The Nelson Eddy/Jeanette
MacDonald craze reached its apex with Robert Z. Leonard’s Maytime (1937) a gloriously elephantine operetta superficially
based on Sigmund Romberg’s Broadway show. Maytime’s
production schedule was interrupted by the sudden unexpected death of MGM’s
wunderkind producer, Irving Thalberg on Sept. 14, 1936. Thalberg had envisioned
Maytime as MGM’s first Technicolor
spectacle and had even brought in Romberg to write four new tunes for his
celluloid update. The producer handpicked Edmund Goulding to direct. But the
results proved disastrous. After spending nearly $800,000 Thalberg and
assistant director Joe Newman concurred. The footage thus far assembled was a
catastrophe. In a gutsy move, Thalberg resolved to start Maytime over again from scratch with a new director at its helm.
But then Thalberg died, placing the project on indefinite hold.
In the interim Jeanette
MacDonald heavily campaigned to make San Francisco (1936) with Clark
Gable. Although the co-stars were anything but kosher toward each other between
takes, the film became yet another feather in Jeanette’s cap and she approached
Maytime with renewed resolve to
renegotiate her MGM contract, while garnering a newfound appreciation for
Eddy’s good nature. Unflatteringly dubbed ‘the
singing capon’ to MacDonald’s ‘iron
butterfly’ by the critics, Eddy knew that apart from his undeniable
presence as a singer he was something of a minor disappointment as an actor.
A capon is a castrated
chicken and, while the inference to Eddy - as a man - may seem more than a tad
cruel (in point of fact, it is), as a performer it fit his acting rather
succinctly. There is no hint of masculine passion or even a modest twinge of virility
to his performances in either Naughty Marietta or Rose
Marie. Eddy was self-conscious,
but this translated into a queer asexuality on the screen. Though undeniably
handsome, there was something odd and waxen about Eddy as a performer – more a mannequin
than a man.
Yet Nelson Eddy’s
performance in Maytime comes off as
something of a revelation, especially when directly compared to his two
previous outings. There is verve to him in Maytime
that is excitingly alive. Perhaps the delays in the production gave the singer
time to rethink his approach to the material. Or maybe he had finally begun to
mature as an actor. Either way, this new level of comfort with the camera gave fans
of the duo their first real reason to celebrate. From start to finish, the new Maytime was rewritten in just six
weeks. Noel Langley, Claudine West and Rida Johnson Young’s screenplay owed
much more to Noel Coward’s Bittersweet than it did Broadway’s Maytime. In fact, the film only
retained one song ‘Will You Remember?’
from the Romberg score.
Our story begins with the
kindly advice of an aged Miss Morrison (Jeanette MacDonald) bestowed upon
Barbara Roberts (Lynne Carver) – a young girl whose head has been filled with
dreams of becoming a great opera singer in New York. However, Barbara’s fiancée
Kip Stuart (Tom Brown) doesn’t want her to go. The couple quarrel and after Kip
leaves Miss Morrison confides to Barbara that she used to be Marcia Mornay –
the world famous opera diva who sacrificed true love for her art.
We regress in flashback to
the time of Napoleon Bonaparte. Marcia and her impresario, Nicolai Nazaroff
(John Barrymore) are invited to the French court to perform for Louie Napoleon
(Guy Bates Post). Afterward, Nicolai tricks renown composer, Trentini (Paul
Porcasi) into writing an opera exclusively for Marcia. Later that same evening
Nicolai proposes to his protégé. Although she does not love him – and Nicolai
knows this – Marcia agrees to the marriage out of a sense of loyalty for all that
he has done to help establish and build up her career. Overjoyed and unable to
sleep, Marcia sneaks away for a midnight carriage ride after Nicolai has gone
to bed. The carriage breaks down in front of a tavern. While the driver begins
his repairs, Marcia is drawn inside the tavern by the superb tenor voice of
Paul Allison (Nelson Eddy) a rather devil-may-care sort who lives in a nearby
squalid one room apartment with his music teacher, August Archipenko (Herman
Bing).
August admonishes Paul for
coming home so late, but is told that tomorrow Marcia Mornay has agreed to join
them for lunch. She fulfills this promise, reminiscing with Paul and August
about her home in Virginia. Paul steals a pair of opera tickets belonging to
his friend Fanchon (Sig Rumann) to attend Mornay’s last performance in France.
However, at the opera Nicolai nervously spies Paul from beyond the footlights. Although
he suspects that Marcia and Paul’s friendship has developed deeper roots of
affection, Nicolai is unable to justify his suspicions. After the performance Paul and Nicolai bump
into each other in the hallway just outside of Marcia’s dressing room, but she
pretends that Paul came backstage merely to congratulate her.
