Diaries and Letters and Shades of Gray

If there’s one thing that Jeanette is like really, really creepy good at, it’s keeping more than one iron in the fire. Consider the published book of her writings, The Irving Stone Letters, which offers a very authentic, often hilarious, sometimes TMI (“isles-pay”??? REALLY???), sometimes frustrated, thoroughly chatty picture of our unfiltered 1920s (and early 30s) MacDonald: Broadway Baby, singing sensation, party girl, tease, drinker of port, user of rude words, milk farm inmate.

Here’s a really fantastic thing. If you have this book, flip to page 41. Monday, September 13, 1927. The handwritten original follows. Jeanette begins:

“Irving dearest– Do you miss me–I wonder–I’ve never missed anyone so much before–really seems a nuisance to come out from rehearsal and find no Big Irving.”

(PS she had a hangover Sunday, people in the world who think she didn’t drink…)

Later in the letter:

“Nextly, I saw the ex [Jack Ohmeis] and, my dear, I could hardly look him in the eye and when he made love to me I was very much afraid I’d fess up but I know that wouldn’t have helped matters and every once in awhile during the evening I found myself thinking of you and you & me. Well, you can imagine.”

BOOM. Two involvements. One soprano. And she’s very open about it, but in a way that leads Irving to believe that he is still the Number One Man.

And then along comes Bob Ritchie, and while still corresponding on the reg and seemingly involved with Irving Stone, she (in a letter so lovey-dovey it is positively tooth-rotting) writes Bob:

“Gee! Gosh! I get almost sick thinking about you and how far away you are — oh daddy darling of mine, I could weep for the love of you–I’d give almost anything to have you fold me in your arms tonite and whisper, ‘I love you.'”

And later, in the same letter:

“I’m going to beddy now, my own–I also mean my own bed but I do wish it were yours. Move over! All I can think of now is you and how much I love & miss you. I’ll write more tomorrow. I’m tired now but I want you to know you’re my life and love and I’m yours forever and ever.”

Jeanette, for whatever else she may or may not have been, was no nun, folks. She had the gift of gab in real life and she was a prolific letter writer all through her life. She has the real gift of making the recipient feel like they are the only person in the entire world that she could possibly ever care about. In these early letters, we see these patterns being established–patterns that she would continue. Recently, a lengthy and thoroughly charming letter from Jeanette to Gene Raymond, surfaced. Jeanette is alternately worried, proud, political, bossy and flirtatious with her husband, who was overseas during the war. It was presented like it was a Giant Missile of Truth that was going to shatter every argument, every shred of research that has suggested that this marriage wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

I’m sure she DID love Gene. I’m sure she DID miss Gene. I’m sure she WAS worried about Gene. After all, she did marry the guy, did she not? And she did call him, by her own admission, c. 1948, and ask if he loved her, and followed that up with asking him if he wanted a divorce. Obviously she cared on at least some level. He may not have been her first choice, but when she got engaged to him in 1936, following a break up with Nelson Eddy, who, for that moment in time could not seem to get a grip on his delayed adolescence — and when she walked down the aisle to him in 1937, she decided he was the safe choice, the sane choice. Gene got along with her mother. Gene didn’t threaten her career in any way shape or form. Gene didn’t make known to her any anger issues or general craziness. Gene liked to dance, ride, swim and play tennis. Gene was good looking and fun at parties. Yeah, Gene’s mom was a holy terror, but lots of people deal with in-law drama and live to talk about it. Gene did not challenge her. Take it from someone who has the footage of the two of them performing on Toast of the Town, doing the little patter song Gene wrote called How D’ya Do—he can’t bat in her league. The ONLY way they can perform together is for her to come DOWN to his level.

(Side Note: I viewed Jeanette’s scrapbooks at UCLA while I was in LA and there’s a freaking HILARIOUS article in the one dedicated to The Guardsman that says it’s good, she’s good, and “all it needs is Nelson Eddy”……..I laughed, and then I considered how perfectly succinct of a statement that was about literally everything. Nelson in that show with her? You couldn’t have gotten them to Broadway fast enough. Gene? Meh.)

Nelson was a whole other animal. They were so, so alike on so many levels. They were both insatiably ambitious, both driven, both perfectionists, both had made their way the hard way and paid their dues. Both brilliantly talented. Both dealing with some childhood scars. Jeanette would never stop trying to please her mother, who never gave her the validation her heart truly needed. Nelson had a lot of residual anger from the terrible behavior of and abandonment by his father. The sex was, by all accounts, mind-blowing, and the blending of their voices too sublime for mere mortals to stand without complete implosion. But they made each other effing nuts.

Many people have commented on that: they either couldn’t keep their hands off each other or they weren’t speaking. Middle ground is not something that really happens with the Eddy and the Mac. They can’t resist each other, and sometimes they are exactly what each other needs more than anything, but sometimes they are not good for each other.

And along comes Gene, into the middle of this business. He’s cute and fun and cultivates Jeanette’s friendship and doesn’t try to run her straight to bed. Nelson is still over here demanding that she kick the movie racket and get busy with the barefoot and pregnant routine, and the hell with all her hard work. I make no apology for the man; he was divine and gorgeous and a wonderful guy and probably heaven in bed but he also had a lot of growing up to do at this particular juncture and I wouldn’t have married him, then, either. I would have, later, but that’s not what we’re talking about. To that end, in the mid 30s, non-threatening Gene was probably really, really good for her. When you take into account the Nelson vs. Gene, passion vs. sanity, highs and lows vs. stability and a good tennis game…well, Jeanette’s choice of husband may not be all that shocking. Gene may not light her fire like Nelson does, but sometimes, at the end of the day, a good night’s sleep ranks higher than mad passion. The complications arise with the fact that it’s just NOT. THAT. SIMPLE.

None of this discounts, I don’t think, Nelson’s lasting presence in her life. From her napping in his arms on the set of Maytime to her pregnant belly, visible in Sweethearts, to how many many many darling candid shots of them on the radio, to This is Your Life, to Nelson getting on a plane and attending Jeanette’s opening of The King and I in 1956 in full evening dress (in an outdoor venue) and her skipping the opening night party to melt away into the darkness with him, to Nelson VERY COINCIDENTALLY leasing an apartment in the same complex as her, at the end, to being on the receiving end of condolences and handshakes at her funeral like he’s the widower, Nelson is almost always there. Barring a couple of breakups, Nelson’s presence is everywhere. It’s documentable. It’s provable. Jeanette talks about being attracted to and dating Nelson, before she married Gene, in her autobiography. We’ve recently made public an original letter from Nelson, Christmas of 1935, where he tells her he loves her and will always be devoted to her. That should tell you something. The fact that, from the page where she gets engaged to end of her book is only ninety-two pages should tell you SO. MUCH. MORE. Sometimes it’s not always just in black and white. Sometimes the most important things are unsaid. Surely from 1936 to the early 1960s, told in her own words, should fill more than ninety-two pages. So why is it pared down like that? She writes prolifically from her early childhood up through Naughty Marietta. And then the details vanish. The anecdotal stuff is sparse. No real fun on-set stories. Nothing about what it was like, making all those movies with Nelson. Nothing, in short, that the fans wanted to read about. What couldn’t she talk about? Doesn’t the possibility exist that so much of what was in her life was so caught up with someone she wasn’t “supposed to” love…so she couldn’t talk about it? And everything that she COULD talk about from a +/-25 year period, safely, without Nelson, filled………….ninety-two pages.

The mistake I think we ALL make, as people who love Jeanette, is we are too entrenched in our insistent belief that she is absolutely, black and white, 100% on one “side” or the other of how we view her life. She was, after all, a Gemini, was she not? I think she had a hell of a lot on her plate and I think she did the best she could under her very bizarre set of circumstances. I do not believe she was immoral or a bad person. I do not judge her AT ALL for doing what she did. I think she should have had all the happiness in the world. Since it’s documentable that she had way more than her fair share of misery, I’m pretty much all about her grabbing happiness wherever she can find it. Sometimes I think that person was probably Gene. Many times I think that person was Nelson. Some people want to pretend Nelson was never a thing, that it’s really the Jeanette and Gene show 800% of the time. Meredith Wilson’s wry comment, upon attending a Clan Clave was, “It’s like Nelson never existed.” Some people can’t come to terms with the fact that yes, Nelson slept with other women, including Gale Sherwood, who–good lord above–if you want to talk about someone who has been on the receiving end of a lot of misplaced hate, look no further. Some people want to pretend Gene doesn’t exist, or can’t see a picture of him without making a derogatory remark. Some people actually like Ann Eddy…………….????????? Like it or not, it was as a team that Nelson and Jeanette were best known, best loved and best remembered. Like it or not, Gene and Ann are important players in this story. For me, I’m not the most anti-Gene Raymond person in the world, actually, most of the time. There’s a couple of instances in their younger days that make me want to rip him limb from limb, but I’m basically more-or-less ok until Jeanette’s heath starts failing and he starts neglecting the ever loving shit out of her, entertaining his ManFriends in his half of the apartment while Jeanette needs help and is being ignored on her side. That’s when we have a big, big problem, and that, of course, is what is being discussed later in this post. Don’t even get me started on the commercial plane to Houston.

I will suggest that Jeanette’s life was not one-dimensional or able to be completely pinned down in her writings to one person—to or from, for or against. That goes for both sides. What these writings DO do is give us a more complete picture, more data, a better story, more clarity, a larger window into the psyche of this woman. Ultimately, if EVERYONE gets a better understanding of Jeanette and her life, then on some level, this complete weirdness has been a success. I must admit it’s refreshing, anyway, to see the Saints getting on board with the idea that MacDonald Sex is a thing. Clap clap clap. She married Gene Raymond. I’ve always assumed that, at one time or another, that meant she had sex with him, too. I also know that they had separate bedrooms and later, separate (though adjoining) apartments. Jeanette made her marriage work. Honestly, on SOME kind of level, so did Nelson. Everybody limped along in this supremely jacked up world they lived in, since there wasn’t a solution in sight that worked for all four people, despite the many, many discussions and attempts. Two of them died far too young, and there is no way in hell you’ll ever convince me that Jeanette’s death did not directly impact Nelson’s.

The bottom line is, Jeanette demonstrated an early-established ability to keep more than one pot on the boil at a time. What her letters to any/all/either of her men prove concretely, is that she’s following her own pattern and she’s doing what she needs to do to keep on keepin’ on, in her life. I myself am eager to read absolutely everything that’s out there, because ALL of it has value and ALL of it is part of this story. Everything is a piece of the greater puzzle.

But while we’re sharing meaningful handwritten data, here’s some more stuff from Jeanette’s 1963 desk diary, ten months’ worth (she didn’t write in November or December, as she was in the hospital) of her daily comings and goings, appointments, eating habits, weight and health information.

I mentioned, both on this blog and in my presentation at the June Mac/Eddy Club Meeting, that the word “alone” is in here more times than I can even count.

Well. I did count them, last night, and the total is 44.

Forty-four times in ten months, Jeanette feels alone enough to make a note of it. Dozens of times, she writes “stayed home” next to plans that had been written previously, and even more frequently than that, she writes “no sleep” to begin her day. I really don’t know how this woman kept going as long as she did on this little rest. She tried to take a nap almost every day, but frequently she didn’t get her nap, either.

