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In the photo above we see a candid shot of Jeanette on set with her Broadway Serenade co-star, Lew Ayres, and her older sister Blossom. And of course we know that Lew Ayres was also friends with Blossom because of working with her just a few months earlier in the first of their Dr. Kildare movie series! Just to understand the time period, Young Dr. Kildare was released on October 14, 1938.

To further understand the events, note that Jeanette looks a bit wan and strained in that photo, a pinched look to her face. No radiance – and in fact, with candid shots from this movie there aren’t many really happy, energetic candids to be found, perhaps on Lew Ayres’ birthday, but not much else.

Compare that to a similar somewhat frail look that Jeanette also demonstrated a few months earlier in this photo below (recently posted and discussed at length by Katie) of her returning to the Sweethearts set after a heartbreaking hospital visit.

The reasons for events that occurred in the Fall of 1938 into December remain puzzling, to say the least. Whereas at other times we have sometimes even a day-to-day accounting, for this time period there are definitely unanswered questions. To read in sequence the overall events I refer you to my book Sweethearts. In the meantime, here is more photographic evidence to back up my statements made there.

In short, after the movie Sweethearts was completed, Nelson took Jeanette on a short road trip as they re-examined their lives going forward. He was all for her setting up a 6-week residency in Reno and getting a quickie divorce. While she did attempt that, there was interference from Louis B. Mayer.  And as we know, the two stars were subsequently thrown into separate films. Nelson made Let Freedom Ring with Virginia Bruce and Jeanette launched into Broadway Serenade with two non-threatening, non-macho co-stars, Lew Ayres and Ian Hunter.

Nelson reacted very badly – as expected – to Mayer’s interference yet again in his life.  This seems to be the point where he begins to seriously question the depth of Jeanette’s love for him when she refuses to deal with a divorce at this time. We can say in hindsight that she should have been honest with him about what was happening. Still, it is pretty clear that there is another possibly short pregnancy in the fall, it ends with her back in the hospital (probably not a miscarriage but terminated out of necessity) and that Nelson blames himself for something about her having a “bad ovary.”

There is mention of three hospitalizations, one in September that seems to be a follow-up to the July pregnancy. And then again in October and November. I state that one of them was lengthy – and here you have Louella Parsons perhaps tattling about this one on October 23rd, saying that Jeanette was hospitalized FOR THREE WEEKS!

Forgive me…but that excuse that she had some inner ear problem again that required “minor surgery” just doesn’t fly. Yes, that was the line given to her fan club and her cheerful quotes to the press. But… three weeks in the hospital?

Furthermore, Louella makes another interesting comment after stating that Jeanette is “getting her strength back” and that “she and her favorite boy friend, Gene Raymond, leave for Palm Springs in a few days for her complete recuperation.” Um…. her BOY FRIEND? Not BOYFRIEND (as in romantically involved) or HUSBAND.  What is Louella hinting at here? Gene is really only a friend of Jeanette’s who happens to be a male? As differentiated by someone she is romantically involved with?  Or legally married to? Is Louella hinting to the fact that Jeanette is trying to DIVORCE Gene…and therefore not a husband? Or they never legally married due to the Bob Ritchie issue?

And is Louella suggesting that there is maybe someone else who had something to do with this mysterious hospitalization if you connect the dots? (And don’t kid yourself, most everyone in town knew or had heard about the Sweethearts pregnancy and who the father of that baby was!) Don’t forget that Hedda Hopper scooped Louella in the summer about that pregnancy!

Jeanette returned to the hospital again in November, presumably before both she and Nelson started on their new films, the third week of that month. So what do we know about Nelson? That during October and November he is freaking out over issues with Jeanette’s health and her seemingly not putting him first in her life. (She did not enlighten him on all the issues coming from Mayer.) And from all accounts, Nelson refused to use birth control with her…which would inevitably lead to a repeat pregnancy. In fact, who knows, maybe Nelson thought another pregnancy that hopefully ended well would be a blessing, help raise her spirits and also force her to push a divorce through with Gene.

