Blog

Missed this book when it first came out, but interesting to see the author’s comments regarding Jeanette MacDonald’s husband Gene Raymond, who co-starred with Loretta Young in 1933’s Zoo in Budapest.

Here’s an excerpt:

In November, 1932, Jesse Lasky announced his intention to become an independent producer at the Fox Film Corporation, with Zoo in Budapest and Berkeley Square as his first productions….[Gene] Raymond gave a bravura performance as Zanni, and animal trainer….For those who only know Raymond as Jeanette MacDonald’s husband, his Zanni is a revelation. It is a strikingly athletic performance, requiring Raymond to jump over partitions, and in the terrifying climax, to hop on the back of an elephant with a young boy he has rescued. He must then grab on to a rope to hoist the boy and himself to safety…Loretta had relatively little to do in the film. The real stars were Raymond and director Rowland V. Lee, who kept a fragile script form splintering. Raymond fancied himself the successor to Douglas Fairbanks; however, it was Errol Flynn and then Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., who buckled the swash and wielded a mean rapier. Still, Raymond’s performance was admirable. He did not need a double; like Burt Lancaster, he did his own climbing and swinging, in addition to exuding the kind of machismo that won over audiences. Raymond was probably one of the leading men Loretta developed a crush on, not knowing at the time that he was bisexual, more homosexually than heterosexually inclined. In fact, when he married Jeanette MacDonald in 1937, she was still in love with Nelson Eddy, her first and only love. Raymond’s lover at the time was Mary Pickford’s husband, Buddy Rogers….But at the time Zoo in Budapest was filmed, Raymond had not met MacDonald, and only a few kindred spirits knew his sexual preferences. As for Loretta, the crush ended when the shoot was over, and then it was on to another leading man and another crush.

The biography is available both in hardback and Kindle edition. You can order it/download it from Amazon.com here.

Thanks to Margo Slaughter for alerting me to this!

It’s slim pickings for Jeanette and Nelson the next couple of months on Turner Classic Movies…but here’s the schedule:

Tuesday, February 19, 12 midnight eastern (that means midnight of Wednesday the 20th, or 9 PM Tuesday the 19th on the West Coast), The Love Parade

Thursday March 7, 10:15 PM, Love Me Tonight

Saturday March 9, 6 AM, Naughty Marietta

Thursday March 21, 5:45 PM, Cairo (Don’t forget that Nelson has a “cameo” in this – in the scene in which Jeanette, Ethel Waters and Robert Young are talking in a movie theater lobby, a large picture of Nelson Eddy is on hanging on the wall!)

Enjoy!

Happy Anniversary to us! Another great year with our Yahoo group – always gathering new information and appreciating the wonderful Jeanette and Nelson. Thanks to Bern and the co-moderators Cee and Patrice – and all the others who help make our group a lively, vibrant place.

If you’d like to find out more, click on the graphic below.

The Washington Post recently ran an article about Ilona Massey’s longtime Bethesda residence, which has fallen into disrepair and is for sale:

Time was probably kinder to Hollywood starlet Ilona Massey than it was to her Bethesda home. Although she died in 1974, she lives on forever, her blond hair and deep voice just a Netflix rental away in movies such as “Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man” and “Love Happy.”

Her house, on the other hand, is described in its sales literature as a candidate for a tear-down. The front gutter is pulling away from the roof of the white neoclassical rambler on Goldsboro Road near MacArthur Boulevard. Wallpaper peels from the walls like so much desiccated lichen. The kitchen floor is littered with bits of shattered skylight.

Kristin Gerlach, the agent selling the 1935 house, gingerly steps over what is either the tail of some forest creature or a tiny mink stole.

“It’s been on the market for a year,” Kristin says of the house, called Happy Valley and priced, along with its 5.5 acres, at $1,495,000. “It’s been under contract a few times, but then they backed out.”

Ilona was under contract once, too, to Metro Goldwyn Mayer. She was one of three dozen actresses imported from Europe in 1937 to feed Hollywood’s insatiable desire for the next sultry foreigner.

