Arabella & CO--Jeanette MacDonald & Nelson Eddy

Our Hero was born in Providence, Rhode Island to a family with exceptional musical talents but then moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with his mother when his parents divorced. At 14 he went to work to help out with the family finances continuing his education by taking correspondence courses at night. But Nelson’s burning desire to be a singer fueled his days. He lost several jobs when he was caught singing to the customers. He finally found a job he really enjoyed working for a local newspaper. And to learn more about voice techniques, he practiced for hours singing with the recordings of the great baritone singers of his time.

He also auditioned for any local musical plays available. He won the role of the King of Greece in a musical called “The Marriage Tax” and received glowing reviews.
This was followed by roles with the Philadelphia Opera Company. Suddenly there was the soft sound of doors opening. People knowledgeable about music heard him sing, notably Dr. Edouard Lippe, and with Dr. Lippe’s advice and financial help from family friends, he was able to go to Europe for two years to study voice. By 1928 people were packing halls to hear him sing. When he went on the radio, the volume was turned up all over town. Suddenly Nelson Eddy was a baritone magna cum laude! In 1933, he was called to fill in for ailing opera star Lotte Lehman in San Francisco.

In the audience, applauding his performance, was a transfixed Ida Koverman. Ida was the secretary to Louis B. Mayer at MGM.

While he was to screen-test at several studios, he finally signed with MGM but not without great trepidation. He wanted to sing and felt this would give him greater exposure in his concert work but he was certain he had made a mistake when he was kept under contract but used only in several bit parts. Then in 1935 he was told he would soon begin rehearsal for a lead role opposite Jeanette MacDonald in “Naughty Marietta”. His life was about to change forever.

Our Heroine sang her first solo at age three at a church social. When the audience didn’t respond with applause fast enough Jeanette clapped for herself. By the time she was 16 she was a seasoned performer. She had sung and danced in kiddie revues and vaudeville parts through all her formative years. By the time she went to live with her sister, Blossom, in New York she had quite a resume and soon had a bit part in a Broadway dance revue. But her big chance came in 1920 when, as the understudy, she was able to step in for the injured female lead of “The Night Beat”.

By 1929 she had graced the stage in 12 Broadway shows and was making quite a name for herself. Then Hollywood and Ernst Lubitsch beckoned and she was cast in her first film “The Love Parade” with Maurice Chevalier, one of four films she would eventually do with the French star. “The Love Parade” was a colossal hit both here and in Europe. Between 1930 and 1935 Jeanette made over 12 films (if you include the French versions of “One Hour With You”and “The Merry Widow”).But suddenly the studio was unable to find scripts to adequately showcase her. While she had done straight dramatic parts , her greatest appeal was when she lifted that beautiful lyric soprano voice in song.

Finally Louis B. Mayer trotted out one of his favorite operettas “Naughty Marietta”. Voila!

Once the handsome Captain Warrington came out of the bayou with his trusty band to rescue the lovely princess and the duet was sung on the staircase, romance was back in flower. There was no turning back. The Singing Sweethearts became a dynamic duo. The public demanded more and got it. So there was the opera star and her mountie in “Rose Marie”...the star-crossed lovers of
“Maytime”...”The Girl of the Golden West” and her bandito...the “Sweethearts” in living color...the revolutionary Duke and his patrician lady love in “New Moon”...the voice teacher who married his pupil in “Bittersweet”also in color and finally...The playboy and his angel in “I Married an Angel”. Oh, the stars did other pictures and other things. To their fans' dismay, they even married other people. But to romantics everywhere, like ham ‘n eggs, it was, and still is, MacDonald & Eddy!

Both our hero and our heroine are gone now. On January 14, 1965, Jeanette, forever the beautiful Marietta, died of a heart attack while awaiting heart surgery in Houston, Texas. Nelson,“America’s Most Beloved Baritone”, was performing in San Souci, Florida on March 5, l967 when he collapsed in the middle of a song. He died in the early hours of March 6 of a massive stroke without ever
uttering another word. But some of their movies and their music is still with us, Look for them...they are treasures.

“One-Take Woody”...W.S.Van Dyke II, the director of “Naughty Marietta”, for helping the neophyte actor Nelson Eddy with the rudiments of film acting without ever disturbing the natural style, personality and charisma that so endeared Nelson to movie fans.“Woody” directed or contributed to the direction of six other MacDonald-Eddy pictures ( “Rose Marie”, “Sweethearts”,“New Moon”, “Bittersweet” and “I Married an Angel”). He also directed Jeanette in “San Francisco” and “Cairo” and Nelson in “Rosalie”.

Rafaela Ottiano....whose excellent portrayal of Ellen, Marcia’s maid in “Maytime” is seldom acknowledged. Watch for her displays of emotion even when out of focus during the scene in Marcia’s backstage dressing room after “The Huguenots” and also in the wings during the finale of “Czaritza”.

Nelson’s rendition of “ Silent Night” in ‘Balalaika” as he returns the greeting of his Austrian enemies in the trenches of WWI.

Jeanette’s tearful “Who Are We To Say?” in “Girl Of The Golden West”

...and four hankies for Jeanette and Nelson’s final farewell in “Maytime”.

Kissing is an art form.......

Arabella sends her regards....
....to the fabulous people who hosted Nelson Eddy’s 100th Birthday bash at Philadelphia’s Warwick Hotel on May 26th and 27th. They really know how to throw a party!....and special heartfelt thanks to Eleanor, Helen C., Elia, Ann, Lea, Diane and Joan for all their personal support and pictorial contributions to this edition..and the great send-off!

