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The photo above shows Nelson Eddy live on the radio with his “Electric Hour” script girl, Norma Nelson. But this radio show is NOT “The Electric Hour”, it’s Art Linkletter’s “House Party.” This was the venue chosen to introduce Norma as a singer and Nelson endorsed and introduced her as his protege. Smart move because had her debut been on Nelson’s radio show, the already rampart rumors about them might have escalated even further…angering both Jeanette and Ann Eddy for sure.

We met Norma Nelson (married name McDaniel) in the late 1970s. She had a difficult life, living alone with her young son who had Down Syndrome. I never met her older daughters. Her son was a very sweet and affectionate childlike young man but Norma had very little social life. She appreciated that we were relaxed around her son and so we became friends. Norma spoke candidly about Nelson, even to telling us that she’d asked Nelson to be his godfather at birth but that Nelson had declined.

Norma agreed to speak at an early club meeting and came to several others and enjoyed being important again with Nelson’s fans. She gave us a copy of her radio appearance on “House Party” so that we could put that out on LP. And we still have it on this on our CD JN128A at this link.

Norma also wrote an article for Journal #4 of Mac/Eddy Today, see below. (The original magazine is re-published here.)

Norma also had a great idea to put together a Mac/Eddy cookbook with theme foods from their films. It WAS a great idea, she had fun putting Volume 1 together and we were able to give her money from the proceeds of which she was most appreciative.  See the photos below.

Norma was a very sweet lady but I fear that once I let her know that I would use her original interview with us in Sweethearts – she did give us permission after all and was glad to talk about it at early LA club meetings – suddenly she realized that it would be her admitting that she “messed around” a bit with Nelson who was after all, a married man! (No, they didn’t have sex, we asked point blank about that.) She had never minded people knowing this before and also admitted with no reservation some details of Nelson’s life that his voice teacher Eduoard Lippe told her!

The facts are that Nelson arranged for her to study with Lippe and at some point, Nelson showed up at Lippe’s for her voice lessons..and here I quote exactly what I wrote in Sweethearts which was basically transcribed from what Norma told me and Diane Goodrich:

Before the lesson, Lippe left them alone to ‘talk.’ Norma admitted that they kissed and there was some ‘petting’ but it didn’t progress beyond that. Lippe told her that Nelson and Jeanette were lovers but when she asked Nelson about it, he denied it saying they were just friends. Lippe also told Norma that Nelson’s marriage was a mess and that he should have married someone like Norma.

Norma had a front row seat in the audience for each broadcast and soon the trades were commenting on the “romance.” Later on, their relationship waned. Nelson became furious when Lippe tried to tell Norma she was a mezzo and he found another teacher for her, Major Herbert Wall, with whom Nelson had just begun his training.

I moved to New York in the mid ’80s so I don’t know what happened to Norma in later years except that she also moved out of state at some point to live with her family. We were out of touch except for letters here and there. It would appear that she had second thoughts about going on record as I never heard from her again after I wrote her letting her know Sweethearts was coming out in 1994.

It seems she wrote a letter to Gene Raymond dated August 24, 1994 in which she basically grovels and apologizes to him for having ever spoken to me or having anything to do with our group.  This was literally about a month or so before Sweethearts hit bookstores. Damage control, anyone?

Lest anyone be annoyed at her trying to publicly backpedal on what she’d said before, please note that there were several sources who freaked out once they were questioned or attacked for their statements. Some were vaguely threatened with lawsuits from the Jeanette fan club. It took a lot of courage to speak the truth! Norma’s original article that she wrote for us was in 1978…it was published in 1978…that’s 1978, folks!…Twelve years before I ever laid eyes on any 1940s correspondence of Isabel Eddy’s where she describes her son “beaming like a headlight” when Jeanette was with him. Twelve years before I saw written documentation also from the 1940s by Lucille Mereto covering all of Nelson’s radio shows and noting the drastic difference in Nelson’s demeanor when Jeanette was his guest.

And yes, Norma’s information and observations ring true. Readers today can appreciate that Norma Nelson was cautiously honest when she wrote about Jeanette’s appearances on “The Electric Hour”:

“She was gorgeous. When she walked into a room, heads turned. Nelson was very proud of her, proud to be associated with her. He positively beamed. His solicitousness with her was a pleasure to behold. He’d hold her script, hold her hand, and see to her every comfort. This treatment was never enjoyed by any of his other guest stars that I noticed.”

PS: Norma told us that she believed what Lippe told her, that Nelson and Jeanette were lovers. When Nelson denied it, Norma assumed – hoped – that maybe there was a chance for her to be in his life. Who can blame her? But she learned (also from Lippe) that Nelson had a wife he couldn’t get rid of.  Norma was finally realistic enough to understand there was no future on a personal front with Nelson. She moved on with her life.

We are grateful to Norma for the information she freely shared. Every piece of information has helped to put together the bigger picture of how the Jeanette-and-Nelson story played out.

This is going to be a very frank discussion of  a very uncomfortable subject. It deals with the first sexual encounter between Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald so those who find the subject abhorrent, please be warned in advance.

The photo above is on the set of Maytime, showing an unusual shot of hostility between them. And yes, they sometimes fought bitterly. Another shot of them glaring at each other:

The text from my book Sweethearts that seems to offend some goes as follows: “He…described in graphic detail what he was going to do to her to make sure she never forgot she was his. Then he threw her down on the bed and raped her.”

To put this into context, the time period we’re talking about is during the filming of their first movie together, Naughty Marietta. I do not know the exact date of this incident but the film went into production in late 1934 and was released in March of 1935. Most likely this occurred in December 1934 or January 1935.

First off, I quoted the events exactly as described to me. The version you read in the book is precisely how I and my then-research partner, Diane Goodrich, were told about this episode. The setting, the dialogue, the quarrel that preceded this episode, Nelson completely losing his temper and acting out so that Jeanette was for the first time exposed to his “Jekyll and Hyde personality” as she termed it – all this was described to us.

Diane and I were duly horrified at hearing this. Diane, who had known Nelson, angrily told me, “Nelson would never do that!” We discussed it and had pressed our sources for all the details they knew. (Marie Collick was the first source but we subsequently asked a few other people about it.) And then I said, “Let’s see what Blossom says.”

As you can read in Sweethearts, Blossom  not only confirmed the story but added the aftermath, in which the second round was definitely consensual and Jeanette happily commented upon it to her sister some time afterwards.

To this day I remember exactly where we were when we finally asked Blossom about it; we had eaten lunch in Paradise Cove, Diane was driving us through Beverly Hills, on Sunset Blvd and then we ended up on Doheny Drive. Blossom was in the front passenger seat giving Diane directions by pointing to the right or left. I was in the back seat. We brought it up tentatively, apologetically, um…we had heard something and didn’t know whether to believe it or not…please don’t be angry or offended by this question…but…

And Blossom laughed as she set the record straight on this episode.

Let me also clarify something. In the context of that time period, the definition of “rape” was – per 1927 law – “the carnal knowledge of a female, forcibly and against her will.” According to a CNN article on the revision of this law, “That meant it was only an act of rape if a man forcibly penetrated a woman through her vagina. It excluded oral and anal penetration.”

It appears that normally easygoing, lovesick “puppy dog” Nelson finally was pushed beyond his own endurance by Jeanette’s behavior and finally just pounced without warning or self-control.

Tonight I discussed this subject with a grandmother who said, “Then they might have called what Nelson did rape but today we would call it rough sex.”

Others point out that there were a few incidents noted during their early dates together where Nelson “got carried away” but he managed to remain a gentleman and not go too far.  Jeanette no doubt had to wonder at his courtship of her, so unusual in their world, she told her sister “He’s so strange.” One wouldn’t put it past her to goad him to that last step – as it happened, if only to see what was up with this guy. For Nelson, it must have been tough on her to watch her daily on the Naughty Marietta set as makeup man Fred Phillips noted that Nelson was always scoping her out.

Another question arises; even if Jeanette had discussed the incident in detail with her older sister and others had heard about it as well…Why would I even want to discuss such a lurid incident in a biography about the two? Good question. There are four reasons that make it vital, no matter how one views the act.

