Jeanette MacDonald & Nelson Eddy Collection Volume 2

These are great old movies! These two voices are the best of the best! I bought volume 1 and 2. The film quality and sound quality is very good. If you love Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy you will love owning these movies. Highly recommend!

My dad loved these! Fun and vocally beautiful if you like American operetta’s!

I bought this for my mother who is in her 90's. She remembers these movies and the fact they don't have subtitles is not an issue. The plots are relatively simple.

The DVD is clear with no stops and starts. The movies aren't for everyone. They are old but I have loved them for 50 years.

Good quality copies of relative rarities. These four films were less of a hit in their day that the four in Volume 1 of this collection and they are less well known now. Still they make enjoyable viewing and are well worth having, particularly for lovers of musical comedy and fans of this inimitable and unforgettable pair as is my case. Warmly reccomended!

I bought the video collection for my mother during a very difficult time of her live (lost my father, her husband, a month after celebrating their 70's wedding anniversary). The videos have been an uplifting light during this deeply sad time of her life. The quality of the image and the sound is impressive. I was happily surprised to find the movies ( filmed around 1936 and after) . I just ordered volume 1 of the collection. Thank you for helping me to bring an smile to my mother's face and heart.

Sweethearts☆☆Jeanette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy, Frank Morgan.This was MGM’s first Technicolor movie: not a film of Victor Herbert’s stage production, but merely his music and a few scenes borrowed to underpin MGM’s would-be extravaganza with MacDonald and Eddy in the lead roles as a married couple.MacDonald and Eddy sing as splendidly as ever, and my-oh-my, does this film need them. The plot is simple, actually simpleminded: after the sixth anniversary performance the two tired actors plan to sneak away for a quiet dinner together. Bear in mind that they would have been giving five performances and three matinees each week, for six years. Their hopes are dashed by impresario Frank Morgan who with practiced cunning persuades them to attend a quiet celebration dinner which turns out to be a big, flash affair complete with a compulsory radio broadcast and an impromptu dinner performance.The exhausted couple finally arrive home to find both sets of parents also have selfish designs upon their restricted spare time.Enter a Hollywood rascal to tempt them towards a film career.Then a mis-delivered and misunderstood note, plus some rascality from the Hollywood chappie, persuades MacDonald that Eddy is playing her false with their secretary, and everything falls apart.A six year old could have invented a more credible plot than this, which MGM and its admirers seemed to think exquisite.On we go, lumbering though pathos, bathos, and simple minded sentimentality until the required reconciliation is achieved, possibly to the joy of the credulous, certainly to the relief of my strained patience.One interesting part of this otherwise silly production is the depiction of the strain placed upon stage performers, and their need for self control, patience, and perseverance.The most ludicrous part of this mess was the idea of two full stage companies touring simultaneously, each with one lead and one stand-in actor. Imagine it if you can, two companies each with about hundred actors, with two stage managers and their crews, two orchestras, tons of scenery, hundreds of costumes, perhaps another fifty or sixty technical hands such as publicists, dressers, lighting crews, catering crews per company, and also transport and accommodation managers. The mind wobbles under the prospect of the financial loss.Yes, this one is cheap trash, worth having only for it’s record of part if the MacDonald-Eddy years together.___New Moon☆☆☆☆☆Jeanette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy.Written by Oscar Hammerstein, with music by Sigmund Romberg and Daniele Amfitheatrof, this movie is a thundering success. It was possibly inspired by Naughty Marietta, as begins towards the end of the eighteenth century with a company of virgins being transported to French Louisiana as brides for the colonists.However it takes off from there in a diverting fashion.Nelson Eddy is Charles, a revolutionary nobleman, who to save his life has had himself arrested under a false name for a petty crime so as to be transported in the hold of a ship with others, to be sold as a bonded servants in Louisiana Colony.Jeanette MacDonald is Marianne de Beaumanoir, a high-nosed young lady travelling in the same ship to Louisiana to inspect an estate she has inherited.Shortly after her arrival she finds, to her surprise, that she has a new footman, Charles, a handsome fellow with a decided sense of his own importance.Charles and his revolutionary pals are expecting a shipment of arms due shortly aboard another ship, the New Moon, with which they intend to take over the colony of Louisiana and declare it a republic.Well, as in all good stories, love and adventure take off in unexpected directions and take us with them. Treachery and betrayal. Quick changes of plan. Blossoming love. Danger at sea. Shipwreck. Humor. Our belovéd pair in the thick of it all, and all of that served up with splendid music and stirring songs.It is interesting, of the eight movies made starring MacDonald-Eddy, the two best were filmed in black and white, and the two worst in Technicolcor.Sums up MGM’s organization.