Jeanette MacDonald


Jeanette Anna MacDonald was an American soprano and actress best remembered for her musical films of the 1930s with Maurice Chevalier and Nelson Eddy. During the 1930s and 1940s she starred in 29 feature films, four nominated for Best Picture Oscars, and recorded extensively, earning three gold records. She later appeared in opera, concerts, radio, and television. MacDonald was one of the most influential sopranos of the 20th century, introducing opera to film-going audiences and inspiring a generation of singers.

Early years

MacDonald was born Jeannette Anna McDonald on June 18, 1903, at her family's Philadelphia home at 5123 Arch Street. She was the youngest of the three daughters of Anna May and Daniel McDonald, a factory foreman and a salesman for a contracting household building company, respectively, and the younger sister of character actress Blossom Rock, who was most famous as "Grandmama" on the 1960s TV series The Addams Family. She was of Scottish, English, and Dutch descent. The extra N in her given name was later dropped for simplicity's sake, and A added to her surname to emphasize her Scottish heritage. She began dancing lessons with local dance instructor Caroline Littlefield, mother of American ballerina/choreographer Catherine Littlefield, when very young, performing in juvenile operas, recitals, and shows staged by Littlefield around the city, including at the Academy of Music. She later took lessons with Al White and began touring in his kiddie shows, heading his "Six Little Song Birds" in Philadelphia at the age of nine.

Acting career

Broadway

In November 1919, MacDonald joined her older sister Blossom in New York. She took singing lessons with Wassili Leps and landed a job in the chorus of Ned Wayburn's The Demi-Tasse Revue, a musical entertainment presented between films at the Capitol Theatre on Broadway. In 1920, she appeared in two musicals: Jerome Kern's The Night Boat as a chorus replacement, and Irene on the road as the second female lead; future film star Irene Dunne played the title role during part of the tour, and Helen Shipman played the title role during the other part of the tour. In 1921, MacDonald played in Tangerine as one of the "Six Wives." In 1922, she was a featured singer in the Greenwich Village revue Fantastic Fricassee, for which good press notices brought her a role in The Magic Ring the next year. MacDonald played the second female lead in this long-running musical which starred Mitzi Hajos. In 1925, MacDonald again had the second female lead opposite Queenie Smith in Tip Toes, a George Gershwin hit show.
The following year, 1926, found MacDonald still in a second female lead in Bubblin' Over, a musical version of Brewster's Millions. She finally landed a starring role in Yes, Yes, Yvette in 1927. Planned as a sequel to producer H.H. Frazee's No, No, Nanette, the show toured extensively, but failed to please the critics when it arrived on Broadway. MacDonald also played the lead in her next two plays: Sunny Days in 1928 in her first show for the producers Lee and J.J. Shubert, for which she received rave reviews; and Angela, which the critics panned. Her last play was Boom Boom in 1929, with her name above the title; the cast included young Archie Leach, who would later become Cary Grant.
While MacDonald was appearing in Angela, film star Richard Dix spotted her and had her screen-tested for his film Nothing but the Truth. The Shuberts, however, would not let her out of her contract to appear in the film, which starred Dix and Helen Kane. 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 The Love Parade, his first sound film, which starred Maurice Chevalier.

