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Gene Raymond (August 13, 1908 - May 2, 1998) was a popular film actor of the 1930s and 1940s.

Gene Raymond was an actor of stage, film, and TV, singer, composer, writer, director, producer, decorated military pilot, and for 28 years the husband of movie star Jeanette MacDonald.

Contents 1 Stage and movie career 2 Controversy 3 References 4 External links

Gene Raymond was born Raymond Guion on August 13, 1908 in New York City. He attended the Professional Children's School while appearing in productions like "Rip Van Winkle" and "Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch". His Broadway debut, at age 17, was in "The Cradle Snatchers" which ran two years. (The cast included Mary Boland, Edna May Oliver, and a young Humphrey Bogart.)

His important films, mostly as a second lead actor, include Red Dust (1932) with Jean Harlow, Zoo in Budapest (1932) with Loretta Young, Flying Down to Rio (1933) with 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. He costarred with his wife in just one film, Smilin' Through in 1941.

Raymond was also a composer, and some of his songs were used in the series of light-hearted RKO musicals he made with Ann Sothern, or sung by his wife in concert.

His screen debut was in Personal Maid (1931). 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 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 Ann Sothern in Smartest Girl In Town (1936). His wife sang several of his more classical pieces in her concerts and recorded one entitled "Let Me Always Sing".

MacDonald and Raymond made one film together, Smilin' Through, which came out as the U.S. was on the verge of entering the World War II.

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A 2001 biography of Nelson Eddy and MacDonald, Sweethearts by Sharon Rich, claims that Raymond had affairs with men during his marriage to MacDonald. The book includes documentation of Raymond being arrested on three occasions for sex with other men: a photo of Raymond's January 1938 arrest and booking number (page 498 of the 2001 edition); a U.S. Army nurse is named and quoted concerning the second arrest; and retired Scotland Yard detective Joe Sampson confirms the third arrest, which occurred in England during World War II.

The book also claims that Louis B. Mayer engineered the 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, due to their temperaments, then he would lose his lucrative box office team. Also, Eddy wanted children and preferred MacDonald to at least semi-retire, which didn't please the studio mogul. While Mayer blessed the MacDonald-Raymond union, he had Raymond blacklisted following his 1938 arrest. After Stolen Heaven (Paramount, 1938), Raymond made no films until Cross-Country Romance (RKO, 1940) and Hitchcock's Mr. and Mrs. Smith (RKO, 1941) -- previously he averaged 4 movies a year.

• Maury Daly, "Gene Raymond: Renaissance Man" in Classic Images (November 1995)
• Scott Eyman, Lion of Hollywood (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005)

• Gene Raymond at the Internet Movie Database
• information on Raymond's military service