Harry Lillis “Bing” Crosby Jr. (/ˈkrɒzbi/; May 3, 1903 – October 14, 1977) was an American singer, comedian and actor. The first multimedia star, Crosby was a leader in record sales, radio ratings, and motion picture grosses from 1931 to 1954. His early career coincided with recording innovations that allowed him to develop an intimate singing style that influenced many male singers who followed him, including Perry Como, Frank Sinatra, Dick Haymes, and Dean Martin. Yank magazine said that he was “the person who had done the most for the morale of overseas servicemen” during World War II. In 1948, American polls declared him the “most admired man alive”, ahead of Jackie Robinson and Pope Pius XII. Also in 1948, Music Digest estimated that his recordings filled more than half of the 80,000 weekly hours allocated to recorded radio music.
Crosby won an Oscar 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 opposite Ingrid Bergman the next year, becoming the first of six actors to be nominated twice for playing the same character. In 1963, Crosby received the first Grammy Global Achievement Award. He is one of 33 people to have three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, in the categories of motion pictures, radio, and audio recording. He was also known for his collaborations with longtime friend Bob Hope, starring in the Road to… film from 1940 to 1962.
Crosby influenced the development of the postwar recording industry. After seeing a demonstration of a German broadcast quality reel-to-reel tape recorder brought to America by John T. Mullin, he invested $50,000 in a California electronics company called Ampex to build copies. He then convinced ABC to allow him to tape his shows. He became the first performer to pre-record his radio shows and master his commercial recordings onto magnetic tape. Through the medium of recording, he constructed his radio programs with the same directorial tools and craftsmanship (editing, retaking, rehearsal, time shifting) used in motion picture production, a practice that became an industry standard. In addition to his work with early audio tape recording, he helped to finance the development of videotape, bought television stations, bred racehorses, and co-owned the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team.
Early life:
Crosby was born on May 3, 1903 in Tacoma, Washington, in a house his father built at 1112 North J Street. In 1906, his family moved to Spokane in eastern Washington State, where he was raised. In 1913, his father built a house at 508 E. Sharp Avenue. The house sits on the campus of his alma mater, Gonzaga University. It functions today as museum housing over 200 artifacts from his life and career, including his Oscar.
He was the fourth of seven children: brothers Laurence Earl (Larry) (1895–1975), Everett Nathaniel (1896–1966), Edward John (Ted) (1900–1973), and George Robert (Bob) (1913–1993); and two sisters, Catherine Cordelia (1904–1974) and Mary Rose (1906–1990). His parents were Harry Lowe Crosby (1870–1950), a bookkeeper, and Catherine Helen “Kate” (née Harrigan; 1873–1964). His mother was a second generation Irish-American. His father was of Scottish and English descent; an ancestor, Simon Crosby, emigrated from Scotland to New England in the 1630s during the Puritan migration to New England. Through another line, also on his father’s side, Crosby is descended from Mayflower passenger William Brewster (c. 1567 – April 10, 1644). On November 8, 1937, after Lux Radio Theatre’s adaptation of She Loves Me Not, Joan Blondell asked Crosby how he got his nickname:
Crosby: “Well, I’ll tell you, back in the knee-britches day, when I was a wee little tyke, a mere broth of a lad, as we say in Spokane, I used to totter around the streets, with a gun on each hip, my favorite after school pastime was a game known as “Cops and Robbers”, I didn’t care which side I was on, when a cop or robber came into view, I would haul out my trusty six-shooters, made of wood, and loudly exclaim bing! bing!, as my luckless victim fell clutching his side, I would shout bing! bing!, and I would let him have it again, and then as his friends came to his rescue, shooting as they came, I would shout bing! bing! bing! bing! bing! bing! bing! bing!”
Blondell: “I’m surprised they didn’t call you “Killer” Crosby! Now tell me another story, Grandpa!
Crosby: “No, so help me, it’s the truth, ask Mister De Mille.”
