Jeanette MacDonald
Encyclopedia
Jeanette MacDonald was an American singer and actress best remembered for her musical films of the 1930s with Maurice Chevalier
(Love Me Tonight
, The Merry Widow
) and Nelson Eddy
(Naughty Marietta, Rose-Marie
, and Maytime). During the 1930s and 1940s she starred in 29 feature films, four nominated for Best Picture Oscars (The Love Parade
, One Hour with You
, Naughty Marietta and San Francisco
), and recorded extensively, earning three gold records
. She later appeared in opera, concerts, radio, and television. MacDonald was one of the most influential sopranos of the 20th century, introducing opera to movie-going audiences and inspiring a generation of singers.
, in New York and landed a job in the chorus of Ned Wayburn's The Demi-Tasse Revue, a musical entertainment presented between films at the Capital Theatre on Broadway
. In 1920 she appeared in two musicals, Jerome Kern's Night Boat as a chorus replacement, and Irene on the road as the second female lead (Future film star Irene Dunne
played the title role during part of the tour). In 1921 MacDonald played in Tangerine, as one of the "Six Wives." In 1922 MacDonald was a featured singer in a Greenwich Village revue, Fantastic Fricassee. Good press notices brought her a role in The Magic Ring (1923). MacDonald played the second female lead in this long-running musical which starred Mitzi Hajos. In 1925 MacDonald again had the second female lead opposite Queenie Smith in Tip Toes, a George Gershwin hit show. The following year found her still in a second female lead in Bubblin' Over (1926), a musical version of Brewster's Millions. MacDonald finally landed the starring role in Yes, Yes, Yvette (1927). Planned as a sequel to producer H.H. Frazee's No, No, Nanette
, the show toured extensively but failed to please the critics when it arrived on Broadway. MacDonald also played the lead in her next two plays: Sunny Days (1928), her first show for producers Lee and J.J. Shubert, for which she received rave reviews, and Angela (1928), which the critics panned. Her last play was Boom Boom (1929), with her name above the title (the cast included young Archie Leach, who later changed his name to Cary Grant
).
While MacDonald was appearing in Angela, film star Richard Dix
spotted her and had her screen-tested for his film Nothing but the Truth. The Shuberts wouldn’t let her out of her contract to appear in the film, which starred Dix and Helen Kane
, the "Boop-boop-a-doop girl". In 1929, famed film director Ernst Lubitsch
was looking through old screen tests of Broadway performers and spotted MacDonald. He cast her as the leading lady in his first sound film, The Love Parade
, which starred the Continental sensation Maurice Chevalier
.
. Her first, The Love Parade
(1929), directed by Lubitsch and co-starring Chevalier, was a landmark of early sound films and received a Best Picture nomination. MacDonald's first recordings were two hits from the score: "Dream Lover" and "March of the Grenadiers". The Vagabond King
(1930) was a lavish two-strip Technicolor
film version of Rudolf Friml's hit 1925 operetta. Broadway star Dennis King
reprised his role as 15th-century French poet François Villon
and MacDonald was Princess Katherine. She sang "Some Day
" and "Only a Rose". The UCLA Film and Television Archive
owns the only known color print of this production.
Paramount on Parade
(1930) was a Paramount all-star revue, similar to other mammoth sound revues produced by major studios to introduce their formerly silent stars to the public. MacDonald's footage singing a duet of "Come Back to Sorrento" with Nino Martini was cut from the release print. Let's Go Native (1930), was a desert island comedy directed by Leo McCarey
, co-starring Jack Oakie
and Kay Francis
. Monte Carlo (1930) was another highly regarded Lubitsch classic, with British musical star Jack Buchanan
as a count who disguises himself as a hairdresser to woo a scatterbrained countess (Macdonald). MacDonald introduced "Beyond the Blue Horizon" which she recorded three times during her career.
In hopes of producing her own films, MacDonald went to United Artists
to make The Lottery Bride
(1930). Despite music by Rudolf Friml
, the film was not successful. MacDonald next signed a three-picture deal with 20th Century Fox
. Oh, for a Man! (1930) was more successful; MacDonald portrayed a temperamental opera singer who sings Wagner's "Liebestod" and falls for an Irish burglar played by Reginald Denny
. Don't Bet on Women (1931) was a non-musical drawing room comedy in which playboy Edmund Lowe
bets his happily married friend Roland Young that he can seduce Young's wife (MacDonald). Annabelle's Affairs (1931) was a farce with MacDonald as a sophisticated New York playgirl who doesn’t recognize her own miner husband, played by Victor MacLaglen, when he turns up 5 years later. Highly praised by reviewers at the time, only one reel of this film survives.
MacDonald took a break from Hollywood in 1931 to embark on a European concert tour. She returned to Paramount the following year for two films with Maurice Chevalier
. One Hour with You
(1932) was directed by both George Cukor
and Ernst Lubitsch
and simultaneously filmed in French with the same stars but a French supporting cast. Currently, there is no known surviving print of Une Heure près de toi (One Hour Near You). Rouben Mamoulian
directed Love Me Tonight
(1932), considered by many film critics and writers to be the ultimate film musical. Starring Chevalier as a humble tailor in love with a princess played by MacDonald, much of the story is told in sung dialogue. Richard Rodgers
and Lorenz Hart
wrote the original score, which included the standards "Mimi
", "Lover
", and "Isn't It Romantic?
".
In 1933 MacDonald left again for Europe and while there, signed with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
. Her first MGM film was The Cat and the Fiddle (1934), based on the Jerome Kern Broadway hit. Her co-star was Ramón Novarro
. The plot about unmarried lovers shacking up just barely slipped through the new Production Code
guidelines that took effect July 1, 1934. Despite a Technicolor
finale—the first use of the new three-color Technicolor process other than Disney cartoons—the film was not a huge success.
In The Merry Widow
(1934), director Ernst Lubitsch
reunited Maurice Chevalier
and MacDonald in a lavish version of the classic 1905 Franz Lehár
operetta. The film was highly regarded by critics and operetta lovers in major U.S. cities and Europe, but failed to generate much income outside urban areas. It had a huge budget, partially because it was filmed simultaneously in French as La Veuve Joyeuse, with a French supporting cast and some minor plot changes.
Naughty Marietta (1935), directed by W.S. Van Dyke, was MacDonald's first film in which she teamed with newcomer baritone Nelson Eddy
. Victor Herbert
's 1910 score, with songs like "Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life", "I'm Falling in Love with Someone", "’Neath the Southern Moon", "Tramp, Tramp, Tramp", and "Italian Street Song", enjoyed renewed popularity. The film won an Oscar for sound recording and received an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. It was voted one of the Ten Best Pictures of 1935 by the New York film critics, was awarded the Photoplay Gold Medal Award as Best Picture of 1935 (beating out Mutiny on the Bounty
, which won the Oscar), and, in 2004, was selected to the National Film Registry
. MacDonald earned gold records for "Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life" and "Italian Street Song".
The following year, MacDonald starred in two of the highest-grossing films of that year. In Rose-Marie
(1936), MacDonald played a haughty opera diva who learns her kid brother (James Stewart
) has killed a Mountie and is hiding in the northern woods; Eddy is the Mountie sent to capture him. She and Nelson Eddy sang Rudolf Friml's "Indian Love Call
" to each other in the Canadian wilderness (actually filmed at Lake Tahoe). Eddy's definitive portrayal of the steadfast Mountie became a popular icon. When the Canadian Mounties temporarily retired their distinctive hat in 1970, photos of Eddy in his Rose Marie uniform appeared in thousands of U.S. newspapers. San Francisco
(1936) was also directed by W.S. Van Dyke. In this tale of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake
, MacDonald played a hopeful opera singer opposite Clark Gable
as the he-man proprietor of a Barbary Coast gambling joint, and Spencer Tracy
as his boyhood chum who gives the moral messages.
In the summer of 1936 filming began on Maytime, co-starring Nelson Eddy, Frank Morgan
and Paul Lukas, produced by Irving Thalberg
. After Thalberg's untimely death in September, the production was shut down and the half-finished film was scrapped. A new script was filmed with a different storyline and supporting actors (including John Barrymore
). The 'second' Maytime (1937), was the top-grossing film worldwide of the year and is regarded as one of the best film musicals of the 1930s. "Will You Remember" by Sigmund Romberg
brought MacDonald another Gold record.
The Firefly
(1937) was MacDonald's first solo-starring film at MGM with her name alone above the title. Rudolf Friml
's 1912 stage score
was borrowed and a new song, "The Donkey Serenade", added. With real-life Americans rushing to fight in the ongoing revolution in Spain, this historical vehicle was constructed around a previous revolution in Napoleonic times. MacDonald's co-star was Allan Jones. The MacDonald-Eddy team had split after MacDonald's engagement and marriage to Gene Raymond
, but neither of their solo films grossed as much as the team films and by the fall of 1937, MGM was barraged with outraged fan mail. The Girl of the Golden West
(1938) was the result, but the two stars had little screen time together and the main song, "Obey Your Heart", was never sung as a duet. The film had an original score by Sigmund Romberg
and reused the popular David Belasco
stage plot (also employed by opera composer Giacomo Puccini
for La fanciulla del West
).
Mayer had promised MacDonald the studio's first Technicolor
feature and he delivered with Sweethearts
(1938), co-starring Eddy. In contrast to the previous film, the co-stars were relaxed onscreen and singing frequently together. This box office smash hit integrated Victor Herbert
's 1913 stage score into a modern backstage story scripted by Dorothy Parker
. MacDonald and Eddy played a husband and wife Broadway musical comedy team who are offered a Hollywood contract. Sweethearts
won the Photoplay Gold Medal Award as Best Picture of the Year.
After MacDonald suffered a miscarriage
during the filming of Sweethearts
, Mayer dropped plans for the team to co-star in Let Freedom Ring, a vehicle first announced for them in 1935. Eddy made that film solo while MacDonald and Lew Ayres
(Young Dr. Kildare) co-starred in Broadway Serenade
(1939). They played a contemporary musical couple who clash when her career flourishes while his flounders. MacDonald's performance was subdued (Eddy married Ann Franklin during the filming) and choreographer Busby Berkeley
, just hired away from Warner Bros., was called upon to add an over-the-top finale in an effort to improve the film.
Following Broadway Serenade, MacDonald left Hollywood on a concert tour and refused to re-sign her MGM contract. Eddy starred in a second solo film, Balalaika
, while MacDonald's manager was summoned from London to help her renegotiate. After initially insisting she film Smilin' Through
with James Stewart
and Robert Taylor
, MacDonald finally relented and agreed to film New Moon (1940) with Eddy. New Moon proved one of MacDonald's most popular films. Composer Sigmund Romberg
's 1927 Broadway hit provided the plot and the songs: "Lover, Come Back to Me", "One Kiss", and "Wanting You", plus Eddy's version of "Stout Hearted Men". This was followed by Bitter Sweet
(1940), a Technicolor
film version of Noël Coward's 1929 stage operetta
.
Smilin' Through
(1941) was MacDonald's next Technicolor
project. This 1919 stage play had been filmed a number of times. Its theme of reunion with deceased loved ones was enormously popular after the devastation of World War I, and MGM reasoned that it should resonate with filmgoers during World War II. MacDonald played a dual role—Moonyean, a Victorian girl accidentally murdered by a jealous lover, and Kathleen, her niece, who falls in love with the son of the murderer. The original co-stars, James Stewart and Robert Taylor, dropped out to help in the military effort and were replaced by Brian Aherne
and Gene Raymond
.
I Married an Angel
(1942), was adapted from the Rodgers & Hart stage musical about an angel who loses her wings on her wedding night. The script by Anita Loos
suffered serious censorship cuts during filming that made the result less successful. MacDonald sang "Spring Is Here" and the title song. It was the final film made by the team of MacDonald and Eddy. After a falling-out with Mayer, Eddy bought out his MGM contract (with one film left to make) and went to Universal, where he signed a million-dollar, two-picture deal. MacDonald remained for one last film, Cairo
(1942), a cheaply-budgeted spy comedy co-starring Robert Young
(Father Knows Best
) and Ethel Waters
, who played MacDonald's singing maid.
(1943). MacDonald marked time by appearing as herself in Follow the Boys
(1944), an all-star extravaganza about Hollywood stars entertaining the troops. The more than 40 guest stars included Marlene Dietrich
, W.C. Fields, Sophie Tucker
and Orson Welles
. MacDonald is shown during an actual concert singing "Beyond the Blue Horizon", and in a studio-filmed sequence singing "I’ll See You in My Dreams" to a blinded soldier.
After MacDonald and Eddy left MGM in 1942, they appeared frequently on radio together while planning several unrealized films that would have reunited them onscreen. Eddy was upset at how his first film turned out at Universal so their joint project at that studio fell through. They next sought independent financing for team projects like East Wind and Crescent Carnival, a book optioned by MacDonald. Other thwarted projects were The Rosary, a 1910 best seller (which Nelson Eddy pitched for a team comeback at MGM), The Desert Song
and a remake of The Vagabond King
, plus two movie treatments written by Eddy, "Timothy Waits for Love" and "All Stars Don't Spangle." In 1954 Eddy pulled out of yet another proposed team film to be made in England when he learned MacDonald was investing her own funds. He had invested in 1944's Knickerbocker Holiday
, and had lost money.
MacDonald returned solo to MGM after 5 years off the screen for two films. Three Daring Daughters
(1948), co-starred José Iturbi
as her love interest. MacDonald plays a divorcée whose lively daughters (Jane Powell
, Ann E. Todd, and Elinor Donahue) keep trying to get her back with her ex, while she has secretly remarried. "The Dickey Bird" song made the Hit Parade
. The Sun Comes Up
(1949), teamed MacDonald with Lassie
, in an adaptation of a short story by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
. MacDonald played a widow who has also lost her son, but warms to orphan Claude Jarman Jr.
