The Gene Raymond connection, part 2

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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:

autobio 2

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.

 

 

 

 

Jeanette MacDonald sings for Planned Parenthood center, 1940

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Above: Jeanette was visibly pregnant both in the film Sweethearts and in candid shots such as this one, taken on her birthday, 1938. This hug and subsequent intense kiss was from Nelson Eddy, not her husband of record but the baby daddy nevertheless.

Below is a fascinating article summarized as: “Singer/actress Jeanette MacDonald (Naughty Marietta, The Merry Widow) was the reluctant savior of Springfield’s first birth control clinic. Read about the founding and financing (thanks to Ms. MacDonald) of the Maternal Health Center on SangamonLink.org, the Sangamon County Historical Society’s online encyclopedia.”

Jeanette MacDonald concert controversy, 1939-40

The Maternal Health Center, Springfield’s first avowed birth control clinic, was created in 1938 by about a dozen socially prominent women. Its early leaders included Elizabeth “Libby” Lanphier (1908-97), Calista Herndon (1902-83) and Mary “Dougie” Funk (1900-80).

The center faced several obstacles at its creation: ignorance on the part of prospective clients, shoestring funding and the local dominance of St. John’s Hospital, which, as a Catholic institution, opposed all “unnatural” forms of birth control. Local doctors’ need to work at St. John’s (and to a lesser extent Springfield Hospital, the former name of Memorial Medical Center) meant no Springfield physician would help at the center’s clinic.

Herndon explained the problem in an interview done by Susan Sherard for the oral history program at what was then Sangamon State University. Funk also participated in the interview.

(I)t all got into politics really. I mean, their apprehension was about the political repercussions that might follow. Also the religion – I mean, St. John’s Hospital was the hospital, and they were told that they could not practice there if they gave assistance to us or to the people that Mrs. Zimmerman reported needed (it).

“Mrs. Zimmerman” was Myrtle Zimmerman (1892-1988), who was involved with the Family Welfare Association, a predecessor of the Family Service Center. Zimmerman initiated discussion of a possible birth control clinic when she talked to Lanphier about the “great need” for information among poor women, a need Herndon said was confirmed by local ministers. Zimmerman became a founding board member of the Maternal Health Center.

The head of the local visiting nurse association also was a Catholic who opposed birth control, Herndon said.

Nonetheless, the group rented two rooms over a drugstore in the 100 block of North Fifth Street, hired a physician (a woman associated with the Illinois Birth Control League who commuted from Chicago twice a month), and started the clinic, which was open from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. every Monday.

Although the Illinois State Journal published a brief story on the clinic’s opening in November 1938, the founders of the Maternal Health Center relied at first on word of mouth – Mrs. Zimmerman and ministers told women they encountered about the existence of the clinic, supporters attended PTA and public aid meetings, and center volunteers staffed a booth at the Illinois State Fair. The group’s most effective tactic was to mail a notice to every new mother who had a birth notice published in local newspapers.

“So we did in our really amateur way spread out what we could,” Herndon said. “Response was rather remarkable.”

Most of the women who came to the clinic were in their late 20s or 30s, Herndon and Funk said. Each was interviewed by a volunteer, and an appointment was made for a physical examination.

Clinic clients had to be married – at least, that was the official stance.

“She had to have a husband,” Funk told Sherard.

“Absolutely,” Herndon agreed. “Of course, we couldn’t check up on whether she had or not.”

“It was for the record,” Funk said.

Getting women to return for the examination was a regular hurdle, Herndon said.

We used to go out and pick them up and bring them in because we’d set a date for them to come back and they wouldn’t show up. … Once they’d done it (come in for an interview), they thought that was it.

Except for the physician, virtually everyone involved with the clinic was a volunteer. In addition to interviews, Maternal Health Center supporters staffed the reception desk, cleaned the clinic – “O. (Octavia) Patton, when she came there, she washed millions and millions of gloves,” Funk said – and served as janitors.

