Jeanette MacDonald

The Incomparable Artist And The Women She Brought To Life

To her devoted fans of yesterday, Jeanette MacDonald was the best and brightest star in the entertainment world.  To us, her loyal fans of today, she retains that revered position as The Queen of Hollywood sixty years after she made her last film.

Jeanette’s talents are many and amazing.  Her beautiful, soaring voice is like no other.  It is hers alone and it is one we would recognize among a million others.  She dances like there is no tomorrow.  Her gifts as a dramatic actress, though often unappreciated, are as brilliant as any Hollywood ever has offered.  She is equally adept at comedy and other forms of entertainment, be it theater, records, opera or the concert stage.

To think of Jeanette, with her red-gold hair, luminous blue-green eyes and sparkling smile is to think of an artist with beauty beyond compare.  Not a single actress in all of Hollywood, for all time, has possessed such a glowing smile.  Her smile truly lit up the Silver Screen.  After watching a movie with our lovely Jeanette, we leave with memory pictures of almost every scene.  As we replay them in our minds, we come to understand that only Jeanette could have breathed life into the women she portrayed.

From her first motion picture, “The Love Parade,” as shy, yet seductive Queen Louise to her last film, “The Sun Comes Up,” as a concert singer and loving mother, Helen Lorfield Winter, she gave her all as no other artist ever has or ever will.  She made each character unique and uniquely hers.  Her voice, her dramatic and comedic talents, her beautiful face and even the way she uses her hands in every film tell her that this is our beloved Jeanette.

But this multi-talented artist, who worked her entire life to perfect her skills, breathed a different life into each woman she portrayed.  Marietta Franini was not Mary Blake.  Mary Blake was not Rose-Marie.  Rose-Marie was not Marcia Mornay.  Marcia Mornay was not Nina Maria.  And we could go on.  In each film, her leading man might be any number of actors.  Of all her leading men, only one came close to taking our eyes from her, but not even good-hearted scoundrel, Blackie Norton, in “San Francisco” can accomplish the impossible feat: taking the limelight from her.  Jeanette MacDonald is the one who makes the movie great.  She is the one who makes each character unique and as real as life itself.  She is the one who makes the movie a joy forever.

This month we begin a series about Jeanette’s characters and the fire, spirit, love and beauty her artistry alone gives them.

Part I:

“Naughty Marietta”

Marietta Franini

We first meet French Princess Marie de Namours de La Bonfain, happy in the knowledge that she changed her name to Marietta Franini.  Not only is her incognito name much easier to pronounce.  It also sounds absolutely musical.  Appropriate for our Golden Songbird.  When the movie begins we find Her Royal Highness mingling with the common folk, who adore her, against the advice of her maid, Prunella.  Later she learns that King Louis XIV intends to force her to marry a man of royalty whom she loathes.  It is then that she becomes casquette girl, Marietta Franini, boards a ship and flees to New Orleans with a group of other young women intent on becoming brides of the French settlers already there.  Princess Marie, a.k.a. Marietta, she of royal blood, blends seamlessly with the other young women on board even though they come from the peasant class.  She seems more comfortable with them than with her own kind.  In fact, the first man to whom Marietta is attracted is no blue-blood decked out in royal regalia, but a womanizing mercenary clad in buckskin clothes and a coonskin hat.  The defiance against class, against one sort of person being better than another continues as an underlying theme throughout this fanciful love story.  This theme was, in a way, one of Jeanette’s themes.  In his biography of Jeanette, “Hollywood Diva,” Edward Baron Turk says, “Jeanette MacDonald was committed to ideals of true inclusivity and human connection.  She tried to speak to the whole country, not just those already hooked on opera and operetta.  She carved out a common ground on which the masses and the privileged could share deep, emotional experience and dignified pleasures.”  Only Jeanette could have played this young Princess so intent on keeping her dignity and, yet, becoming ‘just one of the girls’.

