The new 2009 Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy calendars are a hit! Here’s the first email feedback:
Hi All, I received my calendar today, it is awesome. You have done the most wonderful job of keeping Jeanette and Nelson alive in our hearts. Joanne
A slightly re-worked version of the Woody Van Dyke - Nelson Eddy comments re: Nelson’s acting ability:
Actors Aren’t Egotistical by Jack Benny
From Screen & Radio Weekly, Sunday the 13th of February 1938:
Actors Aren’t EgotisticalBy Jack Benny
A Radio Comedian Turned Screen Actor Here Gives You His Evaluation of His Co-Workers and, in the Benny Manner, Emerges with All Banners Flying in His Defense of This Maligned Profession.
Jack Benny, as everybody but an unidentified man in French Indo-China knows, appears on NBC Sunday nights with his radio troupe. His next film for Paramount is called “Never Say Die.”
HERE is something I’ve wanted to get off my chest for years. I expect to be given arguments about it. There will be many snorts of “Oh, yeah?” But a Benny never falters for mere snorts. He’s faced too many dead-on-their-seats audience.
I say actors as a class aren’t nearly so sold on themselves as non-professionals think. Here’s what I mean:
An Irishman named Mike wanted to go for a sleigh ride and he didn’t have a sled. His friend Pat did. Mike thought over the situation and he said to his wife:
“Sure it’s a fine morning for a sleigh ride. I wish I had a sled.”
“Well, Pat has a sled. Why don’t you go over and ask him if you can borrow it,” said his wife.
“Ah, he’d never let me have it, the tightwad,” said Mike.
“Maybe he would. Go ask him, Mike,” said his wife.
So Mike started for Pat’s house, and all the way he muttered to himself: “He’ll never do it. I don’t know why I should be after asking him. Fine friend he is. He wouldn’t give me a potato if I was starving.”
By the time he reached Pat’s house he’d worked himself up into a fury. He pounded on the door and when Pat stuck his head out Mike shouted:
“Listen, I don’t want your so-and-so sled. You can keep it!”
THAT’S the way people are about actors. Everybody outside of show business thinks everybody inside is egotistical, conceited, egocentric and all the other fine sounding adjectives that mean stuck-on-yourself. An actor is licked before he has a chance to open his mouth to defend himself. People say: “Of course he’s conceited. If he weren’t he wouldn’t be an actor.”
Who wants to bet? I’ve been in show business for more than 20 years and I’ve known a whale of a lot of actors. I say they’re no more in love with themselves than other men and less than some classes of men. High-powered salesmen, for instance, or hotel managers. If an actor talked about his performances at the length to which I’ve heard salesmen go in describing big deals they’ve put over single-handed, some listener would get mad and pop him on the nose.
I’ve found hotel managers who could praise themselves by the hour. When I went to Europe last summer I came home 10 days earlier just so I could drive from Chicago to Los Angeles, taking my time along the way; and it takes a lot of time in that Maxwell of mine. I liked that part of the trip better than anything in Europe, except maybe London. This is a great country to drive over. I remember one night I stopped in a hotel in a fair sized Middle-Western city. After I’d gone to my room the manager sent me to his suite for cocktails. He said his wife and daughter would enjoy meeting me.
I went, of course. It is always flattering when folks say they want to meet you. I expected to be asked a few questions about Hollywood and motion pictures and radio. But from the time I crossed that guy’s threshold Jack Benny did a complete fade-out, conversationally. He had me there for the sole purpose of telling me how wonderful he was. He enumerated the hotels he’d put on a big paying basis. It would be no trouble for him to show them how to run the Ritz. Then he started in on what was the matter with the way motion pictures are made and how he could improve them. Pretty soon he was telling me how to run my radio shows.
A couple of times I got as far as, “That reminds me,” but no farther. Finally his daughter said, “Daddy, I wish you’d let Mr. Benny talk a little.” It was no use. He was too busy to hear her.
I DON’T know any actors who could get away with a monolog like that. I don’t know any actors who would try. Sometimes in a discussion of the self-importance of those in my profession I’ve asked critics to name six who have one overboard. They never get beyond two, even in Hollywood, where it is supposed to be a case of dog eat dog.
Take fellows like Bing Crosby. He has earned a race track, a handsome hut in the San Fernando Valley, a ranch at Sante Fe Springs, a yacht and plenty of money to run ‘em all, by his own efforts. He has one of the most popular radio programs on the air and his pictures are in greater demand every time a new one is released. Yet Bing will proclaim to anyone who will listen that he knows “from nothing” about acting. One of his favorite occupations is poking fun at himself as an actor.
Nelson Eddy, who is swamped by fan-mail most of which is sweetly scented, loves to tell about the time Woody Van Dyke, the director, met him outside the Chinese Theater after the premiere of “Naughty Marletta.” The director asked Nelson how it felt to be a great actor, “But I’m not an actor,” said Nelson. “I know that,” said Van Dyke, “but how does it feel?”
