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?

January 14 – We Will Remember

Fifty years ago today, we lost our dazzling Iron Butterfly.

An excerpt from Nelson’s letter to Jeanette’s fan club — incidentally, the same organization that tried (and old members of that defunct organization are still trying) at every turn to minimize his importance and vehemently deny the role he played in Jeanette’s life:

Your grief is mine, as you must know. And I appreciate the many letters expressing sympathy to me personally in the passing of a great lady, a most beautiful songbird, Miss Jeanette MacDonald. I cannot believe such loveliness is stilled. The world has done me the great honor to associate my name with hers in this sad time. It was indeed a privilege in life to have worked and played with Jeanette. 

Later, he told the Boston Sunday Herald, “I’m asked to reminisce about my life with Jeanette. I am asked to recall funny happenings, so-called interesting incidents of our working life. People just don’t seem to understand that I’m terribly upset. That I am feeling extremely low. Besides which, it seems to me almost sacrilegious to talk of happier days at a time like this. I shall be at the funeral on Monday. It will be the most miserable day of my life.”

It’s bad enough that she died at age 61. The way she died, the way she was allowed to die, is, to me, the most horrifying chapter of this whole saga.

Nelson, who could only be described as in good, robust health before this happened, declined at an alarming rate of speed and joined her in death not quite 26 months later at age 65. A frequent happening among devoted couples of long standing. Don’t tell me that’s a coincidence. (Gene Raymond, a heavy smoker with a long history of drinking too much, made it to a few months shy of 90. Go figure.)

This is the part where I say that I could never have imagined that I would care so much about two people who died twenty years before I was born…but I’ve loved old movie stars my whole life, so that wouldn’t be strictly true. However, other people whom I’ve loved at this “level” — Katharine Hepburn immediately comes to mind — have had their truth universally accepted for a long time. Fifty years after Jeanette’s death, there are STILL people who would deny the truth about her life. There are STILL people who leave deliberately horrendous book reviews and nasty remarks for Sharon Rich, who has done more than anyone (except perhaps Jeanette’s sister Blossom, who made the choice to communicate the truth to Sharon all those years ago, and started this ball rolling) to get the word out about the truth of Jeanette’s story.

But we’re a valiant group. We keep meeting, we keep discussing, we keep adding bits and pieces of information to this story. We keep researching, we keep introducing new people to these movies, we keep Skype-ing and calling and texting and writing and making youtube videos and colorizing pictures and laughing and captioning and theorizing and screen-capturing and wanting to hug them and protect them and ask them questions and crack their heads together.

They deserve our best because they gave us their best.

They deserve our best because fifty years ago they didn’t have the support of a group of people who loved them for themselves, and not as idealized, angelic pedestal-sitters. Fifty years ago it wasn’t possible for them to live openly in a way that is possible today.

I want them to have the recognition that they deserve as artists who gave us a very unique and specific gift, and I want their truth to be understood. I know I’m not alone. I learned from the pioneer of this particular movement.

Basically, what I’m saying here is that I write this blog for Jeanette and Nelson. They are why I’m here and who I’m working for, because they are worth it. Keeping that in mind makes it very easy to elect to keep going.

God KNOWS we love you, Jeanette. We miss you terribly even though we never met you. We won’t stop studying and telling your truth. If this blog is helping do that, well, it’s a privilege.

Jeanette Anna MacDonald

“Stunning and Startlingly Beautiful”

June 18, 1903 – January 14, 1965

We Will Remember.

❤

Oh, For a [Real] Man!

If there’s one thing you learn QUICKLY when you become a Jeanette MacDonald fan, it’s that you have to pick a “side” regarding what you believe about her marriage to Gene Raymond and her relationship with Nelson Eddy. You can say you’re staying neutral, or that you don’t care, or that it doesn’t matter because you just enjoy her work and think her personal life was nobody’s business. Yeah, that’s great and all, but that’s not really how this works. When you’re a member of the uber-famous, your life, to some extent, becomes everybody’s business. That’s the price of fame, kids. If nobody was interested in the private, personal lives of famous people, the field of biography wouldn’t be a thing. We care. We’re interested. Actually, we’re fricking nosy. And because we care, we form opinions. We study. We dig. We become Cold Case Detectives and Monday Morning Quarterbacks.

I’m a big fan of analyzing pictures. It’s not foolproof, it’s maybe not always 100% accurate, but it’s fascinating. Without going into a lot of the technicalities (which, if you’re reading this blog, you’re probably pretty aware of anyway) of who was where, when and why, what I’d like to do with this post is just offer my thoughts on some pictures. I’ve already made my case about Gene’s unfathomably unforgivable handling of Jeanette at the end of her life, and if I go into all that again, I’ll just get pissed and rant a lot. If you need to review that, find the post about it.

