Hollywood Diva: A Biography of Jeanette MacDonald
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, CTCopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.