The final remains of Veronica Lake.

Here in the quiet town of Phoenicia, where the Catskills strike gallant poses against the boundless blue sky, everyday sights include a band of hunters digging into omelets before their annual outing and flyfishers wading into the chilly Esopus.

But on this regal, sunny October afternoon, Phoenicia regulars stand slack-jawed as a baker's dozen of platinum blonde dames, dressed in '40s evening gowns, sashay along Main Street.  Today, Phoenicia plays host to a Veronica Lake lookalike contest, sponsored by Homer and Langley's Mystery Spot Antiques.  An engagingly bizarre shop crammed to the rafters with the cultural detritus of the 20th century, it is owned by Laura Levine, who has been a rock magazine photographer, a book author, and a filmmaker.

The event came about by serendipity, which seems to be Levine's guiding force in life.  A longtime store customer and weekender, Larry Brill, told Levine that he had, in a jar above his bedroom television, the final remains of Lake, a '40s siren and film noir star.

Levine, with a strong appetite for kitsch, was intrigued.  "This would be a great opportunity to create a proper little memorial to Veronica," she said.  Brill loaned her the relic, but Levine could not decide on a proper tribute.  The urn, wrapped unceremoniously in pink bubblewrap, sat on a living room table for nearly two years.  After talking with Dave Pillard, a fellow merchant from Phoenicia, she envisioned an event that could harmoniously combine a celebration of Lake with the unsettling display of powdered bone chips.

This afternoon, worshippers crane their necks and point cameras.  Some stand by the side, nibbling from a tray of Peek A Boo Cookies, created by local baker Craig Thompson.  Each lemony disk bears a likeness of Lake's glamorous face, complemented by a dollop of yellow icing to suggest her legendary over-the-eye tress.

On a video monitor in the store window, the celluloid Miss Lake is playing opposite Alan Ladd in This Gun for Hire.  The diminutive Ladd, unable to find many female co-stars who would not tower over his 5'4" frame, found the perfect foil in Lake, whose curvaceous frame stood a mere five feet high.  They co-starred in four hard-bitten noir films, including The Blue Dahlia and The Glass Key.

Veronica Lake Lookalike Contest winner Leah Michele Yananton (center), People's Choice winner Jen Williams Dragon (right)

The Veronica clones are flouncing and winking through the crowd.  On a nearby table sit the prizes: three trophies, for under-18, over-18 and audience choice.  Beside them lays a velvet sash emblazoned in red sparkles.  One over-18 contestant is Sara Phelps, a New York film producer.  A dead ringer for Cameron Diaz, Phelps considered dressing as Lake in the Preston Sturges classic Sullivan's Travels, in which Lake played a ragged hobo.  However, she opted for a backless black gown and stone marten.  "I love Sullivan's Travels, but I wanted to go for the glamour, because I think that's what everyone remembers about her.  And her life ended in kind of a tragedy, so I wanted to remember the good parts."

Admittedly, the good parts were brief.  Lake commanded the screen for little more than a decade in varying B-movie roles with middling success.  The Sturges film would became a classic only decades later.  Modern audiences might know her only from Kim Basinger's stunning homage in the film LA Confidential.  Lake was an alcoholic who walked away from Hollywood as the roles dried up.  She returned East, where she had started as a hard luck Brooklyn girl named Constance Frances Marie Ockleman.  According to her 1968 autobiography, Lake became a cocktail waitress at the Martha Washington Hotel in Manhattan, where most were unaware of her luminous pedigree.  As a dipsomaniac, she had an unerring instinct for unworthy lovers, but a knack for attaching herself to people who would help her for months at a time.  Yet the novelty of keeping company with an insolvent former star would quickly fade, and Lake would be on her own again.

Carsten Andresen, 32, drove to Phoenicia from Boston today.  His fascination with deceased female movie stars, he said, stems from his Texan upbringing and annual celebration of the Mexican holiday Day of the Dead.  Coming to worship the ashes of Veronica Lake, he said, differs little from from the Roman Catholic custom of honoring relics, such as the finger bone of a saint.