At the movie’s beginning, we hear the Princess tell a dear friend, one of the common folk, that she has never met a man she could love.  Later, in New Orleans, as we watch Marietta fight her growing attraction to mercenary soldier, Richard Warrington, we also witness the artistry and seductiveness of one of the greatest flirts ever to grace the Silver Screen: our lovely Jeanette.  The Queen of Hollywood knew how to appear seductive, albeit innocently, with her co-stars and she knew how to seduce the camera and her audience.  Unlike today’s actresses, not a stitch of clothing need fall away from her for the audience to fall under her spell.  Whether her lines are delivered playfully or with hooded eyes and a lowered voice, no one can beguile the camera like Jeanette.  We know at the outset that Warrington is a womanizer.  He ‘loves ‘em and leaves ‘em.’  That’s the name of the game for him.  Only one actress, in all of Hollywood, possesses the beauty, charm, and charisma to portray a woman Captain Warrington cannot love and leave: Jeanette MacDonald.

I am reminded of the scene on the balcony of Marietta’s temporary dwelling when she and Captain Warrington are serenaded by street singers.  Warrington has yet to hear Marietta sing and tells her, ‘Of course, I don’t expect you to sing like her.’  The look on Marietta’s face after his comment is one of the classic scenes in the movie.  We see Jeanette, the ultimate actress, deliver a line without saying a single word.  With hooded, bewitching eyes she looks at him and we can read her mind--it’s all in the look—‘Don’t you dare tell me I can’t sing!’  What follows is one of the most delightful moments in the movie:  Marietta’s lively, gorgeous rendition of ‘The Italian Street Song,’ as only the divine voice of Jeanette MacDonald can deliver it.  And as we recall her incomparable voice, we also remember the royal reception given Marietta once her true identity is discovered.  Here we are privileged to see two of Jeanette’s amazing talents work together to create one of the most memorable scenes known to the Silver Screen.  We witness one of the loveliest musical pieces in Hollywood history and one of the greatest moments of acting ever committed to the screen in a single, magical, heart-wrenching scene.  We Jeanette’s audience, sit as entranced as Marietta’s audience, while with soaring voice and amazing emotional depth, Marietta sings to Captain Warrington the movie’s trademark song, ‘Ah, Sweet Mystery Of Life.’

James Robert Parrish’s biography of Jeanette MacDonald had this to say: “It is said that there are two kinds of people in the world: the givers and the takers.  This biography is about Jeanette MacDonald, the Giver.”  It takes an individual with a loving spirit to work as Jeanette MacDonald did to perfect her talents and to share them with the world.  We know how deeply she loved Gene Raymond, her husband of twenty-eight years and how devoted she was to her parents and her two sisters.  We know, too, how she loved her fans and what pure delight she found in sharing her talents with audiences the world over.

We’ve just taken a look at the life and love she breathed into one character, Marietta Franini.  Next month we will look at Marie De Fleur, a.k.a., Rose-Marie.

We end this article with the final words we hear Marietta sing, words that were another theme of Jeanette MacDonald’s life:  “For it is love that rules forevermore!”

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The Angel at the Top of the Hill

 In 1960, when I was eleven years old, I saw bits and pieces of a movie called “San Francisco” on a local television station which ran movies each weekday at 5:00 P.M.  While movies were a passion of mine during that time of day, I was generally involved with my other passion—my horse.  Consequently, I saw the beginning of the movie, and then later the middle segment showing Mary Blake singing the part of Marguerite in the opera “Faust.”  I didn’t get back to the movie until the earthquake was bringing all of San Francisco, including a heathen name Blackie Norton, to its knees.  Even though I didn’t see the movie in its entirety, it left a lasting impression.  I remember thinking near the end of the movie that the lady dressed in white, standing at the top of a hill, and singing a hymn, was surely an angel.  For ever so long I had hoped to see “San Francisco” again, but back then one could only catch old movies on television.  There were no VCRs and DVDs.  And whenever it was on television, it was my misfortune to have missed it. 

Then last October, to my surprise, I discovered that my online DVD rental service stocked it.  You can be sure I rented it.  As I watched, it was the scene when Mary Blake began singing the aria in Faust—the one where Marguerite is in prison, praying for forgiveness—I started to hum the melody along with her.  To think I had heard it only once; and yet, all these years later I remembered every note.  That is how powerful of an impression it made on me.  The next day I purchased my own copy and it quickly replaced “The Sound of Music” as my all time favorite movie.  I have since watched it countless times, enjoying it more with each viewing.  Talking about favorites, Cary Grant has always been my favorite actor; however, I never had a favorite actress.  But I sure do now!  I am proud to say my favorite actress is the angel at the top of the hill—Jeanette MacDonald.  Yes, today, forty-seven years later, I am only now beginning to understand why years ago I thought I had heard and seen an angel.   

