Jeanette MacDonald’s husband claimed her last words were “I love you,” but her diary revealed that he had been neglecting her as her health failed.
A Fallen Angel
Jeanette MacDonald rose to fame in the ruffle-laden, fantasy-ridden Hollywood musicals of the 1930s, her angel’s voice transporting audiences and establishing her as one of the highest-paid actresses of the day. MacDonald kept this pristine image until the day she died, even right up to her beautiful last words to her long-time husband.
But after her death, the jaw-dropping truth came out.
1. She Was The Baby
Born in 1903 to a working-class family, Jeanette MacDonald was firmly her father’s favorite. Although he had hoped for a boy and gotten three girls instead, Jeanette—the baby of the family—was the one who looked most like him, and inherited his red hair and blue-green eyes. As his favorite, he constantly pushed Jeanette to pursue an “American dream”...and did she ever.
Trailer screenshot, Wikimedia Commons
2. She Needed Love
At a young age, MacDonald had a startling realization. She needed people’s adulation “as I needed food and drink”. She wasn’t afraid to give someone a nudge in this direction, either: When, as a girl, she performed at a local church and there was a pause between her finishing and the applause, she immediately started clapping, crying out, “Now everybody’s got to clap!”
MacDonald’s pathological need to perform would push her to great heights.
Trailer screenshot, Wikimedia Commons
3. She Had The Voice Of An Angel
At the very beginning of the Roaring 20s, MacDonald followed her sister Blossom Rock—a character actor in her own right and eventually Grandmama on The Addams Family show—to New York. While there, she climbed her way up the Broadway ladder and earned rave reviews for the sweet tenor of her soprano voice.
Still, MacDonald always wanted more.
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4. She Was A Broadway Dynamo
By the late 1920s, MacDonald was an established star on the Great White Way. Then she hit a bigger stroke of luck. Famed director Ernst Lubitsch was looking through old show reels for a leading lady to cast when his eyes fell on MacDonald. He instantly put her in his upcoming sound film Love Parade, alongside Maurice Chevalier.
It opened the floodgates.
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5. She Became An Overnight Star
The Love Parade was a massive hit, and right when the talkies were taking over Hollywood. More than that, it came out just after the Wall Street crash, and just as audiences were in need of a pick-me-up. So overnight, MacDonald became a star, and one synonymous with optimism and better days ahead.
But behind the scenes, the story was much different.
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6. She Had A Frightening Illness
Even as The Love Parade was rocketing her to the top of Hollywood’s call list, MacDonald was suffering from terrifying symptoms. In a letter dated from 1929, when she was just 26 years old, MacDonald revealed that she had recently had a heart attack. She then began suffering from blackouts as well as fainting spells, and doctors advised her that she might not be able to carry a pregnancy to term.
It wasn’t just physical ailments, either.
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7. She Turned Anxious
MacDonald’s various illnesses took a toll on her mental health. She got so distressed by the all-encompassing sickness that she often couldn’t eat, and developed a case of stage fright that had her running to a therapist. Nonetheless, she never gave up on trying to find relief, including entering more or less experimental treatments like massage therapy, even if they only worked temporarily.
She also never let it stop her very particular requirements on set.
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8. She Was A True Diva
Because of her symptoms, MacDonald was unable to attend morning shoots, a habit that some of her less sympathetic co-stars hated. But her other requests annoyed them more. Proud of her singing voice and suspicious of Hollywood’s new sound technologies, MacDonald refused to lip sync while shooting her movies, preferring to sing live to playbacks on set.
This, as it turns out, was extremely grating: On Broadway Serenade, leading man Lew Ayres requested earplugs while he was alongside her, lest the volume burst his ear drums. Not that MacDonald had trouble getting other leading men to like her.
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9. She Wasn’t A Girl You Took Home To Mom
MacDonald’s foray into Hollywood had been an instant success, but her forays into love weren’t so easy. While she was still trying to make it on Broadway, she dated Jack Ohmeis, a wealthy manufacturer’s son. Unfortunately, Ohmeis’s family took one look at pre-fame MacDonald and thought she was a gold-digger.