It was her final film.
Offers continued to come in and in 1962 producer Ross Hunter proposed teaming MacDonald and Eddy for featured roles in his 1963 comedy smash, The Thrill of It All
. They declined and the roles were eventually played by Arlene Francis
and Edward Andrews
. 20th Century Fox also toyed with the idea of MacDonald (Irene Dunne was also briefly considered) for the part of Mother Abbess in the film version of The Sound of Music
. It never moved beyond the discussion stages partly because of MacDonald's failing health.
An annual poll of film exhibitors listed MacDonald as one of the top ten box-office draws of 1936, and many of her films were among the top 20 moneymakers of the years they were released. In addition, MacDonald was one of the top ten box-office attractions in Great Britain from 1937–1942 inclusive. During her 39-year career, MacDonald earned two stars in the Hollywood Walk of Fame
(for films and recordings) and planted her feet in the wet cement in front of Grauman's Chinese Theater.
and Carnegie Hall
.
When America joined World War II in 1942, MacDonald was one of the founders of the Army Emergency Relief and raised funds on concert tours. She auctioned off encores for donations and raised over $100,000 for the troops. President Franklin D. Roosevelt
, who considered MacDonald and Eddy two of his favorite film stars, awarded her a medal. She also did command performances at the White House for both Presidents Harry S. Truman
and Dwight D. Eisenhower
.
In early 1960, The Hollywood Bowl announced that MacDonald and Howard Keel would be the guests soloists at the annual Easter Sunrise Service. However, health problems forced her to cancel her appearance. By the summer of 1960, MacDonald was seriously ill and her autobiography collaborator, Fredda Dudley Balling, wrote that it was uncertain whether she would live long enough to finish the book. Besides her heart problems, MacDonald suffered from a benign, non-operable brain tumor.
in the United States. She also did some early recordings for HMV in England and France while she was there on a concert tour in 1931. She earned three gold records, one for an LP album that she did with Nelson Eddy in 1957.
, one of the leading opera stars of the early 20th Century.
"When Jeanette MacDonald approached me for coaching lessons", wrote Lehmann, "I was really curious how a glamorous movie star, certainly spoiled by the adoration of a limitless world, would be able to devote herself to another, a higher level of art. I had the surprise of my life. There couldn’t have been a more diligent, a more serious, a more pliable person than Jeanette. The lessons which I had started with a kind of suspicious curiosity, turned out to be sheer delight for me. She studied Marguerite with me—and lieder. These were the ones which astounded me most. I am quite sure that Jeanette would have developed into a serious and successful lieder singer if time would have allowed it."
MacDonald made her opera debut singing Juliette in Gounod
's Roméo et Juliette
in Montreal at His Majesty's Theatre (May 8 and 10, 1943). She quickly repeated the role in Quebec City (May 12) Ottawa and Toronto. Her U.S. debut with the Chicago Opera Company
(November 4, 11 and 15, 1944) was in the same role. She also sang Marguerite in Gounod's Faust
with the Chicago Opera. In November 1945, she did two more performances of Roméo et Juliette and one of Faust in Chicago, and two Fausts for the Cincinnati Opera
. On December 12, 1951, she did one performance of Faust with the Philadelphia Civic Grand Opera Company
at the Academy of Music
.
Claudia Cassidy
, the music critic of the Chicago Tribune wrote: "Her Juliet is breathtakingly beautiful to the eye and dulcet to the ear." The same critic reviewed Faust: "From where I sit at the opera, Jeanette MacDonald has turned out to be one of the welcome surprises of the season... her Marguerite was better than her Juliet...beautifully sung with purity of line and tone, a good trill, and a Gallic inflection that understood Gounod's phrasing....You felt if Faust must sell his soul to the devil, at least this time he got his money's worth."
ceremony broadcast in 1931. She hosted her own radio show, Vicks Open House, from September 1937 to March 1938, for which she received $5,000 a week. However, the time demands of doing a weekly live radio show while filming, touring in concerts and making records proved enormously difficult, and after fainting on-air during one show, she decided not to renew her radio contract with Vicks at the end of the 26-week season. Thereafter, she stuck to guest appearances.
MacDonald appeared in condensed radio versions of many of her films on programs like Cecil B. DeMille
's Lux Radio Theater
, usually with Nelson Eddy, and the Railroad Hour which starred Gordon MacRae
. These included The Merry Widow, Naughty Marietta, Rose Marie, Maytime, Sweethearts, Bitter Sweet, Smilin' Through, and The Sun Comes Up, plus other operettas and musicals like Victor Herbert's Mlle Modiste, Irene, The Student Prince, Tonight or Never with Melvyn Douglas
, A Song for Clotilda, The Gift of the Magi, and Apple Blossoms. Other radio shows included The Prudential Family Hour, Screen Guild Playhouse and The Voice of Firestone which featured the top opera and concert singers of the time. In 1953, MacDonald sang "The Star-Spangled Banner
" at the inauguration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower
, which was broadcast on both radio and TV.
MacDonald sang frequently with Nelson Eddy during the mid 1940s on several Lux Radio Theater
and The Screen Guild Theater
productions of their films together. She also appeared as his guest several times on his various radio shows such as The Electric Hour and The Kraft Music Hall. He was also a surprise guest when she hosted a war bonds program called Guest Star, and they sang on other World War II victory shows together. The majority of her radio work in the mid to late 1940s was with Eddy. Her 1948 Hollywood Bowl concert was also broadcast over the air, in which she used Eddy's longtime accompanist, Theodore Paxson.
MacDonald appeared on early TV, most frequently as a singing guest star. She sang on The Voice of Firestone on November 13, 1950. On November 12, 1952, she was the subject of Ralph Edwards' This Is Your Life
. Nelson Eddy appeared as a voice from her past, singing the song he sang at her wedding to Gene Raymond. His surprise appearance brought her to tears.
Shortly thereafter, she appeared as the mystery guest on the December 21, 1952 episode of What's My Line?
. After the panelists guessed her identity, she told John Daly
she was in town in New York for the holidays. She also said that on January 16, 1953, she was going to have a recital at Carnegie Hall
.
On February 2, 1956 MacDonald starred in Prima Donna, a television pilot
for her own series, written for her by her husband, Gene Raymond. The initial show featured guest stars Leo Durocher
and Larraine Day, but it failed to find a slot.
In December 1956 MacDonald and Eddy made their first TV appearance as a team on the Lux Video Theatre Holiday Special. In 1957, she and Eddy appeared on Patti Page
's program, The Big Record, singing several songs.
On Playhouse 90
(March 28, 1957), MacDonald played Charley's real aunt to Art Carney
's impersonation in "Charley's Aunt."
she was singing for a large group of men in San Francisco who were due to ship out to the fierce fighting in the South Pacific. She closed with "The Battle Hymn of the Republic
", and 20,000 voices spontaneously joined in.
and The King and I
She opened in Bitter Sweet at the Iroquois Amphitheater, Louisville, Kentucky, on July 19, 1954. Her production of The King and I opened August 20, 1956 at the Starlight Theatre
. While performing there, she collapsed. Officially it was heat prostration
but in fact it was a heart seizure. She began limiting her appearances and a reprisal of Bitter Sweet in 1959 was her last professional appearance.
MacDonald and her husband, Gene Raymond, toured in Ferenc Molnár's The Guardsman
. The production opened at the Erlanger Theater, Buffalo, New York on January 25, 1951 and played in 23 northeastern and midwestern cities until June 2, 1951. Despite less than enthusiastic comments from critics, the show played to full houses for virtually every performance. The leading role of "The Actress" was changed to "The Singer" to allow MacDonald to add some songs. While this pleased her fans, the show still closed before reaching Broadway.
In the 1950s there were talks with respect to a Broadway return. In the 1960s, MacDonald was approached about starring on Broadway in a musical version of Sunset Boulevard
. Harold Prince recounts in his autobiography, visiting MacDonald at her home in Bel Air to discuss the proposed project. Composer Hugh Martin
also wrote a song for the musical entitled, "Wasn't It Romantic?".
MacDonald also made a few nightclub appearances. She sang and danced at The Sands
and The Sahara in Las Vegas in 1953, The Coconut Grove in Los Angeles in 1954, and again at The Sahara in 1957, but she never felt entirely comfortable in the smoky atmosphere.
MacDonald next dated Irving Stone from around 1926-8; they apparently met when she was touring in Chicago in Yes, Yes, Yvette. Stone, who lived in Milwaukee, was the nephew of the founder of the Boston Store
and worked in the family business. Few details were known of Stone's romance with MacDonald until the discovery of hundreds of pages of handwritten love letters she wrote him that were found in his apartment after his death.
In 1928 Robert George Ritchie became MacDonald's manager and fiance. They were together until 1935 and presumed by many to be married. MacDonald dared anyone to prove it. However, MacDonald wrote Ritchie a letter in July 1929 calling him "my own darling husband" and on the envelope she gave her return address initials as "JAR" (Jeanette Anna Ritchie). On March 29, 1931 MacDonald wrote Irving Stone that she was engaged to Ritchie and on July 8, 1931 she wrote him again from Europe that "I didn't get married on June 9." Ritchie's nephew and the remaining family claimed that there was a Ritchie-MacDonald marriage and that it was annulled, possibly in Hawaii, in 1935. If so, details have never come to light. However, MacDonald was photographed in Hawaii just prior to the release of Naughty Marietta (1935).
The Bob Ritchie romance began to sour when MacDonald became friendly with Nelson Eddy
in late 1933. In January 1934 the trades announced they would be co-starring in Naughty Marietta. They dated on and off throughout 1934 but after MacDonald's 1935 Hawaii trip, Eddy became more persistent in his marriage proposals. The problem was that Eddy wanted her to retire and raise their children; MacDonald preferred to put her career first. They fought constantly over this and broke up in early June 1935.
Later that month, MacDonald met the actor Gene Raymond
at a party and began dating him. Blond Raymond resembled Nelson Eddy
and the two men were sometimes mistaken for each other when seen publicly with MacDonald. During summer 1935, MacDonald rekindled the relationship with Eddy when they began filming Rose Marie. MacDonald later called it "the happiest summer of my life". While on location at Lake Tahoe
, they became secretly engaged. Then MacDonald became pregnant and was ordered by MGM studio boss Louis B. Mayer
to have an abortion. Eddy did not believe her when she claimed to have miscarried, and he broke off the engagement.
On June 16, 1937 MacDonald married Gene Raymond
in a traditional ceremony at Wilshire Methodist Church in Los Angeles. They remained married until MacDonald's death. Raymond was also a songwriter, and MacDonald introduced two of his songs in her concerts. In addition to the TV pilot Prima Donna that Raymond wrote for her, they also did a few radio shows together and toured in The Guardsman on stage. But even with their infrequent attempts to work together, including the film Smilin' Through, the public was indifferent to them as a team as evidenced by only fair box-office receipts. According to published books, including Sweethearts by Sharon Rich and The Golden Girls Of MGM by Jane Ellen Wayne, Gene Raymond engaged in numerous affairs with men and their marriage was problematic. MacDonald addressed this issue in her unpublished autobiography (now published in a facsimile edition; see Controversy section) and mentioned several separations and marital problems. After her death, Raymond and his friends (including the MacDonald fan club, which remained associated with Raymond until his death) disputed these claims.
Nelson Eddy
attempted a reconciliation with MacDonald in 1938 but again had interference from Louis B. Mayer
, who felt that divorce might harm MacDonald's saintly image with her fans. Eddy eloped to Las Vegas
with Ann Franklin in January 1939. His marriage also lasted until death.
and was hospitalized for two-and-a-half months. Her friends kept the news from the press until just before her release. Her large home was sold and she moved into a Los Angeles apartment that would not require so much of her energies. Her husband, Gene Raymond, moved into an adjoining apartment. Nelson Eddy took his own apartment in the opposite building. MacDonald was again stricken in 1964. Nelson Eddy was with her when she was admitted to UCLA Medical Center, where on Christmas Eve she was operated on for abdominal adhesions. She was able to go home for New Year's, but in mid-January husband Raymond flew her back to Houston. It was hoped that pioneer heart surgeon Dr. Michael DeBakey
, who had recently operated successfully on the Duke of Windsor
, could perform the same miracle for her. She checked in on January 12, and a program of intravenous feedings was begun to build her up for possible surgery. MacDonald died two days later on January 14 at 4:32 pm, with her husband at her bedside. According to press reports, MacDonald's last words to Raymond while he massaged her feet were "I love you". He replied "I love you, too"; she smiled and succumbed.
MacDonald was interred on January 18, 1965 in a crypt at Forest Lawn Memorial Park
in Glendale, California
which reads Jeanette MacDonald Raymond. Nelson Eddy, who told Jack Paar
on The Tonight Show, "I love her [MacDonald]", broke down when interviewed by the press the evening of her death. He survived MacDonald by two years.
A decade after MacDonald's death in 1965 Gene Raymond remarried. His second wife, a Canadian heiress, was the former Mrs. Bentley Hees. Her first name was, coincidentally, Nelson. "Nels", as she was called, died in 1995. Raymond died on May 3, 1998 and was laid to rest next to Jeanette MacDonald at Forest Lawn, Glendale, California.
A controversy exists concerning the private lives of Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy
. John Kenneth Hilliard
, a sound engineer backstage at MGM from 1933 to 1942, reported in 1981 that though Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald were a screen couple, they "hated each other with a vengeance". Hilliard worked on Naughty Marietta and it is common knowledge that MacDonald's initial iciness toward Eddy almost caused Eddy to walk off that film. There were three film sets on which they battled off-screen: the second half of Rose Marie
, after MacDonald's refusal to elope to Reno with Eddy; The Girl of the Golden West, filmed immediately after MacDonald's marriage; and New Moon, filmed after Eddy's marriage. Nevertheless, an off-screen affair was verified from another MGM sound engineer who built Eddy's home recording equipment, and other MGM staff such as makeup artists William Tuttle and Fred Phillips.
