Soprano, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. Five years after her 1920 debut in a Broadway chorus, she began appearing in films. Though she sang occasionally in opera, she was best known for roles opposite Nelson Eddy (190167) in film operettas such as Naughty Marietta (1935) and Rose Marie (1936).
| Jeanette MacDonald | |
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| Birth name | Jeanette Anna MacDonald |
| Born |
June 18, 1903 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA |
| Died |
January 14, 1965 Houston, Texas, USA |
Jeanette MacDonald (June 18, 1903 – January 14, 1965) was a singer and actress best remembered for her musical films of the 1930s with Maurice Chevalier (Love Me Tonight, The Merry Widow) and Nelson Eddy (Naughty Marietta, Rose Marie, and Maytime). During the 1930s and 1940s she starred in 29 feature films, two nominated for Best Picture Oscars, and recorded extensively, earning three Gold Records. MacDonald was one of most influential sopranos of the 20th century, introducing grand opera to movie-going audiences and inspiring a generation of singers.
Early Years
Jeanette Anna MacDonald was born June 18, 1903 at her family's Philadelphia home at 5123 Arch Street. She was the youngest of the three daughters of Daniel and Anna Wright MacDonald.
Broadway
In November of 1919, MacDonald joined her older sister, Blossom, in New York and landed a job in the chorus of Ned Wayburn's The Demi-Tasse Revue, a musical entertainment presented between films at the Capital Theatre on Broadway. (Future film star Irene Dunne played the title role during part of the tour.) In 1921, MacDonald played in Tangerine, as one of the "Six Wives." In 1922, MacDonald was a featured singer in a Greenwich Village revue, Fantastic Fricassee. MacDonald played the second female lead in this long-running musical which starred the famous Mitzi [Hajos]. In 1925, MacDonald again had the second female lead opposite Queenie Smith in Tip Toes, a George Gershwin hit show. MacDonald finally landed the starring role in Yes, Yes, Yvette (1927). MacDonald also played the lead in her next two plays: Sunny Days (1928), her first show for producers Lee and J.J. (The cast included young Archie Leach, who later changed his name to Cary Grant.)
While MacDonald was appearing in Angela, film star Richard Dix spotted her and had her screen-tested for his film Nothing but the Truth. But the Shuberts wouldn’t let her out of her contract to appear in the film, which starred Dix and Helen Kane, the “Boop-boop-a-doop girl.” In 1929, famed film director Ernst Lubitsch was looking through old screen tests of Broadway performers and spotted MacDonald. He cast her as the leading lady in his first sound film, The Love Parade, which starred the continental sensation Maurice Chevalier.
Motion Pictures
The Paramount Years
In the first rush of sound films, 1929-30, MacDonald starred in 6 films, the first 4 for Paramount Studios. Her first was The Love Parade (1929), directed by Ernst Lubitsch and co-starring Maurice Chevalier, a landmark of early sound films. MacDonald's first recordings were two hits from the score: “Dream Lover” and “March of the Grenadiers.” The Vagabond King (1930), was a lavish 2-strip Technicolor film version of Rudolf Friml’s hit 1925 operetta. Broadway star Dennis King reprised his role as 15th-century French poet François Villon and MacDonald was Princess Katherine. MacDonald introduced “Beyond the Blue Horizon” which she recorded three times during her career.
In hopes of producing her own films, MacDonald went to United Artists to make The Lottery Bride (1930). MacDonald next signed a 3-picture deal with Fox. MacDonald portrays a temperamental opera singer who sings Wagner's "Liebestod" and falls for an Irish burglar played by Reginald Denny. Don’t Bet on Women (1931) is a non-musical drawing room comedy in which playboy Edmund Lowe bets his happily married friend Roland Young that he can seduce Young’s wife (MacDonald). Annabelle’s Affairs (1931), was a delightful farce with MacDonald as a sophisticated New York playgirl who doesn’t recognize her own miner husband, played by Victor MacLaglen, when he turns up 5 years later.
