Maytime

source: Maytime

Leave it to the greatest movie studio of them all, MGM, to deliver to the world in l937 this unsurpassed musical joy. While all the other movies were celebrating swing and tap dance and the Big Band sound, "Maytime" comes along and when it was released, it took the world by storm. Why? Because it shows how a powerful studio massed together all of its brilliant talent onto this film. Jeanette McDonald and Nelson Eddy would never surpass their performances here. Adrian's incredible costumes for McDonald are stunning. The lush photography, set designs and decor of late l9th century Paris are mind-boggling. And of course, the unforgettable music. You listen again and again to the magnfiicent scoring and vocal arrangements and never forget them. The ultimate sequence is the fabulous "Czaritza" that comes towards the end. McDonald and Eddy are backed up by a fantastic Russian choir. The pre-production on this one movie is amazing. Years in the planning, it was originally begun in l936 as a Technicolor spectacular. But after Irving Thalberg died, Louis B. Mayer chopped the budget in half and demanded "Maytime" be shot in black and white. Whatever the outcome, this movie can enchant even anti-music lovers. Now, let's hope it appears on DVD real soon.

For their third screen teaming MGM gave Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy the old Sigmund Romberg-Rida Johnson Young operetta Maytime which was originally on Broadway in 1919. They kept the libretto, but scrapped the entire score except for the famous Will You Remember duet which became one of Jeanette and Nelson's most beloved songs. In its place were some operatic arias and some public domain standards like Carry Me Back to Old Virginia and La Marsellaise. This served to make the musical part of the film tilted far more to Jeanette than Nelson. But the plot is one of the most romantic. The film opens with a heavily made up Jeanette living as an old maid in some small town. Both the neighbor's daughter and her sweetheart confide in her. The daughter has been given a chance to study music, but that would mean uprooting herself and going abroad. The boyfriend is in love and wants to marry her. Jeanette sighs and tells the daughter about her life that at one time she was a famous opera singer who's been living in obscurity by choice because she chose a career over true love. Of course we all know who her true love is. But she marries her manager John Barrymore and in the end Jeanette has cause to regret. The movie's message about marrying for love is an odd one indeed to come out of Hollywood. That's one place where a whole lot of people including the two stars of this film sacrificed a lot of personal happiness for careers. Actually in another film a year later, Jeanette and Nelson were a happily married singing team in Sweethearts. I guess the idea is you should marry for love, but if you're a singer hope your spouse can carry a tune. Will You Remember got a second go around in the Sigmund Romberg biographical film Deep In My Heart with Vic Damone and Jane Powell doing the honors. But it's not half as good as when Nelson and Jeanette sing it. John Barrymore turns in a fine performance as the rather tightly wrapped manager of MacDonald. For a man who was brought up in the bravura tradition of Victorian stage acting, Barrymore was capable of great subtlety in his screen roles. Watch his facial expressions, they tell you far more than any dialog will. Of course he out acts the two leads. The other supporting performance of note is Herman Bing as Nelson Eddy's sidekick/music teacher. Maybe if Jeanette had studied with him things would have turned out better. When the flashback sequence opens Jeanette and Barrymore are going to a palace ball where she sings for Emperor Louis Napoleon, Les Filles Des Cadiz. That sequence was later seen in Jeanette's later starring film Cairo where she plays a movie star stranded in Cairo. It was a most requested item in later concert performances. For romantics at heart and of all ages Maytime is a must see film for you.

"Maytime" is, I believe, the most popular film of that very popular singing team of Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald. The story, based on the Romberg operetta, tells the story in flashback of a beautiful young opera singer (MacDonald), under the wing of her teacher (John Barrymore) who in spite of herself falls in love with a baritone (Eddy) though she's promised to marry her teacher. She chooses loyalty and career over true love, with tragic results. This isn't the most feminist film you'll ever see, as the elderly Miss Morrison (MacDonald) tells her story to a young woman who wants to throw her boyfriend over and pursue her career in New York. Nevertheless, it's the setting for a touching tale and gorgeous music sung by MacDonald and Eddy. MacDonald was beautiful and a fine actress, and she had parts of her voice, particularly the middle range, that were absolutely beautiful. Her high notes and singing technique - well, not so great. Some of it was the way female singers were taught to sing "white" high notes - backing off of them and straightening the tone, and part of it was the unsophisticated recording devices. The difference in placement between her voice and Eddy's, who sang a frontal placement all the way up, is remarkable. The montages show the great female star singing Trovatore and Wagner - not with that lyric coloratura voice, she wasn't. Eddy sings magnificently throughout, though he was never the presence that MacDonald was. Have some tissues ready. It's a lovely story, and the acting is very good. MacDonald is very touching and Barrymore is appropriately villainous and also underplayed, for those who think he was a big ham. It's one of those films you'll always remember, especially the ending, and that's what the film is about - remembrance.

