happy birthday jeanette macdonald!
The titian-tressed triller was born 106 years ago today in Philadelphia; appropriately, on Arch Street. Miss MacDonald
The titian-tressed triller was born 106 years ago today in Philadelphia; appropriately, on Arch Street. Miss MacDonald
I have that clip from Love Me Tonight (”Isn’t It Romantic?”) in mp3 form—if I knew how to post it, I would. Love it. Also have her glorious rendition of “Beyond the Blue Horizon” which she sings from the window of a train (in Monte Carlo, I think), to a group of stunned peasants. She had a remarkable gift for light comedy.
OK—so here they are, posted to my page on Multiply. It’d be nice if you could download, but you can’t have everything…
http://hndymn.multiply.com/music/item/52?mark_read=hndymn:music:52
hndymn: If you have a unique URL for any sound clip, you can just paste that URL into the comment and the link will generate automatically.
For example, here’s the infamous “Butterfly
Trainwreck” –
http://media.libsyn.com/media/parterrebox/butterfly_trainwreck.mp3
thanks for the advice, La Cieca—I’m afraid I still don’t get it. Isn’t the URL for the playlist on my Multiply page sufficient? How otherwise do I get a unique URL for an audio file?
Oops—I misspoke—does it make a difference that the files in question are WMA and MP3? I’d be willing to bet it does…
You are oorrect, hndymn. The URL for your audio page is fine for a WMA playlist.
I haven’t watched MAYTIME since last night. Anyone who doesn’t love Jeanette & Nelson should seek professional help.
Alto (Comment 10#): One does not have to be a bel canto queen to realize Jeanette ‘Big Macs’ had no diaphragmatic support for what I personally consider ‘her ambitious screech’. Jeanette Mackers had a ‘pretty little voice’ if it was not taxed and I accept that many are fond of her. To me, it was a bit incongruous watching a full grown mature woman always singing with the voice of a ‘developing promising young teen’ a la Jane Powell ( I confess I loved the sheer personality of her voice!!) or some Deanna Durbin. To see the difference check out the Youtube clips of the then very young girl called Beverley Sills in films. It was all there…natural and instinctive when she was still a mere kid, far beyond any abilities of say a Jeanette ‘Mackers’
Give me Helen Traubel in Deep in my Heart or Laurenz Melchior doing ‘Winterstrume’ in Luxury Liner anytime! The Melchior example especially, is a benchmark document of WHAT singing was really all about. I disagree that the older discography did not have many singers that had size, support, technique, evenness or the brain how to use their voice. Just look at the impostor ‘glamor stars’ they are trying to foist on us today, developing vocal nodes as quick as they can………..and I refuse to be interested or buy examples of their work.
It is distressing ,realizing as you listen, that performing the way they are, they are bankrupting their vocal resources as fast as they can.
I think La Cieca could start an interesting blog asking the question ‘Why are the present stars not seeming to have the vocal heath or career longevity of those singers, even of the recent past. What are the reasons?’ I believe we could get some sane and sensible answers if we left out bashing individual artists – but considered the subject in the broadest terms.
Harry, I think you miss the point. Jeanette MacD was a movie star who sang. She sold it with her looks and personality. Traubel and Melchior were opera singers who made movies. They brought their great vocal gifts to their films—but seriously, could either one EVER have played a romantic part in a film (as opposed to what they did in live opera onstage)?
One of the things that’s most striking about the two clips I posted from the Paramount-era MacDonald films is her elocution-school mangling of English-as-she-is-sung. Too funny. By the time of the later films (the operettas, San Francisco), she’d at least started to sing real vowels and consonants…
hndymn; I do not know about Traubel playing a ‘romantic part’ by the time she did Deep in my Heart’ but one has to admit she was believable class with a captial C ‘as an actor playing and singing the part, she did , in that movie. Perhaps we will have people now raving about Jeanette Mackers doing high culture in MGM ‘Girl of the Golden West’ or San Francisco with all those startled ‘dramatic looks’ for acting.! And not let’s go to the Lanza films……….. Those scripts were MGM emulsified vomit material with Lanza sing such excretable song material as ‘Doing the Tina Lina’ No wonder film musicals lost their shine.