Clients were charged only what they could afford to pay – which was seldom much, since the clinic was aimed at low-income women. The small group of volunteers also made donations, but for its first two years, “we were very shaky financial,” Herndon said.

Jeanette MacDonald

The center’s money problems, however, were wiped out in a single step when backers persuaded singer/actress Jeanette MacDonald (“Naughty Marietta,” “The Merry Widow”) to appear at a benefit concert in 1940. But that, too, ran into obstacles when people who objected to birth control began a campaign to talk MacDonald out of performing in Springfield. Funk and Herndon described the controversy in the 1975 interview:

Funk: We had a friend who was a friend of the banker of Jeanette MacDonald, and that was when she was at the heighth of her popularity. She willingly signed a contract to come to appear (for) our Maternal Health Center. … We started promoting it. Talking about it.

The Catholics were very upset and wrote her threatening letters, and they would do everything to hinder her from coming. So (she) tried to break the contract. And we had a member, Louis Gillespie, wrote her. He is the lawyer. And so (MacDonald) put the date for Wednesday, Ash Wednesday, hoping that would discourage us and we would break the contract.

But we went on in the old Orpheum Theater, which was quite large. And it was packed.

But she was so apprehensive about coming that her husband came with her. And she made it sound as if (the benefit) was a maternity thing. She sang a lullaby. And so without having to do with contraceptives in any way. I was president at the time, and I was pregnant. It was one of the most exhilarating, frustrating (events). …

(T)he Orpheum was filled. We were elated. … We were so excited. Here she was. And we had sold many tickets. And so we were financially secure up until the time (the center) was closed.

Sherard: That was the one thing that did it.

Herndon: Yes. She gave a very fine performance. …

The center got a big boost in clientele after World War II – “the husbands were all coming home,” Herndon said, and some Catholic doctors were referring women to the clinic for information they could not provide – but patronage fell off in the 1950s.

By then, the clinic, which had renamed itself the Planned Parenthood Association of Springfield, had a regular local physician, Dr. Ann Pearson. But many other doctors, especially younger ones, also had begun to provide contraceptives to patients who needed them. As a result, the organization eventually converted itself from a clinic to a referral service, directing women to private physicians who were willing to help.

The newborn letters continued, but with a new approach, Herndon said. The new text was approximately:

Congratulations on your new baby. In case you want to space your family, here is a list of doctors whom the Planned Parenthood of Springfield and the National Planned Parenthood are giving you. You can go to them for information. And if you want further information, please call such and such a number.

“Which was my telephone number,” Herndon said. “And I did get some calls. I got a lot of scolding calls.”

The national Planned Parenthood organization began to pressure the Springfield office in the 1960s to expand, add services and hire a professional executive director. “We decided that we could not do it, that it was just more than we could handle at that time,” Herndon said.

With more information generally available on birth control by then anyway, the local volunteers closed up shop in about 1964. In 1971, the remaining board members sent the $700 left in the group’s bank account to the national Planned Parenthood organization.

Even that caused a kerfuffle. Caryl Moy (1932-2010) had reorganized Planned Parenthood in Springfield a few months earlier. When Moy learned of the old organization’s national donation, Herndon said, Moy asked, “Can’t we get it back?” The answer was no.

“It was too bad after all the years of having it there,” Herndon said. “But it seemed the thing to do.”

Planned Parenthood Springfield Area, with a clinic at 1000 E. Washington St., merged into Planned Parenthood of Illinois in 2008.

Original content copyright Sangamon County Historical Society. You are free to republish this content as long as credit is given to the Society.

***

It is not surprising that Jeanette reached out to help in this situation. She had her own family issues in regards to unplanned pregnancy as her older sister Elsie eloped with a shotgun wedding. Elsie bore a son but that early union failed; what we suppose mattered to the family at that time was only that the baby was born in wedlock.

