Eddy on Tour

A couple of policemen shooed 50 high-school girls away from the stage door. The Chicago Civic Opera House was jammed with about 300 men, 2,700 women, all of whom had bought their tickets at least a month before. They had come to hear a baritone, Nelson Eddy, who is certainly the handsomest man on the U. S. concert stage and, with radio and cinema earnings, probably the best paid (a reported $600.000 a year).

Mr. Eddy, with much flashing of strong, white teeth, much glancing of roguish eyes, sang his audience into rapture. Few cared whether his velvety, beautifully controlled voice molded a phrase with real musicianship--as it often did--or turned a cheap song into a Hollywood production --as it more often did. When the pounding of feminine palm on palm had at last subsided, Mr. Eddy slipped away through a secret exit. At his hotel he had no more than made the elevator, on the run, when two panting women in evening dress rushed in, demanded his room number.

At the Opera House, two hours later, 100 women still besieged the stage door, refusing to believe that he had made his getaway.

To the owner of the most expensive U. S. voice, last week in the middle of his annual concert tour, such incidents are workaday. Two years ago in Chicago, when 500 seats were sold on the stage, a female headed Nelson Eddy off, was just about to achieve her ambition of kissing him when she swooned. Since then, Baritone Eddy has barred seats on the stage.

Last week his Chicago manager swore that he had orders for 150 seats for the next Eddy concert--55 weeks hence. A likable fellow, happily married, he relaxes from his fans by modeling in clay.

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