Since last October, I have seen and am proud to say, I have acquired copies of most of Jeanette’s movies.  In rediscovering Jeanette MacDonald, unexpected joy has entered my life.  As I watch her movies over and over, I still cannot quite express just what is it about this lovely lady that is so extraordinary.  I think of the words her friend, Lloyd Nolan, spoke at her funeral, “…There were other voices—other lovely faces.  What was different about Jeanette?  Why is hers the voice and the face we shall always remember?  It was that last of her God-given gifts.  It was her infinite capacity for love.  Love for her devoted husband—love for her family and friends.  But even more, it was her love for the entire world that brought rapture to Jeanette’s voice—and rapture to those who sat entranced and silent as her message of love poured forth…”  It quickly became apparent to me that there was no one to equal Jeanette, and there never would be.  When she sang, her sparkling blue-green eyes shone with a light kept bright by the love in her soul.  The warmth that radiated from her lovely smile was a flame that could have made the darkest room bright.  She sang, she smiled, she did everything with such joy and love.  A mean spirit can make the most handsome or beautiful face ugly, and a loving spirit can make even the plainest face a sight to behold.  There have been other actresses whose faces might have been more perfect.  And though Jeanette did, indeed, have a beautiful face—it was her heart and soul, her joy in living, and her loving that made her face perfection.  Jeanette MacDonald’s beautiful spirit rendered her face a living work of art.  And that voice—oh that voice—was there ever, ever such a voice?  Was there ever anyone who sang with such unbridled joy?  Was there ever another voice that sounded so rich and full, and at the same time so light and airy?  And she gave all of that joy, radiance, and love to us.  She left all of this and so much more so that people like I could find happiness.  It isn’t difficult to understand why more than forty years after her death, just watching her face glow as she sings, and her voice soars, that those beautiful notes indeed were the voice of an angel.   

And the way she related to her on screen romantic partners made me fall in love with them.  Jeanette made me fall in love with Nelson Eddy’s Sgt. Bruce in “Rose-Marie”; with Maurice Chevalier’s Captain Danilo in “The Merry Widow”; and she made me fall in love Clark Gable’s scoundrel, Blackie Norton in “San Francisco” like I never could have fallen in love with Rhett Butler. 

If there is a heaven, Jeanette is there singing with every bit of her heart and soul just as she did here on earth.  And if there is a loving God, Jeanette was one of the most perfect ways He had of revealing His love.  Only a Creator with a heart FULL OF LOVE could have breathed life into a glorious creation like Jeanette MacDonald. 

Following Jeanette’s death, the Chicago Daily News said:

      “The older folks will mourn and remember Miss MacDonald and the young will never know what they missed.” 

I was one of the young ones when Jeanette died, but thank God I am NOT among those who “will never know what they missed.”  While I wish that Jeanette was still with us, I know, too, that the entertainment world, as we know it today, might not appreciate a star who was so strong and at the same time—so full of grace.  I know what I missed by never meeting her and by not appreciating her during her lifetime.  And, silly as it may seem—sometimes I find my eyes filling with tears because she is no longer with us.  But her face and voice will give me joy for as long as I can see and hear.  I will laugh as I watch Rose-Marie choke on the brandy Sgt Bruce forces down her throat after she nearly drowns, or she silently covets the beans and bacon he eats over the warm campfire.  I’ll laugh as I watch Queen Louise chase her husband Prince Alfred from his bedroom to hers and back again in “The Love Parade.”  I’ll cry as I watch Marietta Franini sing “Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life” to Captain Warrington in “Naughty Marietta,” or Marcia Monay’s spirit reunite in death with her one true love in “Maytime.”  I’ll feel the thrill of patriotism as I watch Marcia Warren sing “Keep the Lights Burning Bright” in the movie, "Cairo.”  I will happily sing along with Mary Blake, when for the sake of her true love, Blackie Norton, she leads a ballroom full of pre-earthquake San Franciscans in a foot-stomping, hand-clapping, rousing rendition of their city’s song.  And I’ll forever be unable to put words to my feelings as I watch Mary Blake sing “Nearer My God To Thee” at the top of the hill among the ruins of “San Francisco.” 

