Judy Lewis – the illegitimate daughter of Clark Gable and Loretta Young, died last week at age 76.

As some of you know, I did a joint book signing with her years ago when I was promoting “Sweethearts” and she was first “coming out” with her autobiography and true story. At that time her story was considered oh-so-shocking with an impact not unlike Christina Crawford when she exposed Joan Crawford’s mothering skills in her tell-all book.

I spent about 4 hours with Judy and she indeed resembled both her mother and father. It was obvious just from looking at her that she was Clark Gable’s daughter. We discussed what a nightmare it was for illegitimate children of Hollywood celebrities to come forward and wondered how many others Gable and other stars might have had…sometimes without even knowing.

Her mother finally did admit that Judy’s claims were true but as far as I know, her half-brother John Clark Gable never publicly accepted her and they were not on friendly terms when I met Judy.

Below is the obituary that has appeared in many newspapers worldwide:

Judy Lewis, born November 6 1935, died November 25 2011

Judy Lewis, who has died aged 76, was the secret lovechild of Clark Gable and Loretta Young, but only began to learn the complicated truth about her parentage when she was about to get married.

For many years the identity of Judy Lewis’s famous father was kept from her in order to preserve her mother’s reputation. Neither Clark Gable nor the glamorous screen siren Loretta Young were able to tell the truth about their daughter’s birth.

“For most of my life, I’ve been unable to claim my real identity,” Judy Lewis told The Daily Telegraph in an interview in 2001. “The outside world was told that I was my mother’s adopted daughter. But look at my face. It’s obvious that I have Clark Gable’s features. I even have his slow left eye. I’m afraid that I also inherited his large ears. They were so prominent that I had an operation in childhood to reduce them. Before then, I was teased at school and called ‘Dumbo’. ”

It was only shortly before her death in August 2000 that Loretta Young finally acknowledged the truth, admitting to her authorised biographer that the baby she had “adopted” was actually her own daughter by Clark Gable.

Judy Lewis was born on November 6 1935 in Venice, where Loretta Young “hid” during the final weeks of the pregnancy. When Judy was eight months old, her mother placed her in a Roman Catholic orphanage in San Francisco, taking her back 11 months later .

The “adoption” was leaked to the Hollywood columnist Louella Parsons, who portrayed it as a generous act of mercy towards another woman’s baby.

Judy had in fact been born as the result of an affair between Gable, then 34 and married, and the 22-year-old Loretta during the filming in the Yukon of Call of the Wild (1935). Both were rising stars with promising careers ahead of them.

Loretta Young was a devout Roman Catholic, and viewed by cinema audiences as the quintessence of virginal purity. She was mortified when she discovered that she was pregnant, and realised that the scandal could destroy her career.

To avoid exposure, she devised an elaborate ruse. As soon as her pregnancy became apparent, she embarked on a tour of Europe; and on her return to Los Angeles she took to her bed, claiming a mixture of exhaustion and some unspecified illness.

Gable offered to obtain a divorce and marry her, but Loretta Young refused. “She told me later that her greatest regret was not marrying him,” Judy Lewis said. Gable subsequently married Carole Lombard.

A few years later Loretta Young married a radio producer called Tom Lewis, who believed her story about Judy’s adoption and became a father to the girl.

The couple had two sons, but Lewis started to resent Judy and never legally adopted her, although she took his name. He was never told the truth about her birth.

One day, when Judy was 15, she came home from Marymount Girls’ Catholic School to find Clark Gable in the living room: “He looked at me and said: ‘You must be Judy’. I said: ‘And you’re Mr Gable, aren’t you?’ We laughed, and he stayed and talked for maybe half an hour.

“When he got up to go, I walked him to the door and he took my face in his hands and kissed me on the forehead. I had no idea why he was showing me so much affection, but, of course, as I realised later, he was saying goodbye. I never saw him again.”

When Judy was in her twenties and engaged to be married, her fiancé, Joe Tinney, a young Los Angeles businessman, told her of the rumours surrounding her birth: “Don’t you know?” he said. “It’s common knowledge in Hollywood that you’re Clark Gable’s daughter.”

Judy Lewis was astounded, but could not bring herself to confront her mother for six years. When she finally insisted on knowing the truth, Loretta Young told her everything; but the revelation undermined their relationship, leading to a long estrangement.

After pursuing a modest career as an actress in the 1960s and 1970s, Judy Lewis left showbusiness to work as a psychologist, specialising in family counselling.