Inside the wreath hanging on the front door of Maree Lubran’s Saratoga home, a bird’s nest nestles among the flowers and leaves. That the nest hides a trio of tiny eggs is just one of the surprises to be found at Lubran’s cozy cottage. The real eye-opener lies just inside the door: Visitors who step over the threshold will discover a remarkable art gallery that covers virtually all of Lubran’s wall-space.
Closer examination reveals a sea of familiar faces. Stars from Hollywood’s “golden era.” Television actors and actresses. U.S. presidents. Musicians. Sports figures, pop icons and hundreds of other notables. All are rendered lovingly in Lubran’s watercolors, both in moody black and white and an evocative color palette.Look closer still: Nearly a quarter of the paintings bear handwritten inscriptions from their subjects. Most are autographs; a large number offer personal messages of thanks to the artist for her talents. Should the curators of either the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History or the Hollywood Motion Picture and Television Museum happen to stroll down Lubran’s hallway, quite likely both would suffer apoplexy at this priceless piece of history.
Lubran has always been enchanted by faces. As a toddler growing up in Australia, she idled away naptime by picking out faces in the swirls of paint on the wall. With a father and grandmother who both created and taught art, it was inevitable that Lubran would inherit the same skills. Her earliest creation was an elephant crafted of modeling clay when she was 5 years old. “My teacher rushed around showing the other teachers,” says Lubran, 80 years after the fact. “I couldn’t imagine why she was so excited; I thought,`Can’t everyone do this?’ “Though the years have conferred on Lubran’s diminutive frame a sense of fragility, and her walker slows her progress through her gallery, behind her glasses her eyes sparkle while recounting her favorite memories. Her wit is as lightning-quick as any 20-year-old’s; her sense of humor frequently wicked. Yet, upon hearing a suggestion that her collection should be displayed in a museum, Lubran seems genuinely surprised and touched.
From the time she was a teenager, Lubran showed clear artistic talent. She took first prize in Australia’s 1940 Children’s Hobby Exhibition for her image of a lion and his mate, rendered in colored pencils. She was a frequent model for her father, who also worked in watercolors. “He gave lots of lessons, and was always asking me to sit for him,” recalls Lubran. But when puberty hit, Lubran developed other interests.
“I was a very grumpy 13-year-old, and I had all of these posters of movie stars on my walls. On Saturdays my best friend and I would go up on her roof and cut out pictures of our favorite stars from movie magazines, and paste them into our scrapbooks. We especially loved Nelson Eddy; we’d hold his photos up and tell him we were going to show him an Australian sunset,” Lubran laughs.
The star-crazed teen soon began capturing the likenesses of her idols on paper. She first drew Olivia de Havilland using pen and ink, but found the process time-consuming. Says Lubran, “I don’t know how it came to me to try watercolor, but when I did it was so much faster and easier than making all those little strokes. From then on, pen and ink were out!”
As Lubran’s skills grew, so did her collection of celebrities. Mickey Rooney, Jimmy Stewart, Fay Wray. Bob Hope, Dolores Del Rio, Marlene Dietrich. Kelly, Peck, Bacall. Name a star, and mostly likely his or her visage hangs in Lubran’s collection. Her only requirement was (and still is) that her subjects have an interesting look. And no teeth, please. “I love painting eyes; they really are the windows to the soul,” Lubran says. “If I see a photograph of a face, and it has good contrast, I’ll do a painting. It’s especially good if the person isn’t showing any teeth. I hate to paint teeth.”
Not long after Lubran began her watercolors of the stars, she hit upon the idea of asking them for their autographs. She dutifully packed up her 11-by-14-inch paintings, along with self-addressed, stamped envelopes, and sent them off.
“In those days the stars were always being asked for autographs, so it wasn’t such a big deal,” she explains. “Every time I’d paint a celebrity I’d send a duplicate of the painting, so he or she could keep it. Making a copy was much quicker than painting the original.”
Her generosity more than paid off: Hundreds of autographs and personal messages from the celebs flooded her mailbox, all saying they’d hung the watercolors in their own homes. Typical of the accolades, Psycho star Janet Leigh wrote, “I’m proud to be in your collection of paintings!” In more recent years, above his signature opera legend Luciano Pavarotti inscribed, “Brava, Maree! Nessun dorma,” while Star Trek’s George Takei wrote, “You are truly gifted, and I am the beneficiary.” Bette Davis devoted a full 27 words to one of her thank-yous, ending with her immortal line, “I’d like to kiss ya, but I just washed my hair.”
Alice Faye, a favorite of Lubran’s, faithfully signed every one of the paintings sent by the artist. “Her assistant was also named Marie, and she would call occasionally to chat. She told me that Alice received many paintings and drawings of herself, but`Maree’s are the best.’ I shouldn’t say so, but I liked hearing that,” Lubran admits…
Britney Spears and Kevin Federline compared to Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy?
Read this theater review from the New York Post: FRINGE DARTS TARGET TART, By FRANK SCHECK. 3 stars.