This June 18^th, for the first time, I will celebrate Jeanette MacDonald’s birthday.  I will celebrate it with gratitude for the joy she has brought into my life.  I will thank God for the gift He gave the world when he gave us “the angel at the top of the hill.”

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Jeanette With The Sunlit Soul

Color—I love color.  Tuscan red, goldenrod, peacock blue, blush pink, cerulean.  These are some of the hues I use to imbue black and white photos of Jeanette with color.  Words, too, can impart color--words like luminous, ethereal, blissful, glowing, amazing, and incomparable.  These are just a few of the colorful words used by millions the world over in an attempt to describe Jeanette MacDonald, the Silver Screen’s Golden Diva.  Listen closely and we can hear how the words cerulean, ethereal and blissful sounds magical, just like Jeanette’s lovely voice, her lustrous eyes and her mega-watt smile.  And yet, all of the beautiful colors and words in the universe fall short in describing Jeanette MacDonald; and, this is because—she is beyond description.  She is beyond description.  I am reminded of the words to the song “Maria,” from “The Sound of Music.”  In an attempt to describe the irrepressible Maria, (a role Jeanette would have so played beautifully had the film been made in the thirties or forties), the nuns sing “How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?”  Describing Jeanette MacDonald with mere words, no matter how colorful, would be as impossible as holding a moonbeam in your hand.  Webster describes the soul as “a person’s spiritual, emotional and moral nature.”  Jeanette’s soul is what makes her beyond description.  We cannot capture it with words or colors.  All the loveliness we hear or see on film, all that escapes our utmost eloquence comes from Jeanette’s sunlit soul.

Just before televising “Rose-Marie,” one of Jeanette’s most delightful movies, TCM ran a short feature about her called Hollywood Hist-O-Rama.  These short features about various stars were directed by Joseph R. Juliano, and created by Raymond R. Stuart.  In this feature the narrator calls Jeanette MacDonald “the possessor of the film world’s most lyrical voice.”  He goes on to say, “Of all the glamorous stars in the entertainment firmament, Jeanette MacDonald stands alone as the one whose voice, gamine gaiety and dramatic power made her a beloved favorite of people of all lands and languages.  A prediction for greatness at age six was prompted by an inborn sweetness, perfect features and large lustrous eyes that, throughout her film career, made her the delight of every cameraman assigned to photograph her.”  Let me add that this short feature was made in 1959; 10 years after Jeanette made her last film.

I am grateful to Gia and Gio, the hosts of the JMFC Website, for giving me the opportunity to write articles about Jeanette.  I will try to follow the great tradition of the Jeanette MacDonald International Fan Club, (now in its 73^rd year), and the wonderful example of the club’s presidents Clara Rhoades and Tessa Williams.

Millions around the world already have heard Jeanette’s golden voice and seen her radiance on film.  They’ve heard her voice in concert, on radio, on records, and CDs.  To her legions of true, loyal fans and to the millions yet to discover the treasure the world was given when Jeanette Anna MacDonald was born, my 2009 New Year resolution is to do my best to express what I believe, with my whole heart, is the truth about the talent, grace, honor and integrity of Jeanette MacDonald.  I will watch her movies many times, (such a pleasant task), and study, not only her luminous face as she sings, but the way she uses her hands and her speaking voice to maker her characters come to life.  Jeanette becomes each character she plays.  She appears not to be acting at all, and that is the highest compliment given any actor.

Like all of your “True Loyal Fans” Jeanette, I to am proud to join them in standing up for you against wishful falsehoods and fable thinking, against those who persist in painting you with dark colors.  I will use words, albeit inadequately, to paint you with all the beautiful, brilliant hues of the rainbow.  I will praise your lifelong artistic achievements and the love with which you showered the world.  You always will be to me, like to millions of others, Jeanette with the glorious, golden voice, the blissful smile, the ethereal beauty and the cerulean eyes.  You are forever Jeanette with the sunlit soul.

Jeanette Flies Without Wings

“And God took a handful of southerly wind,
blew his breath over it and created the horse.”
-Bedouin Legend

And God said, “I have given thee the power of
flight without wings.”
-The Koran