October is around the first time we start hearing about Nelson’s despair, wanting to give up love for music, he apparently starts talking too much to sympathetic Ann Franklin in some weak moments, he is worried that he has caused Jeanette’s bad ovary, etc. His friends are worried about him.

I find it very probable that Mayer would embrace Nelson marrying anyone – Ann Franklin or whoever, at this time, just to get him away from Jeanette. Nelson caused problems that had Jeanette repeatedly in the hospital in 1938. I have heard snide rumors from one or two people that the studio insisted Nelson marry to show that he liked women but what seems to be more realistic is that Nelson was viewed as a threat and a loose cannon. Mayer could not trust that the roller-coaster events of 1938 would not happen again in 1939 when inevitably, Jeanette and Nelson had to work together. Movie audiences would demand a team film and the press was quick to announce that after these solo projects, MGM was buying “The Desert Song” for them as their next project.

In short, Mayer could not allow his most popular female star, shortly to be awarded the upcoming “Queen of the Screen”, to be spending weeks in hospitals or otherwise indisposed with unwanted pregnancies or complications. Or thinking about divorce and/or rampant gossip about an affair with Nelson who refused to be reined in about his private life.

What do we know about Jeanette? Well, look at the photos below which according to the dates, were released to the press in the first half of December. That would mean they were shot in the early days of filming Broadway Serenade. Remember in Sweethearts how I write that Jeanette looked paunchy around the middle? These photos demonstrate that her figure has not returned to what seemed to be normal for her…or is once more (if very slightly) showing a baby bump.

Maria Escano shared the photo below which also vividly shows Jeanette’s rounded figure:

And here’s a closeup. Look closely at the darkened area where they noticeably touched up the photo to reduce the belly:

Maria, who is a medical doctor, also addresses the question of the “bad ovary”:

The only thing I can think of why Nelson would blame himself is the possibility of a STD. I hate to even think about it but what else could it be, if we are honest to ourselves. Also we don’t know what the concept of a “bad ovary” was at that time among lay people, I mean, non-medical.

As a physician, those things come to mind naturally no matter how much we try to think that our stars would never ever go through things like that. There is always that niggling question in the back of one’s mind and I would not be true to my profession if something like that didn’t become part of my differential diagnosis.

An ectopic pregnancy, depending on whether it was diagnosed early or not can be problematic and dangerous…The Fallopian tubes are so narrow that a growing embryo will not be sustainable there and will lead to rupture, an acute abdomen scenario, if undetected.

Whatever the facts about that long hospitalization, there is something else to consider. Toward the end of 1938, the press began getting a little outrageous in their hints about movie stars whose lives didn’t follow the generally accepted ideas of morality. We see an interesting blurb noting that Allan Jones’ movie career had declined for some reason – and that Gene Raymond also wasn’t working. Both being mentioned in the same article cannot help but show us that the activities of Jeanette and Nelson were being closely watched – because Sweethearts reveals the answers to both of these “Hollywood mysteries”:

 

And then came Photoplay‘s January 1939 issue that was released in late 1938, “outing” the unmarried stars who were living together:

Photoplay was forced to do some damage control the following month with this apology of sorts:

Note the very last sentence of their “apology”:

This article was intended merely to portray some of the finest friendships we have ever known.

Finest friendships – a code name for shacking up together without benefit of marriage….

Now recall a statement made by Woody Van Dyke and quoted in the press during the filming of Sweethearts just a few months earlier…when some were squawking about a “feud” between the stars. Here’s exactly what Woody said: “Believe me, there are no finer friends in all Hollywood than Nelson and Jeanette – and I know.”

Do you think that Louie B. Mayer was going to stand for Jeanette and Nelson continuing to shack up in hideway houses, for her to get pregnant and Nelson to make such a fuss that the paternity of that baby was obvious? In this tenuous climate in Hollywood at that time?

