Prologue

The old man sat in the dark room of his home theater, anticipating every moment on the screen. He usually ran the films in the same order, but not always. How he played them was determined by the amount of pain he was in, the weather, how much he'd had to drink, how many painkillers and tranquilizers. But, always, he needed to see Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy.

He most enjoyed/loathed them when they seemed so happy together in Naughty Marietta - it had made a fortune for him, made him powerful (money will do that), established his stars as "America's Singing Sweethearts." He'd seen to that! He was the one who decided who should be happy. But the songs were nice, always beautifully sung, her voice an anodyne. And the baritone - no name for him - how bad his acting! Just a block of wood. Good for laughing. Louis B. Mayer should know bad acting when he saw it, having watched so much of it over all the long and short decades while he was the Lion of Hollywood. Then Rose Marie - boy wins girl, boy loses girl to career, boy gets girl back for a moment. And then those most wonderful words - The End. He knew that their embrace had ended when his director had joyously screamed, "Cut!" He knew that they had let go fast, snarled and spit at each other, stalked apart. No happy ending there! (He'd had spies - they were paid well.) The deep agony in his liver lessened. The morphine-hungry bladders knew their deliverance.

Perhaps next a special treat, one of Nelson's forgettable, disastrous films with someone else. Louis had liked all the "someone elses" - he'd gotten them all, too, one way or another. Nelson would usually look woodenly handsome and sing until the requisite final embrace. But his acting did improve. Nelson hadn't made a well-received bonanza picture with anyone other than Jeanette. Granted, he sang well enough, but the public didn't want him on screen with anyone except Jeanette with her beautiful green gaze, her open longing for him, her wondrous voice that matched his so well that the two together were more than each separately. Synergy - he'd had someone look it up. It seemed that when Nelson wasn't singing, or didn't have Jeanette to adore with his eyes, he was clumsy or awkward. So Louis had done his best to keep Jeanette out of Nelson's movie sight. He almost smiled at the memories.

Louis's first wife, the dark-haired Margaret, never complained of any lack or inattention. They had his requisite daughters, Irene (she had married well to David Selznick, who, sadly, proved a formidable rival on his own), and second daughter, Edith (Edie), who Mayer married to producer William Goetz (who later became President of Universal Pictures), and it was enough for Louis that he and Margaret had enjoyed their first years together. Margaret busied herself about the house and her girls and the charities that enjoyed the rest of her time. But sometimes she'd put on her emerald bracelet and earrings and sable throw and demand he take her to dinner, and he would. That was the agreement. She was Mrs. Louis B. Mayer.

He was insatiable. He never thought of it as other than just a need to be attended to - satyriasis was the doctors' name for it. Or priapism. Louis was the Lion of MGM, the perfect symbol of what he had created, dutifully servicing the mates in his pride. He never thought of all this as anything but his imperial prerogative. And those women who were movie stars and starlets and B actresses (thanks to him and his cinematic dealings and planning) and lived as extras? Those virginal bodices and mouths did not speak of what he'd done. He left no traces, and they could take all the multi-colored pills or liquids that they needed for their nightmares and their memories before their next meeting with him. The studio had doctors for every need. How he loved to greet these subservient women in public, hug or pat them on the arm. If they were short enough, he'd even kiss them on the cheek as a sign of favor. He kept the women in his domain cut down to size.

When the pain surged again, Louis would order up more movies, perhaps with different stars. Janet Gaynor. It was widely known Louis himself had ruined her and her career, and she had said so. It had happened to others, such as the ethereally beautiful Lillian Gish. She had refused D. W. Griffith. So she was done. There were men, too. Ramon Novarro - all those rumors. John Gilbert and his oddly high-pitched voice. Charlie Chaplin had a connoisseur's eye for lovely young (little) girls, so Louis might watch one of his reels. He liked little girls. Besides, Chaplin could make him laugh. As the foreign stars came up on his projector with their European take on modesty, which meant nude swimming and lots of wet clothing, he enjoyed that, too.

And then, after that, Louis could watch Jeanette with Nelson again - Girl of the Golden West, or Bitter Sweet. Nelson in the turkey Knickerbocker Holiday never failed to cheer him up enough so he could nap for a while. Then Jeanette with Gene Raymond, her perfectly mismatched husband.

Louis was the only one smiling after Smilin' Through. He'd arranged all that himself. So many promises made. Such a lack of "chemistry." Everyone had seen it. Money well spent. He loved to remember those days. Then Jeanette with the last improbable screen marriage to José Iturbi. She at least a foot taller than he. Oh, well done! She was away from the baritone, even if nowhere near Louis either. And then The Sun Comes Up, in Technicolor. She sang not only to Louis but also to her co-star Lassie. The dog. Then she faded away into obscurity. No one cared.

