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AI |
author interview |
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AMPAS |
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences — Margaret Herrick Library |
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Rinker |
Unpublished memoir, The Bing Crosby I knew,by Al Rinker, completed in 1978 |
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BCCGU |
BCCGUing Crosby Collection, Foley Center Library, Gonzaga University |
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HCC |
HCCoward Crosby Collection |
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JWTPR |
JWTPR. Walter Thompson program reports for Kraft Music Hall |
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KGM |
KGMnpublished memoir by Kitty (Lang) Good, recorded and transcribed during the 1980s and 1990s. Courtesy of Kitty Good and her son, Tim Good |
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Lucky |
Call Me Lucky, by Bing Crosby and Pete Martin |
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RBT |
Remembering Bing: interview transcripts for a 1987 Chicago WTTW television documentary, produced and written by Jim Arntz and Katherine MacMillin, executive producer: Glenn DuBose. |
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TIA |
Time Inc. Archive |
Introduction
1. Seldes, The Public Arts,p. 126.
2. Thompson, The Complete Crosby,p. 252.
3. Death certificate filed with the American embassy in Madrid, Oct. 21, 1977.
4. Edmund Wilson, The Wound and the Bow (1941; reprint, New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 3.
5. Newsweek, June 28, 1999.
6. Shepherd and Slatzer, Bing Crosby: The Hollow Man, and Crosby and Fire stone, Going My Own Way.
7. Among the most egregious were a memoir by Joan Rivers that called him a drunken wifebeater (for which there is no evidence); the pilot for a syndicated TV show, Hollywood Babylon, with Tony Curtis, that recycled demonstrative untruths concerning his will; and a December 22, 1999, story in the New York Post that dis torted Crosby’s readily available FBI file (see note 40 to Chapter 21).
8. Smith, Life in a Putty Knife Factory,p. 258.
9. An article in the New York Times, “Watched by Millions,” Aug. 25, 2000, reported that the only programs to attract more than 50 million viewers in the preceding eight months were two special events, the Super Bowl (88.5 million) and the final episode of Survivor (51.7 million).
10. Cited in the Philadelphia Courier, Nov. 22, 1947.
11. 1960 radio interview by Tony Thomas, for Canadian Broadcasting Company, released on LP, Conversations in Hollywood, vol. 2 (Citadel).
12. Emerson, Representative Men (1850).
13. Rourke, American Humor.
14. According to Whitburn, Pop Memories 1880-1954 and Top Pop Singles 1955-1986. Much of Whitburn’s figuring is based on speculation, so it would be folly to place too much emphasis on his pop-chart rankings, but the general picture he offers has proved reliable.
15. According to the annual Quigley Publications poll; Steinberg, Reel Facts.
16. There are many others. Crosby made twenty-three gold and two platinum singles, including the only double-sided gold record (“Play a Simple Melody”/“Sam’s Song”); he was the leading record seller through two decades, the 1930s and 1940s; more than half his feature films were among the ten highest grossing pictures of the years in which they were released; in 1946 three of the five top-grossing pictures of the year (The Bells of St. Mary’s, Blue Skies, Road to Utopia) were Crosby vehicles, each a sequel to one of his earlier successes; he introduced more Academy Award-nominated songs (fourteen) and more winners (four) than any other film star.
PART ONE
1. The Harrigans
1. Kraft Music Hall radio broadcast, Mar. 15, 1945.
2. This section is based largely on genealogical research by King and Fitzgerald. See their The Uncounted Irish and King’s The Irish Lumberman-Farmer, as well as King’s “Bing Crosby’s Irish Roots: The Harrigan Family of County Cork, New Brunswick Can., Minnesota, and Washington” in Minnesota Genealogist, vol. 14, no. 4 (1983); a letter from Joseph A. King to Sheelah Carter of Spokane Public Library, dated Jan. 27, 1979, in library files; and a 1994 AI with King. Much information was also culled from the Crosby family’s Crosby Genealogy, commissioned by Larry Crosby and published privately.
3. Her full name was Catherine Driscoll Harrigan. In several essays and books, King inadvertently gives her birth date as 1782 (which would make her fifty at the time of Dennis Jr.’s birth), yet it was King who discovered, in the 1851 census for Williamstown, New Brunswick, that she was actually born in 1791. (See Lumberman- Farmer, Appendix A, p. 172.)
4. King speculates that Dennis sold his leases in the townlands at Driane and Derryleary, which bordered Schull, in order to purchase the fares. In Parliamentary Report of 1835 and 1836, two parish priests, Father James Barry and Reverend Robert Trail, estimated that no more than ninety people of the parish emigrated in 1831 —“they were, with very few exceptions, Protestants, and in comfortable cir cumstances.”
5. Swift, “A Modest Proposal,” 1829.
6. Edmund Burke, in a letter in 1792, described the code as “a machine as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment and degradation of a people, and the debasement in them of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man.”
7. Wellington, cited in Woodham-Smith, The Great Hunger,p. 20.
8. Gustave de Beaumont, Ireland: Social, Political and Religious, 1839), cited in ibid., p. 19.
9. The story of John of Skibbereen is based on an undated letter from Bing Crosby’s first cousin, Margaret Harrigan Kendell, of Redmond, Washington, accessed by King, who says Kendell’s information was given her by William Harrigan, a first cousin of Bing’s mother. Larry Crosby was under the impression that John used two surnames, Harrigan and O’Brien, and was known as Organ O’Brien because he played the organ in church at Skibbereen, a part of West Cork where (King writes) “the population lived so exclusively on the potato that no trade in any other description of food existed.”
10. Cited in Woodham-Smith, The Great Hunger,p. 24.
11. Ibid., p. 26.
12. See Van Der Merwe, Origins of the Papular Style,pp. 10—14, for a fuller treatment of how the Oriental influence was sustained in Europe’s northwestern countries.
