Gordon MacRae

The guy could sing... about that there was never any question.  I think he had the finest, richest, mellowest baritone voice to ever hit the movies. (Stay home, Nelson Eddy.) Gordon MacRae practically raised me.  I never missed a single one of those sunny, nostalgia musicals he made at Warner Bros, mainly with Doris Day.  He was a singer who could act but unfortunately after musicals went out of style, especially his kind of musical, Hollywood didn't take notice of his acting abilities and they cast him aside.  I was very unhappy.  So was he.

It seems odd that his two best films, hands down, came at the end of his movie career.  But if the industry shunned him, it easily could have been because of his drinking as much as the movies bidding farewell to musicals.  He had gotten a reputation.  He once said I was one hell of a drunk.  I used to stand at the bar and try to out-drink Bogey and Errol Flynn.  Both, of course, were well-known boozers and the knowledge never hurt Bogie's career, although maybe it would have had he lived longer.  Alcoholism certainly ravaged Flynn's career and life.

Once the phone stopped ringing, his drinking escalated.  He is lucky that for years there were still several venues available to him as a singer and he would perform many times with his wife.  But those years, both professional and personal, were not without pitfalls.

It started promisingly enough in a musical family.  He was born in New Jersey in 1921 to a singer from Scotland, known as Wee Willie MacRae, and a mother who was a concert pianist.  While the father gave up trying to make it as a singer and became a toolmaker, he encouraged his son to take up singing.  Everyone thought he had a voice gifted from the angels and both his parents thought it was his ticket to fame and fortune.  His musical skills extended to playing the piano, clarinet and saxophone.  

He appeared in a number of shows in high school... musicals, comedies and dramas.  At 19 he moved to New York City and promptly won an amateur singing contest.  That led to a two-week gig at the New York World's Fair singing with both the Harry James and Les Brown bands.  He still needed a real job and hired on as a page at NBC.  While there orchestra leader Horace Heidt took notice and hired him as his boy singer, a stint that lasted two years.

He met actress Sheila Stephens at a playhouse where they were  performing and married her shortly afterwards.  They both were just 20 years old.  She would forever be known as Sheila MacRae.

He joined the Army Air Corps, working as a navigator for two years.  Returning to New York, he began appearing in small roles on Broadway and was involved in a number of radio shows over several years.  He performed many duets with popular songstress, Jo Stafford, both on the radio and on recordings.  He was appearing in a Broadway show in 1948 when he was discovered by a Warner Bros talent.  The MacRaes packed up and moved to California so he could become a movie star.  

He made five films for the studio before he really clicked with the public and three of those were in dramas.  What seems a bit askew to me is that Doris Day joined the studio the same year as MacRae  and although she did a few dramas, there was no doubt she was the studio's hot, new musical star.  Why not MacRae?  In addition to them being ideally paired, their musical backgrounds were similar, both were good-looking and touted as homespun.  The same care was definitely not as extended to MacRae as it was to Day.

That first drama is The Big Punch (1948), a B film noir with MacRae playing a boxer.  It didn't make such a big punch with the public.

With wife Sheila

After never showing the promise that was hoped for at 20th Century Fox, pretty blonde June Haver ambled over to WB for an even more lackluster career.  She and MacRae were paired in both Look for the Silver Lining (1949) and The Daughter of Rosie O'Grady (1950).  I thought both were fun because of him but MGM didn't need to worry.

O'Grady is the first of six films MacRae would make with dancer Gene Nelson.  He had joined WB at the time of making this film.  I don't think there was any particular connection to so many costarring ventures... it's not that they were a team.  I think it's simply that each was eminently suited to the turn-of-the-century nostalgia that WB was so fond of at the time.  I liked Nelson's dancing almost as much as I enjoyed MacRae's singing.  

I remember seeing MacRae first in Backfire (1950).  He captured my attention because he reminded me of a cousin.  The movie was another B noir, this time about an amnesiac accused of murder.  Nothing new but done well.

He plays the son of a sheriff who is falsely accused of murder in The Return of the Frontiersman (1950).  His love interest, Julie London, is another singer who didn't warble a note.

Gold was struck for MacRae and Nelson in their first outing with Doris Day in Tea for Two (1950).  It is a reworking of Broadway's No, No Nanette where Day must say no to everything for two days if she wants to collect an inheritance.  I paid little attention to the silly plot but loved the songs and the entire cast which includes dancers Patrice Wymore and Virginia Gibson and skilled comedians Eve Arden, Billy DeWolfe and S. Z. (Cuddles) Sakall.

MacRae, Day and Nelson joined Jimmy Cagney and Virginia Mayo for The West Point Story (1950), more silliness, to say the least, but the cast left me weak-kneed.  You haven't lived til you've seen them all perform The Military Polka.  LOL.

Day and MacRae are students (!) in On Moonlight Bay (1951) where the big noise was her father who didn't think MacRae was quite right as his son-in-law.  See the straw in that picture above?  That and a lot of corn is in this early 1900's fluff that was so popular with the public that a sequel was spawned.  A hit title song helped sell the film.