1. It happened.  And it was, as noted above, Jeanette’s first introduction to Nelson’s temper and his jealous rages. By this time they had known each other about a year; he had proposed marriage to her a week after their first date, she turned him down so he backed off and exhibited very gentlemanly manners all through 1934. But working with her on the film and being near her and seeing her in ever-changing lovely costumes was very hard on him…as noted in this un-retouched photo of them below on the set.

2. It showed that Nelson had interest in sex, wasn’t “The Singing Capon” as some snide people termed him, and that he was indeed sexually attracted to and in fact obsessed with Jeanette MacDonald. Nelson once made this crude but obviously accurate statement: “I get within a mile of her and I’ve got a hard-on.” Below is another shot of him with Jeanette on the Maytime set in which demonstrates his arousal. And here’s a link to an article with some screenshots from The Girl of the Golden West, in which Jeanette’s nearness was again a huge problem for Nelson.

All puns aside, the next two reasons are the most important:

3. This was not an isolated incident, there is a vague mention of another angry attack by Nelson in August 1936 that resulted in Jeanette breaking up with him and accepting the marriage proposal of Gene Raymond.  It should be noted that Nelson was terribly frustrated with Jeanette and he was fed up with her acting “like a yo-yo”. He wanted to marry her, he wanted her by his side and instead she put her career first. Something triggered him off again but we have no real detail on the incident, just its outcome.

4. Based on his past behavior, Nelson believed himself capable of this kind of boorish behavior – forcing himself on a woman – so when Ann Franklin “told me a nightmare of a story about my becoming violent in my lovemaking” while Nelson asserted he was both drunk and drugged and had no memory of it – HE BELIEVED HER! And according to what Nelson wrote to Jeanette, this is the reason he married Ann. (Whether it was the self shame of what he purportedly did to Ann or the fear that Ann would provide a full detailed report to Jeanette – which would no doubt result in Jeanette breaking up with him – Nelson could find no way out of his predicament.)

This is why it was necessary, I felt, to show the irrational pattern of behavior Nelson demonstrated on rare occasions, usually a mild-mannered gentleman but also capable of being pushed to his limit and finally blowing up and acting out.  As his mother Isabel once wrote, “Living with Nelson is like living with World War II in your house.”

Finally, for those of you wondering how or why we would learn such detailed descriptions of their intimate moments, I direct you to read Sweethearts where Nelson mostly (but sometimes Jeanette) can be quoted from letters discussing such matters endlessly, sometimes in vivid and graphic detail. This is who these people were, this is what made them tick and how and why they kept their love going for decades. My job was simply to share the story which – for the most part – they were happy to tell themselves, in their own words.

By the way, it should also be noted that there is never any mention after that August 1936 incident of Nelson acting out toward Jeanette in such a manner again. Ever.

This isn’t to say that they didn’t have their issues in the coming years, namely Nelson’s stamina vs. Jeanette’s frailty, her pregnancies, her heart problem, their many separations due to work and travel, his infidelities and the muddled scene with their spouses. But somehow they managed to work it out for themselves, having learned the hard way that they needed to be together.

To end this article on a more cheerful note, the photo below shows them when personally they were happy in their personal lives together…what a difference!

It was bound to happen, folks!

After all these decades and all the hundreds of original handwritten letters that were no doubt torn up or reportedly burned, one little ‘ol letter slipped through…and was just sold at auction.

And what a letter!

It was found among Jeanette MacDonald’s boxed-up belongings and surprise, surprise – these items were in the possession of of Clara and Tessa, in the Topeka home they shared, the two women who ran Jeanette’s largest fan club back starting in the last years of Jeanette’s life.  They were the keepers of the flame for the Jeanette and Gene blissful marriage and eventually made sure every one of their magazine covers featured a photo of the “happy” couple. They were (in case you didn’t know) on lifetime salary from Gene Raymond and they did their jobs well.

What you should know is this: they DENIED any relationship ever between Jeanette and Nelson. And they made sure that anyone who came to them asking about it were told NO SUCH DOCUMENTATION EXISTED.  In addition, they paraded out the happy Jeanette-Gene photos and letters to show how amazing that marriage was.

In one regard, perhaps you can’t totally blame the phony pretense because certainly Jeanette, Nelson, Gene, Blossom and others towed the party line for the public, press and those club publications. Irritating as it may seem now, all of them politely played out their politically correct roles. For decades.

One earlier letter of Nelson’s also slipped through and was auctioned, dated November 1934, at a time when Jeanette had rebuffed Nelson’s first marriage proposal and he was being very proper and gentlemanly, not to scare her off with his impulsiveness or acting “like an animal”. In that letter he calls her “Miss MacDonald” but blurts out: “I think you’re the grandest person in the world.”

And still ANOTHER piece of source documentation has been obtained, further shooting down the happy marriage myth with Jeanette speaking from the grave about her farce of a marriage via her 1963 desk diary.  Between Jeanette’s diary and Nelson’s 1935 lovesick letter to her, these two handwritten pieces of documentation have shifted the playing field in a major way. No longer can those who tout the happy Jeanette-Gene marriage continue the facade or their lies. Nor can they deny that the Nelson-Jeanette romance was perhaps a troubled but surely passionate and star-crossed one.

In Nelson’s amazing 1935 letter to Jeanette, he calls her an “extravagant wretchess.” And just to clear up the definition of “wretchess,” a wretch is someone who is a poor unfortunate thing or a scoundrel. He’s calling her a girl version of that, or maybe mixing it up calling her a wretch and a princess? Like a special nickname he calls her when he lovingly scolds her or she annoys him. Whatever reason he calls her that, it is a loving nickname.

Some background to this letter: just a few months earlier Nelson proposed marriage to Jeanette at Lake Tahoe, she accepted and then there was an ugly breakup. For details of what happened read Sweethearts but in essence Nelson was so very, very VERY hurt and certain he was well rid of Jeanette – who seemed to care more about her career than her feelings for him.

Yet Nelson couldn’t help himself. He loved her and termed her “like a sickness” he couldn’t get over.

And she loved him. That was never the issue with them; the love and desire was there… so the ex sex was inevitable. And by December 1935 Nelson missed their personal relationship dreadfully and wanted to Jeanette to travel with him on his upcoming 1936 tour so he wouldn’t be alone. That would have meant her cancelling or postponing the film San Francisco. They quarreled about this and his desire to have his woman at his side while Jeanette claimed she could successfully balance both marriage to him and her career.

From this excerpt from Sweethearts (which I wrote twenty-one years ago without ever knowing about this letter) we learn what happened in December 1935:

…In desperation Jeanette finally arranged to see Nelson alone and tried to resolve things with him. They hashed out things over and over between periods of lovemaking, trying to find a way a union between them could work. This marathon lasted for over twenty-seven hours with endless hours of discussions and arguments and lots of tears – mostly Jeanette’s. Finally they had to agree that it would never work. They loved each other and they needed each other but they were too similar. Neither one was willing to give an inch or sacrifice their career goals. “I used to think that Love was the most powerful emotion,” Nelson said bitterly years later. “But I found out it wasn’t. Pride is the greater emotion.” In the end, they decided to part friends, knowing they would love each other always but determined to break both the spiritual and sexual bond….The romance, as far as either believed, was over forever.

And yet on Christmas Day, what was Nelson doing? Partying? Or taking time to sit down and think about Jeanette and write her a touching letter blurting out like a lovesick schoolboy that despite his attempt to be casual and “just friends,” he was still hopelessly in love with her.

This man was 34 years old, folks! And he already knew that he would “always be devoted to you.” All his life. As indeed he was.

For those who can’t read his scrawl, this is what he states in the letter, dated Christmas 1935:

Dearest Jeanette,

Thank you.

It’s beautiful, and I appreciate it more than I can tell you.

You are an extravagant wretchess, but I love you and will always be devoted to you.

Best Christmas and New Year’s thoughts to you.

Gratefully and fondly,

Your Nelson

I had never heard of this letter but to see how perfectly it fit in with Nelson’s torn emotions at that time – spending passionate hours with her and then determining that “it would never work”….well, this is the Nelson you see here.

