Biography
Distinctive Features
`Peekaboo` hairstyle, covering right side of forehead and sometimes partly over right eye.
Measurements
Bust: 33"
C
Waist: 21"
Hips: /2"
Trivia and Quotes
Quotes
 "Hollywood gives a young girl the aura of one giant, self-contained orgy farm, its inhabitants dedicated to crawling into every pair of pants they can find." "I wasn`t a sex symbol, I was a sex zombie."
"I will have one of the cleanest obits of any actress. I never did cheesecake like Ann Sheridan or Betty Grable. I just used my hair."
"I`ve reached a point in my life where it`s the little things that matter. I`m no longer interested in doing what`s expected of me. I was always a rebel and probably could have got much farther had I changed my attitude. But when you think about it, I got pretty far without changing attitudes. I`m happier with that." - reflecting on her career, 1970.
"You could put all the talent I had into your left eye and still not suffer from impaired vision."
[on Alan Ladd] Alan Ladd was a marvelous person in his simplicity. In so many ways we were kindred spirits. We both were professionally conceived through Hollywood`s search for box office and the types to insure the box office. And we were both little people. Alan wasn`t as short as most people believe. It was true that in certain films Alan would climb a small platform or the girl worked in a slit trench. We had no such problems together.
[on Paulette Goddard] It was her honesty I liked.
Trivia
Her ashes sat on a funeral home`s shelf until 1976 when her cremation was paid for and supposedly spread on the Flordia coastline. Some 30 years after her death, her ashes resurfaced in a New York antique store in October 2004.
Kim Basinger won an Oscar as "Best Actress in a Supporting Role" for portraying a prostitute who is supposed to look like Lake.
She and Alan Ladd made 7 movies together: The Blue Dahlia (1946), Duffy`s Tavern (1945), The Glass Key (1942), Saigon (1948), Star Spangled Rhythm (1942), This Gun for Hire (1942) and Variety Girl (1947). In Variety Girl (1947), Star Spangled Rhythm (1942) and Duffy`s Tavern (1945) they appear as themselves.
A 1943 Paramount newsreel shows her adopting an upswept hairdo at the behest of War Womanpower Commission, to discourage "peekaboo bangs" on Rosie the Riveter.
An accomplished aviatrix.
During World War Two, the rage for her peek-a-boo bangs became a hazard when women in the defense industry would get their bangs caught in machinery. Lake had to take a publicity picture in which she reacted painfully to her hair getting "caught" in a drill press in order to heighten public awareness about the hazard of her hairstyle.
Got her big break when teamed with the only actor in Hollywood relatively near to her in height, Alan Ladd. Ladd was 5` 6" and she was just 4` 11".
Her height variously given as "barely five feet" to 5` 2" Photos indicate the shorter height.
She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame located at 6918 Hollywood Blvd.
She took up flying in 1946 and in 1948 flew her small plane from Los Angeles to New York.
She was cremated and her ashes scattered at sea in the Virgin Islands.
Women in the 1940s (and even Kim Basinger 50 years later for the movie L.A. Confidential (1997)) lost most or all of their hair trying to copy her platinum blonde hair color.
Birth year usually given as 1919 but her autobiography and Lenburg`s highly negative biography both indicate 1922. The 1920 United States Census shows that her father Harry Ockelman is unmarried and childless, while in 1930 Constance is listed as seven years old.
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