page_title: Jeanette MacDonald
section_title: Final roles
hierarchical_section_title: Jeanette MacDonald / Acting career / Film career / Final roles
caption_attribution_description: Screenshot of Jeanette MacDonald from the trailer for the film The Sun Comes Up
context_page_description: Jeanette Anna MacDonald was an American singer and actress best remembered for her musical films of the 1930s with Maurice Chevalier and Nelson Eddy. During the 1930s and 1940s she starred in 29 feature films, four nominated for Best Picture Oscars, and recorded extensively, earning three gold records. She later appeared in opera, concerts, radio, and television. MacDonald was one of the most influential sopranos of the 20th century, introducing opera to film-going audiences and inspiring a generation of singers.
context_section_description: After opening the Metropolitan Opera's membership campaign, MacDonald appeared as herself in Follow the Boys (1944), an all-star extravaganza about Hollywood stars entertaining the troops. The more than 40 guest stars included Marlene Dietrich, W.C. Fields, Sophie Tucker, and Orson Welles. MacDonald is shown during a concert singing "Beyond the Blue Horizon," and in a studio-filmed sequence singing "I'll See You in My Dreams" to a blinded soldier. She returned to MGM after five years off the screen for two films. Three Daring Daughters (1948) co-starred José Iturbi as her love interest. MacDonald plays a divorcée whose lively daughters (Jane Powell, Ann E. Todd, and Elinor Donahue) keep trying to get her back with her ex, but she has secretly remarried. The song "The Dickey Bird" made the hit parade. The Sun Comes Up (1949) teamed MacDonald with Lassie in an adaptation of a short story by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. MacDonald played a widow who has lost her son, but warms to orphan Claude Jarman Jr.. It would prove to be her final film.
  She frequently attempted a comeback movie, even financing and paying a screenwriter. One of the possible film reunions with Nelson Eddy was to be made in England, but Eddy pulled out when he learned MacDonald was investing her own funds. Eddy preferred to publicly blame the proposed project as mediocre, when in fact MacDonald was uninsurable due to her heart condition. A reunion with Maurice Chevalier was also considered. Other thwarted projects with Eddy were The Rosary, The Desert Song, and a remake of The Vagabond King, plus two movie treatments written by Eddy for them, Timothy Waits for Love and All Stars Don't Spangle. Offers continued to come in, and in 1962, producer Ross Hunter proposed MacDonald in his 1963 comedy The Thrill of It All, but she declined. 20th Century Fox also toyed with the idea of MacDonald (Irene Dunne was briefly considered) for the part of Mother Abbess in the film version of The Sound of Music. It never moved beyond the discussion stages partly because of MacDonald's failing health.
  An annual poll of film exhibitors listed MacDonald as one of the top-10 box-office draws of 1936, and many of her films were among the top-20 moneymakers of the years they were released. In addition, MacDonald was one of the top-10 box-office attractions in Great Britain from 1937 to 1942. During her 39-year career, MacDonald earned two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (for films and recordings) and planted her feet in the wet concrete in front of Grauman's Chinese Theater.
caption: From the trailer for The Sun Comes Up (1949)
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