There is no arguing that the two “main” men in Jeanette’s life were Nelson Eddy and Gene Raymond, no matter what stance you decide to take on the workings of her relationships with them. She actually knew Nelson first (late 1933) and dated him first, so their relationship is longer, but in general terms, give or take a couple of years, the length of the two relationships is comparable. Both relationships continued until her death in 1965.

I think Gene is a useless jerk, basically. Sometimes amusing, sometimes affable, sometimes watchable, sometimes harmless, but usually, he’s just kind of a dick. He drinks too much, he has an inferiority complex and he acts like a shitty little bully with his body language. He’s not more famous than Jeanette, he’s not wealthier than Jeanette, and on one hand he had absolutely no problem being kept by a wealthy, older woman (he married again, into a similar situation, after Jeanette died); on the other hand, he seems to be kind of frustrated—and you can hardly blame him, if we’re being honest—but his frustration manifests itself in the way he treats Jeanette. She was “the balls” in the operation, no doubt, (and I’m quoting someone who worked with the two of them on The Guardsman), but at the same time, there were many cases of people witnessing him acting like an ass: browbeating her mercilessly at a dinner party where they were the guests (until someone had to actually tell him to knock it off) while Jeanette just looked at her lap and took it. There is the well known story of him throwing the plate of party snacks at the wall in 1961, Jeanette was helping fix stuff for a party that night and Gene came in, drunk, and flipped his lid. People say that she would have left him in a heartbeat if he actually treated her badly, but that’s WAY over-simplifying the situation. One of her friends, when asked why she stayed with Gene, answered, “Guilt.” I think she did care for him and I think she did feel bad about involving him in some of this mess, to some extent. At the same time, he certainly didn’t starve and as long as he didn’t try to keep her from seeing Nelson, stuff was status quo. Anyway, the moments cited above are just a couple of examples, and certainly every marriage has rough parts, but there is a frequent undercurrent of dischord and tension in their pictures together. Yes, I know there are sweet pictures of them, there’s no denying it. I’ve seen them. However, I also find that Jeanette frequently looks “social” with Gene—politely happy but not lit from within and glowing. She looks like the elevator isn’t going to the top floor—her smile doesn’t reach her eyes. Many times, she does not look happy and comfortable with his hands on her.

I’ll be blunt: the way he touches her a lot of the time skeeves me right the hell out. He grabs her hard, his fingers look like they’re digging, it looks like he’s trying to overpower her. It looks like it’s about control. He looks like he squeezes too hard. His hands are not gentle, loving, sexy or kind. They are awkward and they handle her roughly. It’s frickin’ weird. He has a thing about grabbing her upper arms. If you’ve ever seen Smilin’ Through, you may have noticed it in the way he holds her throughout the movie.

Or in real life:

(She looks SO sarcastic in that picture.)

And with Ralph Edwards:

I mean, he could just as easily have his hand on her waist in SO MANY pictures, but he prefers the arm hold thing (less intimate and loving; more controlling). And he isn’t grabbing her hard in the last picture, but it’s still very much a “thing” that he does. These examples are just a sample of the plethora of pictures where you can see it, all from different periods in their lives. And he’s the only person I have ever seen consistently hold her arms like this. I have a couple thousand pictures of her lying around on various hard drives and flash drives and have been interested in her for about thirteen years. I don’t pretend to know everything, but I know enough to have an opinion based on available evidence.

Here’s a shot of her and Nelson “backstage” at a radio broadcast in 1945. At first glance, it’s a cute picture of them:

But let’s look more closely at her arm and hand:

The bruised vein on the back of her hand looks like she could have just inadvertently hit it on something, right? No big deal.

But the bruises on her arm are clearly fingerprints. Three of them. And who do we know who constantly grabs her by the upper arms?

Ding ding ding, we have a winner.

Makes you a little sick, doesn’t it? I’ve never grabbed someone hard enough to bruise their skin in multiple places, but I imagine you’d have to do it pretty hard. So, was she trying to wrench away when she hit the back of her hand and caused the other bruise? Who knows.

I was fortunate to be able to view/work with an episode of Toast of the Town, August 5, 1951, at the Library of Congress. Gene acted as MC that week and Jeanette was the guest star. Here she is trying to remove his hand from her inner arm:

I hope to be able to provide the actual video footage of this happening some day, but he grabs her by her inner arm and her hand immediately flies up to loosen it. You’re hurting her, asshole. Let go.

And speaking of their appearance on that show, WHY does he have to have this weird deathgrip on her arm?

Is it not enough that he’s already holding her hand? I’m telling you, this two-handed control thing that he does with her is really effing strange.

She’s fully enchanted with his clutching and slobbering, as you can see. 1948-1952 was a stinking rough time by all accounts anyway, but gee.

And then there’s this charming moment:

Was he drunk, here? Was he goofing off? I don’t know, but this picture does not make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Fred MacMurray is just trying to not get involved. Jeanette looks like she would appreciate it if he DID get involved. I’m not sure exactly what her expression is conveying, but it isn’t delight. Maybe quit strangling her, Gene.