Her candid memoir, Uncommon Knowledge (1994), led to more emotional upheavals with her mother’s family and friends.

She told the Telegraph that she always cried when she watched Gable’s loving scenes with his on-screen daughter in Gone With the Wind (1939): “It’s very sad to me because he’s so dear with her. I pretend it’s me.”

Judy Lewis divorced Joe Tinney in 1972. Her partner, Steve Rowland, survives her, as does a daughter of her marriage.

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Kathryn Grayson

I just received news that Kathryn Grayson passed away last night at age 88.

No formal announcement has been made yet and it isn’t in the news yet. Sometimes it takes 2 or 3 days before an official press release is announced; this was the case when Susanna Foster died.  But I wanted to let everyone know.

Kathryn Grayson was a kind lady who in the early days of the club attended our Jeanette MacDonald Nelson Eddy club meetings in Los Angeles. Grayson was a fan of MacDonald’s and also, when she first came to MGM she was supposed to co-star with Nelson Eddy in what would have been his final movie there, Lucky Star.  In that movie Nelson would have played 2 roles and he had already read and made written notations on his script when he decided instead to buy out his contract and leave MGM.

More recently Kathryn Grayson attended the Nelson Eddy Drive ceremony at Hollywood Forever.  She spoke afterward to the group there. You can see pictures of her at the dedication ceremony at this link.

Sharon

Nelson Eddy and his 1940s lifesize sculpture of actress Anna May Wong, limited edition replicas available at www.maceddy.com

As you may know, we own the original of Nelson Eddy‘s excellent lifesize sculpture of the famous Chinese-American movie star, Anna May Wong. Although the sculpture is undated, we have a photo of Nelson working on it, and it would appear to be around 1947 or so. Although – on the back of it, Nelson signed his initials and then made a line of 4 dots, a space, then 3 dots. We don’t know whether this means 43, as in 1943?

We did offer this years ago and sold exactly one replica of it. Recently we’ve had some requests for it again but needed a few orders to cover the costs of prep work and a new molding to make it available again.

We have had enough interest to resume the project…and will offer it for this pre-launch at the same price as the other Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald limited edition busts, $795 plus UPS shipping. And we can ship worldwide.  The bust is lifesize but actually a larger piece because more of Ms. Wong’s torso is sculpted – not just a head shot. Many who have seen it think it is Nelson’s best sculpture.

You can learn more about the Anna May Wong bust and order it at this link.

Jeanette MacDonald & Lassie in The Sun Comes Up (1949)

Those who cling to the image of André Previn as a Wunderkind in a turtleneck may be gobsmacked to learn that April 6 marked his 80th birthday. In the course of a multifaceted career, Mr. Previn has distinguished himself as a symphonic conductor, a chamber musician, a jazz pianist, and a composer of symphonic and chamber music, opera, Broadway shows, concert song, popular American song, and Hollywood film scores. To mark this banner year, Mr. Previn has been involved in an exhausting international performance schedule….

Of his modus operandi as a composer, Mr. Previn asserts: “No notebooks or sketches. I just get to work on the first blank page. Even if I throw out the first week’s work, I’ve got to write something down. Once I’m over that hurdle, I write very quickly. It’s a habit that comes from my shabby Hollywood background,” he says with a chuckle, “writing scores under strict deadlines for MGM.”

Mr. Previn wrote his first soundtrack exactly half a century ago. It was for a distinctly minor picture, “The Sun Comes Up.” “Jeanette MacDonald, Lloyd Nolan and Lassie — go figure that billing. In any case, I was a kid at the time and just thrilled to see my name on that screen. After that, MGM knew I could handle their assignments, so I got an endless stream of cheap, fast movies. I like to think I’m writing better music than that now.”

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Jeanette MacDonald & Nelson Eddy in Naughty Marietta

Rotten Tomatoes was honored to sit down with Betty White to discuss her Five Favorite Films (hint: she’s a romantic at heart) and to revisit her incredible career in Hollywood — an impressive body of work that includes hosting her own self-titled talk show, her own variety show, creating iconic characters like “The Happy Homemaker” Sue Ann Nivens on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Rose Nylund on The Golden Girls, and winning five Emmys — all before jumping headfirst into movie roles. Read on to learn Betty White’s Five Favorite Films and hear her insights into great television writing, silly moments on the set of The Proposal, and her take on the art of the conversation.

