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.”
Michael Evans was a friend, he spoke at a MacDonald/Eddy New York luncheon, detailing some of the harsh realities of his family’s life and his mother’s mental illness. He expressed that his greatest fear was that he would eventually have mental issues as several other family members had suffered through in his mother’s and grandmother’s generations. Sadly, this proved out. He died in 2017.
1892: Birthdate of German –born American director Ernst Lubitsch. His movies are witty and sophisticated, with a fine and malicious sexuality: in all of them there is the famous “Lubitsch touch”, that is an unconventional way to make a picture, based on his sarcastic sense of humour and his scornful view of life. Lubitsch had turned his back on his father’s tailoring business to enter the theater, and by 1911 he was a member of Max Reinhardt’s Deutsches Theater. His first film work came in 1912 as an actor. Gradually, he abandoned acting to concentrate on directing and in 1918 he made his mark as a serious director with Die Augen der Mumie Ma (The Eyes of the Mummy), a tragic drama starring Pola Negri. Lubitsch subsequently alternated between escapist comedies and grand-scale historical dramas; he enjoyed great international success with both. His reputation as a grand master of world cinema reached a new peak after the release of his spectacles Madame Du Barry (Passion, 1919) and Anna Boleyn (Deception, 1920). Lubitsch left Germany for Hollywood in 1922, invited by Mary Pickford. She allowed Lubitsch to sign with Warner Bros., where he established his reputation for sophisticated comedy with such stylish and delightful films as The Marriage Circle (1924), Lady Windermere’s Fan (1925), and So This Is Paris (1926). In 1928, when sound arrived in Hollywood, Lubitsch joined Paramount Pictures. With his first talkie, The Love Parade (1929), starring Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald, Lubitsch hit his stride as a maker of worldly musical comedies (and got himself another Oscar nomination). With the beginning of the sound era, he created witty and sarcastic dialogue, and malicious and bizarre comedic situations. The Love Parade (1929), Monte Carlo (1930), and The Smiling Lieutenant (1931) were hailed by critics as masterpieces of the newly emerging musical genre. But whether with music, as in MGM’s opulent The Merry Widow (1934), or without, as in Paramount’s delicious Trouble in Paradise (1932, certainly his best film), One Hour with You (1932) and Design for Living (1933), Lubitsch continued to specialize in sophisticated comedy. He made only one other dramatic film, an antiwar picture, titled Broken Lullaby (aka The Man I Killed, 1932). In 1935 he was appointed that studio’s production manager and subsequently produced his own films and supervised the production of films of other directors. In 1939, Lubitsch moved to MGM, and directed the divine Greta Garbo in Ninotchka, a satirical and scintillating comedy in which the great actress laughed for the first time on the screen. Then he directed the delightful The Shop Around the Corner (1940), with James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan as a pair of secret admirers. He went independent to direct That Uncertain Feeling (1941, a remake of his 1925 film Kiss Me Again, and the cynical anti-Nazi comedy To Be or Not to Be (1942), Carole Lombard’s last picture. Lubitsch spent the balance of his career at 20th Century Fox, but a heart condition curtailed his activity. The last great picture made by the director is certainly Heaven Can Wait (1943), an elegant and ironic comedy. The plot is about Henry Van Cleve (played by Don Ameche) who presents himself at the gates of Hell only to find he is closely vetted on his qualifications for entry; surprised there is any question on his suitability, he recounts his lively life and the women he has known from his mother onwards, but mainly concentrating on his happy but sometimes difficult twenty-five years of marriage to Martha (played by the beautiful Gene Tierney).In March of 1947 he was awarded a special Academy Award for his “25-year contribution to motion pictures”. He died later that year of a heart attack, his sixth. His last film, That Lady in Ermine, with Betty Grable, was completed by Otto Preminger and released posthumously in 1948. At the director’s funeral, the great Billy Wilder said, “No more Lubitsch,” and William Wyler responded, “Worse than that. No more Lubitsch pictures”.
Here’s a reminder to watch/record “The Merry Widow” with Jeanette MacDonald and Maurice Chevalier on January 28, 2009 at 4 pm eastern time. Note: they will have a 4-minute little bio of Jeanette four minutes before the film starts, in case you want to catch that as well.
Nice article about the history of Technicolor, although one incorrect statement noted about the fact that Jeanette MacDonald didn’t want to make Technicolor films? Still, there are some great pictures, they do mention Jeanette and Nelson Eddy films (why wouldn’t they?) and it’s an informative article.
44 yrs. since Jeanette’s passing – doesn’t seem possible. I was young at the time but I do remember Nelson and how ill and sad I thought he looked. I always had the feeling they had loved each other all their lives, loved their movies, and “knew” they were in love. It is sad to think of that time. I feel sorry that Nelson did not see Jeanette before she passed; he probably did want to but was in denial. I can understand that. And I really believe Jeanette wanted him to be with her too. The Gene Raymond story of “Goodbye darling” is such a huge lie! Well, we know all about his lies throughout all the years, don’t we? He treated Jeanette shamefully at the end. I cannot stand the man.