There is one thing to note about those couples mentioned above in Photoplay, they were not viewed by the public as dedicated onscreen teams. The exception was Charlie Chaplin and Paulette Goddard (with Modern Times released and The Great Dictator in the works)…but remember Chaplin was his own boss. And still, this nebulous marital state was said to have cost Paulette Goddard the role of Scarlett O’Hara.

But as evidenced by box office receipts, the movie-going public ONLY wanted to see Jeanette and Nelson together, as a team.

Note that two of the couples mentioned above: Gable and Lombard, and Taylor and Stanwyck, stopped living “in sin” and were married in 1939. Such was the power of that Photoplay article.

All these issues and influences noted above came into play in the final months of 1938…with disastrous results for our people in the beginning of 1939.

One has to wonder whether Nelson’s marriage, while a PR disaster that the studio had to spin, secretly pleased Mayer because it meant – or so he thought – the end of headaches dealing with Nelson and Jeanette and their personal drama.

Thanks to Alisa for forwarding some of the articles reproduced here.

 

In the photo above we see a candid shot of Anna MacDonald, Gene Raymond, Jeanette and her sister Blossom.

Two days before her marriage to actor Gene Raymond, Jeanette MacDonald wrote her ex-love (or ex-husband) Bob Ritchie, as quoted in the book Sweethearts:

I have had fears and qualms but lately none at all and as the date approaches I feel more relaxed and certain I am not making a mistake – I am going to try and make this go as I have always with everything else.

The original of this amazing letter is in the Ritchie family collection and for some reason Bob Ritchie kept the letter all his life. Maybe he hoped/sensed the marriage wouldn’t work and he could get back together with Jeanette on a personal level – as he did remain her manager after her marriage.

The following day, Jeanette penned a letter to Nelson Eddy’s mother, Isabel, in which she wrote (again quoted from Sweethearts):

I must be a happy bride tomorrow – I must – I must go to Gene not with my heart’s love, for that is impossible, but with purity of spirit – and a calm mind – a prayer in my heart.

Whoa! It’s not uncommon for brides to have have last-minute jitters. But let’s take a step back and realize that we’re talking about an A-list movie star about to marry someone she’s not really sure she loves! But for whatever reasons, some of them discussed here, she went ahead and took the plunge.

Look again at the photo above, which shows us Jeanette’s mother, Anna MacDonald (who had been widowed for over a decade), all flirty and giggly with Gene Raymond. What we see here is Anna at her happiest. Don’t know about you but I’ve never seen a photo of Anna MacDonald looking happier! In fact, I’ve never seen her laughing before!

Nelson Eddy, on the other hand, called Anna MacDonald “a witch” and had no use for her. No social graces with her, wouldn’t even pretend to like her or to try and win her approval.

And come to think of it, is there even a photo of her with Nelson – a suitor that she despised? Feel free to email it to me if you have one.

Gene Raymond was a smart man. He knew to court Jeanette he had to also court her mother. His own mother was a PR disaster (publicly anti-Semitic) and a personal disaster (didn’t much like Jeanette for some reason and was violently against him marrying her). To look at this photo and see Anna all giggly and girlish with Gene, we perhaps have a better understanding why Jeanette would want peace and mother’s approval in her life and would marry the man who won her mother’s approval.

The fact that Gene’s mother was so against their marrying may have also pushed Jeanette and Gene closer in those final weeks before their wedding….just to prove the woman wrong.

So as a result, we have the photo below of Nelson and his mother Isabel arriving at Jeanette’s wedding. He wears the same miserable, resigned expression that he had several days earlier arriving at Jean Harlow’s funeral. You notice that Isabel, while beautifully gowned, doesn’t look too thrilled either.

