#5: Veronica Lake in Sullivan’s Travels (1941)
Preston Sturges had already heard the rumor and asked directly. Veronica Lake told him she was not pregnant. She was, in fact, six months along when shooting began. That revelation did not arrive until production was underway, at which point the director was furious, and the costume department had a very immediate problem to solve. Edith Head took on the visual side of it, using specially designed gowns and the loose hobo clothing required by the story to soften Lake’s changing shape. The latter was almost perfect camouflage because her character spends a large portion of the movie dressed down while traveling with Joel McCrea’s idealistic filmmaker.
