Above: a gorgeous color shot of Jeanette MacDonald from the film Sweethearts. Her sister Blossom, by the way, kept an almost identical photo framed on her dresser during the last years of her life.
TCM is screening two of Jeanette’s films on her 105th birthday!
Smilin’ Through shows at 6 am Eastern Time, while Rose Marie with Nelson Eddy screens at 8 am.
Set your VCR, DVR or Tivo!
Very sad news…one of the English papers is reporting that Paul Newman may be near death, from lung cancer.
I have known for about a year that he was ill, as his wife Joanne Woodward began curtailing various activities to stay close to his side. He has been treated for cancer here in NYC.
Joanne Woodward, as you may know, is a die-hard Nelson Eddy fan. She saw Naughty Marietta about 15-17 times and loves to tell the story about how she met Nelson at a restaurant after she won her Best Actress Oscar for Three Faces of Eve. She went over to him and gushed how much she enjoyed his films, how many times she’d seen Naughty Marietta, etc. – to Nelson’s amazement. Woodward said her hubby was amused and tolerant of “the other man” in her life.
When I first met her a few years back, I gave her one of our Nelson Eddy Centennial tote bags … filled with a few items I thought she might like. She was giving one of her wonderful film screening afternoons – a tribute to Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy. She spoke to the audience and with tears in her eyes, said it was one of the most wonderful gifts she had ever gotten. And that when she got home with the tote bag Paul Newman had taken it from her and looked at its contents, laughing at how she still adored Nelson Eddy after all these years.
Like many of you women whose long-suffering husbands have been tolerant of your “addiction” to Nelson Eddy – well, it was amazing to know that Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman had a similar scene at home! (Movie stars…they’re just like us!)
I have always found Ms. Woodward to be a gracious and kind lady, with a sense of humor, honesty and courage in speaking out about the Jeanette MacDonald–Nelson Eddy romance even when it wasn’t the politically correct topic of discussion. I have met several people who know the Newmans, or have worked with them, and they only have laudatory things to say about them – especially how they’ve used their fame and money to help others.
My heart goes out to them.
Update: Martha Stewart posted several pictures of herself taken with Paul Newman at one of his charity events last weekend.
LOS ANGELES, California (AP) — Alexander “Sandy” Courage, an Emmy-winning and Academy Award-nominated arranger, orchestrator and composer who created the otherworldly theme for the classic “Star Trek” TV show, has died. He was 88.
Courage died May 15 at the Sunrise assisted-living facility in Pacific Palisades, his stepdaughter Renata Pompelli of Los Angeles, said Thursday. He had been in poor health for three years.
Over a decades-long career, Courage collaborated on dozens of movies and orchestrated some of the greatest musicals of the 1950s and 1960s, including “My Fair Lady,” “Hello, Dolly!” “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers,” “Gigi,” “Porgy and Bess” and “Fiddler on the Roof.”
But his most famous work is undoubtedly the “Star Trek” theme, which he composed, arranged and conducted in a week in 1965.
“I have to confess to the world that I am not a science fiction fan,” Courage said in an interview for the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation’s Archive of American Television in 2000. “Never have been. I think it’s just marvelous malarkey. … So you write some, you hope, marvelous malarkey music that goes with it.”
Courage said the tune, with its ringing fanfare, eerie soprano part and swooping orchestration, was inspired by an arrangement of the song “Beyond the Blue Horizon” he heard as a youngster. [Note: Jeanette MacDonald introduced it in “Monte Carlo” (1930) and sang it again in “Follow the Boys” (1943).]
“Little did I know when I wrote that first A-flat for the flute that it was going to go down in history, somehow,” Courage said. “It’s a very strange feeling.”