CLARK GABLE SUGGESTS THAT NELSON EDDY BUY GENE RAYMOND OFF - NELSON TRIES ONCE MORE FOR JEANETTE

Commentary by Missy (notice my notes!) :

When Jeanette MacDonald would not call off her wedding to Gene Raymond, a marriage that Louis B. Mayer expected of her, Nelson Eddy and the famous actor Clark Gable became drinking buddies.  The two sometimes went missing for a couple days.  Nelson's mother Isabel Eddy was called in to control him.

To think that these two stars in 1936 were in their early thirties and the studio had their mothers controlling them like they were teenagers!  (They would also call in Gene Norman's mother!)

Filming scenes in which they had to sing romantic and heartbreaking songs almost Jeanette and Nelson in.  They could not pull it off without crying and were eventually threatened with pay suspensions if they didn't stop the crying and get the scene right. The scene used in the film, 'Maytime,' is the result of many takes and many edits.

This image is from 1937 per Wikipedia

Excerpt: Page 173  On filming 'Maytime.'

The "Will You Remember? (Sweetheart) number was a nightmare to film.  Nelson, resigned at last to losing Jeanette forever, could not sing and look at her without crying.  ....

As the year 1936 drew to a close, Nelson made another attempt to get Jeanette back.  He'd never forgotten Clark Gable's brilliant idea about 'buying Gene off. So one Sunday, he impulsively called his banker, and insisted on meeting him to pick up a suitcase of cash - all the money he could get his hands on immediately. Nelson went to see Raymond and offered him $250,000 not to go through with the wedding. (That's in 1936 dollars, According to the U.S. Inflation Calculator in 2022 it would be $5,170,935.25!) To his amazement, Gene agreed. Some funds exchanged hands, with the condition that the rest would be paid after an official announcement came from the studio that the marriage was off.

(Gene returned the money saying that because of Mayer the wedding could not be called off.)

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