After seeing the fantastic trailer for the movie in production The Lost Blonde: The Veronica Lake Story (2021) I had to reach out to the production team via the Little Dude Films website.
I quickly got into an enthusiastic email exchange with Ian Beaumont about the movies production and he very kindly offered to do an interview for us to answer my questions:
Film producing and script writing are actually my third career, after working as a civil servant and as a PR and public affairs consultant. However, I worked with quite a few film and TV people in both of those careers and did a great deal of writing too, so getting into the film business wasn’t a totally new start for me.
The key heads of department are the director, producer and director of photography, but making a film is a massive team effort requiring a wide range of people with an equally wide range of skills, both in front of and behind the camera, all of whom are essential to the project.
I’ve always loved film noir and particularly enjoyed the 1940s American film noirs, including those with Veronica Lake and Alan Ladd in them. I’ve always found her beautiful and mysterious and wanted to find out more about her and my interest in her started from there.
Also, Alan Ladd’s character in one of their films together called The Glass Key is called Ed Beaumont, so it felt like Veronica was talking to me personally, when she was speaking to him and referring to him by my name in that movie.
Once I tracked down Veronica Lake’s autobiography and read it, it seemed very clear to me that elements of it would work very well as a film. The book is very honest and very direct and her personality comes through in it, on every single page.
I was also lucky enough to meet Donald Bain, who co-wrote her autobiography with her and befriended her in her final years. He gave me a real insight into what she was like as a person and that made me want to make the film even more.
In a word: challenging. Veronica lived a very diverse life, which was hard to condense into a feature film script without it becoming very muddy and confused. However, I think I’ve managed to capture the essence of who she was in the script at the various different stages of her adult life. People who’ve read it seem to think so anyway.
We made the teaser/trailer for two main reasons: firstly, as you say, to seek to gain support for the feature, including investment in it. I also knew that Don Bain was very ill and I wanted to make it as a tribute to him. We only just did so in time. He died five days after we completed the teaser/trailer. He didn’t get to see it, sadly, but he did know we were making it and saw some of the stills from the shoot.
We’re going to be promoting the feature at the forthcoming American Film Market in L.A. in November 2021, so hopefully I’ll have some more news for you on it after then.
I had worked with Clara’s agent, Ruth Young at United Agents, before, so she was the first person I went to in terms of casting for the role. I saw Clara’s photograph on Ruth’s page on the United website and thought that she looked just like Veronica in her Hollywood heyday. Ruth showed Clara the script, which she clearly liked and she signed up for the role pretty much straight away. And she was fabulous in it.
Yes, it was quite an elaborate shoot. We had I think 38 people on it in total, including two cameras and all of the crew we needed. We were also helped by Focus 24, who provided us with much of the kit that we used on the shoot.
Once we had Clara on board, things moved forward very quickly. I tend to work with the same people, in particular my brilliant Director of Photography, James Butler and we crewed it with a mixture of people whom either he or I knew, or both.
We found two locations for the shoot: a club in North London for the 1940s scene and a basement bar that a friend of mine owned at the time for the 1960s scene, both of which were perfect for the shoot. Also, everyone on the shoot knew how important it was to me to get it made, on account of Don’s fading health, which gave it an extra energy and emotion that it probably wouldn’t have had otherwise.
The teaser/trailer gives you a sense of two key periods in Veronica’s life: when she was a Hollywood star in the 1940s; and later, in the 1960s, after she’d given it all up and ended up working as a waitress in a cocktail bar, to quote the Human League song.
The feature film script works backwards and forwards from both of these periods and also includes roles for the important people in her life, including Alan Ladd and Andy Ellison, the merchant seaman who was the love of the life. Hopefully the feature will give audiences a real sense of who Veronica was as a person and what was happening to her at the different stages of her life and career.
I think she seriously underrated herself as an actress, which is a shame. If you look at her best work, she’s clearly excellent, but she didn’t have the support network that actors take for granted today and which would have most likely protected her more from her own doubts about her talent and from the vagaries of the film business. She was a woman out of time in many ways; but maybe more of our times, which I hope will make the film relevant to a modern audience.
In terms of her legacy, I’m hoping that the film will re-establish her as an important actor and also as an important figure in terms of female emancipation in film land. She stood up for herself and stood by what she believed in and felt, despite the odds against her, and those are lessons in behaviour and attitude that are as relevant today as they were in the 1940s, if not even more so.
Thank you. We were invited to submit the teaser/trailer to the prestigious Golden Trailer Awards this year and were delighted when it was nominated and then won in the Best Trailer/No Movie category, which is an incredibly competitive category. I’m looking forward to receiving my GTA21 award, which looks like an Oscar statuette, but with a tiny caravan perched on top of it. It’s adorable. I just need to get a mantelpiece to put it on!
I know I’ve mentioned The Glass Key, but my favourite film of hers is actually The Blue Dahlia. There’s a scene in it, which I reference in the film, in which she rescues Alan Ladd from the rain in her car, which, in terms of its dialogue and attitude, is the epitome of the very best of cool and sexy film noir.
Veronica was a great comedic and dramatic actress and it’s a shame that she didn’t have more opportunities to demonstrate her skills in both mediums. However, even despite this, there are at least half a dozen of her films that stand out as classics or near classics to this day, which is still more than many actors can claim to have made.
I think she was a great actress and hope The Lost Blonde will go some way towards rehabilitating her as such and as an important person in her own right.
We’ve still got a long way to go with the feature, including in terms of raising most of the finance for it. It’s a long old haul, but it’s an important project and one in which I feel that I’m carrying the candle for both Veronica and Don, so I’ll keep plugging away until we get there.
Fortunately, I’ve got a great team working with me, including Jennifer Fowler, my US based co-producer, James Butler and his crew and also three incredible assistant producers and production assistants Zoey, Rita and Kai, so I’m confident we will get the feature made, hopefully next year..
Interview with Ian Beaumont 2nd October 2021
Photographs by Kyle Jones kylejonesfilms.com
All photographs © Little Dude Media Ltd
