Lupe Velez, The Mexican Spitfire.

The lives of Hollywood stars are frequently tragic and messy tales of absent fathers, cruelly ambitious mothers, and madly dysfunctional families.

Mexican-American actress, Lupe Velez (July 18, 1908 – December 13, 1944) “The Mexican Spitfire” was a beautiful, passionate, emotionally unstable woman best known for a series of 1930’s B movies in which she plays a delightfully scatter-brained character who speaks broken English mixed with streams of rapid fire Spanish.

Her first feature-length film was in the Douglas Fairbanks blockbuster, The Gaucho (1927), where she plays a high spirited Spanish dancing girl. Velez performed in a further eighteen films before settling into comedy—she had a Carol Lombard vibe, a  flair for screwball situations, but her accent limited her appeal—most notably in the seven “Mexican Spitfire” series of films (1939-1943). (more…)

Esther Ralston at the height of her fame, 1920’s.

To read Part I of this series, please click here.

To read Part II, please click here.

Broke, with her second marriage in shambles and blacklisted by studio boss L.B. Mayer—Esther wouldn’t trade amorous favors for movie roles—Esther Ralston flees to New York in 1939 to find work and rebuild her shattered career.

Esther, in her slim but resonant 1985 memoir, Some Day We’ll Laugh, tells us that she was forced to leave her daughter Mary behind in California with her mother.

Working in Summer Stock and radio, Esther meets a young entertainment columnist named Ted Lloyd.  Everywhere she plays, Ted is in the audience. With characteristic understatement Esther notes that Lloyd “seemed to follow me.” (more…)

Esther Ralston at the height of her fame, mid-twenties.

To read Part I of this series, please click here.

Blessed with a lovely, melodic voice, it’s something of a puzzle why Paramount dropped Esther Ralston’s option in 1929. Esther was a rising star who, between 1924 and 1929, starred or co-starred in twenty-five films. She would seem a natural for talkies.

But the mystery is soon cleared up as Esther explains:

Since I had only a year to go on my Paramount contract, the studio sent me a new contract with a talkie clause to sign. Knowing I had been brought up in the theater before going into pictures, George decided I should ask for a hundred thousand dollars to sign this talkie clause. He sent me alone to talk to Mr. Lasky and Mr. Zukor. They were courteous as always, but explained that the new talkie panic had them worried and they didn’t feel they should have to increase my salary until they were sure I would be adequate in talkies.

Once again, the destructive Svengali-Trilby relationship asserts itself as the guiding principle of Esther and George. (more…)

Esther Ralston, at the height of her Hollywood stardom in the 1920’s.

They called her: The American Venus.

She lived in a Hollywood mansion with a staff of servants. Her chauffeur drove a limited edition limousine. But she ended her days in an upscale trailer park in Ventura, California.

One of the enduring mysteries—for yours truly—are the scores of Hollywood starlets, innocent young women, who are attracted to bad men: drunks, gamblers, liars, tinsel town sociopaths.

Esther Ralston is a prime example of an early Hollywood star who showed great promise as an actress—she played drama and comedy with equal craft—but three ill-considered marriages effectively derailed Ralston’s career and drained away her considerable fortune. (more…)