Even though they eventually changed their minds and the pair got engaged, it fell apart before MacDonald made it to stardom. But it wasn’t the last she saw of him.
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10. She Had A Heart Of Gold
Just as The Love Parade was coming out, Jack Ohmeis’s family fell as MacDonald rose: They lost nearly everything in the Wall Street crash. Although it had been some years since she had been with Ohmeis, MacDonald didn’t hesitate to lend him money—so much, in fact, that it took him until the 1950s to repay her.
As we’ll see, MacDonald did always have a hard time letting people go. This got even messier.
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11. She Liked Suspicious Men
As her fame grew, MacDonald began dating Wall Street man Robert Ritchie. Their relationship was scandalous from the beginning. 12 years older than her, Ritchie also made the somewhat dubious claim that he was the son of a millionaire who had fallen on hard times—then followed MacDonald to Hollywood to become an MGM agent.
However, none of this appeared to bother MacDonald.
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12. She May Have Had A Secret Marriage
In a move that would mirror her later secrets, MacDonald may have married Robert Ritchie, but certainly kept it under wraps. MacDonald once signed her name “JAR” (Jeanette Anna Ritchie) and called him her “darling husband”. His own family claimed they had married and then had the union annulled, but Ritchie and MacDonald were tight-lipped about it for the rest of their lives.
Besides, by then she had begun one of the most successful partnerships of her life—on screen.
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13. She Had A Famous Partnership
Starting with Naughty Marietta in 1935, MacDonald began an enormously popular co-starring streak with the clean-cut, doe-eyed Nelson Eddy. A baritone musical actor who had cut his teeth in opera, Eddy had huge crossover appeal, and at his zenith he was the highest-paid singer in the world.
Naughty Marietta was so successful, and largely because of the chemistry between MacDonald and Eddy, that they starred in seven more films together over the next eight years. But that chemistry also led to explosions.
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14. She Had A Terrifying Boss
MacDonald and Eddy were both now contract players with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), and thus often under the thumb of the infamous executive Louis B Mayer, who had a reputation for controlling actresses and turning their lives into nightmares. So when Mayer saw how much emotional pull Eddy had over MacDonald, he was none too happy—and he got revenge.
15. He Tried To Control Her
1936’s Rose Marie remains one of MacDonald and Eddy’s most popular two-handers, but Louis B Mayer tried to sabotage it from the beginning. According to the crew, Mayer gave the makeup team explicit instructions to make Nelson Eddy’s makeup look bad, thus supposedly teaching Eddy a lesson for trespassing on his territory, i.e. Jeanette MacDonald.
Audiences, however, had a much different reaction.
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16. They Gossiped About Her
From 1935 onward, the evident chemistry between MacDonald and Eddy led fans, critics, and gossip columnists alike to speculate about a romantic relationship between the pair. Hollywood audiences were soon disappointed: MacDonald and Eddy always staunchly denied that anything was going on between them.
Then, they went one step further to proving it.
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17. She Met Someone
The year that MacDonald made Naughty Marietta with Eddy, she met the man she would end her days with. Actor Gene Raymond was a baby-faced, seemingly stable man who ended up scorning the studio system that had produced monsters like Louis B Mayer.
MacDonald was apparently smitten, and they began dating…but not without controversy.
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18. His Family Hated Her
MacDonald always did have trouble winning over her lovers’ families, and Gene Raymond’s mother was no exception. The matriarch was so incensed at the match, she not only regularly snubbed MacDonald, she also actively tried to split them up, once setting up her son at a charity ball with actress Janet Gaynor rather than inviting MacDonald along.
In the end, it was futile.
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19. Her Wedding Was Emotional
Despite these issues, MacDonald seemed determined to make it work with Raymond, and in 1937 they married. The special day was a total mixed bag: Although Raymond’s mother, still bitter, refused to attend the ceremony, Nelson Eddy did show up and sing a song for the newlyweds.
This fragile happiness would only get more fragile.
