Back to :- Hollywood Forever - Celebrity Graves.
The Final Resting Place of Nelson Eddy.
Nelson Eddy
29th.June 1901 -
6th.March 1967
Located north of the lake in section 8.
Cause of Death - Stroke.
Nelson Ackerman Eddy was an American singer who appeared in 19 musical films during the 1930s and 1940s, as well as in opera and on the concert stage, radio, television, and in nightclubs. Although he was a classically trained baritone, he is best remembered for the 8 films in which he costarred with soprano Jeanette MacDonald, especially for his role as the Mountie who sings "Indian Love Call" to her in Rose Marie.
Long before screaming fans mobbed Frank Sinatra, the Beatles, or the latest hip-hop stars, a tall, blond opera singer named Nelson Eddy inspired similar public frenzy in film fans of the 1930s. He had the good fortune to arrive on screen at exactly the moment when popular tastes and the restrictive Production Code were changing the ideal screen hero. International seducers and gangster anti-heroes were losing their charm. The tall, blond New Englander presented something brand new: an all-American gentleman — brave, open, trustworthy, idealistic, and with a gentle sense of humor—all the qualities that female audiences valued and that male audiences wanted to see in themselves. Hollywood was smart enough to let him play variations of himself on screen while he delivered splendid renditions of everything from opera to folk songs.
During his 40-year career, he earned three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (one each for film, recording, and radio), planted his footprints in the wet cement at
Grauman's Chinese Theater, earned three Gold Records, and was invited to sing at the third inauguration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He also introduced millions of young Americans to classical music and inspired many of them to pursue a musical career.
Nelson Ackerman Eddy was born in Providence, Rhode Island, the only child of William Darius Eddy and Isabel Kendrick Eddy. His father was a machinist and toolmaker whose work required him to move from town to town. Nelson grew up in Providence and Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and in New Bedford, Massachusetts. As a boy, he was a redhead and quickly acquired the nickname "Bricktop." As an adult, his red hair was streaked with silver, so that his hair photographed as blond.
Nelson came from a musical family. His Atlanta-born mother was a church soloist, and his grandmother, Caroline Ackerman Kendrick, was a distinguished oratorio singer. His ancestry on his mother’s side of the family was Russian Jewish, while he was pure New England English on his father’s side. His father, William Darius Eddy, occasionally moonlighted as a stagehand at the Providence Opera House, sang in the church choir, played the drums, and performed in local productions like H.M.S. Pinafore.
Eddy's parents divorced when he was fourteen. The teenager moved with his mother to Philadelphia, where her brother, Clark Kendrick, lived. Eddy's uncle got the teenager a clerical job at the Mott Iron Works, a plumbing supply company. But the restless, ambitious boy soon found work as a reporter with the Philadelphia Press, the Evening Public Ledger and the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin. He also worked briefly as a copywriter at N.W. Ayer Advertising, but was let go for constantly singing on the job.