"I wasn't a sex symbol, I was a sex zombie."
What is it about Veronica Lake that makes her so completely unlike all other 1940s blondes? We know she was short, hell to
work with, and spent her remaining years tending bar in a cheap women-only hotel. But none of that helps explain her unique,
otherworldly effect, which is akin to a whisper silencing a crowded baseball stadium, or the voice you remember from dreams.
Something in her gaze reflects a sweet tender concern; something in her voice always seems distant and far away, as if it
was dubbed in later by the ghost of an angel drowned years ago; her eyes show a tenderness unbowed, a calmness around psychopathic
behavior, as if it reminded her of home. Hers is a warm shoulder to weep yourself to sleep into on flu-addled nights, even
as her aura, remoteness, impassive face, and beautiful blonde hair freeze you where you sit like a blast of Arctic air.
Veronica Lake's long blonde hair shone like a moon that could turn the tides. Women doing wartime factory work caught their
hair in machines trying to emulate her, so with the cooperation of her studio, that magnificent hair was kept locked up tight
in buns and bizarre hats. When Lake's hair was free it could wash all the sins of the depression and the war away, as in the
amazing bathrobe scene of
Sullivan's Travels or any shot of her in
This Gun for
Hire.
She was a very heavy drinker who once noted Ladd seemed a bit of a zombie himself, and together they stand
as undead outsiders in a noir world never quite asleep enough to match them. Part of the appeal of
The Glass Key lies
in Alan Ladd's stoic rejection of this destiny, the much richer Veronica Lake (he's a political thug; she's an heiress) or
in his acceptance with a bemused shrug of her affection for the co trying to catch him, "You love that guy?" It's all okay
with him, for immediately upon being accepted by her, warts and all, he's saved. Her renouncement of the 'peek-a-boo' hairstyle
is a similar bit of stoicism. Like many film lovers, I've long been fascinated by the weird chemistry the pair exhibit, and
how other similar pairs, such as Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews (
Laura), lack that same chemistry, much as the ingredients
are there. Ladd and Lake seem to be born in a different time, on a slower projection speed, than those around them, as blonde
beauties used to having to look up and speak up to talk to people suddenly finding one another and being able to whisper and
look straight into each others' eyes; two kids in a room full of adults, but reversed: the only adults for miles. Together
they were like a misfit Adam and Eve from an alien galaxy. Lake was an astonishing 4'11" which made her one of the few women
who could play opposite the 5'5" Ladd but it's so much more, and bravely less, than that.
In
Glass
Key they have such a great sleepy chemistry it's like they're dreaming while awake and whenever they're together they're
packing or leaving or otherwise hanging out in empty rooms. You just get used to seeing one or the other's leaving trunks
dead center in the room whenever they're together. You don't have to read Wikipedia to know that both of them had hard childhoods,
you can feel it in their shy delivery and wary glares. Ladd and Lake are two damaged souls recognizing each themselves in
one another, and the aloof posturing, verbal attacks and avoidance strategies they used to keep the world at bay couldn't
fool the other for a minute. In
This Gun For Hire they're never even close to lovers but spend the night sleeping on
each others' shoulders on a moving train, just pals who come to trust each other in a world full of duplicitous poisonous,
peppermint-eating snakes which in a way makes it even sexier (and sadder). Normal sex and marriage is stale by comparison.
Perhaps that's why Lake-Ladd films are, for me anyway, ideally seen when at home, sick with a cold, as I was all this past
week.
The Glass Key goes down smooth and easy, with William Bendix's fists standing in for the effects of influenza,
and Veronica Lake's smooth alcoholic tones as gentle as a shot of Tussinex Suspension served from a witch's cauldron ladle.
Do you, dear reader, dare assume there are no such things as sorcerers or witches? Rene Clair must have tried to access this
supernatural power in Lake during
I Married a Witch, because the film seems primed
to take off into some alternate dimension. It never succeeds totally, but it spawned that TV show,
Bewitched. Goddamn
Dick York for his part in emasculating the male ego ideal of this great nation! Frederic March in the film is at least a stronger
force than Jimmy Stewart in
Bell Book and Candle. Kim Novak has some of this weird
Veronica Lake magic, but it's not the same brand, more modern, down to earth. Lake could only be down as far as the seaweed.
Some of my relatives (on my father's side) were tried and hung as witches in Salem, Mass, back in the late 1600s (Mary Easty
was hung, Mary Edwards escaped). My great grandmother, who recently died at 107, and my grandmother, now 94, both have inherited
some of this weird magical daemonic power that Veronica Lake had. Is this why we like some stars over others, genetics? We
feel emotions through cinema's stars as if they were vessels, proxies, stand-ins for our dream selves. Now let's presume that,
on an unconscious level, we can connect yourself through the past to these moving images of people long dead... is that not
itself a form of black magic, by which I mean film? To connect your soul with that of Veronica Lake is to merge with the
past, not just to connect with the unconscious drive of returning to the womb, but the deep end unconscious drive of merging
with the womb behind your
mom's womb, back further still, behind you great grandmother's womb, to all-seeing
I am
Womb, from which all beings come, and from which comes birth, thought, expression, action, life, death, retention, release,
all just facets of the same ever-sparkling tinsel-toed diamond?
Imagine your own ancient ancestors who lived before telephones and electricity -- what would they think if they could see
you now? They couldn't see you if they tried, and oh how they tried. They tried with crystal balls but they couldn't look
that far ahead. But
we can see
them, all the way back when they were young and pretty. Just as I can connect
to the gossamer image of Veronica Lake through my fevered viewing of
This Gun for Hire,
so we can see our own ancestors, and marvel at the pre-digital age. And if this is true, it is also and obviously true that
future generations are right now looking back at us, peering through the silvery veils of screening room time to marvel at
the age of tools and celluloid and pre-pixelated flesh; a time before all was pure thought; a time when man and machine were
separate entities; a time before the cleansing hand of 2012 came and washed it all away until there was nothing, just the
eternal blazing brilliance of her blond and wavy hair, the peaceful calm still reflective surface that was and is Veronica
Lake.