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20. She Outshone Her Husband
For the next few years, MacDonald’s life with Raymond looked like a postcard: They lived in a mock-Tudor mansion they called “Twin Gables” with a pack of dogs and a horse named White Lady. But inside its doors, tensions rose. Raymond was never as successful as MacDonald and, even more worryingly, never had a steady stream of income, which wore on the household.
Unfortunately, it got more humiliating than that.
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21. Her Fans Humiliated Her
MacDonald's partnership with Nelson Eddy was at its apex during her wedding to Raymond, and so diehard fans naturally assumed that whenever they saw her with Raymond, he must actually be Eddy. This was a painful experience for husband and wife: As MacDonald confessed, "Of course we always laughed it off—sometimes Gene even obliged by signing Nelson's name—but no one will ever know the agonies I suffered on such occasions”.
Still, if fans looked closer, they would see even more cracks in the facade.
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22. She Had A Mini Break-Up
Even after the wedding, MacDonald–Eddy fans never gave up on somehow getting the two of them together. If they looked closely, there was unsettling evidence. For one, right after MacDonald’s marriage, their partnership had a blip, and both of them went off to do solo films: MacDonald starred in The Firefly with tenor Allan Jones, while Eddy starred in Rosalie with Eleanor Powell.
And that wasn’t all.
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23. She Was Stiff On Screen
After both solo efforts underperformed expectations, Louis B Mayer—never one to pass up making more money, despite his personal feelings—quickly got MacDonald and Eddy in another film together, 1938’s The Girl of the Golden West. Yet this, too, had warning signs for fans: MacDonald and Eddy shared very little screen time and seemed awkward together, although some noted this dissipated in their next film, Sweethearts.
For those who wanted to believe there was something between MacDonald and Eddy, though, the next event was the smoking gun.
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24. Her Co-Star Eloped
In 1939—just two years after MacDonald married Raymond—Nelson Eddy suddenly eloped with Ann Franklin, the ex-wife of Hollywood director Sidney Franklin. To many in the industry and in the cinema seats, it almost looked as if Eddy was on the rebound, and trying to give MacDonald as good as she got. MacDonald’s reaction didn’t help.
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25. She Ran Away
When MacDonald heard about the elopement, she was in the middle of making Broadway Serenade, very much not co-starring Nelson Eddy. Her response after wrapping was frantic. She immediately left Hollywood to take up a concert tour, and while this might have been business as usual, she also refused to renew her contract with MGM—the same studio that employed Eddy.
Her next demands were also bizarre.
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26. She Was A Tough Negotiator
Months after icing out MGM, MacDonald seemed to realize she still needed Hollywood, and called her manager—none other than her possible ex-husband Robert Ritchie—to help her negotiate. While at the table, MacDonald seemed to do everything she could think of to avoid Eddy, requesting that she next film Smilin’ Through with Jimmy Stewart instead.
She wouldn’t get her wish.
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27. She Had Another Hit
Instead of granting her request, MGM pushed her into not one but two films in 1940 with Nelson Eddy: New Moon and Bitter Sweet. The studio was rewarded. Audiences ate it up, with New Moon in particular being one of MacDonald’s most enduringly popular films.
When MacDonald finally did film Smilin’ Through, her husband Gene Raymond was, perhaps not coincidentally, on the credits roll. But in any case, her time with Eddy was coming to an end.
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28. He Left Her
In 1942, MacDonald made her final film with Nelson Eddy, I Married an Angel. Yet it was Eddy’s drama, not MacDonald's, that brought their partnership to a close: Tired of fighting with Louis B Mayer, Eddy bought out his contract and went over to Universal in a million-dollar deal, leaving MacDonald to fend for herself professionally.
MacDonald was about to enter a new phase of her life. A bitter-sweet one.
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29. She Tried A New Talent
After her partnership with Nelson Eddy came to an end, MacDonald seemed to lose interest in Hollywood for the next decade. In the 1940s, she embarked on a quest to reinvent herself as an opera singer, making her debut as Juliette in Gounod’s Romeo et Juliette, and also took jobs in television and radio.
In the end, she would only make four more movies after I Married an Angel, ending her film career for good in 1949. But when she tried to make a comeback, her drama followed her.
