LUPE VELEZ: UBER BEECH

"Velez observed that people liked her because she had 'pep,' but Collier's magazine saw it differently, with a lampooning article headlined 'The Girl With One Talent.' Though she married Johnny Weissmuller she maintained a passion for [Gary] Cooper and when she described Cooper's new escort, the Countess di Frasso, as 'nothing but an old whore,' the Countess retaliated by tossing a glass of wine in her face.
Later she toured with Libby Holman in a production of Cole Porter's You'll Never Know, blacking the singer's eye one night in New Haven. Holman's biographer Jon Bradshaw describes how Velez screamed at Holman: 'You bastard, you son-a-beech, I keel you with thees,' brandishing a huge diamond ring given her by Weissmuller. She would also show it to the director, threatening: 'Thees is the ring I'm going to murder that Jewish beech with!' Following these outbursts she would kneel down in the wings, cross herself and pray. Later still her hatred caused her to urinate in the wings hoping the shortsighted Holman, who followed her onstage, would slip in the puddle and fall." -- from Dancing With the Devil: The Windsors and Jimmy Donahue by Christopher Wilson