Nelson Eddy

The only career Nelson Eddy (1901-1967) ever considered was singing. The classically trained baritone achieved his greatest popularity through eight films with Jeanette MacDonald, with whom he formed a regular screen couple in the 1930s and 1940s. At the height of his career, he received more fan mail than any other star on the MGM payroll.


Dutch postcard by M.B. & Z., no. 1049. Photo: Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Sent by mail in 1942.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. A 1106/1, 1937-1938. Photo: Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy in Maytime (Robert Z. Leonard, 1937). Collection: Marlene Pilaete.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. A 1506/1, 1937-1938. Photo: Metro Goldwyn Mayer.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. A 2942/1, 1939-1940. Photo: Metro Goldwyn Mayer.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. A 2783/1, 1939-1940. Photo: Metro Goldwyn Mayer.

A record 58 takes before the exasperated test director gave up

Nelson Ackerman Eddy was born in 1901 in Providence, Rhode Island, USA. He was the son of Isabel (Kendrick) and William Darius Eddy. His parents were singers, and his grandparents were musicians. Nelson studied singing as a child, and in 1924, he won a competition and was allowed to perform with the Philadelphia Opera Society. The conductor of the Philadelphia Civic Opera, Alexander Smallens, began to train and promote Eddy.

In the late 1920s, Eddy performed with the Philadelphia Civic Opera Company and sang a broad repertoire of 28 operatic roles, including 'Le nozze di Figaro'. Eddy also appeared with the Savoy Company, which produced popular operettas by Gilbert & Sullivan. Eddy studied briefly with noted teacher David Bispham, a former Metropolitan Opera singer, and switched after his death to William Vilonat.

Dr. Edouard Lippe coached him and loaned him money in 1927 to study in Dresden and Paris. Dresden was considered an essential training centre for American singers at the time. Eddy turned down an offer of an engagement with a small German opera house and returned to the United States. He gave his first concert recital in 1928 in Philadelphia. When Eddy went on his first tour, he hired Theodore Paxson, who remained his accompanist for four decades.

In 1933, he did 18 encores for an audience in Los Angeles that included an assistant to MGM studio chief Louis B. Mayer. MGM signed him to a seven-year contract, which allowed him three months of concert tours per year. Mayer ordered Eddy to test for his debut in the film Broadway to Hollywood (Willard Mack, Jules White, 1933). The 33-year-old newcomer took a record 58 takes before the exasperated test director gave up.

Despite this failure, Mayer overruled the consensus about Eddy's acting talent, non-existent, and ordered him to be used for a singing sequence in the film only. The producers at MGM didn't know what to do with Eddy and only allowed him to appear for individual songs in his following films. But the audience reacted favourably to this.


British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 945b. Photo: Metro Goldwyn Mayer.


British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, no. W. 543. Photo: Metro Goldwyn Mayer.


British postcard in the Film Partners Series, London, no. P 328. Photo: Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald in New Moon (Robert Z. Leonard, W.S. Van Dyke, 1940).


Italian postcard by Zincografica, Firenze. Photo: Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald in Naughty Marietta (Robert Z. Leonard, W.S. Van Dyke, 1935), released in Italy as Terra senza donne (Land without Women), and based on the operetta 'Naughty Marietta' by Victor Herbert. The film won an Oscar in 1936.


British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. W 408. Photo: Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy in Sweethearts (W.S. Van Dyke, 1938).

One of the ten best films of 1935

After MGM acting lessons, Nelson Eddy's first real success came as the Yankee scout to Jeanette MacDonald's French princess in the Operetta Naughty Marietta (Robert Z. Leonard, W.S. Van Dyke, 1935). It was a huge box-office hit made on a small budget. The film was nominated for an Oscar, received a Photoplay Award and was voted one of the ten best films of 1935 by the New York Film Critics.

Eddy made six more films with Jeanette MacDonald, including Rose-Marie (W.S. Van Dyke, 1936), and Maytime (Robert Z. Leonard, Edmund Goulding, 1937), which grossed over 4 million US dollars at the box office. Concert appearances became increasingly lucrative for Eddy with his film fame, but he only sang occasionally on the opera stage. His last film with MacDonald was I Married an Angel (W.S. Van Dyke, 1942).

Nelson Eddy also appeared with other leading ladies over the years, such as in Rosalie (W.S. Van Dyke, 1937) with Eleanor Powell and Balalaika (Reinhold Schünzel, 1939), where he appeared alongside Ilona Massey. The Chocolate Soldier (Roy Del Ruth, 1941) was an adaptation of a Viennese operetta by Ferenc Molnár. Eddy appeared in a double role alongside Met singer Risë Stevens. Critics nearly always panned his acting. After the financial failure of I Married an Angel, Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald left MGM.