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30. She Staged A Comeback
Starting in the late 1950s, MacDonald tried to engineer her resurgence in Hollywood, and she took great measures to get her comeback off the ground. She hired a screenwriter to help create projects for her, and additionally tried to coordinate with either Maurice Chevalier, her first co-star in The Love Parade, or Nelson Eddy to stage a reunion.
It almost literally ended in tears.
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31. He Snubbed Her
At one point, MacDonald had almost clinched a comeback deal, with Nelson Eddy set to be her co-star. Then her old screen partner betrayed her. Reportedly scared off because he’d heard MacDonald was investing her own money into the picture, Eddy pulled out. Then again, the story got more complicated than that.
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32. She Was Uninsurable
In public, Eddy criticized the project as mediocre, and cited multiple issues with the production. But there was an even darker reason the film never got off the ground: MacDonald’s general health problems, and particularly her heart issues, had never gone away, and by this time she was uninsurable. It made her lose out in more ways than one.
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33. She Could Have Done So Much More
By the early 1960s, MacDonald was still casting around for a film comeback, but her body was making it more and more difficult to do anything. She turned down a part in the 1963 comedy The Thrill of It All, and though 20th Century Fox considered her for the role of Mother Abbess in The Sound of Music, talks stalled when MacDonald’s health began to plummet.
But if you asked MacDonald, that’s not what happened at all.
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34. She Sacrificed Herself
In 1957, MacDonald’s old co-star Maurice Chevalier asked her why she had been absent from Hollywood for all these years. MacDonald’s answer was suspiciously perfect. She responded, “Because for exactly twenty years I've played my best role, by [my husband’s] side. And I'm perfectly happy”.
Perhaps MacDonald wanted to believe that it was only her love for Raymond keeping her out of the movies, but even then people must have understood it wasn’t the full truth. They had no idea.
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35. She Died Young
In late 1964, MacDonald’s heart condition rapidly worsened, and in January of 1965 she was near death at Houston Methodist Hospital, with all medical interventions and surgeries having gotten nowhere. On January 14, 1965, heart failure felled the actress at the age of just 61.
But, at least according to her official lore, there was a silver lining.
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36. Her End Was Suspiciously Sweet
The last moments of Jeanette MacDonald’s life read like a saccharine fairy tale—albeit one with a tragic ending. Reportedly, just before she passed, MacDonald’s husband Gene Raymond was at her bedside, massaging her feet. According to Raymond, their last words for each other were shared “I love yous” right before her head hit the pillow.
Yet even amidst this version of events, the public noticed something else.
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37. Her Funeral Was A Tearjerker
At MacDonald’s funeral on January 18, 1965, mourners from across Hollywood and America poured in, including Spencer Tracy and several former or future US presidents. But one guest in particular caught eyes. Newsreel footage revealed that Nelson Eddy was the last one to leave the church, with friends circling around him and giving him condolences.
After all these years, people still questioned the true nature of their relationship. But MacDonald clung to secrecy.
Jeanette MacDonald Funeral - Jan. 18, 1965 (Exclusive), The Sweethearts: Jeanette and Nelson
38. She Wanted To Control Her Narrative
Before her death, MacDonald had been trying and failing to publish an autobiography about her life. Despite prompting from publishers, MacDonald’s pages were “too genteel” to make the book viable, as she refused to divulge gossip about any of the Hollywood heavy-hitters she’d known, Nelson Eddy included.
MacDonald’s stance was that she was taking the high road, but in reality, she was only hiding the truth—and it’s worse than you could ever imagine. .
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39. He Wasn’t Faithful
Despite pesky rumors about MacDonald and Eddy carrying a flame for each other during their film run, the safe haven of her marriage to Gene Raymond remained intact until the day she died. Except this may have been the biggest lie of all. According to biographer Sharon Rich, Raymond frequently had affairs during his marriage to MacDonald…and that’s not all.
