A Trans-American Dream: Lupe Vélez and the Performance of Transculturation By Kristy A. Rawson A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment Of the requirements for a degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Screen Arts and Cultures) in The University of Michigan 2012 Doctoral Committee: Associate Professor Johannes von Moltke, Co-Chair Assistant Professor Amy Sara Carroll, Co-Chair Associate Professor Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes Assistant Professor Colin Gunckel © copyright by Kristy Rawson 2012 Acknowledgements My dissertation is about a real person. This study is entirely predicated on the existence of Lupe Vélez and on the amazing tenacity with which she insisted on occupying a place in the public sphere. I might not have finished this project if not for a certain contract I somehow entered. I selected Lupe Vélez as the protagonist of my dissertation after having seen her impersonations (High Flyers, 1937) on youtube. I resolved that if Lupe would turn out to be the worthy, rewarding subject I believed she might be, I would work to do right by her. Lupe Vélez has held up––no, she has far exceeded––her end of the bargain. I was, and am, continually inspired by her grace, her humor, her intelligence, and her courage. I only hope I have held up my end of the bargain... so far. I know that Lupe and I aren’t finished with each other yet. After Lupe, I mostly just wanted to do right by my two co-advisors who I was so very lucky to have engaged in this project and who have so generously supported, challenged and enriched this work. The respect and affection I hold for them both is immeasurable: Johannes von Moltke singly embodies the high standard of scholarly and pedagogical professionalism to which I will always aspire. Amy Sara Carroll is the most creative and expansive scholar I have known and is one of my favorite human beings. Johannes and Amy’s combined expertise and rigorous reading and thinking brought my quixotic project into productive focus without denying its idiosyncratic nature. Owing to Johannes and Amy––individually and as a team (kudos to Duke Lit)––I have come to understand mentorship as an art. My project could not exist in its interdisciplinary form without the diverse talents of my entire wonderful committee. Ever dedicated, passionate and generous, Lawrence La Fountain Stokes brought to my committee his relentlessly thorough expertise in Latina/o Studies, Queer Studies, queer appropriation and performance. Larry’s scholarly rigor, combined with his activism and his creativity, forges a model for progressive scholarship. I’m grateful that my work has been fed by his. Colin Gunckel is my mentor in La Opinión studies, regional reception studies and Mexican American cultural studies. Colin’s research and writing on Chicana/o art and Mexican American Los Angeles has fed me personally as well as professionally. I am continually amazed at my good fortune that he came to join us at UM. Many University of Michigan scholars generously assisted my project forward at key points in its development. I hold a very unique, quasi-committee level debt of gratitude to a number of individuals in the Screen Arts and Cultures Department, the Department of American Culture, and the Sweetland Writing Center: special thanks to Catherine Benamou, Louis Cicciarelli, Maria Cotera, Anthony Mora, Daniel Ramírez, Yeidy Rivero, Lucia Saks, and Gaylyn Studlar. At the Center for the Education of Women and ii at Rackham Graduate School respectively, I thank Jacquie Bowman and Darlene Ray- Johnson. For helping me forge a doctoral trail at the Screen Arts and Cultures Department, I want to thank Richard Abel, Giorgio Bertellini, Caryl Flynn, Daniel Herbert, Mark Kligerman, Candace Moore, Sheila Murphy, and Markus Nornes. Screen Arts and Cultures is blessed with “standouts” in various categories that I won’t here attempt to delimit or describe. I would be so much less sane today (and less widely informed) if not for Phillip Hallman. I would be less creatively inspired for not knowing Chris McNamara and Terri Sarris. I would have less faith in institutional function if my graduate experiemce had not been blessed with Carrie Moore. I cannot thank enough my fellow graduate scholars and thinkers whose intellect, camraderie and humanity has meant so much to me in my time at the University of Michigan. You, my colleagues and friends, have productively challenged my dedicated pessimism at each and every turn. Thank you: Rachel Afi Quinn, Andrew Covert, Gen Creeden, Alex (Sasha) Hoffman, Molly Hatcher Pritcher, Chris Meade, Simonetta Mennosi, Courtney Ritter, (Dr.) Amy Rodgers, (Dr.) Noah Tsika, (Dr.) Susanne Unger, and Shannon Winston. I have been fortunate to encounter consistent support for my project even beyond the University of Michigan. I am deeply grateful for the generous help and encouragement and feedback I have received from Laura Isabel Serna, Arnaldo Cruz-Malavé, and William Anthony Nericcio. I conducted