In addition, Jeanette as we know from her letters to Irving Stone had at least one pregnancy scare with him. Who knows how many others there were in her early life. Many Hollywood actresses were forced to have multiple abortions because birth control was not readily embraced by the males in the industry. And pregnancy was often not allowed by studio bosses especially if the woman was single! It ruined your sexy image, affected your figure and kept you off the screen for many months when the idea was to keep cranking out films with stars who were under contract. (The most harrowing book I’ve read about what a female star endured was the excellent Kay Francis biography by Scott O’Brien.)

It was rumored that Jeanette had to deal with this issue in her earlier Hollywood days and from the documentation we have, it is likely that she would have bowed to Louis B. Mayer’s wishes regarding Nelson getting her pregnant during the filming of Rose-Marie. Nature handled that “problem” for her but at a dear emotional price.

And who knows if earlier pregnancy “issues” affected her later ability not to get pregnant but to sustain a pregnancy? Yes, Jeanette had a bad heart. Perhaps if she’d been on bed rest and pampered the entire pregnancy it might have worked. In today’s world, possibly yes. But what other factors there might have been we don’t know. We DO know that Jeanette finally (a little late in Nelson’s opinion) did want children and was determined to have them despite learning on her honeymoon that she would NOT have children with her husband, Gene Raymond. At one point Jeanette planned to ‘fess up and tell the truth in her autobiography and perhaps admit to one pregnancy at least…but that didn’t happen. In the final manuscript she just elaborated on her sorrow that she never had children.

Keep in mind that birth control was ILLEGAL in the 20s and 30s and this included diaphragms – the only method of birth control a woman could use back then. And all this was STILL illegal in 1938 (to ship by mail until a court case overruled the Comstock law that prohibited mailing “articles of immoral use”). This was when Jeanette was most visibly pregnant during the summer of 1938 – with an unplanned pregnancy!

So it took great courage for Jeanette to reach out on this unpopular birth control issue. Even though she was heavily attacked for supporting this cause (and yes, she did try to back out of her appearance once she was attacked, who knows what kinds of threats she received about it!), she did in the end show up and put on a wonderful concert as only Jeanette MacDonald could do.

Nelson Eddy: Listen and weep. You will never be the same!

, ,

Little Grey Home in the West

August 11, 2015 update: I was just emailed more insight into the coded messages Nelson included in his singing of the “Czar’s Lament” from Boris Godunov, on the radio three days after his marriage to Ann Franklin. Alisa, who speaks Russian, compared the original translation of this aria into English and noted the following:

1. The original opera has Boris singing…”SIX years and more my reign has not been troubled.” Nelson changed it to “FIVE” years. Five years and a few weeks was exactly how long it had been since Nelson declared his to Jeanette and first wanted to marry her.

2. Nelson wrote and inserted the following lines himself – they are NOT in the original opera libretto. Katie had transcribed Nelson’s lyrics (see link below for her original post):

And groaning under the weight of the burden
And awful and great pain inflicted
I’ll throw the flame on me
They who loved me, they hate my very name
Openly curse me

3. Also not in the original lyrics is Nelson’s line: “Can sooth my aching heart”…

It is even more evident now that Nelson is openly acknowledging that he knows the awful effect his elopement had on Jeanette, that she “hates his very name” and “openly curses him.”

Alisa notes re: the five years: “It is important to note that in his bogus interview to Photoplay after his unfortunate elopement (in a damage control article called “I’ll Tell You About My Marriage”) he states candidly, “FIVE YEARS AGO I FOUND THE IDEAL GIRL – just the one girl in the world for me.” Of course, the article is spinning this to be all about Ann Franklin. But those of you who have read Sweethearts will be familiar with other early quotes from Nelson where he speaks of Jeanette and hints repeatedly that she was his ideal girl…with subsequent bitterness that it didn’t work out with her.

Thanks, Alisa, for this clarification. See my original article below which was my stunned reaction to listening this radio show last year.

