Lupe Vélez

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Lupe Vélez (July 18, 1908 – December 13, 1944) was a Mexican actress.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Film career 3 Decline and death 4 Filmography 5 Trivia 6 Miscellaneous 7 External links

[edit] Early life

Vélez was born María Guadalupe Villalobos Vélez in the city of San Luis Potosí. Her father refused to let her use his last name in theater, so she used her mother's maiden name. Lupe was educated at a convent school in Texas before finding work as a sales assistant. She took dancing lessons and in 1924 made her performing debut at the Teatro Principal. She moved to California that year and was first cast in movies by Hal Roach.

[edit] Film career

Her first feature-length film was Douglas Fairbanks's The Gaucho (1927); the next year, she was one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars. She made a further eighteen films before finding her niche in comedy with Hot Pepper (1933). She largely stuck to lighter roles from then, notably in the Mexican Spitfire series of seven films (1939-1943). Vélez was one of the few Hollywood actors to make the successful transition from silent film to 'talkies'.

[edit] Decline and death

Emotionally generous, passionate and high spirited, she had a number of highly publicized affairs before marrying Olympian Johnny Weissmuller (of 'Tarzan' fame) in 1933. The fraught marriage lasted five years; they repeatedly split and finally divorced in 1938. She went on to have another emotionally draining affair, this time with Gary Cooper. In 1943 she returned to Mexico and starred in an adaptation of Emile Zola's Nana (1944), which was well received. Subsequently she returned to Hollywood.

Vélez committed suicide in 1944, at 36 years old, in Beverly Hills, California. Her decision to commit suicide came as the result of the end of her relationship with the married Harald Maresch, whose child she was carrying. Maresch would not leave his wife, and Lupe, a devout Catholic, refused to have an abortion.

Unable to face the shame of giving birth to an illegitimate child, she decided to take her own life. She retired to bed after taking an overdose of secobarbital, but instead of sending her to sleep the drug upset her stomach and she was actually found dead in her bathroom.

Her suicide note read, "To Harald, may God forgive you and forgive me too but I prefer to take my life away and our baby's before I bring him with shame or killing him, Lupe."

A persistent legend is that she drowned in the toilet after going to the bathroom to be sick. Logic suggests this is, in reality, extremely unlikely. Her suicide and the circumstances surrounding it have spawned a cruel but grimly amusing story, made into a film by Andy Warhol in 1965 as Lupe, and repeated as an elaborate anecdote in step-by-step detail by the 'Roz' character in the pilot episode of the television series Frasier.

[edit] Filmography

• What Women Did for Me (1927 (short subject)
• Sailors Beware (1927) (short subject)
• The Gaucho (1927)
• Stand and Deliver (1928)
• Hollywood Snapshots #11 (1929) (short subject)
• Lady of the Pavements (1929)
• The Wolf Song (1929)
• Where East Is East (1929)
• Tiger Rose (1929)
• Hell Harbor (1930)
• The Storm (1930)
• East Is West (1930) (a Spanish language version was filmed, also starring Vélez)
• Resurrection (1931) (a Spanish language version was filmed, also starring Vélez)
• The Squaw Man (1931)
• The Cuban Love Song (1931)
• The Voice of Hollywood No. 13 (1932) (short subject)
• Men in Her Life (1932) (Spanish language version of 1931 film)
• The Broken Wing (1932)
• Kongo (1932)
• The Half Naked Truth (1932)
• Hot Pepper (1933)
• Mr. Broadway (1933) (documentary)
• Palooka (1934)
• Strictly Dynamite (1934)
• Laughing Boy (1934)
• Hollywood Party (1934)
• The Morals of Marcus (1935)
• Gypsy Melody (1936)
• He Loved an Actress (1937)
• High Flyers (1937)
• La Zandunga (1938)
• The Lady from Mexico (1939)
• Mexican Spitfire (1940)
• Mexican Spitfire Out West (1940)
• To Remember Is to Live (1941) (short subject)
• Six Lessons from Madame La Zonga (1941)
• Mexican Spitfire's Baby (1941)
• Honolulu Lu (1941)
• Playmates (1941)
• Mexican Spitfire at Sea (1942)
• Mexican Spitfire Sees a Ghost (1942)
• Mexican Spitfire's Elephant (1942)
• Ladies' Day (1943)
• Redhead from Manhattan (1943)
• Mexican Spitfire's Blessed Event (1943)
• Nana (1944)

[edit] Trivia

• Vélez is mentioned in the Frasier pilot episode The Good Son by Roz near the end of the episode. She says that Vélez's suicide was caused by a desire to be remembered after her career went downhill.

• She was mentioned in the episode of The Simpsons called Homer's Phobia. John Waters gave the Simpsons, excluding Homer Simpson, a tour including where Vélez bought the toilet she supposedly drowned in.

[edit] Miscellaneous

• Mexican biographers and genealogists claimed to trace Vélez's ancestors to Native Americans in the U.S., whom came to Mexico in the 1850's. ^{[citation needed]}

[edit] External links

• Lupe Vélez at the Internet Movie Database
• Photos