In Jeanette’s Autobiography, she mentions a few times her evident surprise that she and Gene would not have children. She writes:

In those days when we shaped our lives together, I had to try not to make an issue of anything, not to argue….I had to learn early that tears would get me nowhere. There was also one subject I didn’t allow myself to pursue, except in my private daydreaming. The Mac-Raymonds had no children.

This is first mentioned when they returned from their Hawaii honeymoon. And then later in the book, Jeanette is talking about the post-war years and she writes an entire paragraph about this subject but then crosses it out with a big “x”. And then she crosses out with a squiggly line the next paragraph: “I might have had children. Dear God, why didn’t I? We could have given them so much.” See the photo below:

Now, she’s not being fully honest here. As she does very cagily in this book, she blurs who she’s referring to as her “husband.” She is definitely talking about a real goal in her life – having a baby. “I might have had children,” indicates that she was physically capable of getting pregnant. Only – Gene did not want children, she explains, and she couldn’t convince him otherwise. She misleads by suggesting that this is why she had no children.

You should know that at one time, Jeanette considered ‘fessing up to at least one actual pregnancy in her autobiography. Yes folks, she was going to admit it. That section was deleted and watered down to simply her “desire” to have a child but not the realization of it. Was this considered too controversial to be published? Did Jeanette back down because it was too painful for her? Or perhaps concerned about the pain it might cause Nelson because she would have to lie and state that the baby was Gene’s?

We don’t know the answers.

The fact is that we have documentation from contemporary letters – and visual evidence from photos – of several pregnancies. So if Gene was not the father – and she’s stating very firmly that he wasn’t – then who the heck was? No answers in her Autobiography (in its “finished” form)  but Jeanette was visibly pregnant during the filming of Sweethearts, no denying it. There are other pregnancies (from mentions in contemporary letters and discussed in my book Sweethearts) over the next few years, particularly when Gene is overseas or in Yuma during WWII. This is why the contemporary letters, particularly from Isabel, are so vital. It was not until I first saw those letters in 1990 that I learned there was most likely another pregnancy gone wrong later in 1938, months after the one that hospitalized Jeanette in July. She returned to the hospital during the fall and then again in November.  At that time she looks paunchy around the middle while filming Broadway Serenade, for example. As discussed in Sweethearts, there is mention that Nelson was upset that he was responsible for her “bad ovary.” Why suddenly did something go wrong with her ovary? There’s no doubt that while Jeanette was filming Broadway Serenade, she literally wanders through it giving a lackluster performance. Her eyes are filled with tears in certain scenes that don’t call for it, such as this one below. Her eyes well up in several scenes; I personally find it difficult to watch this film with her struggling to be the professional actress that she needs to be.

My assumption based on the little information we have is that she went to the hospital and had a medically necessitated termination of this pregnancy. And that Nelson somehow blamed himself for what happened.

Then we have the mid 1940s in which the letters tell us of Jeanette’s frantic attempt to have a child before she is too old to do so. During this time, there are several gossip blurbs alluding to Nelson’s futile efforts to get a divorce from Ann, offering her basically $2 million and anything else she wants – as long as she doesn’t drag Jeanette’s name through the mud. But Ann won’t agree. In the meantime, Jeanette attempts to force matters by having at least two well-documented pregnancies during this time. In both of these cases, she miscarries.

Gene Raymond returns from the war to find his wife still trying desperately to have the love child she had promised Nelson but had failed to deliver. We can only imagine how Gene felt – any man would feel – coming home to this situation. No matter the circumstances of his marriage to Jeanette, Gene also had his pride and a limit to his tolerance.  While Jeanette is not honest about WHY Gene wanted out of the marriage, she does admit that Gene “embarked on a semi-bachelor existence” after the war (see below). And really wanted out of this marriage.

Because Gene Raymond did not want children. And now he would be asked to raise another man’s child as his own because Nelson could not get a divorce. Even those who are not sympathetic to Gene have to wonder how he was expected to swallow this strange scenario.