Gene is almost never home. He’s in New York for a month, from Feb 25 to March 23. He’s in Chicago, in Philadelphia, he’s at March Field doing his Air Force stuff all the time, he’s in Santa Ana, he’s anywhere but with her, a solid 80-85% of the time, and MANY of his engagements are social. And like, I recognize that the man is working, too, but it’s very clear, even from reading these pages, that Jeanette is not well. She would, in fact, be dead 15 months after her last entry in this book. Gene couldn’t arrange to be around to take care of her, but he certainly found time to have a documented involvement with Jan Clayton (they were both heavy drinkers), per HER own letters. He basically intimated that Jeanette didn’t have long to live and, rather than divorce her, he’d just wait until she died and then he and Jan would get married at an appropriate time. Of course, this never happened, but PLEASE, GENE, BE MORE OF A LOWLIFE. (Sweethearts, page 496)

Here are just a few examples of her concerning health entries:

She’s dizzy, frequently. She went to her Science of Mind church class and had a “turn”. On top of which, she’s getting a cold, and spent the next week seeing doctors daily for nose washes and the like. She isn’t sleeping and she feels like hell.

“Can’t seem to eliminate urine” and “Seem to have laryngitis” so she calls her doctor and he tells her to stop taking her Phenergan. Naturally, I looked it up, and it seems like it is used for pretty much everything that ails her, from allergies to insomnia to motion sickness to nausea and dizziness. The problem is, there are potentially dangerous interactions with people who have heart trouble. Here’s an informative description of the drug. Yikes. And obviously it wasn’t helping her sleep, but it was making it so she couldn’t urinate. Dear God, poor Jeanette. Seems like every normal bodily function gets screwed up in this poor woman’s body at some point or other.

I feel like a loving spouse, when their partner is this ill, would scale back their own activities to, you know, maybe be around more. MORE TO THE POINT, this woman shouldn’t effing be left alone! What the hell is his problem, joyriding around with his friends when she’s having dizzy spells, she’s not sleeping, she is underweight–and that’s without having any of these other issues like colds and vomiting and hysterical crying because she thinks she’s dying and various bathroom troubles. Didn’t he take an “in sickness and in health” vow, MacRaymond marriage enthusiasts? I guess his idea of supportive care is firing her nurse, taking her phone out of her bedroom, dumping drugs in her fruit juice, telling visitors she was sleeping and couldn’t see them and leaving her to rot, unattended for 8 days and then shipping what’s left of her to Texas on a commercial flight when ANY FAN OFF THE STREET would have taken better care of her. But I’m getting way ahead of myself, here. Oh, heck, we’re getting to that place where I feel like hell’s too good for Gene.

Anyway, as you can see:

“GR not home” — another thing to note on this page, that’s Gene’s handwriting at the top, “GR – MC”. So for those of you wondering why she wrote “Visitor!!” instead of “Nelson’s here!!!1one!” — well, here’s the proof that Gene had access to this book, if he wanted it. So why is she going to give him something else to flip out about? They have enough fights and bad spells between them in this 10 month period alone, and that’s with him hardly ever being home!!!…….so what was the rest of the time like?

Oh, look. She’s sick enough that she doesn’t go to her Science of Mind class, which she attended as often as she was able and seems to have thoroughly enjoyed and found interesting, and…………..Gene’s gone a lot. Once at a meeting, once to a banquet and once “away all day”.

“Can’t locate GR”

“_____ (illegible) all night and threw up my breakfast” Then she went somewhere and “threw up on way home”. 😦

Gene arrived home after being gone a month. She had a migraine that night and TWO migraines the next day. THAT IS NOT GOOD. Those are only a few of the many migraines she had this year. It is known that she had a benign brain tumor, most likely diagnosed in 1960 (Fredda Balling notes how very, very sick Jeanette was when they were trying to work on her autobiography) and, of course, migraines are widely recognized as one of the symptoms. More information on that relationship here. Further, several pieces of documentation exist that suggest that Jeanette was seeing an oncologist at UCLA about this, and indeed, appointments at UCLA are noted several times in this diary.

On page 496 of Sweethearts, it is noted that sometimes when she and Nelson were on the phone, she would get “hysterical” and be frightened that she was dying (sourced from both Blossom and Sunny Griffin). Funny story, when this diary came to the fore, Jeanette herself writes of going into hysterics more than once:

She had a “bad nite” and “GR home very late”, she weighs only a hundred pounds but she’s skipping meals and Gene is gone again all day. I’m getting out of sequential order here, but here is the other mention of her “hysterics” on July 15. She had no sleep and no nap, is overtired and gets hysterical.

June 6, she and Gene have a “big fight” — she had gone to the apartment to meet with the guy who was doing some design and decorating for them, and Harold didn’t show up, which resulted in her presumably coming “home too early” and encountering Gene, which it looks like she could have avoided if she had waited longer….

And, as I’ve already published, she was alone on her 60th birthday (which makes me sad…this woman LOVED birthdays and loved to make a big deal out of them, loved to give parties for birthdays, loved to have a fuss made over her birthday, was absolutely always eating birthday cake in a picture, etc etc and this is a huge milestone birthday and nobody seems to give a rat’s ass), and Gene showed up for dinner but there was a “big quarrel” that evening about the “same old thing”:

There was no “our” apartment. There was a his and hers, two units with an adjoining door. Rather an odd arrangement for a happily married couple, especially when one of the partners is not well, nevertheless, observe Jeanette’s clear distinction between his and hers, June 20 and 21:

And on June 25, she’s dealing with more dizziness:

She washed her hair, obviously wasn’t feeling well because she canceled Harold, then was “terribly dizzy after dinner” — oh, and Gene showed up in time to eat, it seems.

August 8: “not much sleep” and “GR pretty bad”

And on the 18th of August:

She’s just not well, guys.

Gene says he’s going to the apartment to “arrange books” but isn’t back as of 3:45AM. He “says he went for a drive up coast” and “I went over twice, started calling at 11:30, no A[nswer]” and “GR in awful mood” …..So he’s lying and defensive about it? That’s what I’m reading, anyway.

“Had spell can’t talk”

On page 503 of Sweethearts, it is noted that it was rumored that she had a small stroke around this time and that her speech was temporarily affected. This is without anyone ever seeing this diary until now.

And another migraine. There are at least 3 or 4 more that I didn’t clip for the purposes of this post. That’s not normal.

My thanks to Maria and Angela for their partnership with me on this diary. Posts like this will really just take all the fun out of everything, because you find yourself feeling so awful that Jeanette’s last years were so unhappy and unhealthy. But I think to pretend everything was just hunky dory, fine and great, is to do her a far greater disservice. It’s important to understand the facts of what she was going through, so that one can understand how other facts fit into this puzzle. Some of the stuff you read about her, you honestly don’t want to be true–that’s human nature. I think if all of us who love her had the choice, we’d have her tucked away into a blissful marriage with a perfect man, because we love her and want her to be happy. Sadly, that was not the case. It’s not “fun” — but it’s reality, and sometimes reality isn’t fun. I’ve seen the phrase “it’s complicated” being mocked in regards to this story….but, isn’t it?

One Kiss

I am currently sitting in the dining room of the Hilton Garden Inn in downtown Washington, D.C. This is our last morning here in the city, and we’re taking this time to review our research of the past two days and start to get it organized for sharing. I want to start out by thanking Sharon Rich for her complete support of Angela’s and my research. Just as in June, the last time we did this, Sharon has been only a text away the entire time and her excitement about what we are doing has only fueled ours.

The thrilling thing for both of us is that every time we have taken special interest in a detail of this story (the devil is in the details!) and tried to hunt it down, it has supported Sharon’s research and claims. The example that immediately springs to mind is that Sharon wrote in Sweethearts about what she had been told about Nelson’s involvement in Jeanette’s funeral and how he was the last one of the honorary pallbearers to come out of the church because he paused an extra moment with the casket before it was closed. In June, as you remember, we unearthed raw, unedited funeral footage of both Jeanette’s and Nelson’s funerals. This footage had never been seen and, guess what, Sharon didn’t even know that it existed, folks. It literally was unused footage in the bowels of the ABC archives….and guess who the last guy out of the church is, before the casket comes out? Nelson. A small thing, but a vitally important thing, one that validates what Sharon was told by a source, one of those sources that you delightful creatures out in Saint Land like to claim are not real or truthful. And those tiny, important things happen all the time.

That was really the nature of this trip. It would be a bit much for us to expect the same total windfall that we experienced in June, with a half-hour’s worth of never before seen television footage, as well as priceless radio recordings that tell their own story and were considered lost. This trip was more about the details. The stack of articles we found and printed is two inches thick. Countless others were saved to flash drives or made note of. Several rare recordings were obtained, as well as some never-released press pictures that we had to handle with white linen gloves. I love that stuff. There were a few other things, too. All in good time, dear readers.

The subject I’m going to discuss today concerns early production on New Moon and one of Jeanette’s many radio appearances around this time. As we know, relations were quite strained between Jeanette and Nelson as they went into production in the fall of 1939. Nelson had made the unfortunate, irrevocable mistake of marrying Ann Franklin in January, Jeanette subsequently tried to off herself, it was just general bad times for a good while. They hadn’t spent any time together. I seem to remember some ass telling Jeanette that Nelson was at a party she was at, and her blanching and being like, “Nelson, here?” and making excuses to get the heck home. Woody Van Dyke, their dear and trusted friend, was the original director on New Moon, with Robert Z. Leonard producing, but early on, Woody got pulled off the project to go expedite matters on I Take This Woman. Pop Leonard took over directorial duties as well (hence the camera making rampant love to Jeanette’s eyes in a few close-up shots. Watch Pop Leonard’s other Jeanette movies, namely Maytime and The Firefly, and you see a love affair between his lens and Jeanette’s big, gorgeous eyes).

Variety notes that pre-recording the score of New Moon began on October 23, 1939. That’s a Monday. In Sweethearts, Sharon notes that New Moon began on November 6, 1939–also a Monday, two weeks later. Given these two dates, I think it’s safe to assume that the November 6th date means principle photography—the start of shooting, in other words. Two weeks for pre-recording is a legit window. In the manuscript of her doomed autobiography, Jeanette notes October 28, 1939, as the start of New Moon. That was a Saturday, for those keeping score here, and seems less likely than the other two dates, which work together. Maybe she meant 23? Who knows. Anyway, that’s all the data—someone is likely slightly mistaken, but the ballpark remains the same.

In the early moments of production, Jeanette was very professionally cool towards Nelson, not making a fuss but not doing one iota more than she had to, either. Nelson, desperate to make things right between them and reconcile with her, was trying all manner of things to break down her walls. He fouled up majorly, and knew it, and needed her to acknowledge his profound remorse. The thing I love about these two is it is never, EVER about “I don’t love you” or “I’m not in love with you” or “I’ve stopped loving you”…….loving each other was never their problem. It was everything else. Even at their lowest lows (and they had some appallingly low ones), the acknowledged that they loved each other. It wasn’t a question. It never seemed to be a threat or ammunition between them in a fight…they both knew the score.

As she was preparing to work on One Kiss, one of her solo numbers in the film, and one of the most erotically lyric-ed songs she ever recorded, in my opinion (yeah it’s a pretty tune but LISTEN TO THE WORDS, yo!) Nelson sent her the following note, which I copied from Sweethearts, but it is sourced from the Isabel Eddy memoirs:

Sing even if you don’t mean it – sing it just for me. You can take all the time you want, but you are coming back to me, you have to. Meanwhile, remember this, my love for you is indestructible. No matter what happens, nothing and no one in all the universe can change or hurt it. Remember that.

Oh, Nels.

So, here’s my thing. I’m preeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeetty sure (no way to be 100% positive, I guess), but I’m pretty sure they weren’t hanging around for each other’s solo recording sessions on this movie. Maybe on other ones when they were using any excuse to be together, but the atmosphere being what it was, I would bet that our little Ice Queen either outright insisted on recording alone or just….worked it out that way.

Variety states on October 24, 1939, that she had recorded One Kiss “yesterday” — so Monday, the 23rd. That’s a solo. I’m guessing that Nelson hadn’t heard it yet because he wasn’t on hand for her solo sessions. But she would have gotten his note.