Film career

Paramount, controversial move to Fox Film Corporation

In the first rush of sound films during 1929 and 1930, MacDonald starred in six films—the first four for Paramount Studios. Her first, The Love Parade, directed by Ernst Lubitsch and co-starring Maurice Chevalier, was a landmark of early sound films, and received a Best Picture nomination. MacDonald's first recordings for RCA Victor were two hits from the score: "Dream Lover" and "March of the Grenadiers." The Vagabond King was a lavish two-strip Technicolor film version of Rudolf Friml's hit 1925 operetta. Broadway star Dennis King reprised his role as 15th-century French poet François Villon, and MacDonald was Princess Katherine. She sang "Some Day" and "Only a Rose." The UCLA Film and Television Archive owns the only known color print of this production.
Both Paramount and MacDonald were extremely busy in 1930. Paramount on Parade was an all-star revue, similar to other mammoth sound revues produced by major studios to introduce their formerly silent stars to the public. MacDonald's footage singing a duet of "Come Back to Sorrento" with Nino Martini was cut from the release print due to copyright reasons with Universal Studios, which had recently acquired the copyright to the song for an upcoming movie, King of Jazz. Let's Go Native was a desert-island comedy directed by Leo McCarey, co-starring the likes of Jack Oakie and Kay Francis. Monte Carlo became another highly regarded Lubitsch classic, with British musical star Jack Buchanan as a count who disguises himself as a hairdresser in order to woo a scatterbrained countess. MacDonald introduced "Beyond the Blue Horizon," which she recorded three times during her career, including performing it for the Hollywood Victory Committee film Follow the Boys.
In hopes of producing her own films, MacDonald went to United Artists to make The Lottery Bride in 1930. Despite music by Rudolf Friml, the film was not successful. MacDonald next signed a three-picture deal with the Fox Film Corporation, a controversial move in Hollywood; every other studio was far superior in the eyes of many, from their budgets to the fantastical entertainment of their films. Oh, for a Man! was more successful; MacDonald portrayed a temperamental opera singer who sings Wagner's "Liebestod" and falls for an Irish burglar played by Reginald Denny. In 1931, Don't Bet on Women was a non-musical drawing-room comedy in which a playboy bets his happily married friend that he can seduce his friend's wife. Annabelle's Affairs was a farce, with MacDonald as a sophisticated New York playgirl who does not recognize her own miner husband, played by Victor McLaglen, when he turns up five years later. Although highly praised by reviewers at the time, only one reel of this film survives.
MacDonald took a break from Hollywood in 1931 to embark on a European concert tour, performing at the Empire Theater in Paris and at London's Dominion Theatre, and was invited to dinner parties with British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald and French newspaper critics. She returned to Paramount the following year for two films with Chevalier. One Hour with You in 1932 was directed by both George Cukor and Ernst Lubitsch, and simultaneously filmed in French with the same stars, but a French supporting cast. Currently, no surviving print of Une Heure près de toi is known. Rouben Mamoulian directed Love Me Tonight, considered by many film critics and writers to be the perfect film musical. Starring Chevalier as a humble tailor in love with a princess played by MacDonald, much of the story is told in sung dialogue. Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart wrote the original score, which included the standards "Mimi," "Lover," and "Isn't It Romantic?"

