Sweethearts: The Timeless Love Affair Onscreen and Off Between Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy is biographical book by Sharon Rich. First published in hardback in 1994 by Donald I. Fine, Inc., Sweethearts was a selection of the Entertainment Book Club. It was revised and updated in 2001, with an additional chapter, new information, more photos and over 50 pages of source notes. The updated edition was published in softcover and was the #1 Best Seller at Booksurge.com (an Amazon company) for 4 weeks in 2002.
The following blurb is from the back of the book and used with the author's permission.
"Sweethearts" is the true story of one of Hollywood's greatest cover-ups: the love affair between Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy. Known as 'America's Singing Sweethearts' of the 1930s and 40s, they made eight box office hits together for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and became the most popular singing team in movie history. Rumor had it that they hated each other off-screen but the truth was that they were in love. Interference by MGM studio boss Louis B. Mayer triggered a series of tragic events that caused them to self-destruct their film careers, health and ultimately their lives. Discussed candidly in the book are Jeanette's four pregnancies by Nelson, her affair with studio boss Louis B. Mayer and her marriage to bisexual Gene Raymond. Nelson married a mentally unstable woman, Ann Franklin, who blackmailed him into marriage, threatened to disfigure Jeanette, and vowed to go to the press with the scandal if Nelson tried to divorce her. Despite all, Nelson and Jeanette had a fierce, spiritual bond and loved each other to the end. The author was a close friend of Jeanette's older sister, actress Blossom Rock, interviewed over 200 people, including celebrities, plus had access to a wealth of unpublished letters and memoirs.
Famous quotes containing the words nelson, affair, love, timeless and/or eddy:
“The victors and the vanquished then the storm it tossed and tore,
As hard they strove, those worn-out men, upon that surly shore;
Dead Nelson and his half-dead crew, his foes from near and far,
Were rolled together on the deep that night at Trafalgar!”
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)
“What a day-to-day affair life is.”
—Jules Laforgue (1860–1887)
“You who love wild passions, flee the holy austerity of my pleasures. All here breathes of God, peace and truth.”
—Jean Racine (1639–1699)
“The aim of science is to apprehend this purely intelligible world as a thing in itself, an object which is what it is independently of all thinking, and thus antithetical to the sensible world.... The world of thought is the universal, the timeless and spaceless, the absolutely necessary, whereas the world of sense is the contingent, the changing and moving appearance which somehow indicates or symbolizes it.”
—R.G. (Robin George)
“The small perplexities of small minds eddy and boil about you. Confident from the experience that has led you out of these same dangers, you attack each problem as it appears, unafraid.”
—Alice Foote MacDougall (1867–1945)