22

HOMECOMING

The interesting part of Bing to me is that he likes to be with jockeys, with millionaires, with beach boys and with caddies. He likes colorful people; he likes people who are amusing and aren’t phonies. He’s an unphony man. He’s so distant, but he’s a very genuine man.

— Johnny Mercer (1974) ¹

As trying as the book experience must have been throughout 1937, Larry looked beyond it to help craft one of the most pleasing publicity events of Bing’s career, his official return to his hometown — twelve years to the month after he and Rinker drove off in their Tin Lizzy. Spokane had made overtures as far back as 1932, when hundreds of people signed a valentine, placed on display at a theater showing one of his Sennett shorts and then mailed to Bing in care of the New York Paramount. By 1937 he contemplated taking Kraft Music Hall on the road. When his old friend Mike Pecarovich, Gonzaga’s football coach, visited him in Hollywood, Bing pressed him with questions about summer training and said he might attend the September game between Gonzaga and Washington State, might even stay a week and do the show up there.

Pecarovich reported the conversation, and Gonzaga responded with alacrity, offering Bing an honorary doctorate, the only one he would ever accept. The timing was perfect, as his visit would coincide with the university’s fiftieth anniversary, its jubilee. Cal Kuhl and Kraft were delighted with the idea. Bing was committed to raising money for Gonzaga, a project that occupied much of his attention over the next forty years. He took the matter in hand and dictated a letter, which Larry amended with a few details before mailing to Bing’s revered disciplinarian, the Reverend Curtis J. Sharp. Bing told Sharp that the event would have to be in October and that he would bring a well-known actor who had graduated from a Jesuit school, perhaps Pat O’Brien, Edmund Lowe, Andy Devine, or Walter Connolly, plus a band and other performers. Kuhl wanted to reserve the last five minutes of the broadcast for the presentation of the degree, Bing noted, so he needed to know the precise particulars and timing of the ceremony.

Paramount also got into the act. Bing wrote: “We are going to run a contest open to residents of the Pacific Northwest to select a boy and girl, both amateurs and both under twenty-one, to come to Hollywood for a screen test and possibly a part in a Paramount picture.” ² Bing, Kuhl, and others would choose the winners after entrants had been narrowed to a group of finalists. He added: “For the Kraft show, it is not considered a good thing to charge admission, so we will probably have to broadcast from a point where only a couple of hundred people would be admitted. Later they propose to give a monster dance and entertainment at the Armory, using the Dorsey band for dancing, and with Burns and myself and other acts we should have enough to put on a pretty good show.” Bing offered to give two performances (“if not too strenuous”), “one for $1.10 which would admit everybody to the Armory or Auditorium and another for $10.00 a couple, for the people on Cannon Hill or those who think they can afford such a stiff tariff…. I’ll be pleased to hear from you with any suggestions you might have relative to the show itself as a medium of garnering some shekels for the school.” ³

Sharp mailed him the Latin diploma and a tribute he wrote (along with citations for phrases he borrowed from Tennyson and Horace), which was to be read by the Reverend Leo Robinson, the president of Gonzaga. He enclosed an English translation of the diploma “for the less enlightened brothers in your troupe.” ⁴ Sharp assured Bing he was doing all he could to keep their plans from leaking to the press, per Bing’s request, adding in an aside that Pecarovich, to whom Bing had given a small bit in Waikiki Wedding, “is all agog about his part in your new picture Double or Nothing. Spokane certainly has had him over the barrel, paddling him generously.” ⁵ Larry wrote the school’s president that “Bing would prefer to arrive quietly without any fanfare, as our first item is the Mass, and then a day of radio rehearsal and the program with which no festivities must interfere.” ⁶

Larry went public in early August with the news that Bing would broadcast from Spokane and receive an honorary degree in music, causing much consternation at Gonzaga when the faculty realized that, not having a graduate school in music, the school could not confer such a doctorate. They changed it to doctor of philosophy, reasoning that philosophy was a staple of a Jesuit education, but Gonzaga did not graduate philosophers, either. The astute Sharp intended to correctly present Bing with a doctor of letters, yet the mistake was allowed to stand, by which time the press was so confused that the Spokesman-Review reported he would receive “the degree of doctor of philosophy in music.” ⁷

The Bing Crosby Talent Contest commenced a few weeks later. One could not help but notice that many applicants signed on with names that would not have made it onto a Hollywood marquee, although a few may have been invented for just that purpose: Carrie Mae Halz, Lyle Dolge, Grant Noble, Mrs. Charles Rainbow, Evelyn Thrasp, Hollis E. Wood.

