The love triangle between Louis B. Mayer, Jeanette MacDonald, and Nelson Eddy is tragic, complicated, and mired in mystery, but one particularly nasty rumor about it spread around Hollywood for years. According to the story, Mayer forced MacDonald to have an abortion when he found out she was pregnant with Eddy’s baby.
Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald were both stars for MGM back in the days of the “studio system,” which kept actors and other creative personnel bound by tight contracts. Louis B. Mayer was one of the tyrannical heads of MGM, and inadvertently pushed Eddy and MacDonald together by assigning them starring roles in many of the studio’s most popular musicals. MacDonald and Eddy never got married, but they were the loves of each other’s lives (much to the chagrin of Mayer). Allegedly, the magnate feared they would distract one another from their incredibly lucrative careers.
In 1935, after spending a blissful summer together, MacDonald found out she was pregnant with Eddy’s baby. This was an absolute disaster for Mayer—the two actors were young, unwed, and made money hand over fist for the studio. The last thing he wanted was to lose MacDonald just because of a pregnancy. So, he purportedly did what any good tyrant would do: Mayer told the actress that if she didn’t have an abortion, he would blacklist both her and Eddy, ruining the remainder of their careers.
The rumor gets even sadder at the end of the summer of 1935. MacDonald miscarried her child, but when Eddy and Mayer heard the news, both assumed she had bowed to Mayer’s threats. Eddy broke up with the actress because of it, but Mayer was giddy over the news and forced MacDonald into more and more pictures.
The studio chief worked hard to discourage the pair from ever getting back together. He constantly made threats against Eddy’s life and pushed the actor’s car off the road as a warning.
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