The photo above shows Nelson Eddy live on the radio with his “Electric Hour” script girl, Norma Nelson. But this radio show is NOT “The Electric Hour”, it’s Art Linkletter’s “House Party.” This was the venue chosen to introduce Norma as a singer and Nelson endorsed and introduced her as his protege. Smart move because had her debut been on Nelson’s radio show, the already rampart rumors about them might have escalated even further…angering both Jeanette and Ann Eddy for sure.

We met Norma Nelson (married name McDaniel) in the late 1970s. She had a difficult life, living alone with her young son who had Down Syndrome. I never met her older daughters. Her son was a very sweet and affectionate childlike young man but Norma had very little social life. She appreciated that we were relaxed around her son and so we became friends. Norma spoke candidly about Nelson, even to telling us that she’d asked Nelson to be his godfather at birth but that Nelson had declined.

Norma agreed to speak at an early club meeting and came to several others and enjoyed being important again with Nelson’s fans. She gave us a copy of her radio appearance on “House Party” so that we could put that out on LP. And we still have it on this on our CD JN128A at this link.

Norma also wrote an article for Journal #4 of Mac/Eddy Today, see below. (The original magazine is re-published here.)

Norma also had a great idea to put together a Mac/Eddy cookbook with theme foods from their films. It WAS a great idea, she had fun putting Volume 1 together and we were able to give her money from the proceeds of which she was most appreciative.  See the photos below.

Norma was a very sweet lady but I fear that once I let her know that I would use her original interview with us in Sweethearts – she did give us permission after all and was glad to talk about it at early LA club meetings – suddenly she realized that it would be her admitting that she “messed around” a bit with Nelson who was after all, a married man! (No, they didn’t have sex, we asked point blank about that.) She had never minded people knowing this before and also admitted with no reservation some details of Nelson’s life that his voice teacher Eduoard Lippe told her!

The facts are that Nelson arranged for her to study with Lippe and at some point, Nelson showed up at Lippe’s for her voice lessons..and here I quote exactly what I wrote in Sweethearts which was basically transcribed from what Norma told me and Diane Goodrich:

Before the lesson, Lippe left them alone to ‘talk.’ Norma admitted that they kissed and there was some ‘petting’ but it didn’t progress beyond that. Lippe told her that Nelson and Jeanette were lovers but when she asked Nelson about it, he denied it saying they were just friends. Lippe also told Norma that Nelson’s marriage was a mess and that he should have married someone like Norma.

Norma had a front row seat in the audience for each broadcast and soon the trades were commenting on the “romance.” Later on, their relationship waned. Nelson became furious when Lippe tried to tell Norma she was a mezzo and he found another teacher for her, Major Herbert Wall, with whom Nelson had just begun his training.

I moved to New York in the mid ’80s so I don’t know what happened to Norma in later years except that she also moved out of state at some point to live with her family. We were out of touch except for letters here and there. It would appear that she had second thoughts about going on record as I never heard from her again after I wrote her letting her know Sweethearts was coming out in 1994.

It seems she wrote a letter to Gene Raymond dated August 24, 1994 in which she basically grovels and apologizes to him for having ever spoken to me or having anything to do with our group.  This was literally about a month or so before Sweethearts hit bookstores. Damage control, anyone?

Lest anyone be annoyed at her trying to publicly backpedal on what she’d said before, please note that there were several sources who freaked out once they were questioned or attacked for their statements. Some were vaguely threatened with lawsuits from the Jeanette fan club. It took a lot of courage to speak the truth! Norma’s original article that she wrote for us was in 1978…it was published in 1978…that’s 1978, folks!…Twelve years before I ever laid eyes on any 1940s correspondence of Isabel Eddy’s where she describes her son “beaming like a headlight” when Jeanette was with him. Twelve years before I saw written documentation also from the 1940s by Lucille Mereto covering all of Nelson’s radio shows and noting the drastic difference in Nelson’s demeanor when Jeanette was his guest.

And yes, Norma’s information and observations ring true. Readers today can appreciate that Norma Nelson was cautiously honest when she wrote about Jeanette’s appearances on “The Electric Hour”:

“She was gorgeous. When she walked into a room, heads turned. Nelson was very proud of her, proud to be associated with her. He positively beamed. His solicitousness with her was a pleasure to behold. He’d hold her script, hold her hand, and see to her every comfort. This treatment was never enjoyed by any of his other guest stars that I noticed.”

PS: Norma told us that she believed what Lippe told her, that Nelson and Jeanette were lovers. When Nelson denied it, Norma assumed – hoped – that maybe there was a chance for her to be in his life. Who can blame her? But she learned (also from Lippe) that Nelson had a wife he couldn’t get rid of.  Norma was finally realistic enough to understand there was no future on a personal front with Nelson. She moved on with her life.

We are grateful to Norma for the information she freely shared. Every piece of information has helped to put together the bigger picture of how the Jeanette-and-Nelson story played out.

This is going to be a very frank discussion of  a very uncomfortable subject. It deals with the first sexual encounter between Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald so those who find the subject abhorrent, please be warned in advance.

The photo above is on the set of Maytime, showing an unusual shot of hostility between them. And yes, they sometimes fought bitterly. Another shot of them glaring at each other:

The text from my book Sweethearts that seems to offend some goes as follows: “He…described in graphic detail what he was going to do to her to make sure she never forgot she was his. Then he threw her down on the bed and raped her.”

To put this into context, the time period we’re talking about is during the filming of their first movie together, Naughty Marietta. I do not know the exact date of this incident but the film went into production in late 1934 and was released in March of 1935. Most likely this occurred in December 1934 or January 1935.

