The Best of Ruskin Bond (17 page)

M
y father was very fond of opera and operetta, but, living in India fifty or sixty years ago, he had to depend on gramophone records if he wanted to listen to his favourite arias from
La
Bohème
or
Madam
Butterfly.
He had an impressive collection of Caruso records, as well as Chaliapin, Gigli, Galli-Curci, and others. We travelled a great deal, and the square black wind-up gramophone went with us all over India. We had to pack the records very flat, otherwise they took on strange shapes in the heat and humidity. Changing needles and winding the gramophone were chores that I enjoyed as a small boy.

When, in 1929-30, sound came to the cinema, it ushered in a great musical era. Although grand opera did not prove very popular with cinema audiences, operettas and stage musicals went down very well, and favourites such as
Naughty
Marietta
(1935),
Rose
Marie
(1936),
Maytime
(1937), and
New
Moon
(1940) were soon turned into very popular screen musicals. My father took me to see some of these, in small cinemas in small cantonment towns all over northern India, and I became a great fan of the American baritone, Nelson Eddy, an opera singer who made it big in Hollywood and appeared in as many as seventeen film musicals between 1935 and 1947.

Eddy’s marching songs in particular appealed to me, and I sang them lustily in the garden, on the road, or on the rooftop. They still come booming forth when I set out for a walk in the hills around my Himalayan home: ‘Stouthearted Men’ from
New
Moon,
‘Tramp, Tramp, Tramp’ from
Naughty
Marietta,
‘Tokay’ from
Bitter
Sweet
(1940), ‘Ride, Cossack, Ride’ from
Balalaika
(1939), and ‘Soldiers of Fortune’ from
The
Girl
of
the
Golden
West
(1938). Sigmund Romberg, Victor Herbert, and Rudolf Friml were the stouthearted composers of most of these musicals.

A lesser-known but very pleasing Eddy vehicle was
Let
Freedom
Ring
(1939), a sort of patriotic Western in which Eddy fights small-town political corruption and discrimination. Forgotten now, it was quite a hit in its time, and featured some of his best songs, including, as a climax, his rousing rendering of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’ He was then at the height of his popularity—America’s highest paid singer—and had he chosen to run for President, he might well have given his opponents a run for their money.

He is probably best remembered for the eight operettas he made with Jeanette MacDonald. Together they became known as ‘America’s Singing Sweethearts.’ They made love in duets, such as ‘Indian Love Call’
(Rose
Marie),
‘Wanting You’
(New
Moon),
‘Will You Remember?’
(Maytime),
and ‘Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life’
(Naughty
Marietta).
These were romantic, sentimental films, but the lovely ringing voices of the stars more than made up for stereotyped plots and dialogue. One exception to the formula was
Sweethearts
(1938), scripted by the acerbic Dorothy Parker of
The
New
Yorker;
she brought some of her acid wit to the set sugary recipe. The usually hostile critics agreed that the film was brightly acted and splendidly sung by its stars.

Another somewhat unusual operetta was
The
Chocolate
Soldier
(1941), in which Eddy appeared opposite Metropolitan opera star Rise Stevens. His masquerading as a flamboyant Cossack was a revelation to many who had dismissed him as a wooden actor. ‘The most effective piece of acting he ever committed to film,’ writes film historian Clive Hirschman in
Hollywood
Musicals.
Eddy also revelled in singing Musorgsky’s ‘Song of the Flea’. He enjoyed singing in Russian, and his rendering of the ‘Song of the Volga Boatman’ in
Balalaika
was superb. Some of his old recordings have been reissued in
Russian
Songs
and
Arias,
published by Mac/Eddy Records in 1982.

*

I have always been drawn to Nelson Eddy, the singer and the person. For one thing, I like baritones and don’t see why it should always be the tenors who get the leading roles in opera. They are invariably the heroes, while the basses and baritones have to make do as villains or buffoons.

Eddy was one baritone who got to play the hero. Not once, but over and over again. And it wasn’t as though he couldn’t sing tenor. His marvellous range enabled him to dub for both tenor and bass in
Phantom
of
the
Opera
(1943); and in Walt Disney’s
Make
Mine
Music
(1946), he lent his voice to Willie, an opera-singing whale whose one ambition was to sing at the Met. The music for the entire sequence comprised ‘Shortnin’ Bread’ (a traditional song), and operatic excerpts from Rossini’s ‘The Barber of Seville’, Donizetti’s ‘Lucia de Lammermoor’, Leoncavallo’s ‘I Pagliacci’, Wagner’s ‘Tristan and Isolde’, Boito’s ‘Mefistofele’, and Flotow’s ‘Martha’. All the parts in these excerpts—soprano, tenor, baritone, bass and chorus—were sung by Eddy. They were the best items in an otherwise disappointing film.