Her five favorite films: Naughty Marietta, Out of Africa, Lost Horizon, The Bridges of Madison County, Kramer vs. Kramer. Re: her first choice:

I don’t think I’d be in this business if it wasn’t for Naughty Marietta, with Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald. I was 14 and I was SO in love with Nelson Eddy I thought it was the end of the world, and I didn’t just like Jeanette MacDonald, I was Jeanette MacDonald! You know, at 14. And at 14 I also thought, Nelson Eddy married somebody and I thought he needed a much younger woman. I think I saw Naughty Marietta 48 times. I wasn’t even interested in show business until then; I did school plays and that kind of thing, but I hadn’t thought of it as a career until I got hooked.

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The Hollywood actress Virginia Bruce has always been of interest to Nelson Eddy fans, if only because she co-starred with him in the 1939 film Let Freedom Ring.

Not many people know that Let Freedom Ring was originally supposed to co-star Jeanette MacDonald, and that it was planned as a follow-up film for Nelson with Jeanette in 1935 right after Naughty Marietta!

Of course there’s an added interest in Virginia Bruce because we know that she and Nelson dated for a time – not in late 1938 when they were filming Let Freedom Ring, but back in 1934 in Nelson’s early days at MGM!

Don’t forget that Jeanette MacDonald and Virginia Bruce also worked together in Jeanette’s first Hollywood film, The Love Parade. Virginia was one of Jeanette’s ladies-in-waiting.

But it is obviously Virginia’s connection to Nelson Eddy that most interests us, and what would have interested him beyond the obvious physical beauty. He went for young blonds, true, but not airheads. Virginia obviously had a keen mind; the biography reveals that at one time she thought to run for California legislature.

Scott O’Brien has done an excellent job in putting together Virginia Bruce‘s life story, and his book features several interviews with close friends and family. They provide a more personal view of the woman although sadly, she seems to have kept very much to herself. Her daughter with John Gilbert also did not share much of the intimate details with the next generation. It was up to them to rediscover Virginia through memorabilia and their somewhat limited personal interaction with her. O’Brien quotes one of her nephews: “She was very independent. She was in charge…like Hillary Clinton…a woman in charge. She wasn’t subservient. Maybe she was subservient to her husbands, but she was headstrong, especially for women in those days. ”

O’Brien also quotes Virginia Bruce: “Perhaps part of my tragedy will be that I do spoil men. I seem to be the type to attract men that are much stronger and more forceful than I am….Most of my theories about the relationships between men and women spring, naturally, from my marriage to John [Gilbert].” Of course, her short marriage to him was doomed due to his drinking. But it’s interesting that along with Nelson Eddy, she also dated Clark Gable, Jimmy Stewart and other major Hollywood players.

Obviously Virginia Bruce had her personal demons. They are mentioned candidly in the book, because Scott O’Brien’s sources did open up to him. I wish they had even been more candid but I know from researching Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy, there is often a tendency for sources to want to make these people look as good as possible, playing down the negatives. They don’t want to blurt out the bad stuff. They think they are protecting the person…and perhaps they are. But for posterity’s sake, we can lie to ourselves but we really do have inquiring minds…and we want to know all we can about how this lovely, gentle young actress became a lonely alcoholic in later years, despite having children and grandchildren.

Scott O’Brien’s picture of Virginia’s later life rings true to my own experience. Virginia Bruce was in and out of the Motion Picture Home during the same years that I knew Jeanette’s sister Blossom Rock, who also lived there. I was always interested in meeting and speaking with residents that had known or worked with Jeanette or Nelson. Yet I never interviewed Virginia Bruce. I visited her a couple of times but she was not particularly sociable or chatty. She was there once because she broke her hip; I don’t remember all the details but we heard that she was an alcoholic. (Of course, you couldn’t drink when you were there in hospital area, although some who lived in the Lodge or bungalows bought their own liquor across the street, or had friends smuggle it in to them.) The book notes that she was also treated there for cancer and cirrhosis. And yes, what I really remember about that is that here was a very ill woman but – she still smoked!

That never ceased to amaze me, because many in the Motion Picture Home were chain smokers – as was Jeanette’s sister Blossom.

