The Hollywood Diva Who Hid a Secret Affair

Jeanette McDonald presented a perfect facade, but after her death, her diary revealed the jaw-dropping truth. She'd had a long affair with a fellow Hollywood star, and his identity was the biggest bombshell of all. Jeanette McDonald rose to fame in the ruffle, late, and fantasy-ridden Hollywood musicals of the 1930s, with her angelic voice transporting audiences and establishing her as one of the highest paid actresses of the day. Born in 1903 to a working-class family, Jeanette McDonald 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. At the very beginning of the roaring 20s, McDonald followed her sister, Blossom Rock, to New York. While there, she climbed her way up the Broadway ladder and earned a ray of reviews for the sweet tenor of her soprano voice. Still, McDonald always wanted more. By the late 1920s, McDonald was an established star on the Great White Way. Then, she hit a bigger stroke of luck. Fame director Ernst Lubich was looking through old showreels for a leading lady to cast when his eyes fell on McDonald. He instantly put her in his upcoming sound film The Love Parade, alongside Maurice Chavallier. It opened the floodgates. 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, McDonald became a star and once synonymous with optimism and better days ahead. But behind the scenes, the story was much different. Even as The Love Parade was rocketing her to the top of Hollywood's call list, McDonald's was suffering from terrifying symptoms. In a letter dated from 1929 when she was just 26 years old, McDonald 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. As of her symptoms, McDonald 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, McDonald 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 Lou Ares requested earplugs while he was alongside her, lest the volume burst his eardrums. Not that Jeanette had trouble getting other leading men to like her though. McDonald's foray into Hollywood had been an instant success, but her forays into love weren't so easy. As her fame grew, McDonald began dating Wall Street man Robert Richie. Their relationship was scandalous from the beginning. 12 years older than her, Richie also made the somewhat dubious claim that he was the son of a millionaire who had fallen on hard times. Then he followed McDonald to Hollywood to become an MGM agent. However, none of this appeared to bother McDonald. In a move that would mirror her later secrets, McDonald may have married Robert Richie, but certainly kept it under wraps. She once signed her name J-A-R, or Jeanette Anna Richie, and called him her darling husband. His own family claimed they had married, and then had the union annulled. But Richie and McDonald 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. Starting with Naughty Marrietta in 1935, McDonald began an enormously popular co-starring streak with the clean cut, dough-eyed Nelson Eddie. A baritone musical actor who had cut his teeth in opera, Eddie had huge crossover appeal, and at his zenith he was the highest-paid singer in the world. Naughty Marrietta was so successful, and largely because of the chemistry between McDonald and Eddie, that they starred in seven more films together over the next eight years. But that chemistry also led to explosions. McDonald and Eddie were both now contract players with Metro Goldwood Mayor, and thus often under the thumb of the infamous executive Louis B. Mayor, who had a reputation for controlling actresses and turning their lives into nightmares. So when Mayor saw how much emotional pull Eddie had over McDonald, he was none too happy, and got his revenge. 1936's Rose Marie remains one of McDonald and Eddie's most popular two-handers. But Louis B. Mayor tried to sabotage it from the beginning. According to the crew, Mayor gave the makeup team explicit instructions to make Nelson Eddie's makeup look bad, thus supposedly teaching Eddie a lesson for trespassing on his territory, i.e. "Genet McDonald." Audiences, however, had a much different reaction. From 1935 onward, the evident chemistry between McDonald and Eddie led fans, critics, and gossip columnists alike to speculate about a romantic relationship between the pair. Hollywood audiences were soon disappointed. McDonald and Eddie always staunchly denied that anything was going on between them. Then they went one step further to proving it. The year that McDonald made naughty Marietta with Eddie, 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. Mayor. McDonald was apparently smitten, and they began dating, but not without controversy. McDonald always did have trouble winning over lovers' families, and Gene Raymond's mother was no exception. The matriarch was so incensed at the match, she not only regularly snubbed McDonald, but she also actively tried to split them up, once setting up her son at a charity ball with actress Janet Gainer rather than inviting McDonald along. In the end, it was all futile. Despite these issues, McDonald 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 refused to attend the ceremony, Nelson Eddie did show up and sing a song for the newlyweds, but this fragile happiness would only get, well, more fragile. For the next few years, McDonald's life with Raymond looked like a postcard. They lived in a mock-tutor 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 McDonald, and, even more worryingly, never had a steady stream of income, which wore on the household. Unfortunately, it got more humiliating than that. McDonald's partnership with Nelson Eddie 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 Eddie. This was a painful experience for husband and wife. As McDonald 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. Even after the wedding, McDonald Eddie fans never gave up on somehow getting the two of them together. If they paid close attention, there was unsettling evidence. For one, right after McDonald's marriage, their partnership had a blip, and both of them went off to do solo films. McDonald's starred in the Firefly with Tenor Allen Jones, while Eddie starred in Rosalie with Eleanor Powell, and that wasn't all. After both solo efforts underperformed expectations, Louis B. Mayer never wanted to pass up making more money despite his personal feelings, quickly got McDonald and Eddie in another film together. In 1938, the girl of the Golden West. Yet this too had warning signs for fans. McDonald and Eddie shared very little screen time and seemed awkward together, although some noted this dissipated in their next film, Sweetheart's. For those who wanted to believe there was something between McDonald and Eddie, though, the next event was the smoking gun. In 1939, just two years after McDonald married Raymond, Nelson Eddie suddenly eloped with Anne Franklin, the ex-wife of Hollywood director Sidney Franklin. To many in the industry and in the cinemasites, it almost looked as if Eddie was on the rebound and trying to give McDonald as good as she got. McDonald's reaction didn't help. When Jeanette heard about the elopement, she was in the middle of making Broadway serenade and very much not co-starring Nelson Eddie. 