MacDonald took a break from Hollywood in 1931 to embark on a European concert tour. She returned to Paramount the following year for two films with Maurice Chevalier: One Hour with You (1932), directed by both George Cukor and Ernst Lubitsch. This film was simultaneously filmed in French with the same stars but a French supporting cast. Rouben Mamoulian directed Love Me Tonight (1932), considered by many film critics and writers to be the ultimate film musical. Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart wrote the original score, which included the standards “Mimi,” “Lover,” and “Isn’t It Romantic?”
The MGM / Nelson Eddy Years
In 1933, MacDonald left again for Europe and while there, signed with MGM. Mayer lured MacDonald to MGM where her first film was The Cat and the Fiddle (1933), a Jerome Kern Broadway hit. In The Merry Widow (1934), director Ernst Lubitsch reunited Maurice Chevalier and MacDonald in a lavish and superb version of the classic 1905 Franz Lehár operetta.
Naughty Marietta (1935), directed by W.S. Van Dyke, was MacDonald’s first film teaming with newcomer baritone Nelson Eddy. The film won an Oscar for sound recording and received an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. It was voted one of the Ten Best Pictures of 1935 by the New York film critics, was awarded the Photoplay Gold Medal Award as Best Picture of 1935 (beating out Mutiny on the Bounty, which won the Oscar), and, in 2004, was selected to the National Registry of Films. MacDonald earned Gold Records for “Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life” and “Italian Street Song.”
The following year, MacDonald starred in two of the highest-grossing films of that year. In Rose Marie (1936), she and Nelson Eddy sang Rudolf Friml’s “Indian Love Call” to each other in the Canadian wilderness (actually filmed at Lake Tahoe). MacDonald plays a haughty opera diva who learns her kid brother (James Stewart) has killed a Mountie and is hiding in the northern woods; In this tale of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, MacDonald played a hopeful opera singer opposite Clark Gable as the he-man proprietor of a Barbary Coast gambling joint, and Spencer Tracy as his boyhood chum who points up the moral messages. On the “Ten Best” lists of the New York Film Critics and Film Daily.
In the summer of 1936, filming began on Maytime, co-starring Nelson Eddy, Frank Morgan and Paul Lukas, produced by Irving Thalberg. The 'second' Maytime (1937), was the top-grossing film worldwide of the year and is regarded as one of the best film musicals of the 1930s. “Will You Remember” by Sigmund Romberg brought MacDonald another Gold Record.
The Firefly (1937), was MacDonald’s first solo-starring film at MGM with her name alone above the title. MacDonald's co-star was Allan Jones. The MacDonald-Eddy team had split after MacDonald's engagement and marriage to Gene Raymond. But neither of their solo films grossed as much as the team films and by the fall of 1937, MGM was barraged with outraged fan mail. The film had an original score by Sigmund Romberg and reused the popular David Belasco stage plot (also employed by opera composer Giacomo Puccini for La Fanciulla del West.
Mayer had promised MacDonald the studio's first Technicolor feature and he delivered with Sweethearts (1938), co-starring Eddy. In contrast to the previous film, the co-stars were relaxed onscreen and singing frequently together. MacDonald and Eddy play a husband and wife Broadway musical comedy team who are offered a Hollywood contract.
After MacDonald suffered a miscarriage (Eddy's child) during the filming of Sweethearts (according to the book Sweethearts by Sharon Rich, page 237), Mayer dropped plans for the team to co-star in Let Freedom Ring, a vehicle first announced for them in 1935. Eddy made that film solo while MacDonald and Lew Ayres (Young Dr. Kildare) co-starred in Broadway Serenade (1939). MacDonald's performance was subdued (Eddy married Ann Franklin during the filming) and choreographer Busby Berkeley, just hired away from Warner Bros., was called upon to tack on a bizarre, over-the-top finale in a vain effort to improve the film.
Following Broadway Serenade, MacDonald left Hollywood on a concert tour and refused to re-sign her MGM contract. Eddy starred in a second solo film, Balalaika while MacDonald's manager was summoned from London to help her renogotiate. After initially insisting she film Smilin' Through with James Stewart and Robert Taylor, MacDonald finally relented and agreed to film New Moon (1940) with Eddy. Composer Sigmund Romberg’s 1927 Broadway hit provided the plot and the songs: “Lover, Come Back to Me,” “One Kiss,” and “Wanting You,” plus Eddy’s rousing “Stout Hearted Men.” This was followed by Bitter Sweet (1940), a Technicolor film version of Noël Coward’s 1929 stage operetta.