De Mille: “I’ll vouch for it, Bing.”
That story was pure whimsy for dramatic effect and the truth is that a neighbor – Valentine Hobart – named him “Bingo from Bingville” after a comic feature in the local paper called “The Bingville Bugle” which the young Harry liked. In time, Bingo got shortened to Bing.
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 him spellbound with ad libbing and parodies of Hawaiian songs. He later described Jolson’s delivery as “electric.”
Crosby graduated from Gonzaga High School (today’s Gonzaga Prep) in 1920 and enrolled at Gonzaga University. He attended Gonzaga for three years but did not earn a degree. As a freshman, he played on the university’s baseball team. The university granted him an honorary doctorate in 1937. Today, Gonzaga University houses a large collection of photographs, correspondence, and other material related to Crosby.
Performance career — early years:
In 1923, Crosby was invited to join a new band composed of high-school students a few years younger than himself. Al Rinker, Miles Rinker, James Heaton, Claire Pritchard and Robert Pritchard, along with drummer Crosby, formed the Musicaladers, who performed at dances both for high-school students and for club-goers. The group performed on Spokane radio station KHQ, but disbanded after two years. 92–97 Crosby and Al Rinker then obtained work at the Clemmer Theatre in Spokane (now known as the Bing Crosby Theater). Crosby was initially a member of a vocal trio called ‘The Three Harmony Aces’ with Al Rinker accompanying on piano from the pit, to entertain between the films. Bing and Al continued at the Clemmer Theatre for several months often with three other men – Wee Georgie Crittenden, Frank McBride and Lloyd Grinnell – and they were billed The Clemmer Trio or The Clemmer Entertainers depending who performed.
In October 1925, Crosby and his partner Al Rinker, brother of singer Mildred Bailey, decided to seek fame in California. They traveled to Los Angeles where they met Bailey. She introduced them to her show business contacts. The Fanchon and Marco Time Agency hired them for thirteen weeks for the revue The Syncopation Idea starting at the Boulevard Theater in Los Angeles and then on the Loew’s circuit. They each earned $75 a week. As minor parts of The Syncopation Idea Crosby and Rinker started to develop as entertainers. They had a lively style that was popular with college students. After The Syncopation Idea closed, they worked in the Will Morrissey Music Hall Revue. They honed their skills with Morrissey. When they got a chance to present an independent act, they were spotted by the Paul Whiteman organization. Whiteman needed something different to break up his musical selections, and Crosby and Rinker filled this requirement. After less than a year in show business, they were attached to one of the biggest names. Hired for $150 a week in 1926, they debuted with Whiteman on December 6 at the Tivoli Theatre in Chicago. Their first recording, in October 1926, was “I’ve Got the Girl” with Don Clark’s Orchestra, but the Columbia-issued record was inadvertently recorded at a slow speed, which increased the singers’ pitch when played at 78 rpm. Throughout his career, Crosby often credited Bailey for getting him his first important job in the entertainment business.
The Rhythm Boys:
Success with Whiteman was followed by disaster when they reached New York. Whiteman considered letting them go. However, the addition of pianist and aspiring songwriter Harry Barris made the difference, and “The Rhythm Boys” were born. The additional voice meant they could be heard more easily in large New York theaters. Crosby gained valuable experience on tour for a year with Whiteman and performing and recording with Bix Beiderbecke, Jack Teagarden, Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey, Eddie Lang, and Hoagy Carmichael. He matured as a performer and was in demand as a solo singer.
Crosby became the star attraction of the Rhythm Boys. In 1928, he had his first number one hit, a jazz-influenced rendition of “Ol’ Man River”. In 1929, the Rhythm Boys appeared in the film King of Jazz with Whiteman, but Crosby’s growing dissatisfaction with Whiteman led to the Rhythm Boys leaving his organization. They joined the Gus Arnheim Orchestra, performing nightly in the Cocoanut Grove of the Ambassador Hotel. Singing with the Arnheim Orchestra, Crosby’s solos began to steal the show while the Rhythm Boys act gradually became redundant. Harry Barris wrote several of Crosby’s hits, including “At Your Command”, “I Surrender Dear”, and “Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams”. When Mack Sennett signed Crosby to a solo recording contract in 1931, a break with the Rhythm Boys became almost inevitable. Crosby married Dixie Lee in September 1930. After a threat of divorce in March 1931, he applied himself to his career.
