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Dreamed what I'd say when he did. And then, miracle of miracles, he invited me to a big Hallowe'en party!
"Feeling very triumphant, I boasted shamelessly about my conquest. Two days later, I discovered that my invitation had come because of Johnny's desire to make another girl jealous! I thought my heart was broken."
Here she interrupted herself to laugh, "Hearts break so easily when one is 14, don't they? But after discovering, to my surprise, that my heart actually didn't crumple to pieces and that I could go on living and laughing as before, I realized that it was hurt pride that caused tears in my eyes and kept me from facing my crowd with my chin up.
"It was then that my mother first taught me to be philosophical about disappointments.
"There was another time, in the early days of my stage career, when I was grateful for that first principle of philosophy. I lost my job suddenly because I disagreed impertinently with the producer of the show over the manner in which I should sing a certain song.
"Do you know what it means to be out of a
The girl who doesn't mind an u n e x pected shower is "aces high."
job in the middle of a season, with hundreds of professional people more experienced than you sitting hour after hour in casting offices? It's no joke, I can assure you, to pass over lightly. I realized that I had been hasty and headstrong. A bit of diplomacy might have kept me from the necessity of haunting the booking agencies. Well, I hadn't been diplomatic. I was 0111 of a job. And that was that.
"Why cry over it? I didn't. I was wiser— and determined not to make the same mistake again. It was some time before I found another engagement. The play was not good— far from it— but it led to my real opportunity, an audition with the renowned Henry Savage. Delighted, I went to the audition. Horror of horrors, I found I had brought the wrong music! The song was written a whole tone too high for my voice! Since it was too late to turn back and get the right music, I optimistically asked the accompanist to transpose it to the proper key. She agreed, but when the accompaniment started, it was as it had been written, and the result was just what I had feared —I reached for a high note, and my voice cracked! There was 'spilt milk' for you! Undaunted, I deliberately stalled for time. Finally, after a cascade of 'Mi, mi, mi's,' I announced calmly, 'It's too high for me'— and finished the song, anyway.
"With what shreds of dignity I could muster, my face flushed with embarrassment, I started to leave the scene of my [Continued on page 91]
this thwarted love of her life.
"He was the most popular boy in my high school crowd, back in Philadelphia," she reflected. "He was 16, goodlooking, well dressed and lived in the best house in the neighborhood. In short, he was the 'prize.'
"I was 14, a normal 14 years old, which is neither child nor adult. My nose was too generously sprinkled with freckles, my hair and clothes both conformed to the unbecoming modes of the time."
A strange picture to associate with Jeanette MacDonald! Unmindful of my inward reflections, she went on.
"Johnny frankly ignored me," she mused. "I spent hours hoping that he'd notice me.
Jeanette MacDonald in the garden of her California home. (Right) A scene from "Maytime," with Nelson Eddy.
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