And, at first glance, when I saw this next picture, I thought it was adorable. No lie. And I even said so on facebook. Which launched some conversation, including Angela’s very well-made points that made me reconsider that first opinion. Upon actual study of it, here we go again. Can’t you let her just……put her arm around you if she wants to? Why ya gotta hold her hostage all the time?

She does not seem to be participating in this picture as much as he wants her to. You’re trying too hard, sir.

I can’t find the picture that made this super clear (if I do, I’ll edit the post to include it), but another thing Angela and I were talking about with regard to Gene’s treatment of her is that Gene seems to have no problem blowing his cigarette smoke in her face. We’ve seen it in a number of pictures where he’s doing this, but I don’t have any of them saved as “smokeblowing.jpg” so it would take forever to find them. When I do, I’ll stick them in. But……she’s not a smoker. So, again, don’t be a dick, Gene.

I just get a snarky, sarcastic vibe from them 60% of the time. And I get a “he looks abusive” vibe 25% of the time. And 15% of the time they look cute.

And then there’s Nelson.

Nelson, who was photographed with her hundreds and hundreds of times, both posed promotional photo shoots for their films and candid shots, over their 32 year relationship.

Nelson, who has a really hard time keeping his hands off of her, but whom I have never, EVER seen with his hands on her in anything other than a loving, gentle, supportive, interested and often sexy way.

We’ve seen them look unmistakably pissed at each other:

But notice how their clear displeasure is manifested through looks, not potentially harmful touching. This is how grown-ups argue, Mr. Raymond.

These two people stare at each other a lot, often when the other is not looking back at them. I have never seen her look at Gene, or anyone else, for that matter, with the same expression with which she is staring at Nelson in that second picture. My God.

Study Nelson here (click on the photo to enlarge it), between shots of I Married an Angel. We know Jeanette had a lifelong phobia of stairs, which may have something to do with why she’s being secured in place here. Nelson has one arm around her back and his other hand is on her stomach, keeping her steady and balanced. Notice that he is watching her body and that his face is pretty serious—the boy is singularly devoted to keeping her safe. He’s probably not thinking that in so many words, but his face and stance indicate that he’s not about to let anything happen to her. And the thing I love about this, too, is how relaxed her arm is, on his shoulder. She’s not gripping on for dear life because she KNOWS he’s got her. She’s comfortable enough to be arranging her dress and not look like she cares at all about being up there. She trusts him.

On the subject of stairs, look at this darling gentleman, giving a tutorial on how to hold a lady’s arm in a supportive and sweet way. There’s a perfectly good railing behind him, but who wants that when he’s right there to offer his gallant assistance?

He brings her flowers on the set.

He cuddles her on the set and manages to not look like a creeptastic control freak bully. His hands and arms are gentle and cozy.

He holds her hand without cutting off her circulation.

He finds ways to clue people in to how he feels, even during staged publicity shoots. I’m sure he was ORDERED to hold her finger like this. Don’t you think?

He sits with his arm draped around her. Not all clutchy and grippy and weird, but relaxed and easy because it belongs there and this feels natural to these people.

When given the choice between the arm grip and the waist, Nelson picks the waist just about every time.*

*(and he doesn’t give two shits that Gene is standing right there, either.)

But they don’t even have to be touching to completely slay you with the way that they look at each other. Adrian might as well not even be there.

And that never changed. Ever.

 

Nelson treats her like he loves her. He touches her like he loves her. He looks at her like he loves her. He talks about her like he loves her.

Nelson is, for the most part, secure in himself—certainly as compared to Gene. He doesn’t need to overpower her, control her or put her down to get the limelight. He doesn’t bully her or yank her around. He adores showing her off. He leads the applause and acts like her biggest fan. He embarrasses her with the laser-like focus of his adoring attention. One of my favorite tiny moments is during a recorded rehearsal for one of their radio shows—she finishes her solo and there’s no real applause because there’s no audience, but you hear Nelson in the background saying, “Pure talent!”

That’s a real man, guys.

Of course they fought, and they had break-ups, and there are many things we wish we could go back and tell them to do differently, but that’s not the point of this post.

Why is this hard to comprehend? I mean, it’s one thing to maybe misinterpret one picture or a few pictures, but there are hundreds of these and they all tell the same story.

PS: A couple of these good scans came from the collection of Maria Escano, and I so appreciate being able to use them to help illustrate the (rather obvious) points of this blog! Thank you, Maria! 🙂

The Book You Need to Study

Check this out, two posts in one day!

(Trying to get this stuff done while it’s still fresh in my mind from the trip.)

I cannot stress enough how important I think Jeanette’s autobiography manuscript is. Obviously, Sweethearts is the sort of “mother ship” book, but if you are seriously interested in MacDonald reading beyond that, her autobiography manuscript should absolutely, 100% be your next stop.

Get it here. After that, your next move should be to devour The Irving Stone Letters, but that’s a subject for another post.

