America's Shining Soprano

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A few months ago someone sent me in these.  Hopefully you will enjoy these.  If you have any articles about Jeanette please send them in and I shall post them (with Credit) here.

Jeanette MacDonald Obituaries

Pop Tunes Article

Jeanette Article #3

Modern Screen Articles

Movie Mirror Article

McDonald (sic) Meeting With Big Success
    "Standing Room Only" signs are greeting Jeanette MacDonald, golden voiced star of the screen, on her two-month personal appearance tour, according to word received from Charles L. Wagner, New York manager, who is presenting the singer at the Music Hall Thursday evening, May 4.
    "The personification of beauty - visual and vocal," writes an enthusiastic Birmingham critic, of Miss MacDonald's recent appearance.  "One would have to be immune to charm and infectious feeling not to have been completely carried away by the personality that extended beyond the footlights and made each individual in the audience feel that Miss MacDonald was singing to him or her alone.  Her voice is of matchless beauty and infinite power -- far more thrilling than a film recording or phonograph record could ever indicate.
    Her program in Seattle will include many of the beautiful songs in classical literature, including German lieder, French and English folk songs.  By popular request she will include among encores  some of the popular hits from her screen successes.

This is under a picture of J taken from "The New Movie Album", 1930

Jeanette started in the chorus.  She didn't stay there long, but it was an experience.  She "crashed it" she says, during the last days of the statuesque "show girls" who could not dance but who could wear clothes so beautifully.  And imagine her embarrassment when she had to undress before them and show her cotton underwear!  With her first salary, she got silk, and undressed proudly.  The road to fame that is hard work was a truly royal road for her, for at the end of her stage pathway shestepped into two regal roles on the audible screen, that of the queen in "The Love Parade" and of the queen in the "The Vagabond King" starring Dennis King in technicolor.  She had stardom and a long succession of musical stage hits to her credit when a lucrative picture contract lured her to Hollywood - among them "Yes, Yes, Yvette," "Boom-Boom", "Oh, Kay" and "Marjolaine."  "The girl with the red gold hair and sea green eyes," as she is known in show circles, is a native daughter of Philadelphia.  She studied music in New York.  Her fairy godmother was right beside her when she made her debut in the talking pictures, for she was guided through the intricacies of the cinema and microphone by Ernst Lubitsch.  She has also played in "Let's Go Native" and "Bride 66."  She is unmarried and lives with her mother.  But there is a fiance.

Jeanette MacDonald Triumphs in Bowl
Hollywood Citizen News 8-10-45
by Margaret Harford
(contributed by Ginny)

No one would be surprised today to learn that the Hollywood Bowl's rentals of opera glasses hit an all time high last night.  Thousands of pairs of these visual aids were focused on the shell to catch a close-up of beautiful Jeanette MacDonald as she came on stage for her debut at the Bowl with Leopold Stokowski and the Hollywood Bowl Symphony.

A singer who can give as much sheer enjoyment with music as Miss MacDonald does occupy a unique place as an artist.

"The King of Thule" from "Faust" seemed less suited to her light lyrical soprano than did her other numbers, The Jewels Song, also from "Faust," the "Romeo and Juliet Waltz," Delibees' "the Maid of Cadiz" and a lilting bandinage from Victor Herbert's "Sweethearts."  Her voice has taken on a resonant fullness in its lower register.  Fatigue seemed to be responsible for the occasional tightness of tone.  Last night's concert was the final one for Miss MacDonald in her current tour, which has taken her across the nation.  Huge crowds made demands on their favorite, just as the throng in the Bowl "stayed put" after the formal program to hear her sing the lovely numbers from her pictures "Indian Love Call," "Donkey Serenade," "Italian Street Song," and others.

One of the most impressive qualities of Jeanette MacDonald as an artist, besides her musicianship and good taste, is the spontaneity with which she sings.  She is a happy, smiling performer who generously shares her musical gifts with those who love to hear her.

