And my first real
musical, I mean, popular musical
was at the Munich Opera in St. Louis, where I
went out to play stock immediately
after signing my contract, and
I opened there with Blossom Time and
then played and I played there for
three summers, 11
out of 12 shows a week,
a season. And
a man who played second leads to mine
was of the name of Archie Leach,
who is Cary Grant, and
he is or the Shubert's at the same time.
And
in the interim, during
the winter, we would go to Boston with a new
show.
Shubert's had a reputation of not getting
any shows on Broadway where they used to fail
in Boston.
And then I go out with the student friends and
buy some time of the country
until eventually I
was seen in a show
in Boston that was
trying out for New York.
It was called Anina and I
was costarred with Maria.
You're Rich, who was
the soprano at the Metropolitan,
and it was a promo for my music
and it was a
failure too. But we did tour for a while with
it. But I was sing and edit
by out on a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
scout and
he asked me to make a test for Naughty
Marietta, which I did, and
on the tutee because I didn't want you to know
about. I had two years to go on my contract
and they album,
they're called New York and said, sign him
for naughty Marietta.
And the Shubert's heard about it.
They slapped a litigation on Metro.
So Metro came back to me and said, you
have to settle this yourself.
And I had they wanted fifty thousand dollars
for my two years. I didn't have it.
And not Marietta was
in production at Metro at the time and the
costs were going against it.
And they kept calling and calling.
And I just couldn't raise the fifty
thousand dollars. And I thought of an old
friend of mine in St. Louis, Frank Ryan,
who was the founder of
International Shoe Company.
I went out to see him.
He said, Why did you waste the time?
Get on.
There's money in the bank as of now.
And in my
excitement, I didn't call Metro.
I got on the plane while I was on the plane.
I couldn't wait any longer and they put some
money in the road. That's how the team of
Eddy and MacDonald started.
But I went out and did
many pictures
for quite a few years.
I did about thirty two pictures
in my movie career.
And
prior to that, for
the people who were interested in classical
before I did it, Boccaccio,
I had a chance to go to Paris
to study my teacher in New York at a summer
school there, and
I came from Scranton, worked in the coal
mines. My father was a Welsh coal miner and my
grandfather was a coal
miner in Wales who also taught
violin, voice and piano on Sundays.
And I
called my father and said, I wonder if I can
give a concert in Scranton to make enough money
to go to Paris.
And he said, Well, I have two thousand
men working for me.
He was foreman of a car and they'll buy
tickets or else.
So I gave the concert,
made eleven hundred dollars, which took me to
Paris, where I
auditioned for Reynaldo Hahn,
a famous composer and conductor who was
conducting the Con Opera Company
and the Con Opera Company
played in Deauville during the summer at a
little opera house adjoining
the casino.
So I went there and I did
quite a few operas. I did my own
Romeo and Juliet.
There were these
lamb in French and
a member of the company, although I didn't get
to work with it was really pontes unheard of
at the time.
And we became neighbors
in Palm Springs and reminisced a great
deal every time we met at parties about our
experiences with the opera
company.