In 1943, Eddy signed a contract with Universal for two films: Phantom of the Opera and Follow the Boys. The musical Phantom of the Opera (Arthur Lubin, 1943), lavishly produced in Technicolour, was based on the well-known novel by Gaston Leroux and songs by Edward Ward. Eddy appeared in it alongside Susanna Foster and Claude Rains but was so dissatisfied with the film afterwards that he abandoned the filming of Follow the Boys, in which he would have appeared again alongside Jeanette MacDonald, and left Universal.

In his home studio, he recorded three-part harmonies (tenor, baritone, & bass) for his role as a multiple-voiced singing whale in the animated Walt Disney feature, 'The Whale Who Wanted to Sing at the Met', the concluding sequence in the animated musical anthology film Make Mine Music (Jack Kinney, Clyde Geronimi, a.o., 1946). Eddy appeared with Ilona Massey in his last film, the musical Western Northwest Outpost (Allan Dwan, 1947), produced by Republic. Nelson Eddy had a large radio following. His theme song was 'Shortnin' Bread'. In 1959, Eddy and MacDonald issued a recording of their film hits, which sold well. In 1953, he had a fairly successful nightclub routine with Gale Sherwood, which ran until he died in 1967. He suffered a fatal stroke while performing in concert. He was interred at Hollywood Memorial Cemetery, now called Hollywood Forever. Nelson Eddy and his wife, Anne Denitz, had no children. He had one child, Jon, with ex-girlfriend Maybelle Marston, born in the early 1930s, and he had a stepson, Sidney Franklin Jr.


German postcard by Ross Verlag no. A 1939/1, 1937-1938. Photo: Metro Goldwyn Mayer.


Italian postcard by Ballerini & Fratini, Firenze, no. 3761. Photo: Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy in Maytime (Robert Z. Leonard, 1937). Collection: Marlene Pilaete.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. A 1931/1, 1937-1938. Photo: Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy in The Girl of the Golden West (Robert Z. Leonard, 1938). Collection: Marlene Pilaete.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. A 2103/1, 1939-1940. Photo: Metro Goldwyn Mayer.


Belgian collector card by Kwatta, Bois-d'Haine, no. C. 182. Photo: Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Ilona Massey and Nelson Eddy in Balalaika (Reinhold Schünzel, 1939).


Belgian collector card by Kwatta Bois-d'Haine, no. C. 216. Photo: Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Nelson Eddy in New Moon (Robert Z. Leonard, W.S. Van Dyke, 1940).


Belgian collector card by Kwatta, Bois-d'Haine, no. C. 224. Photo: Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy in New Moon (Robert Z. Leonard, 1940).


Belgian collector card by Kwatta, Bois-d'Haine, no. C. 228. Photo: Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Nelson Eddy and Risë Stevens in The Chocolate Soldier (Roy Del Ruth, 1941).


Dutch postcard by M. B. & Z., no. 1063. Photo: Metro Goldwyn Mayer.


Dutch postcard. Photo: Republic / Centra. Nelson Eddy and Ilona Massey in Northwest Outpost (Allan Dwan, 1947).

Sources: Ed Stephan (IMDb), Wikipedia (Dutch, German and English) and IMDb.

Helena Makowska

Polish singer and actress Helena Makowska (1893-1964) was a beautiful diva of the Italian silent cinema in the 1910s. During the 1920s, she moved to Berlin and became a star of the German cinema. Later, Luigi Comencini directed her in La valigia dei sogni / The Suitcase of Dreams (1953) as the aged actress of the silent era who is visibly moved by seeing herself back in Il fiacre no. 13 / Cab Number 13 (1917).


Italian postcard by Ed. A. Traldi, Milano, no. 425.


Italian postcard by Ed. A. Traldi, Milano, no. 467.


Italian postcard, no. 30. Collection: Didier Hanson.


Italian postcard by Ed. A. Traldi, Milano, no. 563.


Italian postcard. Photo DM.

Beautiful and a bit stiff

Helena (also Elena) Makowska was born Helena Woynowiczówna in Krivoy Rog, Russian Empire (now Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine), in 1893. She was the daughter of Ludwik Woyniewicz, a Polish engineer who worked for a Russian-Belgian company, and his wife, Stanislawa née Sauret.

