by Sam Juliano
America’s “singing sweethearts” Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy were brought together by Louis B. Mayer in 1934 after each had climbed different ladders. The baritone Eddy sang for the Philadelphia Civic Opera Company and appeared in concerts and on radio, (later landing small roles in three minor musicals) while the liting soprano MacDonald appeared on Broadway and in a memorable series of musical films for Paramount that included four by Ernst Lubitsh (The Love Parade, One Hour With You, Monte Carlo, The Merry Widow) and Rouben Mamoulian’s Love Me Tonight, a musical generally acknowledged as one of the finest ever made. Indeed, as “Princess Jeanette” MacDonald beguiled audiences with her charming and timeless “Isn’t It Romantic,” with Maurice Chavalier, a Rogers & Hart standard that to this day is regarded as one of the greatest of all musical numbers. MacDonald’s exceptional work in The Merry Widow was tempered by her well-publicized dislike for co-star Chavalier, whom she called “the fastest derriere chaser in Hollywood.” Chavalier in turn derided his female co-star with charges of “prudishness” and “highhanded ways.” In any event, Mayer was stoked to build on his budding star’s popularity and chose a melodic 1910 operetta by Victor Herbert and Rida Johnson Young.
Naughty Marietta was conceived after concerted arm-twisting by Mayer to enlist MacDonald’s services, and a shot-in-the-dark offer to the essentially untested Eddy, who brought no real acting experience to the table aside from some limited opera work. But Eddy was blessed with dashing good looks, was blond, and posessed a classically-trained baritone voice. The production was rife with uncertainty from the start as the budget was limited, and the chosen director wasn’t someone of George Cukor or Lubitsch’s caliber but W.S. “Woody” Van Dyke, known as “one-take Van Dyke” for his studio-friendly but artistically-alienating propensity to get a production in on time and within the confines of the budget. As is often the case in film musicals, particularly historical ones, the narrative is nonsensical and the machinations contrived. Yet, Naughty Marietta, set in Pre-Revolutionary America, offers up a serviceable story for the glorious music and singing that both heightens the film’s ample melodrama, and serves as an emotional underpinning for what is visually an exquisite costume drama. (more…)
Click on names for archives
Writers/Founders
Wonders in the Dark 