13. Chambers’s Encyclopaedia, cited in the 1972 supplement to the Oxford English Dicitonary, under croon.
14. AI, Ronan Tynan.
15. It might perhaps be more accurate to say that Crosby “allowed to be written in his memoir,” Call Me Lucky, as he did not so much write as speak it to his collabora tor, Pete Martin. But he did scrutinize the manuscript, and though he permitted many inaccuracies (not nearly as many as he blithely approved in his brothers’ book), the volume reflects his wishes. Indeed, it is not impossible that he took an active hand in sections of Lucky.
16. King interviewed Father John Deasy of Schull, who said, “[Bing] mistakenly thought his grandfather was born in Ireland.” The Uncounted Irish,p. 290. Several early books on Crosby trace the Harrigans to County Mayo and describe Dennis Jr. as a plumber, misinformation that Bing unaccountably declined to correct when he vetted Thompson’s 1976 biography.
17. King, The Uncounted Irish,p. 101.
18. Others include Louis B. Mayer, production chief at MGM, and Robert C. Gillis, who in 1904 helped purchase and design much of the Hollywood community.
19. According to the 1900 census, Dennis Jr. initially entered the United States in 1859, as a carpenter and contractor. He returned to Canada, however, and married Catherine (Katie), bringing her to the United States in 1867. She was born in March 1836 or 1837 in New Brunswick, the daughter of John Ahearn and Ann Meghan of Ireland and Miramichi, and died on October 25, 1918, in Tacoma. Also “Dennis Harrigan Dies[;] Prominent Contractor, Resident of Tacoma Since 1888 Passes,” Tacoma Daily Ledger, Sept. 19, 1915, and “Crosby’s Mother, State Native, Dies,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, Jan. 8, 1964.
20. The Harrigan children were William John Harrigan (1867), Alexander Ambrose (1869), Edward (1870), Catherine (1873), Anne (1875), Francis Albert (1876), and George Leo (1879).
21. This was her accepted family name, but there is no Helen on her Stillwater birth certificate.
22. Lucky, p. 52.
23. The dry-goods store run by Albert H. Sanford and George H. Stone sold fabrics, clothing, and hardware. It was across the street from the library at 1115-17 Tacoma Avenue and is listed as Kate’s place of employment in the 1893-94 city directory. AI, Judith Kipp.
2. The Crosbys
1. Blankenship, Early History of Thurston County,p. 267.
2. Ibid.
3. Crosby Genealogy. Larry Crosby’s privately printed chronicle was completed in 1960. Although he kept complete files on the genealogy in the Crosby offices, they were not available for research and may have disappeared. The Genealogy is not an infallible source: it has obvious mistakes (the date of Harry Lowe Crosby’s death is given as 1949, instead of 1950) and contradictions.
4. Ibid. Larry also claimed earlier English Crosbys: a Yorkshire constable in 1204; a property owner named Golfrides de Crosseby; and John de Crosseby, a procurator appointed by the abbot of St. John’s in Colchester early in the fourteenth century.
5. Bing refers to him as Edmund in Lucky, and other biographers name him Thomas, but William is the name in White’s Biographical Bulletin on Bing, 1946; in Larry’s genealogy; and in the rolls of the General Society of Mayflower Descendants.
6. Institute of American Archives, certified by director Mendell Peterson.
7. Correspondence of James Fenimore-Cooper, edited by his grandson James Fenimore Cooper (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1922), p. 284.
8. Mary E. Phillips, James Fenimore Cooper (New York: John Lane Company, 1913), p. 86. For more on Enoch, see The Spy Unmasked, or Memoirs of Enoch Crosby, alias Harvey Birch, The Hero of Mr. Cooper’s Tale of the Neutral Ground,edited by H. L. Barnum in 1831. Also James Grossman, James Fenimore Cooper(New York: William Sloane Associates, 1949).
9. Susan Feminore Cooper, “Small Family memories” (1883), in Correspondence of James Fenimore-Cooper, p. 42.
10. The name Nathaniel became a Crosby good-luck piece. Nathaniel Sr. begat Nathaniel Jr., who begat Desire Crosby (born 1772), Bethiah, and David from his first marriage, and from his second, Tabitha, Mary, and Captain Nathaniel Crosby I,who was born in 1782. Nat I married Ruby Foster, begetting in 1810 Captain Nathaniel Crosby II, and later married (in 1831) Mary Lincoln in Wiscasset, Maine, begetting another Nathaniel in 1835, as well as Mary Lincoln and Martha Ruby.
11. The passenger list for the Grecian included Captain Clanrick Crosby, his wife, Phebe F. Crosby, and their three children, Clanrick, Phebe Luisa, and Cecilia; First Officer Washington Hurd and his wife (Clanrick’s sister) and their two-year-old daughter, Ella; Second Officer Albert Crosby (Clanrick’s younger brother) and his wife; Mrs. Mary Crosby, wife of Captain Nathaniel Jr. and three children, Nathaniel,Mary, and Martha; Mrs. Holmes, companion-housekeeper; Captain Nathaniel Crosby Sr., the father of the captain and second officer; and one passenger, Mr. Converse Lilly of New York — all in the cabin. Forward, there were seven more, including the three brothers of Mrs. Nathaniel Crosby Jr: Joseph Taylor, Foster Lincoln, and Nathaniel Lincoln.
12. Martha married a ship chandler and remained in China until 1864, when she brought her son to San Francisco to escape a cholera epidemic. She resettled in Olympia, where her mother and siblings were. Her husband died of cholera in China, and she lived in Tumwater for the next two years, then married Andrew Burr, Capital City’s postmaster and a loquacious politician, and had three children.