Anticipation for the big weekend was stimulated by numerous news stories. Bing gave advice on how to hear your own voice by talking to a door; Jimmy Monaco and Johnny Burke wrote a marching song for GU; semifinalists were chosen for the Paramount competition; “Johnny” Trotter and Perry Botkin posed with Bing as they planned the show (Trotter had replaced Dorsey in the months since the original proposal); Pecarovitch announced that Bing was to be his assistant coach when Gonzaga’s Bulldogs met the San Francisco Dons. The papers endlessly retold stories of the flivver, Rinker, Mildred, Whiteman, and Barris, as though they were grizzled fables collected by Bulfinch. “SEE! — MEET! — HEAR! BING CROSBY,” the advertisements bellowed: “DINE With the Stars” Thursday at Civic Auditorium (five dollars a plate); “LAUGH With the Stars” Friday at the Armory (one-, two-, three-dollar tickets); “DANCE With the Stars” Saturday at Natatorium Park (ladies one dollar, men a dollar fifty); “CHEER With the Stars” Sunday afternoon at GU Stadium ($1.15, $1.75, $2.30 tickets). ⁸

At last the day arrived, October 21: Bing’s train pulled in at 7:00 A.M., without fuss, and he went directly to the university for mass. His retinue included Joe Perry, who had produced his monumental hit of the year, “Sweet Leilani,” the best selling disc since 1929; his old friend Connie Boswell (formerly of the Boswell Sisters), with whom he recorded his current chartbuster, “Bob White”; his KMH guests, Edmund Lowe and Mary Carlisle; Bob Burns, Trotter and the band, Ken Carpenter, and Johnny Burke. A week earlier Ted was under the impression that Louis Armstrong was coming; if that was the case (Louis is not mentioned in the other existing correspondence), he may have been pulled because of a question Ted, who helped to arrange lodgings, ingenuously posed: “One thing — how about accommodations for Louis Armstrong. How do you handle that?” ⁹Larry had arrived earlier in the week, as advance man. Harry and Kate followed. In a photograph taken by the Spokane Chronicle, Bing, wearing a mortarboard and gown and holding his degree, stands with his parents, Larry, and Ted, all looking inappropriately dour. Everett drove up later in the day. Dixie did not make the trip, as she was seven months pregnant.

After mass, at a commencement (rather than on the air), Bing received his degree. The statement written by Sharp and read by Robinson took note of Bing’s technological handmaidens: “two of the greatest scientific achievements of the age, the radio and the cinema,” whereby “the voice and personality of Harry Lillis Crosby have brought pleasure and many a happy moment to millions of his fellow men.” It went on to praise his “steadfast loyalty and unswerving fidelity to his Alma Mater and his firm adherence to the principles of uprightness and moral courage taught by the University he attended.” ¹⁰ Bing later recalled, “I almost broke down.” ¹¹

From Gonzaga they trouped to City Hall, where Bing was named honorary mayor and Burns honorary chief of police. The KMH show and banquet followed that night. Thousands attended the various events, including the talent contest at the Fox Theatre, where the queuing began at 2:00 for a 9:30 curtain. Bing and Burns left the banquet to make a brief appearance at the Fox and return with the winners, chosen by Ted Lesser and James Moore, the head of Para-mount’s talent department and the studio’s chief test director, respectively. Preliminary events reduced the field of a thousand contestants to a group of ten. Lesser assigned parts to the actors, and Moore filmed them, in case, Lesser observed, “talent develops that we can use outside of the winners.” ¹² As it happened, he found talent outside the circle of finalists. An attractive blonde named Barbara Ruth Rogers caught his eye selling tickets at a theater. Surprised but pleased by her good luck, she told a reporter, “I never thought much about pictures, but probably had the thought in the back of my head.” ¹³ Paramount signed her along with one contest winner, Janet Waldo, to two-year contracts; they appeared in numerous movies over the next twenty-four months, before the bubble burst, first as walk-ons, then in supporting roles, and finally as leads in Poverty Row westerns. Waldo went on to enjoy a long and prominent radio career.

Perhaps Bing was contemplating the likely future of young contract players or recalling his own futile auditions, because he was said to appear nervous at the show, furiously smoking his pipe and relieved to pass the mike to Bob Burns, who passed it to Carpenter, the evening’s emcee. He was radiant, however, the next night at the Armory, presiding at a two-and-a-half-hour show before an elated audience of 3,500 — and in a tuxedo! When Carpenter introduced him, he brought down the house addressing the crowd as “fellow citizens.” He continued, “You shouldn’t thank me for coming here. Rather, I should thank you most sincerely for what you have done for me and for the honor which Gonzaga University has bestowed upon me. We came here to do something for Gonzaga and Spokane.” ¹⁴ The highlight of the show was his duet with Connie Boswell on “Basin Street Blues.”