First off, I quoted the events exactly as described to me. The version you read in the book is precisely how I and my then-research partner, Diane Goodrich, were told about this episode. The setting, the dialogue, the quarrel that preceded this episode, Nelson completely losing his temper and acting out so that Jeanette was for the first time exposed to his “Jekyll and Hyde personality” as she termed it – all this was described to us.

Diane and I were duly horrified at hearing this. Diane, who had known Nelson, angrily told me, “Nelson would never do that!” We discussed it and had pressed our sources for all the details they knew. (Marie Collick was the first source but we subsequently asked a few other people about it.) And then I said, “Let’s see what Blossom says.”

As you can read in Sweethearts, Blossom  not only confirmed the story but added the aftermath, in which the second round was definitely consensual and Jeanette happily commented upon it to her sister some time afterwards.

To this day I remember exactly where we were when we finally asked Blossom about it; we had eaten lunch in Paradise Cove, Diane was driving us through Beverly Hills, on Sunset Blvd and then we ended up on Doheny Drive. Blossom was in the front passenger seat giving Diane directions by pointing to the right or left. I was in the back seat. We brought it up tentatively, apologetically, um…we had heard something and didn’t know whether to believe it or not…please don’t be angry or offended by this question…but…

And Blossom laughed as she set the record straight on this episode.

Let me also clarify something. In the context of that time period, the definition of “rape” was – per 1927 law – “the carnal knowledge of a female, forcibly and against her will.” According to a CNN article on the revision of this law, “That meant it was only an act of rape if a man forcibly penetrated a woman through her vagina. It excluded oral and anal penetration.”

It appears that normally easygoing, lovesick “puppy dog” Nelson finally was pushed beyond his own endurance by Jeanette’s behavior and finally just pounced without warning or self-control.

Tonight I discussed this subject with a grandmother who said, “Then they might have called what Nelson did rape but today we would call it rough sex.”

Others point out that there were a few incidents noted during their early dates together where Nelson “got carried away” but he managed to remain a gentleman and not go too far.  Jeanette no doubt had to wonder at his courtship of her, so unusual in their world, she told her sister “He’s so strange.” One wouldn’t put it past her to goad him to that last step – as it happened, if only to see what was up with this guy. For Nelson, it must have been tough on her to watch her daily on the Naughty Marietta set as makeup man Fred Phillips noted that Nelson was always scoping her out.

Another question arises; even if Jeanette had discussed the incident in detail with her older sister and others had heard about it as well…Why would I even want to discuss such a lurid incident in a biography about the two? Good question. There are four reasons that make it vital, no matter how one views the act.

1. It happened.  And it was, as noted above, Jeanette’s first introduction to Nelson’s temper and his jealous rages. By this time they had known each other about a year; he had proposed marriage to her a week after their first date, she turned him down so he backed off and exhibited very gentlemanly manners all through 1934. But working with her on the film and being near her and seeing her in ever-changing lovely costumes was very hard on him…as noted in this un-retouched photo of them below on the set.

2. It showed that Nelson had interest in sex, wasn’t “The Singing Capon” as some snide people termed him, and that he was indeed sexually attracted to and in fact obsessed with Jeanette MacDonald. Nelson once made this crude but obviously accurate statement: “I get within a mile of her and I’ve got a hard-on.” Below is another shot of him with Jeanette on the Maytime set in which demonstrates his arousal. And here’s a link to an article with some screenshots from The Girl of the Golden West, in which Jeanette’s nearness was again a huge problem for Nelson.

All puns aside, the next two reasons are the most important:

3. This was not an isolated incident, there is a vague mention of another angry attack by Nelson in August 1936 that resulted in Jeanette breaking up with him and accepting the marriage proposal of Gene Raymond.  It should be noted that Nelson was terribly frustrated with Jeanette and he was fed up with her acting “like a yo-yo”. He wanted to marry her, he wanted her by his side and instead she put her career first. Something triggered him off again but we have no real detail on the incident, just its outcome.

4. Based on his past behavior, Nelson believed himself capable of this kind of boorish behavior – forcing himself on a woman – so when Ann Franklin “told me a nightmare of a story about my becoming violent in my lovemaking” while Nelson asserted he was both drunk and drugged and had no memory of it – HE BELIEVED HER! And according to what Nelson wrote to Jeanette, this is the reason he married Ann. (Whether it was the self shame of what he purportedly did to Ann or the fear that Ann would provide a full detailed report to Jeanette – which would no doubt result in Jeanette breaking up with him – Nelson could find no way out of his predicament.)

This is why it was necessary, I felt, to show the irrational pattern of behavior Nelson demonstrated on rare occasions, usually a mild-mannered gentleman but also capable of being pushed to his limit and finally blowing up and acting out.  As his mother Isabel once wrote, “Living with Nelson is like living with World War II in your house.”

Finally, for those of you wondering how or why we would learn such detailed descriptions of their intimate moments, I direct you to read Sweethearts where Nelson mostly (but sometimes Jeanette) can be quoted from letters discussing such matters endlessly, sometimes in vivid and graphic detail. This is who these people were, this is what made them tick and how and why they kept their love going for decades. My job was simply to share the story which – for the most part – they were happy to tell themselves, in their own words.

By the way, it should also be noted that there is never any mention after that August 1936 incident of Nelson acting out toward Jeanette in such a manner again. Ever.

This isn’t to say that they didn’t have their issues in the coming years, namely Nelson’s stamina vs. Jeanette’s frailty, her pregnancies, her heart problem, their many separations due to work and travel, his infidelities and the muddled scene with their spouses. But somehow they managed to work it out for themselves, having learned the hard way that they needed to be together.

To end this article on a more cheerful note, the photo below shows them when personally they were happy in their personal lives together…what a difference!