I did not immediately recognize Virginia Bruce when I met her; she was heavy and much changed. She seemed pretty much a loner and regretted that she ended up her life cooped up in a small hospital room. Some actors, like Blossom Rock, made the best of life there and kept a busy schedule. Larry Fine of The Three Stooges was another optimist; despite a stroke that debilitated him even more than Blossom’s stroke, he’d set up a daily card game with his cronies and they’d play and smoke together for hours at a time. Sometimes Moe Howard would join them and they’d laugh about the good ol’ days and welcome any other old-timer who wanted to hang out.

But Virginia Bruce wasn’t like that, she seemed more bitter. And it’s borne out by a poignant quote from the book made by her: “Do you think when I’m gone anyone will remember that I had awfully dreamy eyes?” And another: ” Do you know Norma Shearer is just down the hall? She was the biggest of them all and here she is, blind and dying, after all that, all that fame and riches and now this. Maybe I haven’t had it so tough.”

I highly recommend reading Virginia Bruce – Under My Skin by Scott O’Brien. And I applaud him for writing about a lesser Hollywood star that others might not have bothered with. Her story is compelling. There are lots of pictures -including some with Nelson Eddy (take another look at the cover!) and some discussion of Nelson’s relationship with Virginia Bruce. After I finished reading it, I put Let Freedom Ring on my DVD player to watch, since I had a new understanding of what Virginia Bruce was all about. For once – I watched her throughout the movie instead of Nelson Eddy.

And maybe that’s my highest praise to a fellow movie star biographer – if after reading it you want to revisit that star’s films again – you’ve done your job.

Above, baritone Wilbur Evans with son Michael and wife Susanna Foster. Evans starred in the West End production of South Pacific.

Forget Phantom of the Opera, Nelson Eddy, Claude Rains, etc. For Susanna Foster, the real horror movie was played out in real life.

It seems that Michael Evans (Susanna Foster‘s son) has finally now begun telling in detail on his blog the painful details of his mother’s childhood and life…incidents that he talked to us about at the New York club meeting that left us somewhat stunned but very sympathetic.

Susanna’s mother Adie, his grandmother, was a monster – made Joan Crawford look like Good Housekeeping’s Mother of the Year!

The story is one of such horror, that one is amazed that Susanna Foster could have a career at all and become a movie star while still a teenager. Here’s an excerpt:

The Larson’s lived a comfortable upper-middle class life until the crash of 1929, and then all hell would break loose for millions of Americans.

After about 1931 when the dollars mysteriously ran out, things swiftly declined; Les could not find work, if he did it was menial, sold type writers, fixing small appliances etc. They often moved every month, being evicted for lack of rent $$.

There were many ‘episodes’ of witness, here’s just a few mentioned through the prism of my mother’s denial;

• Victoria’s [sister] Scarlet Fever-Quarantined sign on the door.
• Gas company turned off the gas- no heat-no cooking.
• Les [father] appealed to the gas company-they would not turn it back on.
• Les was humiliated when he had to steal gas from the downstairs neighbor.
• Adie [mother] was paradoxically a “wonderful mother”/ nurse- Svengali- like.
• Waking them up at 4am to clean house (very drunk)- “come on, come on everybody up, we got to clean this place.”
• Dragging the girls across the floor by their hair when rage would frequent Adie.
• Suzanne coming home from school to find the apartment wrecked, human feces on the kitchen walls with Adie slumped over the kitchen table, drunk and puking.
• Terrific fights; where furniture was broken and bones nearly.
• Kathleen [sister] would hold her breath and turn blue “…when she couldn’t get her way..”. Maybe just to survive.
• Suzanne’s almost fatal bout with pneumonia.
• Exceedingly lonely times for Suzanne, at 8 years would become the sole caretaker of her baby sisters “Baby” and “Sister.”

I would take some time to read Michael’s latest blog post, also the entire blog…and post a comment for Michael as well.

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Excerpts from my interview with Susanna Foster, recorded at Musso and Frank’s restaurant, 1983. © 1983, 2005 by Sharon Rich, all rights reserved. You may quote from this interview as long as you reference me and this link.

Sharon Rich: You actually started your film career at MGM in 1937?

Susanna Foster: Yes, they’d just let Deanna Durbin go. I’d just gotten over pneumonia about six months before. I was the skinniest, ugliest thing you’d ever seen. They sent out the talent scout and signed me to a contract sight unseen. I was skinny, all eyes, nose and mouth, but I did have a remarkable voice, and very good quality. I was brought out there and stayed (at Metro) for three years.

Sharon Rich: Did you meet [Louis B.] Mayer?