Bing could do no wrong that week. In addition to raising more than $10,000 for the Gonzaga Athletic Fund, he presented the team with a $1,000 water wagon to replace paper cups carried around at halftime on a tray. (They lost anyway.) He visited a “home for unfortunate girls,” ¹⁵ called the House of the Good Shepherd, where he dedicated tennis courts, signed autographs, crooned a cappella, and executed a buck and wing. At the Shrine Children’s Hospital, he walked among the beds with ready wit, talking and singing to one child after another — “My Little Buckaroo” to the smallest boy in the group, “Sweet Leilani” to a girl in a head-to-foot cast with only her eyes showing. He staged an impromptu performance for the student priests at Mount St. Michael. He visited Inland Products, the former brewery that had brought the Crosbys east from Tacoma, and other haunts of his youth. On October 25 Bing boarded the train for Los Angeles. At a stop in Klamath Falls, Oregon, he was greeted by a crowd of 2,000. Call him lucky: the next day he abandoned the train in Oakland to attend the races at San Mateo. His horse High Strike won the Home Bred Handicap.

The four days cost Bing the substantial sum of $5,000. The headliners came out of friendship, but Trotter’s band left five network shows without their regular musicians, and substitutes had to be paid, as did extra wire charges for broadcasting from Spokane. From a public-relations angle, it was a bargain; the national publicity was so upbeat, it started a wave of great-guy stories that all but washed away the drunk sailors, taxes, picket line, Mysterious Montague, and familial rancor. Three years earlier the Los Angeles Examiner had deemed him a “guardian angel” for seeing Mack Sennett through a period of financial hardship. ¹⁶ That kind of news item now became commonplace. In fact, within days of his return to Paramount, Bing was declared a lifesaver by makeup man Wylann Fieltz, whom Bing came upon unconscious in his dressing room and rushed to a hospital for an emergency appendectomy.

Bing’s good deeds often concerned friends in the jazz world. In May 1937 he organized a five-hour benefit for the tubercular pianist Joe Sullivan at Pan-Pacific Auditorium. The 6,000 who attended and the tens of thousands who listened on the radio heard one of the Swing Era’s benchmark evenings. Bing instructed Everett and Larry to produce the best swing concert ever, and the performers included Bing, Connie Boswell, Red Norvo, Johnny Mercer, Ella Logan, the guitar duo of Dick McDonough and Carl Kress, and the orchestras of Woody Herman, Earl Hines, Ray Noble, Jimmy Dorsey, Louis Prima, Harry Owens, Jimmy Grier, Victor Young, and Ben Pollack. It broke the house record and raised $3,000 for Sullivan. The next February Down Beat printed a story — “Bing Crosby (Dr. of Square Shooting) Known as Squarest Guy in Hollywood” — that itemized instances when he came to the aid of friends, often by giving them work in films or on radio: “Whenever the stork is hovering over a Hollywood home, the prospective ‘Pappy’ usually finds himself on Bing’s program as a guest star — such were the cases of Andy Devine and Harry Barris.” ¹⁷At Easter he donated a $1,600 organ to St. Charles Church in North Hollywood, dedicating it with a few hymns. For a man who resisted the press, he had the press in thrall.

The gusher of goodwill soared after January 5, 1938, when Dixie gave birth to her fourth son (Bing told Variety they outfitted the nursery for a girl, hoping that might reverse their track record). Lindsay Harry was named for Lindsay Howard, with whom Bing founded Binglin Stock Farm that very week, and Bing’s father. Quieter than the colicky Gary or the competitive twins, Linny (as he was called) would be the most indulged of the boys, though his life, marked by severe depression, would be no easier. “Linny was the only one of us with brown eyes,” Gary recalled. “He differed in other ways as well. He was a quiet, dreamy, unaggressive child who read a lot, got good marks in school and liked to draw and paint.” ¹⁸ In the excitement surrounding his arrival, all seemed rosy in the Crosby household and in what was rapidly becoming the Crosbys’ world. Weeks after Linny appeared, the New York Journal-American editorialized that Bing’s “current eminence” was one of “the grand stories” of the past year and hailed him as “the typical American, still young yet the father of four boys, singing his way honestly through life and brightening the way of others with his affable, smiling, melodious voice which radiates friendliness in the loudspeaker.” ¹⁹

Bing was celebrated in one poll as Hollywood’s most typical father, and there were no signs that anything was amiss. Dixie’s drinking was under control, she entertained, she accompanied Bing to numerous social functions. But trouble was around the corner, in part an unexpected consequence of Bing’s homecoming broadcast, which spurred him to take subsequent programs on the road, requiring longer absences from home. A year or two later, Dixie and the marriage would be in trouble, but not yet. “The children were all lovely boys,” Dixie’s friend Pauline Weislow recalled, “and she was very involved when they were young. She meant to be a wonderful parent. What was so very interesting is that such public persons as Bing and Dixie were so private.” ²⁰

Since the demise of her film career, Dixie had reluctantly agreed to a few professional appearances, among them a guest spot on Al Jolson’s radio show and a 1936 recording session with Bing, at which they sang two superb songs by Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields, introduced that year by Astaire and Rogers in Swing Time. Astaire, Billie Holiday, and Guy Lombardo enjoyed hits with the arch “A Fine Romance” and the incomparably wistful “The Way You Look Tonight”; Bing and Dixie did not. But their renditions have a unique, unforgettable pathos that sets them apart. Bing’s expertise at duets, from his apprenticeship with Al Rinker to his give-and-take with the Mills Brothers, was already known, though his unrivaled finesse as a quick-witted, funny, supportive partner of other singers was truly confirmed a couple of years later in records with Connie Boswell and Johnny Mercer. With Dixie, he is relatively guarded, but his formality is protective, mandated by their inability to sing in the same key. Their musical seclusion underscores an emotional detachment, despite Victor Young’s spare and affectionate arrangements, which were devised to accommodate their disparate ranges.