Contemporary magazine writer Sandy Reiss reported that a private trailer was set up for the two on Maytime and that the crew called them "the lovebirds." Other MGM co-workers claimed that Eddy and MacDonald were closest during the filming of Sweethearts
and I Married an Angel
. After the MGM years, their private lives fell off the Hollywood radar. Baritone Theodor Uppman
, who won the Atwater Kent opera auditions and later sang at the Metropolitan Opera, saw Eddy and MacDonald at a 1947 party together, where the talk of the evening was the fact that MacDonald was pregnant with Eddy's child but he could not get a divorce.
In the biography Sweethearts by Sharon Rich
, the author presents MacDonald and Eddy as continuing an adulterous affair after their marriages. Rich claims the relationship lasted, with a few breaks, until MacDonald's death. Rich also interviewed about 200 others including celebrities who also spoke candidly. Apparently, Rich additionally had access to hundreds of pages of personal letters, some of them handwritten by MacDonald, others part of a correspondence between Eddy's mother and a close friend. Another biography, Hollywood Diva by Edward Baron Turk, denies there was any such affair. An erroneous rumor has been floated that "Hollywood Diva" is an "authorized" biography. Turk states that this was not the case, that he was the only MacDonald biographer to have interviewed Gene Raymond at length; but that neither Raymond nor anyone else vetted the book.
In MacDonald's autobiography (the 1960 typewritten manuscript published as a facsimile edition in 2004), MacDonald writes: "I remember seeing Nelson for the first time and thinking he fulfilled most of my requirements in a man." She later mentions an "attraction Nelson and I might have had for each other" prior to marrying Raymond and also devotes several pages to marital problems immediately after her honeymoon (pages 337-99, 344) and again in the post-war years.
built a Jeanette MacDonald Recital Hall in her honour. http://web-app.usc.edu/venues/?id=420
Maurice Chevalier
Maurice Auguste Chevalier was a French actor, singer, entertainer and a noted Sprechgesang performer. He is perhaps best known for his signature songs, including Louise, Mimi, Valentine, and Thank Heaven for Little Girls and for his films including The Love Parade and The Big Pond...
(Love Me Tonight
Love Me Tonight
Love Me Tonight is a 1932 musical comedy film produced and directed by Rouben Mamoulian, with music by Rodgers and Hart. It stars Maurice Chevalier as a tailor who poses as a nobleman and Jeanette MacDonald as a princess with whom he falls in love...
, The Merry Widow
The Merry Widow (1934 film)
The Merry Widow is a 1934 film adaptation of the operetta of the same name by Franz Lehár. It was directed by Ernst Lubitsch and starred Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald...
) and Nelson Eddy
Nelson Eddy
Nelson Ackerman Eddy was an American singer and actor who appeared in 19 musical films during the 1930s and 1940s, as well as in opera and on the concert stage, radio, television, and in nightclubs. A classically trained baritone, he is best remembered for the eight films in which he costarred...
(Naughty Marietta, Rose-Marie
Rose Marie (films)
The 1924 Broadway musical Rose-Marie has been the basis of three MGM films of the same title. The best-known film adaptation was released in 1936; however, a silent version was released in 1928 and another film was released in 1954. All three versions are set in the Canadian wilderness...
, and Maytime). During the 1930s and 1940s she starred in 29 feature films, four nominated for Best Picture Oscars (The Love Parade
The Love Parade
The Love Parade is a 1929 musical comedy film about the marital difficulties of Queen Louise of Sylvania and her consort, Count Alfred Renard...
, One Hour with You
One Hour with You
One Hour with You is a 1932 American film. It was produced and directed by Ernst Lubitsch and written by Samson Raphaelson, from the Lothar Schmidt play Only a Dream....
, Naughty Marietta and San Francisco
San Francisco (film)
San Francisco is a 1936 musical-drama directed by Woody Van Dyke, based on the April 18, 1906 San Francisco earthquake. The film, which was the top grossing movie of that year, stars Clark Gable, Jeanette MacDonald, and Spencer Tracy. The then very popular singing of MacDonald helped make this film...
), and recorded extensively, earning three gold records
Music recording sales certification
Music recording sales certification is a system of certifying that a music recording has shipped or sold a certain number of copies, where the threshold quantity varies by type and by nation or territory .Almost all countries follow variations of the RIAA certification categories,...
. She later appeared in opera, concerts, radio, and television. MacDonald was one of the most influential sopranos of the 20th century, introducing opera to movie-going audiences and inspiring a generation of singers.
Early years
Jeanette Anna MacDonald was born June 18, 1903 at her family's Philadelphia home at 5123 Arch Street. She was the youngest of the three daughters of Daniel and Anna Wright MacDonald. At an early age, she graduated from tap dancing in front of the mirror to dancing lessons with Al White, and from imitating her mother's opera records to singing lessons with Wassil Leps. She performed at church and school functions and began touring in kiddie shows. She was raised as a Christian Scientist.Broadway
In November 1919 MacDonald joined her older sister, BlossomBlossom Rock
Edith Marie Blossom MacDonald , also known or credited as Blossom Rock, Blossom MacDonald or Marie Blake, was an American actress of stage and television...
, in New York and landed a job in the chorus of Ned Wayburn's The Demi-Tasse Revue, a musical entertainment presented between films at the Capital Theatre on Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
. In 1920 she appeared in two musicals, Jerome Kern's Night Boat as a chorus replacement, and Irene on the road as the second female lead (Future film star Irene Dunne
Irene Dunne
Irene Dunne was an American film actress and singer of the 1930s, 1940s and early 1950s. Dunne was nominated five times for the Academy Award for Best Actress, for her performances in Cimarron , Theodora Goes Wild , The Awful Truth , Love Affair and I Remember Mama...
played the title role during part of the tour). In 1921 MacDonald played in Tangerine, as one of the "Six Wives." In 1922 MacDonald was a featured singer in a Greenwich Village revue, Fantastic Fricassee. Good press notices brought her a role in The Magic Ring (1923). MacDonald played the second female lead in this long-running musical which starred Mitzi Hajos. In 1925 MacDonald again had the second female lead opposite Queenie Smith in Tip Toes, a George Gershwin hit show. The following year found her still in a second female lead in Bubblin' Over (1926), a musical version of Brewster's Millions. MacDonald finally landed the starring role in Yes, Yes, Yvette (1927). Planned as a sequel to producer H.H. Frazee's No, No, Nanette
No, No, Nanette
No, No, Nanette is a musical comedy with lyrics by Irving Caesar and Otto Harbach, music by Vincent Youmans, and a book by Otto Harbach and Frank Mandel, based on Mandel's 1919 Broadway play My Lady Friends...
, the show toured extensively but failed to please the critics when it arrived on Broadway. MacDonald also played the lead in her next two plays: Sunny Days (1928), her first show for producers Lee and J.J. Shubert, for which she received rave reviews, and Angela (1928), which the critics panned. Her last play was Boom Boom (1929), with her name above the title (the cast included young Archie Leach, who later changed his name to Cary Grant
Cary Grant
Archibald Alexander Leach , better known by his stage name Cary Grant, was an English actor who later took U.S. citizenship...
).
While MacDonald was appearing in Angela, film star Richard Dix
Richard Dix
Richard Dix was an American motion picture actor who achieved popularity in both silent and sound film. His standard on-screen image was that of the rugged and stalwart hero.-Early life:...
spotted her and had her screen-tested for his film Nothing but the Truth. The Shuberts wouldn’t let her out of her contract to appear in the film, which starred Dix and Helen Kane
Helen Kane
Helen Kane was an American popular singer; her signature song was "I Wanna Be Loved By You". Kane's voice and appearance were a likely source for Fleischer Studios animator Grim Natwick when creating Betty Boop, although It-girl Clara Bow is another possible influence.-Early life:Born as Helen...
, the "Boop-boop-a-doop girl". In 1929, famed film director Ernst Lubitsch
Ernst Lubitsch
Ernst Lubitsch was a German-born film director. His urbane comedies of manners gave him the reputation of being Hollywood's most elegant and sophisticated director; as his prestige grew, his films were promoted as having "the Lubitsch touch."In 1947 he received an Honorary Academy Award for his...
was looking through old screen tests of Broadway performers and spotted MacDonald. He cast her as the leading lady in his first sound film, The Love Parade
The Love Parade
The Love Parade is a 1929 musical comedy film about the marital difficulties of Queen Louise of Sylvania and her consort, Count Alfred Renard...
, which starred the Continental sensation Maurice Chevalier
Maurice Chevalier
Maurice Auguste Chevalier was a French actor, singer, entertainer and a noted Sprechgesang performer. He is perhaps best known for his signature songs, including Louise, Mimi, Valentine, and Thank Heaven for Little Girls and for his films including The Love Parade and The Big Pond...
.
The Paramount years
In the first rush of sound films, 1929–30, MacDonald starred in six films, the first four for Paramount StudiosParamount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
. Her first, The Love Parade
The Love Parade
The Love Parade is a 1929 musical comedy film about the marital difficulties of Queen Louise of Sylvania and her consort, Count Alfred Renard...
(1929), directed by Lubitsch and co-starring Chevalier, was a landmark of early sound films and received a Best Picture nomination. MacDonald's first recordings were two hits from the score: "Dream Lover" and "March of the Grenadiers". The Vagabond King
The Vagabond King (1930 film)
The Vagabond King is a 1930 American musical operetta film photographed entirely in two-color Technicolor. The plot of the film was based on the 1925 operetta of the same name, which was based on the 1901 play If I Were King by Justin Huntly McCarthy. The play told the story of a renegade French...
(1930) was a lavish two-strip Technicolor
Technicolor
Technicolor is a color motion picture process invented in 1916 and improved over several decades.It was the second major process, after Britain's Kinemacolor, and the most widely used color process in Hollywood from 1922 to 1952...
film version of Rudolf Friml's hit 1925 operetta. Broadway star Dennis King
Dennis King
Dennis King was an English actor and singer.Born in Coventry as Dennis Pratt, King had a stage career in both drama and musicals. He emigrated to the USA in 1921 and went on to a successful career on the Broadway stage. He appeared in two musical films and played non-singing roles in two other...
reprised his role as 15th-century French poet François Villon
François Villon
François Villon was a French poet, thief, and vagabond. He is perhaps best known for his Testaments and his Ballade des Pendus, written while in prison...
and MacDonald was Princess Katherine. She sang "Some Day
Some Day (1925 song)
"Some Day" is a song, with music by Rudolf Friml and words by Brian Hooker, originally published in 1925. It was included in Friml's operetta The Vagabond King, sung by Caroline Thomas in the role of Katherine de Vaucelles....
" and "Only a Rose". The UCLA Film and Television Archive
UCLA Film and Television Archive
The UCLA Film and Television Archive is an internationally renowned visual arts organization focused on the preservation, study, and appreciation of film and television, based at the University of California, Los Angeles. It holds more than 220,000 film and television titles and 27 million feet of...
owns the only known color print of this production.
Paramount on Parade
Paramount on Parade
Paramount on Parade is a all-star revue released by Paramount Pictures, directed by several directors including Edmund Goulding, Dorothy Arzner, Ernst Lubitsch, Rowland V. Lee, A. Edward Sutherland, Victor Heerman, Lothar Mendes, Otto Brower, Edwin H...
(1930) was a Paramount all-star revue, similar to other mammoth sound revues produced by major studios to introduce their formerly silent stars to the public. MacDonald's footage singing a duet of "Come Back to Sorrento" with Nino Martini was cut from the release print. Let's Go Native (1930), was a desert island comedy directed by Leo McCarey
Leo McCarey
Thomas Leo McCarey was an American film director, screenwriter and producer. During his lifetime he was involved in nearly 200 movies, especially comedies...
, co-starring Jack Oakie
Jack Oakie
Jack Oakie was an American actor, starring mostly in films, but also working on stage, radio and television.-Early life:...
and Kay Francis
Kay Francis
Kay Francis was an American stage and film actress. After a brief period on Broadway in the late 1920s, she moved to film and achieved her greatest success between 1930 and 1936, when she was the number one female star at the Warner Brothers studio, and the highest paid American film actress...
. Monte Carlo (1930) was another highly regarded Lubitsch classic, with British musical star Jack Buchanan
Jack Buchanan
Walter John "Jack" Buchanan was a British theatre and film actor, singer, producer and director. He was known for three decades as the embodiment of the debonair man-about-town in the tradition of George Grossmith Jr., and was described by The Times as "the last of the knuts." He is best known in...
as a count who disguises himself as a hairdresser to woo a scatterbrained countess (Macdonald). MacDonald introduced "Beyond the Blue Horizon" which she recorded three times during her career.
In hopes of producing her own films, MacDonald went to United Artists
United Artists
United Artists Corporation is an American film studio. The original studio of that name was founded in 1919 by D. W. Griffith, Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks....
to make The Lottery Bride
The Lottery Bride
The Lottery Bride is a movie musical starring Jeanette MacDonald, John Garrick, Zasu Pitts, and Joe E. Brown. The film was produced by Arthur Hammerstein, based on the musical by Rudolf Friml, and released by United Artists....
(1930). Despite music by Rudolf Friml
Rudolf Friml
Rudolf Friml was a composer of operettas, musicals, songs and piano pieces, as well as a pianist. After musical training and a brief performing career in his native Prague, Friml moved to the United States, where he became a composer...
, the film was not successful. MacDonald next signed a three-picture deal with 20th Century Fox
20th Century Fox
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation — also known as 20th Century Fox, or simply 20th or Fox — is one of the six major American film studios...
. Oh, for a Man! (1930) was more successful; MacDonald portrayed a temperamental opera singer who sings Wagner's "Liebestod" and falls for an Irish burglar played by Reginald Denny
Reginald Denny (actor)
Reginald Denny was an English stage, film, and television actor. He was once an amateur boxing champion of Great Britain.-Acting career:...
