Silver Screen (Jun-Oct 1940)

60 Silver Screen for June 1940 On Tour with a Prima Donna [Continued from page 23] number three slipper. She's so delightfully human about it (show me someone who doesn't get mad occasionally and I will show you a moron) that I think we might as well let her have her little kicks without accusing her of being a temperamental prima donna. A goodly portion of the population of Dallas was waiting at the station, even at that ungodly hour, and there was quite a ripple of excitement when Jeanette stepped off the train, slim, beautiful, svelte, every inch the movie queen, except for a small scuff on the toe of her slipper. With her sparkling smile she immediately won over the gaping fans who, polite and worshipful, crowded around her with their autograph books. And not a one of those books did Jeanette miss. Even when a chilling blast from the Texas plains whipped her skirts about her, with dire threats of pneumonia, or at least a cold, the scourge of the prima donna. Even when an official busybody swooped down on her and suggested that she sneak out the back way where 'she had a car waiting and avoid "all this bother," meaning the eager fans. "They aren't any bother," Jeanette hastily assured her. "If they want to see me badly enough to get up this early I certainly have no intention of running out on them." No matter how large the crowds at the station, and in El Paso and Shreveport there were more than fifteen hundred, Jeanette never has dodged them. Mingling with the people holds no more terror for her than it does for Queen Elizabeth, and many a Hollywood star, screaming about claustrophobia, though I won't name names, could well afford to take lessons in friendliness from her. I must say I was awfully proud of Jeanette. Confucius say fan writer — Oh, well. After anything but a birdlike breakfast (oatmeal, my dear, and with cream and sugar) Jeanette received the Dallas press, and college kids who were studying journalism, in a reception room at the Stoneleigh Hotel. She does this in every town she visits. Now I have attended these horrible press conferences in my day and always found them cold, constrained, and awkward, with the Great One looking bored as hell. But immediately Jeanette stepped smartly into the room with her personal abundance of what it takes to put people at their ease I knew that this press interview would be different. She had the glamour all right, but it was quite painless. The two most frequent questions asked Jeanette by the reporters in various cities are, "What is your favorite picture?" and "Why haven't you made a picture with your husband, Gene Raymond?" Her answer to the first is "Maytime" and to the second she says, "My studio has an idea that the public does not want to see husband and wife in the leading roles of a picture." She adds that she does not agree with the studio. I jotted down a few of the questions asked her that day at the Stoneleigh: "What is the color of your hair, Miss MacDonald? In some Technicolor films it's dark brown, in some it's yellow?" Jeanette answered, "Carrot topped." "Is it difficult to maintain a normal home life in Hollywood?" Jeanette replied, "I try to remember what home was like before Hollywood, and try to keep mine that way. I do all the ordering for the house before I start for the studio. I tell the cook what we want for dinner. But Hollywood makes many demands." "Does movie gossip worry you, Miss MacDonald?" To which Jeanette replied that it did not worry her, but it did annoy her. She would like to shoot a few people for movie gossip, but she wasn't the shooting kind. "What is your advice, Miss MacDonald, to the aspiring vocalist?" Jeanette answered, "Given a voice, the boy or girl who wants to become a successful singer must study endlessly, practice endlessly, and have a determination to succeed that is not beyond sacrificing every other thought and interest." "What is your favorite color, Miss MacDonald?" Jeanette, chic in black, said "Green." She tactfully refused to name her favorite leading man. But there was no doubt that Gene Raymond was her favorite actor. Well, that gives you an idea. . . . That afternoon we took a taxi over to the Fair Park Auditorium (which seats 4100 people) and I wondered how anyone would have the nerve to sing in a big hall like that! And wouldn't it be awful, I thought, if people didn't come! But that's one thing that neither Jeanette nor her friends ever have to worry about. Wherever she sings, the house is always sold out. Jeanette ran through a few of her songs (/ can take the Jewel Song from Faust now without a murderous glint in my eye) with her accompanist, Giuseppe Bamboschek, former musical secretary and conductor at the Metropolitan Opera. Dinner was to be served in the MacDonald suite that evening at seven, and I who had been out cocktail partying, wouldn't you know, was twenty minutes late. I didn't know that an early dinner was of the Utmost Importance to Jeanette. But I wasn't the least upset that I had kept Mr. Raymond's bride waiting, so Jeanette decided to take it out on the chops. (Now you can't possibly kick a chop.) "I think they are fried," she said poking around, "and I just can't eat anything fried." "Jeanette," I said in that tone I use on celebrities and small children, and which will indubitably be the death of me, "we are in the South. People in the South are very sensitive about their Southern Cooking, Southern Hospitality, and 'Gone With the Wind.' I know because I am a Southerner myself. We don't want you putting on any Yankee airs around here. Eat your chop." I mention this because it had a kickback the next morning. Jeanette likes to go for a long walk in the morning of her concert, so I made inquiries and learned that the nicest place to walk in Dallas (really a beautiful city) is from the Lee Memorial, along Turtle Creek Road, to the Dallas Country Club. We got in a taxi at the hotel and I informed the driver, "Drive us to the Lincoln Memo Lucille Ball and Director Ray McCarey beat out a bit of a Conga between scenes or "You Can't Fool Your Wife," in which Jimmy Ellison also appears.