Jeanette talked on and off, many times, about working on/finishing her autobiography. It never did get published. One of the most basic problems was that it was not “juicy” enough to be considered an exciting read—well, that falls in line perfectly with the MacDonald publicity machine, public image and fan club offerings, right? Square, square, square. Boring, fuddy-duddy, churchy, Republican, suburban-type has-been movie star.

(…who liked to do the wild thing with Nelson Eddy in the sweet, sweet night.)

(…and said bad words.)

(…and actually consumed alcohol.)

She worked on her book a lot, and revised it a lot, and submitted it and was told to cut some of the early childhood, that people were more interested in after she got on the stage, so she did that. She hired people to help her and ultimately, it didn’t matter. She was not in good health and browbeating herself over what to include or not include in her book was too taxing. Fredda Dudley Balling, a well-known magazine writer, worked extensively on this project with Jeanette and noted that Jeanette could really only work a few hours a day, but the two of them soldiered on until they had this 350 page manuscript. When they submitted it, it came back all cut up with 50 pages of material deleted and that was the last straw. According to a letter from Fredda Balling dated March 6, 1965, Jeanette (in 1960, when this was happening) called her in frustrated tears and explained what had happened with the publishers basically pulverizing her manuscript. That was it. At great expense, Jeanette sold bonds, returned the sizable advance against presumed royalties and abrogated her contract.

The autobiography was done for.

That is, until it was discovered and put into the hands of Sharon Rich, who annotated it and got it out there for us to enjoy and study.

Study being the right word. Some of the things Jeanette has to tell us in this book are charming and amusing and wonderful. But the very BEST part is the handwritten notes literally all over the manuscript. She adds stuff, changes stuff, crosses things out, makes notes in margins, does [incorrect] math in margins…..it is a total field day for the person interested in studying this fascinating human being.

Here’s a sample page.

I mean, the whole book is like that. There are VERY few pages that she hasn’t marked up in some way. Fascinating stuff.

In and of itself, that’s plenty of reason to own this book.

While we were in Washington, I was thumbing through this thing for the 923842738429384236275347534953th time (why do I have to always lug such huge books with me everywhere I go?), and Angela and I got to talking about it. I did something with the pages of this book, the visual of which absolutely struck her and she insisted that I demonstrate the same thing on the blog. I agree, it’s pretty damn compelling.

Okay, so we’ve already said that this manuscript is 350 pages long, right? And that it was summer of 1960 that she was busy trying to get it finished.

So, as an experiment, let us open the book to its exact middle.

Oh. It’s 1930-31, she’s in Europe proving that her eye didn’t get shot out by an outraged royal. (True story. Buy the book.)

Well, okay, so she’s covered her childhood, her Broadway days and the very, very earliest part of her film career (up through 1930’s Oh, For a Man!). You get the sense that she’s a little behind schedule. You’re halfway through the book and she hasn’t even sung the Indian Love Call one freakin’ time! She hasn’t even met either of the two most significant men in her life, Nelson Eddy and Gene Raymond. She hasn’t discussed her marriage, she hasn’t confessed to a red hot love affair, she hasn’t talked about grand opera or WWII or MGM or ANY of that! Kinda funny.

Now, she discusses meeting Nelson, dating Nelson, the “attraction” they “might” have had for each other, meeting Gene and dating Gene. And this, dear readers, is the time in Jeanette’s life when the shit started really really hitting the fan and it never actually stopped. Here’s a crazy visual:

The gap where my fingers are? Yeah, on that page she has just gotten engaged to Gene. She has recently finished making Rose Marie. So we’re in, like, 1936. And look how LITTLE of her book is remaining. (Please note that I’ve pulled up only her manuscript pages. Sharon’s writings before and after have been left down with the covers on either side to get an accurate “measurement” of the manuscript.)

Why is it that she is so verbose about her early life, first boyfriend, stage work, traveling, European tour, Paramount movies………and then she gets to the mid-1930s—-the biggest, brightest, most meteoric time in her WHOLE LIFE—-and she can suddenly get from there to 1960 in NINETY-TWO PAGES???????? In a 350 page book, the last 92 pages take us from 1936 to 1960. That seems seriously, seriously off. (PS, I’m using the page numbers on the typewritten manuscript, not the page numbers that include all the annotations, etc. So yes, this number is real Jeanette pages.)

Why, then, is it like that? Why is she so tight-lipped (fingered?) about 1936-1960?

Here’s a list of what she was up to in that time period:

Films:

San Francisco

Maytime

The Firefly

Girl of the Golden West

Sweethearts

Broadway Serenade

New Moon

Bitter Sweet

Smilin’ Through

I Married an Angel

Cairo

Follow the Boys

Three Daring Daughters

The Sun Comes Up

Television Work: Numerous guest spots, two with Nelson, game shows, plus Prima Donna and Charley’s Aunt

Scores and scores of radio performances (many with Nelson) and recordings. National concert tours nearly too numerous to mention, beginning in 1939. One tour entirely for the War effort. TONS of war work, volunteer work, boards and causes and political involvements by the dozen. Two grand operas. A skirmish with the Met. An album of “Favorites” with Nelson that went gold almost immediately. Summer stock runs in The King and I  and Bitter Sweet.