However, on October 29th, 1939 (a Sunday), Jeanette made an appearance on a radio show called Community Chest. And……guess what she pulls from her repertoire to sing.

🙂

This recording has never been made available before. We found it in the Library of Congress’s collection back in June and submitted a request for it to be digitized. We heard it for the first time on Monday, recorded a copy and here we are.

Now, could she have chosen to sing this because she was rehearsed for it, having just recorded it that prior week? Yeah, sure she could. BUT, what sticks out to me about this is the fact that New Moon wasn’t released until June 28th, 1940, a full eight months after this. Additionally, though the Romberg operetta is called New Moon, the film version starring MacDonald and Eddy was originally titled Lover, Come Back to Me. So, first of all, I think it’s too early for her to be doing publicity for the movie that had JUST started pre-recording (how many other projects get to the pre-recording stage and then get shelved or discarded? Many.)—-the fact is, according to the practices of the time, it was way too early in the game for her to be singing songs from the movie to publicize it. And, since Lover, Come Back to Me was the original working title, if she WAS doing this for publicity, why didn’t she sing that? It would have been the title song. Fred MacMurray even points this out in the sort of faded out sounding post-script to her performance. Or she could have easily have sung any number of the songs she had already made uber famous. One Kiss is, indeed, an interesting choice.

We know Nelson and Jeanette used this kind of thing to communicate with each other. To me, it seems highly, highly likely that this choice was in response to his note. Think about it. Think how safe this is–he isn’t around, isn’t physically there, so she doesn’t have to talk it out with him afterwards, or look him in the eye, or get grabbed up in his arms when she knows she doesn’t have the power to resist him. It’s an olive branch. A safe olive branch, from a distance. Yes, I got your note. Yes, I still love you. Yes, I’m singing this for you. Consider how she looks in the film, during Wanting You. She is all Professional Actress Face for the beginning of the number, then we see her resistance crumble, we see her breathing like she’s just sprinted a mile. Then we see that tentative, cautious hand reach out towards him and with that, his entire performance changes and sweeps her along with it. This choice of song is like that hand. She wants him, wants what they have, but she’s scared of the avalanche.

A Concert Tour Rendezvous

Hello again,

This post has been in the making for some time–I just hadn’t gotten around to doing it until now. I figured I’d better, because a week from today, Angela and I will be back at the Library of Congress doing more research, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that there are things waiting for us that we set in motion in June…things that you will NOT want to miss! So get excited, you’ll read it here first!

In the meantime, I figured it was the best time to go ahead and get this other post written and done.

Yearly (sometimes not every consecutive year, but commonly in the 40s), Jeanette and Nelson made concert tours. Usually, these tours overlapped, and by that I mean that usually there was an overlap of time during the tours that they were both out on the road. Occasionally, their tours took them within a few hours of each other by train or car. Sometimes, they even snuck along with each other on tour. Jeanette (in her first trimester of pregnancy) traveled with Nelson in April, 1938, on the Eastern leg of his concert tour, prior to them making Sweethearts. This has been thoroughly confirmed and sourced in Sharon Rich’s book, Sweethearts, new edition (print version), page 245.

A few years ago, I had occasion to speak with a resident of a retirement home (I occasionally tour retirement/nursing homes within the general 100 mile radius to talk about movies and movie stars and Hollywood and WWII. Those are my favorite audiences. We are simpatico.) who gave me an interesting tidbit on this subject.  A woman at Westminster Canterbury, one of the classiest retirement communities in the area (where I have been asked to lecture more than once!) told me about growing up in and around Philadelphia. She was an avid Nelson fan and saw him in concert every time he was remotely local. As I was mingling with the group after my presentation, she approached me and asked if I had any idea if Jeanette MacDonald ever accompanied Nelson on his tours. I said yes, that we have had people come forward and say that she was there some of the time, on the road with Nelson or meeting up with him at a particular stop. A look of sly vindication crossed her features and she said, “Oh, I thought so!” When I asked her why, she said she had seen Nelson give a concert in Philadelphia “back in the Forties” and the weather was cold and miserable. Because of this, only a few people went to the stage door that night, and actually, when Nelson emerged, he told them all to go home before they caught cold! She remembers a woman, whom she described as “very willowy and slender” wearing slacks and a trench coat, with a scarf over her…wait for it….bright red hair. This woman, with her head down, walked purposefully from the stage door to the waiting car. Before she had reached the car, a voice from back inside yelled, “Jenny! Your purse!” upon which the redhead wheeled around, exclaiming, “Where have I parked my brain tonight?” and trotted back after her purse. She got into the car, and when Nelson came out, he got into the same car. The woman I talked to pointed out that she must have been backstage the whole time because, “She wasn’t dressed up enough to have been out front.” She said, “My friend and I always felt sure that was Jeanette MacDonald. There were rumors that they loved each other.”

I LOVE STUFF LIKE THAT. Let me point out, too, that this woman had never read Sweethearts. She had no bias, she was just going on rumors that circulated at the time, as well as her own instincts.

Anyway, it was not unheard of for them to “meet up” on tour. The last time Angela and I were at the LOC (in June), I was working my fingers to the bone in the Newspaper Reading Room, trying to export as many articles as I could get my hands on. Many of them I didn’t even stop and read: if it looked interesting, I grabbed it while the grabbing was good and worried about reading it later. But something that caught my eye mentioned Jeanette making a tour stop in Roanoke, VA, in January of 1941. Roanoke is less than a 40 minute drive from my house, so that was cool, and I made a mental note to look into that, reflecting that Nelson sang for FDR’s inauguration in 1941, and wondering if the dates were similar and if, by chance, the paths (and perhaps, you know, bodies) of our twosome had crossed.

Later on, as I had time, I snooped around the internet trying to figure out where I could access the archives of the Roanoke Times, which surely would have covered La MacDonald coming to town. Finding the library that I needed, I composed an email and sent it off, only to get an automated response that the “Virginia Room” section of the library (where the newspaper archives are) was closed for renovations, and that research requests would be handled on a very limited basis. There might be a long turnaround time so don’t hold your breath, basically. Oh. Well, okay. So I moved on with my life. Fast forward a couple of months and I was teaching a riding lesson one afternoon when my phone heralded the arrival of a most excellent email. Not only did the Roanoke Times cover the event, but some kind librarian had gone through the microfilm and copied a couple of articles and a picture and attached them to the email. JOY! I love librarians.

And then I read what I read and I nearly died. I smelled smoke in a big big way and I called poor Sharon screeching in her ear. I just know she loves it when I do that…..

Nelson and Jeanette were super local to each other between January 19 and 25, is the gist of it. And while that might be enough to get us excited, that also leaves plenty of room for that to be totally coincidental and not a big deal.

BUT.

It gets better.

Okay, I’m about to impart a whole LOT of data, so try to stay afloat. I’ll present it in the most organized way possible, but there’s a lot of material here. I’ve spent a bunch of hours trawling through newspapers and calling libraries in various cities, trying (and sometimes succeeding) to get scans of newspaper articles from their towns about this tour. I originally only cared about January of 1941, but I ended up researching the entire tour. For each month, I printed out a calendar and penciled in information on each day for which I found data. I also made a map of their tour locations! I succeeded in nailing down every single date of every concert that either of them gave on this tour, and in many occasions, got the name of the theatre or venue where they sang. I’d like to thank Sharon and Maria for helping come up with a few dates that I was missing. Sharon also provided me with her list of tour stops against which to check my newspaper digging work–I’d transposed one date, but by and large, they were right on! 🙂

First thing you need to know is that Jeanette started touring in November, 1940, and her tour wrapped up on February 28th of 1941, in Asheville, NC. It was supposed to end on the 16th, but she had to make up two concerts that she missed earlier. That’s crucial information, but just hold on. She scrammed back to LA in early March, presumably took a long nap and started shooting Smilin’ Through on March 26th. Nelson’s tour kicked off officially February 11, 1941, in Tucson, AZ, and went until April 17th. He had a radio engagement April 20th back in Hollywood. So, all told, we’re talking about six months of total time that one or both of these guys was on the road. That’s a long time to be 99% apart from someone you love—and these people did this almost every year for a while there. When Nelson got home, Jeanette was working on Smilin’ Through and he went to work on The Chocolate Solider in June.

So here’s the fun stuff:

January 18: Jeanette concert, Memorial Hall, Columbus, OH

January 19: Nelson sings for FDR inauguration. Ann Eddy is present for this, BUT SHE GOES BACK TO LA RIGHT AFTERWARD. We don’t have any mention of Nelson leaving the East Coast until mention of him singing in San Diego on February 4th. (However, an item ran on January 25th with Nelson’s nominations for the “Ten Best” songs for shower singing and general pleasure. In addition to The Road to Mandalay and The Star Spangled Banner, he lists Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life and I’ll See You Again….and….wait for it……Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes. Right, Nels, because that was such a peppy, upbeat, awesome song… Has NOTHING to do with the fact that girlfriend is about to sing it in her next picture, I’ll bet!)

January 20: Jeanette sings at City Auditorium in Huntington, WV. So she’s about 5-6 hours away from Nelson by train at that point. She hops the train to Pittsburgh, where she is scheduled at Syria Mosque on the 23rd. Now she’s 3.5-4 hours by train from Washington. And, having already arrived in Pittsburgh, after singing to rave success in Huntington, she gets “sick”.

Let me pause right here to point out that Jamannamac here is a total pro and very much the show must go on. To illustrate my point….remember that time she LITERALLY HAD A HEART ATTACK during The King and I in 1956? In the middle of the show? AND FINISHED THE SHOW? Or how about that time she was puking her guts up during The Guardsman in 1951—actually leaving the stage to yak in the wings and coming back onstage and staying with it and doing the show.

Newspapers all pointed out that canceling this Pittsburgh concert on the 23rd was the first time in all her national tours that she had not kept a scheduled date. So either she was really, really, really dying OR she was willing to do it to spend a day or so with Nelson under the radar. Since she sang in Roanoke TWO DAYS LATER to rave reviews (a two hour show and over an hour of encores), was in exceptional voice and generally brought down the house…..I’m basically forced to think that she was not, in fact, dying.

As of January 22nd, her concert had not yet been canceled, but our girl was already on the train to Washington. She was in DC on the 23rd, the day of her canceled Pittsburgh concert, and was supposed to go on to Roanoke, where she was scheduled on the 25th. But, FUNNY STORY, she MISSES HER TRAIN in DC on the 23rd!!

She misses her train.

Misses.

Her train.

Well, I mean, it’s hard to catch a train when you’re all, like, trapped under a baritone, am I right?

And she’s “forced” to spend “another” (a word that indicates MORE THAN ONE. So she was there on the 22nd, too.) night in Washington. You know, with Nelson in town and nary a spouse for thousands of miles.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

The article is badly faded and hard to read, but after detailing that she had to spend “another” night in Washington, it goes on to say that she didn’t receive the press in Roanoke, that she walked straight to the waiting car and was taken to the Hotel Roanoke (less than a mile from the train station, I’ve been there MANY times, it’s classy and gorgeous and old and wonderful and it also is less than a mile from the venue where she performed, which has been torn down and replaced with the Roanoke Civic Center).

Here’s how she looked getting off the train in Roanoke:

After bringing down the proverbial house in Roanoke, she cancels Asheville, NC, where she was scheduled on the 28th. (Magic! Sick again!!!) This time, her “doctor” orders her to go to Florida to recover from her “cold”. Okay, I don’t care how famous you are, when was the last time ANY of you reading this were sent to Florida to get over a cold? I just really wonder if that doctor’s last name wasn’t Eddy. I just really do.

