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 Final Resting Place of Jeanette Macdonald.

Jeanette MacDonald   
18th.June 1901 - 14th.January 1965.
Located in the Freedom Mausoleum, Sanctuary of Heritage. Take an immediate right, the 
Sanctuary of Heritage is a room down on your left.
Cause of Death - Heart Attack.

Jeanette MacDonald  was a singer and actress best remembered for her musical films of the 1930s with Maurice Chevalier (Love Me Tonight, The Merry Widow) and Nelson Eddy (Naughty Marietta, Rose Marie, and Maytime). In the 1920s, the petite redhead sang and danced in Broadway musicals. In Hollywood during the 1930s and 1940s, she starred in 29 feature films, two nominated for Best Picture Oscars, and recorded extensively, earning three Gold Records. She also appeared in grand opera, concerts, radio, and television.
Jeanette Anna MacDonald was born June 18, 1903 at her family's Philadelphia home at 5123 Arch Street. She was the youngest of the three daughters of Daniel and Anna Wright MacDonald. At an early age, the fledgling prima donna graduated from tap dancing in front of the mirror to dancing lessons with Al White, and from imitating her mother's opera records to singing lessons with Wassil Leps. She eagerly performed at church and school functions, and began touring in kiddie shows.
In the first years of sound films, Jeanette MacDonald starred in sophisticated sex comedies, introducing hit songs like “Beyond the Blue Horizon” while displaying her ladylike charms in lacy lingerie and sunken marble bathtubs. But in the mid-1930s, two things happened simultaneously that threatened to put an end to her film career. First, the restrictive Motion Picture Code went into effect, banning boudoir comedies and scanty costumes. Second, the rise of Nazism in Europe began to close the lucrative overseas markets that Hollywood had always counted on for making their more urbane films profitable. Jeanette might have headed back to Broadway except for a wonderful happenstance. To keep her earning her salary while new Code-approved vehicles were prepared, MGM quickly trotted out a time-filler, an old-fashioned lace-valentine operetta called Naughty Marietta. Perhaps they hoped its title might suggest a continuation of her risqué hits, and early posters showed her hoisting her ruffled 18th-century skirts to her knees. It was to be a quickie affair. Victor Herbert’s 1910 operetta was utterly outmoded by cynical, hardboiled Depression standards. Jeanette’s leading man was an unknown young opera singer named Nelson Eddy. The director was W.S. Van Dyke, noted for fast-paced action and adventure films. This unlikely combination collided almost accidentally on a movie soundstage, and the sparks ignited a nation. Amazingly, the tumultuous critical and public reception to Naughty Marietta brought an Oscar nomination for Best Picture and launched a series of hit film musicals that would forever link Jeanette’s name to that of her costar, Nelson Eddy.
An annual poll of film exhibitors listed Jeanette as one of the ten top box-office draws of 1936, and many of her films were among the top 20 moneymakers of the years they were released. During her 39-year career, Jeanette MacDonald earned two stars in the Hollywood Walk of Fame (for films and recordings) and planted her diminutive feet in the wet cement in front of Graumans Chinese Theater.
Starting in 1931 and continuing through the 1950s, Jeanette did regular concert tours between films. Her first European tour was in 1931, and she sang to great acclaim in France and England. Throughout the next three decades, she did frequent U.S. tours between films. She sang several times at the Hollywood Bowl and Carnegie Hall.
When America joined World War II in 1942, Jeanette was one of the founders of the Army Emergency Relief and tirelessly raised funds on concert tours. She would auction off encores for donations and raised over $100,000 for them. She also did command performances at the White House for both President Truman and President Eisenhower.
Jeanette was especially careful of her health in later years because heart trouble. She worsened in 1963 and underwent an arterial transplant at Methodist Hospital in Houston, Texas. Nelson Eddy, in Australia on a nightclub tour, pleaded illness and returned to the States at word of Jeanette's surgery. After the operation she developed pleurisy and was hospitalized for two-and-a-half months. Her friends kept the news from the press until just before her release. Instead of returning home to Twin Gables, she went to a newly acquired Los Angeles apartment that would not require so much of her energies. Gene Raymond had the adjoining apartment. She was again stricken in 1964. Nelson Eddy was with her when she was admitted to UCLA Medical Center, where on Christmas Eve she was operated on for abdominal adhesions. She was able to go home for New Year’s, but in mid-January her husband Gene Raymond flew her back to Houston. It was hoped that pioneer heart surgeon Dr. Michael DeBakey, who had recently operated successfully on the Duke of Windsor, could perform the same miracle for her. She checked in on January 12, and a program of intravenous feedings was begun to build her up for possible surgery. On Thursday, January 14, she seemed to be responding to treatment. That afternoon she awoke to find her husband beside her. “My feet are cold,” she said, and he began rubbing them as a nurse prepared an intravenous feeding. “I love you,” she whispered. “I love you too,” he replied. She died a few minutes later at 4:32 PM.
Jeanette Anna MacDonald was interred on January 18, 1965 in a crypt at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. Nelson Eddy, who told Jack Parr on "The Tonight Show" that "I love her," broke down when interviewed by the press the evening of her death. He survived Jeanette by only two years.