. Don't Bet on Women (1931) was a non-musical drawing room comedy in which playboy Edmund Lowe
Edmund Lowe
Edmund Dantes Lowe was an American actor. His formative experience began in vaudeville and silent film. He was born in San Jose, California.-Film career:...
bets his happily married friend Roland Young that he can seduce Young's wife (MacDonald). Annabelle's Affairs (1931) was a farce with MacDonald as a sophisticated New York playgirl who doesn’t recognize her own miner husband, played by Victor MacLaglen, when he turns up 5 years later. Highly praised by reviewers at the time, only one reel of this film survives.
MacDonald took a break from Hollywood in 1931 to embark on a European concert tour. She returned to Paramount the following year for two films with Maurice Chevalier
Maurice Chevalier
Maurice Auguste Chevalier was a French actor, singer, entertainer and a noted Sprechgesang performer. He is perhaps best known for his signature songs, including Louise, Mimi, Valentine, and Thank Heaven for Little Girls and for his films including The Love Parade and The Big Pond...
. One Hour with You
One Hour with You
One Hour with You is a 1932 American film. It was produced and directed by Ernst Lubitsch and written by Samson Raphaelson, from the Lothar Schmidt play Only a Dream....
(1932) was directed by both George Cukor
George Cukor
George Dewey Cukor was an American film director. He mainly concentrated on comedies and literary adaptations. His career flourished at RKO and later MGM, where he directed What Price Hollywood? , A Bill of Divorcement , Dinner at Eight , Little Women , David Copperfield , Romeo and Juliet and...
and Ernst Lubitsch
Ernst Lubitsch
Ernst Lubitsch was a German-born film director. His urbane comedies of manners gave him the reputation of being Hollywood's most elegant and sophisticated director; as his prestige grew, his films were promoted as having "the Lubitsch touch."In 1947 he received an Honorary Academy Award for his...
and simultaneously filmed in French with the same stars but a French supporting cast. Currently, there is no known surviving print of Une Heure près de toi (One Hour Near You). Rouben Mamoulian
Rouben Mamoulian
Rouben Mamoulian was an Armenian-American film and theatre director.-Biography:Born in Tbilisi, Georgia to an Armenian family, Rouben relocated to England and started directing plays in London in 1922...
directed Love Me Tonight
Love Me Tonight
Love Me Tonight is a 1932 musical comedy film produced and directed by Rouben Mamoulian, with music by Rodgers and Hart. It stars Maurice Chevalier as a tailor who poses as a nobleman and Jeanette MacDonald as a princess with whom he falls in love...
(1932), considered by many film critics and writers to be the ultimate film musical. Starring Chevalier as a humble tailor in love with a princess played by MacDonald, much of the story is told in sung dialogue. Richard Rodgers
Richard Rodgers
Richard Charles Rodgers was an American composer of music for more than 900 songs and for 43 Broadway musicals. He also composed music for films and television. He is best known for his songwriting partnerships with the lyricists Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II...
and Lorenz Hart
Lorenz Hart
Lorenz "Larry" Milton Hart was the lyricist half of the famed Broadway songwriting team Rodgers and Hart...
wrote the original score, which included the standards "Mimi
Mimi (song)
"Mimi" is a popular song written by Richard Rodgers, with words by Lorenz Hart. It was featured in the movie Love Me Tonight , in which it was first sung by Maurice Chevalier to Jeanette MacDonald, then later reprised by the entire company...
", "Lover
Lover (song)
"Lover" is a popular song written by Richard Rodgers, with words by Lorenz Hart. It was featured in the movie Love Me Tonight . Les Paul's version was a guitar instrumental released by Capitol Records in 1948. It has a french title Partout Toi...
", and "Isn't It Romantic?
Isn't It Romantic?
"Isn't It Romantic?" is a popular song and part of the Great American Songbook. The music was composed by Richard Rodgers, with lyrics by Lorenz Hart. It has a 32-bar chorus in ABAC form...
".
The MGM/Nelson Eddy years
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of films and television programs. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer...
. Her first MGM film was The Cat and the Fiddle (1934), based on the Jerome Kern Broadway hit. Her co-star was Ramón Novarro
Ramón Novarro
Ramón Novarro was a Mexican leading man actor in Hollywood in the early 20th century. He was the next male "Sex Symbol" after the death of Rudolph Valentino...
. The plot about unmarried lovers shacking up just barely slipped through the new Production Code
Production Code
The Motion Picture Production Code was the set of industry moral censorship guidelines that governed the production of the vast majority of United States motion pictures released by major studios from 1930 to 1968. It is also popularly known as the Hays Code, after Hollywood's chief censor of the...
guidelines that took effect July 1, 1934. Despite a Technicolor
Technicolor
Technicolor is a color motion picture process invented in 1916 and improved over several decades.It was the second major process, after Britain's Kinemacolor, and the most widely used color process in Hollywood from 1922 to 1952...
finale—the first use of the new three-color Technicolor process other than Disney cartoons—the film was not a huge success.
In The Merry Widow
The Merry Widow (1934 film)
The Merry Widow is a 1934 film adaptation of the operetta of the same name by Franz Lehár. It was directed by Ernst Lubitsch and starred Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald...
(1934), director Ernst Lubitsch
Ernst Lubitsch
Ernst Lubitsch was a German-born film director. His urbane comedies of manners gave him the reputation of being Hollywood's most elegant and sophisticated director; as his prestige grew, his films were promoted as having "the Lubitsch touch."In 1947 he received an Honorary Academy Award for his...
reunited Maurice Chevalier
Maurice Chevalier
Maurice Auguste Chevalier was a French actor, singer, entertainer and a noted Sprechgesang performer. He is perhaps best known for his signature songs, including Louise, Mimi, Valentine, and Thank Heaven for Little Girls and for his films including The Love Parade and The Big Pond...
and MacDonald in a lavish version of the classic 1905 Franz Lehár
Franz Lehár
Franz Lehár was an Austrian-Hungarian composer. He is mainly known for his operettas of which the most successful and best known is The Merry Widow .-Biography:...
operetta. The film was highly regarded by critics and operetta lovers in major U.S. cities and Europe, but failed to generate much income outside urban areas. It had a huge budget, partially because it was filmed simultaneously in French as La Veuve Joyeuse, with a French supporting cast and some minor plot changes.
Naughty Marietta (1935), directed by W.S. Van Dyke, was MacDonald's first film in which she teamed with newcomer baritone Nelson Eddy
Nelson Eddy
Nelson Ackerman Eddy was an American singer and actor who appeared in 19 musical films during the 1930s and 1940s, as well as in opera and on the concert stage, radio, television, and in nightclubs. A classically trained baritone, he is best remembered for the eight films in which he costarred...
. Victor Herbert
Victor Herbert
Victor August Herbert was an Irish-born, German-raised American composer, cellist and conductor. Although Herbert enjoyed important careers as a cello soloist and conductor, he is best known for composing many successful operettas that premiered on Broadway from the 1890s to World War I...
's 1910 score, with songs like "Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life", "I'm Falling in Love with Someone", "’Neath the Southern Moon", "Tramp, Tramp, Tramp", and "Italian Street Song", enjoyed renewed popularity. The film won an Oscar for sound recording and received an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. It was voted one of the Ten Best Pictures of 1935 by the New York film critics, was awarded the Photoplay Gold Medal Award as Best Picture of 1935 (beating out Mutiny on the Bounty
Mutiny on the Bounty (1935 film)
Mutiny on the Bounty is a 1935 film starring Charles Laughton and Clark Gable, and directed by Frank Lloyd based on the Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall novel Mutiny on the Bounty.The film was one of the biggest hits of its time...
, which won the Oscar), and, in 2004, was selected to the National Film Registry
National Film Registry
The National Film Registry is the United States National Film Preservation Board's selection of films for preservation in the Library of Congress. The Board, established by the National Film Preservation Act of 1988, was reauthorized by acts of Congress in 1992, 1996, 2005, and again in October 2008...
. MacDonald earned gold records for "Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life" and "Italian Street Song".
The following year, MacDonald starred in two of the highest-grossing films of that year. In Rose-Marie
Rose Marie (films)
The 1924 Broadway musical Rose-Marie has been the basis of three MGM films of the same title. The best-known film adaptation was released in 1936; however, a silent version was released in 1928 and another film was released in 1954. All three versions are set in the Canadian wilderness...
(1936), MacDonald played a haughty opera diva who learns her kid brother (James Stewart
James Stewart
James Stewart was a Hollywood movie actor and USAF brigadier general.James Stewart may also refer to:-Noblemen:*James Stewart, 5th High Steward of Scotland*James Stewart, the Black Knight of Lorn James Stewart (1908–1997) was a Hollywood movie actor and USAF brigadier general.James Stewart...
) has killed a Mountie and is hiding in the northern woods; Eddy is the Mountie sent to capture him. She and Nelson Eddy sang Rudolf Friml's "Indian Love Call
Indian Love Call
"Indian Love Call" is a song from Rose-Marie, a 1924 operetta-style Broadway musical with music by Rudolf Friml and Herbert Stothart, and book and lyrics by Otto Harbach and Oscar Hammerstein II...
" to each other in the Canadian wilderness (actually filmed at Lake Tahoe). Eddy's definitive portrayal of the steadfast Mountie became a popular icon. When the Canadian Mounties temporarily retired their distinctive hat in 1970, photos of Eddy in his Rose Marie uniform appeared in thousands of U.S. newspapers. San Francisco
San Francisco (film)
San Francisco is a 1936 musical-drama directed by Woody Van Dyke, based on the April 18, 1906 San Francisco earthquake. The film, which was the top grossing movie of that year, stars Clark Gable, Jeanette MacDonald, and Spencer Tracy. The then very popular singing of MacDonald helped make this film...
(1936) was also directed by W.S. Van Dyke. In this tale of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake
1906 San Francisco earthquake
The San Francisco earthquake of 1906 was a major earthquake that struck San Francisco, California, and the coast of Northern California at 5:12 a.m. on Wednesday, April 18, 1906. The most widely accepted estimate for the magnitude of the earthquake is a moment magnitude of 7.9; however, other...
, MacDonald played a hopeful opera singer opposite Clark Gable
Clark Gable
William Clark Gable , known as Clark Gable, was an American film actor most famous for his role as Rhett Butler in the 1939 Civil War epic film Gone with the Wind, in which he starred with Vivien Leigh...
as the he-man proprietor of a Barbary Coast gambling joint, and Spencer Tracy
Spencer Tracy
Spencer Bonaventure Tracy was an American theatrical and film actor, who appeared in 75 films from 1930 to 1967. Tracy was one of the major stars of Hollywood's Golden Age, ranking among the top ten box office draws for almost every year from 1938 to 1951...
as his boyhood chum who gives the moral messages.
In the summer of 1936 filming began on Maytime, co-starring Nelson Eddy, Frank Morgan
Frank Morgan
Frank Morgan was an American actor. He was best known for his portrayal of the title character in the film The Wizard of Oz.-Early life:...
and Paul Lukas, produced by Irving Thalberg
Irving Thalberg
Irving Grant Thalberg was an American film producer during the early years of motion pictures. He was called "The Boy Wonder" for his youth and his extraordinary ability to select the right scripts, choose the right actors, gather the best production staff and make very profitable films.-Life and...
. After Thalberg's untimely death in September, the production was shut down and the half-finished film was scrapped. A new script was filmed with a different storyline and supporting actors (including John Barrymore
John Barrymore
John Sidney Blyth , better known as John Barrymore, was an acclaimed American actor. He first gained fame as a handsome stage actor in light comedy, then high drama and culminating in groundbreaking portrayals in Shakespearean plays Hamlet and Richard III...
). The 'second' Maytime (1937), was the top-grossing film worldwide of the year and is regarded as one of the best film musicals of the 1930s. "Will You Remember" by Sigmund Romberg
Sigmund Romberg
Sigmund Romberg was a Hungarian-born American composer, best known for his operettas.-Biography:Romberg was born as Siegmund Rosenberg to a Jewish family in Gross-Kanizsa during the Austro-Hungarian kaiserlich und königlich monarchy period...
brought MacDonald another Gold record.
The Firefly
The Firefly (film)
The Firefly is a 1937 musical film starring Jeanette MacDonald, Allan Jones. The film is an adaptation of the operetta of the same name by composer Rudolf Friml and librettist Otto A. Harbach that premiered on Broadway in 1919...
(1937) was MacDonald's first solo-starring film at MGM with her name alone above the title. Rudolf Friml
Rudolf Friml
Rudolf Friml was a composer of operettas, musicals, songs and piano pieces, as well as a pianist. After musical training and a brief performing career in his native Prague, Friml moved to the United States, where he became a composer...
's 1912 stage score
The Firefly (operetta)
The Firefly is the first operetta written by composer Rudolf Friml, with a libretto by Otto Harbach. The story concerns a young girl, who is a street singer. She disguises herself and serves as a cabin boy on a ship to Bermuda, where she falls in love...
was borrowed and a new song, "The Donkey Serenade", added. With real-life Americans rushing to fight in the ongoing revolution in Spain, this historical vehicle was constructed around a previous revolution in Napoleonic times. MacDonald's co-star was Allan Jones. The MacDonald-Eddy team had split after MacDonald's engagement and marriage to Gene Raymond
Gene Raymond
Gene Raymond was an American film, television, and stage actor of the 1930s and 1940s. In addition to acting, Raymond was also a composer, writer, director, producer, and decorated military pilot.-Stage and movie career:...
, but neither of their solo films grossed as much as the team films and by the fall of 1937, MGM was barraged with outraged fan mail. The Girl of the Golden West
The Girl of the Golden West (1938 film)
The Girl of the Golden West is a 1938 musical western film. It was adapted from the play of the same name by David Belasco, better known for providing the plot of the opera La fanciulla del West by Giacomo Puccini...