13. Goldie Robertson Funk, “The Old Crosby Home at Tumwater,” Seattle Times, Mar. 20, 1949.
14. AI, KenTwiss.
15. Catherine Crosby, “A Mother’s Day,” unidentified magazine clip (c. 1947). BCCGU.
3. Tacoma
1. Burt McMurtrie, “It Seems to Me,” Tacoma Daily News, Sept. 29, 1948.
2. Most of the material on the treasurer’s office and Harry’s early employment is from an analysis of county records by Judith Kipp of the Tacoma Public Library, Northwest Room. Election results from Bonney’s History of Pierce County.
3. Tacoma Daily Ledger, Dec. 14, 1902. The deed was turned over by Alexander T. Hosmer to Catherine H. Crosby for $850 on January 6, 1903.
4. Tacoma Daily Ledger, May 4, 1903. “Summer arrived full blown in Tacoma yesterday,” the story began, “and the whole city was out taking the open air. The day was perfect, with twelve hours of warm, mellow sunshine and a gently stirring breeze, ideal weather for outdoor recreation.”
5. Tacoma Daily Ledger, May 5, 1903: “The home of Mr. and Mrs. H. L. Crosby was gladdened yesterday by the arrival of a son.”
6. Tacoma Daily News, May 6, 1903.
7. Tacoma Daily Ledger, May 7, 1903: “A little son arrived May 3 in the home of Mr. and Mrs. H. L. Crosby.”
8. Reverend Anthony LeBlanconce was parish priest and signed the register, which reads “Henrieum Lillis.”
9. Paul Vandervoort II, “Uncle Sam Sans Whiskers,” Band Leaders Magazine, Jan. 1946.
10. Intrepid researchers in the 1940s had little difficulty finding the truth —indeed, until the mid-eighties, the only book to get it right was Mize’s Bing Crosby and the Bing Crosby Style. The Associated Press Biographical Service had the correct year (wrong day) in a 1946 Crosby sketch but altered it to 1904 as of 1949, presumably acceding to pressure from the Crosby organization. In 1949 Bing’s business manager, Basil Grillo, noticed discrepancies regarding his age on several life-insurance policies: “Everyone of them had a different age, all the way from 1901 to 1904. When an insurance policy doesn’t state the right age, they adjust the payments accordingly when it comes time to pay off. So not understanding the actor’s mind, I innocently went to Bing and I said, ‘Bing, we’ve got a lot of policies here and they all have a different birth date for you, which really changes the amount of insurance we carry’ I asked, ‘When were you actually born?’ He says, ‘Nineteen hundred and four.’ Even for business reasons, he was born in 1904. Everything related back to his success as a movie actor. He tried to protect it, and I think the age thing was an outgrowth of that. He once told me, ‘In this business, youth is everything.’ Maybe he convinced himself that he was born in 1904. Who knows?” Grillo believed that Crosby was born in 1901, because Larry said so. Yet by 1957 no one in the family could have been in doubt. That year, in advance of his second marriage, Bing himself obtained a baptismal certificate with the correct date; shortly thereafter, Larry prepared the genealogy he distributed to the family, correctly identifying his brother’syear of birth. Yet 1901 and 1904 continue to crop up in reference works. AI, Basil Grillo.
11. Catherine Cordelia was the first of the Crosby children whose birth was recorded by Tacoma’s Department of Public Health.
12. AI, Ken Twiss, who spoke with Mary Rose and said she reluctantly conceded her role in the May 2/3 controversy.
13. Reed was replaced by his former cashier, Edgar M. Lakin, who succeeded Reed as treasurer in the election of 1904. At first, the change boded well for Crosby, who was soon advanced to the position of deputy. Yet for unknown reasons, he was fired before the end of 1905, possibly to reward an elusive clerk named William Turner, who with far less experience was given Harry’s job. His dismissal was followed by that of all the men promoted by Lakin. Only Turner returned to a demoted post in 1910.
14. For many years Tacoma’s port was larger than Seattle’s because it was thirty miles farther west and saved a day in transporting goods to the Pacific — a system known as “rail to sail.” Tacoma was shaped by a series of booms and busts that began in 1852, when the first sawmill was opened by a Swede who then bought a large tract of land, hoping the Northern Pacific Railroad would come through. The NPRR was given land to do just that, and the lumber companies followed.
15. Ted Crosby, The Story ofBing Crosby,p. 20. This is the 1946 edition of a book originally published in 1937 and credited to Ted and Larry Crosby. (See Chapter 21.) In addition to being updated, the second version is revised in numerous small ways. Both are essentially fictions, however, and are referenced here with much caution.
16. Lucky, p. 56.
17. Ibid., p. 55.
18. Deed #230077, received Jan. 5, 1907.
19. Spokesman-Review, Sept. 13, 1908. BCCGU.
4. Spokane
1. Ralph Ellison, “On Bird, Bird-Watching, and Jazz, “ The Collected Essays. Also Melville writes in Moby Dick (Chapter XLV) of the “rights, privileges, and distinctions of a name” bestowed by an admiring community.
2. Stratton, Spokane & the Inland Empire, p. xiv; Spokane city directory of 1914.
3. For some twenty years the NPRR treated the city as little more than a dependent, hindering its growth with monopolistic pricing so that Spokane’s businessmen lost out to rivals in Seattle, where competing railroads charged half as much to transport products from the East.
4. Motto engraved on a Northern Pacific Railway arch in Sept. 1883. See Stratton, Spokane & the Inland Empire,pp. 109—21 for a concise history of the NPRR’s impact on Spokane.
