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

Let the success of actresses of Mexican origin in Hollywood still be celebrated as something special – Lupe Velez broke all the glass ceilings before the era of equal opportunities. A native of the city of San Luis Potosi, she firmly decided that she wanted to act in films. And neither the strict rules of the Catholic school in which she studied nor the prohibitions of the officer’s father, who threatened to deprive her daughter of her surname, could deprive her of this dream. But is it a barrier? Lupe took her mother’s maiden name and went to California. She first performed in vaudeville and then began getting roles in films. The debut for the young Mexican turned out to be unforgettable – in 1927 she starred in the film “Gaucho”, where Douglas Fairbanks, a true idol of silent films, played the main role.

However, Lupe could not reach such a career height for a long time. She was given mostly ethnic roles. At some point, she even left Hollywood and tried to become a star on Broadway. Ironically, the long-awaited fame will bring her the very role that Lupe was so tired of. In 1939, she starred in the comedy The Mexican Girl, which was an incredible success.

However, even without that, Veles was on everyone’s lips. The actress was one of the main Hollywood beauties of the 1930s and had passionate romances with the most beautiful men.

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

The already mentioned Douglas Fairbanks left his wife Mary Pickford, also actually a Hollywood star, for whom the audience went crazy for Lupe. Among the Mexican lovers were Charlie Chaplin, Errol Flynn, John Gilbert and director Victor Fleming. In this series of inscrutable novels, Lupe managed to get married – a five-year marriage to five-time Olympic swimming champion Johnny Weissmuller, who is famous for portraying the role of Tarzan.

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

They met during the filming of the film “Wolf Song” in 1929 and did not fight for long. Although they both had other lovers at the time (Hollywood wasn’t too strict), Gary and Lupe were so smitten with each other that Cooper even proposed to her. However, the handsome man did not think that this circumstance somehow limits his flirting with other ladies. But Veles has fallen in love with Cooper and seems to have forgotten all his frivolous hobbies.

Of course, the chosen one’s behavior did not suit her at all. Temperamental Velez heaped grandiose scandals on Cooper, and sometimes there was even an ambush, and Lupe somehow slashed him with a knife. Cuffs went to the loving Cooper regularly, but the screen hero himself endured it humbly and came up with new explanations for bruises and abrasions only when he appeared on the page.

One day, however, his patience ran out. Then an enraged Lupe almost sent him to the other world. Tired of his relationship with the actress, Cooper planned to run away from her to New York, but Velez found out about it and overtook the actor at the station. The actress took aim and shot him in the head with a revolver. Fortunately, Velez missed and Cooper was unscathed (not counting the stress he suffered, of course – the actor still had to heal his nerves), but the relationship of the stars fell apart.

In the early 1940s, after divorcing her husband, Velez began an affair with the young actor Harold Maresh. The actress soon became pregnant. The man was in no hurry to take her to the altar, and Lupe, raised in strict Catholic traditions, could not imagine that she could give birth to a child out of wedlock.

Then she decided to take her own life and left her lover a farewell letter. The actress decorated the room with flowers, dressed in a luxurious outfit and beautifully prepared for death. But everything did not go according to plan. It is worth noting here that the death of Veles is still surrounded by all sorts of rumors. So the newspaper said that they found her body with her head down on the toilet – either Lupe was fighting nausea in the last minutes of her life, or she completely slipped on her own vomit, fell and hit herself.

In an attempt to stop the flow of these “yellow” publications, the secretary of the actress said that Lupe died in her bed, but few believed him.

However, the suicide motive also raised questions. Previously, the actress did not have a righteous lifestyle in accordance with Catholic standards, so many doubted that pregnancy could break the actress.

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

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

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