She did go to Florida, alright, but we don’t see or hear from her again until she sings at Municipal Auditorium in Orlando on the 31st. From there, she zipped down to Havana on the 3rd of February and sang at Sociedad Pro-Arte. There was an uncomfortable political scene with President Batista being directly involved only a short distance from where the concert was. This frightened her and she left right after the show to come back to the US, preferring not to spend the night in Havana. All this time, not only is Gene Raymond well-documented in Los Angeles, as is Ann Eddy, there is not one SMELL of where Nelson is or what he’s doing–the only thing that seems certain is that he was NOT in California. No mention of his homecoming from Washington, which would have been mentioned by someone, somewhere. No blurb about him being on a train or plane or anything. We only start hearing about him again in preparation for his concert in San Diego on February 4th.

I started out only caring about January, but I found that, as always, knowing all of the background data enhanced the story significantly. You have to figure, if you are that close to your significant other (4 hours by train, instead of on the opposite coast), after that much time apart, and knowing you won’t have the chance to see them again for months—it might well be worth it to you to postpone a couple of engagements to spend time with them, even if that is terribly out of character. ESPECIALLY when you can do it this sneakily. I just can’t see her legit canceling for a cold under these circumstances. Maybe I’m wrong, but this woman had a LIFETIME of colds, allergies and hay fever. If she canceled an engagement every time she had ear/nose/throat problems, she’d hardly ever work. In her autobiography manuscript, she notes her frequent colds and her ability to sing “over, under and around them”…so, again, it must have been pretty damned important for her to postpone two shows. Her outstanding performance in Roanoke between bouts of being sick also belies any condition as serious as what the papers claimed. Incidentally, she added Pittsburgh and Asheville on to the end of her tour, singing there on the 24th and 28th of February, respectively.

And, ya know, this candid shot that everyone loves of them on the set of Smilin’ Through? Yeah, that was taken after he got home from his tour. If they hadn’t seen each other much since their rendezvous in late January, that might explain the ridiculous grins and happy arms.

Nelson’s all like I could eat you with a spoon.

Jeanette’s all like Why on earth do you need a spoon?

❤

Just some food for thought, all this business. I thought it was interesting, and I think it seems highly likely.

Stay tuned for Library of Congress Treasures, Round Two!!

The Sterilization of Jeanette MacDonald

I’m ba-aack. 😀

So, yesterday, I posted a bunch of photos in one of my favorite Facebook groups, including one of Jeanette, Claude Jarman, Jr., and Lassie (or maybe it was Major, Lassie’s stand in?) sitting in a tent, around a heater, obviously cold, on the set of The Sun Comes Up, Jeanette’s final movie. This picture launched a whole LONG discourse between myself and several of the members of the group about Jeanette’s last two films.

Disclaimer: I love all of Jeanette’s movies. All of them, with the possible exception of The Vagabond King. So understand that the forthcoming criticisms are, yes, criticisms, but there is MUCH to love and appreciate about these movies just the way they are.

Also understand that being personally critical of Jeanette is not something at which I’m super good. I ain’t about getting hit by lightning and homegirl’s aim is pretty spot on. So.

Now, for Three Daring Daughters (can we please agree to refer to it from now on as TDD? Yeah? Great.), MGM cast the current “it” guy, Jose Iturbi, incredible pianist, heavily accented short little fellow, as Jeanette’s love interest. He’s supposed to rock her world so hard that she abandons the “shackles” of being a single mom to three teen/preteen girls and marries him on a whim during an extended boat trip. Oh. Okay. Well, for starters, our Jeanette is a tallish (5’5″), willowy beauty…and she’s legit taller than him in her heels and upswept hair. And for me, that’s sort of an immediate buzzkill. They look …not sexy… together. This is the movies and stuff like that matters, I’m sorry. Secondly, there is absolutely no passion. No clinch. No “I shouldn’t, it’s wrong, I’m so responsible but ohhhhhhhhhhh do it again, don’t stop……” scene that would have lent a shred of authenticity to the idea of this very strong, independent, intelligent single mom (she’s the editor of a high powered magazine) throwing caution to the wind. We don’t see her actually throw the caution. We see her blow out a candle and in the next scene she’s ditched the Serious Mom Wigs and has cute shorter curly hair. And as if to remind us how super wild and kinky the honeymoon was, that scene also has the one kiss in the movie—-an afterthought peck in fadeout. Like they’ve been married 112 years, not approximately 12 seconds.

And see, this ticks me off. Louise Morgan really, if treated better by the script, could have become Jeanette’s most compelling portrayal, but she doesn’t get half a chance. In the scene where she’s wearing this gorgeous orangey-coral dress and hum/singing along to You Made Me Love You, floating in via piano from the next cabin, you get a glimpse of what might have been. You see Louise yearn. You hear this low, soft voice, and the way she’s lounging around on the sofa…yep, this is a woman who is in touch with the fact that she maybe has been missing out on some Man Things since she ditched the girls’ father. She is sexy. She is gorgeous. She experiences desire. She has layers and feelings and longings—it occurs to her, and us, that maybe she’d like a kind of love that doesn’t come from her kids. Maybe she’d like to be a woman and not just Mommy.

(Now just imagine that the camera cuts to Nelson Eddy playing that damn piano. …Now that everyone is a little giddy in the pants, I’ll remind you all that it wasn’t Nelson. Many sorries.)

The fact that Jeanette is able to bring us these layers in that very short space of time is a tribute to what she is capable of as an actress. Then the camera reveals that it’s Mr. Iturbi and the viewer is sort of like, “…Oh.” But see, we see Sexy Jeanette for half a second, and lest that get dangerous (MOM CHARACTERS CANNOT BE SEXY!!!! ESPECIALLY JEANETTE MACDONALD MOM CHARACTERS BECAUSE SHE’S STILL A VIRGIN GUYS.), we have to temper that with Very Safe G-Rated Little Piano Man. I promise, I’m really NOT hating on Mr. Iturbi. I think he’s a great talent, Jeanette said he was good to work with, he was sweet to the kids (particularly Ann Todd who played Ilka, as she was a pianist), and he’s charming in a cute way. But as a romantic leading man for my girl Jeanette he is totally unsatisfying.

And THIS, friends, is the crux of the problem.

MGM—as many things as it did well and right with regard to the motion picture art form—mishandled the MacDonald sexuality.

Let me put you in touch with Jeanette Anna of the pre-MGM days.

They called her The Lingerie Queen of the Talkies.

Famous Quote: “I’m sure people must say about me, on the screen, ‘Good gracious, is Jeanette MacDonald going to take off her clothes – again?'”

   

I mean, hell, Maurice Chevalier measured her boobs in Love Me Tonight:

And she totally mouth-kissed a girl in One Hour With You:

Yeah, yeah, that was all Pre-Code. I get it. I do. BUT……it’s also a little hilarious how the general public opinion of Jeanette contains words like “highbrow” and “prissy” and “proper” and “ladylike” and “icy” and “frigid” and on and on and on. THE ABOVE PICTURES ARE HOW SHE GOT FAMOUS IN THE MOVIES, PEOPLE.

She was on Broadway first. She was Musical Theatre, not Opera—and she really wanted to be “Opera”—something that would fascinate her about Nelson Eddy when they met. HE was “Opera”…..she was “Musical Theatre” and nary the twain shall meet. Usually. She proved ’em wrong. 🙂

So Jeanette gets to Metro and she makes The Cat and the Fiddle, which I think of as sort of a transition for her, because she looks prettier (she was always beautiful but EVERYBODY is a little prettier at Metro, that’s just how it works) but she still is retaining the threads of the Jeanette that the movie audiences know. And there’s some suggestiveness here; the main characters are shacked up but not married, there’s kissing in bed, she tells him about basically dreaming about him naked, etc. It came out in 1934, that pivotal year for The Code, which applied to all movies released on or after July first (Thanks, Sharon, I hadn’t remembered the date)—and it seems to have squeaked out just in time, as most of it was filmed in 1933. Then came The Merry Widow, which Metro produced but which brought together the team she already had established elsewhere: Chevalier and director Ernst Lubitsch. So really, aside from the sheer BEAUTY of the production—the sets and costumes are VERY Metro and VERY lavishly beautiful—it doesn’t really feel like an MGM movie. Lubitsch made everything he did have that pre-code feel. As Jeanette discusses in her interview with Tony Thomas later in life, his specialty was whimsical innuendo.

The big image change happened when she and Nelson teamed up for Naughty Marietta. The movie, as we all know, was a barn-burning sensation, launched the Mac/Eddy team and so on and so forth—it has MUCH to commend it on every level, but the fact of the matter is that gone forever was the Jeanette that movie audiences had known and enjoyed previously.

She’s stunning and startlingly beautiful, to coin a phrase, all swathed in period costume after period costume. She’s coquettish and coy but never seriously sexual. The typical pattern is that we see her first, she gets the first song, he’s usually not as important in life station as she is, he likes her immediately, she doesn’t like him, then she REALLY likes him but is hard to get, then they sing a duet and are officially in love until struggles force them to part but they usually are reunited (and if not, he gets to die on her powdered bosom a couple times). The “formula” is not complicated. Nobody cares about this. When the two of them open their mouths to sing, the rest of the world can go hang itself. They were the absolute best at what they did and that’s all there is to it. You can be someone who likes Jeanette better or likes Nelson better, I think we all have our preferences, but if you can’t recognize that it was TOGETHER that they were best known, best loved and did their best work…….well, you’re an idiot.

But the fact of the matter is that her figure, and indeed, her actual sexual presence, went from being her stock in trade (apart from her voice, obviously) to what Modern Screen (If I’ve mis-attributed that quote, please correct me, but I’m almost positive it was Modern Screen, in the little gossip blurbs, and I think I have the actual copy of the magazine where it’s mentioned) termed the “best kept secret in Hollywood.”

That’s what happens at Metro, friends. Family pictures, you know.

(I’m not knocking that either, really. I think we could use a hell of a lot more family pictures in this day and age.)

The thing is, as their personal relationship developed, so did their chemistry on screen. Jeanette and Nelson can’t help but be sexy together. Please observe this clip, a zoomed in look at their hands duing the Obey Your Heart sequence in Girl of the Golden West. I’m not going to go into all the back story of what was going on (but Sharon did a great and recent analysis of it, go here.) but the fact of the matter is that nobody in 1937 is going to DIRECT this sort of hand play in a very Code-happy studio environment. Just look:

I mean, please imagine that he was doing that to ANY OTHER part of her body. Pick one. That is some seriously sexy business right there, and her thumb is playing right back. My point is, moments of sexy show up in every single movie, whether the studio wanted them to or not, Hayes Code be damned. But why did Metro want her to be seen as such an innocent type? Could it be that Mayer, who long-nursed a personal soft spot for Jeanette, didn’t want her charms on display? Could it be that the more intense the passion looked with Nelson, the less the public would be enamored of the humongous studio sponsored marriage to Gene Raymond? I mean, selling Gene to the public as Jeanette’s husband was a hard enough job anyway. But marrying her off to the absolutely-NEVER-threatening-to-the-ivory-tower Raymond ensured that she was seen as prim, boring, prudish and dispassionate. And then her damn fan club took it from there and here we are.

Amazing too, how they are shunted off into separate pictures when things are a little too risky. Rosalie and The Firefly happened between Maytime and Girl of the Golden West. What else happened in that era? Jeanette’s wedding. Letting them be together at work was too risky. They might decide to rage against the Machine and run off together. Something might slip. They were blissfully happy, even though Jeanette was married, during the making of Sweethearts, until Jeanette lost Nelson’s child at around six months of gestation. The Mayer Machine just BARELY gets away with keeping that under wraps, and promptly ushers Jeanette into Broadway Serenade and Nelson into Let Freedom Ring and Balalaika. And what else happens? Oh, yeah, drunk and majorly fucked up Nelson elopes with Ann Franklin. And Jeanette tries to kill herself at the end of production on Broadway Serenade, to which she always referred as being her least favorite movie she ever did. (As always, these episodes and subsequent documentation can be explored in more detail by reading Sweethearts by Sharon Rich.)