Re Susanna Foster: I feel sad that she had such a terrible time, but with all of those mental problems in her family it must have been inevitable. She was so pretty and had such a fine voice. It is sad to read of her problems. Susanna had such talent and should have gone on and on at Universal or another studio.
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.
Sharon Rich: What was your overall impression of Nelson?
Susanna Foster: Don’t kid yourself, Nelson was very ambitious. So was Jeanette. And he was a man who wanted to wear the pants in the family, no question about it. And Jeanette also had paid very dearly for what she’d done, you know. She was very generous to him. In their first film, she could have had star billing alone. She shared equal billing and so, when I hear this thing about an Iron Butterfly, that infuriates me. She was very hard on herself. Nelson underrated himself….She didn’t underrate. She knew what she had and didn’t have. No conceit, nothing like that.
Now, there was a certain shyness in Nelson….. I think Nelson was more sensitive, in a different way than Jeanette. She was a fragile woman…. Nelson was a strong man. Big, husky man. Very durable…. There was a harmony about his face, his mouth. If you look at pictures of him when he was a little older, he had very dark blue eyes, almost black-blue. And they were very burning, you know. Typically the opposite of his mouth, it turned up at the corners and smiled and was sweet. His eyes had a lot of feeling…. You don’t see a lot of meanness in Nelson’s face. But he had a fiery streak in him, you know….I realized Nelson wasn’t all harmony and sweetness. If he ever lost his temper, I wouldn’t want to be around.
Sharon Rich: And Jeanette?
Susanna Foster Jeanette was so beautiful, she turned heads in New York when she walked down the street, they said. When I visited her home, this was after I made Phantom, around 1944, we had the same lawyer…. I went to their home, and Gene wasn’t there. We had ham for dinner. I’ll never forget because we had ham and her maid was named Virginia. And she was so old, she could barely walk.
I remember Jeanette telling me at dinner…. We started talking about opera and she said, “Oh, Susanna, don’t get mixed up in that bunch. That’s the worst intrigue in the world. You think you’ve seen intrigue in Hollywood, wait till you see it in the opera.” She told me, and she was so right.
Now, I heard her on her first concert tour, at the Philharmonic. She wore that pink chiffon gown that’s in the painting of her. She got up there, and she sang about three concerts a week. She sang her repertoire and for an encore sang “Sempre Liebera” from La Traviata. Now, how many sopranos of that era could do that?
They weren’t fair. That woman was a very fine singer and should have been singing at the Metropolitan.
[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….
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.
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 [Philip] 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 turned down all help but kept talking about her big comeback. Believe me, folks, it took some careful listening and observation 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.
Above, Nelson Eddy photographed the day Jeanette MacDonald died.
On January 18, 1065, Jeanette MacDonald was laid to rest after a funeral in which an approximate 6,000 fans paid respects to her at Forest Lawn, Glendale.
She died four days earlier, on January 14, in Houston. Many fans have written me over the years, telling me of the pain of hearing that news. Many Hollywood stars pass away only to have fans say, “Oh, what a shame, I remember seeing so-and-so in this film or that -. ” They feel a twinge of sadness, or nostalgia, for that usually happy, younger time in their lives.
But the death of Jeanette MacDonald caused huge grief worldwide. Fans that had been loyal for decades were invested emotionally in her life and wellbeing. There was that special “something” about her…and about Nelson Eddy, who followed her two years later, that made their fans care deeply.
I have heard from several fans that were so devastated at the news of Jeanette’s death, they cried for hours. Or couldn’t go to work that day. Or were told by their bosses (who knew of their caring for Jeanette) that they understood, just stay home and grieve.
There are very few movie stars in today’s arena that would elicit such a response among their fans. Perhaps young actors, cut down in the prime of life. Heath Ledger, for example…such a waste of talent.
But not a movie star long past middle age. In today’s world, only Paul Newman has recently been so publicly mourned. Not only because he was a gorgeous man and a fine actor, but because he was a generous, giving man off-screen.
I’m not sure that the general public was fully aware of the charitable work that Jeanette – and Nelson – did quietly, in their day. Some fans were aware of it because they were so ‘in their face’ and saw it up close. But the public did sense that same goodness and generosity in them, and so they felt (as with Paul Newman last year) that we had lost someone who had made the world a better place for having lived.
Anyway that knew Jeanette’s older sister Blossom was aware how close they were. Jeanette had few people she could speak with candidly about the personal issues in her life. Blossom had always been a trusted confidant, non-judgmental as their other sister Elsie was. So – when Blossom died thirteen years to the very day that Jeanette died – January 14, 1978 – it was not surprising to me. Ironic, maybe, and fitting.
