Movie review - "Bitter Sweet" (1940) **

 Noel Coward disliked this version of his operetta and it's not hard to see why - but also I'm sympathetic to MGM, who needed a film for MacDonald and Eddy. It removes the opening device of the old heroine telling a young couple about her life in flashback because it was used in an earlier film Maytime. But that robs the piece of its point. Also the two stars are too old.

It's overproduced, the colour seems pointless somehow, there's lots of hammy support actors - George Sanders goes full Teutonic as the nasty noble after MacDonald. She's okay, Eddy's stiff.

Some of the songs were well done, particularly the last number. But this film was annoying. They didn't even give Eddy a chance to put up a decent fight in the duel with Sanders - Sanders just skewers him (which to be fair is realistic but it de-balls him). MacDonald doesn't even seem to care. The actors were probably over each other by now.

I'd forgotten I'd seen a bunch of MacDonald-Eddy movies. They didn't linger in my memory.

Movie review - "Sweethearts" (1938) ***

Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald had by this stage made a lot of money for MGM so the studio were willing to pony up for Technicolour for this effort. It actually wasn't really worth it - I mean, it's nice, but colour would have been better in their previous movies - Naughty Marietta took place in colonial Louisiana, Rosie Maria in mountainous Canada, Maytime in wherever the hell that was set, The Girl of the Golden West in the old west. Sweethearts is a screwball comedy which mostly takes place in the world of nightclubs, backstage dressing rooms, radio studios, swish New York apartments and the like. Yes there are some elaborate numbers on stage but it's all pretty much indoors.

All the MacDonald-Eddy films to this date had varied: pure silly operetta, heightened melodrama, road movie. This one is a screwball comedy, written by Dorothy Parker and Alan Campbell, full of sparky one liners and frantic situations. It's not much of a story - vested interests try to break up a beloved stage star couple (kind of like a singing version of the Lunts) in order to prevent them running off to the movies. A secretary is used to make Jeannette jealous, and that's about it. Things are resolved very quickly.

But it's very bright and funny, with a strong support cast, including Frank Morgan, Mischa Auer and Reginald Gardiner; Eddy wasn't great at comedy but he can be a straight man and Jeannette is lively and sexy - she was very talented.

Movie review - "Maytime" (1937) *** (warning: spoilers)

Nelson Eddy and Jeannette MacDonald at their MGM peak, in an entertaining melodrama musical which takes place in never never land on the studio backlot. It starts with an aged MacDonald giving a young couple some relationship advice then flashes back to her own operatic career. She is loved by her manipulative manager (John Barrymore) and decides to marry him for the sake of fame and her career.... despite falling in love with another singer (Nelson). She and Nelson are reunited but Barrymore gets out his gun... Poor Jeanette is left to mourn him and to wait until death.

In other words it's the same plot in a way as Barry Manilow's Copacabana or even James Cameron's Titanic. It worked then and it works here, with plenty of songs. I'm really starting to like MacDonald - she had spark and flair, a sense of naughtiness as well as class; Nelson Eddy is bland lunk but he does work well with MacDonald. Plenty of production values, including an elaborate re-creating of small town America (which tended to be MGM's specialty).

Book review - "Lion of Hollywood: The Life and Legend of Louis B Mayer" by Scott Eyman (2005)

Eyman is one of the best film biographers going around and Mayer deserved reappraisal - he's been long mocked/pillored in Hollywood history because of his behaviour: attacking the writers guild and communists, sobbing and wailing to actors and talking about family values and mother worship and wholesome pictures, terrorising poor little Irving Thalberg and Dore Schary, punching out John Gilbert.

There was more to him than that. Mayer was a genius filmmaker in his way - not a writer, director or even producer, but a great manager of MGM at it's peak. He set up a small, struggling operation, merged it with others and created a colossus which led Hollywood. It was an amazing achievement, even by the mogul standards, and deserves to be acknowledged and praised.