Leopold Stokowski and the Hollywood Bowl Symphony gave the soprano excellent orchestral support.  Their performance of "Romeo and Juliet" Overture was inspiring and Stokowski gave Ravel's Bolero distinct character, boldly bringing forther the solo passages.  Too often this popular work sinks into a blurred monotony.  Suppe's "Light Cavalry" Overture was a good warming-up exercise for the orchestra, somewhat heavy on the brass.

 

Singing Star Back From British Tour
L.A. Times 9-11-46

(contributed by Ginny)


Singing star Jeanette MacDonald as back in her Bel-Air home with her husband Gene Raymond, yesterday followinga recent six-week concert tour of England, Ireland, and Scotland.

And while Raymond played someof his own tunes onthe piano, Miss MacDoanld glanced over one of her concert programsand reminisced about her trip.

"I gave eight separate recitals and the English people were wonderful," said the star.  "So were the Scotch andthe Irish.  They loved it when I sang "The Song of the Kerry Dancers'."

Food is still scare there, she said adding that she had only one egg during her stay.

Next to her singing, the Englishwomen liked her hats, Miss MacDonald said.  "The asked me to pose again and again just for pictures of my hat.  Of course, Hedda Hopper, who was also in London at the same time, gave me some competition."

MacDonald Delights Throng of Admirers
L.A. Times 3-31-48
by Albert Goldberg

(Contributed by Ginny)


One of the more curious phenomena of late years has been the entry of movies stars into the concert world.  It has left regular concert-going audiences practically unmoved, but it has brought into the recital halls vast numbers of people, who one may believe, scarcely knew a recital existed before.  And it has had a curious effect upon the stars themselves: those who had concert reputations before they went into the movies have almost without exception found it necessary to lower their standards to meet the new audiences, but those who began in the movies have almost always aspired to a higher musical level.

Capacity Crowd

Jeanette MacDonald belongs in the latter category.  Radiant and glowing, she stepped onto the stage of the Philharmonic Auditorium last night to be greeted rapturously by an audience that filled the place to the rafters and that seemed to be equally compounded of movie celebrities and autograph hunters.  But to this adoring through, which would have loved almost anything she cared to give it, she sang a program of the type which has become most serious sort of singer.  If there were any excerpts from her popular movies they must have been including the final encores after this reporter left the hall.

For so much one must give Miss MacDonald credit. Her vocal resources judged by concert standards are limited, but she has studiously and sincerely developed them not only to a point of respectability but to a general degree of adequacy and versatility.  The most difficult items of her program often came off the best.  You can hear a good many performances of "Madame Butterfly" in which "Un bel di vedremo" is not sung with so much expressiveness with so sure a sense of climax.  Nor does every singer capture the abandon of such a song as Vidal's "Ariette" as well as does Miss MacDonald.  And while personal charm exists in all that the singer attempts there were frequent glints of poetic feeling in the brace of Grieg songs, though why the music of a Norwegian composer should be sung to an English-speaking audience in German is one of those dark secrets which singers keep among themselves.

Uneasy Beginning

Miss MacDonald's vocal faults are mostly those of placement.  When the tone is lightly poised and brought forward sufficiently it emerges wit pure and please quality.  When this case of production deserts her, the tone tends to become strained and pinched.  The unease ofa beginning made it undesirable to sing two arias from "La Sonnambula" so early in the program; they were the least satisfactory of the evening's offerings.  But there was steady improvement as the voice warmed to its task and it was the best toward the end in Samuel Barber's "The Daisies" and Elinor Remick Warren's charming "Down in the Glen."

For all its varying qualities Miss MacDonald's audience loved her singing and herself without restraint, and when she unbent to play her own accompaniment for Grieg's "Springtime." or rocked an imaginary baby in her arms wile she sang Gershwin's "Summertime," or played with a fan during Massenet's "L'Eventail" or repeated the mimery of Ravel's "Nicolette" after a recalcitrant spotlight had killed the climax, her public's joy knew no bounds.

Collins Smith was the self-effacing accompanist, and gave the singer the usual rest period by playing solos in rather better than the usual accompanists manner