Ilona Hajmassy — her original name — had grown up in Hungary, the daughter of a disabled typesetter. “My salvation,” she once said, “is that I have known misery and hunger. In my youth in Budapest I didn’t know the taste of meat until I was 7 years old. That’s how poor my family was.”

She was apprenticed to a dressmaker and spent her earnings on singing lessons. She got a job dancing in the chorus of a Budapest musical comedy house, then sang at the Staats Opera. Her Hollywood debut was in 1939’s “Balalaika,” opposite Nelson Eddy. [Note: her first film with Nelson was actually 1937’s Rosalie, pictured here.] Wrote the New York Times: “She looks like Dietrich, talks like Garbo and will probably be smiling from all the fan magazine covers in no time.”

In the end, Ilona would make only 11 films, the last 1949’s “Love Happy” with the Marx Brothers.

Her fourth and final husband was the reason she settled in our area. Donald Dawson was a U.S. Air Force general and a former aide to Harry S. Truman. Perhaps the two shared a hatred of communism, as well as a love for each other: Ilona often led pickets in front of the Soviet Union’s United Nations headquarters.

During the Hungarian uprising of 1956, she taped a message to her former countrymen while packing CARE packages. “I will try everything within my power to help you,” she said. “If necessary, we will give our blood, too.”

Ilona sang occasionally — nightclub gigs in Havana and South Africa — but her life in Bethesda was quiet. She was content, she said, to make paprika chicken and play with her two dogs: black Great Danes named Hero and Nero. She loved animals, and in 1972 the Happy Valley estate was the setting of a party celebrating the opening of a Washington office of the Fund for Animals. Two Canadian timberwolves — Jethro and Clem — were the guests of honor. Ilona died two years later and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Her husband remarried, then died in 2005 at age 97.

Their house is vacant. In one dusty room, a large photo of the general is propped on a mantel. A picturesque stream trickles outside, just six feet from the edge of the house.

The stream is the problem. The Corps of Engineers says any new house must be 100 feet away. The lot may not be subdivided. The existing house is probably too far gone to save.

We all eventually will fall into disrepair and disappear, our only trace a pile of photographs, a few home movies. Some of us will have better movies than others.

The filmed musical show Les Miserables opened over Christmas with much fanfare. Reviews have been slightly mixed..those receiving huge praise are singing actors Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway (who apparently is an early favorite to win a Best Supporting Actress Oscar). But some of the other (great) actors have been criticized for not being able to sing the Broadway score in a traditional manner. The director Tom Hopper (The King’s Speech) filmed the musical numbers live so there is “talk-singing” in some instances. Musical purist and “American Idol” star Adam Lambert has taken a lot of heat this week for voicing on Twitter what some movie-goers are thinking:

“Les Mis: Visually impressive w great Emotional performances. But the score suffered massively with great actors PRETENDING to be singers. It’s an opera. Hollywood’s movie musicals treat the singing as the last priority. (Dreamgirls was good). The industry will say ‘these actors were so brave to attempt singing this score live’ but why not cast actors who could actually sound good?”

“Those raw and real moments when characters broke down or were expressing the ugliness of the human condition were superb. However… My personal opinion: there were times when the vocals weren’t able to convey the power, beauty and grace that the score ALSO calls for.”

“DO go see it for Anne Hathaway’s performance. It’s was breathtaking….One last thing though: Anne Hathaway was so good- had me tearing up. Oscar worthy performance for sure!”

Whatever your feelings about this film (feel free to add your comment about it), it is interesting that a few reviewers have brought up Jeanette and Nelson… always the highest standard singing stars for comparison when discussing a movie musical!

HeraldNet.com: “As the adult Cosette, Amanda Seyfried (who also warbled in “Mamma Mia!”) displays a sweet soprano that makes her a throwback to the days of Jeanette MacDonald. Her scenes with young lover Marius (Eddie Redmayne) give the movie its dewy, tragical romance.”

Voxxi.com: “There are moments when Redmayne and Seyfried resemble a modern-day Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald in their fluting, birdlike lyricism.”