5. Ted and Larry, Bing,p. 6. This passage was deleted from the 1946 edition.
6. Lucky, p. 56.
7. NET-TV interview, Close-Up on Bing Crosby, 1967.
8. “Heiber Incorporates Brewery,” Spokesman-Review, Apr. 12, 1892; “Hieber Brewery Changes Hands,” Oct. 1, 1905; “Plan Beer Agency,” Apr. 15, 1906; “Erect New Ice Plant,” Nov. 16, 1906; and “Pays $35,000 for Lease,” Sept. 29, 1908. Also, Spokane city directories, 1906-34.
9. Ad, 1911 city directory.
10. “A Mother’s Day,” op. cit.
11. Harry L. Crosby Sr. as told to Jack Holland, “My Boy Bing,” Movies (undated, probably spring 1940). BCCGU.
12. “The Kid from Spokane,” Collier’s, Apr. 27, 1935.
13. The “Bingville Bugle” references are from the Spokesman-Review for March 13, 1910; August 7,1910; September 13, 1910; January 29, 1911;April2, 1911.
14. Despite references to a floppy-eared Bingo in Lucky, a 1949 Associated Press sketch, and elsewhere, a search of the “Bingville Bugle” for 1910 turned up no such character, though there was a drawing of an unnamed fellow with outsize ears.
15. “Uncle Sam Sans Whiskers,” op. cit.
16. Gertrude Kroetch, 1946 interview memo. TIA.
17. “A Mother’s Day,” op. cit.
18. They were Ted, Bob, Mary Rose, and Kay. AI, Howard Crosby.
19. Bing Crosby, “My Second Family,” from the early 1960s, reprinted in The Crosby Voice, Sept. 1984, Australia.
20. NET interview, op. cit.
21. “My Boy Bing” op. cit.
22. Lucky, p. 56.
23. Helen Finnegan, 1946 interview memo. TIA.
24. Lucky, p. 57.
25. In his book, Ted Crosby says Kate proudly refused the offer, but he told his son Howard that Kate was all for it and Harry stopped her. AI, Howard Crosby.
26. Radio interview with Jack O’Brien, New York, Dec. 10, 1976.
27. Wilbur W. Hindley, “In Clemmer and Liberty New Record Is Made by Spokane,” Spokesman-Review, Feb. 28, 1915.
28. Corporation deed between Pioneer Educational Society and Catherine H. Crosby, filed June 1, 1911; warranty deed between Catherine H. Crosby and Inland Brewery & Malting Company, filed July 2, 1911; quitclaim between Inland Brewery and Catherine H. Crosby, filed Jan. 15, 1913.
29. Born ten years after Bing and seven years after Mary Rose, Bob was born at 508 East Sharp Street and baptized on September 7, 1913, at St. Aloysius, birth certificate from Bureau of Vital Statistics. Harry Lowe was forty-three, Kate was forty.
30. Bob Crosby, RBT.
31. Lucky, p. 56.
32. Ted Crosby, The Story of Bing Crosby,p. 30.
33. Alice Watts, “Bing Was Her Favorite,” The Daily Olympian, Aug. 14, 1981.
34. Ibid.
35. Gregg Hammond, “Mary Rose Crosby Poole, “ The Crooner, no. 50, Nov. 1990. Also AI, KenTwiss.
36. Tacoma Daily Ledger, Sept. 19, 1915: He died September 18, at eighty-three, and was buried in Calvary Cemetary, Tacoma. In 1909 Dennis had been struck on the head by falling timber while inspecting construction of the governor’s mansion; his condition worsened in 1911. The death certificate gives the primary cause of death as myocarditis and a contributing cause as nephritis. In addition to his widow and seven children, he was survived by a brother, Patrick Harrigan, in Oregon, and fourteen grandchildren — seven of them Kate’s and Harry’s.
37. Bing told the same story on Radio Erin in 1961: “I remember my mother telling me that when her mother was on her deathbed…”
38. Cottrell in “Belly Flops at Little Vatican” (unsigned), The Inside Passage, Oct. 28, 1977.
39. Lucky, p. 66. Also William Stimson, “Bing We Hardly Knew Ye,” Pacific North west, Dec. 1987.
40. “My Boy Bing,” op. cit.
41. NET interview, op. cit.
42. Ibid. A fin is slang for five dollars.
43. Spokesman-Review, Jan. 7, 1916.
44. The poem by Thomas Dunn English was set to music by Nelson Kneass; Ben is implored to remember the long dead “sweet Alice.”
45. Also known as “A Dog Named Rover” and “What D’Ye Mean You Lost Yer Dog (Where’s That Dog-gone Dog-gone Dog of Mine),” and not to be confused with “Poor Old Rover,” which Bing did record. One night at a hunting lodge, in the 1960s, oilman George Coleman taped him singing it.
Bing: I’ve got a dog named Rover.
Hey Rover, come over.
He roams around all over.
He’s only home three times a day.
[whistles] I’m looking for a dog called Rover.
I’m looking for him now all over.
But he’s a hunter dog all right
’Cause he keeps me hunting day and night.
This is what I worry over.
Say, who put the rove in Rover?
[whistles, says, “My whistle’s getting dry”].
Sometimes I wish I were a tree.
Then Rover’d have to look for me.
Oh where’s that goddamn goddamn dog of mine?
[ends song, laughter]
Bing: My mom’s got a picture, took a picture…
Coleman: How old were you then?
Bing: Twelve. And I had that — you know, the knee pants?
46. Few people recorded that song or “A Perfect Day.” One who recorded both was contralto Elsie Baker, a Victor recording star during the mid-teens. Bing might have been surprised to learn that one of the most prolific composers of the kind of song marking his debut was a relative, albeit one so distant not even his parents knew of her. Larry uncovered the connection when he compiled his genealogy. Blind poet Fanny Jane Crosby was the protégée of George Frederick Root and the lyricist for his Civil War hit, “Rosalie the Prairie Flower.” She later published 8,000 hymns and songs, most under her married name, Mrs. Alexander Van Alstyne.