Young was abetted by the material itself. “The Way You Look Tonight,” one of the incontestable triumphs of American popular song, has two enharmonic changes, signaled by a transitional instrumental figure built into the melody — leading in to and out of the release. Young shrewdly employs those transitions to facilitate and minimize the shift in keys that occurs every eight bars, as Bing and Dixie exchange passages of that length. With his wide range and finesse, Bing carries the burden of those shifts, which are brought off so well that the listener is barely aware of the elevator ride transporting each singer to a harmonically suitable floor. Yet the manipulation of keys distances Bing and Dixie, who harmonize only briefly, on the title phrase. They sound at times as isolated as if they had been wired in from different studios, she passive and wounded, he expert and strong. Dixie’s melancholy nasality, though passé, emanates feeling. Their attempts at humor on “A Fine Romance” are tense, despite Bing’s fleeting mimicry of W. C. Fields (“potatoes”) and Martha Raye (“oh boy”), but “The Way You Look Tonight” is an affecting record, lacking an essential bond of communication and in that absence striking a forlorn, immensely touching chord.

Any pretense of continuing her career was long over for Dixie by the time Linny was born. Except for parties, she rarely sang in public. Once on a Sunday night at the Century Club, Bing coaxed her, and she sang “You Are My Lucky Star” to an audience that included Jimmy Dorsey, Joe Venuti, and Zeppo Marx. Mostly she sang in the house. Her son Phillip remembered her chirping along with Ella Fitzgerald’s “A-Tisket, A-Tasket” all day long. ²¹ When the kids accidentally broke the record, she ran out to buy another. Within a few years her shyness would congeal into reclusivity, but now she was regularly seen on Bing’s arm: watching the boxing matches at Wrigley Field or attending the racetrack, sipping cocktails to celebrate the engagement of Anne Shirley and John Payne or at a party at Barbara Stanwyck’s (Bing sang). She threw buffets for friends like the Johnny Burkes, the Edmund Lowes, the Johnny Mercers, the Joe Venutis, and the Andy Devines; celebrated anniversaries with the Pat O’Briens and the Joe E. Browns. The Crosbys dined at Chasen’s and the Cocoanut Grove and the House of Murphy; after the races they stopped for drinks at Cafe La Maze or Club 17. When Bing appeared as a guest on the debut of Paul Whiteman’s new Chesterfield show, she improvised a soiree, and she was there to cheer the gala debut of Earl Carroll’s theater and restaurant.

And as if their dance cards were not filled top to bottom, Bing and Dixie formed a mummers society, the Westwood Marching and Chowder Club (North Hollywood Branch). However much Bing was a product and innovator of technology, he remained a son of the nineteenth century and the show-business traditions that dominated his youth. Though he married one of its daughters, Bing continued to view the South as a musical-comical never-never land, a state of mind and a trove of irresistible material. “He did like southerners,” Kentucky’s Rosemary Clooney recalled. “He loved southern women — it was almost a prerequisite. He wouldn’t ask anyone if they were southern, but he got along with southerners very well.” ²²

The Marching and Chowder Club was spurred by the Crosbys’ friendship with their neighbors in Toluca Lake, Herb Polesie, a radio producer, and his wife, Mildred, whom everyone called Midge. (As Mildred Lovell, she wrote a society column for the New York Daily News). Phillip Crosby remembered Midge as a member of the circle of six who surrounded Dixie, along with Pauline Weislow, Kitty Sexton, Sue Carol, Alice Ross, and Julie Taurog, whom Phillip said had problems with her husband, director Norman Taurog, and spent more time at the Crosby home than at her own. Herb, who would soon produce Kraft Music Hall and two of Bing’s movies, was described by Phillip as “one of the nicest guys in the world.” ²³ A press release identified him as the Marching and Chowder Club’s president; the program for its first presentation, The Midgie Minstrels, credits him as “Interlocutor and ticket taker.”