The next afternoon Paul and
Marcia go ‘maying’ at the county fair; a golden afternoon of indulgences capped
off by a romantic rendezvous in the pastoral hills outside of town where Marcia
reluctantly admits she is about to marry Nicolai as she has promised. Paul
desperately wants Marcia for his own, but she denies him their mutual love,
marries Nicolai and departs Europe for a whirlwind tour of America. In the
meantime, the forlorn Paul focuses his ambitions on his singing career,
returning to America to establish himself as a tenor with the New York Opera
Company. Hence, when the company hires Marcia for their production of Traviata,
Nicolai demands that the play be changed to Czaritza instead.
As the performance unfolds
in front of a live audience on opening night, the characters Marcia and Paul
are playing are drawn into a passionate embrace that transcends their art. Paul
tells Marcia that he will never let her go again and Marcia agrees. She can no
longer deny the love she feels. After the performance, Marcia fakes exhaustion
to go home with Nicolai where she informs him that she has decided to run away
with Paul. Acknowledging that Paul’s memory has been between them these past
seven years of their marriage, Nicolai retires to his room, retrieves his
pistol and trudges through the snowy streets to Paul’s brownstone.
Realizing too late where
her husband has gone, Marcia runs after him. Nicolai arrives at the brownstone
first. He tells Paul he has decided to give Marcia her freedom tomorrow, but
that he is giving Paul his freedom tonight. With that cryptic message, Nicolai
murders Paul. Marcia burst into the room and rushes to her lover’s side. He
dies in her arms and the scene dissolves back into the present. A tearful Barbara
thanks Miss Morrison for her kindly advice. Kip returns and the two are
reconciled with Barbara deciding to give up her career to become Kip’s wife. Drained
of the strain of this lifelong secret, Miss Morrison quietly dies in her chair,
revived as a youthful ghost reunited with Paul, the two walking hand in glove
through a bower of cascading cherry blossoms where they are destined to spend eternity
together.
Maytime
is a marvellous
movie; full of the sort of rank sentimentalism that warmed L.B. Mayer’s heart. And
in viewing the film today one has to concur with its initial critical
reception; that Eddy and MacDonald had never been more natural together. Nelson
Eddy’s performance is remarkably relaxed. He is convincing as both the loveable
scamp we are first introduced to in the tavern, then as the more mature man who
vows to rescue Marcia from her slavish duty toward Nicolai. MacDonald effortlessly
runs the gamut of emotions and ages, from precocious flirt to world weary
matron. John Barrymore lends a diabolical credibility to Nicolai Nazaroff; a
man barely able to restrain his possessive jealousies. Herman Bing is charming
in all his frustrated buffoonery.
After purging all but one
of Romberg’s songs from the score, composer Herbert Stothart composed a twelve
minute aria inspired by Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony for Czaritza, then
proceeded to repopulate the rest of the score with songs from dead musicians
whose work had fallen into public domain. Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots became a pivotal backdrop for the scene in which
Nicolai suspects a romantic entanglement between his wife and Paul. Other arias
were borrowed from Donizetti, Verdi, Gounod and Wagner to fill in the musical
repertoire. At Napoleon’s embassy ball MacDonald trills the flirtatious Les Filles de Cadiz and the rousing Le Regiment de Sambre et Meuse. Musically,
Maytime is MacDonald’s show. The
only time Eddy gets to sing alone is at the tavern where his Paul is first
introduced to both Marcia and the audience. Otherwise, virtually all of his
songs are duets with MacDonald.
When Maytime had its premiere in March of 1937 it was all but
universally praised by the critics as a seamless fusion of the high ideals of
classical opera meets the pop culture of the movies. Audiences flocked to see
it and Maytime’s success even outranked
San
Francisco that, until Maytime’s
release had been MGM’s top money maker. Today,
Maytime still ranks among the best
movie musicals of its vintage and certainly remains the very best musical Jeanette
MacDonald and Nelson Eddy ever made together. It’s full of schmaltz, heart and
lilting songs that raise our spirits, reaffirming – at least in fantasy – that perhaps
some of the hardships in life can be rectified in the hereafter.
We could us a bit of
rectifying on Warner Home Video’s MOD DVD transfer. Maytime is a film that deserves to have its original negative (if
one still exists) rescanned and cleaned up. Personally, I’d like to recommend it
for a 1080p Blu-ray release. The film, as it currently exists, is decidedly
grainier than usual or what is even acceptable by today’s mastering standards. Grain structure is an inherent part of
photographic film. But Maytime’s
grain looks a tad digitized instead of natural.
The gray scale appears to
have had its contrast levels slightly bumped up, creating a harsher than expected
visual characteristic; overall, quite unflattering. Age related artefacts persist
and are sometimes distracting. The audio is mono but quite strident in spots, as
when MacDonald hits the high notes during Le
Regiment de Sambre et Meuse. As with other films in the Warner Archive Collection,
all we get with this offering is a theatrical trailer that – oddly enough –
looks very clean and solid. Recommended for content – not quality of transfer.
FILM RATING (out of 5 - 5 being the best)
4
VIDEO/AUDIO
3
EXTRAS
0
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