It just annoys me that too many of Jeanette’s Metro pictures have her being a one trick pony—even if it’s one HELL of a trick. She was a good actress, a splendid comedienne, but also capable of beautiful depth of feeling, especially as she aged. Her performance in The Sun Comes Up is absolutely gorgeous. Helen Winter has a little bit more of a meaty script than Louise Morgan does in terms of internal character development, but is just as short on the leading man front. Lloyd Nolan was a great guy and a personal friend of Jeanette’s and Nelson’s, but he doesn’t exactly spark with her on the screen. Which probably suited everyone just fine, because again, Jeanette is not allowed to be sexy, and CERTAINLY not when she’s playing a mom. I mean, it makes you long for her to have played a mom like Maureen O’Hara’s character Maggie in The Parent Trap…THAT is a transformation. She’s a great mom, but the reunion scene between Maggie and Mitch is swoon-worthy. Very romantic and very, very sexy. I didn’t say it needed to be dirty. It doesn’t. That isn’t. But it’s real.

Jeanette was on her way out after I Married an Angel. She did Cairo to finish out her contract (I effing love that movie) and wouldn’t be seen again at Metro until Three Daring Daughters. There was great “Welcome Home” fanfare about her return to her old stomping grounds after years of absence, but it seems that once she was there, they weren’t really sure what to do next. She was still exquisite, still had the best soprano voice in the movies, and wasn’t really old enough (well, okay, she was 43, so according to what she liked to tell people, that would make her 39…and she looked late thirties) to be shoved around the bend into Mom-dom. Nelson strongly objected to her playing Mom roles, perhaps because he knew that once she did that, she wouldn’t be able to go back to playing a real romantic lead—which he knew damn well, publicly and privately, she should have still been doing. She rallied for Nelson to be cast in TDD and wrote Hedda Hopper that it would have been a “hot” box office reunion….and how right she was. That movie with Nelson would have been ENTIRELY different. And Metro would have had to admit that she was sexy. That he was sexy. That they were sexy together. This was no mannered, powdered wig period piece…this was a modern movie. If Louise Morgan had met Nelson Eddy on that ship instead of Jose Iturbi….I mean, can you imagine? Sexy, sexy. Perhaps that’s exactly why it didn’t happen. The studio wasn’t ready to make a grown up movie about grown up people. The idea that you can raise your kids and still feel the tingles for the right man who reminds you that you’re female……yeah, apparently that wasn’t a thing at Metro. Pity. It would have been great. Look at this candid of TDD-era Jeanette (with Iturbi) WITHOUT the wigs that made her matronly in the movie:

She doesn’t look old enough to be the mother of a high school graduate. She just doesn’t. Don’t effing tell me all that was left to her were Mom roles. Nelson, pal, you were EXACTLY right.

A screen capture from TDD. Look how gorgeous. Staaaaaaahp it.

Perhaps the best way to end this much-longer-than-anticipated post is with this anecdote:

Sometime in the 1940s, Nelson Eddy had occasion to see Monte Carlo, one of Jeanette’s Lingerie Queen Pre-Code films. (You know, the one where she runs around in her underwear and sings Beyond the Blue Horizon on a train. That song became one of her signature numbers.) Upon seeing it, his comment was:

“That’s the Jeanette I know.”

The defense rests.

 

The Happy Bridegroom – January 22, 1939

Get excited, kids, this is a humdinger.

Last weekend at the Library of Congress, Angela and I were able to listen to Nelson’s most elusive Chase and Sanborn radio broadcast from January 22, 1939—three days after his misguided and heavily intoxicated elopement with Ann Franklin.

Before I go into those details, Angela has written up a little piece about her experience at the LOC, so I’m enclosing it here. Thanks, Angela! 😀

June 13, 2014, Washington DC – Library of Congress – My social media status reflects my current location as I add a photo of my research tools: a pen, a Library of Congress reader card, a pink work request slip and a black and white composition book.

“What are you researching and for what reason?”

Somehow that comment from a friend of long gone High School days annoyed me. I had to think a bit on how to answer. Just how did I end up here and why had I cancelled a planned spa day to wake up at the crack of stupid and take a jostling commuter bus from Herndon, VA into Washington, DC?

“Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy.” I answered.

“Should have known – since they are your faves.”

My faves? Really? Does that even begin to describe it? And do you really care? Most of my friends and family certainly don’t. Their eyes glaze over whenever I mention the dreaded names. Except Chris, she understands. She recently told me of the time she took a 12 hour bus ride from her college in Boston to meet up with a fellow Judy Garland fan somewhere in Minnesota. Speaking as her mom, I’m glad I didn’t know it then, speaking as a fellow fan girl, all I can say now is, I raised her right.

So here I am, awaiting my fellow MacEddy obsessive and comrade in arms, Katie, a young girl with an old soul. We’ve been plotting this for weeks but are not nearly prepared enough and we know it. We are frantically texting as she approaches the city by train and each can sense the others nervousness over how it will go. I know my job and set about culling information and targeting available research opportunities as I await her arrival.

Phyllis, the research volunteer de jour, gives me the lay of the land and recommends the reading room providing detailed directions. The Madison building is a large rectangle and color coded she explains, I nod. “What are you researching?” Phyllis asks. I tell her and guess what? She actually knows who they are and even a bit about them. This is promising. I love retiree volunteers.

“Go to Reading Room 113,” she tells me. “Performing Arts, that’s where you’ll find the radio programs.”

So I scamper off. There I meet and befriend Jan M, maybe a few years older than me, hard to tell. Jan is the archetypal librarian, frumpy skirt, support hose, no nonsense shoes; her steel grey hair is pulled back into a low pony tail. Only the kohl rimmed eyes bespeak of the girl she once was. I glance at her younger self staring at me from the name badge she wore clipped to her neat sweater. Yes, I knew that girl, I could picture her walking my High School halls. She wore jeans and Birkenstocks, her long hair parted in the middle, no makeup except for black lined eyes. She spoke very precisely, was serious, focused and knew what she wanted to do with her life, unlike the rest of us.

Jan helps me find what I’m looking for and it’s just dumb luck that the January 22, 1939 Chase and Sanborn program is already digitized and available for listening. Oh, I had to spell Sanborn for her; Jan must not be a coffee drinker but she is very anxious to help. I set up an appointment for later that morning and text my co-conspirator to alert her of our rendezvous location. I love research librarians.

Katie arrived overheated from her three block hike (Blogger’s Note: “Sweaty and disgusting” is more like it! The cab let me out too early and I had a huge purse and super heavy backpack and I found out which building I was supposed to be in and ran the 3 blocks in 95 degree heat. Yuck.) but anxious to get to work. We queued up our recording in Booth 15 and began. All I can say is I was gob smacked (thank you my British friends for that lovely word) as I listened with St. Anthony and the Blessed Mother jangling away on my wrist as I furiously wrote in my composition book, Katie scribbling out a bit of mumbled dialogue I’d missed. I love bright young researchers.

Two days later, I am back in Connecticut, at my real job. “Did you have a nice vacation?” My colleague asks me. I whip out my Library of Congress official reader card and show her. A fellow bibliophile and longtime book club member, she looks at it longingly and sighs.

“Yes, I had a wonderful time.”

 

So that takes us up to where we were in Booth 15, getting ready to listen to newlywed Nelson on Chase and Sanborn. Sharon had told us that it was going to really mess us up, and boy, she wasn’t kidding. Right from the beginning, you sense that something is “up” with Nelson—anyone familiar with his radio work (and he did a TON of it) knows that his style is easy and affable, interspersed with the great singing that made him famous. Only, on this day, he doesn’t want to come to the microphone. You hear the other people trying to improvise to make up for the fact that he didn’t jump in when he should have, and then, finally, he mutters, completely audibly, “I must have the wrong script.” What, in real life? You sure do, brother. To me, that sounds like a sideways way of saying he doesn’t want to participate in any of this wedding talk. The playing of the wedding march, in this context, sounds brash and horrible. The idea that they’re all having a good laugh and talking about throwing rice (and maybe they did, the studio audience is laughing)—while he is totally silent—is just a great big helping of awkward sauce. And then the normally yakkity-yak Nelson doesn’t say ONE WORD. Just goes into his first song. Weird, weird, weird.

Is this a good time to point out that absolutely nobody likes Ann Eddy? Because…absolutely nobody likes Ann Eddy.

Then he sings the lament from the opera Boris Gudounov, usually sung by a basso; a favorite role of Nelson’s idol, Feodor Chaliapin, so on a normal day in normal context, it is understandable that he’d be interested in singing it. Sort of the same reason why I can only ever make Baked Beans using Jeanette’s recipe. Boris was done in English at the Met in 1963, sung by Jerome Hines. This particular selection can be heard at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UGIy-wdAqI for anyone wishing to compare the legit Metropolitan translation with what Nelson sings.

I have, to the best of my ability, transcribed Nelson’s lyrics. One wonders where they came from. Did he do this translation himself? It is entirely possible; he spoke Russian. He frequently did this sort of work with his songs. To say this is a dark-as-hell piece is putting it mildly. Let us remember that Nelson, while a great singer, was no actor and never claimed to be (check him out in his movies without Jeanette sometime. Oy. I love the guy to the ends of the earth, but….oy.). What he was, was a seriously professional musician. Dramatic interpretation of a piece is one thing—singing off key is something else. Nelson would never have done it on purpose, and the fact that he does–repeatedly in this selection—really speaks to his highly heightened emotional state.

And why is he so emotional? Well, for starters, he’d basically been blackmailed into this marriage with Ann. Trustingly naive Nelson had unburdened to this older woman, whom he thought was merely a friend of his mother’s, during the many nights she was a guest in their home when Nelson was having trouble in his relationship with Jeanette. He talked way, way, way too much. Ann got him into a compromising position and essentially forced his hand with everything she knew about Jeanette and their relationship—the depths of exactly what she knew that was so very, very damning may never be fully realized. The bottom line is, she had him just where she wanted him: emotionally broken, beaten down and blackmailed over a barrel. According to Isabel Eddy, his mom, after he passed out from whatever substance he was on for the very brief, very clinical ceremony, he asked what they were doing on a train. Well, shit. Ann Eddy won that round and she would have him painted into a corner for the rest of his life.

Here is my best transcription of Nelson’s lyrics of the sad tzar’s lament. Please note how vastly different they are from the English translation used at the Met. The meaning is essentially the same, but some of the word choice is very, very interesting (and yes, this is very dramatic, very flowery language. This is opera, people.):

I stand supreme in power

Five years and more my reign has not been troubled

Yet happiness eludes my sad and tortured soul

In vain I hear astrologists foretell long years of life in power

Peace and glory

No life, no power, no promises of glory

No praise from the crowd

Can soothe my aching heart

I look among my children to find comfort

And soon to see a brilliant marriage feast prepared

For my Kseniya, my dearest daughter

But cruel death has struck the one she loved

How heavy is the hand of God in His wrath

How merciless a doom awaits the sinner

In gloom I walk, grim darkness surrounds me

No single ray of light bring solace

My heart is torn with anguish, it’s hopeless and weary

Naught avails me

A secret terror haunts me

I wait, I tremble

With all my heart I implore saints above

And a God I beseech to grant me mercy

And I with all my power; all of Russia I feared and envied

In tears have vainly begged for pardon

[Cannot make out this line]

Pestilence, disloyalty, starvation!

