"Lupe's The Sweetheart of The Fleet!" and "She's a Honey! She's a Lulu! She's the Queen of Honolulu!" declared the poster for Honolulu Lu (1941), a comedy starring the "Mexican Spitfire," Lupe Vélez in another of her hot-tempered characterizations.

Directed by Charles Barton from an original story by Eliot Gibbons and screenplay by Gibbons and Paul Yawitz, Honolulu Lu follows the adventures of Consuelo Cordoba, as she arrives in Honolulu with her conman uncle, Estaban (Leo Carrillo), who has a weakness for fleecing wealthy widows. Consuelo tires of his schemes and makes him promise to change his ways, but it's a promise he breaks almost immediately. After learning that Estaban has cashed a fake check for $2,000, Consuelo leaves their hotel and calls him from a drugstore payphone to say she is through. Determined to make her own way in life, she goes to a burlesque club frequented by sailors and auditions for the manager under the stage name of Lu. Her obvious talents earn her a spot at the club, and her beauty earns her a date with a sailor named Skelly (Bruce Bennett), who recognizes Estaban as the crook who ripped him off in Atlantic City. Estaban, who is trying to scam a new wealthy widow, Mrs. Van Derholt (Marjorie Gateson), tells the police that Consuelo is an international spy in order to keep her from revealing the truth about him.

Honolulu Lu went into production at Columbia Pictures on September 19, 1941 with the notoriously temperamental Vélez reportedly behaving well on the set. Charles Barton dutifully told the press that Vélez watched her normally salty language and threw no tantrums. She likely had no time for shenanigans; the production only lasted a month, with the film wrapping on October 10. In that short time, Vélez had a lot to do, including singing, dancing a hula and doing her famous imitations of Marlene Dietrich, Katharine Hepburn and Adolf Hitler. The latter had become one of her favorite party tricks in Hollywood, although she had long been known for her eerily accurate imitations of other stars like Shirley Temple and Gloria Swanson. Making fun of Hitler was not an obvious comedy slam-dunk in the autumn of 1941. Like Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator (1940) and Ernst Lubitsch's To Be or Not to Be (1942), Honolulu Lu was shot before the United States entered World War II, and while the nation had instigated the draft in 1940 and had loaned Great Britain supplies earlier in the year, the US was still neutral and hoping to stay out of the war. To criticize Hitler in those pre-war days was still a risk, one the studio had previously taken with a Three Stooges' short, You Nazty Spy! (1940).

Although Honolulu Lu was deemed a "satisfactory program picture" by the Motion Picture Herald, the film ultimately suffered from extremely poor timing when it was released on December 11, 1941, only days after the United States was plunged into war. The nation was too preoccupied with the attack on Pearl Harbor to worry about a frothy B picture set in Honolulu.

By Lorraine LoBianco

SOURCES:

https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/moviedetails/27269?sid=f96669de-3bce-47aa-8dad-19f4f4b3904d&sr=0.1663727&cp=1&pos=0
"What the Picture Did for Me: Honolulu Lu" Motion Picture Herald 2 May 42
Shull, Michael S. and Wilt, David Edward Hollywood War Films, 1937-1945: An Exhaustive Filmography of American Feature-Length Motion Pictures Relating to World War II
Vogel, Michelle Lupe Vélez: The Life and Career of Hollywood's "Mexican Spitfire