(1938) was the result, but the two stars had little screen time together and the main song, "Obey Your Heart", was never sung as a duet. The film had an original score by Sigmund Romberg
Sigmund Romberg
Sigmund Romberg was a Hungarian-born American composer, best known for his operettas.-Biography:Romberg was born as Siegmund Rosenberg to a Jewish family in Gross-Kanizsa during the Austro-Hungarian kaiserlich und königlich monarchy period...
and reused the popular David Belasco
David Belasco
David Belasco was an American theatrical producer, impresario, director and playwright.-Biography:Born in San Francisco, California, where his Sephardic Jewish parents had moved from London, England, during the Gold Rush, he began working in a San Francisco theatre doing a variety of routine jobs,...
stage plot (also employed by opera composer Giacomo Puccini
Giacomo Puccini
Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini was an Italian composer whose operas, including La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot, are among the most frequently performed in the standard repertoire...
for La fanciulla del West
La fanciulla del West
La fanciulla del West is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Guelfo Civinini and Carlo Zangarini, based on the play The Girl of the Golden West by the American author David Belasco. Its highly-publicised premiere occurred in New York City in 1910...
).
Technicolor
Technicolor is a color motion picture process invented in 1916 and improved over several decades.It was the second major process, after Britain's Kinemacolor, and the most widely used color process in Hollywood from 1922 to 1952...
feature and he delivered with Sweethearts
Sweethearts (film)
Sweethearts is a 1938 musical romance directed by W.S. Van Dyke, starring Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy. The screenplay, by Dorothy Parker and Alan Campbell, uses the “play within a play” device: a contemporary Broadway production of the 1913 Victor Herbert operetta is the setting for...
(1938), co-starring Eddy. In contrast to the previous film, the co-stars were relaxed onscreen and singing frequently together. This box office smash hit integrated Victor Herbert
Victor Herbert
Victor August Herbert was an Irish-born, German-raised American composer, cellist and conductor. Although Herbert enjoyed important careers as a cello soloist and conductor, he is best known for composing many successful operettas that premiered on Broadway from the 1890s to World War I...
's 1913 stage score into a modern backstage story scripted by Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker was an American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist, best known for her wit, wisecracks, and eye for 20th century urban foibles....
. MacDonald and Eddy played a husband and wife Broadway musical comedy team who are offered a Hollywood contract. Sweethearts
Sweethearts (film)
Sweethearts is a 1938 musical romance directed by W.S. Van Dyke, starring Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy. The screenplay, by Dorothy Parker and Alan Campbell, uses the “play within a play” device: a contemporary Broadway production of the 1913 Victor Herbert operetta is the setting for...
won the Photoplay Gold Medal Award as Best Picture of the Year.
After MacDonald suffered a miscarriage
Miscarriage
Miscarriage or spontaneous abortion is the spontaneous end of a pregnancy at a stage where the embryo or fetus is incapable of surviving independently, generally defined in humans at prior to 20 weeks of gestation...
during the filming of Sweethearts
Sweethearts (film)
Sweethearts is a 1938 musical romance directed by W.S. Van Dyke, starring Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy. The screenplay, by Dorothy Parker and Alan Campbell, uses the “play within a play” device: a contemporary Broadway production of the 1913 Victor Herbert operetta is the setting for...
, Mayer dropped plans for the team to co-star in Let Freedom Ring, a vehicle first announced for them in 1935. Eddy made that film solo while MacDonald and Lew Ayres
Lew Ayres
Lew Ayres was an American actor, best known for starring as Paul in All Quiet on the Western Front and for playing Dr...
(Young Dr. Kildare) co-starred in Broadway Serenade
Broadway Serenade
Broadway Serenade is a 1939 musical drama film distributed by MGM, and directed and produced by Robert Z. Leonard. The screenplay was written by Charles Lederer, based on story by Lew Lipton, John Taintor Foote and Hanns Kräly...
(1939). They played a contemporary musical couple who clash when her career flourishes while his flounders. MacDonald's performance was subdued (Eddy married Ann Franklin during the filming) and choreographer Busby Berkeley
Busby Berkeley
Busby Berkeley was a highly influential Hollywood movie director and musical choreographer. Berkeley was famous for his elaborate musical production numbers that often involved complex geometric patterns...
, just hired away from Warner Bros., was called upon to add an over-the-top finale in an effort to improve the film.
Following Broadway Serenade, MacDonald left Hollywood on a concert tour and refused to re-sign her MGM contract. Eddy starred in a second solo film, Balalaika
Balalaika
The balalaika is a stringed musical instrument popular in Russia, with a characteristic triangular body and three strings.The balalaika family of instruments includes instruments of various sizes, from the highest-pitched to the lowest, the prima balalaika, secunda balalaika, alto balalaika, bass...
, while MacDonald's manager was summoned from London to help her renegotiate. After initially insisting she film Smilin' Through
Smilin' Through (1941 film)
Smilin' Through is a 1941 MGM musical film based on the 1919 play of the same name by Jane Cowl and Jane Murfin.The film was a remake of a previous 1932 version by MGM and was the third and final film version of the play. It starred Jeanette MacDonald, Brian Aherne and Ian Hunter...
with James Stewart
James Stewart
James Stewart was a Hollywood movie actor and USAF brigadier general.James Stewart may also refer to:-Noblemen:*James Stewart, 5th High Steward of Scotland*James Stewart, the Black Knight of Lorn James Stewart (1908–1997) was a Hollywood movie actor and USAF brigadier general.James Stewart...
and Robert Taylor
Robert Taylor (actor)
Robert Taylor was an American film and television actor.-Early life:Born Spangler Arlington Brugh in Filley, Nebraska, he was the son of Ruth Adaline and Spangler Andrew Brugh, who was a farmer turned doctor...
, MacDonald finally relented and agreed to film New Moon (1940) with Eddy. New Moon proved one of MacDonald's most popular films. Composer Sigmund Romberg
Sigmund Romberg
Sigmund Romberg was a Hungarian-born American composer, best known for his operettas.-Biography:Romberg was born as Siegmund Rosenberg to a Jewish family in Gross-Kanizsa during the Austro-Hungarian kaiserlich und königlich monarchy period...
's 1927 Broadway hit provided the plot and the songs: "Lover, Come Back to Me", "One Kiss", and "Wanting You", plus Eddy's version of "Stout Hearted Men". This was followed by Bitter Sweet
Bitter Sweet (1940 film)
Bitter Sweet is a 1940 Technicolor American musical film directed by W. S. Van Dyke, based on the operetta by Noel Coward and previously filmed in 1933; see Bitter Sweet . It was nominated for two Academy Awards, one for Best Cinematography and the other for Best Art Direction by Cedric Gibbons and...
(1940), a Technicolor
Technicolor
Technicolor is a color motion picture process invented in 1916 and improved over several decades.It was the second major process, after Britain's Kinemacolor, and the most widely used color process in Hollywood from 1922 to 1952...
film version of Noël Coward's 1929 stage operetta
Bitter Sweet
Bitter Sweet is an operetta in three acts written by Noël Coward and first produced in 1929 at Her Majesty's Theatre in London. It ran for a very successful 967 performances....
.
Smilin' Through
Smilin' Through (1941 film)
Smilin' Through is a 1941 MGM musical film based on the 1919 play of the same name by Jane Cowl and Jane Murfin.The film was a remake of a previous 1932 version by MGM and was the third and final film version of the play. It starred Jeanette MacDonald, Brian Aherne and Ian Hunter...
(1941) was MacDonald's next Technicolor
Technicolor
Technicolor is a color motion picture process invented in 1916 and improved over several decades.It was the second major process, after Britain's Kinemacolor, and the most widely used color process in Hollywood from 1922 to 1952...
project. This 1919 stage play had been filmed a number of times. Its theme of reunion with deceased loved ones was enormously popular after the devastation of World War I, and MGM reasoned that it should resonate with filmgoers during World War II. MacDonald played a dual role—Moonyean, a Victorian girl accidentally murdered by a jealous lover, and Kathleen, her niece, who falls in love with the son of the murderer. The original co-stars, James Stewart and Robert Taylor, dropped out to help in the military effort and were replaced by Brian Aherne
Brian Aherne
Brian Aherne was a British actor of both stage and screen, who found success in Hollywood.-Early life and stage career:...
and Gene Raymond
Gene Raymond
Gene Raymond was an American film, television, and stage actor of the 1930s and 1940s. In addition to acting, Raymond was also a composer, writer, director, producer, and decorated military pilot.-Stage and movie career:...
.
I Married an Angel
I Married an Angel
I Married An Angel is a musical comedy by Rodgers and Hart. It was adapted from a play by Hungarian playwright János Vaszary, entitled Angyalt Vettem Felesegul. The book was by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, with music by Rodgers and lyrics by Hart. The story concerns a wealthy banker who,...
(1942), was adapted from the Rodgers & Hart stage musical about an angel who loses her wings on her wedding night. The script by Anita Loos
Anita Loos
Anita Loos was an American screenwriter, playwright and author.-Early life:Born Corinne Anita Loos in Sisson, California , where her father, R. Beers Loos, had opened a tabloid newspaper for which her mother, Minerva "Minnie" Smith did most of the work of a newspaper publisher...
suffered serious censorship cuts during filming that made the result less successful. MacDonald sang "Spring Is Here" and the title song. It was the final film made by the team of MacDonald and Eddy. After a falling-out with Mayer, Eddy bought out his MGM contract (with one film left to make) and went to Universal, where he signed a million-dollar, two-picture deal. MacDonald remained for one last film, Cairo
Cairo (film)
Cairo is a 1942 musical comedy film made by MGM and Loew's, and directed by W. S. Van Dyke. The screenplay was written by John McClain, based on idea by Ladislas Fodor about a news reporter shipwrecked in a torpedo attack, who teams up with a Hollywood singer and her maid to foil Nazi spies. The...
(1942), a cheaply-budgeted spy comedy co-starring Robert Young
Robert Young (actor)
Robert George Young was an American television, film, and radio actor, best known for his leading roles as Jim Anderson, the father of Father Knows Best and as physician Marcus Welby in Marcus Welby, M.D. .-Early life:Born in Chicago, Illinois, Young was the son of an Irish immigrant father...
(Father Knows Best
Father Knows Best
Father Knows Best is an American radio and television comedy series which portrayed a middle class family life in the Midwest. It was created by writer Ed James in the 1940s.-Radio:...
) and Ethel Waters
Ethel Waters
Ethel Waters was an American blues, jazz and gospel vocalist and actress. She frequently performed jazz, big band, and pop music, on the Broadway stage and in concerts, although she began her career in the 1920s singing blues.Her best-known recordings includes, "Dinah", "Birmingham Bertha",...
, who played MacDonald's singing maid.
Later career
MacDonald followed Eddy to Universal, where they were scheduled to make one film together after he finished Phantom of the OperaPhantom of the Opera (1943 film)
Phantom of the Opera is a 1943 Universal horror film starring Nelson Eddy, Susanna Foster and Claude Rains, directed by Arthur Lubin, and filmed in Technicolor. The original music score was composed by Edward Ward....
(1943). MacDonald marked time by appearing as herself in Follow the Boys
Follow the Boys
Follow the Boys , also known as Three Cheers for the Boys, is a musical film made by Universal Pictures as an all-star cast morale booster to entertain the troops abroad and the civilians at home. The film was directed by A. Edward "Eddie" Sutherland and produced by Charles K. Feldman...
(1944), an all-star extravaganza about Hollywood stars entertaining the troops. The more than 40 guest stars included Marlene Dietrich
Marlene Dietrich
Marlene Dietrich was a German-American actress and singer.Dietrich remained popular throughout her long career by continually re-inventing herself, professionally and characteristically. In the Berlin of the 1920s, she acted on the stage and in silent films...
, W.C. Fields, Sophie Tucker
Sophie Tucker
Sophie Tucker was a Russian/Ukrainian-born American singer and actress. Known for her stentorian delivery of comical and risqué songs, she was one of the most popular entertainers in America during the first half of the 20th century...
and Orson Welles
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...
. MacDonald is shown during an actual concert singing "Beyond the Blue Horizon", and in a studio-filmed sequence singing "I’ll See You in My Dreams" to a blinded soldier.
After MacDonald and Eddy left MGM in 1942, they appeared frequently on radio together while planning several unrealized films that would have reunited them onscreen. Eddy was upset at how his first film turned out at Universal so their joint project at that studio fell through. They next sought independent financing for team projects like East Wind and Crescent Carnival, a book optioned by MacDonald. Other thwarted projects were The Rosary, a 1910 best seller (which Nelson Eddy pitched for a team comeback at MGM), The Desert Song
The Desert Song
The Desert Song is an operetta with music by Sigmund Romberg and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, Otto Harbach and Frank Mandel. It was inspired by the 1925 uprising of the Riffs, a group of Moroccan fighters, against French colonial rule. It was also inspired by stories of Lawrence of...
and a remake of The Vagabond King
The Vagabond King
The Vagabond King is a 1925 operetta by Rudolf Friml in four acts, with a book and lyrics by Brian Hooker and William H. Post, based upon Justin Huntly McCarthy's 1901 romantic play If I Were King...
, plus two movie treatments written by Eddy, "Timothy Waits for Love" and "All Stars Don't Spangle." In 1954 Eddy pulled out of yet another proposed team film to be made in England when he learned MacDonald was investing her own funds. He had invested in 1944's Knickerbocker Holiday
Knickerbocker Holiday
Knickerbocker Holiday is a musical written by Kurt Weill and Maxwell Anderson ; it was directed by Joshua Logan. Among the songs introduced was the "September Song", now considered a pop standard.- History :...
, and had lost money.