The show was held in the Crosby home on April 16, 1938. John Mercer and Joe Venuti were the end men. Bing appeared, according to a program note, by permission of the Emanuel Cohen Minstrels. As most of the wives had show-business experience, they performed along with their husbands; the couples included the Pat O’Briens, Johnny Burkes, Johnny Mercers, Larry Crosbys, David Butlers, Joe Venutis, Edmund Lowes, and Perry Botkins. Kitty Sexton performed under her maiden (and Ziegfeld Follies) name, Rasch; her husband, the veterinarian, also did a number. Bing printed up the jocular playbill (“one performance only”):

Part the First

1.      Opening Chorus, “Hello, Hello”........... Ensemble

2.      Those Girls.......... Six bits of femininity or 75c worth of “Swanee”

3.      “Frivolous Sal”......... sung by Elsie Butler with Rita Lowe and her three mocking birds Off-Rhythm Boys, “Sailing Down Chesapeake Bay”

4.      James Monaco.......... The original Ragtime Jimmy From Red lights to kleig lights

5.      “That Ever-lovin’Ziegfeld Follies Baby” sung by Kitty Rasch (class of 1908)

6.      Larry Crosby.......... The “IT” Boy in “Oh My Garden” accompanied by THE Elaine Couper Off-Rhythm Boys, “Sweet Cider Time”

7.      “I Did It for the Red, White and Blue” The Merry Mercers, Ginger and John

8.      Jerry Colonna.......... “The Clean Shaven Fillip” Encore, “Louisville Lou” if requested

9.      Perry (Union) and Virginia Botkin Two folks and one guitar

10.  First Act Finale, “When You Wore a Tulip,” Ensemble

Crackerjack, large peanuts and exceptional popcorn between the acts by David Butler, concessionaire. Very good prizes too.

Part the Second

1.      The Natchez Sunshine Four.......... in “Bits and Tidbits” “Jungle Town”

2.      Lee & Burke, or Burke & Lee.......... Dixie and Johnny in a potpourri of Chatter, Patter and Ja-Da

3.      Ray Mayer.......... The Masked Musical Marvel Demonstrates his latest invention THE PIANOLA

4.      Bessie Patterson.......... A Lass and a Lasso! Off-Rhythm Boys singing “Dearie Please Don’t Be Angry”

5.      Joe Venuti.......... The jiving alligator, or a bit of burp accompanied by Sally

6.      Bing Crosby.......... Refreshments served gratis in lobby during recital

7.      A lull

8.      Pat O’Brien.......... A bit of very old Erin

9.      The Yacht Club Boys.......... Why?

10.  Dr. William Sexton.......... For Men Only

11.  Edmund Lowe.......... And away we go!

12.  Finale “Waiting for the Robert E. Lee”

Entire Company

The above program, subject to change with plenty of notice. No money refunded once the curtain goes up. If it goes up. ²⁴

Though blackface was confined chiefly to an end-men number by Venuti and Mercer, the costumes replicated the wry buffoonery of an old-time minstrel show, with satiny stripes, clashing plaids, and bowlers or top hats. Bing looked especially natty in a black frock coat, broad-plaid trousers, a close-plaid vest with a watch fob, polka-dot bow tie, and top hat. O’Brien wore a suit of silver satin. Bessie Burke wore a studded leather belt, a satin blouse, cowboy hat, and chaps of sheep’s wool with cutouts to display her buttocks. Johnny Burke and Dixie wore matching suits with fitted trousers and waistcoats, bow ties, and bowlers. The women in the sextet number blended satin, gingham, lace, and outlandish hats. David Butler tied a leopard skin over rolled-up trousers and cowboy shirt for a number with an unbilled John Scott Trotter.

Within weeks telegrams hastily went out for the club’s second meeting:

THE WESTWOOD HILLS MARCHING AND CHOWDER CLUB NORTH HOLLYWOOD BRANCH ASKS YOU TO ITS 2ND BREAKWAY MINSTREL SHOW TO BE PERPETRATED AT 10500 CAMARILLO NORTHHOLLYWOOD AT 7 PM JUNE 25TH. BRING YOUR OWN ACT AND COSTUME OR COME AND KNOCK YOURSELF OUT. CALL MISS ROSS AT NH 5645 WITH ACCEPTANCE OR ALIBI. SUPPER AT MIDNIGHT.

— DIXIE AND BING CROSBY ²⁵

This show rounded up most of the same cast, along with Ken Murray, Wesley Ruggles, Jimmy Monaco, Andy Devine, Bill Frawley, Eddie Sutherland, Skeets Gallagher, and Fred MacMurray. Trotter led a five-piece band that included Tommy Dorsey and Spike Jones. Now titled The Breakaway Minstrel Show, the company performed in a huge tent erected on the Crosby tennis court, with an elaborate proscenium arch and a painted backdrop. ²⁶ The showstopper came early, after an ensemble chorus of “Hello, Hello” and “The Little Ladies, God Bless ‘Em, in good ole ‘Swanee River.’” Lasses Mercer and Chitlins Crosby offered an “erudite analyseration of swing,” ²⁷ based on the vaudeville classic “Mr. Gallagher and Mr. Shean.” Mercer wrote the lyric, an off-the-wall parody of jazz history; but what dazzled the audience was the smooth running wit of the neovaudevillians delivering it.

