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Pardon me while I get on my soapbox
for a moment...
This is a long letter, but important,
so you might want to print it out and really study it. We'll have a quiz
on it later! (smile)
Many of you have found our website
from surfing the Internet and finding several choices of sites regarding
Jeanette and/or Nelson. Recently I have received e-mail from various people
who have visited two sites in particular, enthusiastically contacting the
people who run those sites only to be curtly told "none of it is true,"
Jeanette and Nelson never even dated, you can't believe butlers and bellhops,
etc.
Welcome to the controversy!
The political viewpoint represented
by these people is that both stars were happily married to their spouses.
That's their choice if they want to believe it. However, you should know
that one of these sites indirectly represents a Jeanette fan club. One
can understand their position since Jeanette's husband Gene Raymond attended
their yearly gathering and so it was in their best interests to keep on
his good side. As for the other person, I don't know her motives. She was
a good researcher and for years claimed to be "on the fence" regarding
the personal relationship. Yet she really wasn't and only in the last couple
of years has the true degree of her vendetta has come to light. Again,
she's entitled to her opinion. But it puzzles me that she had access to
many of the people I interviewed. Many of them were celebrities who appeared
at guest speakers at Mac/Eddy Club meetings over the years, meetings that
were often audio or video taped by attendees. I have published transcripts
of many of these interviews in our magazine; it was not difficult to follow
up with these sources if there was really a desire to do so.
As for myself, here is my background:
I was close friends with Jeanette's older sister Blossom Rock for nine
years (till her death in 1978). I grew up in Los Angeles and met her at
the Motion Picture Home where she was living in retirement. I was a child
when Jeanette and Nelson died so I never knew them, but through Blossom
I met many of Jeanette's friends who gave me more contacts to speak with
and thus my interest and research developed. When I first met Blossom I
was all of sixteen years old and didn't even really know who Jeanette MacDonald
and Nelson Eddy were, much less care anything about their personal lives.
Blossom herself was the first to
tell me that her sister was in love with Nelson. She also told a number
of other people as well. I didn't think it was any big secret--until I
told Blossom I wanted to be a writer and she suggested I write a book about
her sister. So I started looking through movie history books and found
that none of them mentioned any such relationship with Nelson. In fact,
many thought they hated each other! I thought maybe I'd misunderstood Blossom
so asked her again. No, she insisted, they WERE in love with each other.
It was a long story....which she didn't give much detail about at first.
Knowing that I had never seen their
films, she arranged for the Motion Picture Home to screen "Sweethearts."
I watched it with her. At the end--I was hooked. A new Mac/Eddy fan was
born. But the first thing I said to her was: Were they really like that
in real life? Yes, she answered, only more high-strung. I said: They look
like they were really in love in this movie, not just acting. Yes, she
told me, and it was really sad because Jeanette was pregnant during this
film...
That's how it began.
I attended my first Jeanette fan
club meeting with Blossom, eager to discuss all I'd learned. To my amazement,
I was pulled aside by that club president and told that maybe I shouldn't
blab it because it might upset some people. I may have been a dumb teeenager
but it didn't take me long to decide this was hogwash. Many of the fans
I met always thought the two stars cared for each other but were afraid
to say so. Some even pulled me aside and whispered that they KNEW it was
true but were frightened to be the first person to "go public."
Ironically, many of my best sources
came from that very club!
The conspiracy of fear and web of
deceit surrounding this story was inconceivable--yet true. Jeanette and
Nelson had been dead for years but the cover-up continued--and woe to anyone
who dared to seek the truth!
Within a few years of meeting Blossom
I co-founded this club with another fan who also knew the real facts; her
father was good friends with Nelson. The club was born of necessity, to
FINALLY have a group where you could speak openly, help with research,
and love either Jeanette or Nelson (or both)--as long respect was shown
for both. This was NEVER the case in the separate Jeanette and Nelson fan
clubs. The philosophy of the Jeanette club was to praise Gene Raymond as
the hero of her life and to badmouth Nelson Eddy as a wooden no-talent
who would have been nowhere without her. Many members of the Nelson club
hated Jeanette, sneering that she couldn't sing and any other co-star was
better. The viciousness--which still continues even today--was not to be
believed.
The bottom line was, whatever their
strengths or weaknesses, whichever one you preferred--it was AS A TEAM
that they made their fame. Nastiness from their fans never served them
well; in 1945 Nelson almost disbanded his clubs because they were so vocal
about their dislike of Jeanette. He could never tolerate anyone speaking
badly of her. Imagine if these people REALLY knew how they felt about each
other! How hurt he must have been, and Jeanette too.