Starlift (1951) is one of those colorful, tuneful, all-star, marginally-plotted extravaganzas that every studio had to do once in a while.  They all sold tickets.  About Face (1952) is a weak military comedy where MacRae got rare top billing.

By the Light of the Silvery Moon (1953) is the Moonlight Bay sequel and it was every bit as popular as the original and had another title song to boost its prospects.  This was also the final pairing for the WB songbirds.  Their popularity together and singly was as high as an elephant's eye.  Oh, I'm getting ahead of myself.

Though it, too, is cornball, The Desert Song (1953) is one of my favorite MacRae movies, made all the brighter by lovely Kathryn Grayson and even villain Steve Cochran.  MacRae is never more handsome or sexy in a dual role as Grayson's tutor and 
El Khobar, the leader of an opposition force during a government takeover by Grayson's father, Raymond Massey.  MacRae rips it with The Riff Song but it is his sonorous voice along with Grayson's gorgeous soprano in One Alone and the romantic title tune that one remembers.  As singers, I think she was his best movie partner.

After appearing with another soprano, Jane Powell, in the ill-fated Three Sailors and a Girl (1953), MacRae stepped away from films to make records and appear on television.  His public still wanted to hear that voice as much as they could.  Nightclub work also picked up.  

It's likely true that only diehard MacRae fans or musical movie fans or bigtime movie buffs would remember him at all or the films we have listed so far.  It is the next film, and in fact the next two films, for which he is most famous.

John Raitt, who gave a first-rate performance as Curly, the lovesick cowboy, on Broadway, was passed over for the film version of Oklahoma (1955).  It was going to be a blockbuster and Rodgers & Hammerstein wanted the movie's favorite boy singer in the lead.  The worldwide fame the film brought him far outweighed the fact that it was a difficult shoot or that he had to constantly have his hair permed.  Curly?  If you missed the recent review of the film, click here.

Fame sometimes welcomes strange bedfellows and fear is sometimes one of them.  He'd never known such fame or adulation and maybe it had an adverse effect on him.  One thing that most definitely happened was his increased drinking.  And along with that... gambling.  It had become a bumpy ride.

He desperately wanted the role of carnival barker, Billy Bigelow, in Carousel (1956) and was none too happy when he heard Frank Sinatra had been signed by 20th Century Fox.  It was further upsetting because he would again costar with his Oklahoma leading lady, Shirley Jones.

With Shirley Jones in Carousel

The two had a wonderful friendship and loved working together.  Jones has said that she could hardly believe it.  He was her favorite male singer and she had listened to his radio show every morning before trotting off to school.

One day, Jones herself was asked to place a call to MacRae post haste.  Sinatra had walked off the film.  The role belonged to MacRae and he certainly made it his own.  If I Loved You became one of his signature songs as did the title tune from Oklahoma.  Unfortunately, some bad press came his way when he was busted for DUI.

Back in the day there was a songwriting team called Henderson, Brown and DeSylva.  They argued and fought and wrote a lot of snappy tunes,  The list of movie bios on songwriters is as long as your arm, so why not one more?  The Best Things in Life Are Free (1956) co-starred Dan Dailey and Ernest Borgnine (who sings!!!) and I liked it more than most people did although it was not a good film.  MacRae's rousing baritone and Sheree North's sexy dancing won me over in the Birth of the Blues number which was steamy hot.  It would be the last film he would make for 22 years.

The stars of The Best Things in Life Are Free

Like all the big singers, when the movie career fades, they go back to doing what they do best... singing.  He did manage his own live television show and he and wife Sheila banded together as never before and took their act on the road.  She sang, too, but mainly handled the comedy and the putdowns.  His records continued to make money.

By 1967, after 26 years of marriage and four children (including actresses Meredith and Heather), Sheila had had enough and divorced the singer.  His gambling and drinking were out of control.  There had been more public displays of drunkenness, passing out at home, forgetting lyrics and an occasional no-show at  various engagements.  This would occur for years and of course he would work less and less.  Later in the year he would remarry and have another child.

Somehow he found a movie role in 1978 but Zero to Sixty seemed like a stupid comedy about repossessing cars and I walked out after his first scene.  He was #12 in the cast listing.

He moved to Lincoln, Nebraska, to get treatment for his alcoholism and got sober in 1979.  He publicly came out as a recovered alcoholic and often worked with the National Counsel of Alcoholism as a spokesman, a role which energized him. 

He still worked when he could and even managed to make one last film, The Pilot (1980), and it was pretty good.  MacRae, Cliff Robertson and fellow real-life alcoholic Dana Andrews played, what else?... alcoholic pilots.  MacRae had a decent role and received some kudos but few saw the film.

In 1982 he suffered a stroke.  Doctors said he would never perform again but through sheer willpower he managed to do so occasionally.

In the mid 80's it was discovered he had cancer of the mouth and throat.  He was still treating for it when he died of pneumonia at his Lincoln home in 1986.  Gordon MacRae was 64 years old.

I loved to hear this man sing... and I still do.


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