It hardly comes as a surprise that Britney Spears is a character in not one but two of the offerings in this year’s Fringe Festival (and that’s just over the first weekend). While she’s merely a supporting character - a ghost, actually - in the cheekily titled “Perez Hilton Saves the Universe (or at Least the Greater Los Angeles Area): The Musical!” she’s the title subject of the “Behind the Music”-style musical fable, “Becoming Britney.”
“Perez Hilton” depicts the adventures of the notorious showbiz blogger as he attempts to find love, keep his site constantly updated and battle bomb-wielding Islamic terrorists - all in one day. Written by Timothy Michael Drucker and Randy Blair (the latter also plays the title role of the pink-wigged gossiper), it certainly doesn’t suffer from any lack of audacity.
From its opening number - wherein a dreaming Perez whips a half-naked Zac Efron - to its depiction of Kathy Griffin (the hilarious Laura Jordan) as a crazed villainess, to its wicked lampoons of such notorious celebs as Amy Winehouse and R. Kelly, the show is raucous, satirical fun. While its shelf life may not be much longer than a typical item on Hilton’s blog, it fits in perfectly with the Fringe’s camp aesthetic.
In “Becoming Britney,” the oft-troubled pop star finds herself at “Promises, Promises,” a rehab center that caters to “the exceptionally beautiful and the moderately talented,” and relates the story of her checkered life to her therapist and fellow patients via such songs as “Millionaire Whore,” “Cross That Line” and “Push It Out.” (That last number, about giving birth, features this immortal refrain: “I feel like I gotta poo!”)
Molly Bell and Daya Curley’s book and lyrics lack the wit to lift the material above the obvious, but there are several fun moments, such as when Britney, amusingly played by Bell, warbles with husband K-Fed (Keith Pinto) like a trailer-trash Nelson Eddy and Jeanette McDonald. And the several suitably lip-synched music video-style numbers all too accurately approximate their inspirations.
…Plus a beautiful picture from “Maytime” to download!
If you enjoy actor Charlie Ruggles you will enjoy this interesting biography about him:
Whether appearing in an elegantly crafted Ernst Lubitsch film such as Trouble in Paradise (1932) or Rouben Mamoulian’s Love Me Tonight (1932) or Howard Hawks’ brilliant Bringing Up Baby (1938) or in a series of fourteen fitfully funny domestic comedies with Mary Boland (seen below at the right with Charlie), the actor delivered his neatly polished performances with a captivatingly casual air. His versatility as a supporting player lightened everything from a 1939 pastiche of a Russian musical in Balalaika with Nelson Eddy to an early ’60s sex farce with Sandra Dee, called I’d Rather Be Rich (1964)–all made more palatably entertaining by his honeyed voice and gentle presence. He was often asked to play put upon, hapless and occasionally beaten men, (a character that probably evoked a feeling of sympathy among struggling audiences in the ’30s). Yet there was invariably a remarkably consistent equanimity to his portrayals. Playing henpecked husbands, butlers, valets, rejected suitors, or occasionally lecherous fellows, he remained a man who hung onto his civilized identity–sometimes by a thread. Ruggles seemed to derive real pleasure from his portrayals of would-be lotharios the most; gently mocking the unprepossessing, not so rampant male of the species.
Nelson Eddy and Jeanette McDonald may have made the Royal Canadian Mounties famous but the plaudits for the horsemen are fading away. The rigid standards that an aspiring recruit had to reach to become a Mountie once upon a time have long gone, sadly diminished by the many concessions made to meet recruitment goals.
In the writer’s opinion, this once elite force no longer ranks as such. Consider the shameful action of the Mounties at a major airport in 2007 when a poor, Polish immigrant, waiting in the International Arrival area for his mother, unable to speak English, confused and agitated after a long wait was tasered and jumped on by no less than 3-4 officers. He died.
And news reports about the recent atrocity that occured on a Greyhound Bus travelling in Western Canada indicates that a witness who sat next to the accused killer and was a friend of the victim, could only be later identifed by the Mounties as ” Stacey”.
And no, they didn’t know her name, address or where she was.
UPDATE: the auction closed at $9,500.00!
Yay, classic Hollywood!
Here’s the link again:
Actress Gillian Anderson, currently starring in the new X-Files movie, is often mentioned as a possibility of an actress to portray Jeanette MacDonald in a MacDonald-Eddy biopic.
Check out this photo comparison of the two actresses and see what you think!
Comments?
Interesting live auction - Jeanette MacDonald is one of the celebrities who wrote in actress silent film actress Ruth Roland’s diary. Roland, along with Pearl White, was the queen of early film serials. She pretty much retired in 1925 (apparently made only 3 films after that) and died in 1937. Here’s some information about her diary:
http://community.livejournal.com/carole_and_co
and the auction itself is here:
http://cgi.liveauctions.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=52933&item=260257431944
It’s a live Ebay auction that ends on Friday. No data as to whether Jeanette personalized her autograph. Bidding is at about $3000 as of today. It’ll be interesting to see what this diary brings!