Like a beast of prey the hungry peasants are prowling

The land is bare, Russia weeps

[Nelson’s voice is breaking on this next line and I can’t understand it, maybe something about a flood?]

And groaning under the weight of the burden

And awful and great pain inflicted

I’ll throw the flame on me

They who loved me, they hate my very name

Openly curse me

And now my sleep has fled, at night I see visions

A blood be-spattered child appears to me

Sobbing in anguish, writhing, lamenting

Praying for mercy and mercy was not granted

Blood from his wounds is falling, loudly he cries

With death he struggles…oh God in Heaven….oh my God.

Let’s not forget that July 26th of the previous year, Jeanette had lost their son at about six months of gestation (newspapers reported her hospitalization, and the subsequent one in September, but cited ear problems as the reason). She was, by her own admission, a “bleeder”—very thin blood. She had difficulty with bleeding after several surgical procedures, including her somewhat botched tonsillectomy. On that occasion, Nelson had “never seen so much blood in his life” …sad, yeah, but it had to have been on his mind. The man is crying at the end of this selection.

 

Some wise-ass decided, the day after Nelson’s elopement, to run onto the set at MGM where Jeanette was winding up filming on Broadway Serenade, and loudly announce that Nelson had eloped in the night. Jeanette screamed, ran off the set, locked herself in her dressing room and downed a bottle of sleeping pills. Woody Van Dyke, beloved pal and frequent director of our Sweethearts, got wind of what had happened and, finding Jeanette’s dressing room door locked, kicked it in and found her on the floor. L.B. Mayer himself arrived on the scene and carried Jeanette to the car, cursing Nelson the entire time, saying he [Nelson] had killed his beautiful star. Jeanette’s stomach was pumped and she recovered, only to attempt suicide again a week later. The source for this information? Woody Van Dyke’s wife, Ruth. This story was verified by Eddy associate Marie Collick, two people who worked in wardrobe, Ken Hollywood (studio guard) and Isabel Eddy, whose letters of that time indicate that she was spending time with Jeanette, whom she adored, basically keeping suicide watch.

News of this had to have gotten back to Nelson. Having an easier time understanding his mental state now? Damn, the poor man.

For his final selection, Nelson changed gears completely and will effing tear your heart out and step on it with his rendition of Little Grey Home in the West. Angela and I played this for Di on Skype Sunday afternoon and all three of us were in tears. It’s just so sad, and so unfair. Here, have a sad graphic:

He wasn’t talking about Ann, kids. He just….wasn’t. There’s no way. And of all the songs he could have picked to end this hour of despair, this choice is one of the most poignant he could have made. There are dozens of songs he could have sung and we would have been all “OH EM GEE He’s singing to Jeanette!” but seriously….this sweet little song they had sung together in happier times just aches with romantic simplicity and longs for domestic bliss….two things that nobody has EVER accused him of having with Ann.

Here it is, guys—all of Nelson’s parts of the radio broadcast from January 22, 1939. Please listen for yourselves. Angela put the video together.

People are so quick to over-simplify their situation. The truth of the matter is that Ann held all the cards that Mayer didn’t. After their tenure at Metro was over, Jeanette COULD HAVE divorced Gene. Nobody has ever said Gene wouldn’t let her out. Sometimes the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t—what was the point of her getting a divorce when Nelson couldn’t? Nelson could not/would not stand for Jeanette getting tarred and feathered in the public with the dirt Ann had on her. For someone as willful as Nelson to be that gun-shy about Ann…well, she must have had a hell of a hand of cards to play. We only know some of that data. For Jeanette’s part, at least, at minimum, being married to Gene gave her the “protection” of being Mrs. SOMEBODY—I can’t think of her wanting to deal with being gorgeous, unmarried and in love with a married man. I can’t think that she was in any mood to deal with the eligible bachelors of Hollywood. On some level, it worked. Some of the time, anyway, at this point in their lives.

 

Sigh.

 

 

This [Really] is Your Life, Jeanette MacDonald!

November 12, 1952

The International Optimists’ Club (is that still a thing?) decided that that perpetually happy chappy, Ralph Edwards, needed to be the recipient of a plaque. And who better to give that plaque? Well, the Queen of Optimism herself, obviously, Miss Jeanette Anna Mac-D.

Actually it was all just a huge ploy to get her to the El Capitan Theatre, where Ralph’s new-ish show, This is Your Life, was being done. The show involved ambushing an unsuspecting famous person and subjecting them to a sometimes-awkward-but-usually-fun half hour review of their lives. All sorts of conspiracy happens to pull that off, with spouses, family members, acquaintances, etc, having to be in on it but not letting on to the person involved. Maureen O’Hara’s episode is really cute, it’s on youtube and I highly recommend it.  J-Mac was one of those Hollywood types who referred to the “invasion” of television and sort of pooh-poohed it in its early days, and she was busy concertizing, so she hadn’t really gotten familiar with TIYL, but whatever, she’ll pour herself into a strapless gown and go present this Plaque O’ Optimism. She sang a concert in LA the night before anyway, so she was in town (though during this period, she spent a lot of time in New York, so LA wasn’t “base” at the moment, I don’t think. I could be mistaken about that, but it isn’t crucial information. What is interesting, however, is that she was out in LA without her husband.).

What you need to know, without spending this whole post hashing it out, is that Nelson and Jeanette were broken up at this point. The years 1949-1952 were rough for both of them, but particularly bad for Jeanette. There had been a lot of talk about her and Nelson re-teaming on a movie, maybe at Metro, maybe somewhere else, and though several possibilities were discussed and, in fact, worked on, nothing fully came to fruition. Things had been extremely rocky for the two of them personally for a while, but it came to a head, according to confidante Sybil Thomas and verified by Jeanette’s sister Blossom, when Jeanette overheard some people discussing how she had photographed in test footage. Their suggestion was that Nelson should be paired with someone younger. Feeling totally irrational and out of sorts because of other pressures and tension in their relationship, that was the straw that broke the camel’s back and she decided he’d lured her into filming to humiliate her. She packed up her stuff, told Nelson she never wanted to see him again and fled home, whereupon she had a total, complete, huge nervous breakdown. The fact that it took her this long to snap, when one familiarizes oneself with the RIDICULOUS amount of stress these people were under, from work pressure to the complete wreckage of their personal lives, shows just how strong she was. (I cannot IMAGINE her photographing that badly!! She’s flippin’ GORGEOUS in her last two movies—okay so her wigs were a wee big matronly but holy hell, she is stunning. She and Nelson would have looked perfect together. Let’s go find those meanies who said she wasn’t photographing well and punch them in the face.)

Friends who knew her before and after comment that she was changed from this point on—and indeed, she seems to be meeker and less balls to the wall in her dogged pursuit of her career after this. Yes, she worked–she actually was quite busy throughout the 50s with concert and stage work and sporadic TV appearances–but as we know, she never returned to films after The Sun Comes Up in 1948.

What she did do, because Nelson seemed to be a lost cause and movies were a no-go, is try to pull herself up by the bootstraps and give her relationship with Gene some CPR. They did the play The Guardsman, with the hope of taking it to Broadway, but it closed before it got there, due in large part to the complete lack of chemistry between the leads. Ever see Smilin’ Through? Gorgeous movie, beautiful costumes, wonderful old songs, terrific story, great cast and performances—except one. Gene isn’t all that offensive in and of himself, but they don’t really give any indication that they are dying to get wild in the dressing room between shots, either. Even when Jeanette added a mini-concert to the show, it was mostly her loyal fan following who bought tickets over and over.

The Guardsman, with Gene:

Nelson, meanwhile, worked in radio and alternated between studying religion (frantically trying to give himself some peace) and screwing a rather long line of blip-on-the-radar type women. Every one of these conquests who have been interviewed knew about his relationship with Jeanette (that is not to say that they liked it) and they all admitted that he would have left them in a hot minute to go back to her.

It was Jeanette’s sister, Blossom, who ultimately saved the day. Basically, Blossom knew about the plans for This is Your Life, she knew Nelson had already said he wasn’t interested in being a part of it, and she knew that it would look 14 kinds of bad for Jeanette if Nelson, of all people, failed to show up as one of the surprise guests. She cornered Nelson into having lunch with her, and found that he was not really aware of all the problems Jeanette had had, and he was sorry about them. Their meeting ended with him agreeing that he would show up, if nothing else, to spare Jeanette the indignity of having people wonder why he didn’t come. How she reacted to him after this period of “off-again” in their relationship would sort of dictate his next move.

There was to be a reception afterwards at the Bit of Sweden restaurant on the Sunset Strip, and the arrangements Blossom and Nelson worked out were thus: If Jeanette was glad to see Nelson and reacted well, Blossom was going to have to leave the party suddenly and Nelson would step up to give Jeanette a ride home. If she reacted badly, she would come home with Blossom as planned.

Here is a link to Jeanette’s episode of This is Your Life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5C6xhQZymA

I want to be very clear right now that this episode has been edited—not much, but enough that it is important to mention. What’s missing are little seconds here and there as well as the original commercials. I have the whole uncut thing floating around somewhere on a VHS tape, so I know it’s still in existence, but for our purposes, this will do.

Look at this little Optimistic creeper, sneaking up on Ralph with her plaque:

Ralph goes to kiss her cheek and asks if Gene is in New York and her response is, “Yes, he’s in New York, you’re safe.”

Ahahahahahaha. Gene is not going to chase you around the El Capitan, Ralph. No worries. Jeanette’s pretty sure she left him on the other coast.

And then we are treated to several full minutes of Jeanette Anna not having a single clue what the hell is going on. It’s really grand. I like the part when she scoots back on the sofa like she’s five years old.

I have absolutely no idea what this means but, sure, Ralph, you can have a pat/hug. It’ll be exactly like the pat/hug my husband gets in a few minutes:

She gets that she’s been punked, but it takes her like, two full guests to figure out exactly what is going on. Here’s her snarky “mmhmm” and raised eyebrow when he mentions that her mom kicked the bucket and had been her “guide and inspiration”:

She needs her glasses. Cue middle-aged-bifocals-position, holding picture way away to see what it is…

“He’s [Gene] on a television show tonight!” ………….and you are a great big dope, babygirl. HAHAHA. Like a lamb to the slaughter, Jeanette. (Also does it not strike anyone else as interesting that she doesn’t appear to know the details about what he’s doing? He’s in NY. He’s on a television show tonight. Do you know any more than that, J-Mac? Do you care? Do you people actually talk at all ever?)

So Gene is on the phone “from New York” and she calls him Pappy and he calls her Bunc and it’s cute. “Bunc” is short for “Bunko” which was his nickname for her. Let’s go to Webster:

a swindle in which a person is cheated at gambling, persuaded to buy a nonexistent or worthless object, or otherwise victimized

or

a complicated confidence game planned and executed with great care

or

a fraud

Anybody else see the absolutely fantastic humor in this? THE OTHER HALF OF MY FAKE MARRIAGE, BUNKO. Hey, if you’re going to be part of this ridiculous mess, you gotta have a sense of humor. I guess that goes for the principals as well as the followers.

And just look at her, waving at the TV. She is so, so cute. And so embarrassing. It sucks that she didn’t have kids, if for no other reason than she would have been awesome at being mortifying in moments such as these. Nobody told her that dress was not the greatest, I guess. Oh well. She fared better than some actresses of her generation in the 50s.

How do you not love this human? How. Just how. ❤ ❤ ❤

Gene: Will you call me afterwards?

Jeanette: Will you be home?

……………….And there you have it, folks. Ha. Gene says he’ll “wait for your call and make the date afterwards.” Great. Gene’s sort of sniggering laugh gets on my nerves and always has. But anyway.