Such self-destructive people Nelson and Jeanette were at times on a personal level. It boggles the mind, doesn’t it?

***

June 23, 2014: I am writing this on my iphone while in an airplane en route to Los Angeles. Should be catching up on sleep but felt compelled to share this with you. (Plus I need to learn how to  upload from my phone, so bear with me!) It’s a long article but I think you’ll find the content of great interest to you.

In my many years of researching this story, there have been several watershed moments. Times of learning things that were so painful – and such damning evidence – that it just made it all that more real. I have written of the many tears wept after I interviewed certain people and learned, for example, the mental cruelty and overall neglect of Jeanette MacDonald in her last week of life. It became an entire process to learn to digest said information, review it over and over until one could do so without sobbing hysterically and then trying to imagine how they could have prevented said awful incident….and why couldn’t someone have intervened… and why was everyone around them so stupidly paralyzed that they didn’t get off their duffs and do something  about it?

Sometimes the horror of the overall story would hit me and I would have to walk away and focus on something else in life before I could return to it. Over the ensuing decades, a few of the people who worked with me on this project gave up altogether and dropped it. For whatever reason, the story brought more personal pain than joy. But I had made a promise to Jeanette’s sister Blossom that has weighed deeply in my life. I have had to remind myself that it was my job to tell the story as best I could so folks could understand and not hate one or the other for their actions and/or missteps.

In 2014 I see that some new readers to Sweethearts are a different lot, there has been acceptance of the story for many years now and this generation of readers is therefore spoiled to a degree – they take it for granted and read it as a tragic and interesting piece of Hollywood history. For some, the shock value is gone.

Yet I feel that we should never, ever forget the outrage and shock value – and the efforts and tears of all the sources who contributed along the way. Without their lingering anger, so many people sworn to secrecy would never have come forward and gone on record.

Because some source material remains shocking even today and can bring one to his or her knees with the pain of it – imagine what it was like for Nelson and Jeanette to actually live it!

A case in point is Katie and Angela, two friends who decided to make a recent trip to DC and managed to listen to the Chase and Sanborn radio broadcast from 3 days after Nelson’s marriage to Ann Franklin. Next to Nelson’s interview the day Jeanette died, I felt that this was the most telling. I had been to DC some years back and listened to it with my screenwriter friend Judy Burns. That we were devastated and in tears experiencing that sad radio hour is an understatement. Back then it was not possible to share it but today we are blessed to have all sorts of source material show itself…so I am happy to say that at the end of this post, you will be able to experience it for yourself. But first, read on so you understand the background.

To be in contact with Katie and Angela as and after they listened to this radio show, to know that they were stunned and grief-stricken and ended up listening and re-listening to parts of it in these ensuing days…I understood the process all too well. And the struggle to come back to “real” life and livingness on Planet Earth and not wallow in the sadness and unfairness of what happened to these people all those years ago  – well, it was déjà vu for me. The Mac/Eddy story has the power to grip and move people and to change their thinking forever. It’s hard to “recover” from this story once the impact of it truly hits you.

Katie has spoken of its impact on her on her own blog…she was also sharp to notice Nelson’s terse comment about him being given the wrong script when he finally comes to the microphone.  For those unfamiliar with the circumstances – The Chase and Sanborn gang made a misguided attempt to surprise Nelson and be lighthearted and congratulate him on his marriage which went over like a lead balloon. He refused to join in the banter, wouldn’t come to the mike at first and apparently walked off after his numbers because there was none of the usual happy discussion after. Announcer Don Ameche didn’t even say, “That was great, Nelson…” There was instead silence followed by polite audience applause. In short, the show was a PR disaster.

In Sweethearts you get the full back story behind Nelson’s marriage and the obviously shell-shocked state he found himself in. By now the hangover would have fully worn off and he was caught up in the whirlwind of how MGM was trying to spin the story. The logistics of this new reality had not fully hit Nelson, one can sense. Like a robot, come hell or high water, you can wind him up and he will sing…through most every happy moment or crisis in his life. Nelson Eddy…the reliable, stalwart, stouthearted performer. He performs his numbers on this show with his usual near-perfect diction but the pitch falters here and there and the particular emotions attached to his second and third numbers are terribly telling and painful to listen to.