A great "what if" of Hollywood history: what if Mayer hadn't quit MGM in a huff in 1951 over fighting with Dore Schary? Could he have kept the studio up with the times? Who knows... MGM struggled before Schary's arrival when it was just Mayer. But Mayer had management genius that eluded Schary, and his taste was in greater line with that of the American public than Schary - for instance, The Great Caruso was a Mayer pet project. And that Andy Hardy type wholesome picture continued to be very popular on TV (Father Knows Best, etc) - I think Mayer could have come up with great TV ideas.

Schary gets a fair bollocking in this book, a little unfairly, I think: Schary was no Mayer, or Thalberg, and in hindsight was the wrong person to run MGM; he should have joined them as a unit producer, where he could have concentrated on turning out film noirs and hard hitting dramas, instead of expanding into areas where he had no idea, like musicals, comedies and discovering and dealing with stars (all the things Mayer was good at in other words, and which made MGM). But he was a talented man and one of the few moguls who had a decent career after being a mogul.

Anyway Schary is only one character in this book. There's plenty of others, notably his duelling daughters Edie and Irene (who would have been a great movie producer but instead worked on the stage), his poor first wife who was dumped and basically driven ga ga, a nice enough second wife (Mayer had a mid life crisis), the enigmatic Thalberg, the feuding Nick Schenck, the movie stars who were forever traipsing into Mayer's office with their problems (Greer Garson and Jeannette MacDonald could wrap him around their little finger, he was distant from Clark Gable, liked Kate Hepburn's class, didn't know what on earth to do with Judy Garland, dealt with Van Johnson's homosexuality in a matter of fact "fixer" way).

It's all deftly handled by Eyman who combines scholarship with entertaining gossip. He probably over-quotes Esther Williams and doesn't get into the dark side of the MGM vision (eg in the Andy Hardy films, it's not just about Andy's high spirits and the judge being sensible, it's also about the mother being a blithering idiot and the daughter having her spirit crushed), but its still a great book.

Movie review - "Naughty Marietta" (1935) ***

Historically important in its own way because it was the first of the Jeanette MacDonald-Nelson Eddy teamings which earnt so much money for MGM. And while they're a team that's easy to mock there's no denying they work well together and had genuine chemistry, no doubt assisted by the fact they would occasionally sleep with each other in real life.

This has a solid, simple story which serves its purpose of going from song to song with a little romance: Jeannette runs away from France to escape a loveless marriage, pretends to be a maid and winds up in New Orleans (when it was still owned by France) where she is romanced by a rough soldier played by Nelson.

There are plenty of tunes including the undeniably catchy and much spoofed "Ah Sweet Mystery of Life", plus an excellent line up of support characters: Douglas Dumbrille (an imposing villain, as the person insisting Jeanette get married), Frank Morgan and Elsa Lanchester. Maybe I'm being over generous with the three star ratings I'm giving this films, but they achieve perfectly what they set out to do.

Movie review - "Rose Marie" (1936) ***

I didn't mind this Nelson Eddy-Jeanette MacDonald starrer, once I got used to the ridiculous of the concept. It helped this had a solid simple basic story full of conflict: opera star Jeanette heads off for the Canadian wilds in order to rescue her criminal brother and is accompanied by mountie Nelson Eddy.

Most of the running time consists of a road trip (well, mountain trip) between Eddy and MacDonald, leading to expected adventures: falling in the river, singing, squabbling, fish out of water comedy, him handing her clothes in her tent when she's had a bath and is flashing bare shoulders (an unexpectedly hot scene).

Eddy is - surprise - stiff and awkward but that suits playing a mountie and he teams well with Jeanette. (They apparently had an affair during production; if so it paid off because there's an earthiness to their chemistry.) There's a lot of warbling including the famous "Indian Love Call'.

James Stewart steals the film in a brief appearance as MacDonald's brother. His plot is resolved very abruptly - only two scenes really. But I guess what the public wanted was Jeanette and Nelson and that Canadian alpine scenery.

Movie review - "San Francisco" (1936) ***1/2

30s MGM at full throttle: San Francisco 1905; lots of extras, costumes and character actors; Clarke Gable punching lots of people out, running a saloon and saying "I don't get this love malarkey... I don't get this opera malarkey... I don't get this God malarkey"; Jeanette MacDonald being virginal yet lusting after Gable in between arias; Spencer Tracy being a priest and punching out Gable when he's not trying to cock-block him; lots of sin and God and singing of opera.