Ralph mentions her amazing contribution to the Army Emergency Relief Fund during the war and she reacts with sweet modesty. Never call this girl’s patriotism into question, kids. She practically bleeds red, white and blue. Another moment I love is when Ralph shows her a picture of her jitterbugging with a random soldier at the Hollywood Canteen (before bringing him onstage) and she remembers his first and last name, plus the fact that he was married and had a baby. A brief encounter in a busy life from ten years before, and look at her. What a sweetie pie.

Then her 7th grade English teacher, Ms. Edna Clear comes out, and Jeanette is again the very picture of adorable charm and grace. Ms. Clear says Jeanette was one of her “most brilliant” pupils, which is a veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery long stretch (J-Mac was not a very good student–she got much more learned later in life and “never regretted not going to college”). Even so, it’s super cute. Then they show some pictures from her movies and play a little strain of music from each. She coos during Lover Come Back to Me, by the way. Ralph makes mention of her “great co-star, Nelson Eddy” and look at her face:

Nervous wreck. When she had first gotten there that night, some wise-ass parking employee told Helen Ferguson (who brought her) to park Miss MacDonald’s car “over there beside Nelson Eddy’s”….and this is the point where I think she really starts realizing that maybe that guy wasn’t being stupid. Maybe Nelson is here. Is he really here? Is he coming out? How is he going to act? …How am I going to act? Shit. Keep it together, Jeanette. You’re on national television. Crap crap crap. Is he really here?

She seems to breathe a little when they mention her wedding date, because she realizes Nelson is not the next person coming out. Dr. Martin, the minister who married her and Gene, comes out and, as soon as he’s there, Jeanette sportingly drops the nervous look and becomes all warmth and sweetness again. Dr. Martin pontificates a little about they “show in their life the philosophy of the holy bonds of matrimony” and Jeanette looks down, embarrassed. Yep, that’s a little awkward.

And here comes Gene. She hugs him and tells him he played it “very well and very straight” and he goes, “Did I play it straight?”

Guys, it’s a cheap laugh and it’s wrong, but I WILL NEVER NOT CHUCKLE.

So then Ralph brings Nelson up again and that look is back on Jeanette’s face. Awesome, now she gets to see Nelson for the first time in a very long time and Gene’s going to be here for the fun, too! And check out Gene, looking to see how she is reacting—he’s already seen Nelson backstage at this point:

Grace Newell, Jeanette’s life-long voice teacher and “adopted” mother (according to the sweetest ever letter written by Jeanette to Grace, who outlived her, a few months before Jeanette’s death) comes out next and is precious, and Grace is followed by our heroine, Blossom, who so plainly adores her sister–and the feeling is completely mutual. Then they say something about Elsie the Family Cow—excuse me, I mean Elsie, the other MacDonald sister–and this part is edited out of this youtube video, but, Scout’s Honor, Jeanette wrinkles her nose at Blossom and mouths, “Oh, is she here too?” Elsie is not our favorite sister, you see. Nevertheless, she’s there, all lacquered and blonde and awkward, but definitely related two the other two and sporting the one characteristic that all three sisters got in full measure: an absolutely gorgeous set of teeth. Check out the teeth on these girls!

And finally, but finally, Ralph turns the subject to love, and we know Nelson must be next. (No, I’m totally serious, that happens.) At the word “love”, music begins to play in the background—the song that Nelson sang at Jeanette and Gene’s wedding—and her face is unchanged, but you can see Gene beginning to watch her carefully. And then, from backstage, Nelson starts to sing.

Here is the link to the video of Nelson’s portion of the episode. If you don’t have 25 minutes to kill on the other one, WATCH THIS ONE. It’s two and a half minutes long and it’s sort of the law that you watch it. I’ve seen it hundreds of times and it still kills me.

The INSTANT she hears his voice — I actually put a stopwatch on it. It takes her three-quarters of a second to go from polite listening to full-blown O-face.

The MacDonald Ecstasy:

NOBODY ELSE GOT ANYTHING CLOSE TO THIS REACTION.

And then, in the 10 seconds following that reaction, she begins to cry. While her head is still back, you see her struggling to keep her emotions in check, and failing. Gene, watching all this in a sort of bemused way, sportingly hands her his handkerchief. There are people who say, “Oh, I would get teary too, listening to a song from my wedding,” …but it has nothing to do with the song. She reacted before he’d even formed one word. It is the sound of Nelson’s voice. The affirmation that he is there, that he is singing, that he still cares about her enough to show up. He’s there, and he’s there for her, and she knows it at once.

She and Nelson make eye contact for just a moment, and he reaches out and takes her hand–the same one that has the handkerchief in it. Still emotional, she grabs the handkerchief away and holds it in her other hand, the better to hold his hand with. (This part is taking me forever to write because I get caught up in watching it!)

It’s really hard to capture, because he’s turning towards her and the youtube quality of this recording sucks, but Nelson is definitely smiling, having seen her reaction and felt her hand probably squeezing the crap out of his:

It is necessary to note here that Nelson is reading the lyrics while he sings—VERY unusual for him. One good look at her face, and you see his arm move as he throws the music behind the couch. He’s not holding it in the next shot. She has been effectively turned into a puddle of MacGoo:

He keeps squeezing and wiggling her hand, just like he used to do in all their movies—Girl of the Golden West contains a scene of such blatant hand porn that it might be too much for this blog. And then she just sort of melds right up into his arms.

And it looks for a split second that their faces are going in the same direction, but damn it, no kiss. They remember they’re on TV.

And then Jeanette finds herself exactly where she is supposed to be. ❤

Blissed-out MacDonald, right there. Gene who???

Gene literally could have dropped dead off to the side and nobody would have noticed.

Look at Nelson. Star football player and his cheerleader girlfriend, anyone? Still holding hands, by the way.

Then Gene shakes hands with Nelson, who still has Jeanette’s hand, and look at Gene’s body language here:

That two-handed grip is known as the “politician’s handshake” and body language research defines this as “an attempt to control the situation or person” ………Welp. Yep.

Nelson, being cute, addresses her as “Jeanette–I may call you Jeanette, may I?” and she laughs and Gene, in some sort of fiercely misguided attempt to be relevant, goes, “That’s all right, old man, I give you my permission.”

Hey, Gene! HERE’S A GREAT BIG DOSE OF FUCK OFF.

Nelson, by the way, skipped the rehearsal for TIYL the day before (but he DID attend Jeanette’s concert at the Philharmonic–this was noted by several sources, including a rather rude critic who found Nelson’s presence at the concert more exciting than the concert. He just didn’t go backstage to see her afterwards.) and had the TIYL people scrambling in blind panic for replacement people to try to fill the gap if he really didn’t show on the actual day. When he did arrive, he was given a prepared speech–the only guest to get one—because he hadn’t attended the rehearsal and they didn’t feel he could be “trusted” to make the appropriately PC comments. He doesn’t even get through all of his statement before he sort of trails off and Jeanette is like, “Well Nelson, what can I say, except it (his performance) was certainly one of the highlights of our wedding (snort) and we’ll never forget it!”

He then kisses her hand and that’s more-or-less it. At the end of the show, she’s given a wristwatch and she sort of starts to show it to Gene, but then shows it to someone on her right—whether that is Nelson or Blossom or just a coincidence, I’m not sure.

The fact remains that Jeanette was not an overly weepy-in-public type, and Nelson totally did her in, the moment she heard him. It’s amazing what you can learn about her, just from watching this show. Her chemistry with Gene is palsy and fun, but her chemistry with Nelson is emotional and adoring. This moment in time was the catalyst for their reconciliation, and they would be “on again” from this point until her death in 1965.

So thanks, Ralph Edwards! But more importantly… thanks, Blossom. 🙂

The MacEddyRaymonds, Part 3

In case anyone didn’t believe me, here’s another picture of Jeanette trying to buck up and pull it together to get the duet shot on the set of Maytime. See the Kleenex in her hand?

And things appear not much better on her wedding day. Have you ever seen a glummer looking group of girls?

Yep, your eyes are correct, she had Ginger Rogers as a bridesmaid. Possibly the best thing about the whole affair. That’s her sister Blossom, matron of honor, next to her in the dress that is a slightly different shade than the others. Adrian designed the dress. There is no doubt that Jeanette was a gorgeous bride, but generally speaking, brides are supposed to be happy.

There is really no question that MGM sponsored the entire thing. It was rumored to have cost $25,000.00 — a rumor which Jeanette herself protested loudly, saying SHE would never have done that (she definitely wouldn’t have, our girl was a bit of a tightwad. I say that in a loving way.), and that it actually cost more like $5,000.00. Well. Maybe that’s what she paid. Her Adrian wedding gown had an 18 foot double tulle train, by the by. Wilshire Methodist is a sizeable church (and check this out, Homegirl is right there on their church history page! Gotta love Hollywood! http://www.ewilshireumc.org/about/our-church-history.html), the entire thing was decked out in roses, etc etc etc. It was, as I said in the last post, Hollywood’s answer to the Royal Wedding. My grandmother was just out of high school when this happened and she remembered it very well. She was good and ticked about it, too, but that’s another story. 😉

The wedding was the talk of all the magazines and columns, and MGM was vigorously supportive of that–as it happens, the good publicity of the wedding was helping to mask the seriously dark and messed up story of Patricia Douglas, the woman whose story was told in the 2007 documentary, Girl 27. Basically, she was an extra at MGM, got told to go to a party for some MGM businessmen, was forced to drink a lot of alcohol, got raped, had the balls to speak up about it and vanished. Here’s an article about the documentary: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/jan/18/girl-27-uncovers-37-rape-case/?page=all It’s worth watching, just because it is really eye-opening for those of you still living in fantasy land about the power these studios and these executives had over people. Many, many beloved movies were made on Mayer’s watch, of course, the man had a definite genius in a lot of ways, and not all of his relationships were horrendous, but he absolutely was capable of wielding his power in disgusting, invasive, harassing, abusive, REALLY FREAKING ILLEGAL ways, and we’ve seen enough evidence of it and heard enough testimony from enough sources that it is brutally naive to think otherwise. Yeah, Jeanette was a headstrong, sassy girl, and on some level was a “pet” of Mayer’s, but to believe he didn’t have a stranglehold on her is ….just naive. So anyway, having a big, pretty wedding to push to the front pages helped slip the Patricia Douglas case quietly out the back door.

Nelson was under studio pressure to sing at the wedding–after all, Allan Jones, Jeanette’s current co-star, was ushering, and the guest list of 250+ of Jeanette’s very closest movie star friends read like a super impressive Who’s Who in Hollywood. Columnists called the wedding “overdone musical comedy” and one snarky one wondered whether the newlyweds would “stay up all night to watch the reviews come in.” Jeanette made note of Nelson’s (understandably) negative reaction in her autobiography manuscript:

“Oh, here you are. I wondered where you were.”

“No, I’m not going to come to your Goddamned wedding.” To be completely fair, she does not attach Nelson’s name to this quotation in her notes (she wouldn’t need to, they were her personal notes and SHE knew who said it!), but this was known by several sources to be his reaction. I can’t prove that, but I would be remiss if I didn’t include this very interesting set of notes.

“No correction possible thru conversation.” (So they can’t talk it out?)

Gene said, “I can’t take pen and paper away from her.”

What the HELL does THAT mean??? So it sounds to me like Nelson won’t discuss things with her, so she’s trying to write him to give him some sort of explanation/understanding/insight/peace/who knows. Gene doesn’t like this, but he “can’t take pen and paper away from her” — meaning that he can’t sit on her to prevent her writing to him.