It is a certainty that Nelson was already aware of Jeanette’s reaction to his marriage – a serious attempt at offing herself which she would repeat a week later before finding a salvation of sorts in a concert tour – where the love and adoration of her fans helped her survive and find a purpose to keep on living.

Isabel Eddy, Nelson’s mother, no doubt had already given her son an earful, having joined Gene Raymond at Jeanette’s bedside as she battled back emotionally from the suicide attempt. Gene was ordered to keep a watchful eye on Jeanette and Isabel continued to give her support in the coming days.

In my opinion, their lives were still salvageable after Jeanette’s marriage to Gene Raymond; he never stood in the way of her getting a divorce.

But that was not the case after Nelson married Ann Franklin. And it appears that this reality did not fully hit Nelson until a year later when he left on his 1940 tour. It was then that he suffered a serious nervous breakdown and had Jeanette not recently re-entered his life, one wonders whether he would have survived at all without her presence.

The first section of the radio show is memorable for Nelson’s refusal to come to the microphone or to accept congratulations over his marriage. He then launches into his opening rousing number – pretty much phoning in his performance.

The second song is the gut-wrenching Czar’s Lament from “Boris Godunov.” Nelson sang this aria several times on radio but as I pointed out to Katie and Angela, usually in Russian! Not English – where the talk of dead, bloodied sons and people who hate him forever, happiness eluding his tortured soul, his reaching out to God in agony and God’s wrath and “how merciless a doom awaits the sinner” and “my heart is torn with anguish, it’s hopeless and weary”, etc, etc. would no doubt have puzzled the studio audience. (By the way, this particular English translation is courtesy of Nelson. And thanks, Katie, for transcribing it.)

Why would a newlywed, supposedly happy Nelson Eddy choose to sing such a downer of an aria? And if this was indeed the previously scheduled aria, would not a “happy” Nelson have said “Hey guys, I wanna sing ‘oh, what a beautiful morning’ instead!” (or some comparable cheerful song since that one hadn’t been written yet…but you get the idea).

Nelson’s last song is “Little Grey Home in the West” with the lyrics from the original show, so slightly different from the movie version. The movie “Sweethearts” was still showing in theaters, having been released at the end of 1938. No doubt MGM was concerned about how Nelson’s marriage would affect the ongoing box office. It’s obvious that the original idea was to continue promoting the movie. But listen closely! Don Ameche is VERY careful introducing the song – not a single mention of Jeanette MacDonald or “Sweethearts” being in theaters at all! Ameche says solemnly, “Nelson Eddy sings the familiar ‘Little Grey Home in the West.'” End of introduction.

That in itself tells you something is very seriously wrong here!

Instead of singing with the loving,  light tone of the movie version, I think it’s not much of an exaggeration to say that Nelson sings it more like a funeral dirge. Slow, sad, his voice is weighted down with emotion. And not in a good place emotion.

In the first stanza he sounds numb and rigid. During the second section he becomes more emotional but begins slowing down the tempo. By the end he is singing slowly and deliberately. Is he driving home a point or trying not to cry? (After Jeanette’s death, at his first performance of his nightclub act, when he was losing it while singing one of their songs he slowed down the tempo in an effort to control his emotions.)

Nelson barely finishes the song when the closing commercial for the coffee begins, cutting into the applause. It’s beyond painful. And the show ends.

Now that I am aware of how much Nelson rewrote lyrics to suit what was going on in his life, it is obvious that the general message in this radio show is that he knows he screwed up royally, he knows there is no forgiveness and his life and love is destroyed forever.

