Hollywood Studio Magazine (December 1972)

The gir / with the peek-a-boo bang By Teet Carle f The first time I saw the Veronica Lake sex-symbol character with the flowing spun gold hair around an angel’s face and with lovely mounds on a wispy body I thought of the song, “Did you ever see a dream walking?” In every way, she was that. The girl with the Peek-a-Boo Bang was a cinematic dream. I had seen her several months before when she wasn’t in siren make-up and hair-do. Previously, she’d been worthy of only one double-take — a doll in a tea cup, perhaps. Surely the proper cutie to lead cheers for the high school teams. A young blond actor named Richard Webb, who later had much screen fame and became Captain Midnight on TV, led the new Veronica Lake up to my desk in the Paramount Publicity department one afternoon in 1940. Webb recently had been signed for his first screen role with William Holden in “I Wanted Wings.” He said, “You know that role of the sexy floosie who causes all the man trouble in our movie and gets killed dead. Well, she’s going to be played by this good friend of mine, whose name is Veronica Lake.” I looked at her and grinned. “Hi, Connie.” She winked. “You remember me at MGM? But Constance Keane is no more.” Yes, I had known her as Connie. She had been one of a group portraying school girls in “Ten Little Mothers” with Eddie Cantor. All publicists had met the juvenilish actresses, even bit-part Connie, because a fellow staff member named Erle Hampton had been thrilled when his infant son was chosen to play the baby around which the plot revolved. So now the girl next door had climbed the sex-appeal ladder and come out Veronica Lake. Of course, Webb had known her as Connie Keane. They’d been fellow drama students at the local Bliss-Hayden school of acting a year before. Connie had been considered by other embryo actors as the tom boy of the school. Pure and simple fun-lover. The type to play the Artful Dodger or Peter Pan. Or maybe Topsy. Many movies later, Veronica told me that she had been barely sixteen when she got that “I Wanted Wings” role and that she could switch from pinafores to tight sleek bodices naturally because of a splendorous ripening of a blouseful of grapefruits. Not long ago when I visited Webb on a movie set and we talked about Veronica he said he could believe her childish years. When a group of the drama students walked little Connie home after rehearsals or performances on summer nights, she always pleaded tired legs and persuaded Dick to carry her piggy-back for blocks. His head wagged. “Highly unromantic. And all the time, she was preparing to become the sexiest gal in town.” Much of that sexiness came from the provacativeness of the Peek-a-Boo Bang which became her trade-mark. I saw another publicist start it all when he purposely let her cascading blond hair cover one eye during a Photographie session. The man was John Engstead, in Charge of setting up and posing gallery art who later became a top Hollywood photographer. Once Veronica was signed and newly christened, she had to be sped to the portrait Studio to provide images to be released to the public. It was the era of short hair but hairdressers were not about to slice off her tresses without production sanction. So her hair was shampooed and combed into Curling, fleecy locks. Her hair kept being brushed back from her face by the stylists until Engstead grunted, “Hey, just let it cover half her face.” 8