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.
Ever wonder what happened to the dress that Jeanette wore as the elderly “Miss Morrison” in the movie Maytime?
It is not one that has shown up at MGM costume auctions. But thanks to Darryl Winston‘s sharp eye, we know that this dress was recycled for another MGM film, 1941’s Blossom in the Dust. This was a prestigious Technicolor film starring Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon. The movie was nominated for Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Color and Cinematography; it won for Best Art Direction.
This time the dress was worn by character actress Cecil Cunningham. 
Here’s a closer look at Jeanette wearing the dress and then Cecil Cunningham.
We don’t know the fate of the dress after that film or whether it was recycled for use in yet another MGM film.
Interestingly enough, Ms. Cunningham’s path crossed with Jeanette in some of their films. Cunningham had an uncredited part as a Society Woman in the “Impulses” segment of Paramount on Parade (a 1930 film from which Jeanette’s scene was cut). Cunningham also was an uncredited Laundress in Love Me Tonight (1932), the Governor’s wife in New Moon (1940), Mrs. Herbert Fairmind in I Married an Angel, and Mme. Larga in Cairo (1942). Her height was noted as 5’8″ but remember that that 5’5″ Jeanette was padded and wore heavy weights to better portray the old woman.
Thanks, Darryl!
Here’s a black-and-white still from the movie showing Cecil Cunningham in the dress along with Felix Bressart and Greer Garson.
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.”
This New York Times article caught my attention. Marc Blitzstein was a contemporary of Nelson Eddy’s and they both studied at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. Even in his earliest career, Nelson was known for singing music of upcoming new American songwriters and composers.
Although in the same league with George Gershwin and Aaron Copland, subjects of two earlier biographies by Howard Pollack, Marc Blitzstein is relatively unfamiliar for a variety of reasons, among them his leftist politics and his openly gay sexuality in an era when both were disdained. Three years after Blitzstein’s death from what was evidently a gay-bashing in Martinique in 1964, Copland said, “It is disheartening to realize how little the present generation knows who he was or what he accomplished,” and Leonard Bernstein expressed dismay in 1976 at “the rapidity with which his name’s been forgotten,” calling him “the greatest master of the setting of the American language to music.” ….
Born in 1905 and raised in a nonreligious Russian Jewish Marxist family in Philadelphia, Blitzstein was a prodigy at piano, a child with perfect pitch. By the age of 14 he had already formed the ambition to be a composer. He studied with Rosario Scalero at the Curtis Institute and Alexander Siloti in New York, and completed his education with Nadia Boulanger in Paris and Arnold Schoenberg in Berlin.
But Blitzstein’s career followed an uncertain path, as the opportunities for having his works performed were continually thwarted…. Some of his songs did manage to reach a public, including “The Dream Is Mine,” which was heard on Broadway in 1925; “Two Coon Shouts,” sung by Nelson Eddy in Philadelphia in 1928; and two of several songs with Walt Whitman texts that were performed in recitals. He gave the first performance of a one-movement piano sonata in 1928, but only after it was revived in the 1980s did it receive critical acclaim.
Here’s a quote from the book itself:
Blitzstein premiered [his piano sonata] in New York at a league of Composers concert…on February 12, 1928, his first major new York appearance…Blitzstein repeated the piece in Philadelphia on March 13, 1928, at the same concert on which he accompanies Nelson Eddy in the first performance of “Two Coon Shouts”…Audience members responded well to the Philadelphia world premieres of “Gods” and “Two Coon Shouts,” insisting that Nelson Eddy encore the second “coon shout”. Both works also elicited some positive remarks in the local press (along with some highly negative ones), one review…saying of “Two Coon Shouts,” There is elemental power and terror in them.”
The book is available at Amazon.com.
It is unusual for a Hollywood star to come forward and publicly support the Jeanette MacDonald-Nelson Eddy love affair…as Joanne Woodward has done in recent years.
There are several reasons for this hesitation. First, stars are loath to discuss something that might be controversial, thus opening them up to attack. Case in point – the lovely Eleanor Powell who was an early member of this club and was supportive of what was being revealed. She felt we were very courageous to speak out defending Jeanette and Nelson in the late 1970s when it wasn’t yet fashionable to do so. As a result of her support, she received a letter threatening a lawsuit from the Jeanette MacDonald fan club. We continued to speak on the phone and I attended her last birthday party, but she cancelled a scheduled appearance at an upcoming club meeting due to the unpleasantness from the other club.
Some of you may remember the TV interview in which Jimmy Stewart grunted his non-denial when asked by Merv Griffin if Jeanette and Nelson had had an affair…after all, Griffin said, “They sang so close together.” And then June Allyson, the other guest, piped up, “Everyone at the studio knew about it.”
Miliza Korjus, also an early member of this club (until her death), staunchly defended the Mac/Eddy affair when she attended the early Los Angeles club meetings. She didn’t know much of the particulars back in 1938 when she was at MGM, but when she met with Jeanette during Jeanette’s last illness, much of Jeanette’s discussion had to do with Nelson and their upcoming plans. It was then that Miliza realized that this had been a long-standing love.
Howard Keel, a later MGM star told me that he didn’t have problems with studio head Louis B. Mayer but while at MGM he heard about the problems Mayer caused for Jeanette and Nelson. Debbie Reynolds was at the studio during the same time period as Keel.
We missed this post from Ms. Reynolds’ website when it was first posted but certainly are – even belatedly – appreciative of the mention!
