Edward Baron Turk
Hollywood Diva: A Biography of Jeanette MacDonald
Berkeley: University of California Press. 1998
ISBN 0 520 21202 9
467pp
US $35.00 (cloth)
Uploaded 16 April 1999

Although Edward Baron Turk’s Hollywood Diva: A Biography of Jeanette MacDonald is billed equally as cultural and film history, that isn’t strictly accurate. It is primarily an homage to Jeanette MacDonald, the dancer, singer, Broadway and Hollywood star, who entertained troops during World War 11, hobnobbed with the Eisenhowers and Nixons, but who never fulfilled her life’s ambition of singing opera at the New York Metropolitan.

Jeanette MacDonald is a significant figure for film history, but that isn’t Turk’s focus and much of his book is useless from that point of view. Jeanette MacDonald is also an extremely interesting figure from the point of view of the high/low culture split in US culture. Here, Turk tantalises but students of that sort of cultural studies will probably also be disappointed.

At 467 pp, Hollywood Diva clearly is meant to be comprehensive: remove bibliography, notes, the list of abbreviations, details of principle recording sessions, a filmography, and stage credits for everything Turk could document, and the text drops to 344 pp. The notes do not interrupt the text; that is Turk documents his sources, but you have to be willing to pursue this information on your own. The one time I was really keen on locating a source, that particular reference turned out to be undocumented.

The academic analysis of Jeanette MacDonald’s significance in cultural terms appears mainly in the afterward and briefly scattered throughout the text. Turk has published a more theoretical essay “Deriding the voice of Jeanette MacDonald: notes on psychoanalysis and the American film musical”, which originally appeared in Camera obscura (nos. 25-26, Spring 1991, pp. 225-49). This book is clearly intended for a general audience and it is dangerously close to being a gushing paean, of interest primarily to other cultists.

For example, the penultimate of 60 photos is captioned “MacDonald, in her last formal portrait sitting (1959), wearing ivory and gold satin; the clips on her pearly necklace and matching earrings are made of white and canary diamonds.” Curiously, the final photo is of her husband, Gene Raymond, noting yet again his “dashing” appearance. Although he died long after MacDonald and he was a major aspect of her life once she had met him, nonetheless, one night expect her photo instead of his to close out the selection.

Turk, more seriously, undermines his credibility at various points in the text when he overidentifies with his subject. Speaking of MacDonald’s performance in Let’s Go Native (Paramount, 1930), he interestingly enough observes that it “gives us a glimpse of how MacDonald must have performed in Broadway stinkers like Angela and Boom-Boom.” Before he explains how he thinks MacDonald managed technically to bring about the appearance of surpassing such bad material, he gushes that “it’s as if she made up her mind to transcend the film’s hokey gags and uninspired music and let JEANETTE [sic] shine through.” (97). A few pages later he recounts an episode in which Fox studio manager Sol Wurtzel explained why a difficult performance of a Wagnerian aria should be cut from Oh, For a Man!  (1930); according to Turk, “Jeanette wanted to sock the philistine in the eye.” Turk lists a source for Wurtzel’s quoted dialogue, and thus possibly a source for his intimate knowledge of MacDonald’s reaction, but it seems dubious.

Turk has some intriguing observations on MacDonald’s importance for the aesthetic development of TV and there are the interesting oddities about whom MacDonald knew and had contacts with over the years. Apart from fans of the star herself, this book will probably appeal most to those interested in the history of music as it connects with the mass media entertainment industries in this century.

Turk’s biography convinces me that Jeanette MacDonald is an interesting figure in the history of film music in the twentieth century, and the interrelation of entertainment industries and society. I don’t doubt that Turk’s research has been thorough. I have fully enjoyed the MacDonald films that I have had the opportunity to see and would, after reading this book, be interested in seeing more of her work on screen. In the end, I don’t think that Turk’s biography has done this unique diva complete justice.

Harriet Margolis