Three Daring Daughters
Three Daring Daughters is a 1948 musical film made by MGM, and directed by Fred M. Wilcox. The screenplay was written by Albert Mannheimer, Frederick Kohner, Sonya Levien and John Meehan.-Plot:...
(1948), co-starred José Iturbi
José Iturbi
José Iturbi was a Spanish conductor, harpsichordist and pianist. He appeared in several Hollywood films of the 1940s, notably playing himself in the 1943 musical, Thousands Cheer and in the 1945 film, Anchors Aweigh...
as her love interest. MacDonald plays a divorcée whose lively daughters (Jane Powell
Jane Powell
Jane Powell is an American singer, dancer and actress.After rising to fame as a singer in her home state of Oregon, Powell was signed to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer while still in her teens...
, Ann E. Todd, and Elinor Donahue) keep trying to get her back with her ex, while she has secretly remarried. "The Dickey Bird" song made the Hit Parade
Hit parade
A hit parade is a ranked list of the most popular recordings at a given point in time, usually determined by sales and/or airplay. The term originated in the 1930s; Billboard magazine published its first music hit parade on January 4, 1936...
. The Sun Comes Up
The Sun Comes Up
The Sun Comes Up is a 1949 MGM Lassie picture.-Plot:Ex-opera singer Helen Lorfield Winter rents a house in the small town of Brushy Gap, in the hills not too far from the Smokies, Blue Ridge, and Atlanta Georgia with her dog, Lassie, after the tragic death of her son. There she befriends Jerry, a...
(1949), teamed MacDonald with Lassie
Lassie
Lassie is a fictional collie dog character created by Eric Knight in a short story expanded to novel length called Lassie Come-Home. Published in 1940, the novel was filmed by MGM in 1943 as Lassie Come Home with a dog named Pal playing Lassie. Pal then appeared with the stage name "Lassie" in six...
, in an adaptation of a short story by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings was an American author who lived in rural Florida and wrote novels with rural themes and settings. Her best known work, The Yearling, about a boy who adopts an orphaned fawn, won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1939 and was later made into a movie, also known as The...
. MacDonald played a widow who has also lost her son, but warms to orphan Claude Jarman Jr.
Claude Jarman Jr.
Claude Jarman, Jr. is an American former child actor.Jarman was discovered in a nationwide talent search by MGM Studios, and was cast as the lead actor in the film The Yearling . His performance received glowing reviews and he was awarded with an Academy Juvenile Award as a result...
It was her final film.
Offers continued to come in and in 1962 producer Ross Hunter proposed teaming MacDonald and Eddy for featured roles in his 1963 comedy smash, The Thrill of It All
The Thrill of It All
The Thrill of It All is a romantic comedy film directed by Norman Jewison starring Doris Day, James Garner, Arlene Francis, and ZaSu Pitts. The screenplay was written by Larry Gelbart and Carl Reiner...
. They declined and the roles were eventually played by Arlene Francis
Arlene Francis
Arlene Francis was an American actress, radio talk show host, and game show panelist...
and Edward Andrews
Edward Andrews
Edward Andrews was an American actor, one of the most recognizable character actors on television and films between the 1950s and the 1980s...
. 20th Century Fox also toyed with the idea of MacDonald (Irene Dunne was also briefly considered) for the part of Mother Abbess in the film version of The Sound of Music
The Sound of Music (film)
Rodgers and Hammerstein's The Sound of Music is a 1965 American musical film directed by Robert Wise and starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer. The film is based on the Broadway musical The Sound of Music, with songs written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, and with the musical...
. It never moved beyond the discussion stages partly because of MacDonald's failing health.
An annual poll of film exhibitors listed MacDonald as one of the top ten box-office draws of 1936, and many of her films were among the top 20 moneymakers of the years they were released. In addition, MacDonald was one of the top ten box-office attractions in Great Britain from 1937–1942 inclusive. During her 39-year career, MacDonald earned two stars in the Hollywood Walk of Fame
Hollywood Walk of Fame
The Hollywood Walk of Fame consists of more than 2,400 five-pointed terrazzo and brass stars embedded in the sidewalks along fifteen blocks of Hollywood Boulevard and three blocks of Vine Street in Hollywood, California...
(for films and recordings) and planted her feet in the wet cement in front of Grauman's Chinese Theater.
Concerts
Starting in 1931 and continuing through the 1950s, MacDonald did regular concert tours between films. Her first European tour was in 1931, where she sang in both France and England. Her first American concert tour was in 1939, immediately after the completion of Broadway Serenade and Nelson Eddy's marriage. After that she, like Eddy, did frequent U.S. tours between films. She sang several times at the Hollywood BowlHollywood Bowl
The Hollywood Bowl is a modern amphitheater in the Hollywood area of Los Angeles, California, United States that is used primarily for music performances...
and Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....
.
When America joined World War II in 1942, MacDonald was one of the founders of the Army Emergency Relief and raised funds on concert tours. She auctioned off encores for donations and raised over $100,000 for the troops. President Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...
, who considered MacDonald and Eddy two of his favorite film stars, awarded her a medal. She also did command performances at the White House for both Presidents Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman was the 33rd President of the United States . As President Franklin D. Roosevelt's third vice president and the 34th Vice President of the United States , he succeeded to the presidency on April 12, 1945, when President Roosevelt died less than three months after beginning his...
and Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States, from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army...
.
In early 1960, The Hollywood Bowl announced that MacDonald and Howard Keel would be the guests soloists at the annual Easter Sunrise Service. However, health problems forced her to cancel her appearance. By the summer of 1960, MacDonald was seriously ill and her autobiography collaborator, Fredda Dudley Balling, wrote that it was uncertain whether she would live long enough to finish the book. Besides her heart problems, MacDonald suffered from a benign, non-operable brain tumor.
Recordings
MacDonald recorded more than 90 songs during her career, working exclusively for RCA-VictorRCA Records
RCA Records is one of the flagship labels of Sony Music Entertainment. The RCA initials stand for Radio Corporation of America , which was the parent corporation from 1929 to 1985 and a partner from 1985 to 1986.RCA's Canadian unit is Sony's oldest label...
in the United States. She also did some early recordings for HMV in England and France while she was there on a concert tour in 1931. She earned three gold records, one for an LP album that she did with Nelson Eddy in 1957.
Opera
Unlike Nelson Eddy, who came from opera to film, MacDonald in the 1940s yearned to reinvent herself in opera. She began training for this goal with Lotte LehmannLotte Lehmann
Charlotte "Lotte" Lehmann was a German soprano who was especially associated with German repertory. She gave memorable performances in the operas of Richard Strauss, Richard Wagner, Ludwig van Beethoven, Puccini, Mozart and Massenet. The Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier was considered her greatest...
, one of the leading opera stars of the early 20th Century.
"When Jeanette MacDonald approached me for coaching lessons", wrote Lehmann, "I was really curious how a glamorous movie star, certainly spoiled by the adoration of a limitless world, would be able to devote herself to another, a higher level of art. I had the surprise of my life. There couldn’t have been a more diligent, a more serious, a more pliable person than Jeanette. The lessons which I had started with a kind of suspicious curiosity, turned out to be sheer delight for me. She studied Marguerite with me—and lieder. These were the ones which astounded me most. I am quite sure that Jeanette would have developed into a serious and successful lieder singer if time would have allowed it."
MacDonald made her opera debut singing Juliette in Gounod
Charles Gounod
Charles-François Gounod was a French composer, known for his Ave Maria as well as his operas Faust and Roméo et Juliette.-Biography:...
's Roméo et Juliette
Roméo et Juliette
Roméo et Juliette is an opéra in five acts by Charles Gounod to a French libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré, based on The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. It was first performed at the Théâtre Lyrique , Paris on 27 April 1867...
in Montreal at His Majesty's Theatre (May 8 and 10, 1943). She quickly repeated the role in Quebec City (May 12) Ottawa and Toronto. Her U.S. debut with the Chicago Opera Company
Chicago Opera Company
The Chicago Opera Company was a grand opera company in Chicago, organized from the remaining assets of the bankrupt Chicago City Opera Company, that produced six seasons of opera at the Civic Opera House from 1940 to 1946 . Fausto Cleva was artistic director 1944-1946, and until 1945 Fortune Gallo...
(November 4, 11 and 15, 1944) was in the same role. She also sang Marguerite in Gounod's Faust
Faust (opera)
Faust is a drame lyrique in five acts by Charles Gounod to a French libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré from Carré's play Faust et Marguerite, in turn loosely based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust, Part 1...
with the Chicago Opera. In November 1945, she did two more performances of Roméo et Juliette and one of Faust in Chicago, and two Fausts for the Cincinnati Opera
Cincinnati Opera
Cincinnati Opera is an American opera company based in Cincinnati, Ohio and the second oldest opera company in the United States .-History:...
. On December 12, 1951, she did one performance of Faust with the Philadelphia Civic Grand Opera Company
Philadelphia Civic Grand Opera Company
The Philadelphia Civic Grand Opera Company was an American opera company located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania that was actively performing at the Academy of Music between 1950 and 1955. Fausta Cleva served as the company's first General Director and conductor...
at the Academy of Music
Academy of Music (Philadelphia)
The Academy of Music, also known as American Academy of Music, is a concert hall and opera house located at Broad and Locust Streets in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was built in 1857 and is the oldest opera house in the United States that is still used for its original purpose...
.
Claudia Cassidy
Claudia Cassidy
Claudia Cassidy , born in Shawneetown, Illinois, was a music, dance, and drama critic. She was so well-known for giving caustic reviews to what she considered bad performances that she earned the nickname "Acidy Cassidy." Her judgment, however, which was regarded as extremely controversial even in...
, the music critic of the Chicago Tribune wrote: "Her Juliet is breathtakingly beautiful to the eye and dulcet to the ear." The same critic reviewed Faust: "From where I sit at the opera, Jeanette MacDonald has turned out to be one of the welcome surprises of the season... her Marguerite was better than her Juliet...beautifully sung with purity of line and tone, a good trill, and a Gallic inflection that understood Gounod's phrasing....You felt if Faust must sell his soul to the devil, at least this time he got his money's worth."
Radio and television
MacDonald's extensive radio career may have begun on a 1929 radio broadcast of the Publix Hour. She was on the Academy AwardsAcademy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
ceremony broadcast in 1931. She hosted her own radio show, Vicks Open House, from September 1937 to March 1938, for which she received $5,000 a week. However, the time demands of doing a weekly live radio show while filming, touring in concerts and making records proved enormously difficult, and after fainting on-air during one show, she decided not to renew her radio contract with Vicks at the end of the 26-week season. Thereafter, she stuck to guest appearances.
MacDonald appeared in condensed radio versions of many of her films on programs like Cecil B. DeMille
Cecil B. DeMille
Cecil Blount DeMille was an American film director and Academy Award-winning film producer in both silent and sound films. He was renowned for the flamboyance and showmanship of his movies...
's Lux Radio Theater
Lux Radio Theater
Lux Radio Theater, a long-run classic radio anthology series, was broadcast on the NBC Blue Network ; CBS and NBC . Initially, the series adapted Broadway plays during its first two seasons before it began adapting films. These hour-long radio programs were performed live before studio audiences...
, usually with Nelson Eddy, and the Railroad Hour which starred Gordon MacRae
Gordon MacRae
Gordon MacRae was an American actor and singer, best known for his appearances in the film versions of two Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals, Oklahoma! and Carousel and films with Doris Day like Starlift.-Early life:Born Albert Gordon MacRae in East Orange, New Jersey, MacRae graduated from...
. These included The Merry Widow, Naughty Marietta, Rose Marie, Maytime, Sweethearts, Bitter Sweet, Smilin' Through, and The Sun Comes Up, plus other operettas and musicals like Victor Herbert's Mlle Modiste, Irene, The Student Prince, Tonight or Never with Melvyn Douglas
Melvyn Douglas
Melvyn Edouard Hesselberg , better known as Melvyn Douglas, was an American actor.Coming to prominence in the 1930s as a suave leading man , Douglas later transitioned into more mature and fatherly roles as in his Academy Award-winning performances in Hud...
, A Song for Clotilda, The Gift of the Magi, and Apple Blossoms. Other radio shows included The Prudential Family Hour, Screen Guild Playhouse and The Voice of Firestone which featured the top opera and concert singers of the time. In 1953, MacDonald sang "The Star-Spangled Banner
The Star-Spangled Banner
"The Star-Spangled Banner" is the national anthem of the United States of America. The lyrics come from "Defence of Fort McHenry", a poem written in 1814 by the 35-year-old lawyer and amateur poet, Francis Scott Key, after witnessing the bombardment of Fort McHenry by the British Royal Navy ships...
" at the inauguration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States, from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army...
, which was broadcast on both radio and TV.
MacDonald sang frequently with Nelson Eddy during the mid 1940s on several Lux Radio Theater
Lux Radio Theater
Lux Radio Theater, a long-run classic radio anthology series, was broadcast on the NBC Blue Network ; CBS and NBC . Initially, the series adapted Broadway plays during its first two seasons before it began adapting films. These hour-long radio programs were performed live before studio audiences...
and The Screen Guild Theater
The Screen Guild Theater
The Screen Guild Theater was a popular radio anthology series during the Golden Age of Radio, broadcast from 1939 until 1952, with leading Hollywood actors performing in adaptations of popular motion pictures such as Going My Way and The Postman Always Rings Twice.The show had a long run, lasting...
productions of their films together. She also appeared as his guest several times on his various radio shows such as The Electric Hour and The Kraft Music Hall. He was also a surprise guest when she hosted a war bonds program called Guest Star, and they sang on other World War II victory shows together. The majority of her radio work in the mid to late 1940s was with Eddy. Her 1948 Hollywood Bowl concert was also broadcast over the air, in which she used Eddy's longtime accompanist, Theodore Paxson.