47. NET interview, op. cit.
5. Gonzaga
1. O’Brien interview, op. cit.
2. The classroom story was related by Corkery to a background reporter for Time.TIA. Francis Prange, who presided over the physics lab, later became known for his work in prison rehabilitation as chaplain at McNeil Island.
3. AI, Ray Flaherty.
4. Much of this section was drawn from Schoenberg, Gonzaga University, and Edward J. Crosby (Bing’s brother), “Gonzaga Past, Present and Future,“Gonzaga 11:1 (Oct. 1919).
5. Many contemporary education practices were established in such sixteenth-century texts as Saint Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises and the Ratio Studiorum(Plan of Studies). Material here is based on John W. Donahue, S. J., “Notes on Jesuit Education,” America, Oct. 26, 1983, and AI with Father Donahue.
6. Ibid.
7. “But wait. These worldly things too are sweet; the pleasures they give is not inconsiderable; we must not be too hasty about rejecting them, because it would be a shame to go back to them again.” Confessions, bk. 6, chap. 12.
8. Flannery O’Connor, “A Memoir of Mary Ann,” in Mystery and Manners.
9. Radio interview with Father Caffrey, issued on LP, Sunday in Hollywood with Ann Blythe and Bing Crosby, by the Maryknoll Fathers in the 1950s.
10. Lucky, p. 72.
11. Ibid., p. 70.
12. Schoenberg, Gonzaga University,p. 267.
13. Crosby, The Story of Bing Crosby,p. 47.
14. Thompson, Bing,p. 6.
15. Caffrey interview, op. cit.
16. Bob Crosby, RBT.
17. O’Brien interview, op. cit.
18. Crosby Genealogy.
19. Ibid.
20. Schoenberg, Gonzaga University,p. 249.
21. Bing especially enjoyed the team of Willie and Eugene Howard, who did Jewish dialect humor and impressions of top vaudeville stars.
22. The team was Sam Lewis and Joe Young.
23. Interview by George O’Reilly at Shepperton Studios, London, 1961.
24. “Brewing Concern to Make Vinegar,” Spokesman-Review, Jan. 17, 1917.
25. Theis as president, Lang as vice president, William Huntley as treasurer, and H. L. Crosby as secretary.
26. AI, Robert Kipp.
27. Bob Crosby, RBT.
28. AI, Peggy Lee.
29. Interview taped in Bing’s Paramount Pictures dressing room by Bill Tusher, 1951.
30. “A Mother’s Day,” op. cit.
31. “Belly Flops at Little Vatican,” op. cit.
32. Hal Prey, “Readers Knew the Famous When They Weren’t So Famous,” Remi nisce, Sept. 1994. Mrs. Stickney’s granddaughter recovered.
33. Dyar, News for an Empire.
34. Ibid.
35. “A Mother’s Day,” op. cit.
36. Ibid.
37. AI, Alan Fisher.
38. “Uncle Sam Sans Whiskers,” op. cit.
39. Gonzaga 9:2. (Dec. 1917). The school magazine, Gonzaga, a key source for much of the material in this section, appeared between 1910 and 1922 and was considered an exemplary student publication by educators. Each issue ran between forty-two and forty-eight pages and sold for twenty cents, averaging a $500 annual profit, most of which was sent to Pope Benedict XV’s relief program.
40. AI, Ray Flaherty.
41. Gonzaga 11:3 (Dec. 1919).
42. AI, Ray Flaherty.
43. Gonzaga 11:1 (Oct. 1919). Bing was mistakenly listed as class of ‘21, which would have been correct had Kate not started him early.
44. Lucky, p. 68.
45. The debate: “Resolved: A national referendum should he held to determine support for Wilson’s League of Nations.”
46. Confessions, bk. 2,chap. 2. A tradition at Gonzaga encouraged instructors to “turn out men who not only absorbed a great amount of knowledge, but who could use it, express it and get up and make a talk in a creditable manner,” William DePuis, “School Dramatics,” The Gonzaga Year-Book, 1924.
47. Lucky, p. 71.
48. Ibid., pp. 71—72.
49. “School Dramatics,” op. cit.
50. Transcribed from his dedication speech at Gonzaga, 1957.
51. Gonzaga 11:4 (Jan. 1920).
52. The student was Doug Dyckman, Gonzaga 11:6 (Mar. 1920).
53. Father Art Dussault, a friend and classmate of Bing’s and later his primary liaison at Gonzaga, told columnist Earl Wilson (New York Post, Aug. 4, 1952) that Bing owed a lot to “having been jugged,” suggesting that it had helped train his phenomenal memory for songs and scripts.
54. Gonzaga 11:7(Apr. 1920). Ted was one of the most prolific and ambitious writers at the school. His numerous works include the poem “Gonzaga” (“And all in their breasts the teachings of their Alma Mater hold / Nor barter their birthright precious for passion or fame or gold!”), 11:1 (Oct. 1919); verse tributes to the Crosby seafearers and Lincoln; such short stories as “The Girl on the Job” (a woman who takes a wartime job then gives it up to a man), 11:2 (Nov. 1919), and “Trying Days” (set in a logging camp), 11:4 (Jan. 1920); and a long journalistic tribute, “Major Gerhard L Luhn, USA,” about a recently departed German-born (yet “every inch an American… no lurking loyalty for the old land”). Luhn had been a hero of the Mexican and Civil Wars, a cavalryman and Indian fighter, the veteran of forty army posts, and “a Christian above all”; he organized the first cadet corps at Gonzaga in 1900. Gonzaga 11:6 (Mar. 1920).