At the age of 16, she married lawyer Julian Makowski, but the marriage was a brief intermezzo. In 1912 Makowska went to Milan to take singing lessons. The following year she debuted at the Opera as Amelia in 'Il ballo in maschera' and as Elena in 'Mefistofele'.

Her film debut was in the film Romanticismo (Carlo Campogalliani, Arrigo Frusta, 1915). It was based on a famous play by Gerolamo Rovetta, which was already filmed in 1913 and refilmed in 1951. Makowska is Anna Lamberti, whose husband Count Vitaliano Lamberti (Tullio Carminati) would like to join the partisans, but is withheld by his pro-Austrian mother. His indecision has estranged him from his wife, who has an affair with a Polish refugee, Cezky, Vitaliano's secretary. When Vitaliano finally joins the free-fighting patriots, he regains his wife's confidence, but her vengeful lover denounces Vitaliano to the police, then commits suicide. Even when warned, Vitaliano stays where he is, is caught and executed.

Romanticismo came out in Italy in September 1915, just a few months after the country had joined the Allied forces against Austria-Hungary and Germany in the First World War (April 1915). It was also Makowska's first film for the Torinese company Ambrosio.

From 1917 on, she switched to other film companies and played Ophelia in Ruggero Ruggeri's Amleto / Hamlet (1917), the seductress Elena in the comedy Addio giovinezza / Good-bye Youth (Augusto Genina, 1918) with Maria Jacobini, followed by La dame en gris / The Lady in Grey (Gian Paolo Rosmino, 1919). Makowska would go on to perform in some 40 Italian films until her move to Germany in the early 1920s. The Italian press constantly praised her beauty but found her a bit stiff.


Italian postcard by IPA, no. CT. 750. Photo: Film della Società Anonima Ambrosio, Torino (Turin). Still from Romanticismo (1915). Caption: Notte d'angoscia (Night of anguish).


Italian postcard by IPA CT Duplex, no. 1713. Photo: Film Società Anonima Ambrosio Torino. V. Uff. Rev. St., Terni. Helena Makowska (in the back) and probably Vittorio Rossi-Pianelli in the Italian historical propaganda film Val d'Olivi (Eleuterio Rodolfi, 1916), based on the novel by Anton Giulio Barrili (1873). Caption: Caught!


Italian postcard by Duplex IPA CT, no. 3887, card no. 2 Photo: Film. Soc. An. Ambrosio, Torino. Umberto Mozzato and Helena Makowska in La fiaccola sotto il moggio (Eleuterio Rodolfi, 1916), based on the eponymous stage play (1905) by Gabriele D'Annunzio. Caption: Tibaldo and Angizia.


Italian postcard by IPA, no. CT. 3873. Photo: Film della Società Ambrosio, Torino. Helena Makowska as the Egyptian courtesan in La Gioconda (Eleuterio Rodolfi, 1916, released 1917), based on Gabriele D'Annunzio's play. Caption: The resurrected mummy told the monk, refugee in the desert, the story of her ancient life: She had been a voluptuous courtesan who lived in the times of the great Pharaoh.


Italian postcard by IPA CT, no. 3876. Photo: Film della Società Ambrosio, Torino. Publicity still of Helena Makowska in La Gioconda (Eleuterio Rodolfi, 1916, released 1917) with Umberto Mozzato as Lucio Settala and Helena Makowska as Gioconda Dianti. Caption: Lucio Settala is madly in love with his model, Gioconda Dianti.


Italian postcard for the film Amleto (Eleuterio Rodolfi, 1917), adapted from William Shakespeare's play 'Hamlet', and starring Ruggero Ruggeri in the title role, and Helena Makowska as Ophelia. Caption: Hamlet: Oh, I am your jester. What else can one ever do down here that is joyous?


Spanish minicard (collector card) by Chocolate Pi, Barcelona. Photo: Ambrosia. Helena Makowska in Il fiacre no. 13 / Cab Number 13 (Alberto Capozzi, Gero Zambuto, 1917), based on the novel 'Le Fiacre Nº 13' (1880) by Xavier de Montépin.


Spanish cromo (collector card) by Chocolat Imperiale, no. 3 of 6. Photo: Gladiator Film / Distr. J. Verdaguer, Barcelona. Helena Makowska and Angelo Vianello in Folgore (Ugo De Simone, 1918-1919), released in Spain as El Rayo.


Spanish collector card (cromo) by Chocolate Imperiale, card 5 of 6. Photo: Distr. J. Verdaguer, Barcelona. Maria Jacobini and Helena Makowska in Addio giovinezza!/Goodbye Youth! (Augusto Genina, 1918). The Spanish release title was Adios, juventud!