The under-18 contestants begin their runway walks.  One cocks her head in a come-hither pose.  Another moves in high heels six sizes too big.  The youngest is Ava Golden, age 3, who sizes up the crowd while intently sucking her thumb.  Among the over-18 types, there radiates a more aggressive sexuality.  One contestant has shoehorned her curves into a tight black velvet gown, minus panties.

Jen Williams Dragon

Most well-wishers this afternoon are unaware of how the ashes of a forgotten film noir siren had come to the Catskills.  It was a dark tale worthy of her film noir career.  When Levine announced the proposed event in early September, I located Donald Bain, the longtime author who collaborated with Veronica Lake on her autobiography.  Bain, who now pens the "Murder, She Wrote" series, lives in the Westchester area.  Bain was disturbed by the event; the unveiling of her ashes contradicted information almost three decades old.

In 1976, three years after Lake's death in a Burlington, Vermont hospital from hepatitis, Bain began wondering what had happened to her remains.  He contacted Corbin & Palmer funeral home and learned that Lake's ashes were still there, unclaimed due to an outstanding$200 bill.  Bain, who had bailed out his hapless friend several times in the past, once again came to her rescue.  He paid the balance and instructed that the ashes be sent to two Manhattan men, Bill Roos and Richard Toman.  Bain considered them to be Lake's only true friends.  "She had told me many times that she wanted to be cremated," Bain recalled, and that her ashes should be "strewn over southern waters."  Roos and Toman were heading to Florida and said they would comply with Lake's wishes.  Until I made contact with Bain in September, he assumed the deed had been carried out.  He believes Roos and Toman have since died.

Larry Brill takes up the story here.  He explained that he was friends with a Manhattan character named Ben Bagley.  An eccentric record and theater producer, Bagley was not shy about asking people for a free meal or a personal item he coveted.  Bagley was once in Roos and Toman's elegant Park Avenue apartment and espied the urn that held Lake's ashes.  Somehow, he wheedled the urn from them.  But because he favored the decorative urn more so than the contents, he passed on the cremains - in a manilla envelope - to Brill, a rabid collector of movie star memorabilia.  (Bagley died in 1998.) That is how the remains of Veronica Lake, in grand guignol Hollywood style, found a home in Phoenicia.

Bain declined an invitation from Levine to attend the Mystery Spot ceremony.  "I frankly find the whole thing unsavory," he said.  In life, Lake went from one undependable husband to another.  Posthumously, she seems to have met the same fate, being passed from Roos to Bagley to Brill.  Perhaps Roos and Toman partially fulfilled their duty.  The Phoenicia remains are no more than a few spoonsful, and the average cremated body yields nine pounds of ash.  Brill and Levine believe  Roos and Toman traveled to Florida for the ceremonial scattering, but kept a bit for themselves.  Why they gave it to Bagley shall remain a mystery.

Under-18 winner Sylvia Mae Gorelick

The judges make their decisions.  In the under-18 category, a young lady named Sylvia is the winner, dressed in a brocaded aqua dress, accented by dental braces.  She possesses enough poise to blow the crowd a kiss.  The people's choice is Jen, whose black roots peep from beneath her dyed locks.  "It's so hard to be so beautiful and so famous," she says.  The over-18 winner is Leah Michele Yannington, in a burgundy dress ensemble.  She is handed a tiara, the sash, a trophy, and a bouquet of flowers.  As  Yannington climbs a bench to bask in the applause, a few drops of rain begin to fall amid the afternoon sunshine.  A brief sunshower.  As a metaphor for Veronica Lake's life, this one is perfect.

The centerpiece of the ceremony has been reached.  Levine leads people into the store and, with the jerk of a sheet, the shrine is unveiled.  Veronica Lake's ashes reside in a 1919 Roseville pottery vase, housed in an old glass cabinet.  Handpainted white lettering on the front reads: Veronica Lake 1919-1973.  Behind it, an 8 x 10 black-and-white glossy depicts Lake at her sultriest.  A whoop of excitement spreads through the crowd.  Levine tries to hush them, explaining, "This is a solemn moment."  But Carsten Andresen disagrees.  "I think this is a happy time.  When I die, no one's going to show off my ashes or dress like me."