research on Lupe Vélez in Los Angeles, Mexico City, Wahington D.C. and Ann Arbor, Michigan. I have been greeted and assisted with expertise, support and enthusiasm at every archive and library I encountered: the Chicano Resource Center, the Margaret Herrick Research Archive, the ULCA Film and Television Archive, Cineteca Nacional, Hemeroteca Nacional, the Library of Congress and of course the Hatcher Graduate Library at the University of Michigan. I hold a deep gratitude for the librarians (Scott Dennis!) and archivists that keep our infrastracture intact and alive. This project would not have happened if it were not for the invaluable instruction and counsel I received in studying Mexican Spanish. My friends and teachers in Mexico have taken good care of me and of Lupe: Jorge Arteaga Soto, Enrique Ramírez Ramos, Marta Rodríguez Barbosa, Marina López Flores, Ernesto López. In Seattle (of all places) I was blessed to befriend Martín Caballero, who shares my dedication to Lupe. In Ann Arbor, Alberto Loya informs so much more than my Spanish translations. Friendship is mysterious. My life in Ann Arbor, Michigan has been blessed and sustained by this gift of humanity that I don’t begin understand and I can’t presume to deserve. Thanks to my Clair Circle of friends for taking us in: Lisa Luczek, Phillip Kline, Jen Burns, Marc Kessler, Ellen Meiselman, Ramon Satyendra, Bonnie Bona, Dave Bona, Astrid Giese, Gilia Smith, Barb Eckstein, Renato Dupke, Marcos Montagnini and, most especially, Alberto again and Julianne Borders. And thanks to my own Good Neighbors, the steadfast Grandview clan that has seen my through: Nick and Peg Steneck, Alex and Cristina Wall, Linda Cousino and Maurilio Castro. It seems too far down in these acknowledgements that I thank my old friends––New iii Mexico musicians all––who entered my life decades ago and continue to sustain me with their love and their lives: Matthew Jackson Cooper, Myshkin (“all of that paper should have stayed trees”!), Melanie West and Tammy Oestmann. This project has allowed me to realize a blessing initially bestowed by my parents, Ellise Rossen and the late Glen Rawson, who likely would not expect me to thank them for taking us all south in 1969. Owing to where I was raised––halfway between Eden Gardens and Rancho Santa Fe (and so far from both)––I met las estrellas that elevated my otherwise “pasty normal” (Jack Smith) school years: Rosalie Castro, Mary Ann Hernandez, Ceclia Rincón, Julia Robles, María Flores, and my first favorite comedienne, Jenny López. Finally, the depth of my gratitude to my partner is unutterable. I chose you, Malcolm Moore, for the same reason I chose Lupe Vélez: you make me laugh. Thank you for that. Thank you for the research assistance and the copy-editing. Thank you for all the cooking and the shopping and the bill paying. Thank you for not leaving me, and thank you for always remaining the inimitable Malcolm Moore. iv Table of Contents Acknowledgements ii List of Figures vii Abstract viii CHAPTER 1 Introduction 1 “I am just Lupe” 2 Inquietud... and the nature of star study 7 Transcultural Counterpoints I: Tobacco / Sugar... Fidelity / Promiscuity 16 Transcultural Counterpoints II: Anarchy / Domesticity 26 Vélez’s “Identities-in-relation” 30 The Performative: When Vélez is not Lupe 33 The Broken Record: “Dolores, Sí; Lupe, No” 44 CHAPTER 2 Nuestra Lupe, La Tiplecita “Jazz” (Our Lupe, the little jazz soprano) 53 Revista and the Primera Tiple 56 The Fever of Imitation 65 La Niña Lupe 67 Working Girls and Public Women: of Revistas and Cantinas 82 Lo(s) popular(es), “Mass Vanguardia” and the Gender of Popular Culture 86 Prologue... Memories of the future 107 CHAPTER 3 Body and Soul Mate: Nation, Representation and American Marriage Crises 110 “Latin Blood Is Open Sesame in the Movies” 122 Companionate Marriage 127 Save the Children 152 No White Wedding 162 En la colonia: Lupe’s crash of 1929 163 CHAPTER 4 Savage Discourse… and the (Musical) Staging of American Civilization187 The Melting Pot Musical 190 “Queen of the Hot-Cha”: Vélez on Broadway 202 Screening the Staged Vélez 206 “Include [her] out!”: Hollywood, 1934 219 En la colonia Mexicana: ¿la incluye afuera? 233 The Tehuana of La Zandunga: images of voluptuous modesty 241 Performing the Politics of Representation: Lupe on Not Lupe 250 CHAPTER 5 The Mexican Spitfire: Of Fighting Words and Serial Combat 262 “In This Corner... Lupe Velez” 269 Fear of Commitment: Marrying The Girl From Mexico 279 “Good Neighbors” Make Good Business 295 The Spitfire: Clipping the Claws of the “Mexican Wildcat” 304 “Don’t you want to be a ‘Good Neighbor’?” 316 v ~ Uncle Matt Lindsay, speaking to his wife, Della (Mexican Spitfire’s Elephant, 1942) 316 Lupe Vélez and the The Performance of Transculturation 321 En Mexico de afuera: “Lupe is ever Lupe” 326 CHAPTER 6 Lupe’s Queer Ghosts 342 Preface to a Prologue: La Llorona 344 The Fever of Appropriation 348 Lupe in Babylon 356 Babylon as text and discourse 358 Perfectly Dead 364 Girl of the Year - D.F.