That darling “marriage” to Gene Raymond, Grandest Useless Rat Fink of All Time. That happened, too.

……………….Ninety-two pages, Jeanette? Really? Of course, she does cover many of those things I mentioned, but she does so in a cursory sort of way, for the most part. If you’re looking for fantastic anecdotes about the Nelson movies or Nelson in general or, really, any other fun stories about most of her professional life, look elsewhere. She doesn’t have a lot to say.

Really, really weird. Until you stop and think that maybe she’s so cursory and tight-lipped about her life, starting in 1936, because she can’t talk about a solid 70% of it. Why?

Because it’s wrapped up around Nelson Eddy, that’s why. Because she was in love and she chose a hellishly complicated, stressful existence because she couldn’t kill that love. She doesn’t trust herself to talk in depth about working with Nelson, that much is obvious. And Nelson is so involved in nearly every other part of her life and his influence colored many of her decisions. So she just can’t talk about it. The readers would have loved to hear her thoughts about getting together with him in 1957 for TV and to record an album! But she doesn’t even mention it! Odd. I don’t care if you like Nelson or not. I don’t care if you like him better than Jeanette. The simple fact is that these two people, both incredible on their own, were BEST KNOWN, BEST LOVED and BEST REMEMBERED TOGETHER. It is with EACH OTHER that they were their best. It is because of their involvement with EACH OTHER that we are still talking about them at all. So a book about either one of them, written by them or not, must, by definition, include a lot of data about the other one. Except this one really doesn’t. And that’s just fricking strange. That should be an immediate red flag.

Because this woman, in 1960, was afraid to come clean about her life to the VERY PEOPLE who, in 1937, flooded MGM with heartbroken letters when she DIDN’T marry Nelson. Her frickin’ fan club had spewed so much Perfect Marriage bullshit for so long that these people have been totally convinced that her life was actually like that. She had a club President STEP DOWN (Marie Waddy Gerdes) from being President because she got to know and love Jeanette (named her kid Jeanette, too), and knew the real story, and chose Jeanette’s confidence and friendship over continuing to row the Golden Comet boat. If you really want to make yourself hurl, read the way these people wrote about her. I mean, yeah, it’s nice and all, but it is so totally saccharine that nobody could POSSIBLY, EVER live up to the ridiculous standard to which Jeanette was held. The hypocrisy is really stunning, when you consider the behavior of these people at club meetings and online since her death. They worship at the shrine of her imagined angelic, pure perfection, and act like total asses to anyone who might suggest that she was —-WHOA—- a real and fallible human being.

We are our own brand of batshit crazy, no doubt, but at least we know she puts on her pants one leg at a time like everyone else. At least we don’t freak the eff out when someone mentions that she enjoyed a Tom Collins or liked sex. I mean, good grief, those things are part of the person, just as much as her strong faith and red hair.

And yet, in 1960, her career had left her, her health was quickly leaving her, and the people who wrote her letters and sent her cards and paid attention to her and made her feel like a Big Fat Movie Star were those fans. Those fans with their totally outrageous pedestal. Imperfect and horribly flawed though they and their viewpoint were/are, they showered her with love and affection and in the final analysis, she couldn’t bear to disillusion them. She chose to put them first, to repay their love in kind, to let them keep their illusions. Jeanette put herself last many times in life. Too many. If she had delivered the shattering truth that they had been misled all these years, they would have crucified her and she couldn’t possibly have withstood their desertion. Not at that stage of the game. Those fans kept her going when little else was around to distract her from a rapidly declining existence.

She had toyed with telling the truth, but in the end, she didn’t. She didn’t outright lie (much)….she just avoided telling the whole story. And thus, the biggest and most important part of her prolific life can be treated in 92 pages.

And what about that marriage? Wasn’t that supposed to be the most glorious thing that ever happened? Why aren’t there endless tales of happiness and wonder and romance? That’s what the fan club printed ad nauseum all those years.

In actual fact, of the personal things she does talk about in those 92 pages, quite a bit of it at the end is devoted to how unhappy she was, many times. Gene was cold. Gene accused her of using her tears as a weapon, so she never felt like she could cry around him. That’s ridiculous. Gene’s mother was an unholy bitch. Gene came home from the war a changed man, and not for the better. Gene won’t answer her when she asks if he loves her. Gene doesn’t tour with her because he just ends up being Mr. MacDonald and she can’t handle the whining, so it’s better for everyone that he doesn’t go. You wonder how on earth he’s compatible with this sweet, warm, funny, sensitive woman. Gene didn’t want children. She did, badly. Desperately. But upon returning from her honeymoon, she notes that, “There was one subject I didn’t allow myself to pursue, except in my private daydreaming. The MacRaymonds had no children.” She never says anything about infertility. She just says the subject is off the table. Several other times, she writes of her longing to be a mother. Every single time, without fail, those passages are crossed out. Too painful. And she did have multiple failed pregnancies, just not with Gene. So it’s painful and it touches on the part of her life she’s not discussing, so it has to go. She also hides the truth about her health and her heart. She glosses over things that were tough.