If Louis B. Mayer, king of Hollywood, could not have the woman he wanted, he would be sure no one else did. And while he was at it, he'd finish off everything of hers that he could. Her career, her money, and especially her long and intense amour with Nelson Eddy.

Chapter One

Dear Diary: No, that's much too simple a greeting and I intend to be more than just a simple girl in Hollywood in the grand year of 1929. I'll think of something else later. Anyway, you will not believe this. I have been invited to be Jeanette MacDonald's companion here in Hollywood. Jeanette knows me and trusts me - I was born in the house next door to her family's house on Arch Street in Philadelphia. She's four years older than I am, but we look remarkably alike with red-gold hair, green eyes, and slim builds. We're even the same height and have very fair skin. However, she grew up to be incomparably beautiful. I try not to be very jealous. By the time I was four, I was trailing after Jeanette everywhere. Maybe she just gave up shooing me away. Really annoyed my mother. But, Anna MacDonald, Jeanette's mom, didn't mind - her girl had me for company, to watch out for her, and to tell Momma Anna all the stories of the day when we came back.

Dr. Johnson had his diarist, Mr. Boswell, and I shall be the one to record Jeanette's MacDonald's career progress. I think she will do wonderful things. So this will be more than my diary - I have no idea what it will turn out to be - but I have plans for myself, too. Today is my first day in Los Angeles, in Hollywood. To make ready for the move, I packed up all that I owned - don't have much. But the fashions will be different there and Jeanette has promised me a salary and things if I need them - and I'm sure I'll need them - for the quick train trip. The trip was so fast. Four days from Philadelphia to Hollywood! At the hotel, there was a room and a bathroom waiting for me. That's being rich - when you have your own room and closet and private bathroom. And a tub.

Jeanette's a movie star. Well, she's not a star - not yet. But she's already got a big, big salary from Paramount. Ernst Lubitsch to direct. Maurice Chevalier is her love interest. And singing. Lots of good music.

Paramount isn't the best studio for musicals - Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM) is. But Lubitsch is the best director. MGM has a different system. If Louis B. Mayer, the head of the studio, likes the way a girl or a guy looks in a test shot, he'll put them in a movie. Then all the fan letters that refer to the "new face" in the publicity department are counted. They have to be very accurate - after all, people could try to "fix" the count to push somebody they favored and cost the studio money. LB loves money - everybody's told me that already. If the new face gets a favorable response, then Mayer will have one of the directors take "the face" in tow, see what use they can be, what they are good at. In fact, if the person's pretty enough, they go to studio "schools" here where they teach you everything. How to walk correctly, speak correctly, eat nicely, and have some manners. I wish they'd emphasize manners more. Some of these guys are really pushy and don't understand no. Seems to be a universal problem. Well, no point in talking about that. Not here anyway. I plan to write about wonderful things.

I know it's our first night here, but Jeanette's not home yet - nothing new there - and I'm too wound up to go to bed to sleep, so I'll just go on dreaming. I don't come from money either. And I haven't earned that much. I was just a secretary like everybody else I know except Jeanette. She has real beauty. Striking. Gorgeous. It's her skin really. And she photographs well. It's called "being photogenic." The camera carries her life spirit across the film into the audience's hearts. She is perceived as "angelic." Well, I could tell you a story or two about "angelic," but I'm studying to be a lady, so I won't. You should guess there are some stories there. We were scamps, we were young, there were lots of things to do and places to go, and she needed somebody to go with her sometimes. Just because of the boys. And people tell me so often how much I look like her!

The second thing she has is also something I've never had, nor ever heard equaled - her singing voice. It's extraordinary. So astonishingly clear. It's why I was drawn to her - just like so many other people are. She sings the Siren's song. I admit it freely - she has bewitched me, if that's what you want to call it. I want to be as much like her as I can be, even if I can't sing a note. Jeanette was always singing, and I've always heard her from the time I was in my cradle. My mother told me she used to beg Jeanette to sing me to sleep if I was fussing or crying and was hot and upset. Sometimes I heard her in my sleep, and who knows what they babies hear and understand and remember while they're asleep.

But that's the point of all this upheaval in my life and why I'll be writing. I've come to be with Jeanette in Hollywood and share in her adventures. It's sure going to beat being little Izzie Tucker of Arch Street, Philadelphia.