JM: Oh, Mr. Crosby [BC hums], Dear Dr. Crosby [BC scats]

Is it true that swing’s another name for jazz? [BC scats]

And the first place it was played

Was a New Orleans Parade

And the Southern Negro gave it all it has?

BC: Oh, Mr. Mercer, Mr. Mercer, Mr. Mercer,

Mr. Mercer, I believe that its foundation came from them

[JM: Are you positive?]

Yeesss. They just slowed the tempo down

And then they really went to town.

JM: Allegretto, Mr. Crosby?

BC: Alligators, Mr. M.

….

BC: Mr. Mercer, [JM: Yes?] Oh, Mr. Mercer, [JM: Hm-hmm?]

Well, I trust that I have made the matter clear.

[JM: It’s really too clear.]

So when someone plays a thing

You’re gonna understand it’s swing

And appreciate the rhythm that you hear.

JM: Oh, Mr. Crosby, [BC: Oh, hear me talking to ya]. No, Mr. Crosby

[BC scats]

I’m afraid that type of rhythm’s not for me.

I prefer my music played

A la Schubert serenade.

BC: Sort of ritardo, Mr. Mercer?

JM: Sort of Lombardo, Mr. C. ²⁸

The number went over so well that Bing and Mercer recorded it six days later for Decca, producing a major hit (hailed by Time as “the summer’s most amusing ditty”), ²⁹ an unflappable duet that remains a standard for rhythmic joshing on the boundary between vaudeville and jazz. They also recorded Hoagy Carmichael’s “Small Fry,” a more conventional reverie with southern minstrel badinage, which they performed with Fred MacMurray (“Fred plays the old dame”) in the tent show, re-creating a scene from the as-yet-unreleased Sing You Sinners. Other highlights found Bing, as Gene Krupa Krosby, joining with Kenny Goodman Murray and Lionel Hampton Burke on “Maggie Blues”; and as Cracklins Crosby, rendering the classic “Nobody” (“Lifted bodily from a Bert Williams record”), which he later sang successfully on radio; the broadcast performance was issued as a Decca recording.

Bing’s “private” shows, including impromptu productions at his golf and track meets, entranced much of Hollywood, adding to an allure that impressed his colleagues. In a town plagued by fear, he was seemingly fearless. His persona reflected an independence as admirable as it was rare. James Cagney had appeared as a guest on Kraft Music Hall early in 1937, but it was a year later, while listening to the show at his farm on Martha’s Vineyard, that he experienced something of an epiphany about Bing. “I knew at once that this was a most extraordinary fella. I actually started to write a piece about him, ‘The Miracle Known as Crosby,’ but after a page or two, I stopped. I realized he was just beginning, and would add up to even more than he was.” ³⁰ Cagney was one of many KMH guests who marveled at his enigmatic grace.

A few weeks after the June Breakaway Minstrel Show, a young journalist named Marie Manovill wrote to several of Bing’s radio guests, asking them to discuss his good and bad points. Lotte Lehmann observed, “It is very difficult for me to say whether the charm of his personality or the charm of his songs is more appealing to me.” ³¹ The only correspondent who ventured any criticism was Rose Bampton. She began by remarking on Bing’s ability to work hard and yet “make everyone about him feel that he is taking life easily, which is quite unique. Especially, since his work is always done and done well.” ³² She pointed to the improvement in his singing as evidence of his labor and credited his “sincerity and absolute honesty” as additional reasons for his success. She continued:

If one were hunting for bad points, I think his only one would be that perhaps he is too self-effacing. I can recall the occasion of one broadcast which demanded that Bing learn an arrangement of the sextette of “Lucia.” Bing insisted that he didn’t read music, that he wasn’t a good musician, yet in spite of all this, inside of fifteen minutes he was singing as nonchalantly as any opera singer a most difficult arrangement which had been allotted to him.

By this little criticism I do not mean to say that one must be arrogant, but surely Bing should be cognizant a little more of his own quite unique ability and standing.

But then, perhaps that is just one of the reasons why every artist who is on his program comes away with a feeling of having made a very sincere new friend, and is just another Crosby fan for ever after. ³³

Bampton had hit on something. Her “little criticism” was much echoed, privately and in the press, as Bing’s movies became increasingly routine; observers wondered why he seemed more energetic in pursuing golf and the ponies than in broadening his range as a performer. The public, of course, was satisfied. Bing was treasured in and out of the business. Hollywood had adopted him as its favorite crooner back when the Rhythm Boys played the Montmartre Cafe. The Marching and Chowder Club affirmed his likableness with insiders and amused the public when it learned of the get-togethers, initially through a charity-raising performance on Tommy Dorsey’s Raleigh-Kool Show. The MCC sponsored a quintet: violinist Jack Benny, clarinetist Ken Murray, cornetist Dick Powell, pianist Shirley Ross, and drummer Bing.