MGM, Nelson Eddy partnership

In 1933, MacDonald left again for Europe, and while there signed with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Her first MGM film was The Cat and the Fiddle, based on the Jerome Kern Broadway hit. Her co-star was Ramón Novarro. The plot about unmarried lovers shacking up just barely slipped through the new Production Code guidelines that took effect July 1, 1934. Despite a Technicolor finale—the first use of the new three-color Technicolor process other than Disney cartoons—the film was not a huge success. It lost $142,000. In The Merry Widow, director Ernst Lubitsch reunited Maurice Chevalier and MacDonald in a lavish version of the classic 1905 Franz Lehár operetta. The film was highly regarded by critics and operetta lovers in major U.S. cities and Europe, but failed to generate much income outside urban areas, losing $113,000. It had a huge budget of $1.6 million, partially because it was filmed simultaneously in French as La Veuve Joyeuse, with a French supporting cast and some minor plot changes.
Naughty Marietta, directed by W. S. Van Dyke, was MacDonald's first film in which she teamed with newcomer baritone Nelson Eddy. Victor Herbert's 1910 score, with songs like "Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life," "I'm Falling in Love with Someone," "'Neath the Southern Moon," "Tramp, Tramp, Tramp," and "Italian Street Song," enjoyed renewed popularity. The film won an Oscar for sound recording, and received an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. It was voted one of the Ten Best Pictures of 1935 by the New York film critics, was awarded the Photoplay Gold Medal Award as Best Picture of 1935, and in 2004 was selected to the National Film Registry. MacDonald earned gold records for "Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life" and "Italian Street Song." The following year, MacDonald starred in two of the highest-grossing films of that year. In Rose-Marie, MacDonald played a haughty opera diva who learns her young brother has killed a Mountie and is hiding in the northern woods; Eddy is the Mountie sent to capture him. Nelson Eddy and she sang Rudolf Friml's "Indian Love Call" to each other in the Canadian wilderness. Eddy's definitive portrayal of the steadfast Mountie became a popular icon. When the Canadian Mounties temporarily retired their distinctive hat in 1970, photos of Eddy in his Rose Marie uniform appeared in thousands of U.S. newspapers. San Francisco was also directed by W.S. Van Dyke. In this tale of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, MacDonald played a hopeful opera singer opposite Clark Gable as the extra-virile proprietor of a Barbary Coast gambling joint, and Spencer Tracy as his boyhood chum who has become a priest and gives the moral messages.
In the summer of 1936, filming began on Maytime, co-starring Nelson Eddy, Frank Morgan, and Paul Lukas, produced by Irving Thalberg. After Thalberg's untimely death in September, production was shut down and the half-finished film scrapped. A new script was filmed with a different storyline and supporting actors. The 'second' Maytime, 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 was MacDonald's first solo-starring film at MGM with her name alone above the title. Rudolf Friml's 1912 stage score was borrowed, and a new song, "The Donkey Serenade," added, adapted from Friml's "Chanson" piano piece. With real-life Americans rushing to fight in the ongoing revolution in Spain, this historical vehicle was constructed around a previous revolution in Napoleonic times. MacDonald's co-star was tenor Allan Jones, who she demanded get the same treatment as she would, such as an equal number of close-ups. 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 an unimpressed Mayer used this to point out why Jones could not replace Eddy in the next project. The Girl of the Golden West was the result, but the two stars had little screen time together, and the main song, "Obey Your Heart," was never sung as a duet. The film featured an original score by Sigmund Romberg, and reused the popular David Belasco stage plot.
Mayer had promised MacDonald the studio's first Technicolor feature, and he delivered with Sweethearts, co-starring Eddy. In contrast to the previous film, the co-stars were relaxed onscreen and singing frequently together. The film integrated Victor Herbert's 1913 stage score into a modern backstage story scripted by Dorothy Parker and Alan Campbell. MacDonald and Eddy played a husband-and-wife Broadway musical-comedy team who are offered a Hollywood contract. Sweethearts won the Photoplay Gold Medal Award as Best Picture of the Year. Mayer dropped plans for the team to co-star in Let Freedom Ring, a vehicle first announced for them in 1935. Only Eddy starred, whereas MacDonald and Lew Ayres co-starred in Broadway Serenade as a contemporary musical couple who clash when her career flourishes while his founders. MacDonald's performance was subdued, and choreographer Busby Berkeley, just hired away from Warner Bros., was called upon to add an over-the-top finale in an effort to improve the film. Broadway Serenade did not entice audiences in a lot of major cities, with Variety claiming that New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles' cinema attendances were "sad," "slow,"and "sour."
Following Broadway Serenade, and not coincidentally right after Nelson Eddy's surprise elopement with Ann Franklin, MacDonald left Hollywood on a concert tour and refused to renew her MGM contract. Months later she summoned her manager Bob Ritchie from London to help her renegotiate. After initially insisting that she wanted to film Smilin' Through with James Stewart and Robert Taylor, MacDonald finally relented and agreed to film New Moon with Eddy, which proved to be one of MacDonald's more popular films. Composer Sigmund Romberg's 1927 Broadway hit provided the plot and the songs: "Lover, Come Back to Me," "One Kiss," and "Wanting You," plus Eddy's version of "Stout Hearted Men." This was followed by Bitter Sweet, a Technicolor film version of Noël Coward's 1929 stage operetta, which Coward loathed, writing in his diary about how "vulgar" he found it. Smilin' Through was MacDonald's next Technicolor project, the third adaptation filmed in Hollywood, with Brian Aherne and Gene Raymond. Its theme of reunion with deceased loved ones was enormously popular after the devastation of World War I, and MGM reasoned that it should resonate with audiences during World War II, but it failed to make a profit. 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, was adapted from the Rodgers & Hart stage musical about an angel who loses her wings on her wedding night. The script by Anita Loos suffered serious censorship cuts during filming that made the result less successful. MacDonald sang "Spring Is Here" and the title song. It was the final film made by the team of MacDonald and Eddy. After a falling-out with Mayer, Eddy bought out his MGM contract and went to Universal, where he signed a million-dollar, two-picture deal. MacDonald remained for one last film, Cairo, a cheaply budgeted spy comedy co-starring Robert Young as a reporter and Ethel Waters as a maid, whom MacDonald personally requested. Within one year, beginning in 1942, L.B. Mayer released his four highest-paid actresses from their MGM contracts; Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, and Jeanette MacDonald. Of those four stars, MacDonald was the only one whom Mayer would rehire.