Success as a solo singer:
On September 2, 1931, Crosby made his nationwide solo radio debut. Before the end of the year, he signed with both Brunswick and CBS Radio. Doing a weekly 15-minute radio broadcast, Crosby became a hit. “Out of Nowhere”, “Just One More Chance”, “At Your Command” and “I Found a Million Dollar Baby (in a Five and Ten Cent Store)” were among the best selling songs of 1931.
Ten of the top 50 songs of 1931 included Crosby with others or as a solo act. A “Battle of the Baritones” with singer Russ Columbo proved short-lived, replaced with the slogan “Bing Was King”. Crosby played the lead in a series of musical comedy short films for Mack Sennett, signed with Paramount, and starred in his first full-length film 1932’s The Big Broadcast (1932), the first of 55 films in which he received top billing. He would appear in 79 pictures. He signed a contract with Jack Kapp’s new record company, Decca, in late 1934.
His first commercial sponsor on radio was Cremo Cigars and his fame spread nationwide. After a long run in New York, he went back to Hollywood to film The Big Broadcast. His appearances, records, and radio work substantially increased his impact. The success of his first film brought him a contract with Paramount, and he began a pattern of making three films a year. He led his radio show for Woodbury Soap for two seasons while his live appearances dwindled. His records produced hits during the Depression when sales were down. Audio engineer Steve Hoffman stated, “By the way, Bing actually saved the record business in 1934 when he agreed to support Decca founder Jack Kapp’s crazy idea of lowering the price of singles from a dollar to 35 cents and getting a royalty for records sold instead of a flat fee. Bing’s name and his artistry saved the recording industry. All the other artists signed to Decca after Bing did. Without him, Jack Kapp wouldn’t have had a chance in hell of making Decca work and the Great Depression would have wiped out phonograph records for good.”
His social life was frantic. His first son Gary was born in 1933 with twin boys following in 1934. By 1936, he replaced his former boss, Paul Whiteman, as host of the weekly NBC radio program Kraft Music Hall, where he remained for the next ten years. “Where the Blue of the Night (Meets the Gold of the Day)”, with his trademark whistling, became his theme song and signature tune.
Crosby’s vocal style helped take popular singing beyond the “belting” associated with Al Jolson and Billy Murray, who had been obligated to reach the back seats in New York theaters without the aid of the microphone. As music critic, 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 admired Louis Armstrong for his musical ability, and the trumpet maestro was a formative influence on Crosby’s singing style. When the two met, they immediately became friends. In 1936, Crosby exercised an option in his Paramount contract to regularly star in an out-of-house film. Signing an agreement with Columbia for a single motion picture, Crosby wanted Armstrong to appear in a screen adaptation of The Peacock Feather that eventually became Pennies from Heaven. Crosby asked Harry Cohn, but Cohn had no desire to pay for the flight or to meet Armstrong’s “crude, mob-linked but devoted manager, Joe Glaser.” Crosby threatened to leave the film and refused to discuss the matter. Cohn gave in; Armstrong’s musical scenes and comic dialogue extended his influence to the silver screen, creating more opportunities for him and other African Americans to appear in future films. Crosby also ensured behind the scenes that Armstrong received equal billing with his white co-stars. Armstrong appreciated Crosby’s progressive attitudes on race, and often expressed gratitude for the role in later years.
During the Second World War, Crosby made live appearances before American troops who had been fighting in the European Theater. He learned how to pronounce German from written scripts and read propaganda broadcasts intended for German forces. The nickname “Der Bingle” was common 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.
The June 18, 1945, issue of Life magazine stated, “America’s number one star, Bing Crosby, has won more fans, made more money than any entertainer in history. Today he is a kind of national institution.” “In all, 60,000,000 Crosby discs have been marketed since he made his first record in 1931. His biggest best seller is ‘White Christmas’, 2,000,000 impressions of which have been sold in the U.S. and 250,000 in Great Britain.” “Nine out of ten singers and bandleaders listen to Crosby’s broadcasts each Thursday night and follow his lead. The day after he sings a song over the air – any song – some 50,000 copies of it are sold throughout the U.S. Time and again Crosby has taken some new or unknown ballad, has given it what is known in trade circles as the ‘big goose’ and made it a hit single-handed and overnight…Precisely what the future holds for Crosby neither his family nor his friends can conjecture.
He has achieved greater popularity, made more money, attracted vaster audiences than any other entertainer in history has. And his star is still in the ascendant. His contract with Decca runs until 1955. His contract with Paramount runs until 1954. Records, which he made ten years ago, are selling better than ever before. The nation’s appetite for Crosby’s voice and personality appears insatiable. To soldiers overseas and to foreigners he has become a kind of symbol of America, of the amiable, humorous citizen of a free land. Crosby, however, seldom bothers to contemplate his future. For one thing, he enjoys hearing himself sing, and if ever a day should dawn when the public wearies of him, he will complacently go right on singing — to himself.”
“White Christmas.”
The biggest hit song of Crosby’s career was his recording of Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas”, which he introduced on a Christmas Day radio broadcast in 1941. (A copy of the recording from the radio program is owned by the estate of Bing Crosby and was loaned to CBS Sunday Morning for their December 25, 2011, program.) The song then appeared in his movie Holiday Inn (1942). His record 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 sixteen times. It topped the charts again in 1945 and a third time in January 1947. The song remains the bestselling single of all time. According to Guinness World Records, his recording of “White Christmas” has sold over 100 million copies around the world, with at least 50 million sales as singles. His 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. Although the two versions are similar, the 1947 recording is more familiar today. In 1977, after Crosby died, the song was re-released and reached No. 5 in the UK Singles Chart. Crosby was dismissive of his role in the song’s success, saying, “A jackdaw with a cleft palate could have sung it successfully.”
Motion pictures:
In the wake of a solid decade of headlining mainly smash hit musical comedy films in the 1930s, Crosby starred with Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour in seven Road to musical comedies between 1940 and 1962, cementing Crosby and Hope as an on-and-off duo, despite never officially declaring themselves a “team” in the sense that Laurel and Hardy or Martin and Lewis (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). When they appeared solo, Crosby and Hope frequently made note of the other in a comically insulting fashion. They performed together countless times on stage, radio, film, and television, and made numerous brief and not so brief appearances together in movies aside from the “Road” pictures, Variety Girl (1947) being an example of lengthy scenes and songs together along with billing.
In the 1949, Disney animated film The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, Crosby provided the narration and song vocals for The Legend of Sleepy Hollow segment. In 1960, he starred in High Time, a collegiate comedy with Fabian Forte and Tuesday Weld that predicted the emerging gap between him and the new young generation of musicians and actors who had begun their careers after WWII. The following year, Crosby and Hope reunited for one more Road movie, The Road to Hong Kong, which teamed them up with the much younger Joan Collins and Peter Sellers. Collins was used in place of their longtime partner Dorothy Lamour, whom Crosby felt was getting too old for the role, though Hope refused to do the movie without her, and she instead made a lengthy and elaborate cameo appearance. Shortly before his death in 1977, he had planned another Road film in which he, Hope, and Lamour search for the Fountain of Youth.
He won an Academy Award for Best Actor for Going My Way in 1944 and was nominated for the 1945 sequel, The Bells of St. Mary’s. He received critical acclaim for his performance as an alcoholic entertainer in The Country Girl and received his third Academy Award nomination.
Television:
The Fireside Theater (1950) was his 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. He was a frequent guest on the musical variety shows of the 1950s and 1960s, appearing literally countless times on various variety shows as well as numerous late-night talk shows and his own highly rated specials. Bob Hope memorably devoted one of his monthly NBC specials to his long intermittent partnership with Crosby titled “On the Road with Bing.” Crosby was associated with ABC’s The Hollywood Palace as the show’s first and most frequent guest host and appeared annually on its Christmas edition with his wife Kathryn and his younger children, and continued after The Hollywood Palace was eventually canceled. In the early 1970s, he made two late appearances on the Flip Wilson Show, singing duets with the comedian. His last TV appearance was a Christmas special taped in London in September 1977 and aired weeks after his death. It was on this special that he recorded a duet of “The Little Drummer Boy” and “Peace on Earth” with rock star David Bowie. Their duet was released in 1982 as a single 45-rpm record and reached No. 3 in the UK singles charts. It has since become a staple of holiday radio and the final popular hit of Crosby’s career. At the end of the 20th century, TV Guide listed the Crosby-Bowie duet one of the 25 most memorable musical moments of 20th-century television.
Bing Crosby Productions, affiliated with Desilu 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 seasons (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 use the deep, loud vaudeville style associated with Al Jolson. He was, by his own definition, a “phraser”, a singer who placed equal emphasis on both the lyrics and the music. His love for jazz helped bring the genre to a wider audience. In the framework of the novelty-singing style of the Rhythm Boys, he bent notes and added off-tune phrasing, an approach that was rooted in jazz. He had already been introduced to Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith before his first appearance on record. Crosby and Armstrong remained friends for decades. They sang “Now You Has Jazz” in the film High Society (1956).
During the early portion of his solo career (about 1931–1934), Crosby’s emotional, often pleading style of crooning was popular. But Jack Kapp, manager of Brunswick and later Decca, talked him into dropping many of his jazzier mannerisms in favor of a clear vocal style. Crosby credited Kapp for choosing hit songs, working with many other musicians, and most importantly, diversifying his repertoire into several styles and genres. Kapp helped Crosby have number one hits in Christmas music, Hawaiian, and country music, and top-thirty hits in Irish music, French music, rhythm and blues, and ballads.
Crosby elaborated on an idea of Al Jolson’s: phrasing, or the art of making a song’s lyric ring true. “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.”
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. Billboard magazine used different methodologies during his career. But his chart success remains impressive: 396 chart singles, including roughly 25 No. 1 hits. Crosby had separate charting singles every 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. He may have been the best selling recording artist with up to 1 billion units sold. Statistician Joel Whitburn at Billboard determined that Crosby was America’s most successful recording act of the 1930s and again in the 1940s.
For fifteen years (1934, 1937, 1940, 1943–1954), Crosby was among the top top ten acts in box-office sales, and for five of those years (1944–1948) he topped 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).
A survey in 2000 found that with 1,077,900,000 movie tickets sold, Crosby was the third most popular actor of all time, behind Clark Gable (1,168,300,000) and John Wayne (1,114,000,000). The International Motion Picture Almanac lists him in a tie for second on the All Time Number One Stars List with Clint Eastwood, Tom Hanks, and Burt Reynolds. His most popular film, White Christmas, grossed $30 million in 1954 ($280 million in current value).
He received 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 when Crosby’s record sales were low. Before 1958, record companies awarded gold records. Universal Music, owner of Crosby’s Decca catalog, has never requested RIAA certification for any of his hit singles.
Crosby charted 23 Billboard hits from 47-recorded songs with the Andrews Sisters, whose Decca record sales were second only to Crosby’s throughout the 1940s. They were his most frequent collaborators on disc from 1939 to 1952, a partnership that 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 sang together on radio throughout the 1940s and 1950s. They appeared as guests on each other’s shows and on Armed Forces Radio Service during and after World War II. The quartet’s Top-10 Billboard hits from 1943 to 1945 include “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?)” and helped morale of the American public.
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 he was inducted into the Hit Parade Hall of Fame and in 2008 the Western Music Hall of Fame.
Entrepreneurship — Role in early tape recording:
During the Golden Age of Radio, performers had to create their shows live, sometimes even redoing the program a second time for the west coast time zone. Crosby had to do two live radio shows on the same day, three hours apart, for the East and West Coasts. 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 musicians’ union and ASCAP, which wanted to ensure continued work for their members also reinforced the live production of radio shows.) In On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio, 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 also 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, for innovations in audio. But NBC and CBS refused to broadcast prerecorded radio programs. Crosby left the network and remained off the air for seven months, creating a legal battle with his sponsor Kraft that was settled out of court. He returned to broadcasting for the last 13 weeks of the 1945–1946 seasons.
The Mutual network, on the other hand, pre-recorded some of its programs as early as 1938 for The Shadow with Orson Welles. ABC was formed from the sale of the NBC Blue Network in 1943 after a federal antitrust suit and 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 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 (40-cm) lacquer discs that played ten minutes per side at 33 1/3 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 golf. He did record his first Philco Radio Time program in August 1947 so he could enter the Jasper National Park Invitational Golf Tournament in September when the radio season was to start. But golf was not the most important reason. He wanted better quality recording, the ability to eliminate mistakes and the need to perform a second live show for the West Coast, and to control the timing of his performances. Because Bing Crosby Enterprises produced the show, he could purchase the best audio equipment and arrange the microphones his way; microphone placement had been debated in studios since the beginning of the electrical era. He would no longer have to wear the toupee that CBS and NBC required 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 him to make more money by finding a loophole where the IRS couldn’t tax him at a 77% rate.
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 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 Ampex, which he 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 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 the intent to produce more machines. In 1948, the second season of Philco shows was recorded with the Ampex Model 200A and Scotch 111 tape from 3M. 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 started the tape recorder revolution in America. In his 1950 film Mr. Music, he is seen singing into an Ampex tape recorder that reproduced his voice better than anything else. Also quick to adopt tape recording was his friend Bob Hope. He gave one of the first Ampex Model 300 recorders to his friend, guitarist Les Paul, which led to Paul’s invention of multitrack recording. His organization, the Crosby Research Foundation, held tape recording patents and developed equipment and recording techniques such as the laugh track that are still in use today.
With Frank Sinatra, Crosby was of the principal backers for the United Western Recorders studio complex in Los Angeles.
Videotape development:
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. The Fireside Theater (1950) sponsored by Procter & Gamble, was his first television production. Mullin had not yet succeeded with videotape, so Crosby filmed the series of 26-minute shows at the Hal Roach Studios, and the “telefilms” were syndicated to individual television stations.
Crosby continued to finance the development of videotape. Bing Crosby Enterprises 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 station ownership:
A Crosby-led group purchased station KCOP-TV, in Los Angeles, California, in 1954. NAFI Corporation and Crosby purchased television station KPTV in Portland, Oregon, for $4 million on September 1, 1959. In 1960, NAFI purchased KCOP from Crosby’s group. In the early 1950s, Crosby helped establish the CBS television affiliate in his hometown of Spokane, Washington. He partnered with Ed Craney, who owned the CBS radio affiliate KXLY (AM) and built a television studio west of Crosby’s alma mater, Gonzaga University. After it began broadcasting, the station was sold within a year to Northern Pacific Radio and Television Corporation.
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. Charles’ son, Lindsay C. Howard, became one of Crosby’s closest friends; Crosby named his son Lindsay after him, and would purchase his 40-room Hillsborough, California 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.[68] 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.
Sports:
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 his death, he owned a 25% share of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Although he was passionate about the 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 its radio broadcast. Crosby had arranged for Ampex, another of his financial investments, to record the NBC telecast 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, Crosby hosted the first ‘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 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.
Crosby was a keen fisherman especially in his younger days but it was a pastime that he enjoyed throughout his life. In the summer of 1966 he spent a week as the guest of Lord Egremont, staying in Cockermouth and fishing on the River Derwent. His trip was filmed for The American Sportsman on ABC, although all did not go well at first as the salmon were not running. He did make up for it at the end of the week by catching a number of sea trout.
Personal life:
Crosby was married twice. His first wife was actress and nightclub singer Dixie Lee to whom he was married from 1930 until her death from ovarian cancer in 1952. They had four sons: Gary, twins Dennis and Phillip, and Lindsay. The Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman (1947) is based on Lee’s life. The Crosby family lived at 10500 Camarillo Street in North Hollywood for over five years. After his wife died, Crosby had relationships with model Pat Sheehan (who married his son Dennis in 1958) and actresses Inger Stevens and Grace Kelly before marrying actress Kathryn Grant, who converted to Catholicism, in 1957. They had three children: Harry Lillis III (who played Bill in Friday the 13th), Mary (best known for portraying Kristin Shepard on TV’s Dallas), and Nathaniel (the 1981 U.S. Amateur champion in golf).
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. According to Giddins, Crosby told his son Gary to stay away from alcohol, adding, “It killed your mother” and suggesting he smoke marijuana instead. Crosby told Barbara Walters in a 1977 televised interview that he thought marijuana should be legalized.
After Crosby’s death, his eldest son, Gary, wrote a highly critical memoir, Going My Own Way, depicting his father as cruel, cold, remote, and physically and psychologically abusive.
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.
Crosby’s younger son Phillip vociferously disputed his brother Gary’s claims about their father. Around the time Gary made his claims, Phillip stated to the press that “Gary is a whining, bitching crybaby, walking around with a two-by-four on his shoulder and just daring people to nudge it off.” Nevertheless, 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 an interview 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.
However, Dennis and Lindsay Crosby confirmed that Bing sometimes subjected his sons to harsh physical discipline and verbal put-downs. Regarding the writing of Gary’s memoir, Lindsay said, “I’m glad [Gary] did it. I hope it clears up a lot of the old lies and rumors.” Unlike Gary, though, Lindsay stated that he preferred to remember “all the good things I did with my dad and forget the times that were rough.” When the book was published, Dennis distanced himself by calling it “Gary’s business” but did not publicly deny its claims. Bing’s younger brother, singer and jazz bandleader Bob Crosby, recalled at the time of Gary’s revelations that Bing was a “disciplinarian,” as their mother and father had been. He added, “We were brought up that way.” In an interview for the same article, Gary clarified that Bing “was like a lot of fathers of that time. He was not out to be vicious, to beat children for his kicks.”
Crosby’s will established a blind trust in which none of the sons received an inheritance until they reached the age of 65.
Lindsay Crosby died in 1989 at age 51, and Dennis Crosby died in 1991 at age 56, both by suicide from self-inflicted gunshot wounds. Gary Crosby died of lung cancer in 1995 at age 62, and Phillip Crosby died of a heart attack in 2004 at age 69.
Widow Kathryn Crosby dabbled in local theater productions intermittently and appeared in television tributes to her late husband. Nathaniel Crosby, Crosby’s younger son from his second marriage, is a former high-level golfer who won the U.S. Amateur in 1981 at age 19, becoming the youngest winner in the history of that event at the time. Harry Crosby is an investment banker who occasionally makes singing appearances.
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 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 through his sister Mary Rose, Carolyn Schneider, published the laudatory book Me and Uncle Bing.
There have been disputes between Crosby’s two families beginning in the late 1990s. When Dixie died in 1952, her will provided that her share of the community property be distributed in trust to her sons. After Crosby’s death in 1977, he left the residue of his estate to a marital trust for the benefit of his widow, Kathryn, and HLC Properties, Ltd., was formed for the purpose of managing his interests, including his right of publicity. In 1996, Dixie’s trust sued HLC and Kathryn for declaratory relief as to the trust’s entitlement to interest, dividends, royalties, and other income derived from the community property of Crosby and Dixie. In 1999, the parties settled for approximately $1.5 million. Relying on a retroactive amendment to the California Civil Code, Dixie’s trust brought suit again, in 2010, alleging that Crosby’s right of publicity was community property, and that Dixie’s trust was entitled to a share of the revenue it produced. The trial court granted Dixie’s trust’s claim. The California Court of Appeal reversed, however, holding that the 1999 settlement barred the claim. In light of the court’s ruling, it was unnecessary for the court to decide whether a right of publicity can be characterized as community property under California law.
Illness and death:
Following his recovery from a life-threatening fungal infection of his right lung in January 1974, Crosby emerged from semi-retirement to start a new spate of albums and concerts. In March 1977, after videotaping a concert at the Ambassador Auditorium in Pasadena for CBS to commemorate his 50th anniversary in show business, and with Bob Hope looking on, Crosby fell off the stage into an orchestra pit, rupturing a disc in his back requiring a month in the hospital. His first performance after the accident was his last American concert, on August 16, 1977 (the day singer Elvis Presley died). When the electric power failed during his performance, he continued singing without amplification.
In September, Crosby, his family and singer Rosemary Clooney began a concert tour of Britain that included two weeks at the London Palladium. While in the UK, Crosby recorded his final album, Seasons, and his final TV Christmas special with guest David Bowie on September 11 (which aired a little over a month after Crosby’s death). His last concert was in the Brighton Centre on October 10, four days before his death, with British entertainer Dame Gracie Fields in attendance. The following day he made his final appearance in a recording studio and sang eight songs at the BBC Maida Vale studios for a radio program, which also included an interview with Alan Dell. Accompanied by the Gordon Rose Orchestra, Crosby’s last recorded performance was of the song “Once in a While”. Later that afternoon, he met with Chris Harding to take photographs for the Seasons album jacket.
On October 13, 1977, Crosby flew alone to Spain to play golf and hunt partridge. On October 14, at the La Moraleja Golf Course near Madrid, Crosby played 18 holes of golf. His partner was World Cup champion Manuel Piñero; their opponents were club president César de Zulueta and Valentín Barrios. According to Barrios, Crosby was in good spirits throughout the day, and was photographed several times during the round. At the ninth hole, construction workers building a house nearby recognized him, and when asked for a song, Crosby sang “Strangers in the Night”. Crosby, who had a 13 handicap, lost to his partner by one stroke. As Crosby and his party headed back to the clubhouse, Crosby said, “That was a great game of golf, fellas.” However his last words were reportedly, “That was a great game of golf, fellas” and then “Let’s get a Coke.” At about 6:30 pm, Crosby collapsed about 20 yards from the clubhouse entrance and died instantly from a massive heart attack. At the clubhouse and later in the ambulance, house physician Dr. Laiseca tried to revive him, but was unsuccessful. At Reina Victoria Hospital he was administered the last rites of the Catholic Church and was pronounced dead. On October 18, following a private funeral Mass at St. Paul’s Catholic Church in Westwood, Crosby was buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California. A plaque was placed at the golf course in his memory.
Legacy:
One of three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6769 Hollywood Blvd. He is a member of the National Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame in the radio division. The family created an official website on October 14, 2007, the 30th anniversary of Crosby’s death. In his autobiography Don’t Shoot, It’s Only Me! (1990), 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 titled “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…”
Bing Crosby Stadium in Front Royal, Virginia, was named after Crosby in honor of his fundraising and cash contributions for its construction from 1948 to 1950. In 2006, the former Metropolitan Theater of Performing Arts (‘The Met’) in Spokane, Washington was renamed to The Bing Crosby Theater. On June 25, 2019, The New York Times Magazine listed Bing Crosby among hundreds of artists whose material was reportedly destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.