But I think it unlikely that Jeanette would have been allowed by her keepers to listen to the broadcast. Or – maybe she did – and it meant something positive to her…or negative and led to her subsequently making a more feeble, second attempt to end her life some days later (also with pills, per Marie Collick). There is scant documentation on this so we can only speculate. All we know for sure is that the next day Jeanette was out of bed and smiling for the cameras, playing the movie diva and happily accepting her “queen of the screen” award. And a few days after that, she wasn’t convinced that she wanted to go on living. She would subsequently leave MGM, go on tour and refuse to sign a new studio contract for many months. Anyone who claims Nelson’s marriage didn’t devastate her is lying to himself or herself.

Nelson Eddy – the “serious singer” – such a purist and perfectionist – there are only two scenarios in which his voice would go noticeably sharp or flat. Either he was wildly happy or terribly miserable. A wildly happy moment was singing his two numbers in the Bob Hope 1954 TV show. He gets so “schmaltzy” and over-emotional singing to Jeanette that his launches onto notes can be too broad and he emotes more than sings at times. The pitch goes off. But he looks so alive and radiant one can forgive that.

There are write-ups of other sad or heavily emotional moments…such as a 1947 “Smilin’ Through” radio performance that nearly brought him to tears and a 1944 “Who is Sylvia” sung live at Carnegie Hall while Jeanette was hospitalized in El Paso, Texas. This had been a special song for them with Nelson insisting she sing it for him while he was preparing it for his tour, so he would envision her while singing it to his audiences. As noted in Sweethearts, a newspaper reviewer particularly complained about this one number being a “treacly, dragged version.”

In this “Little Grey Home in the West” Nelson sings better than the previous aria but pain colors the mood.

It should be noted that unlike most other episodes of Chase and Sanborn, Nelson has no playful banter interacting with other guests during the show, being part of a comedy skit with Edgar Bergen, or even a quick word with host Don Ameche.  Nothing.

So listen and learn. And thanks to both gals for making this available. In this instance, the documentation is there for you to experience…I am sure you will have your own “Oh my God it’s really true!” moment as well.

Here is the link to Katie’s post, the photo above and the radio show. I’d say “Enjoy!” but am not sure that word is applicable in this case.

Fifty Shades of Nelson Eddy

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Note: this post includes some graphically sexual sketches drawn by Nelson Eddy so please be warned if you think you might be offended. The fourth photo shows sex with a woman with possibly the initials “JM” skillfully woven into the drawing!

Updated August 11, 2015:

In the candid mid 1940s photo above, Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy are on a radio show together, Nelson in particular “beaming like a headlight” (his mother’s words) at the manilla folder with a heart drawing pierced by Cupid’s arrow and their initials N – J written inside. Very teenager-ish and telling…but Nelson’s arm is around her waist (visible in a different shot from this same show) and his relaxed, big ol’ smile shows that he doesn’t care “if the whole world knows.” This is a very interesting and telling moment for a man who craved privacy in his personal life.

And yet, here is a quote from Nelson Eddy’s 1948 letter to his mother, excerpted in Sweethearts, describing how the apparently very proper and gentlemanly Nelson Eddy slipped away unnoticed from his hiding place backstage at the Hollywood Bowl where Jeanette had just sung to a sold-out crowd:

“That night I left a pink rose tucked in her bag to tell her I had gone. Of course I could not be at the reception but I could well afford to have her public have her for a little while – soon she would be with me to open the portals of her plentiful love to me alone. All mine!”

Well, folks, we seem to have survived the recent post discussing Nelson’s obsessive and possessive sexual issues regarding Jeanette and his occasional losing his temper. While there is no documentation of him ever acting out like that in the 1940s or later, the subject of demonstrating “portals” and “plentiful love” is certainly something Nelson himself illustrated – by doodling on his sheet music!

