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December 08, 2009
Lupe Velez: When Shame, Abortion and Suicide Collide
Lupe Velez, The Mexican Spitfire.
The lives of Hollywood stars are frequently tragic and messy tales of absent fathers, cruelly ambitious mothers, and madly dysfunctional families.
Mexican-American actress, Lupe Velez (July 18, 1908 – December 13, 1944) “The Mexican Spitfire,” was a beautiful, passionate, emotionally unstable woman best known for a series of 1930’s B movies in which she plays a delightfully scatter-brained character who speaks broken English mixed with streams of rapid fire Spanish.
Her first feature-length film was in the Douglas Fairbanks blockbuster, The Gaucho (1927), where she plays a high spirited Spanish dancing girl. Velez performed in a further eighteen films before settling into comedy—she had a Carole Lombard vibe, a flair for screwball situations, but her accent limited her appeal—most notably in the seven Mexican Spitfire series of films (1939-1943).
To read my entire article, please head on over to my home away from home Big Hollywood.
Lupe Velez, 1932.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at December 8, 2009 08:11 AM
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