In conclusion, I really would urge you all to buy the autobiography. Study it. Listen to the things she says, but maybe listen even harder to everything that she doesn’t say. It will astound you.

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.

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 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 MacEddyRaymonds, Part 1

Hi again.

Took a day off to write a chapter of the fiction novel I’m also working on, but alas, I returned, just as annoyed as ever that people are still being thick about the Eddy and the Mac.

So. Jeanette and Gene Raymond. Where does one, like, even start? On a doorstep? Well, if we’re to believe the much-publicized version of events, that’s how they met. On a doorstep, at a party. Apparently she got there before he did. He whistled. She turned around (oh, lord, J-Mac), subsequently they introduced themselves to each other (“I’m Jeanette MacDonald.” ….Cool story, I’m sure he’d never have known that.) and when the hostess opened the door, “Oh, how nice of you to come together!” Great.

So, they sort of started hanging out. They both liked to ride. They both liked to dance and socialize. Jeanette was approximately 47 times cooler than Gene on the Hollywood Social Ladder and so having her as a convenient way to get to all the good parties must have been super awesome. He played that card for a good twenty-some years more, until she got fragile and not so cool anymore and not so good for those party invites and then she got ignored and neglected and didn’t even have a phone in her bedroom and didn’t have a nurse for two weeks between having a nurse and going to Texas on a goddamn commercial plane (WHAT THE FUCK GENE RAYMOND. SERIOUSLY. PUT THE WOMAN ON A PRIVATE FLIGHT SO PEOPLE DON’T, YOU KNOW, AUTOGRAPH SEEK WHILE SHE’S OVER HERE TRYING TO DIE.)  to die in a hospital awaiting the surgery she should have had months before. But we’ll get to that later. Let’s actually stick, for now, to the time of life when I don’t want to strangle Gene with my bare hands!

So there they are. Hanging out. Casually dating. Why is Jeanette even on the market for a man at this point? After Naughty Marietta and Rose Marie, she was entangled in the considerable charms and bed sheets of Nelson Eddy, right?

Weeee–eeellll……

So here’s the deal, in a nutshell. Marietta is a wonderful beginning. Sparks a’flyin’ every which way. By the time they’re done with that movie, they’re “a thing”. Nelson’s mom is a little dubious. Babygirl had quite the reputation for having some pretty busy drawers back in the day and may-or-may-not have been getting private summons to L.B.’s office for you-know-what even as Nelson was moving in. Hilarious that Isabel Eddy is put off by this, considering how much MORE wild her own son was! Luise Rainer was told by Mayer that, “Jeanette MacDonald sits on my lap when she signs a contract with me.” (And no, that’s not a rumor, I’ve seen the footage of those words coming out of her mouth.) So whether that’s true or not (the fact that Rainer reported it is true, I’m saying whether or not the actual action is true), Mr. Mayer had it pretty bad for our Redhead. So when she takes a liking to Nelson, whom Mayer does not particularly like…….well, Mayer decided he likes Nelson even less, basically. Anna MacDonald, Jeanette’s mom, doesn’t like Nelson either. She sees him as a threat. Funny, she never felt that way about Gene. Why? Because her daughter a) wasn’t passionately in love with Gene and b) Gene never tried to alter the course of her career. Nelson had opinions about what she did. You know, because he legit gave a damn. Anna perceived Nelson’s opinions + the fact that Jeanette was really into him as a direct threat to her own security.

So after Marietta wraps, Nelson and Jeanette continue to date and, reportedly, he got pissed because she went out dancing without him–even though he hated to go out–and he saw her picture in the paper at some nightclub and they had a fight about it. Both of them were a lot immature back then. He was probably worse, but she was no picnic. He was jealous and on the possessive side of annoying. So they have a fight about it over at his and his mom’s house (who, by this point, has seen enough of Jeanette that she has decided she loves her and that feeling lasted the rest of Isabel’s life. The two became very close.) she politely excuses herself and beats it. Nelson stomps upstairs in a huff, Jeanette follows him to continue fighting (one of those “last word” types, I imagine she was) and, welp, whaddya know, at long last, the relationship is consummated. It was rough and Jeanette’s shirt got torn. Nelson, horrified at himself for having been something of a brute, is freaking out with remorse. She’s trying to get dressed. Her shirt is torn and she needs an alternate plan for clothing and….oh, hey, round two. She, of course, told her sister Blossom all this later, and intimates that, list of conquests or not, she “lost control” for the first time with Nelson. And the crowd cheers.

