parterre box

21 comments

• Implacabile Dea says:

  Let the critics say what they will regarding Miss MacDonald’s vocalism. I found out what opera was by watching her movies. The charm and vitality that she exuded could serve this current generation of singers well.

  What a beautiful lady…

  on June 18, 2009 at 11:25 AM
• mrmyster says:

  Dea – J. MacD was perhaps the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. I met her once backstage at a performance of Faust in Hartford; she had come to watch the tenor as she was singing the role of Marguerite the following week in Philadelphia. MacD had come back stage to see D. Kirsten after the performance; I happened to be in Kirsten’s dressing room when J. came in — unbelievable beauty. The hair! The skin color! The sculpted face …. the nuanced and vivid speaking voice! NOW, if only her singing voice had been able to match that! But it did what was needed at the time, and as to you, she brought operatic experience to millions of people. God bless her; I loved her! But I preferred to listen to Steber and Kirsten and Traubel and Flagstad!

  on June 18, 2009 at 2:01 PM
• Harry says:

  Love that photo: that campy crystal lace ‘ice cream wafer’ contraption on her head. Perhaps it was a early form of sounding board to save and amplify her thin tin whistle sound. Ah! those nights in some suburban theater as a kid,hearing Jeanette screech and overtax the lousy mono speaker boxes together with all the added ‘scratch and plop’ noises from a bad re-run film print. Give me Kitty Carlisle in Marx Bros ‘Night at the Opera’ anytime.

  on June 18, 2009 at 3:04 PM
• judycadanna says:

  Someone should expand ‘Tsaritsa’ into a full work.
  Wouldn’t you rather see that than whatever it is Rufus W is cooking up? Or ‘The Fly’? Or Doctor Atomic? Or another half-assed Boheme?

  on June 18, 2009 at 3:31 PM
• Max Zook says:

  IMHO it’s a shame JMac is best remembered for her movies with Eddy, which is like being remembered for standing next to a wooden Indian for six years.

  on June 18, 2009 at 3:45 PM
• Hippolyte says:

  On Criterion’s Eclipse 4 DVD set of musicals by Ernst Lubitsch one will find 3 of his films with JMcD and Maurice Chevalier: The Love Parade, Monte Carlo and One Hour with You (all from the early 30s). These show how witty, sexy and fun JMcD could be, a much different image from the more common one familiar from the lugubrious films she made with Nelson Eddy. In addition, Lubitsch’s version of The Merry Widow (also with JMcD and MC) is available (cut up into 10 minute segments) on Youtube.

  on June 18, 2009 at 4:03 PM
• Orlando Furioso says:

  She was indeed delightful with Chevalier. In addition to the four titles mentioned by Hippolyte, the best of all their pairings (in my opinion) is also available on DVD: Love Me Tonight. Rouben Mamoulian directs, and the Rodgers & Hart score is tops. The sequence in which Maurice (their character names are their own) starts lightly humming “Isn’t It Romantic?” to a customer, who sings it to his cabdriver who passes it to another customer who sings it on a train, whence the soldiers sing it on the march where it is heard by gypsies who spread it through the countryside to be capped by Princess Jeanette singing it at her balcony — it doesn’t get any better than that.

  on June 18, 2009 at 5:26 PM
• MontyNostry says:

  Did Tchaikovsky get any royalties for this?

  on June 18, 2009 at 6:29 PM
• suzyQ says:

  Orlando Furioso, I love that “Isn’t It Romantic” number! The thought of it just brightened this horribly rainy day! Thanks! I’ve got to get the DVD!

  on June 18, 2009 at 6:49 PM
• Alto says:

  Harry, you may find her sound that of a tin whistle — an instrument that is not contemptible when Jimmy Galloway sticks it in his mouth , by the way — but if you explore the older discography, you will find that an earlier age was not as populated by vocal size-queens as PTB is lately.

  on June 18, 2009 at 7:57 PM