Smilin’ Through (1941) was MacDonald's next Technicolor project. This 1919 stage play had been filmed a number of times. MacDonald played a dual role—Moonyean, a Victorian girl accidentally murdered by a jealous lover, and Kathleen, her niece, who falls in love with the son of the murderer.
I Married an Angel (1942), was adapted from the sophisticated Rodgers & MacDonald sang “Spring Is Here” and the title song. It was the final film made by the team of MacDonald and Eddy. After a falling-out with Mayer, Eddy bought out his MGM contract (with one film left to make) and went to Universal, where he signed a million-dollar, two-picture deal. MacDonald remained for one last film, Cairo (1942), a snappy, cheaply-budgeted spy comedy co-starring Robert Young (Father Knows Best) and Ethel Waters, who played MacDonald's singing maid.
The Final Years
MacDonald followed Eddy to Universal, where they were scheduled to make one film together after he finished Phantom of the Opera (1943). MacDonald is shown during an actual concert singing “Beyond the Blue Horizon” and in a studio-filmed sequence singing “I’ll See You in My Dreams” to a blinded soldier.
After MacDonald and Eddy left MGM in 1942, they appeared frequently on radio together while planning several unrealized films that would have reunited them onscreen. Eddy was upset at how his first film turned out at Universal so their joint project at that studio fell through. They next sought independent financing for team projects like East Wind and Crescent Carnival, a book optioned by MacDonald. Other thwarted projects were The Rosary, a 1910 best seller (which Nelson Eddy pitched for a team comeback at MGM), The Desert Song and a remake of The Vagabond King, plus two movie treatments written by Eddy, "Timothy Waits for Love" and "All Stars Don't Spangle." In 1954 Eddy pulled out of yet another proposed team film to be made in England when he learned MacDonald was investing her own funds.
MacDonald returned solo to MGM after 5 years off the screen for two films. The Sun Comes Up (1949), teamed two of MGM's top female stars, Jeanette MacDonald and Lassie, in a melodramatic enlargement of a touching short story by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. MacDonald played a widow who has also lost her son, but warms to orphan Claude Jarman Jr.
An annual poll of film exhibitors listed Jeanette MacDonald as one of the ten top box-office draws of 1936, and many of her films were among the top 20 moneymakers of the years they were released. During her 39-year career, Jeanette MacDonald earned two stars in the Hollywood Walk of Fame (for films and recordings) and planted her diminutive feet in the wet cement in front of Graumann’s Chinese Theater.
Concerts
Starting in 1931 and continuing through the 1950s, MacDonald did regular concert tours between films.
When America joined World War II in 1942, MacDonald was one of the founders of the Army Emergency Relief and tirelessly raised funds on concert tours. President Roosevelt, who considered MacDonald and Eddy two of his favorite film stars, awarded her a medal.
Recordings
MacDonald recorded more than 90 songs during her career, working exclusively for RCA-Victor in the United States. Peter Bergman writes of her work: “Whether singing the sophisticated, brittle, and edgy songs from her Paramount films with Chevalier or the romantic exercises from her MGM operettas, Jeanette could always be relied upon to provide a mini-masterpiece. Her expressive vocal gestures are far more French and much more seductive than her Philadelphia upbringing would lead us to expect.”
Opera
Unlike Nelson Eddy, who came from grand opera to film, MacDonald in the 1940s yearned to reinvent herself in grand opera.