___Bitter Sweet☆☆Jeanette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy.They say that Noél Coward, the author of the stage play, exploded with anger when he saw what MGM had done to his script; and he subsequently made sure no other work of his was filmed in America.You can’t really blame him. The stage play had run close to a thousand performances in Britain plus some eight hundred more on Broadway; and one would think it hardly possible to make a bad film of it.MGM managed just that. They filmed it in Technicolor, and wasted much of that technique on dull interiors. They also chopped it, disemboweled it, cut the second most popular song, costumed the female cast - including English aristocrats - like burlesque trollops, introduced a ludicrous song and dance spectacular, and tried to pass all of this off as the love story of an English girl and her lover in the capital city of the lateeighteenth century Austro-Hungarian Empire.Poor Jeanette MacDonald, in her mid thirties with a burgeoning double chin and an ineradicable American accent, cast to play a English Society girl half her age. She could sing delightfully of course, especially with Nelson Eddy, but that was not enough to repair the damage.The main song, ‘I’ll See You Again’, was sung in the original play by the middle aged Sarah wistfully recalling her lover, murdered in Vienna thirty years earlier. This song then led into the past and was reprised frequently. In the final scene, back in the thirties, she sang it again. It was her song.In this film version, the story is set completely in the 1890s and the lovers both dive headlong into the song, declaring their mutual love, and setting forth for Vienna where - surprise, surprise! - the Viennese have American accents, most of them that is, except for one or two with German accents. The normal Viennese nasal sing-song is nowhere to be heard.‘If Love Were All’ the second favorite song, a sad, dreamy, delicate number sung by Manon, was deleted. Manon is still in the film, but it is hard to imagine why. Other characters from deleted sections also wander through the movie like unemployed ghosts.‘Zigeuner’ (Gypsy) is presented as the aforementioned song and dance ensemble, costumed peculiarly enough to make a crocodile snigger, and about as far as possible from a Central European Gypsy performance as you could hope to get.MGM could have cropped the script intelligently, or better yet have set Sarah and family in upper class New York where American accents would have fitted perfectly; but no, they knew better.So do we all, now.___I Married An Angel☆Jeanette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy.Originally a saucy, amusing Hungarian stage play by János Vaszary; it was translated and transferred to the American stage, there somewhat milder but still saucy enough to attract big audiences, before falling into the hands of MGM who managed to ruin it in their by now usual fashion. MGM was going rapidly down market by then, all its original promise and glitter tarnished, and losing money.What MGM’s internal problems were is infinitely debatable, but the perceived need to avoid offending American small town morality, not to forget the actual deadening influence of the Hay’s office, were fatal influences on this movie.Filmed in black and white, Jeanette MacDonald as the dull secretary Anna, and a stolid Nelson Eddy as lecherous bank owner Count Palaffi, could not do much to liven the tediously slow paced production. A long dream sequence, exaggerated costumes, laboriously contrived mistakes and misunderstandings, plus boring songs all combine to make this a forgettable film.It is only as the eighth and last film of the MacDonald-Eddy saga that it has any value.___EnvoiAfter this last movie, Nelson Eddy, no fool, bought out his contract, escaping what had become the ruinous MGM influence on his career.So ended the short partnership of America’s - and the world’s - most loved singers.He struck out on his own, later going into professional partnership with Gale Sherwood, making radio broadcasts and stage appearances, which made him wealthy. He and Jeanette MacDonald also made many short appearances together, both directly in public and also on Lux Radio Theater.Jeanette MacDonald made a few more movies, then trained for a career in opera. To the surprise and pleasure of her teachers, she avoided any suggestion of self importance and studied as intensely as any student. Perhaps she had learned something of the opera world and its standards from Eddy. She eventually sang leading roles, winning the respect of the cynical opera community as she had won the respect of the movie world.She died of heart trouble in 1965, aged sixty, and Eddy wept for her, his loved friend and colleague of thirty-five years.He died two years later, during a stage performance.Their legend continues to this day …___(John Barrett Rose, seafarer by trade, is a playwright and novelist, and to the consternation of his neighbors, also a bathroom baritone.)

I am obsessed with the music and their romantic expressions of love that is so apparent. I am hard of hearing and wish it had sub titles.

My 94 year old mother is absolutely thrilled with her Jeanette MaacDonald & Nelson DVD

キートンファンの方にはオススメです｡カットシーン復元されてます｡英語字幕付きです｡3作品入ってお得なプライスです｡オペラ好き､MGMミュージカル好きには是非観てもらいたいです

Wife Loves it!

The package arrived with a cracked box...I negotiated and accepted 10% reduction in the price although I would prefer a good box. So far the dvd-s are o.k. However in Volume I, Rose Marie developed problems in two places after the first 3 viewing. I would like to replace that one dvd alone, but probably that will not be an option.