Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy, on-screen MGM lovers of the 1930s, enjoy a renewed popularity this Valentine’s Day at www.maceddy.com. The website documents both their careers and illicit off-screen love affair and just marked its one millionth visitor.
(PRWeb) February 14, 2007 -- Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy, on-screen MGM lovers of the 1930s, enjoy a renewed popularity this Valentine’s Day at www.maceddy.com. The website documents both their careers and illicit off-screen love affair and just marked its one millionth visitor.
“Hollywood loves a forbidden love story, and none was more scandalous in the 1930s than the MacDonald-Eddy affair,” says Sharon Rich, author of the duo-biography “Sweethearts.” “They were married to others but had a secret hideaway home high above Beverly Hills, on Angelo Drive. Their affair was one of Hollywood’s worst kept secrets.”
Gossip columnists were forbidden to leak the story but in 1938 Hedda Hopper printed a daring photo of herself seated at MacDonald’s bedside, with this byline: “Jeanette MacDonald was going to have a baby, Hedda heard, but Jeanette just laughs and says she wishes it were true, but it’s not.” This was Hopper’s way of scooping the news that MacDonald had just miscarried Eddy’s child. The official press version was that MacDonald had an emergency hospitalization for an inner ear infection.
Visitors to the website www.maceddy.com range from teenagers discovering the MacDonald-Eddy films today on cable TV, to lifelong fans who ditched school as children to spend an entire day at the movies, watching and re-watching romantic classics such as “Naughty Marietta” (1935) and “Rose Marie.” (1936) Today, in their eighties, they are still fans. “Our website attracts fans from all continents,” says Rich. “I receive emails from Hong Kong, Thailand, Russia, Israel and Hungary, as well as the English-speaking countries. Anyone who thinks there is no public for MacDonald and Eddy in today’s world is sadly mistaken.” This year marks the 70th anniversary of “Maytime,” in which Drew Barrymore’s grandfather John shoots and kills Nelson’s character midway through the film. Jeanette’s character lives on to old age, her aged body dying while her youthful spirit walks off with Nelson, singing “Will You Remember.” One of the greatest tear-jerkers ever filmed, “Maytime” was the #1 international box office hit of 1937, and MacDonald was awarded a SAG Best Actress award.
The website provides many photos and documentation of the MacDonald-Eddy affair, including candid interviews with friends and co-workers. Chapter One of the book “Sweethearts” is also posted, in which Eddy writes in graphic details of a secret 1943 rendezvous: “You were intoxicating beyond my fondest dreams…The curve of your white little breast…that intimate glorious part of you...that magic evening…I remember telling you that you belonged to me—that I would never let you go. Oh my darling, what a mistress for a man’s home. I closed my eyes and imagined you presiding at my table when we entertain our friends. How proud I shall be. In all the world there never will have been a man so proud.”
“Most of their fans suspected there was something going on between them,” says Rich, a close friend of MacDonald’s older sister Blossom Rock. “Nelson Eddy never pretended that his marriage was happy; the last 14 years of his life he was on the road — without his wife — with a very successful nightclub act. Jeanette MacDonald was another story. She played up her ‘happy’ marriage to actor Gene Raymond to the hilt. While their marriage may have worked for them on some level, it’s also true that she caught him with another man on their honeymoon. Though I have angered some fans who refuse to believe documentation of Gene’s true lifestyle, as a biographer I find it vital to understand why MacDonald remained in a marriage of convenience.”
Rich also had access to hundreds of letters and eyewitness accounts, love letters, diary entries and the unpublished memoirs of both MacDonald and Nelson’s mother, Isabel Eddy. Long before Gawker Stalker, MacDonald-Eddy fans followed the stars sometimes on a daily basis in Hollywood, or traveled with Eddy from city to city when he did nationwide concert tours. Every sighting, every comment made about MacDonald or a glimpse of the two stars together was newsworthy for these fans (mostly women). The activities were documented in private letters or journals that were mailed to a handful of “in the know” fans.
“New people are still coming forward,” says Rich, who is working on a documentary about the stars’ lives. “We have many, many hours of videotaped interviews going back to 1980, as well as information that I have not yet published, due to promises to my sources that their identity would be kept secret during their lifetimes.”
Rich is still looking to interview anyone with private information about either star. She can be contacted by email.
For more information or to read the first chapter of “Sweethearts, visit http://www.maceddy.com/index.php?main_page=sweethearts_excerpts.
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