MacDonald appeared on early TV, most frequently as a singing guest star. She sang on The Voice of Firestone on November 13, 1950. On November 12, 1952, she was the subject of Ralph Edwards' This Is Your Life
This Is Your Life
This Is Your Life is an American television documentary series broadcast on NBC, originally hosted by its producer, Ralph Edwards from 1952 to 1961. In the show, the host surprises a guest, and proceeds to take them through their life in front of an audience including friends and family.Edwards...
. Nelson Eddy appeared as a voice from her past, singing the song he sang at her wedding to Gene Raymond. His surprise appearance brought her to tears.
Shortly thereafter, she appeared as the mystery guest on the December 21, 1952 episode of What's My Line?
What's My Line?
What's My Line? is a panel game show which originally ran in the United States on the CBS Television Network from 1950 to 1967, with several international versions and subsequent U.S. revivals. The game tasked celebrity panelists with questioning contestants in order to determine their occupations....
. After the panelists guessed her identity, she told John Daly
John Charles Daly
John Charles Patrick Croghan Daly John Charles Patrick Croghan Daly John Charles Patrick Croghan Daly (generally known as John Charles Daly or simply John Daly (February 20, 1914 – February 24, 1991) was an American journalist, game show host and radio personality, probably best known for hosting...
she was in town in New York for the holidays. She also said that on January 16, 1953, she was going to have a recital at Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....
.
On February 2, 1956 MacDonald starred in Prima Donna, a television pilot
Television pilot
A "television pilot" is a standalone episode of a television series that is used to sell the show to a television network. At the time of its inception, the pilot is meant to be the "testing ground" to see if a series will be possibly desired and successful and therefore a test episode of an...
for her own series, written for her by her husband, Gene Raymond. The initial show featured guest stars Leo Durocher
Leo Durocher
Leo Ernest Durocher , nicknamed Leo the Lip, was an American infielder and manager in Major League Baseball. Upon his retirement, he ranked fifth all-time among managers with 2,009 career victories, second only to John McGraw in National League history. Durocher still ranks tenth in career wins by...
and Larraine Day, but it failed to find a slot.
In December 1956 MacDonald and Eddy made their first TV appearance as a team on the Lux Video Theatre Holiday Special. In 1957, she and Eddy appeared on Patti Page
Patti Page
Clara Ann Fowler , known by her professional name Patti Page, is an American singer, one of the best-known female artists in traditional pop music. She was the best-selling female artist of the 1950s, and has sold over 100 million records...
's program, The Big Record, singing several songs.
On Playhouse 90
Playhouse 90
Playhouse 90 is an American television anthology series that was telecast on CBS from 1956 to 1960 for a total of 133 episodes. It originated from CBS Television City in Los Angeles, California...
(March 28, 1957), MacDonald played Charley's real aunt to Art Carney
Art Carney
Arthur William Matthew “Art” Carney was an American actor in film, stage, television and radio. He is best known for playing Ed Norton, opposite Jackie Gleason's Ralph Kramden in the situation comedy The Honeymooners....
's impersonation in "Charley's Aunt."
War work
After the United States entered World War II in December 1941, MacDonald continued to sing in concerts and on radio, and much of her time was devoted to war work. She was one of the founders of the Women's Voluntary Services and was active with the Army Emergency Relief. She raised over $100,000 for them with benefit concerts throughout the country in the fall of 1943, for which FDR awarded her a medal. She did extensive free concerts for the military through the U.S.O, and after each of her regular "civilian" concert, she would auction off encores and donated the money to wartime charities. She was surprised to find that the song she was most often asked to sing was "Ave Maria." When she was home in Hollywood, she held open house at her home, Twin Gables, on Sunday afternoons for G.I.s. On one occasion, at the request of Lt. Ronald ReaganRonald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
she was singing for a large group of men in San Francisco who were due to ship out to the fierce fighting in the South Pacific. She closed with "The Battle Hymn of the Republic
The Battle Hymn of the Republic
"The Battle Hymn of the Republic" is a hymn by American writer Julia Ward Howe using the music from the song "John Brown's Body". Howe's more famous lyrics were written in November 1861 and first published in The Atlantic Monthly in February 1862. It became popular during the American Civil War...
", and 20,000 voices spontaneously joined in.
Musical theatre
In the mid-1950s, MacDonald toured in summer stock productions of Bitter SweetBitter Sweet
Bitter Sweet is an operetta in three acts written by Noël Coward and first produced in 1929 at Her Majesty's Theatre in London. It ran for a very successful 967 performances....
and The King and I
The King and I
The King and I is a stage musical, the fifth by the team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. The work is based on the 1944 novel Anna and the King of Siam by Margaret Landon and derives from the memoirs of Anna Leonowens, who became governess to the children of King Mongkut of Siam in...
She opened in Bitter Sweet at the Iroquois Amphitheater, Louisville, Kentucky, on July 19, 1954. Her production of The King and I opened August 20, 1956 at the Starlight Theatre
Starlight Theatre (Kansas City)
Starlight Theatre is a 7,947-seat outdoor theatre in Kansas City, Missouri, United States that stages touring Broadway shows and concerts. It is one of three remaining self-producing outdoor theatres in the U.S.-History:...
. While performing there, she collapsed. Officially it was heat prostration
Hyperthermia
Hyperthermia is an elevated body temperature due to failed thermoregulation. Hyperthermia occurs when the body produces or absorbs more heat than it can dissipate...
but in fact it was a heart seizure. She began limiting her appearances and a reprisal of Bitter Sweet in 1959 was her last professional appearance.
MacDonald and her husband, Gene Raymond, toured in Ferenc Molnár's The Guardsman
The Guardsman
The Guardsman is a 1931 film based on the play Testőr by Ferenc Molnár. It stars Alfred Lunt, Lynn Fontanne, Roland Young and ZaSu Pitts...
. The production opened at the Erlanger Theater, Buffalo, New York on January 25, 1951 and played in 23 northeastern and midwestern cities until June 2, 1951. Despite less than enthusiastic comments from critics, the show played to full houses for virtually every performance. The leading role of "The Actress" was changed to "The Singer" to allow MacDonald to add some songs. While this pleased her fans, the show still closed before reaching Broadway.
In the 1950s there were talks with respect to a Broadway return. In the 1960s, MacDonald was approached about starring on Broadway in a musical version of Sunset Boulevard
Sunset Boulevard (musical)
Sunset Boulevard is a musical with book and lyrics by Don Black and Christopher Hampton and music by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Based on the 1950 film of the same title, the plot revolves around Norma Desmond, a faded star of the silent screen era, living in the past in her decaying mansion on the...
. Harold Prince recounts in his autobiography, visiting MacDonald at her home in Bel Air to discuss the proposed project. Composer Hugh Martin
Hugh Martin
Hugh Martin was an American musical theater and film composer, arranger, vocal coach, and playwright. He is best known for his score for the 1944 MGM musical Meet Me In St...
also wrote a song for the musical entitled, "Wasn't It Romantic?".
MacDonald also made a few nightclub appearances. She sang and danced at The Sands
Sands Hotel
The Sands Hotel was a historic Las Vegas Strip hotel/casino that operated from December 15, 1952 to June 30, 1996. Designed by architect Wayne McAllister, the Sands was the seventh resort that opened on the Strip....
and The Sahara in Las Vegas in 1953, The Coconut Grove in Los Angeles in 1954, and again at The Sahara in 1957, but she never felt entirely comfortable in the smoky atmosphere.
Personal life
MacDonald had five documented serious romances. The first was wealthy NYU student Jack Ohmeis, whom she dated from 1922 until 1927. They became engaged in 1926 but his family objected to his marrying an actress. Ironically, the Ohmeis family fortunes were lost in the 1929 stock market crash and MacDonald later loaned money to Jack Ohmeis.MacDonald next dated Irving Stone from around 1926-8; they apparently met when she was touring in Chicago in Yes, Yes, Yvette. Stone, who lived in Milwaukee, was the nephew of the founder of the Boston Store
Boston Store
-History:The Boston Store is mentioned in Theodore Dreiser's "Sister Carrie" published in 1900 and Carl Sandburg's Mamie, part of his 1916 Chicago Poems collection....
and worked in the family business. Few details were known of Stone's romance with MacDonald until the discovery of hundreds of pages of handwritten love letters she wrote him that were found in his apartment after his death.
In 1928 Robert George Ritchie became MacDonald's manager and fiance. They were together until 1935 and presumed by many to be married. MacDonald dared anyone to prove it. However, MacDonald wrote Ritchie a letter in July 1929 calling him "my own darling husband" and on the envelope she gave her return address initials as "JAR" (Jeanette Anna Ritchie). On March 29, 1931 MacDonald wrote Irving Stone that she was engaged to Ritchie and on July 8, 1931 she wrote him again from Europe that "I didn't get married on June 9." Ritchie's nephew and the remaining family claimed that there was a Ritchie-MacDonald marriage and that it was annulled, possibly in Hawaii, in 1935. If so, details have never come to light. However, MacDonald was photographed in Hawaii just prior to the release of Naughty Marietta (1935).
The Bob Ritchie romance began to sour when MacDonald became friendly with Nelson Eddy
Nelson Eddy
Nelson Ackerman Eddy was an American singer and actor who appeared in 19 musical films during the 1930s and 1940s, as well as in opera and on the concert stage, radio, television, and in nightclubs. A classically trained baritone, he is best remembered for the eight films in which he costarred...
in late 1933. In January 1934 the trades announced they would be co-starring in Naughty Marietta. They dated on and off throughout 1934 but after MacDonald's 1935 Hawaii trip, Eddy became more persistent in his marriage proposals. The problem was that Eddy wanted her to retire and raise their children; MacDonald preferred to put her career first. They fought constantly over this and broke up in early June 1935.
Later that month, MacDonald met the actor Gene Raymond
Gene Raymond
Gene Raymond was an American film, television, and stage actor of the 1930s and 1940s. In addition to acting, Raymond was also a composer, writer, director, producer, and decorated military pilot.-Stage and movie career:...
at a party and began dating him. Blond Raymond resembled Nelson Eddy
Nelson Eddy
Nelson Ackerman Eddy was an American singer and actor who appeared in 19 musical films during the 1930s and 1940s, as well as in opera and on the concert stage, radio, television, and in nightclubs. A classically trained baritone, he is best remembered for the eight films in which he costarred...
and the two men were sometimes mistaken for each other when seen publicly with MacDonald. During summer 1935, MacDonald rekindled the relationship with Eddy when they began filming Rose Marie. MacDonald later called it "the happiest summer of my life". While on location at Lake Tahoe
Lake Tahoe
Lake Tahoe is a large freshwater lake in the Sierra Nevada of the United States. At a surface elevation of , it is located along the border between California and Nevada, west of Carson City. Lake Tahoe is the largest alpine lake in North America. Its depth is , making it the USA's second-deepest...
, they became secretly engaged. Then MacDonald became pregnant and was ordered by MGM studio boss Louis B. Mayer
Louis B. Mayer
Louis Burt Mayer born Lazar Meir was an American film producer. He is generally cited as the creator of the "star system" within Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in its golden years. Known always as Louis B...
to have an abortion. Eddy did not believe her when she claimed to have miscarried, and he broke off the engagement.
On June 16, 1937 MacDonald married Gene Raymond
Gene Raymond
Gene Raymond was an American film, television, and stage actor of the 1930s and 1940s. In addition to acting, Raymond was also a composer, writer, director, producer, and decorated military pilot.-Stage and movie career:...
in a traditional ceremony at Wilshire Methodist Church in Los Angeles. They remained married until MacDonald's death. Raymond was also a songwriter, and MacDonald introduced two of his songs in her concerts. In addition to the TV pilot Prima Donna that Raymond wrote for her, they also did a few radio shows together and toured in The Guardsman on stage. But even with their infrequent attempts to work together, including the film Smilin' Through, the public was indifferent to them as a team as evidenced by only fair box-office receipts. According to published books, including Sweethearts by Sharon Rich and The Golden Girls Of MGM by Jane Ellen Wayne, Gene Raymond engaged in numerous affairs with men and their marriage was problematic. MacDonald addressed this issue in her unpublished autobiography (now published in a facsimile edition; see Controversy section) and mentioned several separations and marital problems. After her death, Raymond and his friends (including the MacDonald fan club, which remained associated with Raymond until his death) disputed these claims.
Nelson Eddy
Nelson Eddy
Nelson Ackerman Eddy was an American singer and actor who appeared in 19 musical films during the 1930s and 1940s, as well as in opera and on the concert stage, radio, television, and in nightclubs. A classically trained baritone, he is best remembered for the eight films in which he costarred...
attempted a reconciliation with MacDonald in 1938 but again had interference from Louis B. Mayer
Louis B. Mayer
Louis Burt Mayer born Lazar Meir was an American film producer. He is generally cited as the creator of the "star system" within Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in its golden years. Known always as Louis B...
, who felt that divorce might harm MacDonald's saintly image with her fans. Eddy eloped to Las Vegas
Las Vegas, Nevada
Las Vegas is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada and is also the county seat of Clark County, Nevada. Las Vegas is an internationally renowned major resort city for gambling, shopping, and fine dining. The city bills itself as The Entertainment Capital of the World, and is famous...
with Ann Franklin in January 1939. His marriage also lasted until death.
Death
MacDonald suffered in her later years with heart trouble. She worsened in 1963 and underwent an arterial transplant at Methodist Hospital in Houston, Texas. Nelson Eddy, in Australia on a nightclub tour, pleaded illness and returned to the States at word of MacDonald's surgery. After the operation she developed pleurisyPleurisy
Pleurisy is an inflammation of the pleura, the lining of the pleural cavity surrounding the lungs. Among other things, infections are the most common cause of pleurisy....
and was hospitalized for two-and-a-half months. Her friends kept the news from the press until just before her release. Her large home was sold and she moved into a Los Angeles apartment that would not require so much of her energies. Her husband, Gene Raymond, moved into an adjoining apartment. Nelson Eddy took his own apartment in the opposite building. MacDonald was again stricken in 1964. Nelson Eddy was with her when she was admitted to UCLA Medical Center, where on Christmas Eve she was operated on for abdominal adhesions. She was able to go home for New Year's, but in mid-January husband Raymond flew her back to Houston. It was hoped that pioneer heart surgeon Dr. Michael DeBakey
Michael E. DeBakey
Michael Elias DeBakey was a world-renowned Lebanese-American cardiac surgeon, innovator, scientist, medical educator, and international medical statesman...