. Bela Lugosi became so obsessed with his screen persona that. when he died, he was buried in his Dracula cape!

. John McIntire played the role of the murder victim in “The Phenix City Story” (1955), a film based on a real murder, while wearing the same clothes the dead man wore when he was killed!

. After getting a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his role in “The Story of G.I. Joe “ (1945), Robert Mitchum was drafted and spent 8 months as an Army private!

. In a tragic twist of fate, Susan Hayward who played the role of a woman dying with a malignant brain tumor in “Stolen Hours” (1963), died herself of a brain tumor in 1975 at the age of 56.

.....J, Carroll Naish, the prolific character actor of screen and television, was the great-grandson of a Lord Chancellor of Ireland? Naish portrayed almost every ethnic group under the sun except Irish because.... the studio didn’t think he looked Irish!

.....The oft-repeated stage admonition “Break a leg!” gained new meaning during the 1954 Broadway production of “Pajama Game”? Carol Haney, the lead, actually broke her leg and her understudy, who had been dancing in the chorus, had to take over. The understudy’s name was Shirley MacLaine!

.....Harry James, the famed orchestra leader, began his career at age 4, in a circus contortionist act, billed as “The Human Eel”?

.....One of the most powerful finales to a movie....was an accident? When the lights went dark at the conclusion of Paul Muni’s performance in “I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang” (1932), it wasn’t because of the director’s brilliance but because the electricity went off! However, director Mervyn LeRoy was brilliant enough not to re-shoot the scene!

.....Harry Leek became one of MGM’s top singing stars when he turned his name around and became Howard Keel!

.....Billie Burke, the Good Witch of “The Wizard of Oz” (1939), was born Mary William Ethelbert Appleton Burke. When she married Florenz Ziegfeld in 1914, she became Mary William Ethelbert Appleton Burke Ziegfeld!

.....Borden Chase, the screenwriter, was born Frank Fowler in 1900. He chose his new name from a milk bottle (Borden) and a bank ad (Chase Manhattan)!

There has been some dispute about just who first invented moving pictures. The British swear it was some guy named Friese-Greene in 1889 and they even made a movie about it with Robert Donat (“The Magic Box” 1951). Now I can appreciate Bob’s talents as much as the next gal (or guy) but they just don’t have the facts straight over there. The way I heard it....

It was one of those dreary days in 1887 when it was too wet to play golf and the Ladies Temperance Society was meeting in the parlor. Tom Edison was moping around the house trying to keep out of the way when he realized he was now 40 and hadn’t invented anything in days. He decided what he really needed was a change of pace and a change of scenery. So he kissed his wife goodbye (right in front of all the ladies), packed up his lab lock, stock and gizmos and headed for Orange, New Jersey to work on an apparatus “that would do for the eye what the phonograph has done for the ear”! He also took along his trusty assistant William Kennedy Laurie Dickson (Tom called him KLD for short, leaving the W to be used later on). KLD was awfully good with gizmos.

Now it seems Tom had this idea for a moving picture camera. KLD wasn’t too impressed but then he never thought that light bulb idea would fly either. The plan called for a cylinder (like the ones on Tom’s phonograph) to be put inside a camera and then slathered with light sensitive gunk. Every time the cylinder turned, a picture was taken and then, when the film was developed and run through a
viewer, it would show motion. Oops, a viewer? Oh, well, they would just have to invent one of those gizmos, too. But, while the boys in Orange were doing the cylinder thing, George Eastman was over in Rochester, New York creating a new celluloid film that didn’t need light sensitive plates and bulky cameras. When the word got out, Tom hurried and ordered some. He cut the film in long strips while KLD modified the camera with some kind of sprocket and crank system that could move the film strips past the lens.

So now Tom had a camera gizmo (the Kinetograph), a viewer gizmo(the Kinetoscope) and, by synchronizing the phonograph with the film, they even had a kind of primitive talking picture! But, since only one person at a time could view the result, they also had a long line of grumpy people who paid a whole nickel to watch a movie. Tom looked at KLD but KLD was tired of designing gizmos.
Tom saw the writing on the wall (KLD was always leaving memos there ) so he went out and bought a projector. Voila! The Vitascope! Business was booming.

Soon they hired more people to make more gizmos. KLD went to work designing a studio out of tar paper that had a hole in the roof and moved on tracks to follow the light. For obvious reasons, Tom named it the Black Maria. They filmed over 2000 movies in that tar paper studio and that made Tom very happy. Then, one day, KLD asked the inevitable question. “What’s next, Tom?” Tom thought about it and decided it was time to make color movies by handpainting the black and white film. KLD wasn’t at all impressed.

Meanwhile, out in Hollywood, they were still trying to get the darn holly to grow. But more about that next time.

.....On April 23, 1896 The Edison Vitascope was demonstrated to the public with a program of projected films accompanying a vaudeville show at a New York music hall. There were 12 short subjects, one of them handcolored. A new art form and a new industry was born.

Celebrate the Golden Age of Film

Arabella feels that any picture worth a thousand words has to move and talk even if the conversation is held in sub-titles!

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Did You Know? It's All In The Name Arabella & CO Home

Kissing is an art form.......

Celebrate the Golden Age of Film

Arabella feels that any picture worth a thousand words has to move and talk even if the conversation is held in sub-titles!

HankyTime Real Or Role This is your Page! Did You Know? It's All In The Name Arabella & CO Home

Kissing is an art form.......

HankyTime Real Or Role This is your Page!
Did You Know? It's All In The Name Arabella & CO Home