Susanna Foster: Oh year, on the train – it’s a really funny story. I had heels this high on, and legs like sticks. I was sixty-nine pounds. I had white spots on my lungs from my pneumonia, and they were afraid I’d have tuberculosis. I had a little derby hat and I carried my mother’s black fox fur all over the train. I thought I was Jeanette MacDonald, my idol. When I looked in the mirror, that’s who I was. I did not see me. When I first saw myself on the screen in The Great Victor Herbert, I thought ‘Oh my God, I’m not Jeanette MacDonald!’ I was so disappointed. I never liked myself on the screen.

And so anyway – Ida Koverman [Mayer’s secretary] met me at the train along with some press man, and we went straight to Mayer’s office. And there was a long grey carpet. And then my Pomeranian spitz proceeded to do his thing on the rug.

He (Mayer) was friendly…. He was very nice to me.

Sharon Rich: Did they utilize you right away?

Susanna Foster: I made a test, where they said I had hair exactly the same shade as Garbo’s. That impressed them for some reason. George Sidney directed the test, and they were so impressed with the acting. They didn’t think I could act like that. They said, “She’s such a little doll, and her hair’s the same shade as Garbo’s,” you know.

They called me up to the office and asked me, “What would you do if you were offered a million dollars, everything you wanted, to sign for Wheaties if you didn’t like Wheaties?” I said, “I’d never do that, never!” They laughed and got a real kick out of it. But, you know, they were very politically oriented. I’m not, with a vengeance.

They did try to groom me. I went to school with Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney. At one point, they were considering me and Johnny Arlington to play Jeanette and Nelson as children in The Girl of the Golden West. But I didn’t look enough like her….

When they let me go, [they] said, “You can’t sing.” They were ready to let me go…. My mother had gone through thirty-seven jobs, and when I told her they fired me – that’s when I grew up. That’s when I severed the umbilical cord. I mean, I still loved my mother but I realized I was on my own. Up until then, I’d done what mother said.

I really think my mother interfered too much. And also, you had to get in the groove. Judy was right in it, she kissed everybody’s fanny. I didn’t like Judy, I’ll tell you that right now. Very egotistical, to me she had no class, that’s all. Yet, I saw her at Carnegie Hall. She was very jealous of everybody. Very jealous of Jeanette. She made fun of Jeanette at Carnegie Hall; I could have killed her. She got up and tried to imitate Jeanette doing “San Francisco” and then she did a terribly awful jazzed version of it.

From an actor’s viewpoint, Jeanette was a good actress. She knew her onions.

But, I must say, when Judy was in the groove, as she was that night at Carnegie, she was an artist, a great artist. But she was not a pleasant person, I’m sorry. And all this stuff about being sorry for her and all this is a bunch of baloney.

Now, Mickey was fresh….He was different. Very talented.

Sharon Rich: Did you meet Nelson or Jeanette then, in 1937?

Susanna Foster: I never once remember seeing Nelson. I think he made Rosalie that year. I met Jeanette in February 1937, before she married him (Gene Raymond).

Now, you know Naughty Marietta is my favorite. I used to say I stopped counting the number of times I’d seen it after sixty-eight. Someone loaned a video tape of it, and I just watch it over and over. Now I have to say I stopped counting after a thousand. I never get tired of seeing that film.

I met Jeanette on the set of The Firefly. I adored her, but what a shock! She treated me like I was two. She meant to be nice, but I was a brainy little girl. I had a very high IQ.

I was so excited about meeting my idol, but I was also seeing her in the worst scene in the movie, where she had those bangs and that hair hanging down, and she didn’t look the way I wanted to see her look. Although her face was lovely, I wanted to see her as she was in Naughty Marietta.

The one that impressed me the most to meet was Clark Gable…. When I first met him, I was only twelve, and they took me around to meet everyone. Spencer Tracy was atrocious. But Gable came in and he treated me like I was the Queen of England. He took my hand, and the way he bowed, I felt like he was being introduced to me. He had such class. No wonder everybody loved the guy….

You know, I never met Nelson the whole time I was at Metro.

[I] left Metro and was at Paramount for two years, but I knew if Paramount didn’t have something soon for me, I was going to leave. They wanted to keep me on at the same salary, and I told them to forget it. I’ve got the letter somewhere. I wrote it when I was seventeen. It was so mature, a fourteen-page letter in which I told them that I was through with pictures – I was ready to quit then – and the whole way they’d done nothing with me, and paid me money for nothing; they were wasting money, and so on. Then, forty days later I signed for Phantom….

