MacDonald, Jeanette (Anna)
MacDonald, Jeanette (Anna)
MacDonald, Jeanette (Anna), American soprano; b. Philadelphia, June 18, 1903; d. Houston, Jan. 14, 1965. She started a career as a chorus girl and model in N.Y. (1920) and unexpectedly won encomia for her starring role in the musical The Magic Ring (1923). She then attained wide recognition as a singing actress via 29 films, especially those in which she paired with Nelson Eddy: Naughty Marietta (1935), Rose Marie (1936), Maytime (1937), The Girl of the Golden West (1938), Sweethearts (1939), New Moon (1940), Bittersweet (1940), and / Married an Angel (1942). She made a belated operatic debut as Juliette in Montreal (May 1944); she also sang in Chicago, but her voice was too small to meet the demands of the large opera halls.
Bibliography
S. Rich, j. M; A Pictorial Biography (Los Angeles, 1973); E. Knowles, Films of J. M. and Nelson Eddy (South Brunswick, N.J., 1975); J. Parish, The J. M. Story (N.Y., 1976); L. Stern, j. M. (N.Y., 1977); E. Turk, Hollywood Diva: A Biography of J. M.(Berkeley, 1998).
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire