Every
Disney Hero Has a Voice(s)
The
Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad
Ichabod
~ Bing Crosby
Mr. Toad
~ Eric Blore
Ichabod
~ Bing Crosby:
Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby (May 3, 1903
– October 14, 1977) was an American singer and actor. Crosby's trademark bass-baritone
voice made him one of the best-selling recording artists of the 20th century,
with over half a billion records in circulation.
A multimedia star, from 1934 to 1954 Bing Crosby was a
leader in record sales, radio ratings and motion picture grosses. His early
career coincided with technical recording innovations; this allowed him to
develop a laid-back, intimate singing style that influenced many of the popular
male singers who followed him, including Perry Como, Frank Sinatra, and Dean
Martin. Yank magazine recognized Crosby as the person who had done the most for
American G.I. morale during World War II and, during his peak years, around
1948, polls declared him the "most admired man alive," ahead of Jackie
Robinson and Pope Pius XII. Also in 1948, the Music Digest estimated
that Crosby recordings filled more than half of the 80,000 weekly hours
allocated to recorded radio music.
Crosby exerted an important influence on the development
of the postwar recording industry. He worked for NBC at the time and wanted to
record his shows; however, most broadcast networks did not allow recording.
This was mainly because of the quality of recording at the time. While in
Europe performing during the war, Crosby had witnessed tape recording, on which
The Crosby Research Foundation would come to have many patents. The company
also developed equipment and recording techniques such as the Laugh Track which
are still in use today. In 1947, he invested $50,000 in the Ampex company,
which built North America's first commercial reel-to-reel tape recorder. He
left NBC to work for ABC because NBC was not interested in recording at the
time. This proved beneficial because ABC accepted him and his new ideas. Crosby
then became the first performer to pre-record his radio shows and master his
commercial recordings onto magnetic tape. He gave one of the first Ampex Model
200 recorders to his friend, musician Les Paul, which led directly to Paul's
invention of multitrack recording. Along with Frank Sinatra, Crosby was one of
the principal backers behind the famous United Western Recorders recording
studio complex in Los Angeles.
During the "Golden Age of Radio," performers
often had to recreate their live shows a second time for the west coast time
zone. Through the medium of recording, Crosby constructed his radio programs
with the same directorial tools and craftsmanship (editing, retaking,
rehearsal, time shifting) being used in motion picture production. This became
the industry standard.
Crosby won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his role
as Father Chuck O'Malley in the 1944 motion picture Going My Way, and was
nominated for his reprise of the role in The Bells of St. Mary’s the next year,
becoming the first of four actors to be nominated twice for playing the same
character. In 1963, Crosby received the first Grammy Global Achievement Award.
Crosby is one of the 22 people to have three stars on the Hollywood Walk of
Fame.
Early life
Crosby was born in Tacoma, Washington, on May 3, 1903, in
a house his father built at 1112 North J Street. In 1906, Crosby's family moved
to Spokane, Washington. In 1913, Crosby's father built a house at 508 E. Sharp
Ave. The house now sits on the campus of Bing's alma mater Gonzaga University
and formerly housed the Alumni Association.
He was the fourth of seven children: brothers Larry
(1895–1975), Everett (1896–1966), Ted (1900–1973), and Bob (1913–1993); and two
sisters, Catherine (1904–1974) and Mary Rose (1906–1990). His parents were
Harry Lincoln Crosby (1870–1950), a bookkeeper, and Catherine Helen (known as
Kate) (née Harrigan; 1873–1964). Crosby's mother was a second generation
Irish-American. His father was of English descent; some of his ancestors had
emigrated to what would become the U.S. in the 17th century, and included
Patience Brewster, the daughter of the Pilgrim leader and Mayflower passenger William
Brewster (c. 1567 – April 10, 1644).
In 1910, six-year-old Harry Crosby was forever renamed.
The Sunday edition of the Spokesman-Review published a feature called "The
Bingville Bugle". Written by humorist Newton Newkirk, The Bingville
Bugle was a parody of a hillbilly newsletter filled with gossipy tidbits, minstrel
quips, creative spelling, and mock ads. A neighbor, 15-year-old Valentine
Hobart, shared Crosby's enthusiasm for "The Bugle" and noting
Crosby's laugh, took a liking to him and called him "Bingo from
Bingville". Eventually the last vowel was dropped and the nickname stuck.
In 1917, Crosby took a summer job as property boy at Spokane's
"Auditorium," where he witnessed some of the finest acts of the day,
including Al Jolson, who held Crosby spellbound with his ad libbing and spoofs
of Hawaiian songs. Crosby later described Jolson's delivery as
"electric".
Popular success
In 1923, Bing Crosby was invited to join a new band
composed of high school students much younger than himself. Al Rinker, Miles
Rinker, James Heaton, Claire Pritchard and Robert Pritchard, along with drummer
Bing Crosby, formed the Musicaladers, who performed at dances both for high
school students and club-goers. However, the group disbanded after two years. .
By 1925, Crosby had formed a vocal duo with partner Al
Rinker, brother of singer Mildred Bailey. Mildred introduced Al and Bing to Paul
Whiteman, who was at that time America's most famous bandleader. Hired for $150
a week, they made their debut on December 6, 1926 at the Tivoli Theatre
(Chicago). Their first recording was "I've Got The Girl," with Don
Clark's Orchestra, but the Columbia-issued record did them no vocal favors, as
it was inadvertently recorded at a speed slower than it should have been, which
increased the singers' pitch when played at 78 rpm. Throughout his career, Bing
Crosby often credited Mildred Bailey for getting him his first important job in
the entertainment business.
Even as the Crosby and Rinker duo was increasing in
popularity, Whiteman added a third member to the group. The threesome, now
including pianist and aspiring songwriter Harry Barris, were dubbed "The
Rhythm Boys". They joined the Whiteman touring act, performing and
recording with musicians Bix Beiderbecke, Jack Teagarden, Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy
Dorsey, and Eddie Lang and Hoagy Carmichael, and appeared together in a
Whiteman movie.
Crosby soon became the star attraction of the Rhythm
Boys, and in 1928 had his first number one hit with the Whiteman
orchestra, a jazz-influenced rendition of "Ol’ Man River". However,
Crosby's reported taste for alcohol and his growing dissatisfaction with Whiteman
led to the Rhythm Boys quitting to join the Gus Arnheim Orchestra. During his
time with Arnheim, the other two Rhythm Boys were increasingly pushed to the
background as the emphasis was on Crosby. Harry Barris wrote several of
Crosby's subsequent hits including "At Your Command," "I
Surrender Dear", and "Wrap Your Troubles In Dreams". But the
members of the band had a falling out and split, setting the stage for Crosby's
solo career.
On September 2, 1931, Crosby made his solo radio debut.
Before the end of the year, he signed with both Brunswick Records and CBS Radio.
Doing a weekly 15-minute radio broadcast, Crosby quickly became a huge hit. His
songs "Our of Nowhere", "Just One More Chance", "At
Your Command" and "I Found a Million Dollar Baby (in a Five and Ten
Cent Store) " were all among the best selling songs of 1931.
As the 1930s unfolded, Crosby became the leading singer
in America. Ten of the top 50 songs for 1931 featured Crosby, either solo or
with others. A so-called "Battle of the Baritones" with singing star Russ
Columbo proved short-lived, replaced with the slogan "Bing Was King."
Crosby played the lead in a series of sound era musical comedy short films for Mack
Sennett, signed a long-term deal with Jack Kapp's new record company Decca, and
starred in his first full-length feature, 1932's The Big Broadcast, the first
of 55 films in which he received top billing. He would appear in 79 pictures.
Around this time Crosby co-starred on radio with The Carl
Fenton Orchestra on a popular CBS radio show. By 1936, he'd replaced his former
boss, Paul Whiteman, as the host of NBC's Kraft Music Hall, the weekly radio
program where he remained for the next ten years. "Where the Blue of the
Night (Meets the Gold of the Day)", which also showcased one of his
then-trademark whistling interludes, became his theme song and signature tune.
Crosby's much-imitated style helped take popular singing
beyond the kind of "belting" associated with boisterous performers
like Al Jolson, who had been obliged to reach the back seats in New York
theatres without the aid of the microphone. As Henry Pleasants noted in The
Great American Popular Singers, something new had entered American music, a
style that might be called "singing in American," with conversational
ease. This new sound led to the popular epithet "crooner".
Crosby made numerous live appearances before American
troops fighting in the European Theater. He also learned how to pronounce
German from written scripts, and would read propaganda broadcasts intended for
the German forces. The nickname "Der Bingle" for him was understood
to have become current among Crosby's German listeners, and came to be used by
his English-speaking fans. In a poll of U.S. troops at the close of World War
II, Crosby topped the list as the person who had done the most for G.I. morale,
ahead of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, General Dwight Eisenhower, and Bob
Hope.
"White Christmas"
The biggest hit song of Crosby's career was his recording
of Irving Berlin's "White Christmas", which he first introduced on a
Christmas Day radio broadcast in 1941 (of which no extant copy is known), and
soon thereafter in his 1942 movie Holiday Inn. Crosby's recording hit the
charts on October 3, 1942, and rose to No. 1 on October 31, where it stayed for
11 weeks. A holiday perennial, the song was repeatedly re-released by Decca,
charting another 16 times. It topped the charts again in 1945, and for a third
time in January 1947. The song remains the best-selling single of all time.
According to Guinness World Records, Crosby's recording of "White
Christmas" has "sold over 100 million copies around the world, with
at least 50 million sales as singles." Crosby's recording was so popular
that he was obliged to re-record it in 1947 using the same musicians and backup
singers; the original 1942 master had become damaged due to its frequent use in
pressing additional singles. Though the two versions are very similar, it is
the 1947 recording which is most familiar today. Crosby was dismissive of his
role in the song's success, saying later that "a jackdaw with a cleft
palate could have sung it successfully."
Motion pictures
With 1,077,900,000 movie tickets sold, Crosby is by that
measure the third most popular actor of all time, behind Clark Gable and John
Wayne. The Quigley Publishing Company's International Motion Picture Almanac
lists Crosby in a tie for second on the "All Time Number One Stars
List" with Clint Eastwood, Tom Hanks, and Burt Reynolds. Crosby's most
popular film, White Christmas, grossed $30 million in 1954 ($260 million in
current value). Crosby won an Academy Award for Best Actor for Going My Way in
1944, and was nominated for the 1945 sequel, The Bells of Saint Mary’s. He
received critical acclaim for his performance as an alcoholic entertainer in The
Country Girl, and received his third Academy Award nomination.
Crosby starred with Bob Hope in seven Road to musical
comedies between 1940 and 1962, cementing the two entertainers as an on-and-off
duo, despite never officially declaring themselves a "team" in the
sense that Laurel and Hardy or Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis were teams. The
series consists of Road to Singapore (1940), Road to Zanzibar (1941), Road to
Morocco (1942), Road to Utopia (1946), Road to Rio (1947), Road to Bali (1952),
and The Road to Hong Kong (1962), and Crosby and Hope were planning another
entry called The Road to the Fountain of Youth in 1977, which was
dropped upon Crosby's death. Appearing solo, Crosby and Hope frequently made
note of the other during their various appearances, typically in a comically
insulting fashion, and they appeared together countless times on stage, radio,
and television over the decades as well as cameos in several additional films.
By the late 1950s, Crosby's singing career had evolved
into that of an avuncular elder statesman, and his albums Bing Sings Whilst
Whilst Bregman Swings and Bing With A Beat sold reasonably well, even in the
rock 'n roll era. In 1960, Crosby starred in High Time, a collegiate comedy
with Fabian and Tuesday Weld that foretold the emerging gap between older
Crosby fans and a new generation of films and music.
Warner Bros. cartoons occasionally caricatured Crosby,
alternately as an animal and as himself. His recognizable appearance popped up
in I’ve Got a Sing a Torch Song, Hollywood Steps Out and What’s Up Doc?, while bird
versions appeared in The Woods Are Full of Cuckoos, Swooner Crooner and Curtain
Razor, Bingo Crosbyana had an insect version of him.
Television
The Fireside Theater (1950) was Crosby's
first television production. The series of 26-minute shows was filmed at Hal
Roach Studios rather than performed live on the air. The "telefilms"
were syndicated to individual television stations.
Crosby was a frequent guest on the musical variety shows
of the 1950s and 1960s. He was especially closely associated with ABC's variety
show The Hollywood Place. He was the show's first and most frequent guest host,
and appeared annually on its Christmas edition with his wife Kathryn and his
younger children. In the early 1970s he made two famous late appearances on the
Flip Wilson Show, singing duets with the comedian. Crosby's last TV appearance
was a Christmas special filmed in London in September 1977 and aired just weeks
after his death. It was on this special that Crosby recorded a duet of "The
Little Drummer Boy" and "Peace on Earth" with the flamboyant
rock star David Bowie. It was rush-released as a single 45-rpm record, and has
since become a staple of holiday radio, and the final popular hit of Crosby's
career. At the end of the century, TV Guide listed the Crosby-Bowie duet
as one of the 25 most memorable musical moments of 20th-century television.
Bing Crosby Productions, affiliated with Desielu Studios
and later CBS Television Studios, produced a number of television series,
including Crosby's own unsuccessful ABC sitcom The Bing Crosby Show in the
1964–1965 season (with co-stars Beverly Garland and Frank McHugh).
The company produced two ABC medical dramas, Ben Casey (1961–1966) and Breaking
Point (1963–1964), the popular Hogan’s Heroes (1965–1971) military comedy on
CBS, as well as the lesser-known show Slattery’s People (1964–1965).
Singing
style and vocal characteristics
Crosby was one of the first singers to exploit the intimacy of the
microphone, rather than using the deep, loud "vaudeville style"
associated with All Jolson and others. Crosby's love and appreciation of jazz
music helped bring the genre to a wider mainstream audience. Within the
framework of the novelty singing style of The Rhythm Boys, Crosby bent notes
and added off-tune phrasing, an approach that was firmly rooted in jazz. He had
already been introduced to Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith prior to his first
appearance on record. Crosby and Armstrong would remain professionally friendly
for decades, notably in the 1956 film High Society, where they sang the duet
"Now You Has Jazz."
During the early portion of his solo career (about
1931–1934), Crosby's emotional, often pleading style of crooning was extremely
popular. But Jack Kapp (manager of Brunswick and later Decca) talked Crosby
into dropping many of his jazzier mannerisms, in favor of a straight-ahead
clear vocal style.
Crosby also elaborated on a further idea of Al Jolson's:
phrasing, or the art of making a song's lyric ring true. His success in doing
so was influential. "I used to tell Sinatra over and over," said Tommy
Dorsey, "there's only one singer you ought to listen to and his name is
Crosby. All that matters to him is the words, and that's the only thing that
ought to for you, too."
Vocal
critic Henry Pleasants wrote:
[While] the octave B flat to B flat in Bing's voice at
that time [1930s] is, to my ears, one of the loveliest I have heard in
forty-five years of listening to baritones, both classical and popular, it
dropped conspicuously in later years. From the mid-1950s, Bing was more
comfortable in a bass range while maintaining a baritone quality, with the best
octave being G to G, or even F to F. In a recording he made of 'Dardanella'
with Louis Armstrong in 1960, he attacks lightly and easily on a low E flat.
This is lower than most opera basses care to venture, and they tend to sound as
if they were in the cellar when they get there.
Career statistics
Crosby's was among the most popular and successful
musical acts of the 20th century. Although Billboard Magazine operated under
different methodologies for the bulk of Crosby's career, his chart numbers
remain astonishing: 383 chart singles, including 41 No. 1 hits. Crosby had
separate charting singles in every calendar year between 1931 and 1954; the
annual re-release of "White Christmas" extended that streak to 1957.
He had 24 separate popular singles in 1939 alone. Billboard's statistician Joel
Whitburn determined Crosby to be America's most successful recording act of the
1930s, and again in the 1940s.
For 15 years (1934, 1937, 1940, 1943–1954), Crosby was
among the top 10 in box office drawing power, and for five of those years
(1944–1948) he was tops in the world. He sang four Academy Award-winning songs
– "Sweet Leilani" (1937), "White Christmas" (1942), "Swinging on a Star" (1944), "In the
Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening" (1951) – and won the Academy Award for
Best Actor for his role in Going My Way (1944).
He collected 23 gold and platinum records, according to
the book Million Selling Records. The Recording Industry Association of
America did not institute its gold record certification program until 1958, by
which point Crosby's record sales were barely a blip; prior to that point, gold
records are awarded by an artist's own record company. Universal Music, current
owner of Crosby's Decca catalog, has never requested RIAA certification for any
of his hit singles.
Although often overlooked in many Crosby biographies,
Bing charted an impressive 23 Billboard hits from 47 recorded songs with the
immensely popular Andrews Sisters, whose Decca record sales were second only to
Bing's throughout the 1940s. Patty, Maxene, and LaVerne were his most frequent
collaborators on disc from 1939–1952, a partnership which produced four
million-selling singles: "Pistol Packin’ Mama," "Jingle Bells,"
"Don’t Fence Me In," and "South America, Take it Away."
They made one film appearance together in "Road to Rio" singing
"You Don’t Have to Know the Language," and they sang together
countless times on radio shows throughout the 1940s and 1950s (appearing as
guests on each other's shows quite often, as well as on many shows for the Armed
Forces Radio SErvice during World War Two and beyond. The quartet's Top-10
Billboard hits from 1943–1945 (including "The Vict’ry Polka," "There’ll
Be a Hot Time in the Town of Berlin (When the Yanks Go Marching In)," and
"Is You Is or Is You Ain’t (Ma’ Baby?) ") helped provide the musical
soundtrack for America's greatest generation during the dark war years.
In 1962, Crosby was given the Grammy Lifetime Achievement
Award. He has been inducted into the halls of fame for both radio and popular
music. In 2007 Crosby was inducted into the Hit Parade Hall of Fame, and in
2008 into the Western Music Hall of Fame.
Entrepreneurship
Crosby's radio career took a significant turn in 1945,
when he clashed with NBC over his insistence that he be allowed to pre-record
his radio shows. (The live production of radio shows was also reinforced by the
musicians' union and ASCAP, which wanted to ensure continued work for their
members.) In On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio, historian
John Dunning wrote about German engineers having developed a tape recorder with
a near-professional broadcast quality standard:
[Crosby saw] an enormous advantage in prerecording his
radio shows. The scheduling could now be done at the star's convenience. He
could do four shows a week, if he chose, and then take a month off. But the
networks and sponsors were adamantly opposed. The public wouldn't stand for
'canned' radio, the networks argued. There was something magic for listeners in
the fact that what they were hearing was being performed, and heard everywhere,
at that precise instant. Some of the best moments in comedy came when a line
was blown and the star had to rely on wit to rescue a bad situation. Fred
Allen, Jack Benny, Phil Harris, and, yes, Crosby were masters at this, and the
networks weren't about to give it up easily.
Crosby's insistence eventually factored into the further
development of magnetic tape sound recording and the radio industry's
widespread adoption of it. He used his clout, both professional and financial,
to innovate new methods of reproducing audio of his performances. But NBC (and
competitor CBS) were also insistent, refusing to air prerecorded radio
programs. Crosby walked away from the network and stayed off the air for seven
months, creating a legal battle with Kraft, his sponsor, that was settled out
of court. Crosby returned to the air for the last 13 weeks of the 1945–1946
season.
The Mutual network, on the other hand, had pre-recorded
some of its programs as early as the 1938 run of The Shadow with Orson Welles.
And the new ABC network, which had been formed out of the sale of the old NBC
Blue network in 1943 following a federal anti-trust action, was willing to join
Mutual in breaking the tradition. ABC offered Crosby $30,000 per week to
produce a recorded show every Wednesday that would be sponsored by Philco. He
would also get an additional $40,000 from 400 independent stations for the
rights to broadcast the 30-minute show, which was sent to them every Monday on
three 16-inch lacquer/aluminum discs that played ten minutes per side at 33⅓ rpm.
Crosby wanted to change to recorded production for
several reasons. The legend that has been most often told is that it would give
him more time for his golf game. And he did record his first Philco program in August
1947 so he could enter the Jasper National Park Invitational Golf Tournament in
September, just when the new radio season was to start. But golf was not the
most important reason.
Though Crosby did want more time to tend his other
business and leisure activities, he also sought better quality through
recording, including being able to eliminate mistakes and control the timing of
his show performances. Because his own Bing Crosby Enterprises produced the
show, he could purchase the latest and best sound equipment and arrange the microphones
his way; the logistics of mic placement had long been a hotly debated issue in
every recording studio since the beginning of the electrical era. No longer
would he have to wear the hated toupee on his head previously required by CBS
and NBC for his live audience shows (he preferred a hat). He could also record
short promotions for his latest investment, the world's first frozen orange
juice, sold under the brand name Minute Maid. This investment allowed Crosby to
make more money by finding a loophole whereby the IRS couldn't tax him at a 77%
rate.
The transcription method posed problems, however. The
acetate surface coating of the aluminum discs was little better than the wax
that Edison had used at the turn of the 19th to 20th century, with the same
limited dynamic range and frequency response.
But Murdo MacKenzie of Bing Crosby Enterprises had seen a
demonstration of the German Magnetophon in June 1947—the same device that Jack
Mullin had brought back from Radio Frankfurt, along with 50 reels of tape, at
the end of the war. It was one of the magnetic tape recorders that BASF and AEG
had built in Germany starting in 1935. The 6.5mm ferric-oxide-coated tape could
record 20 minutes per reel of high-quality sound. Alexander M. Poniatoff
ordered his Ampex company, which he'd founded in 1944, to manufacture an
improved version of the Magnetophone.
Crosby hired Mullin to start recording his Philco
Radio Time show on his German-made machine in August 1947, using the same
50 reels of I.G. Farben magnetic tape that Mullin had found at a radio station
at Bad Nauheim near Frankfurt while working for the U.S. Army Signal Corps. The
crucial advantage was editing. As Crosby wrote in his autobiography:
By using tape, I could do a thirty-five or forty-minute
show, then edit it down to the twenty-six or twenty-seven minutes the program
ran. In that way, we could take out jokes, gags, or situations that didn't play
well and finish with only the prime meat of the show; the solid stuff that
played big. We could also take out the songs that didn't sound good. It gave us
a chance to first try a recording of the songs in the afternoon without an
audience, then another one in front of a studio audience. We'd dub the one that
came off best into the final transcription. It gave us a chance to ad lib as
much as we wanted, knowing that excess ad libbing could be sliced from the
final product. If I made a mistake in singing a song or in the script, I could
have some fun with it, then retain any of the fun that sounded amusing.
Mullin's 1976 memoir of these early days of experimental
recording agrees with Crosby's account:
In the evening, Crosby did the whole show before an
audience. If he muffed a song then, the audience loved it – thought it was very
funny – but we would have to take out the show version and put in one of the
rehearsal takes. Sometimes, if Crosby was having fun with a song and not really
working at it, we had to make it up out of two or three parts. This ad lib way
of working is commonplace in the recording studios today, but it was all new to
us.
Crosby invested US$50,000 in Ampex with an eye towards
producing more machines. In 1948, the second season of Philco shows was taped
with the new Ampex Model 200 tape recorder using the new Scotch 111 tape from
the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing (3M) company. Mullin explained how one
new broadcasting technique was invented on the Crosby show with these machines:
One time Bob Burns, the hillbilly comic, was on the show,
and he threw in a few of his folksy farm stories, which of course were not in
Bill Morrow's script. Today they wouldn't seem very off-color, but things were
different on radio then. They got enormous laughs, which just went on and on.
We couldn't use the jokes, but Bill asked us to save the laughs. A couple of
weeks later he had a show that wasn't very funny, and he insisted that we put
in the salvaged laughs. Thus the laugh-track was born.
Crosby had launched the tape recorder revolution in
America. In his 1950 film Mr. Music, Bing Crosby is seen singing into one of
the new Ampex tape recorders that reproduced his voice better than anything
else. Also quick to adopt tape recording was his friend Bob Hope.
Mullin continued to work for Crosby to develop a videotape
recorder (VTR). Television production was mostly live television in its early
years, but Crosby wanted the same ability to record that he had achieved in
radio. 1950's The Fireside Theater, sponsored by Procter and Gamble, was
his first television production. Mullin had not yet succeeded with video tape,
so Crosby filmed the series of 26-minute shows at the Hal Roach Studios, and
the "telefilms" were syndicated to individual television stations.
Crosby did not remain a television producer, but
continued to finance the development of videotape. Bing Crosby Enterprises
(BCE), gave the world's first demonstration of videotape recording in Los
Angeles on November 11, 1951. Developed by John T. Mullin and Wayne R. Johnson
since 1950, the device aired what were described as "blurred and
indistinct" images, using a modified Ampex 200 tape recorder and standard
quarter-inch (6.3 mm) audio tape moving at 360 inches (9.1 m) per second.
TV stations
A Bing Crosby-led group purchased KCOP-TV station in
1954. NAFI Corporation and Bing Crosby purchase together the television
station, KPTV, for $4 million on September 1, 1959. In 1960, NAFI purchased
KCOP from Crosby's group.
Thoroughbred horse racing
Crosby was a fan of thoroughbred horse racing and bought his first
racehorse in 1935. In 1937, he became a founding partner of the Del Mar
Thoroughbred Club and a member of its Board of Directors. Operating from the Del
Mar Racetrack at Del Mar, California, the group included millionaire
businessman Charles S. Howard, who owned a successful racing stable that
included Seabiscuit. His son, Lindsay Howard, became one of Crosby's closest
friends; Crosby named his son Lindsay after him, and would purchase his 40-room
Hillsborough estate from Lindsay in 1965.
Crosby and Lindsay Howard formed Binglin Stable to race
and breed thoroughbred horses at a ranch in Moorpark in Ventura County,
California. They also established the Binglin stock farm in Argentina, where
they raced horses at Hipódromo de Palermo in Palermo, Buenos Aires. A number of
Argentine-bred horses were purchased and shipped to race in the United States.
On August 12, 1938, the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club hosted a $25,000
winner-take-all match race won by Charles S. Howard's Seabiscuit over Binglin's
horse Ligaroti. In 1943, Binglin's horse Don Bingo won the Suburban Handicap at
Belmont Park in Elmont, New York.
The Binglin Stable partnership came to an end in 1953 as
a result of a liquidation of assets by Crosby, who needed to raise enough funds
to pay the hefty federal and state inheritance taxes on his deceased wife's
estate. The Bing Crosby Breeders’ cup Handicap at Del Mar Racetrack is named in
his honor.
Crosby was also a co-owner of the British colt Meadow
Court, with jockey Johnny Longden's friend Max Bell. Meadow Court won the 1965 King
George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes, and the Irish Derby. In the Irish Derby's
winner's circle at the Curragh, Crosby sang "When Irish Eyes Are
Smiling."
Though Crosby's stables had some success, he often joked
about his horseracing failures as part of his radio appearances. "Crosby's
horse finally came in" became a running gag.
Crosby the sportsman
Crosby had an interest in sports. In the 1930s, his
friend and former college classmate, Gonzaga head coach Mike Pecarovich
appointed Crosby as an assistant football coach. From 1946 until the end of his
life, he was part-owner of baseball's Pittsburgh Pirates. Although he was
passionate about his team, he was too nervous to watch the deciding Game 7 of
the 1960 World Series, choosing to go to Paris with Kathryn and listen to the
game on the radio. Crosby had the NBC telecast of the game recorded on kinescope.
The game was one of the most famous in baseball history, capped off by Bill
Mazeroski's walk-off home run. He apparently viewed the complete film just
once, and then stored it in his wine cellar, where it remained undisturbed
until it was discovered in December 2009. The restored broadcast was shown on MLB
Network in December 2010.
Crosby was also an avid golfer, and in 1978, he and Bob
Hope were voted the Bob Jones Award, the highest honor given by the United
States Golf Association in recognition of distinguished sportsmanship. He is a
member of the World Golf Hall of Fame. In 1937, Bing Crosby hosted the first
National Pro-Am Golf Championship, the 'Crosby Clambake' as it was popularly
known, at Rancho Santa Fe Golf Club in Rancho Santa Fe, California, the event's
location prior to World War II. Sam Snead won the first tournament, in which
the first place check was for $500. After the war, the event resumed play in
1947 on golf courses in Pebble Beach, where it has been played ever since. Now
the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am it has been a leading event in the
world of professional golf.
Crosby first took up golf at 12 as a caddy, dropped it,
and started again in 1930 with some fellow cast members in Hollywood during the
filming of The King of Jazz. Crosby was accomplished at the sport, with a two
handicap. He competed in both the British and U.S. Amateur championships, was a
five-time club champion at Lakeside Golf Club in Hollywood, and once made a
hole-in-one on the 16th at Cypress Point.
Personal life
Crosby was married twice, first to actress/nightclub
singer Dixie Lee from 1930 until her death from ovarian cancer in 1952. They
had four sons: Gary, twins Dennis and Phillip, and Lindsay. The 1947 film Smash-Up:
The Story of a Woman is indirectly based on her life. After Dixie's death,
Crosby had relationships with actresses Inger Stevens and Gracy Kelly before
marrying the actress Kathryn Grant in 1957. They had three children: Harry (who
played Bill in Friday the 13th), Mary (best known for portraying Kristin
Shepard, the woman who shot J.R. Ewing on TV's Dallas), and Nathaniel.
Kathryn converted to Catholicism in order to marry the
singer. Crosby was also a registered Republican, and actively campaigned for Wendell
Willkie in 1940 against President Roosevelt, arguing that no man should serve
more than two terms in the White House. After Willkie lost, Crosby decreed that
he would never again make any open political contributions.
Crosby reportedly had an alcohol problem in his youth,
and may have been dismissed from Paul Whiteman's orchestra because of it, but
he later got a handle on his drinking. Village Voice jazz critic and Crosby
biographer Gary Giddins says that Louis Armstrong's influence on Crosby
"extended to his love of marijuana." Crosby smoked it during his
early career when it was still legal, and "surprised interviewers" in
the 1960s and 1970s by advocating its decriminalization. According to Giddins,
Crosby told his son Gary to stay away from alcohol ("It killed your
mother") and suggested he smoke marijuana instead. Gary said, "There
were other times when marijuana was mentioned and he'd get a smile on his
face." Gary thought his father's marijuana smoking had influenced his
easygoing style in his films. Crosby finally quit smoking his pipe following
lung surgery in 1974.
After Crosby's death, his eldest son, Gary, wrote a
highly critical memoir, Going My Own Way, depicting his father as cold,
remote, and both physically and psychologically abusive. Two of Crosby's other
sons, Lindsay and Dennis, sided with Gary's claim and stated Crosby abused them
as well. Dennis also stated that Crosby would abuse Gary the most often.
Gary
Crosby wrote:
We
had to keep a close watch on our actions... When one of us left a sneaker or
pair of underpants lying around, he had to tie the offending object on a string
and wear it around his neck until he went off to bed that night. Dad called it
"the Crosby lavalier." At the time the humor of the name escaped
me... "Satchel Ass" or "Bucket Butt" or "My Fat-assed
Kid." That's how he introduced me to his cronies when he dragged me along
to the studio or racetrack... By the time I was ten or eleven he had stepped up
his campaign by adding lickings to the regimen. Each Tuesday afternoon he
weighed me in, and if the scale read more than it should have, he ordered me
into his office and had me drop my trousers... I dropped my pants, pulled down
my undershorts and bent over. Then he went at it with the belt dotted with
metal studs he kept reserved for the occasion. Quite dispassionately, without
the least display of emotion or loss of self-control, he whacked away until he
drew the first drop of blood, and then he stopped. It normally took between
twelve and fifteen strokes. As they came down I counted them off one by one and
hoped I would bleed early... When I saw Going My Way I was as moved as
they were by the character he played. Father O'Malley handled that gang of young
hooligans in his parish with such kindness and wisdom that I thought he was
wonderful too. Instead of coming down hard on the kids and withdrawing his
affection, he forgave them their misdeeds, took them to the ball game and
picture show, taught them how to sing. By the last reel, the sheer persistence
of his goodness had transformed even the worst of them into solid citizens.
Then the lights came on and the movie was over. All the way back to the house I
thought about the difference between the person up there on the screen and the
one I knew at home.
It was revealed that Crosby's will had established a
blind trust, with none of the sons receiving an inheritance until they reached
the age of 65.
However, younger son Phillip vociferously disputed his brother
Gary's claims about their father. Around the time Gary made his claim, Phillip
stated to the press that "Gary is a whining...crybaby, walking around with
a 2-by-4 and just daring people to nudge it off." However, Phillip did not
deny that Crosby believed in corporal punishment. In an interview with People,
Phillip stated that "we never got an extra whack or a cuff we didn't
deserve." During a later interview conducted in 1999 by the Globe, Phillip
said:
My
dad was not the monster my lying brother said he was; he was strict, but my
father never beat us black and blue, and my brother Gary was a vicious, no-good
liar for saying so. I have nothing but fond memories of Dad, going to studios
with him, family vacations at our cabin in Idaho, boating and fishing with him.
To my dying day, I'll hate Gary for dragging Dad's name through the mud. He
wrote Going My Own Way out of greed. He wanted to make money and knew
that humiliating our father and blackening his name was the only way he could
do it. He knew it would generate a lot of publicity. That was the only way he
could get his ugly, no-talent face on television and in the newspapers. My dad
was my hero. I loved him very much. He loved all of us too, including Gary. He
was a great father.
Gary Crosby died in 1995 at the age of 62, and
69-year-old Phillip Crosby died in 2004.
Lindsay and Dennis Crosby each committed suicide,
shooting themselves with shotguns in 1989 and 1991, respectively. Nathaniel
Crosby, Crosby's youngest son from his second marriage, was a high-level golfer
who won the U.S. Amature at age 19 in 1981, at the time the youngest-ever
winner of that event (a record later broken by Tiger Woods). Harry Crosby is an
investment banker who occasionally makes singing appearances.
Widow Kathryn Crosby dabbled in local theater productions
intermittently, and appeared in television tributes to her late husband. Denise
Crosby, Dennis Crosby's daughter, is also an actress and is known for her role
as Tasha Yar on Star Trek: The Next Generation, and for the recurring role of
the Romulan Sela (daughter of Tasha Yar) after her withdrawal from the series
as a regular cast member. She also appeared in the film adaptation of Stephen
King's novel Pet Sematary. In 2006, Crosby's niece, Carolyn Schneider, published
the laudatory book "Me and Uncle Bing."
Failing health and death
Following his recovery from a life-threatening fungal
infection of his right lung in 1974, Crosby emerged from semi-retirement to
start a new spate of albums and concerts. In March 1977, after videotaping a
concert for CBS to commemorate his 50th anniversary in show business and with
Bob Hope looking on, Crosby backed off the stage and fell into an orchestra
pit, rupturing a disc in his back and requiring a month in the hospital. His
first performance after the accident was his last American concert, on August
16, 1977; when the power went out, he continued singing without amplification.
In September, Crosby, his family, and singer Rosemary Clooney began a concert
tour of England that included two weeks at the London Palladium. While in
England, Crosby recorded his final album, Seasons, and his final TV
Christmas special with guest David Bowie (which aired several months after
Crosby's death). His last concert was in The Brighton Centre four days before
his death, with British entertainer Dame Gracie Fields in attendance. Although
it has been reported that Crosby's last photograph was taken with Fields, he
was photographed playing golf on the day he died.
At the conclusion of his work in England, Crosby flew
alone to Spain to hunt and play golf. Shortly after 6 pm on October 14, Crosby
collapsed and died of a massive heart attack on the green after a round of 18
holes of golf near Madrid where he and his Spanish golfing partner had just
defeated their opponents. It is widely written that his last words were
"That was a great game of golf, fellas." In Bob Hope’s Confessions of
a Hooker: My Lifelong Love Affair With Golf, the comedian recounts hearing that
Crosby had been advised by a physician in England to play only nine holes of
golf because of his heart condition.
Legacy
He is a member of the National Association of
Broadcasters Hall of Fame in the radio division.
The family launched an official website on October 14,
2007, the 30th anniversary of Crosby's death.
In his 1990 autobiography Don't Shoot, It's Only Me!
Bob Hope wrote, "Dear old Bing. As we called him, the Economy-sized
Sinatra. And what a voice. God I miss that voice. I can't even turn on the
radio around Christmas time without crying anymore."
Calypso musician Roaring Lion wrote a tribute song in
1939 entitled "Bing Crosby", in which he wrote: "Bing has a way
of singing with his very heart and soul / Which captivates the world / His
millions of listeners never fail to rejoice / At his golden voice..."
Compositions
Crosby co-wrote lyrics to 15 songs. His composition
"At Your Command" was no.1 for three weeks on the U.S. pop singles
chart beginning on August 8, 1931. "I Don’t Stand a Ghost of a Chance With
You" was his most successful composition, recorded by Duke Ellington,
Frank Sinatra Thelonious Monk, Billie Holiday and Mildred Bailey, among others.
Songs co-written by Crosby include:
- "That's
Grandma" (1927), with Harry Barris and James Cavanaugh
- "From
Monday On" (1928), with Harry Barris and recorded with the Paul
Whiteman Orchestra featuring Bix Beiderbecke on cornet, no. 14 on US pop
singles charts
- "What
Price Lyrics?" (1928), with Harry Barris and Matty Malneck
- "At
Your Command" (1931), with Harry Barris and Harry Tobias, US, no. 1
(3 weeks)
- "Where
the Blue of the Night (Meets the Gold of the Day)" (1931), with Roy
Turk and Fred Ahlert, US, no. 4; US, 1940 re-recording, no. 27
- "I
Don’t Stand a Ghost of a Chance With You" (1932), with Victor Young
and Ned Washington, US, no. 5
- "My
Woman" (1932), with Irving Wallman and Max Wartell
- "Love
Me Tonight" (1932), with Victor Young and Ned Washington, US, no. 4
- "Waltzing
in a Dream" (1932), with Victor Young and Ned Washington, US, no.6
- "I
Would If I Could But I Can't" (1933), with Mitchell Parish and Alan
Grey
- "Where
the Turf Meets the Surf" (1941)
- "Tenderfoot"
(1953)
- "Domenica"
(1961)
- "That's
What Life is All About" (1975), with Ken Barnes, Peter Dacre, and Les
Reed, US, AC chart, no. 35; UK, no. 41
- "Sail
Away to Norway" (1977)
Radio
- The Radio
Singers (1931, CBS), sponsored by Warner Brothers, 6 nights a week, 15
minutes.
- The Cremo
Singer (1931–1932, CBS), 6 nights a week, 15 minutes.
- Unsponsored
(1932, CBS), initially 3 nights a week, then twice a week, 15 minutes.
- Chesterfield's
Music that Satisfies (1933, CBS), broadcast two nights, 15 minutes.
- Bing
Crosby Entertains for Woodbury Soap (1933–1935,
CBS), weekly, 30 minutes.
- Kraft
Music Hall (1935–1946, NBC), Thursday nights, 60 minutes until
January 1943, then 30 minutes.
- Armed
Forces Radio (1941–1945; World War II).
- Philco
Radio Time (1946–1949, ABC), 30 minutes weekly.
- The Bing
Crosby ChesterfieldShow (1949–1952, CBS), 30 minutes weekly.
- The Minute
Maid Show (1949–1950, CBS), 15 minutes each weekday morning;
Bing as disc jockey.
- The General
Electric Show (1952–1954, CBS), 30 minutes weekly.
- The Bing
Crosby Show (1954–1956, CBS), 15 minutes, 5 nights a week.
- A
Christmas Sing with Bing (1955–1962, CBS, VOA and AFRS), 1 hour each year,
sponsored by the Insurance Company of North America.
- The Ford
Road Show (1957–1958, CBS), 5 minutes, 5 days a week.
- The Bing
Crosby – Rosemary Clooney Show (1958–1962, CBS), 20 minutes, 5 mornings a
week, with Rosemary Clooney.
RIAA certification
|
Album
|
RIAA
|
|
Merry Christmas
|
Gold
|
|
Bing sings
|
2x platinum
|
|
White Christmas
|
4x platinum
|
Mr.
Toad ~ Eric Blore:
Eric Blore (23 December 1887 – 2 March 1959) was an
English comic actor. Blore was born in finchley, Middlesex, England.
Aged eighteeen, he worked as an insurance agent for two
years. He gained theatre experience while touring Australia. Originally
enlisting into the Artists Rifles he was commissioned in the South Wales
Borders in World War I. Eventually he appeared in several shows and revues in
England. His stage work in the musical Gay Divorcee with Fred Astaire earned
him a role in films. In 1923 he went to the United States and began playing
character roles on Broadway. After the death of his first wife, Violet Winter,
he married Clara Mackin in 1926.
He moved onto film and appeared in over eighty Hollywood
films. Blore, in his role as an English butler, appeared more frequently than
any other supporting player in the series of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers
musicals at RKA Radio Pictures, five of nine. Some of his most memorable
on-screen moments took place in Top Hat (1935) and Shall We Dance (1937). He
reprised this role with Astaire for a final time in The Sky’s the Limit (1943),
delivering the line: "If I were not such a gentleman's gentleman, I could
be such a cad's cad". Other memorable roles included Sir Alfred McGlennan
Keith in the Preston Sturges film The Lady Eve (1941) with Barbara Stanwyck and
Henry Fonda, a small part as Charles Kimble in the second of the seven Bing
Crosby-Bob Hope "Road" films, Road to Zanzibar (1941), and from 1940
to 1947 in eleven Lone Wolf films as Jamison the butler.
Blore died of a heart attack at age 71 on 2 March 1959 in
Hollywood, California. He was entombed in Glendale's Forest Lawn Memorial Park
Cemetery.
His death caused an unexpected stir, quite independent of
his fame. The British critic Kenneth Tynan, writing for The New Yorker, had
recently made a mistaken reference to "the late Eric Blore", and this
error passed by the normally vigilant checking department. When Blore’s lawyer
demanded a retraction, the editor had no choice other than to refer this demand
to Tynan, pointing out in a fury that this was the first retraction ever to
appear in that uniquely authoritative magazine. In disgrace, Tynan prepared a
major apology, to appear prominently in the next issue. On the eve of
publication, when the edition was printed and ready for delivery, Blore dropped
dead. So next morning, the daily papers announced Blore’s death, while The
New Yorker apologised for any insult to Mr. Blore’s feelings through their
erroneous report of his demise.
Partial filmography
- Flying
down to Rio* (1933)
- The Gay
Divorcee* (1934)
- Top Hat* (1935)
- The Good
Fairy (1935)
- Diamond
Jim (1935)
- I Dream
Too Much (1935)
- The
Ex-Mrs. Bradford (1936)
- Piccadilly
Jim (1936)
- Swing
Time* (1936)
- It’s Love
I’m After (1937)
- Quality
Street (1937)
- Shall We
Dance* (1937)
- Breakfast
for Two (1937)
- Swiss
Miss (1938)
- Island of
Lost Men (1939)
- The Lone
Wolf Strikes (1940)
- 'Til We
Meet Again (1940)
- The Lone
Wolf Meets a Lady (1940)
- The Boys
from Syracuse (1940)
- The Lone
Wolf Keeps a Date (1940)
- The Lady
Eve (1941)
- The Lone
Wolf Takes a Chance (1941)
- Road to
Zanzibar (1941)
- Secrets
of the Lone Wolf (1941)
- Sullivan’t
Travels (1941)
- The
Shanghai Gesture (1941)
- Counter-Espionage (1942)
- The Moon
and the Sixpence (1942)
- Forever
and a Day (1943)
- Heavenly
Music (1943 short)
- The Sky’s
the Limit (1943) (uncredited)
- Submarine
Base (1943)
- Passport
to Suez (1943, part of the Lone Wolf series)
- Holy
Matrimony (1943)
- The
Notorious Lone Wolf (1946)
- The Lone
Wolf in Mexico (1947)
- The Lone
Wolf in London (1947)
- Romance
on the High Seas (1948)
- The
Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949 short) -
voice of J. Thaddeus Toad
- Love
Happy (1949)
- Fancy
Pants (1950)
- Bowery to
Bagdad (1955)
*
Astaire-Rogers films