Is it any wonder that they never
felt safe coming forward with the truth? In Nelson's own words--"The fans
will crucify us!"
I shall never forget the Jeanette
fan who said haughtily, in my presence, "If it's true that Jeanette loved
Nelson I'll burn my entire collection!" She meant it, too.
I kid you not. Nor do I exaggerate.
I have been researching this story
for over twenty years now. Of the hundreds of people I have interviewed,
a good number of them were celebrities, most of them were willing to go
on record, to be audio or video taped, or to appear at meetings of the
Mac/Eddy Club and speak publicly before dozens of people. I documented
my book "Sweethearts" to death dropping these names and quoting as many
sources as I could (obviously some insisted on annonymity). Our club members
shared in the research, ofttimes giving me important leads of new people
to interview. I still remember a meeting in Los Angeles in which I brought
a few of the letters from the Isabel Eddy correspondance, waved them in
the air, read aloud from them then announced, "You're the very first to
know about these letters. I'm going through hundreds of them and will edit
them and put them into a book. ("Sweethearts") When the book comes out
the other side will yell Fake! All lies! She made it up! But you saw them
and heard them here first."
The goal was always to know the
truth, whatever it was. Most of their fans feel the same way, I've found.
Who were some of my celebrity sources?
Well, let's drop some names. Jeanette's first cousin Esther Shipp explained
at a Las Vegas meeting that her aunt (Jeanette's mother) did not want Jeanette
to marry Nelson; movie star Ida Lupino angrily called Louie B. Mayer "an
S.O.B." at a Los Angeles meeting because he ruined their lives by not letting
them marry; MGM make-up man Bill Tuttle was interviewed on tape by my associate
and verified that Jeanette was pregnant during the filming of "Sweethearts",
that Nelson was the father and "he didn't do right by her" (the same Tuttle
who has attended meetings of the Jeanette club); Metropolitan Opera singer
Theodor Uppman was also taped; he knew Nelson in the late 1940s and was
aware of Jeanette's later pregnancy--also by Nelson--as well as Nelson's
futile attempts to obtain a divorce from his wife. Oh--and by the way,
the "butler" mentioned above was Richard Halverson, who worked for Jeanette
before and after her marriage to Gene as a butler and chauffeur. This is
the same Richard Halverson who left Jeanette's employ to pursue religious
studies and and went on to become the United States Senate Chaplain until
his recent death. Again -- most of these people were audio-taped or video-taped.
Why did I decide to write such a
candid book of my findings? Well, it didn't take a genius to observe that
Jeanette and Nelson were surprisingly forgotten in comparison to other
sometimes lesser MGM stars. And the general public's opinion of the two
wasn't too flattering either. I'm sure you've heard it said that Jeanette
was a snooty, prudish prima donna and Nelson was gay, asexual, sterile,
or a complete wimp. Oh yes--and their movies are camp, corny and laughable.
Don't you get tired of hearing that? I do.
In view of the above, I felt that
setting the record straight was better than continuing the fiction that
these other clubs (and web sites) promoted. Jeanette and Nelson were human
beings like you or I, with wonderful qualities as well as failings. In
the end, their lives turned out much like their movie "Maytime." No one
faulted Jeanette's character in that film for remaining in love with Nelson's
character even though she married John Barrymore. In real life, though,
some were incensed to learn the same thing had happened.
Which is why I "outed" Gene Raymond
(it wasn't a secret anyway among Hollywood circles) so that one could understand
that Jeanette had an unusual marriage to begin with. In Nelson's case,
the last fourteen years of his life he spent most of each year on the road
doing supper clubs so his fans tended to know that his marriage was a farce.
They accepted that he found solace elsewhere--but should one suggest it
was from Jeanette all hell broke loose!
I began writing about the relationship
while both Ann Eddy (Nelson's wife) and Gene Raymond (Jeanette's husband)
were still alive. This was deliberate because I had already cleared my
material and sources with lawyers and knew they would never sue. My book
"Sweethearts" was also published while Gene Raymond was still alive. He
was contacted by several newspaper reporters who reviewed the book for
a statement but he always refused to give one. He did give one interview
to a screenwriter (both parties audiotaped it) in which he did not really
deny the Jeanette-Nelson angle but was far more interested in knowing what
had been found out about HIM and how HE might be portrayed--very nervous
as to whether the screenwriter thought he was gay. He got even more nervous
when she replied, "It's not what I think, it's what the research shows."