…In 1994, “Sweethearts: The Timeless Love Affair Onscreen and Off Between Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy,” by Sharon Rich, proposed that Eddy and MacDonald had had a torrid love affair that resulted in four pregnancies for MacDonald, including one during the filming of “Bittersweet” [actually, it was “Sweethearts”] in 1938 that ended in a miscarriage. Supposedly Mayer himself had a yen for MacDonald, plus he had a vested interest in keeping her married to Gene Raymond, a blonde handsome MGM star who was gay and, times being what they were, living on the down low.
So here’s what I’m wondering–did Mayer take MacDonald off of “Balalaika” not because he wanted to boost Massey’s career but because he wanted to cool things off between MacDonald and Eddy? Well, yes–Mayer was king of MGM, and as you know, it’s always good to be king.
For more info about the MacDonald/Eddy affair, you can read the very descriptive Kirkus Review of “Sweethearts,” then catch up on all things MacDonald/Eddy at MacEddy.com…
Link to Debbie Reynolds’ official website blog
PS: Back in the day, Debbie Reynolds and Jane Withers were the only two Hollywood stars pushing for a permanent Hollywood museum. They put endless money, work, love and care into preserving the film industry’s heritage and memorabilia. (Ms. Withers told me that the only reason she continued to work in the 1970s and ’80s was to pay for all the storage units housing her collection.) Both women finally had to give up on the idea. Debbie Reynolds auctioned off much of her extensive collection in 2011. She is to be commended for trying so hard for so many years to preserve a precious chunk of 20th century American history.
Sold at the auctions and pictured on this page are costumes of interest to us: Jeanette’s gown from her 1930 Technicolor film, The Vagabond King, and Nelson’s costume from Balalaika (1939).
PPS: We understand that Ms. Reynolds has had health issues these last few months and wish her a full recovery.
This week we have released 2 new CDs:
JN 206: Nelson sings on 2 Christmas radio shows
JN 207: Jeanette and Nelson – rare recordings, their last TV appearance together and interviews.
Enjoy!
The third “Master Class” in our series presented by Madeline Bayless and Linda Tolman has been uploaded for you to watch at this link. The topic of this 53-minute video is the funeral of Jeanette MacDonald…and Nelson Eddy’s participation – both private and public – in the events that followed her death on January 14, 1965.
I want to thank those who emailed to check up on us during the recent “Frankenstorm” aka Hurricane Sandy.
We are fine now, hot water and heat were finally restored last night (November 6). I have heard from others who live in New York/New Jersey and our group seems to have made it through the storm okay. Many folks lost power but thankfully no homes were heavily damaged or washed away.
In answer to your questions, we are a few blocks from “Zone A”, the mandatory evacuation area in Manhattan around the edges of the island. If you’re familiar with the lovely South Street Seaport, we are close to that and this is what it looked like after being flooded:
We are 18 stories up so didn’t fear that our building would flood. But the heavy winds uprooted trees behind our building:
We had no water or power…I snapped this shot of my family having dinner over candlelight. (Note: the lights in the background are all that could be seen out our window looking across the East River into Brooklyn.)
Juliet took the nighttime photo below looking out across the expanse of lower Manhattan from our living room window.
Below is the same view during the day, which extends across the Hudson River to New Jersey.
We did finally brave walking down and back up 18 flights of stairs to get food, water and information. Yes, disaster relief information was posted online and on television and radio but those of us without power also had no internet and no cell phone service…though we were able to sporadically send text messages. All power was out from 34th Street and below in Manhattan. We braved the stairs again later in the week to be picked up and driven into midtown to a New York Sports Club which kindly offered free hot showers to those without water.
Our power didn’t return until the end of the week. Soon after it went on again we discovered the National Guard distributing bottled water in front of our building. I snapped this shot when, after a mad scramble by residents of our building, the water supplies already were nearly gone. However, we didn’t understand why they were showing up at this late date when help and supplies were now more desperately needed in Staten Island. Bluntly, our wonderful “first responders” were neighbors who took it upon themselves to scrounge up food and water, then walked up and down the 20 floors of our building, wearing heavy backpacks filled with supplies, and going door-to-door on all floors in our entire building complex.
When the power finally returned, we were without heat or hot water for another few days. Juliet was able scrounge up a space heater and we “camped out” in our living room, bundled up with coats and blankets and with the heater going full blast. Still, we all felt chilled to the bone, damp and grubby as though we’d been on a week-long camping trip during a rainy season. When the heat and hot water finally returned, it seemed a miracle!
Yes, we had a horrific week but compared to what others have suffered, it was minimal. If you are so inclined to help out, may I suggest that you donate to the Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund. Cantor Fitzgerald (who famously lost 658 employees on 9/11) matches every donation 100% with corporate funds. In recent years, the Relief Fund has continued to help victims of “natural or civil disasters” such as Hurricane Katrina and now Hurricane Sandy. The Relief Fund takes zero out of your donations for administrative fees and they pay out to needy families very promptly. As many of you know, I worked with the Cantor Relief Fund after 9/11.While the Red Cross, Salvation Army and other agencies were caught up in red tape and bad PR regarding allocating funds, the CF Fund shamed them all by getting money into families’ hands before any of the other groups. (Don’t get me wrong, these other agencies are wonderful but in a crisis it seems to take forever before they can take action.)
If you wish, make a donation in Jeanette and Nelson’s memories. Click on the CF logo below to go to their website.
Thank you.
Sharon
DVR alert! Turner Classic Movies is screening the following films this month:
Nov 11, 8:00 am Eastern – San Francisco
Nov 21, 10:30 am Eastern – Rosalie