It's fascinating to read in all the well justified praise (and occasional cavil) lavished on the glorious hodge-podge that is MAYTIME, not one word of the great feature film debut at MGM which the film also represented. Since MAYTIME - first filmed in 1923 in a version more faithful to the original but as a "silent" film, lacking ALL of the original music - was contractually obligated to ONLY credit music to the great Sigmund Romberg (whose original show it had been when it opened on Broadway on August 16, 1917, to play for a then astounding 492 performances with songs the studio did not want to use like "Jump, Jim Crow"), the studio called in their youngest contracted composer/lyricists (then only 21 and earning a mere - but lordly during the Depression - $200 a week), Bob Wright and George (Chet) Forrest, who would be willing to do virtually the entire score (not allowed to actually compose, but adapting public domain material under chief studio composer - and early Oscar Hammerstein collaborator - Herbert Stothart's supervision). Wright and Forrest were relegated to billing only for "Special Lyrics by..." (and not even acknowledged for THAT by the IMDb, although the credits are there on the screen!). The film's "Best Score" Oscar nomination didn't even go to Romberg or supervising composer Stothart, but to Nat W. Finston, the head of the studio's Music Division! It was years before "The Boys" would break into the public consciousness with stage adaptations of their own like SONG OF NORWAY and KISMET, and their own (always their first choice) original music for shows like KEAN and GRAND HOTEL, but the result on MAYTIME (including their faux Russian opera for the film, drawn from Tschaikowsky's 5th Symphony, translated from their original English into French by another poet not credited by IBDB - in a talk at the New York Sheet Music Society in 1989, Bob Wright said it was U.S. Sigey, but the screen credits say Gilles Guilbert) was a triumph of craft and carefully catering to the strengths of the stars who they were writing for. Witness in particular a couple numbers ("Song of The Carriage" and a number where Eddy proposes to prepare a ham and egg breakfast for MacDonald) crafted for the limited acting range of Nelson Eddy, giving him something to DO while he sang! LOTS of great Broadway names worked under almost forgotten under-billed capacities (Larry Hart of Rodgers & Hart fame did lyrics for the Maurice Chevalier MERRY WIDOW!), but Wright & Forrest were among the most prolific and best, and MAYTIME was their first major film "credit." It's only a pity (given the high quality of their few surviving original scores) that in the ways of Hollywood, MAYTIME also "typecast" them into adapting other composers' works for the bulk of their careers.

the best romantic team in movies. wonderful music, wonderful Nelson and Jeanette The las scenes are truly unforgettable . Perhaps one of the great muscicals of movie history fernando alonso barahona

The best of the Nelson Eddy/Jeanette MacDonald musicals, and to my mind the best musical film ever. The pair were at their peak - they were still young, looked beautiful, and their singing was superb. The story was strong, and they were backed by a fine supporting cast, led by John Barrymore as the possessive and jealous Nazaroff. It's the standard engaged girl meets boy she loves more but feels obligated to keep her promise to marry her teacher/manager, loses boy, finds boy - well, it's a weepy. It's also amusing, and has lots of wonderful singing, including a montage of opera sequences for Jeanette MacDonald and a superb shadow opera, Czaritza, adapted from Tschaikovsky's 5th Symphony. Even my husband, who can't stand Eddy and MacDonald, sits and watches this one. I must have seen it about fifty times, but I never, ever tire of it.

This has to be the biggest heap of excitingly melodramatic froth ever to be whipped up in black-and-white. It has everything -- flashbacks, unrequited love, grand opera, bittersweet moments, high comedy, dramatic tragedy, foolish young people learning from their elders' hard-earned wisdom, and a title sequence spelled out in flower petals on a moving stream. It's a great watch, even if you normally stay as far from movie musicals as you can get. A sentimental friend of mine once said, blowing her nose, "I thought that if I saw this over and over I'd get used to it and be able to handle it better, but now I just start crying as soon as I see the tree in the opening credits." Pass the hankies. And the popcorn.

This film should never be remade under any circumstance. You do not mess around with genius. Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald at their very best. When it hits the tube, I get the tissue, lay back in my recliner and watch. And on every occasion, I see something that I had missed before. There is so much love there.

Springtime in Paris. A beautiful young opera singer, trained under the jealous eye of a maestro much older than she, meets a handsome, lively voice student. Their spontaneous romance, sweetly brief & ultimately tragic, will be remembered with much tenderness every MAYTIME. This was Jeanette Mac Donald & Nelson Eddy's third film together and it is one of the most beautifully sentimental movies of the 1930's. Enormous care was taken by MGM, right from the opening titles, to make this film special. The sets & costumes are splendid - notice the detail lavished on the two May Day scenes. The music, which carries the passions of the plot along, is never boring. MacDonald & Eddy once again make an exciting couple and they are in very fine voice, indeed. John Barrymore effectively underplays his role, adding quiet despair to the maestro's descent into madness. Rafaela Ottiano, as Jeanette's maid, & Herman Bing, as Nelson's tutor, lend good support. Look for Billy Gilbert & Harry Davenport in small uncredited roles. The final opera sequence is based on themes from Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony and was written especially for this film. This is a movie you'll remember every Springtime...Love Time...May.