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| Birth Name(s) : Jeanette Anna MacDonald |
Date of Birth: June 18, 1903 |
| Status:
Married
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Partner:
Gene Raymond |
| Profession:
Actor/Musician |
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Full Jeanette MacDonald Biography
This musical star may not have been the biggest box-office draw of all time, but she still has an international fan club, and a devoted following, indicative of the impact she made on-screen. She was a Broadway chorus girl in the early 1920s, but was soon picked to play leads in operettas and musical comedies. Given a screen test at Paramount's New York studio in 1929, she was chosen by director Ernst Lubitsch to costar with French singing sensation Maurice Chevalier in The Love Parade the success of which made her one of the most popular female stars of the early talkie era. Pretty and vivacious (but, oddly, without much sex appeal), MacDonald's saucy characterizations in her early films for Lubitsch are quite at odds with the image she later presented as a star at MGM.
She starred in The Vagabond King Lubitsch's Monte Carlo, Let's Go Na- tive, Lottery Bride, Oh for a Man! (all 1930), Don't Bet on Women, Annabelle's Affairs (both 1931), Lubitsch's One Hour With You, Love Me Tonight (both 1932, reteamed with Chevalier in two of her best screen outings), The Cat and the Fiddle and The Merry Widow (both 1934, the latter marking her final film with Chevalier and director Lubitsch) before her first fateful teaming with Nelson Eddy.
MacDonald sang frequently on stage and in concert for years thereafter, but was eventually sidelined with a heart ailment, which contributed to her passing. She was survived by actor Gene Raymond, whom she'd married in 1937. They costarred in the sentimental drama Smilin' Through (1941). |
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Additional Jeanette MacDonald Biography
| Critic J. Peter Bergman writes of her work: “Whether singing the sophisticated, brittle, and edgy songs from her Paramount films with Chevalier or the romantic exercises from her MGM operettas, Jeanette could always be relied upon to provide a mini-masterpiece. There was no need to see her to be aware of her facial expressions. They were present in her voice. You can still see them now, listening to her recordings. Even if you’ve never seen a filmed moment, her smile can be heard. Likewise her frown. When she rolls her eyes, it is there in her voice. Her expressive vocal gestures are far more French and much more seductive than her Philadelphia upbringing would lead us to expect.” |
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Jeanette MacDonald Quote(s)
| I've been told I have an Irish temper, I know I have Scottish thrift, and, like the English, I love a good show. |
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