| While making the Preston Sturges film Sullivan's
Travels in 1941, VERONICA LAKE and JOEL McCREA enjoyed a
taste of the privileged life on the Janss family estate, where this scene
was shot. If it hadn't been for her hairstyle, Lake might not have been
quite as legendary. But that "peek-a-boo" do that almost obscured
one eye became such a trend that she was one of the hottest stars of the
early forties. At one point the War Department had to step in and ask her
to change her style, since so many Rosie-the- Riveter types were adopting
the look - semi- blinded by their tresses, workers' long hair easily got
caught in machinery. Lake enjoyed some hits in which she was teamed with
Alan Ladd, starting with This Gun For Hire (1942). Her love life
was in the news when she dated Greek millionaire Aristotle Onassis and
Hollywood tycoon Howard Hughes. By the end of the forties, however, her
popularity declined and her career went awry. She filed for bankruptcy,
dropped out and disappeared. In the sixties a journalist tracked her down
in the bar of a New York hotel where she was serving drinks. By 1973, after
a final failed attempt to jump- start her career, she died from hepatitis.
McCrea's career was as hot as Lake's in the forties, when he had the lead
in Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent (1940) and Sturges'
The Palm Beach Store: (1942). After 1946 he appeared mostly in westerns.
For McCrea, who had grown up in Hollywood helping early cowboy stars Tom
Mix and William S. Hart with their horses, this represented the completion
of a career circle. |
JEAN HARLOW strikes a pose in her BVD swimsuit,
which featured a rather innocent round neckline in front, a daring extremely
low-cut back. It was the perfect design to reflect her sex-kitten image.
Harlow got her break as the heroine in Howard Hughes' World War I epic
Hell's Angels (1930). Under contract to Hughes, the platinum blonde developed
a reputation for playing coarse, wise-cracking characters with a vulnerable
side, which also paralleled her off-screen personality. When Harlow moved
to MGM in 1932, she became more refined, developing into a sexy, sultry
comedienne. Nicknamed "Baby," she died suddenly of a cerebral
edema at age twenty-six. |