55. Gonzaga 11:9 (June 1920). This long-forgotten juvenilia, clunky but vivid, seems to anticipate many aspects of his career, from his dusky caricature in the Mack Sennett two-reeler Dream House, through parodied caravans in the Road pictures. The central image recurs unconsciously in his exalted description (Lucky,p. 43) of meeting Paul Whiteman, the first potentate Bing ever knew. No less prescient is the cymbal, the instrument he brought with him into the big time, or the pagan setting he came to know in the sodden arms of Prohibition. The young Bing’s vision of a white-robed ruler served by vassals while an audience sings his praises and music flows suggests how far Bing’s dreams had begun to distance him from Spokane.
6. Mr. Interlocutor
1. Rourke, American Humor,p. 103.
2. AI, Ray Flaherty.
3. The cost breakdown for college day students was as follows: $50 tuition per semester for College of Arts and Sciences, $5 breakage deposit, $3 bulletin and library fee, $10 student activities (including season tickets to all ordinary games, as well as debating and dramatic societies, orchestra, band, and other events) $10 laboratory fee, $2.50 partly refundable deposit for chemicals.
4. Gonzaga Register, 1920-21.
5. Ibid.
6. Gonzaga hired Charles E. “Gus” Dorais in May 1920, after Jim Thorpe was obliged to decline because of a prior contract.
7. “Dorais Gives Recruits Tryout,” Spokane Daily Chronicle, Mar. 31, 1922.
8. Lucky, p. 303. Bing’s mother worked with Father Sharp in her role as treasurer of the Mother’s Club, which raised money for scholarships and school functions. He served on its executive board as faculty representative. Mrs. T. J. Corkery, mother of Frank, served as secretary and later as president. The April 26, 1921, Spokane Daily Chronicle lists Mrs. H. L. Crosby as one of two dozen patronesses of a play, Gonzaga’s Chief. See also, Schoenberg, Gonzaga University,p. 302; Gonzaga 12:5 (Mar.1921); Gonzaga 14:1 (Autumn 1922).
9. Lucky, p. 39.
10. Ibid.
11. Ad, Gonzaga Bulletin, Oct. 7, 1921.
12. “Work of Michael Pecarovitch Lauded by Southern Critics,” Spokane Daily Chronicle, May 5, 1922. Pecarovitch lived in San Pedro, California, and participated in theatricals at Santa Clara, Seattle College, and Gonzaga.
13. Gonzaga 12:2 (Nov. 1920).
14. Ibid. 12:3 (Dec. 1920).
15. Another member was George Twohy, Bing’s high-school debating partner.
16. Rourke, American Humor,p. 103.
17. Donald O’Connor, for example, has spoken of the sincerity with which an actor was expected to approach a black role. AI.
18. Ellison, “An Extravagance of Laughter,” in The Collected Essays.
19. AI, Bob Hope.
20. Rourke, American Humor,p. 103.
21. For example, whites played Charlie Chan and Fu Manchu decades after they were no longer allowed to play blacks, except in classical theater; consider The Road to Hong Kong or Dr. No in the 1960s.
22. Rourke, American Humor,pp. 103—04.
23. In “Vintage Glimpses of a Lost Theatrical World,” Margo Jefferson writes of a silent film of black pantomimist and dancer Johnny Hudgins: “His charm so palpable that the burned-cork makeup, which we have come to read as intrinsically degrading, seems as incidental as the white makeup circus clowns have worn for centuries,” New York Times, Oct. 20, 1996.
24. AI, Gerald Marks. Coincidentally, Marks and Sy Oliver were both New Yorkers born in Michigan.
25. Letter from Father Arthur L. Dussault, S.J. Jesuit Oregon Province Archives.
26. AI, Father Patrick J. Ford. S.J., academic vice president of Gonzaga.
27. Ibid.
28. Letter from Dussault to “Cathy and Hobie,” Apr. 9, 1990. Jesuit Oregon Province Archives.
29. Letter from Dussault to Mr. Marion Simms, Sept. 14, 1950. Jesuit Oregon Province Archives.
30. Tony Thomas interview, op. cit.
31. George O’Reilly interview, op. cit.
32. NET interview, op. cit.
33. Goldman, Jolson,p. 36.
34. Ibid., p. 4.
35. Waters, His Eye Is on the Sparrow,p. 218.
36. Gonzaga 13:2 (Apr. 1922).
37. “Gonzaga Pupils Rehearse Play,” Spokane Daily Chronicle, Feb. 8, 1923. Also Gonzaga 14:2 (Winter 1923).
38. Strangely, Bing tells a story in Lucky about a fan who insisted upon calling him Bim Crosland, which is how he signed the fan’s autograph book.
39. “Gonzaga Actors Delight Crowd,” Spokane Daily Chronicle, Nov. 8, 1923.
40. Anne Shaw Faulkner, “Does Jazz Put the Sin in Syncopation?” Ladies’ Home Journal, Aug. 1921.
7. Musicaladers
1. Confessions, bk. 4, chap. 1.
2. Rinker. The Bing Crosby I Knew is a 110-page draft for a proposed book, finished in 1978 (a year after Crosby’s death) when Al was seventy-one; he died three years later. At one point, his suggested title was It’s a Treat to Beat Your Feet on the Mississippi Mud. Courtesy of Julia Rinker.
3. Ibid.
4. Rinker interview from The Old Guy on the Orange Juice Commercial: A Biography for Radio of Bing Crosby, written and narrated by Rod Coneybeare, c. 1977.
5. Rinker.
6. The Cotton Pickers, which made its key recordings in 1922 and 1923, should not be confused with McKinney’s Cotton Pickers, a black band that began recording in 1928.