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 Eddie. Her next demands were also bizarre. Months after icing out MGM, McDonald seemed to realize she still needed Hollywood, and called her manager, none other than her possible ex-husband Robert Richie, to help her negotiate. While at the table, McDonald seemed to do everything she could think of to avoid Eddie. Resting that she next film smile and through with Jimmy Stewart instead. She wouldn't get her wish. Instead of granting her request, MGM pushed her into not one, but two films in 1940 with Nelson Eddie, New Moon, and Bittersweet. The studio was rewarded. Audiences aided up, with New Moon in particular being one of McDonald's most enduringly popular films. When McDonald finally did film Smiling Through, her husband Jean Raymond was perhaps not coincidentally on the credits roll. But in any case, her time with Eddie was coming to an end. In 1942, McDonald made her final film with Nelson Eddie. I married an angel, yet it was Eddie's drama Not McDonald's that brought their partnership to a close. Tired of fighting with Louis B. Mayer, Eddie bought out his contract and went over to universal in a million dollar deal, leaving Jeanette McDonald to fend for herself professionally. She was about to enter a new phase of her life, a Bittersweet one. After her partnership with Nelson Eddie came to an end, McDonald 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 Juliet in Gunoz Romeo et Juliet, while also taking 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. Starting in the late 1950s, McDonald 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 Chavalier, her first co-star in the love parade, or Nelson Eddie to stage a reunion. It almost literally ended in tears. At one point, McDonald had almost clinched a comeback deal, with Nelson Eddie's set to be her co-star. Then her old screen partner betrayed her. Reportedly scared off because he'd heard McDonald was investing her own money into the picture, Eddie pulled out. Then again, the story got more complicated than that. In public, Eddie criticized the project as mediocre, and cited multiple issues with the production. But there wasn't even darker reason the film never got off the ground. McDonald'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. By the early 1960s, McDonald 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 sound of music, talks stalled when McDonald's health began to plummet. But if you asked Jeanette, that's not what happened at all. In 1957, McDonald's old co-star, Maurice Chevalier, asked her why she had been absent from Hollywood for all these years. McDonald's answer was suspiciously perfect. He responded, because for exactly 20 years I've played my best role by my husband's side, and I'm perfectly happy. Perhaps McDonald 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. In late 1964, McDonald'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, Hart Failure fell the actress at the age of just 61, but at least according to her official lore, there was a silver lining. The last moments of Jeanette McDonald's life read like a saccharine fairy tale, albeit one with a tragic ending. Reportedly, just before she passed, McDonald's husband Jean 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. At McDonald's funeral, mourners from across Hollywood and America poured in, including Spencer Tracy and several former or future U.S. presidents. But one guest in particular caught eyes. Newsreel footage revealed that Nelson Eddie was the last one to leave the church, with friends circling around him and giving him condolences. After all these years, people still question the true nature of their relationship. But McDonald clung to secrecy. For her death, Jeanette had been trying and failing to publish an autobiography about her life. Despite prompting from publishers, McDonald's pages were too gentile to make the book viable, as she'd refused to divulge gossip about any of the Hollywood heavy hitters she'd known. Nelson Eddie included. McDonald'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. Despite pesky rumors about McDonald and Eddie carrying a flame for each other during their film run, the safe haven of her marriage to Jean 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 McDonald, and that's not all. Raymond's wandering eye would have been one thing, but the couple were hiding so much more than that. Sadly, while on her honeymoon, McDonald 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. Mayor forced McDonald into the union as Raymond's so-called beard. This would all be tragic enough, but it's still only half of the story. In 2015, McDonald's diary was sold at auction, and its pages revealed the harrowing truth. Raymond, frustrated and denied his own desires, was both physically and emotionally horrific to McDonald for decades, often showering her with verbal insults and getting physical. But when he wasn't hurting her, he was doing much worse. McDonald'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 Jeanette McDonald had other things to hide. More of her deep secrets came out after her passing, including the truth about her relationship with Nelson Eddie. In a letter written around the time of their first film together and uncovered much later, Nelson Eddie 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 McDonald's life, that was just the sweet beginning to an utterly harrowing ordeal. By the time McDonald and Eddie filmed sweethearts together in 1938, they were hiding a catastrophic secret. At the time of filming, McDonald, though only recently married to Jean Raymond, was pregnant with Eddie's child. Some say you can even see the pregnancy through her costume in certain scenes in the film. The baby McDonald 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 Eddie confronted Raymond and attacked him so viciously, the newspapers reported Raymond had fallen down some stairs. And of course, it ended in even more tears. There's evidence that with all this going on, McDonald went to Louis B. Mayor and begged him to annul her marriage to Raymond so she could alope with Eddie. His reply was pure cruelty. He refused carte blanche. Six months into her pregnancy, McDonald then lost the baby with Eddie burying the remains on his property in California. Yet still, McDonald and Eddie couldn't quit each other. In the end, McDonald and Eddie didn't let Louis B. Mayor stop the marrying, at least in their hearts. According to one story, they performed a mock ceremony at Lake Tahoe while filming Rosemary. Considered themselves married and traveled back to the lake every autumn for years to renew their vows. Jeanette McDonald 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. everything to us. Thanks for watching, and we'll see you in the next one.