July 18, in addition to being remembered for war events, is also the day on which the birth of Lupe Vélez, one of the first great Latin actresses in Hollywood, is commemorated.
To give you an idea, it was the Salma Hayek or the Sofia Vergara of the forties, a beloved and idolized icon with many admirers. Her self-confidence and her sympathy made her a Mexican who did not go unnoticed on the big screen and adored her. People paid to see her perform with Gary Cooper, Jimmy Durante, Lon Chaney, Ramon Novarro, or with the comedic couple Laurel and Hardy. Off-screen, her troubled private life came to an end over which rivers of ink flowed.
Lupe said that she was the daughter of a colonel in the Mexican army and an opera singer, although it has never been known if that was true or a legend. What is certain is that it was her mother who introduced her to the world of acting. At the age of 19, the actress moved to Hollywood to try her luck. One of the greatest stars of all time, Douglas Fairbanks, chose her to star with him in “The Gaucho”, which made her name of the moment. At the age of 21, she already had a dozen titles behind her. She was one of the most acclaimed and most desired actresses.
But not only her artistic gifts aroused interest: her private life had become a frequent subject of rumors and gossip in the movie Mecca. No one missed her numerous love affairs and her passionate relationships, often with such famous men as Clark Gable. Of course, his did not last long because the protagonist of "Gone with the Wind" was terrified at the idea that Lupe was telling what a bad lover she was. Another of her partners was Gary Cooper, whom she stabbed in a moment of passionate discussion. However, this was not the reason for the breakup.
The relationship, in fact, was broken by the studio's refusal to let her story go ahead, but also by the opposition of Cooper's mother who did not want to see her son holding hands with a Mexican. Gable and Cooper were followed by Johnny Weissmuller, the best Tarzan the cinema has ever seen. They ended up getting married in Las Vegas in 1933. She gave him boxing gloves as a wedding gift. They divorced five years later.
Lupe Vélez's last partner was a French actor named Harold Ramond, eight years her junior. The actress became pregnant by him, but Ramond did not want to know anything about the child she was expecting. For the very religious Lupe, abortion was unthinkable. And the abandonment of Ramond was a shock that she was not able to get over. Her career was over and her personal life was broken. She found no other way out than suicide.
But Lupe Vélez could not die just anyhow. She decided to decorate her Beverly Hills mansion with her best flowers, as well as perfume her, and put several candles to create a wonderful effect. Before taking her own life, she organized a Mexican dinner with her friends to whom she announced her plans, although practically no one paid attention to her. "Lupe's things," they thought. During the evening, everything was laughter, alcohol, and good food..., of course, accompanied by hot chili.
Once home alone, she dressed in a beautiful evening dress, made up like the star that she was, took her pills, and went to bed to wait for the end. But her death did not come to him in the bedroom, as she would have expected, but in a much less cinematic and, undoubtedly, less glamorous place. Vélez did not mention that the spiciness of the dinner would be added to the effect of the pills. The mixture of her forced her to get up and go to the bathroom to return everything. She didn't come out of the bathroom again. The next day, her maid found her dead with her head in the toilet. It was December 14, 1944.
This story has been told for years thanks, especially, to the pages that Kenneth Anger dedicated to the interpreter in his “Hollywood Babylon”. However, in 2012 the authors of the book "Beverly Hills Confidential", Barbara Schroeder and Clark Fogg, were able to clarify once and for all what happened when they found for the first time an image of the removal of her body. Lupe was found dressed with the elegance that she knew how to have, beautifully made up and combed with great care.
Next to the body was a note addressed to Harold Ramond that read: “To Harold, may God forgive you and me, but I would rather take my life and our baby than shame or kill him. Lupe”. On the back he wrote: “How could you, Harold, pretend to love me and our baby so much when you didn't love us all the time? I see no other way out for myself, so goodbye and good luck to you. Love, Lupe." She was 36 years old.