, who had recently operated successfully on the Duke of Windsor
Duke of Windsor
The title Duke of Windsor was created in the Peerage of the United Kingdom in 1937 for Prince Edward, the former King Edward VIII, following his abdication in December 1936. The dukedom takes its name from the town where Windsor Castle, a residence of English monarchs since the Norman Conquest, is...
, could perform the same miracle for her. She checked in on January 12, and a program of intravenous feedings was begun to build her up for possible surgery. MacDonald died two days later on January 14 at 4:32 pm, with her husband at her bedside. According to press reports, MacDonald's last words to Raymond while he massaged her feet were "I love you". He replied "I love you, too"; she smiled and succumbed.
MacDonald was interred on January 18, 1965 in a crypt at Forest Lawn Memorial Park
Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale
Forest Lawn Memorial Park is a privately owned cemetery in Glendale, California. It is the original location of Forest Lawn, a chain of cemeteries in Southern California. The land was formerly part of Providencia Ranch.-History:...
in Glendale, California
Glendale, California
Glendale is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. As of the 2010 Census, the city population is 191,719, down from 194,973 at the 2000 census. making it the third largest city in Los Angeles County and the 22nd largest city in the state of California...
which reads Jeanette MacDonald Raymond. Nelson Eddy, who told Jack Paar
Jack Paar
Jack Harold Paar was an author, American radio and television comedian and talk show host, best known for his stint as host of The Tonight Show from 1957 to 1962...
on The Tonight Show, "I love her [MacDonald]", broke down when interviewed by the press the evening of her death. He survived MacDonald by two years.
A decade after MacDonald's death in 1965 Gene Raymond remarried. His second wife, a Canadian heiress, was the former Mrs. Bentley Hees. Her first name was, coincidentally, Nelson. "Nels", as she was called, died in 1995. Raymond died on May 3, 1998 and was laid to rest next to Jeanette MacDonald at Forest Lawn, Glendale, California.
Controversy
Nelson Eddy
Nelson Ackerman Eddy was an American singer and actor who appeared in 19 musical films during the 1930s and 1940s, as well as in opera and on the concert stage, radio, television, and in nightclubs. A classically trained baritone, he is best remembered for the eight films in which he costarred...
. John Kenneth Hilliard
John Kenneth Hilliard
John Kenneth Hilliard was an American acoustical and electrical engineer who pioneered a number of important loudspeaker concepts and designs. He helped develop the practical use of recording sound for film, and won an Academy Award in 1935...
, a sound engineer backstage at MGM from 1933 to 1942, reported in 1981 that though Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald were a screen couple, they "hated each other with a vengeance". Hilliard worked on Naughty Marietta and it is common knowledge that MacDonald's initial iciness toward Eddy almost caused Eddy to walk off that film. There were three film sets on which they battled off-screen: the second half of Rose Marie
Rose Marie
Rose Marie is an American actress. As a child performer she had a successful singing career as Baby Rose Marie....
, after MacDonald's refusal to elope to Reno with Eddy; The Girl of the Golden West, filmed immediately after MacDonald's marriage; and New Moon, filmed after Eddy's marriage. Nevertheless, an off-screen affair was verified from another MGM sound engineer who built Eddy's home recording equipment, and other MGM staff such as makeup artists William Tuttle and Fred Phillips.
Contemporary magazine writer Sandy Reiss reported that a private trailer was set up for the two on Maytime and that the crew called them "the lovebirds." Other MGM co-workers claimed that Eddy and MacDonald were closest during the filming of Sweethearts
Sweethearts (film)
Sweethearts is a 1938 musical romance directed by W.S. Van Dyke, starring Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy. The screenplay, by Dorothy Parker and Alan Campbell, uses the “play within a play” device: a contemporary Broadway production of the 1913 Victor Herbert operetta is the setting for...
and I Married an Angel
I Married an Angel
I Married An Angel is a musical comedy by Rodgers and Hart. It was adapted from a play by Hungarian playwright János Vaszary, entitled Angyalt Vettem Felesegul. The book was by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, with music by Rodgers and lyrics by Hart. The story concerns a wealthy banker who,...
. After the MGM years, their private lives fell off the Hollywood radar. Baritone Theodor Uppman
Theodor Uppman
Theodor Uppman was an American operatic baritone. He is best known for his creation of the title role in Benjamin Britten's opera Billy Budd....
, who won the Atwater Kent opera auditions and later sang at the Metropolitan Opera, saw Eddy and MacDonald at a 1947 party together, where the talk of the evening was the fact that MacDonald was pregnant with Eddy's child but he could not get a divorce.
In the biography Sweethearts by Sharon Rich
Sharon Rich
Sharon Rich has written eight books and edited and written over sixty magazine articles about 1930s singing stars Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy. She was close friends for many years with Jeanette's older sister, actress Blossom Rock...
, the author presents MacDonald and Eddy as continuing an adulterous affair after their marriages. Rich claims the relationship lasted, with a few breaks, until MacDonald's death. Rich also interviewed about 200 others including celebrities who also spoke candidly. Apparently, Rich additionally had access to hundreds of pages of personal letters, some of them handwritten by MacDonald, others part of a correspondence between Eddy's mother and a close friend. Another biography, Hollywood Diva by Edward Baron Turk, denies there was any such affair. An erroneous rumor has been floated that "Hollywood Diva" is an "authorized" biography. Turk states that this was not the case, that he was the only MacDonald biographer to have interviewed Gene Raymond at length; but that neither Raymond nor anyone else vetted the book.
In MacDonald's autobiography (the 1960 typewritten manuscript published as a facsimile edition in 2004), MacDonald writes: "I remember seeing Nelson for the first time and thinking he fulfilled most of my requirements in a man." She later mentions an "attraction Nelson and I might have had for each other" prior to marrying Raymond and also devotes several pages to marital problems immediately after her honeymoon (pages 337-99, 344) and again in the post-war years.
Posthumous honours and commemorations
The USC Thornton School of MusicUSC Thornton School of Music
The University of Southern California Thornton School of Music, founded in 1884 and dedicated in 1999, is one of the premier music schools in the United States...
built a Jeanette MacDonald Recital Hall in her honour. http://web-app.usc.edu/venues/?id=420
Filmography
- The Love ParadeThe Love ParadeThe Love Parade is a 1929 musical comedy film about the marital difficulties of Queen Louise of Sylvania and her consort, Count Alfred Renard...
(1929) - The Vagabond KingThe Vagabond King (1930 film)The Vagabond King is a 1930 American musical operetta film photographed entirely in two-color Technicolor. The plot of the film was based on the 1925 operetta of the same name, which was based on the 1901 play If I Were King by Justin Huntly McCarthy. The play told the story of a renegade French...
(1930) - Paramount on ParadeParamount on ParadeParamount on Parade is a all-star revue released by Paramount Pictures, directed by several directors including Edmund Goulding, Dorothy Arzner, Ernst Lubitsch, Rowland V. Lee, A. Edward Sutherland, Victor Heerman, Lothar Mendes, Otto Brower, Edwin H...
(1930) (scenes deleted, except for a far shot in a gondola number with Nino Martini) - Let's Go Native (1930)
- Monte CarloMonte Carlo (1930 film)Monte Carlo is a 1930 American musical comedy film directed by Ernst Lubitsch. It stars Jeanette MacDonald as Countess Helene Mara. The film is also notable for the song "Beyond the Blue Horizon", which was written for the film and was performed by Jeanette MacDonald. The film was also hailed by...
(1930) - The Lottery BrideThe Lottery BrideThe Lottery Bride is a movie musical starring Jeanette MacDonald, John Garrick, Zasu Pitts, and Joe E. Brown. The film was produced by Arthur Hammerstein, based on the musical by Rudolf Friml, and released by United Artists....
(1930) - Oh, for a Man (1930)
- Don't Bet on Women (1931)
- Annabelle's Affairs (1931)
- Hollywood on Parade (Short subject, 1932)
- One Hour with YouOne Hour with YouOne Hour with You is a 1932 American film. It was produced and directed by Ernst Lubitsch and written by Samson Raphaelson, from the Lothar Schmidt play Only a Dream....
(1932) (a French version was also filmed) - Love Me TonightLove Me TonightLove Me Tonight is a 1932 musical comedy film produced and directed by Rouben Mamoulian, with music by Rodgers and Hart. It stars Maurice Chevalier as a tailor who poses as a nobleman and Jeanette MacDonald as a princess with whom he falls in love...
(1932) - The Cat and the Fiddle (1934)
- The Merry WidowThe Merry Widow (1934 film)The Merry Widow is a 1934 film adaptation of the operetta of the same name by Franz Lehár. It was directed by Ernst Lubitsch and starred Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald...
(1934) (a French version was also filmed) - Naughty Marietta (1935)
- Rose MarieRose Marie (films)The 1924 Broadway musical Rose-Marie has been the basis of three MGM films of the same title. The best-known film adaptation was released in 1936; however, a silent version was released in 1928 and another film was released in 1954. All three versions are set in the Canadian wilderness...
(1936) - San FranciscoSan Francisco (film)San Francisco is a 1936 musical-drama directed by Woody Van Dyke, based on the April 18, 1906 San Francisco earthquake. The film, which was the top grossing movie of that year, stars Clark Gable, Jeanette MacDonald, and Spencer Tracy. The then very popular singing of MacDonald helped make this film...
(1936) - Maytime (1937)
- The FireflyThe Firefly (film)The Firefly is a 1937 musical film starring Jeanette MacDonald, Allan Jones. The film is an adaptation of the operetta of the same name by composer Rudolf Friml and librettist Otto A. Harbach that premiered on Broadway in 1919...
(1937) - The Girl of the Golden WestThe Girl of the Golden West (1938 film)The Girl of the Golden West is a 1938 musical western film. It was adapted from the play of the same name by David Belasco, better known for providing the plot of the opera La fanciulla del West by Giacomo Puccini...
(1938) - Hollywood Goes to Town (Short subject, 1938)
- SweetheartsSweethearts (film)Sweethearts is a 1938 musical romance directed by W.S. Van Dyke, starring Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy. The screenplay, by Dorothy Parker and Alan Campbell, uses the “play within a play” device: a contemporary Broadway production of the 1913 Victor Herbert operetta is the setting for...
(1938) - Broadway SerenadeBroadway SerenadeBroadway Serenade is a 1939 musical drama film distributed by MGM, and directed and produced by Robert Z. Leonard. The screenplay was written by Charles Lederer, based on story by Lew Lipton, John Taintor Foote and Hanns Kräly...
(1939) - The Miracle of Sound (Short subject, 1940)
- New Moon (1940)
- Bitter SweetBitter Sweet (1940 film)Bitter Sweet is a 1940 Technicolor American musical film directed by W. S. Van Dyke, based on the operetta by Noel Coward and previously filmed in 1933; see Bitter Sweet . It was nominated for two Academy Awards, one for Best Cinematography and the other for Best Art Direction by Cedric Gibbons and...
(1940) - Smilin' ThroughSmilin' Through (1941 film)Smilin' Through is a 1941 MGM musical film based on the 1919 play of the same name by Jane Cowl and Jane Murfin.The film was a remake of a previous 1932 version by MGM and was the third and final film version of the play. It starred Jeanette MacDonald, Brian Aherne and Ian Hunter...
(1941) - I Married an AngelI Married an AngelI Married An Angel is a musical comedy by Rodgers and Hart. It was adapted from a play by Hungarian playwright János Vaszary, entitled Angyalt Vettem Felesegul. The book was by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, with music by Rodgers and lyrics by Hart. The story concerns a wealthy banker who,...
(1942) - CairoCairo (film)Cairo is a 1942 musical comedy film made by MGM and Loew's, and directed by W. S. Van Dyke. The screenplay was written by John McClain, based on idea by Ladislas Fodor about a news reporter shipwrecked in a torpedo attack, who teams up with a Hollywood singer and her maid to foil Nazi spies. The...
(1942) - Follow the BoysFollow the BoysFollow the Boys , also known as Three Cheers for the Boys, is a musical film made by Universal Pictures as an all-star cast morale booster to entertain the troops abroad and the civilians at home. The film was directed by A. Edward "Eddie" Sutherland and produced by Charles K. Feldman...
(1944) - Three Daring DaughtersThree Daring DaughtersThree Daring Daughters is a 1948 musical film made by MGM, and directed by Fred M. Wilcox. The screenplay was written by Albert Mannheimer, Frederick Kohner, Sonya Levien and John Meehan.-Plot:...
(1948) - The Sun Comes UpThe Sun Comes UpThe Sun Comes Up is a 1949 MGM Lassie picture.-Plot:Ex-opera singer Helen Lorfield Winter rents a house in the small town of Brushy Gap, in the hills not too far from the Smokies, Blue Ridge, and Atlanta Georgia with her dog, Lassie, after the tragic death of her son. There she befriends Jerry, a...
(1949)
See also
- Harold HarbyHarold HarbyNot to be confused with Harold A. Henry, Los Angeles City Council member 1945–66.Harold Harby was elected to the Los Angeles, California, City Council in 1939, but he had to leave office in 1942 when he was convicted of using a city car for a trip out of the state. He was reelected in 1943 and...
, Los Angeles City Council member, 1939–42, 1943–57, praised her singing
External links
- [ Jeanette MacDonald ] at Allmusic
- Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy Home Page
- Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy: A Tribute