But then things hit a snag, because Nelson wants to get married. He wants Jeanette to quit movies and raise a family and follow him around on concert tours. She thinks that is a pile of steaming BS and tells him so. So, at an impasse, they sort of break up. That’s when she met Gene. So she really is just hanging around with Gene, dating him casually, while being unable to resist Nelson when he comes sweeping in with renewed efforts around August of ’35. So they resume and leave to go shoot Rose Marie on location at Lake Tahoe. Here’s a couple of pictures of them dating around this time:

They went to see Maytime on stage (the film version of which was soon to be theirs) and this picture was taken backstage with the leading lady.

See his arm around her? See her perfectly RIDICULOUS grin? See his??

Definitely dating. So all you people who say they were NEVER romantically involved—adios! She even says that in the squeaky clean, severely edited, mostly-only-useful-for-her-handwritten-notes autobiography manuscript. She alludes to “whatever attraction Nelson and I may have had for each other” (does NOT deny it) and mentions dating him.

Okay so off to Lake Tahoe they trot, romance rekindled. Jeanette is, even for her, unusually barfy on the curvy roads, but just attributes it to the curvy roads and change in altitude. They have a blissful time there, love in Indian Summer, if you will, and everything’s grand. Her sometimes boyfriend/financial adviser/old flame Bob Ritchie came up to Tahoe to visit and even brought her a puppy (the way to Jeanette’s heart: cake, ice cream and puppies) and she basically told him, “Thanks for the puppy. Bye!” So that relationship, which began in her New York days, was done. Here’s a candid shot of her on Lake Tahoe with Nelson. Please do not miss the way he is looking at her:

 

She had, back in LA, spotted an emerald ring that she loved, and Nelson, hoping for a better result the next time he brought up marriage, had reportedly spent $40,000.00 in 1935, making that rock his. In today’s money, that ring cost him $700,211.31. You might say the boy was serious. Up in the pines and sparkling waters of Tahoe, he tries again. She says yes. Here’s the rock:

And then things become, as they UNFAILINGLY DO WITH THESE PEOPLE, mucho complicado.

Jeanette is pregnant. Nelson finds this new development utterly thrilling. They’ll sneak off and elope and that’ll be that.

Oh, guys, if only. If only. (Although, really, it is my belief that if they had married then, the relationship would not have lasted. I think they needed to go through some of these tougher times to realize really how much they loved each other. I think, had they married in 1940-42 or even later, it would have been until death. They needed to grow up and realize how important they were to each other. They hadn’t done that quite yet in 1935, I don’t think.)

Jeanette, being the good little employee that she is and not having it in her to totally a) rebel (she was sassy, for sure, but by and large she was a pretty law-abiding citizen) and b) throw very personal cold water in Mayer’s face, decided she had to call the studio and talk to Mayer. Understand that back then, in long term contracts, you had to have studio approval to marry, divorce or have a child. So she was trying to play this by the rules. Nelson’s idea that it’s better to seek forgiveness than ask permission was a far better one, in this case.

Mayer says absolutely no on all fronts. Are we shocked? No marriage, and “get rid of the problem” ASAP.

She doesn’t want an abortion, but she doesn’t know what to do. She tells Nelson, he flips because she called Mayer behind his back, they have a huge fight, he stomps off, and poor Jeanette miscarries (she had a heart condition which made miscarriage exponentially more likely–something to be explored in a future post). She got in touch with her sister, Blossom, who went to Tahoe to be with her. Nelson doesn’t believe that she miscarried, he’s being a stubborn jackass at this point and accuses her of having an abortion and lying about it to him. They are done, done, done. For a few minutes, anyway. Blossom dropped everything and came to be with baby sister as she tried to get over her miscarriage and breakup and while she was there, she took this photo of Jeanette, wearing her glasses that she needed in private life and playing checkers with Jimmy Stewart, who had a supporting role in the movie.

Back in Hollywood, Nelson has cooled down and taken a walk and they try to talk it out and apparently spend the weekend together alternately committing mental suicide over their differences and screwing. They shot the finale, which, if you inspect it, has a real air of tenderness and poignancy to it—Jeanette’s face especially, kissing Nelson’s hand, holding it against her face… They’re stupid for each other, but they can’t get it together.

Jeanette needs a pal. She needs somebody to hang around with, to keep her company, to take her places and try to breathe some sense of fun back into her life. Gene is just that guy. He’s cute, he’s not too threatening, he’s not too demanding, he thinks whatever she wants to do with her life and career is fine, he doesn’t form strong opinions…in short, at that time in her life, he was just what the doctor ordered. Mayer, by the by, is thrilled with this. Nelson is out and the pretty damn effeminate Raymond is in. Good. There are rumors all over about Gene’s tendencies, so this will hush those up and keep Nelson “away”, too. Can we please just take a gander at Gene Raymond around this time?

