Lupe Vélez
Actor · 1908 – 1944 · San Luis Potosí, San Luis Potosí, Mexico
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Lupe Vélez (July 18, 1908 – December 13, 1944), was a Mexican and American stage and film actress, comedian, dancer and vedette. Vélez began her career as a performer in Mexican vaudeville in the early 1920s. After moving to the United States, she made her first film appearance in a short film in 1927. By the end of the decade, in the last years of American silent films, she had progressed to leading roles in numerous movies like El Gaucho (1927), Lady of the Pavements (1928) and Wolf Song (1929), among others. She was one of the first successful Latin American actresses in the United States. During the 1930s, her well-known explosive screen persona was exploited in a series of successful films like Hot Pepper (1933), Strictly Dynamite (1934) and Hollywood Party (1934). In the 1940s, Vélez's popularity peaked after appearing in the Mexican Spitfire films, a series created to capitalize on Vélez's well-documented fiery personality. Nicknamed The Mexican Spitfire by the media, Vélez's personal life was as colorful as her screen persona. She had several highly publicized romances and a stormy marriage. In December 1944, Vélez died of an intentional overdose of Seconal. Her death, and the circumstances surrounding it, have been the subject of speculation and controversy. Description above from the Wikipedia article Lupe Vélez licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Movies23
Movie6.8DocumentaryHOLLYWOOD. Tinseltown. Land of the stars. A city where an actor can reach the greatest heights overnight - and descend just as rapidly. What goes up must come down, and Hollywood's failing stars leave a legacy of sadness, pain and disappointment in their wake. Here, in graphic detail, are the shocking stories behind the deaths of the silver screen's most beloved celebrities, as well as it's lesser known players. Packed with stunning newsreel footage, and previously unrevealed facts, DEATH IN HOLLYWOOD documents many a celebrity's morbid demise due to suicide, drug and alcohol abuse, disease, and even murder. From the outrageous to the tragic, DEATH IN HOLLYWOOD leaves no tombstone unturned in it's quest to dig up the truth about Hollywood's dearly departed.
Death In Hollywood
1990 · 5 votes
Movie7.1DocumentaryMusicSome of MGM's musical stars review the studio's history of musicals. From The Hollywood Revue of 1929 to Brigadoon, from the first musical talkies to Gene Kelly in Singin' in the Rain.
That's Entertainment! III
1994 · 42 votes
Movie7.2ComedyDocumentaryFilm clips highlight the funniest scenes and brightest comic stars in MGM's history.
The Big Parade of Comedy
1964 · 6 votes
Movie5.6ComedyMusicJimmy Durante is jungle movie star Schnarzan the Conqueror, but the public is tiring of his fake lions. When Baron Munchausen comes to town with real man-eating lions, Durante throws him a big Hollywood star-studded party so that he might use the lions in his next movie. But, his film rival sneaks into the party to buy the lions before Durante.
Hollywood Party
1934 · 16 votes
Movie6.5ComedyDue to a complex series of events a Guards Officer in a small European country is imprisoned. He manages to escape in the company of an idiotic milliner and they briefly take shelter with some gypsies, where the Captain falls in love with a young woman. Having been discovered by an American promoter while performing with gypsy orchestra in a tavern, the three accompany him to London as the latest new musical sensation. A great success, they begin a European-wide tour when their plane is forced down by bad weather in their homeland. Here events are satisfactorily resolved.
Gypsy Melody
1936 · 2 votes
Movie4.0DramaBased in the Émile Zola novel of the same name, which details the life of Nana, a French prostitute of the 19th century.
Naná
1944 · 5 votes
Movie6.5DocumentaryDocumentary about the presence of Latin American culture and actors in American movies.
Movie5.8MusicComedyWhile in Hawaii, Velez begins the film as a risque nightclub act and due to her involvement with a group of sailors becomes a beauty queen.
Honolulu Lu
1941 · 3 votes
Movie5.2ComedyIn this comedy, a pair of ex-Marines team up and get involved in a nightclub. Trouble ensues when they both fall in love with a feisty woman and begin fighting over her.