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40. Her Marriage Was A Sham
Raymond’s wandering eye would have been one thing, but the couple were hiding so much more than that. Reportedly, while on her honeymoon, MacDonald walked in on Raymond in bed with male actor Buddy Rogers, and over the course of their marriage Raymond was detained on three different occasions for these at-the-time taboo proclivities. As a result, many believe Louis B Mayer forced MacDonald into the union as Raymond’s “beard”.
This would all be tragic enough, but it’s still only half of the story.
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41. Her Diary Made A Dark Confession
In 2015, MacDonald’s diary was sold at auction. Its pages revealed the harrowing truth. Raymond, frustrated and denied his own desires, was both physically and emotionally horrific to MacDonald for decades, often showering her with verbal insults and getting physical. But when he wasn’t hurting her, he was doing much worse.
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42. He Abandoned Her
MacDonald’s diary reveals the stark, heartbreaking truth about the last years of her life. While her health was failing, Raymond was acutely neglecting her. He left his incapacitated wife utterly alone for 44 days of the year, and her weight unsurprisingly dropped down to under 100 pounds.
It was not a perfect marriage. But MacDonald had other things to hide.
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43. He Loved Her
More of MacDonald’s deep secrets came out after her passing, including the truth about her relationship with Nelson Eddy. In a letter written around the time of their first film together and uncovered much later, Nelson Eddy wrote: “Dearest Jeanette…I love you and will always be devoted to you,” finally confirming after all this time that they did have a romantic relationship.
But like so much in MacDonald’s life, that was just the sweet beginning to an utterly harrowing ordeal.
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44. She Was Pregnant With A Love Child
By the time MacDonald and Eddy filmed Sweethearts together in 1938, they were hiding a catastrophic secret. At the time of filming, MacDonald—though only recently married to Gene Raymond—was pregnant with Eddy’s child. Some say you can even see the pregnancy through her costume in certain scenes in the film.
This news reads like a telenovela, but the situation would only get more dramatic.
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45. Her Lover Attacked Her Husband
The baby MacDonald carried in Sweethearts became a breaking point for all aspects of her life. That’s because, even while she was pregnant, Raymond reportedly physically mistreated her. After learning of this, a furious Nelson Eddy confronted Raymond and attacked him so viciously, the newspapers reported Raymond had fallen down some stairs.
It ended in even more tears.
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46. She Lost Nearly Everything
There’s evidence that, with all this going on, MacDonald went to Louis B Mayer and begged him to annul her marriage to Raymond so she could elope with Eddy. Mayer’s reply was pure cruelty: He refused carte blanche. Six months into her pregnancy, MacDonald then lost the baby, with Eddy burying the remains on his property in California.
Yet still, MacDonald and Eddy couldn’t quit each other.
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47. She Gave Away Her Heart
In the end, MacDonald and Eddy didn’t let Louis B Mayer stop them marrying, at least in their hearts. According to one story, they performed a mock ceremony at Lake Tahoe while filming Rose Marie, considered themselves married, and traveled back to the lake every autumn for years to renew their “vows”.
Indeed, the evidence of their attachment was scandalously obvious.
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48. She Lost Eight Children
Over the course of their illicit and extremely hush-hush relationship, there is both documentation and visual evidence that MacDonald got pregnant eight times by Eddy, even after he too got married. After all, Gene Raymond reportedly couldn’t father children in the first place.
Sadly, possibly due to MacDonald’s health issues, each pregnancy ended in a miscarriage.
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49. She Never Stopped Loving Him
MacDonald’s relationship with Nelson Eddy lasted long past their film partnership together, right up until MacDonald’s passing. According to evidence, they even surreptitiously shared several homes, or else used hotels and friends’ houses to see each other. In the last years of her life, Eddy got an apartment directly beside MacDonald’s so she could walk over and see him as long as she was strong enough.
MGM, Wikimedia Commons
50. She Lived A Lie
Jeanette MacDonald presented one perfect, celluloid face to the world, all while her private life roiled with a heartache so deep, she could barely even admit it to herself. In the end, she lived with the lies until her dying day, putting on a performance every hour of her life—because without the comfort of her Hollywood fantasy, the unvarnished truth would have brought her to her knees.
Michael Ochs Archives, Getty Images
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Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6