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!!

I’ll See You Again, Part 5 (EXCLUSIVE FOOTAGE)

IT’S THE LAST DEATHBLOG HOORAY.

Maybe not last ever ever, but last for right now. I’ve been taking great pains to say everything I can think of to say right now, because I want to leave this bizness alone for a while. What was originally conceived as a 3-part blog (because of the 3 new chunks of footage we had to reveal) became a 5-part blog, but I would like to think I’ve been as complete as possible with the data we have right now. Anyone who sticks with this story in a serious way for a long time knows that, even all these years later, pieces of information are STILL being brought to light. It’s pretty amazing.

The story of Nelson’s death is well known. He was performing in Miami, March 5th, 1967, just after having returned from touring in Australia, when he became unable to speak and the side of his face went numb. He asked the audience to bear with him a moment, he was having trouble getting the words out. He then asked Ted (Paxson, accompanist and longtime friend) to play Dardanella, and maybe he’d get the words back. Ted, seeing that something was way wrong, jumped to his feet and got Nelson off the stage. Offstage, Ted and Gale (who had been offstage changing her costume–Nelson was getting ready to do the solo “special” song he sang for Jeanette every performance) helped him into a chair and called an ambulance. Nelson was unable to speak by the time the ambulance arrived, and would never speak again. He lost consciousness and died at 7:30 the next morning: March 6, 1967.

Ann Eddy didn’t go to Florida, she just waited for Nelson’s body to be shipped home.

The funeral held for Nelson goes directly against his long-held wishes, which he even went so far as to state in his will in 1959. Despite him telling the press that he was going to go change his will after witnessing the “circus” of Jeanette’s funeral, he didn’t actually do this. The 1959 will (and codicil dated June 19, 1964) is the one that stood. Nelson’s will and codicil are printed in full in Issue #53 of Mac/Eddy Today.

The final clause in Nelson’s will is as follows:

I believe the body is useless after death; therefore, I request the simplest and most inexpensive funeral possible, in any Protestant form, cremation and disposal of the ashes according to law. Let there be no sorrow over the remains, for at that time the soul will have found its destined way to the infinite. 

The man is a poet even in his flippin’ will. Its destined way to the infinite…. Oh, Nelson.

A sad comment on Nelson’s tiny circle: Jeanette’s will is full of many thoughtful personal bequests, and it is easy to take away even from that that she had many friends. The only personal bequests in his will are to Ann, her son Sidney Franklin, Jr., Ted, Gale, his dad, his half-sister and his manager. And he didn’t even LIKE two of those people. The World O’ Eddy was very, very small.

Just like Gene’s display of bad taste before her, Ann Eddy, eager to snatch her 15 minutes of fame, merrily chucked Nelson’s PRINTED WISHES right out the window and did exactly what the heck she pleased.

Was he cremated? Nope. It was an open casket service, just as Jeanette’s was.

Was it the simplest and most inexpensive funeral possible? No way.

Here is the third installment of the footage that Angela and I paid to have digitized—color footage from Nelson’s funeral. Like the others, it has never been seen since 1967. Don’t share it around the internet without our permission—it can only come from one possible place at this point, so we’ll know. 😀

Yes, Gene was a pallbearer. Yes, he looks pretty sad about it all. Yes, I still want to punch him in the mouth when he calls Nelson “Nels.”

Fun fact: He remarried and HIS WIFE’S NAME WAS NELSON. Bahaha.  Nelson Ada Hees, known as Nels. You can’t even make this stuff up. So at the end of the day, Gene got what may have been his fondest wish. (She was a wealthy heiress from Canada, and though their marriage was reported to not be a happy one, it also lasted until she died. Absolutely no liking-to-freeload-on-wealthy-women pattern here at all.)

Lloyd Nolan, on the other hand, looks absolutely devastated. He was, along with Z. Wayne Griffin, also a pallbearer for Jeanette. His remarks are very interesting in their wording, and his grief is palpable.

The funeral proceedings were broadcast over loudspeaker to those outside. Doesn’t sound very small and private, really. Granted, there are WAY fewer members of the general public there, but even so, hoopla was not what Nelson wanted.

AND THEN THIS HAPPENED:

Why, oh why, didn’t you two darlings get married? You’d have been so stunningly perfect for each other.

During the exchange pictured above, Ann was overheard making a remark to Gene which has been reported with two different wordings, nevertheless, both “sides” acknowledge that it happened.

“Now they can sing together forever,” is how Ann is quoted in Sweethearts.

Similarly, in Edward Baron Turk’s Hollywood Diva, Ann is quoted saying,  after walking over to Gene and kissing him, “Now they will sing beautiful music together again.”

Well, I mean, EITHER WAY, right…???

It’s a fitting end to all this.

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.