Tolle Marietta

Naughty Marietta marked the first teaming of Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy and what a success it was. MacDonald had broken into films with Paramount pictures which made her a star. She moved to MGM the previous year and had done a fourth film with Maurice Chevalier which was well received. But she and Chevalier did not get along and she wanted no more films with him. She did one with Ramon Novarro and there was no great demand for that team.

Louis B. Mayer decided to team her with operatic baritone Nelson Eddy. Eddy had been signed by MGM and had done what we would now call cameo parts in three films. He even gave Eddy co-star billing in this first featured role.

The results were a box office smash. Jeanette and Nelson looked great on the screen and sang even better. Seven more films followed that paired them. Even today they still have a loyal fan base.

Naughty Marietta had its debut on Broadway in 1910 with music by Victor Herbert and book and lyrics by Rida Johnson Young. It was one of Herbert's biggest hits and the songs are still popular today. Back then the melody was king and what melodies they were.

Of course the book has to be taken with a grain of salt and allowances for the mores of the times. The operetta is set in the New Orleans of Louis XV. One of his royal wards has been promised to wed a Spanish nobleman and she wants none of it. The royal lady exchanges places with her maid who is going to New Orleans as a promised bride for one of the French colonists.

When they're almost there, the ship is attacked by pirates and the promised brides among them Jeanette MacDonald are taken ashore. But they are rescued by an intrepid band of frontiersman led by Nelson Eddy who sing even better than they fight. They're mercenaries in the service of the Territorial Governor of Louisiana.

As Jeanette put it in the beginning of the film, she wants to marry for love and she couldn't love any of those powderpuff courtiers that inhabit Versailles.

Watching my VHS of Naughty Marietta today it was interesting to see a portrayal of New Orleans society in 1765 and then seeing New Orleans try to dry out from another hurricane. New Orleans was and is one valuable piece of real estate on this continent, located at the mouth of the Mississippi-Missouri-Ohio river systems. It changed hands until many times until the Louisiana Purchase got it for the USA.

Nelson and Jeanette have a rough go of it as they always do in their films. But a few songs and love conquers all.

Being this was their first film, Jeanette and Nelson got to sing their first duet which was Ah Sweet Mystery of Life. A really fabulous melody and lyric from a golden age of song writing. One of the great love songs ever written. Naughty Marietta should be seen for that alone.

This is just a flat out good movie! Maybe I should say a GREAT movie. Although I've been a fan over the past few decades of many films and performers of the 1930s--including the amazing dancing team of (who else?) Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers--until yesterday I'd never seen a film featuring Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald. Then, by chance a couple of weeks ago, I heard some singing by Eddy and started checking his and Jeanette's work on Youtube.

This led me to many scenes and songs on good old Youtube. The singing was, well, fabulous, and the chemistry between the stars was kinetic, but I figured that, outside of the songs themselves, the movies would probably be syrupy sweet and impossibly dated. That seemed to be the buzz, and otherwise, why weren't they more popular with today's audiences. Still, I had to see a whole film after those tantalizing Youtube scenes.

Still, actually finding their films isn't all that easy. There is nothing much on Netflix and few videos of any kind seem to be currently in print. Still, I managed to track down and buy a DVD of 'Naughty Marietta' from an independent outlet--and was amazed at how good it was, and not just the songs!

It has a compelling plot, a whole variety of settings going up and down the social ladder from posh Louis XV Paris to the bayous of the rugged Louisiana frontier. It also features some appealing comic moments from MGM's team of crack character actors. Frank Morgan (later the man behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz) particularly stands out as the likably incompetent governor of French colonial New Orleans.

And even in their non-singing scenes, the chemistry between the two stars remains electric. I somehow hadn't realized, at least until my Youtube explorations, that Jeanette MacDonald was drop-dead gorgeous--but she was. She also had a great deal of vivacity and charm-- and, boy, could she sing. Eddy's acting has been criticized, and maybe he didn't have tremendous emotional range, but he does have a real presence on the screen along with that electric connection with Jeanette. And when he sings, his voice acts for him! Moreover, as a singer, he's even better than Jeanette.