Tracey's role actually isn't very big - very much a support bit - with most of the attention on Gable and MacDonald. MacDonald's an acquired taste - I'm not that familiar with her work yet. Her singing really got on my nerves as did her I'm-a-scared-virgin routine early on which made it seem like Gable was sexually harassing her... but she's great when she's actually hot for Gable and trying to fight her attraction, panting away. I also really liked her singing that song 'San Francisco' on behalf of Gable's saloon at the end over the objections of her fiancee (Jack Holt).

The earthquake finale is very well done (as is the follow up city fire and looting). All the prayer and God at the end was a bit much with Gable praying and MacDonald getting hot for him while watching him. I laughed at how little Holt's mother is about her son's death ("oh well... God's will"). Done with conviction and passion and Gable in great form.

Radio review – Lux – “Phantom of the Opera” (1943) ***

Basil Rathbone substitutes excellently for Claude Rains as the Phantom – but unfortunately his role is downplayed in this version in favour of Susannah Foster singing numbers and shenanigans involving Nelson Eddy and his romantic rival. More opera than horror, which was a feature of the Universal feature – it’s a shame in a way, radio can be a spooky medium and one imagines the Phantom on radio could have been really scary (kind of like The Shadow). Still, it’s enjoyable.

Book review - "The Lion of Hollywood" by Scott Eyleman

One of the great "what if"s of Hollywood history - what if Louis B Mayer had not resigned in 1951, how would MGM have fared? The studio was on the slide before Dore Schary came to the studio, and Mayer lacked the ability to produce film's on an individual basis so might not have been able to adapt to the changing environment. But surely MGM would have had better years up until Mayer's death in 1957 - at the very least their record at recruiting stars would have been better. But maybe Mayer would have been dead against any change and avoided some of their co-production successes, so...

Mayer really should have died in 1946 - Hollywood at its peak, MGM at the peak of Hollywood. He lived another 11 years, the first of the moguls to die, which meant his reputation has suffered. Everyone who worked or almost worked for MGM has an LB Mayer story, mostly making fun of him or getting one over him. Eyleman adds that Mayer didn't like writers and writers write memoirs - he also copped the blame for destroying two of Hollywood's favourite martyrs: Judy Garland and Irving Thalberg. Eyleman seems to have been motivated to write this book partly by a desire to rehabilitate Mayer - something Charles Higham did in his 1992 biography. Eyleman seems to make a habit out of going over well covered topics eg John Ford - but he still manages to find something new - this is an excellent book.

I think he's a little hard on Dore Schary - Schary cops it from people but he came up with some excellent films eg Bad Day at Black Rock. He should have been an MGM producer, headed up a unit or something, not run the whole show - wrong person to handle the MGM gloss. (A big thing in Schary's favour is he was the first mogul to make a great success after he left movie making - he wrote a hit play and directed two others).

Could anyone have taken Mayer's place successfully? Lew Wasserman is the most likely - Mayer tried to entice him over to MGM in the late 1940s but Wasserman was happily ensconsed at MCA at that stage where he was pretty much top dog and he would have clashed with Mayer. Still, just as Mayer was Hollywood's leader in the 40s and 30s, so was Wasserman in the 60s and 70s - like Mayer, Wasserman knew how to schmooze politicians, took a long range view (also like Mayer his time would come, he ran out of vision and he found himself on the outer, a sad albeit rich man). Who else? Selznick's best days were behind him, ditto Wagner (though both would have been better than Schary). My own pick is Irene Selznick, Mayer's daughter - I think she would have been brilliant.

Mayer was a tyrant, but a very human one - he had rages, he'd cry, develop crushes, love movies. Capable of ruthlessness - the fact that his last few years were hard and his reputation suffered shouldn't fool everyone into thinking he was a lovable teddy bear. Much of the nostalgia for him is more nostalgia for the old ways. But he build a tremendous studio, and many stars owe their careers to him: Greer Garson, Garbo, etc. This book does him justice - I really liked it.