Almost Shot Her Lover and Died in the Toilet: The Sinful Life of Hollywood’s Most Jealous Woman Lupe Velez

May the success of Mexican-born actresses in Hollywood always be celebrated as something special – Lupe Velez smashed all the glass ceilings before the era of equal opportunity. A native of the city of San Luis Potosi has firmly decided that she wants to act in films. And neither the strict rules of the Catholic school in which she studied, nor the prohibitions of the officer father, who threatened to deprive his daughter of her surname, could deprive her of this dream. But is it a barrier? Lupe took her mother’s maiden name and moved to California. At first she acted in vaudeville, then she began to receive roles in films. The debut of the young Mexican turned out to be memorable – in 1927 she starred in the film “Gaucho”, where the main role was played by Douglas Fairbanks, a real idol of silent cinema.

Lupe, however, could not reach such a career height for a long time. She had mostly ethnic roles. At one point, she even left Hollywood and tried to become a Broadway star. Ironically, the long-awaited fame will bring her just the role that Lupe seemed so tired of. In 1939, she starred in the comedy The Mexican Girl, which was incredibly successful.

However, even without that, Veles was on everyone’s lips. The actress was one of Hollywood’s leading beauties in the 1930s, and wrung passionate romances with the most handsome men.

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In the personal life of Lupe, it is quite possible to study the history of cinema – the spectacular actress managed to turn the heads of leading Hollywood men of that time.

Douglas Fairbanks, already mentioned, left his wife Mary Pickford, also a Hollywood star, for whom the public went crazy over Lupe. Among the Mexican lovers were Charlie Chaplin, Errol Flynn, John Gilbert and director Victor Fleming. In a series of such erratic romances, Lupe managed to marry – the marriage to five-time Olympic swimming champion Johnny Weissmuller, known for playing the role of Tarzan, lasted five years.

But the relationship with the main sex symbol of those years, Gary Cooper, was the most stormy. Majestic, tall (186 centimeters!), the blue-eyed actor made the hearts of all women tremble – from his partners on stage to the audience in the gallery.

They met while filming the movie “Wolf Song” in 1929 and did not beat around the bush for a long time. Although the two had other lovers around this time (Hollywood wasn’t very strict), Gary and Lupe were so taken with each other that Cooper even proposed to her. However, the handsome man did not consider this circumstance to somehow limit his flirting with other women. But Veles, having fallen in love with Cooper, seems to have forgotten all her frivolous hobbies.

Of course, the behavior of the chosen one did not suit him at all. Temperamental Velez threw grandiose scandals at Cooper, and sometimes it was about assault, and somehow Lupe even cut him with a knife. The handcuffs regularly went to the magnet Cooper, but the screen hero himself humbly endured it and offered new explanations for the bruises and abrasions only when he appeared on the site.

However, one day his patience broke. Then an enraged Lupe almost sent him to the afterlife. Tired of the relationship with the actress, Cooper planned to flee her to New York, but Velez found out and passed the actor at the train station. The actress took aim and shot him in the head with a revolver. Luckily, Velez missed and Cooper was unscathed (not counting, of course, the stress he underwent – the actor still had to heal his nerves), but the stars’ relationship ended.

In the early 1940s, after her divorce from her husband, Velez began an affair with a young actor, Harold Maresh. Soon the actress became pregnant. The man was in no hurry to lead her down the aisle, and Lupe, brought up in strict Catholic traditions, could not imagine that she could give birth to an illegitimate child.

Then she decided to kill herself, leaving her lover a farewell note. The actress decorated the room with flowers, donned a luxurious outfit and prepared to die beautifully. But not everything went as planned. Here it is worth mentioning that the death of Veles is still surrounded by all kinds of rumors. So the newspapers wrote that they found her body with her head down in the toilet – either in the last minutes of her life Lupe was nauseous, or she completely slipped on her own vomit, fell and fell hit.

Trying to stem the flow of these “yellow” posts, the actress’ secretary said Lupe died in her bed, but few believed her.

However, the motive for the suicide has also raised questions. Previously, the actress did not have a righteous lifestyle according to Catholic standards, so many people doubted that pregnancy could break the actress.

Veles throughout her life suffered from sudden bouts of excitement and depression, so there is a version that another mental state crisis could bring to the actress.

Although Veles did not manage to die in an elegant setting, as she wished, a beautiful memory remained of the actress. A bust of her has been erected in her hometown in Mexico, and her life has already been the subject of films, including Andy Warhol’s biopic Velez, starring Edie Sedgwick.

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