Mexican Spitfire (1. Articles. Mexican Spitfire (1. Though she was often marginalized by critics as a cut price Dolores Del Rio or Carmen Miranda, Lupe Velez had an almost twenty- year tenure as a Hollywood exotic. Yet despite her popularity with moviegoers in the Thirties and Forties, caustic Tinseltown gossip (particularly Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon) doomed . Born Mara Guadalupe Vlez de Villalobos on July 1. Mexico City, the future . Spirited as a child (confessing in interviews that she played with boys because other girls found her too rough), Lupe was packed off on the cusp of puberty to be educated (and tamed) at Our Lady of the Lake convent in San Antonio, Texas. When her father was killed in the line of duty two years later, Lupe returned home and took a job as a department store sales girl to help support her widowed mother. By 1940, the time of The Mexican Spitfire. In Mexican Spitfire's Elephant. Overview of Mexican Spitfire, 1940, directed by Leslie Goodwins, with Lupe Velez, Leon Errol, Donald Woods, at Turner Classic Movies. Dennis heads west to work on an important b. Mexican Spitfire Komedie. Mexican Spitfire (1940) Comedy. Newlyweds Dennis and Carmelita have several obstacles to deal with in their new marriage: Carmelita's fiery Latin temper, a meddling. Mexican Spitfire Out West 1h. Title: Mexican Spitfire Out West (1940) 6.2 /10. Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Trailer for the 1940 comedy, MEXICAN SPITFIRE, starring Lupe Velez, Donald Woods, Leon Errol and Linda Hayes. This film was a sequel to the previous year's. With money saved from her $4 a week salary, Lupe enrolled in dance classes. Her voluptuous measurements and bobbed . Making her stage debut in the revue Ra- Ta Plan, Lupe was given a letter of introduction to American stage actor Richard Bennett, who was preparing a Hollywood run of the Willard Mack play The Dove and needed an actress for the role of a Mexican cantina singer. When Lupe arrived in Hollywood (after first having been turned back across the border by immigrations officials), the fifty- something Bennett was alarmed to discover she was just 1. When he saw her frolicking in Music Box Revue, film producer Hal Roach invited Lupe to join his stable of pretty young things, whose number included Carole Lombard, Jean Harlow and later Paulette Goddard. Lupe appeared in several comic two- reelers, including the Laurel and Hardy short Sailors Beware (1. Oliver Hardy first performed his trademark . Cast by Fairbanks as his hot- tempered Latin lover, Lupe allowed the template for her Hollywood career to be stamped in the mold of the hot tamale nonpareil. In his review of The Gaucho, the critic for Variety raved that . She weathered a tempestuous love affair with Gary Cooper (on the rebound from Clara Bow) and might have married the lanky, laconic actor were it not for the disapproval of his domineering mother. In 1. 93. 3, Lupe did marry Johnny Weissmuller, the Romanian migr and Olympic gold medalist who had parlayed his swimming prowess into a rolling paycheck as cinema's first talking Tarzan. Not surprisingly, the union of Weissmuller and Velez was stormy, marked by public fights, allegations of physical abuse and occasional separations. The year the marriage was dissolved, Lupe starred in the first installment of what would become a popular film series tailor- made to her talents. Mexican Spitfire (1. RKO's lowbrow comedy The Girl from Mexico (1. Lupe played a Chicana singer groomed for stardom as a radio star. The fish out of water formula seemed so sure- fire that RKO studio head George Schaefer negotiated a deal with Lupe for the modest but steady salary of $1,5. Nugent of Mexican Spitfire, which had its premiere just six months after the release of The Girl from Mexico. Truth be told, Lupe's shtick as Carmelita Fuentes- Lindsay was nothing new: the facial contortions, malapropisms, double entendres, and pratfalls were all pulled unapologetically from the shallow bag of tricks the actress had been carrying since her time with Hal Roach. Nevertheless, the public ate it up. Men seemed to love Lupe's unpredictability and undeniable sex appeal while women found a role model in this libertine loose cannon. While her fiery Carmelita Lindsay was a married woman (her mixed marriage was highly unusual for Hollywood at this time), she retained a separate life as a singer, one that (at least initially) she was not going to forsake by having children. A former Vaudevillian and Ziegfeld rep player, Errol's mtier in Hollywood was the two- reel comedy but he stayed with the Mexican Spitfire series until the very end. Returning to Mexico City, she played the lead in Nana (1. Spanish language adaptation of mile Zola's 1. Celestino Gorostiza and Roberto Gavaldn. While Mexican critics were kind to Lupe, they panned the production as an obvious star vehicle which compromised Zola's naturalism. Lupe soon returned to California. After ending a relationship with actor Guinn . In December of 1. Lupe discovered she was pregnant but a proposal of marriage was not forthcoming from Ramand. Exhibiting symptoms of what would now be called manic depression, Lupe hosted a lavish celebration of her patron saint, the Virgin of Guadalupe, on December 1. On December 1. 3th, at the Hollywood premiere of Nana, she told friend Estelle Taylor . She was thirty- five years old. Many years later, Kenneth Anger alleged that Lupe died not from the overdose but from drowning in her own toilet after vomiting up the pills. Despite glaring inaccuracies in Anger's account of the death of Lupe Velez, his version persisted. The macabre death scenario was reenacted by Edie Sedgwick in Andy Warhol's Lupe (1. The Simpsons and Frasier. Meanwhile, film critics, scholars and . Roberts. Cinematography: Jack Mac. Kenzie Art Direction: Van Nest Polglase. Music: Paul Sawtell. Film Editing: Desmond Marquette Cast: Lupe Velez (Carmelita Lindsay), Leon Errol (Uncle Matt/Lord Basil), Donald Woods (Dennis Lindsay), Linda Hayes (Elizabeth Price), Elisabeth Risdon (Aunt Della), Cecil Kellaway (Mr. Chumley), Ward Bond (policeman). BW- 6. 8m. by Richard Harland Smith Sources: Twinkle, Twinkle, Movie Star! Brundidge. Lupe Velez and Her Lovers by Floyd Conner. Mexican Spitfire Out West (1. In this third of RKO's . Lupe feels that her straightlaced husband (Donald Woods) is neglecting her, and thus seeks a divorce. Reliable old Uncle Matt (Leon Errol) shows up to straighten things out, which means that for the umpteenth time in this series he'll disguise himself as the veddy British Lord Epping. Before everything straightens itself out, Uncle Matt finds himself in dutch with his own wife. We all know that Lupe and her hubby will get together: otherwise there wouldn't be a fourth.
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