An eager Paramount publicist ran with the ball: the Marching and Chowder Club performed every month (no less) and “turned back the pages of time to the gay ‘90s” with “approximately 150 stars” (no less). Why stop there? The Floradora Sextette number alone, he marveled, would “cost $500,000 to put on the screen.” ³⁴ Bing may have considered the ballyhoo a mistake, because Paramount quickly retreated with a bulletin that began on a more ominous note: “The screen colony’s ‘open door’ policy is a thing of the past.” ³⁵ This release grieved for the film stars who were harassed by “chiseling hangers-on, blackmailers, souvenir hunters, and gate-crashing celebrity hunters”; they had no choice but to pare down parties and guest lists. “The West Side [sic] Marching and Chowder Club,” it noted, hired “special guards to keep out the uninvited.” ³⁶ The Westwood revelers retired until 1940.

The mummers shows demonstrate Bing’s capacity for fun, penchant for masks, and love for the venerable traditions of show business. They also underscore a leadership capacity he exercised more readily in his private life than in his professional one. If Bing was an unbending force who went his own way in his own time, he did not consider himself or want to be considered the architect of his career.

Like the indifferent college student who was pushed to the brink of show business by high schoolers, like the singing star who adopted the vision of his record producer, and like the radio star who had to be cajoled into spontaneity, Bing continued to heed the advice of those he deemed savvier than himself. Disciplined, inscrutable, and innovative artist that he was, he pretended to leave the big decisions to others as long as they suited his purposes. For example, at the time of the MCC shows, he accepted a ten-year contract, without options, to continue as Kraft Music Hall’s host. It was the longest commitment offered to anyone in radio history and would ultimately haunt NBC, when Bing made one of the biggest decisions of his life, to break free in 1946, and a judge ruled that a covenant of that length amounted to indentured servitude.

Playtime was another story: he called the shots. As Phil Harris recalled, “I knew him well enough to wait for him to call me.” ³⁷ In the late 1930s most of the calls he made were focused on making the Del Mar racetrack a going concern. Toward that end, the money Bing put up — essential though it was — probably counted for less than his investment in energy and commitment. He coasted through the filming of Double or Nothing as if it were merely a venture to fill spare time. “When not actually working in a scene or learning a song,” a reporter noted, “he was on the telephone talking to functionaries at the track or at his stable, or he was out on the Paramount campus rounding up other stars to be Del Mar ‘guest stewards.’” ³⁸ On the set he convinced costars to appear on opening day for the next meet. At the track he collected tickets, signed autographs, entertained, and announced races.

He was no less engaged in the stables. Charlie Whittingham, who trained for him in later years, met him in the early days at Del Mar. “He’d be out every morning, and I got to know him quite well. Very nice to be around, a regular guy, you know. Liked the horses and got to know them, because Binglin had quite a good stable. They kidded him about his nags, but he had decent horses. A lot of times, from the races we’d go over to Bing’s and have a cocktail, sit around and talk. They had a softball team at Rancho Sante Fe, and he played on it. Pretty good athlete.” ³⁹

Though he never trained horses for Bing, Noble Threewitt admired the way he handled himself on the grounds: “Lots of owners hate to waste their time talking to you. But Bing would visit with anybody. He was just an all-around good guy. The opening day at Del Mar with him and Pat O’Brien — that was a great, great opening day.” ⁴⁰

Yet in the year that followed that fabled afternoon, Del Mar stumbled badly, failing to attract capacity crowds or a serious following. John O’Melveny had argued against the whole plan, but Bing had uncharacteristically ignored his attorney’s advice and invested $45,000 for 35 percent of the stock. For a year and a half, Del Mar lost money. Everything changed with the legendary meet of August 1938, which was heralded by the most famous track ditty ever composed. Midge Polesie came up with the catchphrase “Where the Turf Meets the Surf,” inspiring a sixteen-bar anthem — and a longer but rarely heard verse — by Monaco, Burke, and Bing, played over the loudspeakers before and after every set of races for seven decades and counting. Bing, Pat O’Brien, and Oliver Hardy plugged it on three NBC shows the week before the 1938 meet.

No effort was spared to attract the Hollywood community on August 5, which was declared Motion Picture Day. Each contest was titled like the entrées on a Sunset Boulevard menu: The Actors, The Exhibitors, The Producers, The Directors, The Cameramen, The Screen Writers, and The Stars. A Motion Picture Handicap offered a $3,000 purse for three-year-olds owned by people in the business. The horses raced by Robert Riskin, Clark Gable, and Joe E. Brown won, placed, and showed; Bing’s entry, Rocco, came in last. But nothing could dampen his spirits that day. He announced the race and then signed hundreds of autographs. After the last race a screen was erected on the track for the premiere of Bing’s new picture, Sing You Sinners, a racetrack story in which his own horses participated. This in itself was an event, “Hollywood’s most novel preview,” a reporter called it. ⁴¹ Drive-ins were practically unheard-of (the first one, erected in New Jersey in 1933, had few imitators until the late 1940s). The audience at Del Mar marveled at the sight of planes overhead and the sound of train whistles in the distance as they watched the movie. Bing was not around for the alfresco screening, however; he was rehearsing the script for the radio broadcast to follow. It began with Del Mar’s theme song and proceeded with several stars lavishing praise on the picture and players, except for Bing, who in mock desperation asked Pat O’Brien, “How did you like my work in the picture, Pat?” The predictable reply: “Oh, were you in the picture, too?”