German prison camp

In the early 1920s, Helena Makowska moved to Berlin, where she remarried to actor Karl Falkenberg.

Between 1922 and 1927, Makowska played in some 15 films in Berlin and also in three in Warsaw, such as Judith / Frauen im Sumpf (1923) and Frauenmoral / Women's Morals (1923), both directed by Dutch director Theo Frenkel, Taras Bulba (Vladimir Strizevsky, Joseph N. Ermolieff, 1924) with Oscar Marion, the Stuart Webbs-detective Der Schuss im Pavillion/The Shot in the Pavillion (Max Obal, 1925), and Kochanka Szamoty / Szamota's Mistress (Leon Trystan, 1927), her last film in Poland.

After her return to Italy, rumours started to circulate that she had an affair with Crown Prince Umberto. In the early 1930s, she married for the third time, now with an Englishman, Botteril, and returned to Poland as an opera and operetta singer.

In 1939, immediately after the Germans occupied Poland, she was arrested as a British citizen and in 1940, she was deported to Berlin. After four years in a prison camp, she was liberated in the course of an exchange of prisoners.

In England she joined the theatre ensemble of the Polish army, where she performed until the end of the war.


Italian postcard, no. 231.


Italian postcard by Fotocelere, Torino, no. 127, with Romanian imprint by Editions SARPIC, Bucharest.


Italian postcard by Fotocelere, Torino, no. ?, with Romanian imprint by Editions SARPIC, Bucharest.


Italian postcard by Fotocelere, Torino, no. 35, with Romanian imprint by Editions SARPIC, Bucharest.


Italian postcard by Fotocelere, Torino, no. 128.


Italian postcard, no. 23. Collection: Didier Hanson.


Italian postcard.


Italian postcard by Ed. Fotocelere, Torino.

Diva of bygone days

During her final years, Helena Makowska lived in Italy, where she did bit parts in Fabiola (Alessandro Blasetti, 1948) starring Michèle Morgan and Henri Vidal, and Quo vadis? (Mervyn LeRoy, 1951), with Robert Taylor and Deborah Kerr.

She appeared in Luigi Comencini's melancholic La valigia dei sogni / The Suitcase of Dreams (1953) as the aged actress of the silent era who is visibly moved by the performances of Lyda Borelli in La Donna Nuda / The Naked Truth (Carmine Gallone, 1914) and of herself in Fiacre 13 / Cab Number 13 (Alberto Capozzi, Gero Zambuto, 1917), one of her most popular films.

In the film of Comencini, a modern audience of the 1950s cruelly laughs about the performances of the silent actresses, but the diva of bygone days sheds a tear over so much beauty and emotion.

Her final film appearance was in Arrivederci Firenze / Goodbye Firenze (Rate Furlan, 1958) with Maria-Pia Casilio.

Helena Makowska died in 1964 in Rome, Italy. She was 71. In 1999 director Peter Delpeut included footage of Makowska, Lyda Borelli, Pina Menichelli and other Italian silent film stars in his beautiful compilation film Diva Dolorosa (1999).


Italian postcard, no. 133. Photo: Bettini, Roma.


Italian postcard, no. 29.


Italian postcard by Unione Cinematografica Italiana. Photo: Medusa Film. Publicity still for Idillio tragico (Gaston Ravel, 1922), based on a novel by Paul Bourget. Caption: Ely rejects Oliviero, as she has now fallen in love with Pietro di Hautefeuille.


Italian postcard by Unione Cinematografica Italiana. Photo: Medusa Film. Publicity still for Idillio tragico (Gaston Ravel, 1922), based on a novel by Paul Bourget. Caption: Ely's sadness after Oliviero has abandoned her.


Italian postcard by G.B. Falci, Milano. Photo: Medusa Film / UCI. Publicity still for Rabagas (Gaston Ravel, 1922).


Italian postcard by G.B. Falci, Milano. Photo: Medusa Film / UCI. Publicity still for Rabagas (Gaston Ravel, 1922).


Italian postcard.


German postcard by Verlag Ross, Berlin, no. 489/1, 1919-1924. Photo: Alex Binder.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 758/1, 1925-1926. Photo: Alex Binder. Collection: Didier Hanson.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 758/2, 1925-1926. Photo: Alex Binder.


Clip from Diva Dolorosa (1999). Source: The Stat (YouTube).

Source: Vittorio Martinelli (Le dive del silenzio) Wikipedia (German) and IMDb.