All in all, the effect is remarkable and one can see why these movies were so immensely popular in their own time. Moreover, overall, I'd rate the non-musical elements of Naughty Marietta (plot, dialog, characterization, acting, setting, thematic development) as superior to most or all of the non-musical moments of Astaire-Rogers, although their movies are, of course, far better known today. In Astaire-Rogers one is often wishing they'll get through this silly scene of dialog and get to the next dance, but that doesn't happen in Naughty Marietta, where the songs seem to grow organically out of the intriguing dramatic situations.

I'm going to track down more films in the Eddy-MacDonald series. This one certainly far exceeded my expectations!

I wish that "Naughty Marietta" and "Sweethearts" and "I Married an Angel" and " and "Maytime" and would be gathered in a 4 disc Tribute set of DVD's. MacDonald and Eddy were well aware that the music in their films was mostly tripe and that the plot lines were thin at best.They were keenly aware of their film's theatricality being in a style that was already passé. But if you watch their faces when they act, ( and it is very good acting!) and see the mutual admiration in their eyes, and understand that it is all performed with tongue in cheek, the films become a lasting delight. My favorites are "Marietta," "Sweethearts" and "Maytime."

"Marietta" is the height of charm. MacDonald is perfection with her bird like trills and rolling "r"s, and shows a very wide display of emotions, including everything from dramatic hand wringing and tears to delightful comedic acting and humor. Eddy matches these moods with considerable skill. He had to be somewhat less flamboyant than MacDonald in order to keep t the movie plausible. The real villain is the plot, but even that could not take away the delight this picture gives to me. ( Frank Morgan is great in it!)

" Sweethearts" is my very favorite of their films. The antiquated plot of the musical stage play was tossed, and a whole new modern story was written for it by Dorothy Parker. Only the songs from the operetta were kept, and were interwoven into the movie within "Great Ziegfeld " like elaborate settings. It was also the first full length 3 strip Technicolor movie made at MGM. Both stars looked wonderful in color, and the absolutely rip roaringly funny story line only pauses for the musical numbers . The songs were acted and sung with such obvious self depreciating humor, that I cannot stop smiling , even now as I am writing this.

"Maytime" is, of course a tragedy, with lovely haunting songs and great scenic beauty. The made for the screen "Opera within the operetta" is the two star's acting zenith. Their delight and passion and friendship for each other in real life shines through the scene, giving it an extraordinary sense of truth. SO, Why not a glorious Boxed set from SONY/ TURNER/ MGM? Please??????

Forgive me for loving this movie! It is dated and corny and the acting of Nelson Eddy is sadly lacking BUT when he and Jeanette McDonald break into song, nothing else matters. With the most glorious voices in the movies, these two made it all worthwhile. Both were gorgeous to look at but McDonald was obviously the better actor while Eddy had the classically trained voice. Together they took your breath away. The haunting "Sweet Mystery of Life" will bring tears to your eyes. This is by far the best of their series of movies although "Maytime" has some equally beautiful music and is a weeper to boot! Take the time to watch this film, you will not be disappointed. It's glorious!!!

If old-fashioned operettas with lots of full-bodied singing and coy charm aren't your idea of entertainment, then steer clear of NAUGHTY MARIETTA--which, frankly, was somewhat of a museum piece even when first released in '35, belonging, as it did, to a style of musical theater that had long passed.

But back then, NELSON EDDY and JEANETTE MacDONALD were a hot singing duo, and MGM would soon be casting them in film after film, based usually on hoary old operetta-type stories. Unless today's musical fans have a taste for this kind of singing, they're likely to find the film totally unbearable.

I can still succumb to the charm of this kind of story and to these singers, for Nelson's baritone is one of the best you're ever likely to hear on screen--only Howard Keel and Gordon MacRae come close to approximating it. As for the story, it has to be taken with a grain of salt--a simple bit of nonsense about a princess escaping from France and ending up in Louisiana, where she gradually falls in love with a man who helped rescue her from French pirates.

It's a slender tale on which Victor Herbert strung some of his golden melodies, sung to the max by MacDonald and Eddy. As a singer myself (I was in The Friendly Sons of St. Patrick Glee Club, a club started by Victor Herbert himself), we sometimes did the Herbert melodies as part of our repertoire.

FRANK MORGAN and ELSA LANCHESTER as the governor and his wife add the required amount of broad humor and the sets and costumes have that lavish MGM look.

Pleasant, if not the most memorable teaming of MacDonald and Eddy.