As a youngster in his hometown of Providence, Rhode Island, where he was born on June 29, 1901, Eddy had taught himself opera by listening to phonograph records by Scotti, Werrenrath, and other great baritones of the day. He would sing along with the recording until he was satisfied with the results. After he left school, he tried his hand at a newspaper career, working for two large Philadelphia papers. Later he became a copywriter for an advertising agency, and did rather well until it became apparent that music was his first and most important love. He was fired for singing on the job. The great American baritone David Bispham heard from a newspaper friend about the ‘singing reporter’ and met Eddy soon afterward. Bispham was so impressed that he agreed to become Eddy’s coach, thus beginning his formal vocal training.

For a time Eddy sang with the Philadelphia Civic Opera Company. While singing in
Tannhauser,
Eddy met Edouard Lippe, veteran opera singer, who suggested that the young man go to Europe for further training. When the impoverished singer protested that he was unable to afford the trip, Lippe suggested that Eddy borrow on his future, and the young baritone managed to obtain a loan from a banker friend of the family; he went to study under William V. Vilonat, teacher of many Philadelphia students, in Dresden, Germany. After several months of study in Dresden and Paris, Eddy was about to return to the United States when he learned that he had been chosen for baritone roles with the Dresden Opera Company. ‘I don’t think Vilonat has ever forgiven me for turning down that chance,’ he said later. ‘But I wanted to see America again. I wanted to put myself in the hands of the American public, sink or swim.’

In 1924 Eddy made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera House in the role of Tonio in
Pagliacci.
He mastered some thirty-two operatic roles. ‘Nelson Eddy,’ wrote the music critic of the
Philadelphia
Record
in 1924, ‘had an electrifying effect on the audience. A young man with that indefinable gift, so seldom seen, of arresting the audience’s interest and holding it continuously, Mr Eddy was a star from the moment he appeared on stage.’

Concert tours occupied Eddy for the next few years, and by 1933 he had sung in nearly every large city in the United States. It was the concert stage that brought him to the attention of Hollywood. A distinguished assembly in Los Angeles was awaiting the start of a concert by a noted opera star. The star, however, had suddenly become critically ill, and a substitute was rushed by plane from San Diego. The substitute was Nelson Eddy, practically unknown on the West Coast at the time. When he began to sing, the audience at once accepted him. It was a brilliant success, with the baritone responding to no less than fourteen encores. The next day motion picture studios began calling him. Within a week he had signed a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), and had sung his first song on the screen—in Joan Crawford’s
Dancing
Lady
(1934). A year later, with
Naughty
Marietta,
he catapulted to stardom.

*

Recently on a BBC request programme, I was fortunate to pick up Nelson Eddy’s rendering, in Russian, of the ‘Song of the Volga Boatman’ (from the 1939 film
Balalaika),
and was captivated all over again by the singer’s full-bodied baritone. It made me wonder why so little is heard about him today, although we are constantly being reminded of the greatness of Paul Robeson or Lawrence Tibbett. Eddy was definitely in their class, and superior to singers like Howard Keel who succeeded him in MGM musicals. Perhaps his versatility worked against him. He sang in everything from opera to musical comedy, radio shows, and nightclub acts; and music critics like to be able to pigeonhole their singers in a particular category. His popularity roused the ire of rivals and critics, who seldom missed an opportunity to snipe at him. One critic complained of his singing in
Phantom
of
the
Opera,
and went on to praise the bass who was singing in the same operatic sequence; it turned out that the bass was Nelson Eddy dubbing for a non-singing actor.

Although none of his films was a flop, it was in the concert field that Nelson Eddy achieved his real fame. His screen personality was watered down, but his dynamic magnetism and masterful voice when heard live came across with full force. Besides, he hated the Hollywood game, he disliked L. B. Mayer (head of MGM studios), and he continued his film career mainly to boost his concert attendances. He firmly refused to discuss his personal life with the press, suing columnist Louella Parsons for implying that his on-screen romance with Jeanette MacDonald was continued off-screen. The ‘singing sweethearts’ of the screen were not, in fact, particularly fond of each other, but you wouldn’t have guessed it; they were such good professionals.