I used to go to the home of Ed Westgrate, who was a writer for The Hollywood Reporter. He’d been in World War I and had a wooden leg, and his eyesight was bad, and so on. But he was a delightful man, and his hobby was writing music. About once a week he’d have dinner with his friends. So, one night he invited Arthur Lubin (Phantom’s director) to dinner….[Lubin] heard me sing. And then my teacher, who was teaching someone – either [Woody] Van Dyke’s wife, or somebody who knew Van Dyke [director and personal friend of Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald] – somehow I got invited to a Van Dyke party. And Nelson was there. He came over and sat and talked with me. I wondered why; I wasn’t anybody. I wondered either if he was interested in me as a person, or what he had in his mind.

All of this happened, yet it had nothing to do with the fact that I was finally signed for Phantom. A man at Paramount suggested to Universal that Susanna Foster would be right for the part…. So then, after I met Lubin and Nelson, it all came together….

Sharon Rich: What stands out in your mind about making Phantom of the Opera?

Susanna Foster: Everyone got along well on that set, and I think it had a lot to do with Nelson. When we did the Lux broadcast of Phantom, and I sang in rehearsal the “Nocturne,” I weighed at that time about 130 pounds. He lifted me right up in the air like I was nothing, up on his shoulders, after I took the top G….

The scar on Claude Rains was a big issue. Jack Pierce did the makeup. It was during the war, and a lot of boys were returning with these problems. They didn’t want to offend anybody, or hurt anybody. So there was a great amount of talk on how they were going to handle that scar. Maybe they expected something more grotesque or horrible…. [Pierce] knew the face and the bones. He’d know which way to pull a lipstick brush, whether to pull it this way or that way with the frame of your face.

Claude Rains…was the only really great actor I ever worked with, and I worked with some really fine actors…. Now [Boris] Karloff (Foster’s co-star in The Climax) was just plain cold. I know people adored him Pierce adored him, you know. He said, “No one could play him (the Frankenstein monster) as he did.” It’s true, the way he created that mask, no one had the sadness and all in the face.

But for me, I felt nothing. It was like working with a stick. I was an amateur and he was a professional. I don’t know, maybe being English, he was reserved. Rains was reserved too, but there was a little twinkle about Rains.

I think I mentioned to Rains that I was a little shy in this, my first big film, you know, with Nelson Eddy. My God – I didn’t dare even tell Nelson how much I’d loved him – I never did that. What a shame. I wish now I had.

Sharon Rich: There were no actual ‘love scenes’ in Phantom.

Susanna Foster: They could never decide whether there was going to be a love interest, or what they were going to do. Besides, I was scared stiff that I’d have to kiss Nelson Eddy. Of course, to kiss anybody, I was scared stiff.

It was very subtly cut out, and was never done. And I think Nelson got it cut because he felt that for him, with a young girl like that, and he knew I’d be embarrassed as hell. I remember in Naughty Marietta, he never liked love scenes himself. Jeanette had to do the doing herself, because that’s when he’d freeze up. I can understand it, I was a lot like him in so many respects – except that Nelson was a talker. He liked to talk and make jokes.

I don’t know why, but he used to call me “Lady.” Not like I was a horse. He said it, “Hello, Lady,” like I was Lady Someone, so sweet. He was a great gentleman, with a lot of humor.

And you know, he did sculpt. He did an original bust of me. I don’t know what he made it from, but I didn’t pose for it.

He wanted me to do a tour with him, a concert tour, after Phantom. But I was scared. I was so young, just eighteen, and I didn’t realize that Nelson would have taken care of me, and I wouldn’t have had to worry. He knew the ropes, he’d have known exactly how to school me. I thought, I didn’t know enough, I hadn’t had enough training. I’m just a natural and I’d only had one teacher. I’m very sorry now I didn’t go. My whole life might have turned out different.

More about meeting Susanna Foster at this link.

The interview above was quoted from this book, in which the complete transcript appears.