So it’s a couple weeks perhaps after their brief reconciliation, he’s already going through “withdrawals” from her and showing what what a mixed up young man he was emotionally about her. Unfortunate that he was so stubborn and didn’t listen to his mother Isabel who wisely observed in her memoirs:

I had never seen Nelson so happy….As I looked at her [Jeanette], I thought how safe a man would be with her. Despite any career, with this girl a marriage vow would always come first. Alas, my son did not believe this and so the Gods forever ruled his peace away.

Folks, here it is in Nelson Eddy’s own handwriting – the answer is YES, he was hopelessly in love with Jeanette MacDonald.

So – I welcome you to shout it to the rooftops! And to the next person or publication you come across who tries to deny the Jeanette-Nelson romance – feel free to share this letter!

From the grave both Nelson and Jeanette are speaking now to us and in an ironic twist – their truths are revealed from those who lied and sought to hide the facts. But no more.

We are vindicated and validated and my thanks to all who have helped uncover the truth over these decades. And thanks to those who helped us obtain this important letter.

UPDATE: June 28, 2015 – Mystery solved!

The discovery of Nelson Eddy’s love letter to Jeanette MacDonald from Christmas 1935 begs a question: What was the gift that he was thanking her for?

Last night I held the original letter for the first time, handed to me by Maria Escano, in whose possession it will remain until it is donated to a museum. I studied the letter and read and re-read it carefully. For over two hours we sat discussing every gift we knew Jeanette had ever given Nelson but “beautiful” is not an adjective a man uses to describe cuff-links, ties, shirts, saddles, etc. What could it be?

And then it hit me, folks. Out of the blue – I knew. A painting of her! Yes indeed, and there was such a painting, a large oil painting of her as Naughty Marietta. In fact, I knew it was mentioned in my book Sweethearts.

So I grabbed my iPhone, opened the Sweethearts book on Kindle and searched for “painting of Jeanette”. And there it was, with chilling accuracy, an oil painting GIVEN TO NELSON BY JEANETTE AS A CHRISTMAS GIFT!

That the oil painting was discussed in a 1945 letter (from which this information was quoted and sourced) is what threw me off. I never understood why Jeanette would give Nelson such a painting in 1944…no date of this gift is given, only that it hung on the wall and had been a Christmas gift! It makes perfect sense for the 1935 holiday, with Naughty Marietta their first and only team movie released, Jeanette would have chosen such a painting for a gift for Nelson.

So here is the background data: As we know, after Nelson’s marriage he moved his mother to the Pacific Palisades beach house and then to a couple different places briefly…and then in December 1944, he moved her into a new house in the Beverly Hills flats located at 526 N. Palm Dr. He always kept a room at his mother’s house.

And here I quote from the book which – again – I wrote the following over 20 years ago and had absolutely no knowledge that such a letter from Nelson Eddy was written or still existed!

[Nelson] told Ann that he needed to spend more time with his mother and he frequently stayed with Isabel. He had his own bedroom in her house and as well as a study and added a second bathroom upstairs so each would have privacy.

Ann was not allowed over to Isabel’s. Privately they were not on speaking terms but were socially polite when in public together at Nelson’s concert or radio appearances. Had Ann visited Isabel’s home she would be enraged for her husband’s study was a virtual shrine to her hated rival. A large oil painting of Jeanette as Naughty Marietta hung on the wall (a Christmas gift from Jeanette), the bookshelves displayed their records, stills, and picture albums, all the letters and cards she’d ever sent him he kept. Nelson had a movie projector in the room. His film collection included San Francisco which he loved for Jeanette’s opera scenes and Smilin’ Through.

Do you understand what this means, dear reader? Not only did Nelson Eddy love and appreciate the “beautiful” gift from Jeanette from Christmas 1935 but he moved that oil painting around from residence to residence where it was hung proudly in his “shrine” to Jeanette. Where nine years later, in December 1944, it was still displayed in his “study” at his mother’s home.

What happened to the oil painting ultimately? Who knows?