Below is a closeup of some drawings Nelson made on his sheet music for “Captain Stratton’s Fancy.” This is a “drinking and debauchery” song that Nelson sang occasionally on the radio.  As was his habit, Nelson re-wrote the original lyrics a bit, in his radio version of August 1944, for example, his version substituted lines about a girl fond of dancing…red lips…and a pretty lass’s eyes. (You can listen to the song at this link.)

Below is a closeup of exactly what Nelson drew on his sheet music (stored with his sheet music collection at Occidental College in Los Angeles).

Since he drew this with a pencil and it’s difficult to see, Angela Messino was kind enough to “translate”  the five numbered points Nelson illustrates above:

(No, we don’t know what the thing is below the girl, it has a particular suggestive shape…but we’re not going there…)

But look VERY closely at the girl again. I darkened the photo (thanks for thinking of this, Angela!) and as you can see from the photo above, it appears there is a backwards or sideways letter “J” on top of her head. And her open legs have been drawn over again – clearly making the letter “M”.

I don’t think there’s any question as to who “JM” is, do you?

And Angela has just noted that that the “M” could also be a second pair of legs atop her although there doesn’t seem to be anymore to the second body if that is the case.

In the photo above, Nelson has drawn a satisfied, happy girl with a halo above her head.  And here too Nelson may have a double meaning (if this indeed is supposed to be Jeanette) – not only her bliss but the fact that Nelson often referred to Jeanette as “My Angel Wife”.

And by the way…the word written underneath her is: “This!”

Above, where the drawing was done on the sheet music. In our excitement, the four of us who were at Occidental took several closeup shots but no full cover shot.

There are some questions remaining…some have suggested that the unidentified item next to the girl in photo #4 is a swaddled baby and the word “This!” is showing what will result when they have sex. And Angela posted an interesting take on it:

“I have a theory about the girl in the “hat” – drawing 2. To me, it looks like a closed flower or a bud. She is all closed up in her mind, the liquor loosens her inhibitions and she opens like a flower in drawing 3. Three is circled so that’s important and there is a faint line between 3 and 4. Everyone sees something a little different in 4 but we all agree is obviously sexual, the conclusion I came to is the girl opens her legs as a result of opening her mind and loosing her inhibitions. I don’t know what those circles are off to the side. I personally don’t feel he’d draw a baby here, it’s out of place and the rest of it is in a jokey/wry vein. I don’t think he’d joke about that. And if you really want to blow your mind, consider this – what if in drawing 4 the line represents not a halo and bed board or a reversed J but a threshold the woman passes (wink) which results in a halo/fully opened mind/bliss? That would be consistent with the having a thing over each person’s head. The circle in drawing 5 maybe the opened mind/threshold/happy guy = This! Maybe Nelson is illustrating how pleasing your woman will please yourself to some 1940s type guys who needed a lesson! Fifty ways to please your lover!”

Alisa emailed me to add this comment: “It dawned on me today that the answer to the riddle can be found in Nelson’s letters:

“Our spirits met first and the ancient wine kindles a fire that can never die. When once that wine is tasted the soul cannot exist without it…” And, regarding Jeanette’s loss of a baby, “Not for nothing has God suffered you to be in pain and taken from you the tiny rose bud of his heaven…”

Alisa continues: “I think it is his declaration of love and eternal bondage between them. Nelson at least once in another letter written to JAM referred to “potential’ baby as “rose bud.”

Even with some of these questions unanswered, one thing is clear. Nelson’s drawings demonstrate yet again what we already knew, that this man was no “Singing Capon.” Quite the opposite, in fact!

Thanks to Angela Messino for elaborating on Nelson’s “Step by Step Guide,” Maria Escano for the photo of Nelson and Jeanette together, Katie Gardner for the closeup shot of Nelson’s drawings, Alisa for her comments and Lorraine Dmitrovic for identifying Jeanette’s initials! The book excerpt is from Sweethearts (© 1994, 2001, 2014 by Sharon Rich) with ordering details at the link above.

 

Norma Nelson, “The Electric Hour” script girl, an update

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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.

 

 

 

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