Singing Eddy developed his talent as a boy soprano in church choirs. Throughout his teens, Eddy studied voice and imitated the recordings of baritones such as
Titta Ruffo,
Antonio Scotti,
Pasquale Amato,
Giuseppe Campanari, and
Reinald Werrenrath. He gave recitals for women's groups and appeared in society theatricals, usually for little or no pay. Eddy had a job in an iron works factory and then spent ten years as a newspaper reporter. He was fired for paying more attention to music than to journalism. His first professional break came in 1922, when the press singled him out after an appearance in a society theatrical,
The Marriage Tax, although his name had been omitted from the program. including Amonasro in
Aida, Marcello in
La bohème, Papageno in
The Magic Flute, Almaviva in
The Marriage of Figaro, both Tonio and Silvio in
Pagliacci, and Wolfram in
Tannhäuser. Thirty-one years later, he was asked for advice by a new Strephon with the company. Eddy wrote: Eddy studied briefly with the noted teacher
David Bispham, a former
Metropolitan Opera singer, but when Bispham died suddenly, Eddy became a student of William Vilonat. In 1927, Eddy borrowed some money and followed his teacher to
Dresden for further study in Europe, which was then considered essential for serious American singers. He was offered a job with a small German opera company. Instead, he decided to return to America where he concentrated on his concert career, making only occasional opera appearances during the next seven years. In 1928, his first concert accompanist was a young pianist named Theodore (Ted) Paxson, who became a close friend and remained his accompanist until Eddy's death 39 years later. In the early 1930s, Eddy's principal teacher was
Edouard Lippé, who followed him to Hollywood and appeared in a small role in Eddy's 1935 film
Naughty Marietta. In his later years, Eddy changed teachers frequently, constantly learning new vocal techniques. He also had a home
recording studio where he studied his own performances. It was his fascination with technology that inspired him to record three-part harmonies (
tenor, baritone, and bass) for his role as a multiple-voiced singing whale in the animated
Walt Disney segment, "The Whale Who Wanted to Sing at the Met", the concluding sequence in the 1946
package film Make Mine Music. With the Philadelphia Civic Opera, Eddy sang in the first American performance of
Feuersnot by
Richard Strauss (December 1, 1927) and in the first American performance of Strauss's
Ariadne auf Naxos (November 1, 1928) with
Helen Jepson. In
Ariadne, Eddy sang the roles of the Wigmaker and Harlequin in the original German. He performed under
Leopold Stokowski as the
Drum Major in the second American performance of
Alban Berg's
Wozzeck on November 24, 1931. • "The screen has found a thrilling thrush, possessed not only of a rare vocal tone, but of a personality and form and features cast in the heroic mold." –
New York American. • "Eddy ... has a brilliant baritone voice. He is engaging and good looking..." –
Richard Watts, Jr., in the
New York Herald. •
The Girl of the Golden West (1938) had an original score by Sigmund Romberg and reused the
David Belasco stage plot also employed by
Giacomo Puccini for
La Fanciulla del West. '' (1940) •
Sweethearts (1938) was MGM's first three-strip
Technicolor feature, incorporating
Victor Herbert's 1913 stage score into a modern script by
Dorothy Parker. It won the Photoplay Gold Medal Award as Best Picture of the Year. •
New Moon (1940) based on Romberg's 1927 Broadway hit, became one of Eddy's most popular films, although in 1978 it was included in the book
The Fifty Worst Films of All Time. His key songs were "
Lover, Come Back to Me", "Softly as in a Morning Sunrise", "Wanting You", and "Stout Hearted Men". •
Bitter Sweet (1940) was a Technicolor film version of
Noël Coward's 1929
operetta. The love theme was "
I'll See You Again". Eddy played a
Viennese singing teacher who elopes with his pretty
English pupil and takes her to live in
Vienna. •
I Married an Angel (1942), adapted from the
Rodgers and Hart stage musical about an angel who loses her wings on her wedding night, suffered from censorship problems. Eddy sang "
Spring Is Here" and the title song. Nelson Eddy also starred in films with other
leading ladies: •
Rosalie (1937), with
Eleanor Powell, offered a score by
Cole Porter. In his first solo-starring film, the script called for Eddy to portray a football-playing
West Point pilot who pursues a princess-in-disguise to Europe. Eddy recorded the title song. •
Let Freedom Ring (1939), with
Virginia Bruce, was a
Western. Eddy got to beat up rugged Oscar winner
Victor McLaglen and preserve
freedom and the
American way from bad guys, a popular theme just before World War II. •
Balalaika (1939), with
Ilona Massey, was based on the 1936 English operetta by
George Posford and
Bernard Grün. Eddy is a prince in disguise, in love with a commoner during the
Russian Revolution. The title song became one of his standards. •
The Chocolate Soldier (1941), with
Metropolitan Opera star
Risë Stevens, was a stylish musical adaptation of
Ferenc Molnár's
The Guardsman. Eddy played a dual role and turned in one of his best performances. •
Phantom of the Opera (1943) was Eddy's first film after he left MGM at the end of his seven-year contract. This lavish Technicolor musical also starred
Claude Rains as the Phantom and
Susanna Foster as Christine. •
Knickerbocker Holiday (1944) was based on the popular stage musical by
Kurt Weill and
Maxwell Anderson. It co-starred
Charles Coburn (singing the classic "
September Song") and
Constance Dowling. •
Make Mine Music (1946) was a
Walt Disney animated package film. Eddy provided all the singing and speaking voices for the touching final segment, "The Whale Who Wanted to Sing at the
Met," later released as a
short,
Willie, the Operatic Whale, by
Disney in 1954. Using a technique based on his technical experiments with his home recording equipment, Eddy was able to sing sextets with himself on the soundtrack, providing all the voices from bass to soprano. •
Northwest Outpost (1947) co-starred Ilona Massey.
