Jeanette MacDonald & Nelson Eddy Blog

SAN FRANCISCO—Shirley Temple Black quietly celebrated her 80th birthday this week after breaking her arm in a fall at her suburban San Francisco home.

Rick Ross, her Los Angeles-based attorney, says the former child star is doing fine. She turned 80 on Wednesday.

Black was the top box-office draw in the U.S. from 1935 to 1938. Her best-known films include “Curly Top” and “Little Miss Marker.”

After retiring from the big screen, she held a number of diplomatic posts, including U.S. ambassador to Czechoslovakia.

Black lives in the San Francisco suburb of Woodside.

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Mac/Eddy fans will remember that Shirley made her radio debut with Nelson Eddy on the Gulf Radio production of “The Blue Bird” - in which they sang “Silent Night” together...and a crazy woman in the audience stood up and pointed a gun at Shirley.

You can visit Shirley’s website here.

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Sandi Kimmel is a Musical Motivational Speaker, and mentions on her blog: “Of course, I also love singing with people who are not moving on but staying here. I love how the music makes their stay better and lighter and filled with healing energy. For example, Anne is an 84-year old friend who is bedridden with degenerative osteoporosis resulting in compression fractures in her spine. A once-spunky lady, she was wilted and depressed when I started visiting her. While she enjoyed my songs and my singing, I felt that something wasn’t clicking. One day, I asked her what kind of music she liked and she started singing a Jeanette MacDonald song. I asked her husband if they had a tape player but the antique machine he produced barely worked. I bought them an inexpensive stereo cassette player and put it next to her bed. Then I went through their tape collection and put ones I thought she’d like within her reach. Since that day, she’s been singing non-stop with the Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy tape, happy as a lark with a voice to match. And yes, she’s been feeling much better lately, too.”

Tags: This 'n That by maceddy
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Times changing for film critics
Younger generation shuns print for web
By ANNE THOMPSON, Variety

For a generation of film lovers weaned on Pauline Kael and Roger Ebert, imagining a world where moviegoers make their pic choices without the help of film critics is nearly unthinkable.

Fact is, that world is already here.

My USC film criticism students — who are film-obsessed and hardly representative of their non-cinephile peers — can’t name a working critic other than Ebert, and that’s thanks to his TV fame.
…
Gone are the halcyon years when Andrew Sarris and Pauline Kael inspired debate. Today, no critics dominate cultural discourse the way they did during the ’70s and ’80s. New York Times critics A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis have built passionate followings, and will likely become even more powerful as the NYT moves into the void left by newspapers that see no option but to cut back on their cultural coverage.

And while newspaper attrition continues, criticism both amateur and pro proliferates on the Web, aggregated by the inclusive Rotten Tomatoes and the choosier Metacritic.

“I used to think what I did ended up as fish wrap,” says Rickey. “But online movie reviews live in perpetuity.” Three months ago, she received a rush of mail about her 2005 review of “Brokeback Mountain.” A feature on the centenary of Jeanette MacDonald yielded more than 200 emails, including college students comparing Ernst Lubitsch and Nelson Eddy. “That piece was sent all over the Internet,” she explains, “all over the world. The Internet has made reviews not fish wrap anymore.”

Link

Tags: JEANETTE MACDONALD, NELSON EDDY by maceddy
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Isn’t She Romantic? Well, She Is and She Isn’t

By STEPHEN HOLDEN in The New York Times, Published: April 4, 2008

When Maude Maggart sings the Rodgers and Hart standard “Isn’t It Romantic?” in an ethereal voice with a supernatural glow, a song of blissful expectation transforms into a ghostly cry of loneliness. Because her voice suggests Jeanette MacDonald, who sang it in the movies, you have a sense of cultural multiple exposure: old Hollywood filtered through post-Woodstock folk-pop via Kate Bush. It is complicated and enthralling…

Maude Maggart continues through May 10 at the Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel, 59 West 44th Street, Manhattan; (212) 419-9331, algonquinhotel.com.

Link 

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Historical recordings of Jesse Crawford when organ rolls were still in style - before the Talkies killed the days of live organ music accompanying silent films!

Listen to “Beyond the Blue Horizon” here … and “The Love Parade” medley here!

Link 

Tags: Mac/Eddy Songs by maceddy
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