Lupe Velez and Her Lovers (Hardcover)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Although ostensibly a biography of the actress, Conner's ( Golf ) book seems more like a disjointed collection of quotes from publications on early Hollywood. The brief facts about Lupe Velez's short life (1908-1944) sink under the weight of mainly familiar items not only on her affairs but on many other notorious couplings in the film colony: Gable and Lombard, John Gilbert and Garbo, Clara Bow and everybody. As for Velez, "The Mexican Spitfire," she was a teenager when she arrived in the U.S., appearing briefly in a revue in Hollyood before landing the plum role with Douglas Fairbanks in The Gaucho that launched her career. Among her sexual partners, Conner counts Charlie Chaplin, Gary Cooper and Johnny Weissmuller, the swimming star she married in 1933 and divorced in 1938. Then, with fewer good roles coming her way and pregnant by a small-time actor who deserted her, Velez committed suicide. Photos.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Dizzyingly dreadful bio of the once-famous ``Mexican Spitfire,'' who racked up lovers like billiard balls and married Tarzan, a.k.a. Johnny Weismuller. Paste-up can't get more cockeyed than this, with Conner (Golf!, 1992, etc.--not reviewed) giving fuller sketches of Velez's endless lovers and many colleagues than of the actress herself (1908-44), who doesn't show up for pages at a time while we read potted lives of Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Charlie Chaplin, or whomever. The Chaplin pillow-talk is especially sappy: Chaplin, Conner says, kept his affair with Velez hidden and therefore nothing is known about it; meanwhile, the author offers the tidbit that Chaplin's 14-year-old mistress, Lilita Grey, was the original for Nabokov's Lolita, a piece of gratuitous information that Conner fails to support. A lifelong hellion born in Mexico during a hurricane, the tiny, ever-strife-ridden Velez said that she was born fighting. By her mid-teens, she was already an entertainer, thought herself a star, and, following stage appearances in Hollywood with Fannie Brice, entered films. Her first starring role was in The Gaucho, opposite 45-year-old Douglas Fairbanks, with whom, Conner suggests, Velez had a brief fling that depressed Mary Pickford for five years. Readers will find themselves buffeted by bios of Hollywood folk only glancingly acquainted with Velez (such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, whom Velez hisses as he sings at a party), and few will be able to keep a scorecard on the actress's lovers or to separate them from figures in passing whose pointless bios merely add fluff. Life with Weismuller, Conner says, left the actor bruised and so scratched that only studio makeup artists kept him filmable. Velez killed herself early on, overdosing on Seconal, her bedroom gaudily decorated for the farewell performance. A benchmark in the art of paste-pot bio--and winner of the Plan Nine from Outer Space Award as the worst movie book ever written. (Sixteen pages of photographs) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 248 pages
• Publisher: Barricade Books; First Edition ~1st Printing edition (September 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0942637968
• ISBN-13: 978-0942637960
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,278,401 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars loved it!, April 30, 2001

By	charlie jackson (Huntsville, Alabama, USA) - See all my reviews

After reading posted reviews, I was hesitant to purchase this book. After my wife gave it to me Christmas 2000, I was very pleasantly surprized to find myself reading such details of Lupe's life and those of her lovers that I had to finish that very night. It was somewhat convoluted when concerning the lives of so many people but after all, the title IS "Lupe Velez and Her Lovers". I was neither disappointed nor surprised to be reading details of Gary, Russ, Jimmy, Johnny, Carole, et al. These people were intregal parts of her life, all contributing to her happiness, her misery, her excitable personality. One irritant constant throughout the book was the writer's insistence on using her full name when referring to her. That, coupled with a few grammatical errors, are my only negative impressions of the entire book.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars So-So, December 26, 2007

By	Jess W - See all my reviews

Seeing as there are little or no biographies out there about Lupe Velez, I guess this one will have to do. The book seems to concentrate more on her directors, costars, lovers, etc. with only little snippets about Lupe herself. I wish I could say I completely loved this book, but...nah...

2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Oh, Brother!, December 17, 1997

By A Customer

The great Lupe Velez deserves a good biography, but this ain't it. To paraphrase the late Mrs. Parker, "this is not a book to be tossed aside lightly. It is to be thrown with great force."