Chapter Two

Dear Diary: Life wasn't hardscrabble. Our dads had jobs, our moms ran the house, and we did chores and went to school and church. I remember Jeanette singing in church. Sometimes she'd be practicing, other times she'd be singing for some group or another. Jeanette's Mom, Momma Anna, made all three sisters' clothes, of course. I didn't find out till I was twelve and screaming bitterly one night about not having a dress to wear that the truth came out. Mrs. MacDonald's sister was a widow who supported herself in the city as a dressmaker. Her wealthy customers would bring her wonderful fabrics from Paris or elsewhere. French things were of course more chic - in other words, more attractive to boys. Aunt Sally set the standard for beautiful clothes in their household. So, Jeanette, at four years old, made her Philadelphia singing debut as part of a piano-student recital in Aunt Sally's most charming scraps and patterns.

Years later, Blossom MacDonald, Jeanette's older sister by several years, got a job dancing in New York (that's all we ever told people) in the chorus of a show at the wonderful Capitol Theatre. Jeanette, while just in the ninth grade, went to New York to visit her sister, met the stage manager (a Mr. Way-something), and, suddenly, there she was, too, singing and dancing on the New York stage of the magnificent Capitol Theater every night and twice on Sundays. Swell money, too, she said. I was so very jealous! I was in sixth grade - where did I get to go? She was having all those adventures instead of going to her ninth-grade classes, and I had to continue living in Philadelphia and going to St. Sebastian's School.

School kept reappearing in my life every year. Every September. St. Sebastian had reappeared in Roman life - first he was martyred just for being a Christian, shot with arrows and left tied to a tree. I hated the pictures the nuns made us look at. St. Sebastian was left for dead, but he didn't die - he survived, reappeared, and then he made his way across the lands of Rome to preach to the Emperor Diocletian. When Diocletian had him murdered, he stayed dead. Everybody gets tired of being preached to, I guess.

I must tell you I loved school, the process of learning, being educated. Liked classes, books, libraries - the works. I will be writing not only to chronicle our adventures - we're going to have a great many - but also to practice my Parker Penmanship. Yes, I know men don't like intelligent women, but I find all this knowing things irresistible. I suppose I'll just act dumb a lot.

Anyway, Jeanette couldn't make very many friends in New York - girls in the theater were considered not nice and definitely tramps - and those were the nice words. As a result, nobody "nice" would associate with her after they (or their parents) found out what she did. She was much too young to be friendless in this way. Bad circumstances for a girl to be friendless with no protector. Some would say it was even worse to have a protector. She was thrown into the company of theater people (since no once else would associate with theater people) very young and found out very quickly why this business of nice and tramps was so. Her first party, matter of fact. A girlfriend fixed her up. It was called a Beaux Arts Ball - that means pretty, or beautiful, arts and artists - and she could see how pretty everyone was because they were not wearing a great deal of clothing, although she was. Some sweet sixteen. Next thing you know, a regular college football player, Jack Ohmeis, rescued her for the first, and probably not the last, time. He was smitten. They started dating. Well, they dated until his parents found out they were dating. This girl, whoever she was, was just a show-biz tramp, certainly not good enough for their boy. He came from a good (rich) family. So they dated quite a bit on the sly, I guess. It was all very vague and I never met him.

Another miraculous rescue happened for this blessed girl. Out of work at the Capitol, instead of having to find an agent, one found her on her first day making the rounds. It just isn't supposed to work like that. None of this would have happened if some nice man had said to me, "Pardon me, young lady, but can you dance on stage?" This man gets into the same elevator she does and he turns out to be a manager or producer of a stage show that needs a singer. He appraises her, gets her off the elevator, and auditions her in the waiting room of his office. He hires her on the spot! She gets herself free costumes from Aunt Sally or a friend of Aunt Sally's in New York. And her first night out on the new stage, she steals the show. She gets encores! But it's just Jeanette's luck. No point in being envious. Jeanette bought a dozen copies of newspapers with the review and sent one to every single person she knew.

I think the reality of it all and the prospects for her life were apparent to everyone when Jeanette took a $100 bill home to Arch Street in Philly to show her family. Her relatives. We passed it around carefully. She even let the neighbors have a look. Her dad had died in 1923. She could support the family now.

There she was, just a kid, a success in the shows on Broadway, going steady with rich college football playboy Jack Ohmeis and wow - his family is still unhappy. She's beginning to understand her beauty and its power and beginning to find out that she can get men to do things for her, and if not for her, then for her voice. The world trailed after her perfume.

Things went fast after that birthday - she was a bit vague about her age always. She lied about it to the point I'm not sure she knew what it was anymore. Her salary went up from show to show, as she went from chorus bits, to duets, to solos, to second lead, and - after her tonsillectomy - to star in Minnie and Me. And Yes, Yes, Yvette. The train fare to Hollywood was nothing to her by the time she got that part.

Chapter Three

Dear Friend: Yes, that sounds more adult than "Dear Diary."

Jeanette's story for awhile was one long string of boys, men, and different theaters. She managed to support herself completely on the New York stage by the age of nineteen. My story, on the other hand, is nothing. Well it's not nothing - it's just less "glamorous." I shall record it because this is my book.