“When Jeanette MacDonald approached me for coaching lessons,” wrote famous diva Lotte Lehmann, “I was really curious how a glamorous movie star, certainly spoiled by the adoration of a limitless world, would be able to devote herself to another, a higher level of art. I am quite sure that Jeanette would have developed into a serious and successful lieder singer if time would have allowed it.” (Sweethearts, page 329)
MacDonald made her opera debut singing Juliette in Roméo et Juliette in Montreal at His Majesty's Theatre (5/8 &
Claudia Cassidy, Chicago’s high priestess of criticism, wrote in the Chicago Tribune: “Her Juliet [sic] is breathtakingly beautiful to the eye and dulcet to the ear." The same critic reviewed Faust: "From where I sit at the opera, Jeanette MacDonald has turned out to be one of the welcome surprises of the season...her Marguerite was better than her Juliet...beautifully sung with purity of line and tone, a good trill, and a Gallic inflection that understood Gounod's phrasing....You felt if Faust must sell his soul to the devil, at least this time he got his money's worth." TV
MacDonald's extensive radio career may have begun on a radio broadcast of the Publix Hour, 9/28/29. However, the time demands of doing a weekly live radio show while filming, touring in concerts and making records proved enormously difficult, and after fainting on-air during one show, she decided not to renew her radio contract with Vicks at the end of the 26-week season.
MacDonald appeared in condensed radio versions of many of her films on programs like Cecil B. In 1953, MacDonald sang "The National Anthem" at the inauguration of President Eisenhower, which was broadcast on both radio and TV.
MacDonald sang frequently with Nelson Eddy during the mid 1940s on several Lux Radio Theater and Screen Guild Theater productions of their films together.
MacDonald appeared on early TV, most frequently as a singing guest star.
On 2/2/56, she starred in Prima Donna, a TV pilot for her own series, written for her by her husband, Gene Raymond.
On Playhouse 90 (3/28/57), she played Charley's real aunt to Art Carney's impersonation in "Charley’s Aunt."
War Work
After the United States entered World War II in December 1941, MacDonald continued to sing in concerts and on radio, and much of her time was devoted to war work.
Musical Theatre
In the mid-1950s, MacDonald toured in summer stock productions of Bitter Sweet and The King and I.
MacDonald and her husband, Gene Raymond, toured in Ferenc Molnár's The Guardsman. Due to lackluster response, the leading role of “The Actress” was changed to “The Singer” to allow MacDonald to add some songs.
MacDonald also made a few nightclub appearances.
Marriage
On June 16, 1937, Jeanette MacDonald married blond film actor (and Nelson Eddy lookalike) Gene Raymond in a traditional ceremony at Wilshire Methodist Church in Los Angeles. Raymond was also a songwriter, and MacDonald introduced two of his songs in her concerts. But even with their infrequent attempts to work together, including the film Smilin' Though, the public was indifferent to them as a team as evidenced by only fair box office receipts.
Death
MacDonald suffered in her later years with heart trouble. Nelson Eddy, in Australia on a nightclub tour, pleaded illness and returned to the States at word of MacDonald's surgery. MacDonald died two days later on January 14, at 4:32 pm, with her husband at her bedside.
Jeanette Anna MacDonald was interred on January 18, 1965 in a crypt at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. He survived MacDonald by two years.
A decade after MacDonald's death in 1965, Gene Raymond remarried. Gene followed her on May 3, 1998 and was laid to rest next to Jeanette MacDonald at Forest Lawn, Glendale, California.
Controversy
A controversy exists concerning the private lives of Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy. In the biography Sweethearts by Sharon Rich (revised edition, 2001), ISBN 0-9711998-1-7, the author presents the two stars as having a lengthy off-screen relationship that began before MacDonald dated Gene Raymond and lasted, with a few breaks, until her death. Another biography, authorized by Gene Raymond, Hollywood Diva by Edward Baron Turk (2000), ISBN 0-520-22253-9, denies there was any such affair, as does the MacDonald fan club, which staunchly carries the torch for the MacDonald-Raymond marriage.
In MacDonald's autobiography (the 1960 typewritten manuscript published as a facsimile edition in 2004), ISBN 0-9711998-8-4, MacDonald writes: "I remember seeing Nelson for the first time and thinking he fulfilled most of my requirements in a man."
Epilogue
An editorial tribute to MacDonald in the San Diego Evening Tribune perhaps said it best: “Songs like ‘Rose Marie’ and ‘Indian Love Call’ espoused no great causes. They simply hinted that love and beauty and honor, however ethereal, had value and meaning...and that anyone could, for a moment at least, taste something of the ‘Sweet Mystery of Life.’”
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