The fact is, in Hollywood this scenario wasn’t so unusual. Don’t forget the whole charade Loretta Young went through with her daughter Judy, courtesy of Clark Gable. She put the baby into an orphanage and then “adopted” her and cooked up some phony story about adopting two children but then ending up with one, etc. So don’t think that Jeanette and Nelson wouldn’t have carried through with whatever shenanigans had to be done. Although Nelson kept insisting that Jeanette NOT raise the child with Gene’s name yet he didn’t want her divorced or to be a single mother living on her own – or also to be prey for other men who might have wanted her. What a dilemma.

There is no doubt that Gene finally decided to stick with the marriage after the war. Perhaps because – as Isabel learned –  “Jeanette recently settled a lot of money on Gene so he doesn’t have to work ever again if he doesn’t want to.” But in sticking with Jeanette, Gene continued to be “the forgotten man.” Such as in the 1950 photo below where it’s NELSON all over Jeanette, his arm around her waist. Gene is pushed away to the middle…and the Melchiors are looking at Nelson and Jeanette – Gene could be invisible for all they care.

Gene Raymond had some idea that he would return from the war and that he and Jeanette would create a professional future for themselves working together. He wrote her: “When this war business is over, you and I are going to be mighty important people in the theatrical world! It may be in Hollywood or it may be in New York, but, whichever, it’s going to be you and me together as an important pair! I’ve made up my mind to do that!”

Yeah, right.  Instead, Jeanette was busy trying to have a baby and/or return to MGM with Nelson. It wasn’t until the end of the decade, when Jeanette had a “final” breakup with Nelson (she had waited ten years for him to leave Ann) that she had a breakdown, tossed in the towel, tried to create a new life for herself and moved forward with Gene to go to Broadway with The Guardsman. And that show never made it, despite many re-tweaks and adding a mini-concert sung by Jeanette during the show.

There was no charisma for audiences between Jeanette and Gene. They should have learned from their 1941 movie Smilin’ Through which also didn’t catch the fancy of audiences. They could go through the motions but audiences weren’t buying it.

In her autobiography, Jeanette discusses their marital problems in the post-war years…all the way into the 1950s – resuming (not coincidentally) after Nelson comes back on the scene in late 1952.

This isn’t to say that all was rosy with Nelson during the ’50s, it definitely was not. But Jeanette and Gene came to some comfortable (for them) lifestyle in what Jeanette termed “a marriage of separations.” There were admittedly times when Jeanette leaned on Gene for emotional support. After all, with Nelson over the years, he was quick to run to others for comfort and sex when he and Jeanette had a falling out.

But Jeanette never did. I never heard a single rumor or knowledgeable statement that Jeanette “retaliated” with other men. Only Gene she had to fall back on when lonely or needed or she was disgusted with Nelson.

Did Gene “do it” for her? The answer has to be NO based on the fact that she tried very hard – starting in 1957 – to convinced Ann Eddy to give Nelson his divorce without making a scandal. Whatever Jeanette said or did, she got Ann to finally agree…and it was all to go down in 1958.

That didn’t happen, as we know.  But what it tells you is that all the lovey-dovey letters between Gene and Jeanette looked so very nice on paper…but meant nothing if Jeanette was ready to drop it all and run off with Nelson even at that late date.

It is another “deja vu” instance of Jeanette writing lovingly to Irving Stone and making him feel special and loved when she’s already sleeping with Bob Ritchie and supposedly crazy in love with him!

Over the years, this whole arrangement wore Gene down, no doubt about it. There’s not any other way to explain his complete disinterest in Jeanette and just barely going through the motions in her last couple of years – plus his total neglect and active abuse of her. And this is documented on a DAY TO DAY BASIS by Jeanette herself, in her 1963 desk diary. That heartbreaking testimony will be the subject of the next article about the Gene Raymond connection.