‘I love to sing and meet the people,’ Eddy once said, and that was exactly what he did during the twenty years that followed his last film in 1947. His radio show ran for thirteen years, and in 1953 he made the transition to nightclubs. Many remember him from this period, including Buzz Kennedy, an Australian columnist who met him when Eddy toured Australia in the mid-1960s. ‘He was one of the nicest people I’ve met,’ recalls Kennedy today. And the hypercritical reviewer of
Variety
wrote of one of Eddy’s last appearances: ‘He required less than a minute to put a jam-packed audience in his hip pocket.’

It was in front of another jam-packed audience, in Miami Beach, Florida, on March 6, 1967, that Nelson Eddy collapsed on stage, having just sung ‘Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life’. ‘Would you bear with me a minute?’ he asked his audience. ‘I can’t seem to get the words out.’ These were his last words. Minutes later he was dead.

*

Well, my childhood record collection had long since disappeared, and I wasn’t going to wait another year for the BBC to play a Nelson Eddy record. So I started making enquiries, and found, to my delight, that a number of music companies in America had reissued the old songs as well as tapes of his radio shows. The latter were fascinating, as they included songs that had never been released in his recording days. In two years of diligent collecting, I now have on tape or disk more than 200 Nelson Eddy songs, far more than I ever heard as a boy.

I open my window to look out at the Himalayas striding away into the sky, while those lovely old songs drift out over the sunwashed hillside—’While My Lady Sleeps,’ ‘Shenandoah,’ ‘The Hills of Home,’ ‘Song of the Open Road,’ ‘Neath the Southern Moon,’ ‘By the Waters of Minnetonka,’ ‘When I Have Sung My Songs to You.’

‘When I have sung my songs to you, I’ll sing no more,’ goes the old ballad.

But for one faithful listener, Nelson Eddy is still singing.

T
here are many among us who, given the opportunity to leave India, are only too happy to go. But whenever I have had the chance to go away, I have held back. Or something has held me back.

What is it that has such a hold on me, but leaves others free to go where they will, sometimes never to come back?

A few years ago I was offered a well-paid job on a magazine in Hong Kong. I thought about it for weeks, worried myself to distraction, and finally, with a great sigh of relief, turned it down.

My friends thought I was crazy. They still do. Most of them would have jumped at a comparable offer, even if it had meant spending the rest of their lives far from the palm-fringed coasts or pine-clad mountains of this land. Many friends have indeed gone away, never to return, except perhaps to get married, very quickly, before they are off again! Don’t they feel homesick, I wonder.

I am almost paranoid at the thought of going away and then being unable to come back. This almost happened to me when, as a boy, I went to England, longed to return to India, and did not have the money for the passage. For two years I worked and slaved like a miser (something I have never done since) until I had enough to bring me home.

And ‘home’ wasn’t parents and brothers and sisters. They were no longer here. Home, for me, was India.

So what is it that keeps me here? My birth? I take too closely after a Nordic grandparent to pass for a typical son of the soil. Hotel receptionists often ask me for my passport.

‘Must I carry a passport to travel in my own country?’ I ask.

‘But you don’t look like an Indian,’ they protest.

‘I’m a Red Indian,’ I say.

India is where I was born and went to school and grew to manhood. India was where my father was born and went to school and worked and died. India is where my grandfather lived and died. Surely that entitles me to a place in the Indian sun? If it doesn’t, I can revert to my mother’s family And go back to the time of Timur the Lame. How far back does one have to go in order to establish one’s Indianness?

It must be the land itself that holds me. But so many of my fellow Indians have been born (and reborn) here, and yet they think nothing of leaving the land. They will leave the mountains for the plains; the villages for the cities; their country for another country; and if other countries were a little more willing to open their doors, we would have no population problem—mass emigration would have solved it.

But it’s more than the land that holds me. For India is more than a land. India is an atmosphere. Over thousands of years, the races and religions of the world have mingled here and produced that unique, indefinable phenomenon, the Indian: so terrifying in a crowd, so beautiful in himself.

And oddly enough, I’m one too. I know that I’m as Indian as the postman or the paanwala or your favourite MP.

Race did not make me an Indian. Religion did not make me an Indian. But history did. And in the long run, it’s history that counts.