Certainly--as my detractors on these
other web pages will point out--there ARE celebrities who deny any relationship
between Jeanette and Nelson. There are many reasons. First, some were friends
with Gene--enough said.
Others were afraid to get involved
in a controversy.
Still others knew the Raymonds socially
and weren't privy to the personal conflicts. They simply didn't know! So
of course they denied it! You can't blame them.
One example of this was screenwriter
Richard Sale ("Northwest Outpost") who socialized with the Raymonds in
the '40s and '50s. When I interviewed him he stated firmly that Jeanette's
marriage was happy. Later in the (taped) conversation he said he'd heard
that Jeanette and Gene had separated in the 1950s for a time and that Nelson
also separated a few times from his wife. I then pointed out to Sale that
he had made contradictory statements about Jeanette's marriage. He thought
for a minute and said that since they had never divorced, one figured they'd
worked through their differences as many married couples do. Whenever he
saw them together they always seemed fine.
This was a point I heard repeatedly
from other celebritites who weren't in the know. If Jeanette was so in
love with Nelson--why didn't she just leave Gene and marry him? They had
been ready to believe there was something there but as the years passed
and nothing changed, they no longer believed it.
Most people never knew the intimate
details of WHY. That was my job as biographer--to pull together all the
pieces of the story. In many cases I found that someone who knew the skinny
in the '30s never saw them in the '50s and knew nothing about that period--and
vice versa! There were very few lifelong friends who had the full overview.
They knew their little bit and that was it.
Along with the interveiws I literally
spent MONTHS in libraries, reading every "Hollywood Reporter" and "Variety"
from 1933 on, or any clipping about them, copying any mention of either
star into a database on my laptop computer. I spent weeks at the USC Doheny
library with my computer, making over 100 pages of written notes and excerpts
from Nelson's personal scrapbooks, as well as xeroxing dozens of the actual
pages. Then I studied nearly all the fan club magazines from 1935 to the
present. Everything went into the database. In some cases there were errors,
such as concerts that were announced but a local newspaper might reveal
that the concert was cancelled or postponed due to illness. Jeanette was
on tour in one city--but snuck away for two days to meet Nelson. Where
could she have fit that in? Contradictory data had to be explored and sorted
out. Then there were the contemporary letters--hundreds and hundreds of
them. From fans who followed their concerts. From groupies who trailed
them in cars and put to paper the minute details ("He turned right on Sunset,
left on Vine...") From "spies" who were checking this story out as early
as the 1940s. From friends of Nelson's mother, Isabel Eddy, who thankfully
was nosy and knew many intimate details of her son's life. There were instances
when letters reported important events that had happened months earlier;
I had to take clues from these letters and try to place the incident as
accurately as I could in the database.
We live in a free country where
everyone is entitled to their opinion. So, enjoy those other web sites
but understand what the real intentions are there. I invite you to observe
for yourself and make your own decision. Jeanette and Nelson never even
dated? Excuse me, but check out all the photos and clippings reproduced
in the club magazine from newspapers and fan magazines of the '30s, in
which Jeanette and Nelson were seen or photographed together--on dates.
I have gotten so many letters from
people who read my book and then went back and watched all of the MacDonald/Eddy
films--sometimes in order--and then wrote me that they noticed exactly
what I had pointed out in the book, ie, Nelson was bleary-eyed in "Girl
of Golden West," was much happier in "Sweethearts," had tears in his eyes
while singing to Jeanette under the tree in "Maytime," etc., etc.
Others watch some of Nelson's TV
interviews in the last years of his life and can't help but see the deep
sadness etched in his face.
But the very best visual proof of
all is to watch Jeanette's "This is Your Life." Anyone with half a brain
can see the blatant difference in the way Jeanette greets her husband,
with a brotherly hug, and her reaction when Nelson walks in--tears, a look
of ecstacy, an adoring, melting hug--the body language tells all. The only
way a person can fail to notice this is--he or she just doesn't WANT to
see it.
I love both Jeanette and Nelson.
I have worked tirelessly to keep their names and their acomplishments alive
and to make available their large body of work. No other club has ever
done that. And if you live near a city where we're holding a club meeting
(see our schedule page) show up! Check it out! Get your questions answered!
I can promise that you'll learn a lot--and make new friends.
Many movie stars live a wild, shallow
life; Jeanette and Nelson were hardworking, good, caring people; they suffered
for their mistakes and died early deaths. There is nothing shameful about
their story. One only wishes we could have helped them in some way. And
that is probably the main reason I carry on year after year with this club--to
let people know what they sacrificed in personal happiness to bring us
the music and the movies we still treasure today.
Sharon Rich
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