Hollywood Diva: A Biography of Jeanette MacDonald (Paperback)

~ (Author) "SHE EXCELLED IN STUNNING ENTRANCES, and her birth was no exception..." (more)
Key Phrases: recital tour, opera debut, dance director, New York, Nelson Eddy, San Francisco (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This is the most comprehensive biography of MacDonald to emerge since Lee Edward Stern's Jeanette MacDonald (o.p.) and James Robert Parish's The Jeanette MacDonald Story (LJ 9/15/76). In addition to documenting her monumental Hollywood years with MGM, Turk (French/film studies, MIT) captures the operetta queen's forays into radio and television, her associations with Ernst Lubitsch, Maurice Chevalier, and?most famously?Nelson Eddy, and her marriage of 28 years to Gene Raymond (who died this year). MacDonald's straddling of "low" and "high" art, her ambivalence toward her "practical" movie career, and her quest to fill the spotlight as a serious operatic singer are poignant. In his afterword, the clearly adoring Turk offers an insightful, engaging cultural analysis of the MacDonald-Eddy phenomenon, broaching the "sexual politics" of the duo's sentimental, sanitized romantic films. An homage that is never salacious, always sincere, and perhaps a little "safe."?Jayne Plymale, Stamford, CT
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Kirkus Reviews

In a dazzling blend of entertainment and scholarship, America's top prewar musical film star is convincingly rethroned as ``an exemplary part of our American heritage.'' Film scholar Turk (French and Film Studies/MIT) carries honey-haired MacDonald from her hometown Philadelphia musical training and early operas to her eventual Broadway success and to discovery in 1929 by Paramount's Ernst Lubitsch (``I have found the queen!'' he cried on their first meeting). Royalty she did become: Paired with Maurice Chevalier and others in pre-Code films including The Love Parade, she metamorphosed into the ``Lingerie Queen of the Talkies,'' who radiated erotic longing in song. By the late 1930s at MGM, she was film's number-one female moneymaker, with movies including San Francisco (which Clark Gable nearly refused to make with her) and various hits with baritone Nelson Eddy. Throughout her roles, the ``Iron Butterfly's'' refusal to go horizontal for advancement, her battles with studio heads, and her stable 27-year marriage to actor Gene Raymond, she showed herself to be an unusually poised and morally confident woman. But films were hardly all she wanted. From the late 1930s through the 1950s, she brought her lyric soprano voice and classical works to wildly receptive small-town America, hoping to prove herself ``a bona fide concert singer, not a picture player on parade'' and to show that ``an appreciation of an elite art did not require elite birth.'' Turk convinces readers of MacDonald's status as a democratizing force for music and as a commando of sophisticated eroticism. A joyful, enlightening analysis of a now-misunderstood star who answered immigrant American desires for a shared national culture. (60 b&w photos, not seen) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 486 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (April 3, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520222539
• ISBN-13: 978-0520222533
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #765,022 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

44 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Academic Indifference - History reframed, August 21, 2000

By	J. Jacobson (Hollywood, California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hollywood Diva: A Biography of Jeanette MacDonald (Hardcover)

If this WERE a work of fiction, Turk's book would not be so offensive, but I have spent well over twenty years interviewing people who knew Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald. I am NOT Sharon Rich. I have spoken with Nelson Eddy. I have even interviewed Gene Raymond. I can honestly say the evidence is overwhelming that Jeanette MacDonald lead a different life than the one presented by Mr. Turk. It is not enough to just read a woman's unpublished autobiography and talk to her husband. There are reasons why both might lie. Jeanette MacDonald did not want to shock her fans or bring down the public personnas of herself and Nelson Eddy when she wrote her autobiography. If Mr. Turk had taken the time to look at the evidence which refutes the "Gene Raymond" version of Jeanette's life, then the book would have fulfilled its potential as a fairly accurate portrait of a complex woman living in a difficult period that straddles World War II. Once Jeanette met Nelson Eddy, he was a driving influence in her life. Nelson Eddy was not a monogamous man. He had many female lovers, and some of them are still alive to talk about him and his relationship with Jeanette, Gene, and Ann Eddy (a woman I have also had the "pleasure" of meeting). Had Turk taken the time to actually follow up the research on the Eddy/MacDonald relationship, he might have presented history in a much more accurate light. It's a shame when an ordinary researcher blurs history by looking at it through "tinted" glasses. It is a sin when an academic does it, either accidentally or on purpose. Mr. Turk varnished the truth, rewrote it by omission, and basically did a disservice to both Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy. I am curious why Mr. Turk did not accept Lina Basquette's account of Nelson Eddy's prowess with women. I am even more curious why he would insinuate that Eddy was gay when even Shelley Winters has recounted Nelson's attempt to seduce her. The University of California should be ashamed for accepting the publication without looking at the research on the other side of the coin.