Rudolf Friml provided the songs for a story of
Fort Ross, a Russian settlement in the
Wild West of California. It was made at
Republic Studios and turned out to be Eddy's final film. After Eddy and MacDonald left MGM in 1942, several unrealized films remained that would have reunited the team. Eddy signed with
Universal in 1943 for a two-picture deal. The first was
Phantom of the Opera and the second would have co-starred MacDonald. She filmed her two scenes for
Follow the Boys, then both stars severed ties with Universal. Eddy was upset with how
Phantom of the Opera turned out. Among their later other proposed projects were
East Wind;
Crescent Carnival, a book
optioned by MacDonald; and
The Rosary, the 1910 best-seller, which Eddy had read as a teen and
pitched to MGM as a "comeback" film for MacDonald and himself in 1948. Under the name "Isaac Ackerman" he wrote a
biopic screenplay about
Chaliapin, in which he was to play the lead and also a young Nelson Eddy, but it was never produced. He also wrote two
movie treatments for MacDonald and himself,
Timothy Waits for Love and ''All Stars Don't Spangle''.
Recordings Eddy made more than 290 recordings between 1935 and 1964, singing songs from his films, plus opera, folk songs, popular songs, Gilbert and Sullivan, and traditional arias from his concert repertoire. Since both MacDonald and he were under contract to
RCA Victor between 1935 and 1938, this made it possible to include several popular duets from their films. In 1938, he signed with the Columbia Masterworks division of
Columbia Records, which ended MacDonald-Eddy duets until
Favorites in Stereo, a special LP album the two made together in 1959. He also recorded duets with his other screen partner, Risë Stevens (
The Chocolate Soldier), and for albums with, among others,
Nadine Conner,
Doretta Morrow,
Eleanor Steber, and
Jo Stafford. Eddy's recordings drew rave reviews during the 1930s and 1940s, and he continued to get good reviews into the 1960s. The
Los Angeles Herald-Examiner on October 4, 1964, noted: "Nelson Eddy continues to roll along, physically and vocally indestructible. Proof is his newest recording on the
Everest label, "Of Girls I Sing". At the age of 63 and after 42 years of professional singing, Eddy demonstrates not much change has occurred in his romantic and robust baritone, which made him America's most popular singer in the early '30s".
Radio and television Eddy had his own show on
CBS (1942–1943) and starred on
The Electric Hour (1944-1946). His version of the song "Rose Marie" was used as the subject of an episode of the Scottish comedy sitcom
Still Game (S4E2), in which the song was requested by a dying patient. He began his more than 600 radio appearances in the mid-1920s. The first may have been on December 26, 1924, at station WOO in Philadelphia. Besides his many guest appearances, he hosted
The Voice of Firestone (1936),
The Chase and Sanborn Hour (1937–1939), and
Kraft Music Hall (1947–1948), among other programs. Eddy frequently used his radio shows to advance the careers of promising young singers. While his programs often featured "serious" music, they were never straitlaced. It was in a series of comedy routines with
Edgar Bergen and
Charlie McCarthy on the
Chase and Sanborn Hour that Eddy's name became associated with the song "
Carry Me Back to Old Virginny", which was also included in the film
Maytime. On March 31, 1933, he performed the role of
Gurnemanz in a broadcast of
Richard Wagner's opera
Parsifal with
Rose Bampton, conducted by
Leopold Stokowski. During the 1940s, he was a frequent guest on
Lux Radio Theater with
Cecil B. DeMille, performing radio versions of Eddy's popular films. In 1951, Eddy guest-starred on several episodes of
The Alan Young Show on
CBS-TV. In 1952, he recorded a pilot for a
sitcom, ''Nelson Eddy's Backyard'', with
Jan Clayton, but it failed to find a network slot. On November 12, 1952, he surprised his former co-star Jeanette MacDonald when she was the subject of
Ralph Edwards'
This Is Your Life. On November 30, 1952, Eddy was
Ed Sullivan's guest on
Toast of the Town.
Nightclub act The advent of television made inroads in the once-lucrative concert circuits, and in the early 1950s, Eddy considered future career options, eventually deciding to form a nightclub act. It premiered in January 1953, with singer Gale Sherwood, his partner, and Ted Paxson, his accompanist.
Variety wrote, "Nelson Eddy, vet of films, concerts, and stage, required less than one minute to put a jam-packed audience in his hip pocket in one of the most explosive openings in this city's nightery history.... Before Eddy had even started to sing, they liked him personally as a warm human being". The act continued for the next 15 years and made four tours of
Australia. ==Personal life==