7. Rinker.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. Rinker interview by John McDonough, 1976.
12. Lucky, p. 75.
13. H. Allen Smith, “Mildred Bailey Plans to Sing Her Life Story from the Stage of Town Hall Next Fall,” New York World Telegram, Apr. 12, 1941.
14. Rinker.
15. Coneybeare interview, op. cit.
16. Ibid.
17. Lucky, p. 75.
18. Sidney Copeland, office memorandum, Aug. 3, 1946. TIA.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid.
21. TV interview, The Pat Collins Show, WCBS, New York, 1976.
22. Crosby interview, radio documentary by John Salisbury, KXL, Portland, Oregon, 1976.
23. Coneybeare interview, op. cit.
24. Copeland memo, op. cit.
25. William Stimson, “Bing Crosby: The Road to Hollywood,” Spokane Magazine, Dec. 1977.
26. Bing Crosby, “Requiem for Rock ‘n’ Roll,” Music Journal, Jan. 1962. “A music company in my native Spokane was our jazz classroom. We met there to listen to the latest and practice playing by ear. With my pal Al Rinker, I practically lived in the place. I’m sure that our parents were as worried about our ‘crazy’ music as today’s parents have been about Rock ‘n’ Roll.”
27. Joseph Mitchell, “In Which Bing Crosby Debunks Himself; Broken Hearts? No, Just Broken Bottles,” New York World Telegram, Dec. 16, 1931.
28. AI, Don Eagle, a Spokane musician, a generation younger than Bing, who worked with him in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court and interviewed Rinker and others for a series of sketches published in Bingang.
29. Bing’s June 24, 1937, letter to Stubeck and Stubeck’s comments from Copeland memo, op. cit. The store was at Sprague and Wall.
30. Lincoln Barnett, “Bing, Inc.,” Life, June 18, 1945.
31. Jack Sheehan, “A Brush with Celebrity,” Showbiz, 1995, reprinted in Bing, no.114 (Dec. 1996). In November 1975 Bing read an article by Sheehan about Bud Ward, the Spokane-born amateur golfer, and sent him a flattering letter with his own recollections of Ward. Sheehan wrote Bing and told him of his aunt Dorothy’s death. Bing wrote him to say he remembered meeting him at Hayden Lake.
32. Rinker.
33. Ibid.
34. Copeland memo, op. cit.
35. Ibid.
36. “Bing We Hardly Knew Ye,” op. cit.
37. Ibid. Material on Lareida’s also drawn from AI with of Nancy Gale Compau of the Northwest Collection, Spokane Public Library, who, in addition to research aid, related information from her father, who frequented Lareida’s. Also Stimson, A View of the Falls, unidentified clip. BCCGU.
38. Letter from H. Neal East to Bing Crosby, Feb. 19, 1935. HCC.
39. “Bing Crosby: The Road to Hollywood,” op. cit.
40. Ibid.
41. Bill Salquist, “Hometown Remembers Because Bing Did,” Spokane Daily Chronicle, Oct. 15, 1977.
42. Rinker.
43. Ibid.
44. McDonough interview, op. cit.
45. Rinker.
46. Spokane Chronicle, May 19, 1918. After the resolution was passed by the County Council of Defense banning The Birth of a Nation from “Spokane county,” it was made public in an announcement by Clemmer on behalf of the league of motion picture men of the Spokane district.
47. “Now the Klemerklink for Doc Clemmer’s Young Friends,” Spokane Chronicle, Apr. 28, 1916.
48. “New Firm Takes Over Clemmer,” Spokesman-Review, May 2, 1925. It was the 149th theater that Carl Laemmle’s Universal Pictures had taken over in a period of sixty days. Universal operated the theater until 1929, when Ray Grombacher leased it and renamed it the Audian. It later became the State Theater and is now the Met,a concert theater.
49. Lucky, p. 74.
50. Rinker.
51. Ibid.
52. Author visit, also AI, Michael Smith, manager of the Met, and Spokane Chronicle, May 30, 1986. After the State (Clemmer) and Garland (which opened in 1945) closed, the only single-auditorium theater in Spokane was the Dishman, which showed pornography. In 1988 the Metropolitan Mortgage & Securities Co. restored the Clemmer/State as the Met, magnificently re-creating the original design by E. W. Houghton and structure by August Paulsen.
53. Dussault attended Bing’s tryout at the Clemmer and later recalled, “Many of the boys from school used to go down and cheer Bing and Al on.” Letter to Stanley Antepenko, Sept. 22, 1976. Jesuit Oregon Province Archives.
54. Dyar, News for an Empire.
55. Lucky, p. 74.
56. See Chapter 8 for Crosby’s use of the term in his letter to Dirk Crabbe.
57. Thompson, Bing,p. 16.
58. Rinker.
59. “My Boy Bing,” op. cit.
60. Rinker.
61. Lucky, p. 78.
62. Madeleine Carroll, a twenty-two-year-old neighbor was interviewed by a Time reporter; Copeland memo, op. cit.
8. Vaudeville
1. Billing reproduced in numerous ads in the trades and on stage bills, 1926.
2. Nevertheless, the word phonograph obtained prominence in the United States, while gramophone became standard in the United Kingdom.
3. Gelatt, The Fabulous Phonograph,p. 146.
4. In a 1980s radio interview with Bill Osborne in Seattle, Bob Crosby recalled the Meyers campaign. “It was done tongue in cheek. They were going to have a lot of fun. They dressed Vic up and put a white sheet on him like Mahatma Gandhi had and gave him a goat to lead around town. They had a lot of fun. Their only campaign issue was that Vic was going to put hostesses on all the streetcars and serve coffee and tea at the end of the line, and cookies. That was his campaign promise. What happened was, it just astounded everybody, including brother Larry, that Vic Meyers got elected lieutenant governor. He studied parliamentary law, and they tell me, at least my uncle did, Judge Harrigan, who’s in the House over in Olympia, he said he became one of the finest Speakers of the House, knew parlimentary law. So Vic stayed lieutenant governor for over twenty years, I believe.”