The press, including 375 writers and photographers who were delivered to the gates on a special train, focused on Motion Picture Day (Friday) and failed to report on Saturday evening’s entertainment, which proved more consequential. Bob Hope had relocated to Los Angeles the previous year to appear in Paramount’s The Big Broadcast of 1938. Having renewed their friendship on the links and at the studio, Bing asked Hope to join him onstage to re-create the routines they improvised at the Capitol Theater six years earlier. The crowd loved them, as did William LeBaron, an officer on the Del Mar board and Paramount’s chief of production. The buzz that evening was, why doesn’t somebody put these guys into a picture?

The incident that ensured Del Mar’s survival took place the following Friday. Bing and Lin Howard had purchased the 6,000-acre La Portena ranch in Argentina and shipped several horses back to the United States, a slow, arduous journey by sea and rail. When the horses finally arrived, the six-year-old Ligaroti was promising but unsteady, and for a while Bing and Lin considered selling him — he was offered to Louis B. Mayer for $75,000. They were glad Meyer declined when, in March 1938, Ligaroti won a $5,000 handicap at Bay Meadows, San Mateo, by three lengths, completing the mile course in 1:40. Another of their Argentine horses, Sabuesa, also won that day. In July Ligaroti won the $5,000 Aloma Handicap at Hollywood Park. Unbilled, he also got to win the big race at the climax of Sing You Sinners. Word got around that Bing and Howard were claiming Ligaroti might be the best distance runner in the country, a boast that Del Mar’s general manager, William Quigley, duly conveyed to Lin’s father, who owned the famous Seabiscuit.

Charles Howard had made a fortune in Buick dealerships. Seabiscuit added to it, winning more than a third of his starts over a four-year period; in 1937 he was voted the nation’s number one handicap horse. Howard could not resist Quigley’s challenge, and a match race was staged with a $25,000 purse, no public wagering, though spectators could bet among themselves. Bing and Lin placed side bets with Howard (who grandly offered three-to-one odds) and Seabiscuit’s backers. The distance was set at a mile and an eighth, with George (The Iceman) Woolf riding Seabiscuit and Noel (Spec) Richardson riding Ligaroti. A crowd of 22,000 overflowed the stands — larger by a third than the previous record crowd. The match was broadcast by Bing and O’Brien from a microphone on the grandstand roof, beneath which a cheering section wore Ligaroti sweaters and waved Ligaroti pennants, chanting, “You can try and try and try, but you can’t beat Ligaroti!”

The race, euphemized by one sportswriter as “torrid,” ⁴² was remembered by the man who announced it, Oscar Otis, as the most violent he had ever seen. Seabiscuit broke out first, but at no time did either horse lead by more than half a length. The crowd went crazy, and so did the jockeys, flailing each other and the horses with whips, grabbing at each other’s saddles and reins. Seabiscuit won by a nose in 1:49, setting a new track record by four seconds. Spec Richardson immediately filed a protest against Woolf, who in turn claimed Richardson began the melee by grabbing his whip hand. Track stewards launched an inquiry, observing that Seabiscuit had taken severe punishment, showing welts on his neck and flank and breathing heavily, while Ligaroti, as one might expect of a Crosby horse, “appeared cool and relatively little exerted.” ⁴³ Both jockeys were suspended for the meet, with a recommendation that the California Horse Racing Board suspend them for the year. But as there was no pari-mutuel betting, the punishments could not be enforced. Dixie presented the prize money to Howard in the winner’s circle. Bing graciously remarked to reporters, “It’s no disgrace to be beaten by the world champion.” Nationwide coverage put Del Mar on the map.

Paramount provided a punch line for all the fuss in the form of a press release with Bing’s byline, in which he complains that he was “on the set one day” and had to endure a barrage of jokes about his horses. “Oh well, let the clowns laugh,” he muses, “[my horses] will be winning races some day.” ⁴⁴ No horses or races are mentioned in the release, but Paramount’s newest contract player makes an appearance. Bing laments that while driving to Lakeside, Bob Hope pointed to a decrepit nag and said, “It looks like one of your horses. It’s stopped.” ⁴⁵ If the flacks were bent on reducing Bing to a routine of frazzled jokes, the front office seemed equally fixed on a standard recipe for film scripts. Small wonder he found more enchantment in the stables and more excitement at a tee.