….Darling.

So this goes on for a while and Jeanette suckers herself into believing that Gene has what it takes to make her happy. She says that he’s, “like Nelson, but without the rough edges.” Or any edges. I have never understood how anyone thinks the two men look alike, but there are people who think they do, and, indeed, they used to get mistaken for one another in public, which was very convenient for Nelson, I’m sure.

Gene proposed with a square-cut sapphire–not as thick or as grand as the emerald, but it’s still a very pretty ring. Here’s a picture (this is after they were married, you can see her wedding band as well):

And here’s their official engagement picture. They…..aren’t even making eye contact. She’s looking to the left of his face. Jeanette’s face is very much the lights are on but there’s no one home.

And that is where I leave you, in this first installment of this massive topic. There’s literally no way to cover all this in one blog post.

‘Til soon—

 

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—–

 

The Kiss

Okay, I don’t really anticipate being able to keep this blog in any sort of chronological order, I’m just going to make these posts as they present themselves to my brain, but I’ll try to give a little context for each. I have ideas for about four blog posts that are all completely unrelated, so I really think the best approach is just to do them and not worry about when each one would fall on the general timeline of their lives.

It came to my attention that on New Year’s Eve, ~1991 (at first the year was given as 1994, we are still looking for a copy of the actual article, but from what we know, we believe 1991-ish to be more accurate), well-known columnist Cindy Adams ran a story about New Year’s Eve during WWII and the movie stars of that time. She wrote that Jeanette and Nelson were Hollywood’s most married-like couple and that Nelson (who was well-known for his artistic ability) had sculpted a “version” of The Kiss, a very famous sculpture by Rodin, and that it had been a Christmas gift for Jeanette. She said that it was not an exact copy, and that the woman in the sculpture was wearing a little towel that was falling to the ground.

Is that true? I mean, it sounds like something artistic Nelson would do. And if it is true, it’s pretty darn cool! But where is it and how will we ever know for sure? Did Jeanette return it to Nelson for safekeeping at some point? Did Gene end up with it? Worse–did Ann? One feels pretty certain that neither of these parties would have kept it on display for the world. That it still exists today would be pretty unlikely. So how on earth do we find out?

Here is the wikipedia link to information about the original sculpture, and below is a picture of it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kiss_%28Rodin_sculpture%29

So, picture it, December, 1941. (I almost said Sicily, 1910, but I stopped myself.)

According to Jeanette’s handwritten notes, shooting of her final movie with Nelson, I Married an Angel, began shooting September 30, 1941 and ended December 23, 1941, with retakes dragging on until April of 1942.

So, first of all, they were making a movie together during the Christmas season. The bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7th meant that the US was officially at war. Christmas, check. Wartime, check. Now if we can just find some clue about a sculpture!

It’s been right in front of our faces the whole time, guys. Anyone who has ever seen I Married an Angel has seen the sculpture. Remember when the statue falls on him and he catches it during the beginning of the dream sequence?

Jeanette, admiring what very well could be her own ass.

Hello.

A “version”: not an exact copy, but stylistically similar: Check

The woman in the sculpture is wearing a “towel” that seems to be falling off: Check, even though I think it looks more like a sheet.

Also, because I think these details are cute–the woman’s hand over the man’s heart with his hand on top (GAH HOW MANY TIMES DO THEY DO THAT IN THEIR MOVIES) and her very protectively enfolded in his arms with her head buried in his chest. Nelson the protector, Nelson the defender, Nelson the security blanket. According to his writings, that is very much how he saw himself with her. So that all checks out, if we’re going to go down this bunny trail.

This movie was directed by Woody Van Dyke, their best friend and secret-keeper. They were all on their way out at MGM at this point, and indeed, some of the candids of Jeanette and Nelson on this set are the most intimate we see of them on any set. They were starting to not give a damn, in a big way. Woody loved to put inside jokes in his movies (first example that comes to mind is the giant picture of Nelson on the movie theatre wall in Cairo)…and plopping their sculpture right between their faces and lighting it well and having it fall and having him catch it and practically begging ANYONE to notice it sounds like the kind of thing they’d be into. The fact that it took until 2014 for someone to see it is hilarious. I bet they’re pleased with themselves.

We know Nelson was really at an artistic peak around this time. It is pretty common knowledge that this is the time period during which he sculpted the bust of Jeanette and his own self portrait (see below). He also sculpted Woody. He sculpted the busts that are seen when Jeanette enters the bank in the first scene–so they clearly were not adverse to using his work in the movie (see below). He also painted the portrait of Jeanette that is in Sweethearts, which was also directed by Woody (see below).

And here’s a picture of him sketching on the set of IMAA:

So clearly the man was very busy with his art around this time. Is the sculpture in the movie the 1941 Christmas present version of The Kiss? Maybe. Probably. I can’t prove that, but from where I sit, it looks pretty good.