Kuwait’s Own Lupe Vélez
I was shocked earlier this week when a dear Dutch friend of mine in Silicon Valley shared a CNN article about a Kuwaiti fashionista making international news waves for all the wrong reasons.
This dunce-worthy debacle reminded me of the story of María Guadalupe Villalobos Vélez, known professionally by the endearing sobriquet of Lupe. Lupe was obsessed with fame and despite her early career in Mexican vaudeville during the 1920s and subsequent roles in numerous American films, Lupe is perhaps best remembered for the way she supposedly passed away.
According to urban legend (highlighted in the 1959 book Hollywood Babylon and in the pilot episode of Frasier), Lupe decided to tragically take her own life and planned to stage a beautiful suicide scene atop her satin bed. She decided to overdose on pills of Seconal, a barbiturate drug commonly used as a sedative, but unfortunately for Lupe, the Seconal did not mix well with the “Mexi-Spice Last Supper” that she had eaten earlier that evening. Lupe became violently ill and instead of dying like an angel on her bed as she had planned, it is rumored that she stumbled to the bathroom to vomit, slipped on the bathroom floor tile and fell face first into the toilet, where she sadly drowned to death.
Her story is a great reminder about the double edged nature of fame. Like a sword, fame, especially of the fleeting fifteen-minutes variety, should be wielded wisely as a tool (for good) and not as a means to an end.
Post Script
Five years prior to her tragic demise, Lupe divorced from her (much more) famous husband, Johnny Weissmuller (born Johann Peter Weißmüller) who was an American Olympic swimmer, water polo player and Hollywood actor. Johnny was known for having one of the best competitive swimming records of the 20th century. He set numerous world records alongside winning five gold medals in the Olympics and was he first human to swim the 100 meters freestyle in under a minute. He won the 100m freestyle and the 4 × 200 m relay team event in the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris and the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam. Weissmuller also won gold in the 400m freestyle, as well as a bronze medal in the water polo competition in Paris.
Following his retirement from swimming, Weissmuller brought to life Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan in twelve feature films from 1932 to 1948; six were produced by MGM, and six additional films by RKO. Weissmuller went on to star in sixteen Jungle Jim movies over an eight year period, then filmed 26 additional half-hour episodes of the Jungle Jim TV series.