But at least one question is answered – what Jeanette’s gift to Nelson was. And much as he said he would always love and be devoted to her, the truth and verification of this was right under our noses all along!

At this link is the video presentation of the original letter and its backstory.

The above quotes and book passages are from Sweethearts (© 1994, 2001, 2014 by Sharon Rich) with ordering details at the link.

Happy Birthday, Jeanette MacDonald.

There are several things to celebrate today.

You are not alone today.  You have friends and fans worldwide who not only appreciate your talent but who give a damn about the sacrifices you made and the agonies that were suffered. They understand the troubles were in part self-inflicted but the consequences undeserved nonetheless. Good people like yourself should not have had to endure such pain.

Fifty years after your passing, those who helped keep the secrets have fallen by the wayside….and their lies and/or denials are now being exposed. We truly thought this would occur after the death of Gene Raymond; apparently that was premature but there’s no stopping it now in 2015.

From Nelson Eddy’s earliest known surviving written declaration of “I love you” to his “Dearest Jeanette”, to your own handwritten comments about how it really was to live with Gene Raymond in your last years, these are truths that are being reinforced at long last.

You can breathe a sigh of relief. And for that reason, on this particular birthday we post this photo of you with Nelson from 1938. You and he shared a private secret and there was hope for the future in what was probably one of your happiest birthday parties.

Forget the pretense anymore and embrace the truth.

Folks, there is more to come…and to celebrate.

When one looks at photos of Nelson Eddy around Jeanette MacDonald, there is no doubt that he liked to gaze intently at her. “He followed her around like a love-sick puppy dog,” was a statement made by several people. And as quoted below from Sweethearts, one of his long-time family friends recalled Nelson’s answer to how the filming was going on Naughty Marietta:

His explanation of the days’ events consisted solely of graphic descriptions of what gowns Jeanette was wearing and how she looked in them…details of her lovely shoulders, her beautiful skin, her low-cut bodice, etc. When Sybil cynically asked whether Nelson did anything else on the set except stare at Jeanette, her point went totally over his head.

Here’s another example:

And even a very grainy newspaper shot from the late 1950s. Yes, it’s poor quality but one thing is certain, Nelson is still just gazing at her.

Per Nelson’s own words, he was initially speechless at her beauty – “she would take your breath away”, he said. And even though he initially came on too strong, too intense, and even proposed marriage to her a week after their first date, he subsequently discovered his manners. After an initial bout of strong interest between them in late 1933 and into 1934, during which time Jeanette pushed for Nelson to co-star with her in Naughty Marietta (and the trades announced his casting), there was then a cooling-off period where Jeanette basically told him – no. This despite photos of them taken together at the studio in June and the fact that Jeanette had even earlier given him a dog, Sheba. So it took Nelson by surprise that he ultimately was given the role late in the year, he thought he had “blown it” with her.

Nelson Eddy was a shy man, initially very reserved and tongue-tied with Jeanette. His mother no doubt lectured him severely about how to properly court Jeanette (once she finally approved of her).  Yes, it is incredulous to think that he was such a naive misfit in the wildness of early 1930s Hollywood, a man who courted an established movie star with flowers and letters and held back from being “an animal” as he later termed it. (At least until he was pushed beyond his limit with her.) He was a mixture of a Victorian gentleman yet so obviously overwhelmed by her that he comes off as – well, a love-sick puppy dog.

Below is a letter written by Nelson to Jeanette after she wired him, whether to congratulate him for his previous night’s opera performance at LA’s Shrine Auditorium (which she attended as the newspapers noted), or to congratulate him on being her co-star in Naughty Marietta, which began filming on November 12 .  Can there be any doubt reading this that the man already adored her? Yes, he restrained himself but still, he could have just written, “Thank you for going to bat for me.”

For those who can’t decipher his scrawl: “Dear Miss MacDonald, – Thank you for the wire. it was terribly sweet of you and I appreciate it more than I can tell you. Some day I hope to get up courage enough to tell you I think you’re the grandest person in the world. Very gratefully yours, Nelson Eddy.”

I want to thank Elizabeth Nocero for sharing the original of this letter with us. Elizabeth has a classic Hollywood blog at this link.