Peekaboo: The Story of Veronica Lake Reprint Edition

I only discovered Veronica Lake a few months ago and like many am captivated by her onscreen beauty and soulful personality. Interested in finding out more about her I found this offering but was hesitant to purchase it based on the sea of negative reviews but decided to go ahead, figuring it would be better than nothing, since there is nothing else in print on this scale. Nothing would have been far better. This author obviously has an agenda to discredit her as much as possible, always casting her in the darkest light possible. Sure, she did many things she might not have been proud of but where is the compassion, the humanity for a very young woman thrust into the incredibly high stress arena of full time movie making, all the while dealing with at least one crippling disease, maybe two. Certainly, there must have been a perceived injury from Ms. Lake to someone the author knows, or to his people at large. Not sure where his vengence comes from but the way he chose to tell this story indictes a deep well of hatred that ultimately tarnishes only him, since he destroys his credibility in the process. I'm so sorry any of my money will reach his hands. I hope yours doesn't.

There aren't too many options out there on Veronica Lake biographies, so with that being the case, this is worth the read. It has its share of grammtical errors and wasn't quite as thorough as I wish it had been...but it was an OK overview of Veronica's life.

book was in bad condition will have it repaired. but keeping it because it was exciting view on veronica by her mom

I liked the book and her.

I'm gifting this book two stars because of the lack of other Veronica Lake biographies, so it's worth a read if you just want an overview of her life. I'm only giving it those two stars because, for the most part, this biography is a piece of trash. The author runs with Veronica's mother's post mortem revenge on her daughter for cutting off her funds years earlier and intercuts the rest of this book with a ridiculous amount of misogyny and victim blaming. I realize this book was written in 1983, but come on! Blaming a pre-teen Constance (Veronica) for being a "trouble maker" because the boys "couldn't keep their hands off of her"! Nope. Pass. Then there is the troubling labeling of Veronica as schizophrenic, which is based off of nothing other than her mother's word (with no actual proof). He then applies any trait about her that he doesn't care for to her so-called mental illness. He will even flip flop the points he's trying to make to make her sound terrible. (Most notably - blaming her for wanting a baby early in her career when no one else was really on board with it... and then flip flopping that just a page later by saying how horrible she was for not wanting the baby and being short tempered during her pregnancy.)If you want to know more about Veronica's actual life, I would recommend getting your hands on (an admittedly hard to find) copy of her Autobiography. She doesn't go out of her way to paint herself as perfect, and you'll get a much better and less spiteful view of who she was.

I've just re-read Jeff Lenburg's Peekaboo, and was reminded how disappointing this book is. It relies far too heavily on Veronica Lake's mother, whose exploitive and tawdry behavior towards her daughter make her assertions suspect at best. There are some interesting anecdotes from co-workers, but the author's fan-magazine-style narrative provides no analytical depth or insight; it also borrows liberally from Veronica's own autobiography (far superior to Peekaboo, and recommended). Any legitimate biography provides detailed notes and sources regarding factual content and quotations - Lenburg only lists the people he interviewed on an "acknowledgements" page. Given the pitiful amount of printed information about Veronica Lake, Peekaboo is possibly better than nothing, but it's subject deserves far better. If only a first-rate biographer such as A. Scott Berg or David Stenn had essayed this fascinating and sad life, I'm sure all of Miss Lake's fans would have been exultant and grateful.

I felt compelled to write this one star review after reading both this book, and the Autobiography written by Veronica (Connie) herself. A book that claims to be a biography, is simply not allowed to take so many assumptions to be facts. It was a well known fact that Veronica and her mother were estranged, how can it be possible that the mother is the main source of the central point this book proposes, that Veronica was schizophrenic? It is all too evident that this book was written for the sake of making money only. Of course, the Autobiography can also be biased, but in this particular case, it rings much more true, as Veronica herself accepts her mistakes with her children, and in her life, sometimes with such clarity that it makes you wonder how she couldn't do anything to make the difficult situations in her life better. Dear reader if you are looking to know more about this engimatic lady, do yourself a favor and get the Autobiography, out of print but available for sale thru sellers at Amazon.

A friend bought this for me for my birthday in January; l finally read it the last week and was underwhelmed. Mr Lenburg displays a singular lack of compassion for a clearly deeply troubled woman. I presume his facts are accurate, and l certainly do not like Hollywood bios that fawn all over the subject, but this was rather meanspirited.

I'm about halfway through this book and just getting so irritated by the amount of typos.