difficulties. In April 1951, the IRS seized their home for unpaid taxes. Later that same year, Lake and DeToth filed for bankruptcy. Bankrupt and on the verge of a nervous breakdown, Lake left DeToth and flew alone to New York. Reflecting on her departure years later, Lake said: "They said, 'She'll be back in a couple of months,'" recalled Lake. "Well I never returned. Enough was enough already. Did I want to be one of the walking dead or a real person?" Lake performed in summer stock theatre and in stage roles in England. In October 1955, she collapsed in Detroit, where she had been appearing on stage in The Little Hut. Later years After her third divorce, Lake drifted between cheap hotels in New York City, and was arrested several times for public drunkenness and disorderly conduct. In 1962, a New York Post reporter found her living at the all-women's Martha Washington Hotel in Manhattan, working as a waitress downstairs in the cocktail lounge. She was working under the name "Connie de Toth". Lake said she took the job in part because "I like people. I like to talk to them". The reporter's widely distributed story led to speculation that Lake was destitute. After the story ran, fans of Lake sent her money which she returned as "a matter of pride". Lake vehemently denied that she was destitute and stated, "It's as though people were making me out to be down-and-out. I wasn't. I was paying $190 a month rent then, and that's a long way from being broke". The story did revive some interest in Lake and led to some television and stage appearances, including the 1963 off-Broadway revival of the musical Best Foot Forward. In 1966, she had a brief stint as a television hostess in Baltimore, Maryland, along with a largely ignored film role in Footsteps in the Snow. She also continued appearing in stage roles. She went to Freeport in the Bahamas to visit a friend and ended up living there for a few years. Lake's memoirs, Veronica: The Autobiography of Veronica Lake, which she dictated to writer Donald Bain, were published in the United Kingdom in 1969 and in the United States the following year. In the book, Lake discusses her career, her failed marriages; romances with Howard Hughes, Tommy Manville and Aristotle Onassis; her alcoholism; and her guilt over not spending enough time