I got my high school diploma right on schedule at age fifteen (I was a quick study and got my teaching diploma early), and set out to be a teacher. That's what girls did. Teach or type or take care of sick people until they married. I wasn't much for the sight of wounded people. Couldn't get bloodstains out of my clothes, nursing garb had to be perfectly white, and I hated dirty clothes anyway. I didn't want to go directly from student to teacher, despite all the honors I'd won in school. I took my share of medals and prizes, thank you, including one for my penmanship. I knew there was more to life than the inside of the classrooms churches and school offices than the nuns, or priests, who had been all too quick to thwack hands with rulers. And marriage? I had seen my parents and Momma Anna. I've no thoughts of marriage. That will have to come much later.

I decided that being a secretary would get me out of the house and into the world I'd read all about. Like New York. Besides, Jeanette and Blossom were there in the Big City and I could bunk with them. It'd take me a while to get my own place. And first I had to get a job. I decided I didn't want just any job. I wanted to work on a place that was in the newspapers a whole lot - Wall Street. Every time Wall Street was mentioned, so was money. In the same sentence. That meant there was money to be made on Wall Street. I wanted to make money. I was ready for adventure. I was old enough to leave home for the Big City and have a career and everything.

New York's Wall Street was quite impressive. A nice wide street packed with autos on both sides just the same as Philadelphia, and the walls of Wall Street were tall buildings. Jeanette and Blossom found me - I could never have found them with that funny subway system (since 1904 - isn't that amazing?). They took me to their nice two-bedroom flat. It had hot and cold running water, its very own bathroom, and was just one floor up from the street. I couldn't get over it - one bathroom for two rooms! And a kitchen. Nicer than my four-square home. They had furnished it as well as they could - Blossom had exquisite taste and could "stretch" things if she had to, so Jeanette let her manage all that sort of thing. Blossom also managed to keep Jeanette organized, with silk, seams, and sequins intact, taxi on call.

That first night we stayed up late and reminisced and caught up and laughed. Nothing had changed - we were still the same friends, the same girls next door. They took inventory of my things and Blossom decided we had to shop the next day for office attire. They had enough extra to give me money for several dresses with changes of collars and cuffs, a coat and shoes and hat. That many outfits would start me off very nicely. I promised to pay them back as quickly as I could. But they just laughed, and Blossom made me model everything for Jeanette the next night.

On my third morning in New York, I set out to conquer the world, starting with Wall Street. I was nicely togged out with the newspaper and Blossom's detailed directions in hand and their address and phone number in my purse along with some dollars of my own. By noon, every waiting room and every secretary looked alike - something I was determined to avoid.

There was a little shop for ladies in the midst of the towering buildings. Happily surprised, I slipped in. I carefully looked through everything until I found a slightly more emphatic suit - a bit more oomph. But not too much oomph. Then shoes - a little less in the ground-gripper mode. A stylish hat with a matching fabric purse, and, for the first time, a piece of jewelry. A discreet gold watch, not silver. My gloves looked fine, silk stockings were tight, seams were still straight. The saleslady in charge of my redesigning project added a lipstick - free! I had told her what I was doing, and she thought it a great project. She helped me pick the best of what I could afford. Now I had something attractive for gentlemen to see after lunch. They'd look twice at this suit, hat, and redheaded girl. Two interviews and a typing test later, I was secretary and assistant to Mr. Harriman of Harriman, Smith, Stockbrokers (whatever that meant). I was primly seated behind a huge mahogany desk in the Harriman Building's immense marble lobby. Everyone had to go by me to get to the elevators.

Oh, I loved it! I could see everything. There was so much to see. Everyone could see me. The very next day, I went back to my little shop and with my proof of employment papers, persuaded the kindly sales lady, a Mrs. Lauderer, to lend me enough suits or tops for five days. I gave her Jeanette's aunt, Sally McTierney, as a reference. I said would repay her, buy more, and tell all my friends. She laughed, and we shook hands and she shooed me "up and away!" You bet I paid her back. And, as time went by, sent all my business friends to her.

Mr. Harriman was fresh as paint at first, but I let him know I was just new in town, not a silly child who wanted to smoke and drink and run around with men. Had to save something for next month. Some other men, too, tried to flirt, but I had been warned by Blossom. I just turned up my nose and turned my face away.

Blossom and Jeanette just laughed and laughed when I came home with my new finery and told them of my glorious day and shiny new success. Jeanette had to go do a show - that was evidently going to be the story of her life. Jeanette was off for her evening, so Blossom and I just heated some soup and bread and talked into the night. She had plenty to tell me about herself and vaudeville - and Jeanette. Girls at gossip!