Gene Raymond

 Gene Raymond (August 13, 1908 – May 3, 1998)

In addition to acting, Raymond was also a composer, writer, director, producer, and decorated military pilot. His screen debut was in Personal Maid (1931). Another early appearance was in the multi-director If I Had a Million with W. C. Fields and Charles Laughton. With his blond good looks, classic profile, and youthful exuberance — plus a name change to the more pronounceable "Gene Raymond" — he scored in films like the classic Zoo in Budapest with Loretta Young, and a series of light RKO musicals, mostly with Ann Sothern. He wrote a number of songs, including the popular "Will You?" which he sang to Sothern in Smartest Girl in Town (1936). His wife, Jeanette MacDonald, sang several of his more classical pieces in her concerts and recorded one entitled "Let Me Always Sing". His most notable films, mostly as a second lead actor, include Red Dust (1932) with Jean Harlow and Clark Gable, Zoo in Budapest (1933) with Loretta Young, Ex-Lady (1933) with Bette Davis, Flying Down to Rio (1933) with Dolores del Río, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, I Am Suzanne (1934) with Lilian Harvey, Sadie McKee (1934) with Joan Crawford, Alfred Hitchcock's Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941) with Carole Lombard and Robert Montgomery, and The Locket (1946) with Laraine Day, Brian Aherne, and Robert Mitchum. MacDonald and Raymond made one film together, Smilin' Through, which came out as the U.S. was on the verge of entering World War II. Raymond married Jeanette MacDonald in 1937. They remained together until her death in 1965. MacDonald died on January 14 with her husband at her bedside. In 1974, he married Nel Bentley Hees, who died in 1995. A 2001 biography of Nelson Eddy and MacDonald, Sweethearts by Sharon Rich, states that Raymond had affairs with men during his marriage to MacDonald. The book has documentation showing that Raymond was arrested three times for having sex with other men.

This includes a photo of Raymond's arrest sheet in January 1938; a US Army nurse is named and quoted concerning his second arrest; and a retired Scotland Yard detective named Joe Sampson confirms the third arrest, which occurred in England during World War II. The book also claims that Louis B. Mayer engineered the 1937 marriage of MacDonald to Raymond—even though Mayer knew Raymond was bisexual—to prevent MacDonald from marrying Nelson Eddy. Mayer was concerned that a MacDonald-Eddy marriage would end in divorce because of their temperaments. He was worried a break-up would destroy his lucrative box office team. On May 3, 1998, at 89 years of age, Gene Raymond died of pneumonia in Los Angeles, California. He is interred with MacDonald inside the Freedom Mausoleum at Forest Lawn-Glendale.