Hi Sharon–I just finished reading your post on my mother’s passing, I do appreciate the kind words you offered. However I would like to help enlighten you with being better informed of the actual family dynamic thereof and what happened to my brother Philip. On that November evening in 1985 Philip lapsed into hepatic coma (liver failure) on my mother’s living room floor and died three days later in Van Nuys Hospital. He was deeply steeped in the disease of alcoholism…he was an ‘alcoholic’, a very very sick one. Our family was literally wracked- to- death by this and mental illness. As you know my poor mother had a very sick mother was also alcoholic AND mentally ill. Both of my mother’s sister were heavily afflicted by mental illness and alcoholism. The majority of their children are fated with this dilemma. My son is schizo-affective as well as alcoholic and my daughter is alcoholic. This is a family disease….and you’re right it is “truly a miracle” that I can even write this note to you.

Here’s an excerpt from a book I wrote in which I mention the fascinating but sad adventure of trying to interview Susanna Foster for my book Sweethearts, about the Jeanette MacDonald-Nelson Eddy off-screen love affair.

In 1983, I ran a two-part interview with Nelson’s Phantom of the Opera co-star Susanna Foster. The story behind the interview is an amazing one, but sad. Whether you like Foster or not as an actress or singer, she was a child prodigy and had an amazing vocal range. She should have had a lengthy and lucrative musical career, but as I was soon to discover, she had serious mental problems….

[I] asked around and learned that Foster had most recently been on the East Coast, kicked off Welfare and was living in her car. Then she returned to Hollywood, taken in by a gay fan. This kindly person was not wealthy, in fact he lived in a tiny one-room apartment on Cherokee off of Hollywood Blvd. The building was known as “Murderer’s Row” because there were so many incidents that occurred there, mostly drug-related.

I don’t remember where I first met Susanna; it was probably at some Hollywood-related event. I asked if I could interview her; she said yes. We set a day and time and I told her I’d pick her up in my car.

I have to say that she looked fabulous and young for her years. She was perky and well-dressed. At the designated time, I picked her up only to learn that she had gotten a new job as a telephone switchboard operator, and could I drop her off at her job? As I recall, it was a building just off Hollywood Blvd…

I have to admit, I wondered why she had a minimum-wage job as a switchboard operator. I pictured a row of girls answering phones together, like they did in the classic movies, and imagined what the other gals would think if this new employee revealed that she’d once been a movie star.

Well, I’m sure none of them had a chance to ask her since Susanna was fired that day; she’d only worked there about one or two days. I asked her why they’d let her go and she rambled on without giving me a clear answer. I didn’t press her, as it sounded like she was glad the job was over. We set up a luncheon date. Again, I wondered at her inability to hold down a job. I mean, how difficult could it be to answer phones for a woman of her talent and brains?

I let her pick the restaurant. she wanted to go to Musso and Frank’s, the oldest restaurant in Hollywood. She hadn’t eaten there in years. So that’s where we ended up. Now, Musso and Frank’s is a pricey restaurant. But somehow, Susanna got the idea that Paramount Studios was picking up the tab for this meal and she kept telling me to order the most expensive item on the menu!…. She ordered an expensive dish and had several drinks, reminding me that we were spending the studio’s money, so live it up!

We spent a few hours at the restaurant [I taped the interview]…. I [published] excerpts of our conversation, with questions that Susanna actually answered in a lucid manner. In between that, there were some incomprehensible remarks….

In shuttling her back and forth to her apartment, there were more shockers in store. As I’ve said, the apartment was very small, like the size of a cruise cabin. It had two single beds, set up in an L-shape. There was a table with two chairs for eating. Susanna had a framed photo from Rose Marie and another one of just Jeanette. There were no photos of her anywhere in the place. There wasn’t much of anything in the place at all, except for the furniture. She offered me a drink but the refrigerator was bare, except for a bottle of wine. While I was there, one of her sons arrived. She told me he was a drug addict….

I offered to give her money; she refused to take it. I offered to buy her some groceries; she said they didn’t need it. She said she was planning a comeback and she sang for me, to prove she still had her voice. She did sound great, her voice was a little deeper but otherwise pretty much untouched by time. I offered to help set up a small recital and to even get some press for her. She turend down all help but kept talking about her big comeback. Believe me, folks, it took some careful listening and obsrvation to see that she wasn’t operating on all circuits. She was a good actress and could get through an entire social event without people seeing this side of her.

You may quote from this interview as long as you provide a backlink to this interview.

You can read more of my comments on the late Susanna Foster as well as the lengthy two-part interview I did with her in my book Mac/Eddy Today, Volume 6. The excerpt above is © 2005 by Sharon Rich, all rights reserved.