Comments on: happy birthday jeanette macdonald!

By: Implacabile Dea

Implacabile Dea — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 00:12:48 +0000

Hndymn hit the nail on the head.

Jeanette MacDonald was a beautiful movie star that sang. It’s like criticizing Ginger Rogers for not dancing like Isadora Duncan.

She was essentially an operetta star, not an operatic diva. It should be noted, however, that she did get good reviews when she performed on the operatic stage in “Faust” and “Romeo et Juliette” in the mid to late 1940s. And even Lotte Lehmann was impressed by Jeanette’s abilities and work ethic and stated that she would have become quite the lieder singer if she had had the time.

It’s equally important to remember that Jeanette’s films (as well as Deanna Durbin’s and Kathryn Grayson’s) brought opera and vocal glamour to places during the Depression 1930s that had probably never been exposed to anything resembling the art form. The door to opera was likely opened by her films to audiences who might only been exposed to the Met broadcasts on the radio.

The accounts of many classical singers attest to the impact that Jeanette’s films had on them, among them Maria Callas, Joan Sutherland, and Beverly Sills to name just a few.

By: Harry

Harry — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 19:07:24 +0000

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.

By: hndymn

hndymn — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 19:11:51 +0000

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…

By: Harry

Harry — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 19:01:55 +0000

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.

By: Florence Quartavodka

Florence Quartavodka — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 18:24:04 +0000

I haven’t watched MAYTIME since last night. Anyone who doesn’t love Jeanette & Nelson should seek professional help.

By: La Cieca

La Cieca — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 02:35:45 +0000

You are oorrect, hndymn. The URL for your audio page is fine for a WMA playlist.

By: hndymn

hndymn — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 02:30:00 +0000

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…

By: hndymn

hndymn — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 02:25:42 +0000

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?

By: La Cieca

La Cieca — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 02:13:44 +0000

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

By: hndymn

hndymn — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 02:08:34 +0000

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

By: hndymn

hndymn — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 01:50:33 +0000

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.

By: Alto

Alto — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 23:57:59 +0000

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.

By: suzyQ

suzyQ — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 22:49:08 +0000

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!

By: MontyNostry

MontyNostry — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 22:29:24 +0000

Did Tchaikovsky get any royalties for this?

By: Orlando Furioso

Orlando Furioso — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 21:26:12 +0000

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.

By: Hippolyte

Hippolyte — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 20:03:46 +0000

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.

By: Max Zook

Max Zook — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 19:45:52 +0000

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.

By: judycadanna

judycadanna — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 19:31:20 +0000

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?

By: Harry

Harry — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 19:04:13 +0000

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.

By: mrmyster

mrmyster — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 18:01:49 +0000

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!

By: Implacabile Dea

Implacabile Dea — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 15:25:58 +0000

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…