It is also interesting to point out that much of the sensitive material (the “juicy” stuff) has been scribbled over or crossed out by Jeanette, or she has made notes to change the wording of certain passages to make them more PC. It is also a fact that she wrote ex-flame Bob Ritchie to tell him he would be “coming off extremely well” in her book. Bob Ritchie was a total prick to her on many occasions, so it’s clear that she’s doctoring the truth. Jeanette is not stupid, guys. She knew damn well what her fan club was made of: a bunch of sycophantic ass-kissers who refused (oh hell, present tense too, there are still some of them around!) to believe she ever did anything other than float around the world being perfectly perfect with glitter and rainbows flying out her ass. I mean, seriously. Please go to Jeanette MacDonald Fan Club dot com. DO NOT TAKE MY WORD FOR THIS. It’s like…..way worse than a bad acid trip. This is the waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay whacked out crazypants business she was dealing with. And she met a lot of these people, and she was absolutely adorable to them, and to their credit, they made her feel loved and important later in her life when she wasn’t getting a whole lot of that feeling from the rest of the world. (And Gene got to be a sort of ceremonial figurehead and thus had something to do once a year for the last 30 years of his life…) For that–for letting our girl know that SOMEONE loved and appreciated her—and I mean this completely sincerely–I will always thank them. And gently remind them that she was, in fact, a human being.

But anyway, Jeanette is their Golden Voiced Angel Diva! She can’t possibly drop the ball now and admit that she occasionally liked a cocktail and also really, really enjoyed Nelson Eddy in the midnight hour. Someone legit said that if it was true that she and Nelson were in love, they would burn their entire collection. What’s she supposed to do? Keep playing the role, or lose the devotion that, in her latter years, was one of the only positive things she had in her life. For her, the choice was clear, and understandable. A personal favorite MacDonald quotation of mine that sums up the situation perfectly is, “They wouldn’t let me say shit if I had a mouthful.” Hence, the book was HEAVILY edited—and this is 99.9% of the reason it never saw the light of day until Sharon got it out there. I hope to go into more detail about it in the future, because, imperfect though it is on a variety of levels, it is enormously revealing.

Can I just mention that this is the same group of people who went apeshit when Sharon produced Jeanette’s baptismal record that proved she was born in 1903, not 1907? Okay, she took a few years off her age–many if not most of the stars did, back then. We don’t care and we don’t judge her for it, we’re JUST POINTING OUT A FACT, YO. But there was a, “Jeanette would never tell a lie!” sort of backlash from this group. Oy. Vey.

Getting back to the subject at hand, here’s poor Nelson, looking terminally ill on Jeanette’s wedding day:

Yeah.

It’s worth noting too that, according to Nelson’s mother (who he was living with at the time), he posed for this picture, skipped the reception, came home and got good and drunk. Then, we know he wrecked his car a week later, and gave his address as 1330 Angelo Drive, which is the first known use of the address for the home he and Jeanette would ultimately share as a most excellent hideout, called “Mists”. Just FYI.

A most interesting source that Sharon Rich uses in Sweethearts is Rev. Richard Halverson, United States Senate Chaplain, who worked as Jeanette chauffer/butler back in the day–pre and post Gene. The interview is fascinating. Halverson describes a sweet, fun, inquisitive Jeanette when she was by herself (before the marriage), who was interested in his faith and his future plans, who never treated him like a “servant” and was easy to get along with. Along comes Gene, who essentially was a jerk to Halverson–rude, distant, very much “better” than “the servants”, someone who “hadn’t really made it, not like Nelson Eddy, for example.” He also describes him as “effeminate” and “bossed her around” and she “took it.” Halverson also witnessed Jeanette with Nelson, and while he claimed he was unaware of a romantic relationship between them, he said that she got along with Nelson very well, that Nelson was a jokester, they had a lot of fun on the set and Nelson made her laugh a lot. His parting words were, “I wonder why she didn’t marry Nelson Eddy?”

Yeah, around these parts, we like Nelson better too, sir.

For Jeanette’s part, she notes in her autobiography that, after her Honolulu honeymoon, there was “a lot of understanding to be done, a lot of matching my ways to his” (no, bad call, don’t do that, we like your ways a lot better) and she learned that “tears would get me nowhere.” And ultimately, she also learned information on her honeymoon that would lead her to say that “there was one subject I didn’t allow myself to pursue.” Her final statement sort of lands with a loud, ominous clunk:

“The MacRaymonds had no children.“

Now. What newlywed woman learns something on her honeymoon that tells her with certainty that she’s not having kids with the guy she just married? Like……they were engaged for almost a year, folks. Surely they discussed this.

But that’s fodder for a different post.

Don’t catch cold!

 

The MacEddyRaymonds, Part 2

When we left off, Gene and Jeanette had just gotten engaged. Their engagement was formally announced August 20, 1936.

Maytime started production that same week, the third co-starring vehicle for Jeanette and Nelson. Without delving too much into why Maytime was in production for such a long while, suffice to say there were basically two versions of the film—Irving Thalberg was heavily involved the first one, but then he died, so they pretty much scrapped the whole thing, changed the story, changed a lot of the cast and tried again.

So here they are at some sort of rehearsal/script meeting for the first Maytime. Jeanette had JUST announced her engagement to Gene and look at these faces:

That’s the thing that’s so cool about these guys—there is always SOMETHING going on…sometimes they look like they need to get a room, sometimes they look like they hate each other, but never is there nothing going on.

Nevertheless, as the director talks to them on the set sometime after this picture was taken, you see where their hands are….

She’s marrying somebody else, they’ve screwed themselves over in the way they’ve handled things (but it is NOTHING compared to how much more screwed over they would eventually get) …and yet they are still sitting here, obviously not happy, but holding hands. Because they love each other, people. In spite of everything and through it all, for the rest of their lives. And here they are in a private candid moment on the same set:

So, once again, they become a couple–engagement or not. By the time the original Maytime was scrapped and the “second version” was beginning, there was a distinctly different tone in their candid pictures on the set. For instance, here is probably one of the most telling candid pictures EVER of them:

She’s sitting on his lap, guys. His arm is around her. They are holding hands and talking and neither of them is looking at the camera. WHAT COULD THIS POSSIBLY MEAN??????

And another, in a lighthearted vein. Robert Montgomery visits the set, and Jeanette can only pay attention to Nelson’s antics behind him:

But Maytime was a real struggle for our twosome, emotionally. The duet Will You Remember was a damn nightmare. They couldn’t get it in the can without one or both of the stars becoming emotional. Finally, in desperation, “Pop” Leonard told Nelson to look at the tree–if you watch the duet, you can see that he, at times, does just that, and doesn’t look at her face. Here is a picture of Jeanette trying to pull herself together during the emotional filming of that sequence:

This is not the only candid picture that shows her with a crumpled Kleenex in her hand, either. At the end of that sequence, I would be remiss if I didn’t note that that kiss was “juicy” enough for the now-infamous Maytime Spit String to occur:

Bahahahahahaha. Sorry, this post was making me sad. Nothing like lightening the mood with a little MacSpit.

When they shot the Czaritza sequence, our dear Nelson was a hot mess, and the clarity of the Warner Archive DVD lends itself to the finding of ManTears. You see, she was willing to call off her engagement, but it was very public (Hollywood’s answer to the recent Royal Wedding, don’tcha know) and so that was a big fat No Can Do from the front office. There’s more to that, which I will explore in Part 3. So they were in love and screwed. Story of their lives. Here is the “wooden” Eddy being quite emotional (thanks to Kitty for the capture of this excellent find!):

She sees it, too. This is the moment right before she reaches up and strokes the back of his head. You know—either Nelson was a REALLY REALLY GREAT WAY ABOVE AND BEYOND AWESOME ACTOR…………….or he wasn’t. Just as in the opera sequence he’s singing, he’s in love with this girl and he knows he’s going to lose her and it’s beyond his control. Worst feeling in the world? Yeah, probably.

One more candid from the set of Maytime, this time thanks to Angela:

Hand on her back/the back of her chair, just resting there because he likes to touch his girlfriend a lot.

Coming up in Part 3: the wedding looms closer, and we will explore some attempted negotiations to call it off, as well as analyzing some extremely telling notes, handwritten by Jeanette, that deal with this time in her life.

For those of you who don’t think there’s anything to see here….please get your eyes checked. In all seriousness, if all I do with this blog is make you QUESTION what you’ve been told by some old crusty politically correct fan club…I’m doing my job.

I’ll be back!

 

The MacDonald/Eddy “Feud”

On the set of Sweethearts, 1938, where the “feud” rumors officially got started. This picture is one in a whole series that they did showing them “fighting” — to prove it was all a load of crap. Didn’t quite work. Even today, there are people who say, “I heard they hated each other.”

This won’t be one of those posts where I pontificate for paragraph after paragraph… I’ll start by letting Nelson explain the whole situation to you. Here he is, talking to Jack Parr in 1960.

“Oh, cut it out!” is his reaction when it is suggested that he and Jeanette didn’t get along. And at the end, you can almost hear the man shrug his shoulders as he says, “Whaddya gonna do? I love her; I think she loves me.” And Parr continues by asking if Nelson ever sees her and Nelson responds, “Yeah, all the time.”

Funnily enough, Jeanette made notes on a page of the unpublished manuscript of her autobiography to tell a very similar story, only she has an extremely interesting take on things:

Jeanette’s notes here concerning Sweethearts are as follows:

Nelson / Woody / Stromberg

Rushes–

Feud? (Yeah. “Feud? What feud?”)

Then some notes about the plot: “Play within play / married couple desperately in love / jealousy over secretary / quarrel”

(I’m resisting the urge to point out that it looks like “desperately in love” was written in as an afterthought, since it doesn’t line up with the rest of that line, and I REALLY want to know what synapses were firing in that red head of hers when she wrote that down. Gah.)

“Nelson’s acting ability” ……….was minimal. You can say it, Jeanette. Side note: It pisses me OFF when people say their chemistry was “just acting” but then pan Nelson as an actor. EITHER HE WAS A GOOD ACTOR OR HE WASN’T. You can’t have it both ways, guys. He was a mediocre at BEST actor who loved his leading lady so he is his most convincing with her because he isn’t acting. His performances without her are….well……. yeah. Either call him a good actor or decide he wasn’t acting, but don’t call him a good actor who can’t act.

And then, here’s the kicker:

“I’m sure rumors started by LB–“

Yep. L.B. Mayer was reeeeeeally sick and tired of the two of them being a thing at this point. He’d gone to all the trouble to finance a very expensive, more-or-less arranged marriage for Jeanette (which will get its own post in due course, I’m sure) and he’d already threatened Nelson AND Jeanette a number of times at this point, and they still were “carrying on” and “not being good boys and girls”…….and Jeanette was pregnant with Nelson’s child during this movie, as has been verified by people who worked in wardrobe and Jeanette’s own sister. That’ll be a separate blog post, chickens, let’s not get sidetracked. Anyway, it would have suited Mayer just fine to have people think they didn’t like each other, because everybody really thought (my grandmother included, she was a huge fan and never quite “forgave” Jeanette for marrying Gene) that they belonged together. I can totally see Mayer’s logic, here. If the public thinks they hate each other, maybe they’ll stop suspecting they are really in love. The studio got literally hundreds of thousands of letters of “protest” when Jeanette married Gene. A good feud will maybe kill some of those rumors and at the same time generate publicity. I bet you’re right, Jeanette. You’re not stupid.

Bottom line? There was no feud.

There were artistic disagreements, probably loads of private fights, and indeed, a couple of breakups through the more than thirty years of their relationship……but there was no feud.

And just for fun, here are a couple of my favorite candid shots of them on the set, showing just how much “feuding” they were doing. ❤

Nelson, it’s very good for you, even if it does stink.

Recording the music for Maytime. With his completely necessary arm around her, and her catnap chair in the background. I dig the socks and sandals, J-Mac. Do that all the time.

I won’t tell you guys how I like to caption this picture….

Aww, Nelson. ❤

 

Until next time—–