22 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Diva" Hits a High Note!, August 22, 2001

By	Paul Brogan (Portsmouth, NH United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Hollywood Diva: A Biography of Jeanette MacDonald (Hardcover)

Edward Baron Turk's brilliantly realized biography of the singer-actress Jeanette MacDonald, "Hollywood Diva" is worth the long wait.

For years fans of the beloved red-haired, green-eyed soprano, have longed for a complete and concise biographical work. "Diva" is all that and more.

Turk has conducted scores of interviews and gleamed through mountains of papers including MacDonald's own unpublished autobiography, to accurately reflect his subject. The reader comes away both educated and enlightened not to mention very impressed with the woman who dazzled and delighted millions in virtually every medium of show business.

Jeanette MacDonald was much more than one-half of the classic screen team of Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy. She starred in nearly 30 motion pictures, broke records performing on stage and in concert, not to mention realizing her dream of starring in Grand Opera. Nightclubs, radio, television, and recordings were fields that benefitted from the special MacDonald touch, and while she may have appeared to do it effortlessly, this book reveals the incredible energy and work that she put into everything she did. Every facet of her life she gave more than 100% to and fans of the star will come away impressed anew with her tireless dedication to her art. Those to whom MacDonald is a name from the far past will want to go out and explore her career by watching her films and discovering what many of us have said for decades - Jeanette MacDonald is one of the greats!

Turk perfectly balances his story by not placing MacDonald on an unreachable pedestal but portraying his subject as a real person, replete with faults, ferocious in her determination to never give less than her best. Nowhere does this apply more than to her personal life. Mr. Turk's handling of the marriage between MacDonald and actor Gene Raymond is a lesson to everyone in every kind of relationship. Their nearly 28 year marriage had periodic difficulties but ultimately what stands out is the real, deep-rooted, and very moving love that the couple shared, something not easily achieved in the milieu of Hollywood.

While some would prefer to believe that MacDonald and Eddy were an "item", Turk disproves that myth completely. The MacDonald-Eddy team were pure on-screen magic but off-screen were merely friends. Naysayers would like to believe that author Turk treats Eddy in a less than respectful manner in this tome but nothing could be further from the truth.

MacDonald was married only once. She didn't indulge in the affairs nor have the sometimes tawdry personal life that others of her generation may have had. She was a professional and that is a sometimes rare commodity in show business.

"Hollywood Diva" is must reading for anyone with even a slight interest in the history of the entertainment industry. You'll laugh, cry, learn, and grow. When a book can accomplish all of that, as well as portraying a real person as someone to admire and respect, then it is indeed something very special.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars It's All Fiction, June 4, 2005

By	JeanetteEddy (Glendale, CA) - See all my reviews

I have loved Jeanette for years and I honestly think this is the worst biography ever written about her. After all these years how can the author ignore all the evidence of a love affair between Nelson and Jeanette. A biography is supposed to uncover the truth about a star but this is just a sanitized look at Jeanette's much too perfect life. It seems like this guy is trying to nominate Jeanette for sainthood. You can't possibly get Jeanette's full life story here because there is so much that is left out. One of the biggest problems here is that Jeanette's widow Gene Raymond is one of the main sources. He was obviously trying to preserve their image as a perfect couple and never revealed anything new about their life together. This book makes Gene and Jeanette's marriage look like a glossy pictorial from a 1940's movie magazine. Since the stories about Jeanette and Gene are purely fiction it makes you wonder if anything in this book is true.

You won't know it by reading this book but the real Jeanette was a passionate human being who made a lot of mistakes in her life. If the author had dared to talk about her ill fated romance with Nelson it would have shown another side to her personality. I don't know why there are certain Jeanette fans who want to believe she was perfect. Are they really happy accepting a nicely packaged bunch of sugarcoated lies about her life? If you want to learn about the real Jeanette please read Sharon Rich's well-researched book about her. Sharon is the first author was not afraid to tell Jeanette's true life story. Since at least nine other fans have written negative reviews I am obviously not the only one who has problems with this so-called biography. Amazon should move Hollywood Diva into their fiction section. I am praying that this author doesn't write a book about any of my other favorite stars.