Hot Pepper
1933 · 6 votes
Movie8.3DocumentaryAn unprecedented anthology of never-before-told true stories by and about some of Hollywood's most interesting stars, legends, and wannabes, and takes readers inside Hollywood's inner sanctum to show how casting decisions are made, who makes them, and who has the final word.
The Casting Couch
1995 · 3 votes
Movie5.0ComedyDennis heads west to work on an important business deal minus the Mexican Spitfire, Carmelita. His hot-tempered spouse decides to surprise him, but ends up as the surprised one when she sees him with another woman. Instead of a second honeymoon, Carmelita begins divorce proceedings
Mexican Spitfire Out West
1940 · 6 votes
Movie5.4ComedyRomanceA pair of shipboard smugglers have a large diamond hidden inside a small elephant statuette, which they plant on absentminded Lord Epping to get it past customs. Now, his lordship is visiting Uncle Matt Lindsay who looks just like him. Thanks to flirtatious Diana's efforts to get the elephant back, the comic confusion proliferates, with 'spitfire' Carmelita (now a blonde) playing a prominent part.
Mexican Spitfire's Elephant
1942 · 7 votes
Movie4.6ComedyAn advertising executive and his temperamental wife adopt a war orphan who turns out to be a beautiful woman.
The Mexican Spitfire's Baby
1941 · 9 votes
Movie6.0ComedyRomanceDennis mistakenly believes Carmelita is going to have a baby. Little does he know that the blessed event is her cat's new kittens.
Mexican Spitfire's Blessed Event
1943 · 4 votes
Movie6.3DramaSimultaneously shot Spanish version of Tolstoy adaptation: After a woman he has formerly mistreated is sentenced for a crime a man who was part of her jury joins her on the trip to Siberia to expatiate his guilt.
Movie5.1ComedyActionCarmelita Fuentes is a fiery-Latin singer/dancer in Mexico City who has designs on Dennis Lindsay, an American publicity agent, for unclear reasons, while Lindsay's shiftless uncle Matthew Lindsay aids and abets her every step of the way to the marriage altar.
The Girl from Mexico
1939 · 7 votes
Movie6.9ComedyA con artist and a midget dressed as her infant son, are unmasked aboard a ship by a steward.
Sailors, Beware!
1927 · 26 votes
Movie5.1ComedyRomanceA carnival pitchman (Tracy) finagles his girlfriend, a fiery hoochie dancer (Vélez), into a major Broadway revue under the auspices of an impresario (Morgan).
The Half-Naked Truth
1932 · 13 votes
Movie6.1RomanceDramaLovely Anita dreams of escaping the monotony of her island home and sailing to bustling Havana. But when her abusive father promises her to the greasy local merchant, Anita does everything in her power to make her dream a reality.
Hell Harbor
1930 · 11 votes
Movie6.1DramaA Chinese wife returns to the American family she left behind in Southeast Asia and then moves in on her daughter's (Lupe Velez) beau (Lloyd Hughes).
Where East Is East
1929 · 15 votes
Movie5.4DramaWesternJim Wyngate, an English aristocrat, comes to the American West under a cloud of suspicion for embezzlement actually committed by his cousin Lord Henry. In Wyoming, Wyngate runs afoul of cattle rustler Cash Hawkins by rescuing the Indian girl Naturich from Hawkins. Wyngate marries Naturich, but then learns that his cousin Lord Henry has been killed and has cleared his name before dying. As Wyngate has long loved Lady Diana, Lord Henry's wife, he is perplexed at his situation. But fate takes a hand and resolves matters as Wyngate could not have predicted.
The Squaw Man
1931 · 12 votes
Movie4.8ComedyCarmelita and Uncle Matt find themselves in a haunted house, but the "ghosts" are actually enemy agents who are trying to frighten away visitors in order to develop a nitroglycerin bomb.
Mexican Spitfire Sees a Ghost
1942 · 6 votes
Movie5.2DramaKarl, a German diplomat in Paris, discovers that his fiancée, Diane, has been unfaithful. He tells her that he would rather marry a 'girl of the streets' than her. Outraged, Diane enlists the services of a Spanish singer/dancer from a disreputable nightclub to pose as a sophisticated, convent-educated singer, and surreptitiously arranges for her to meet Karl.