5. At least that’s what Bing recalled; Al thought they sang with Meyers himself. In most instances where disputed accounts between Crosby and Rinker can be verified, the former’s recollections, written thirty years closer to the events, have proved to be the more reliable. In instances that could not be verified, Bing’s account isoften more colorful than Al’s. It should be noted that when the Crosby memoir was a 1953 bestseller, Whiteman, Rinker, Barris, Malneck, and other principals were alive, and none found reason to correct the record as he created it — not even in private interviews from that era.
6. Rinker.
7. Ibid.
8. Lucky, p. 79.
9. Rinker.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. Jones was seen briefly twelve years later as a member of a trio singing “The Ragtime Violin,” in the 1938 20th Century-Fox musical Alexander’s Ragtime Band. Bing gave her a prominent spot in East Side of Heaven that same year. See Chapter 24.
13. AI, RedNorvo.
14. “Mildred Bailey Plans to Sing…,” op. cit.
15. Crosby liner notes, Mildred Bailey: Her Greatest Performances 1929-1946,Columbia Records, 1962.
16. Rinker.
17. Ibid.
18. AI, Milt Bernhart, Red Norvo.
19. Rinker.
20. Crosby liner notes, op. cit.
21. Mildred later auditioned for talent scout and record producer John Hammond with Smith blues.
22. Rinker.
23. AI, Barry Ulanov.
24. Pete Martin may have jumbled some facts in the Lyman passage in Lucky, or Bing, who liked to mention the names of people he admired or thought were neglected, may simply have added him to the historical record. Lyman is not mentioned in Ulanov or other early accounts. Yet the older Bing got, the more insistent he became about the Lyman gig, sometimes extending it to a few weeks. He would also extend his yearlong pre-Whiteman vaudeville experience to eighteen months or two years.
25. Owens, Sweet Leilani,p. 21.
26. Ibid., p. 22. Owens misremembered the songs they auditioned and named “Mississippi Mud,” which lay two years in the future.
27. Ibid., p. 23.
28. Rinker.
29. Collins interview, op. cit.
30. Variety, Oct. 20, 1926.
31. Cited in Slide, The Vaudevillians,p. 159.
32. Spokane Daily Chronicle, Jan. 1, 1926.
33. Doreen Taylor, who danced as Doreen Wilde, was interviewed at length in 1981-82, shortly before her death, by her granddaughter, Alison McMahan, who later transcribed and collated the tapes.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid.
36. Bing Crosby, Live at the London Palladium (K-Tel, United Artists), 1976.
37. Wilde interview, op. cit.
38. Confessions, bk. 2, chap. 1.
39. This four-page handwritten letter, written to Dirk Crabbe on January 24, 1926, was sent by the recipient’s widow, Lillian Crabbe Hanson, to the Minneapolis radio personality Arne Fogel and first published in Bingang in July 1988. Some of the addenda appeared as “Don Eagle Provides Further Insight into Early Bing Letter,” Bingang, July 1990.
40. Wilde interview, op. cit.
41. Ibid.
42. Norman, The Film Greats,p. 197.
43. Lucky, p. 80.
44. That same week Variety ran an ad taken out by a young vaudevillian named Harry Barris, who toured the Midwest with his Blu Blowing Baby Grand; in little more than a year, he would change all their lives. Also that week, on May 4, Bing’s brother Larry, an editor at the Wallace-Press Times in Wallace, Idaho, married Elaine Couper of Spokane.
45. Thompson, Bing,p. 18.
46. Rinker.
47. Ibid.
48. AI, Phil Harris.
49. The humor of Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson, largely forgotten today, was brought to a fevered pitch in the 1938 stage hit Hellzapoppin’, which ran three years and has been called “the greatest vaudeville revue of all time.” Slide, The Vaudevillians, p. 111.
50. Harris later said, “The first ballad I really remember him singing was ‘I Kiss Your Hand, Madame,’at the Montmartre, in 1929.” AI.
51. Cited as “a San Diego newspaper” in Shephard and Slatzer, Bing Crosby: The Hollow Man, p. 58.
52. Lucky, p. 81.
53. One grace note during their run was the marriage of Bing’s sister Catherine to Edward Mullin at San Francisco’s St. Ignatius Catholic Church, in a ceremony read by Gonzaga’s dean of faculty, Father Carroll.
54. Rinker.
55. Ibid.
56. Lucky, pp. 42-43.
57. Variety, Oct. 6, 1926; the review (signed Land.) appeared under “New Acts.” The version used here is the one that ran in Variety’s second edition; the first had a few different words and altered punctuaton.
58. AI, RedNorvo.
59. Thompson, Bing,p. 18.
60. Lucky, p. 80.
61. Rinker.
9. Whiteman
1. Variety, Feb. 16, 1927, signed by Gus Kahn, Jean Goldkette, Roger Wolfe Kahn, Joe Rea, Eddie Edwards, Paul Ash, Phil Napoleon, Art Kahn, and five others. Cited in DeLong, Paps, p. 58.
2. Hugh C. Ernst, original program notes. He characterized the piece as follows: “The shrieking clarinet, thumping piano and the clattering traps describe vividly a husky hostler dragging his wife by the hair around their squalid hut behind the stable. The ‘G-r-r-r!’ of the cornet and the moan of the trombone are Fido and Towser barking, yapping and howling outside the door, eager to get into the fray.”
3. DeLong, Pops,p. 104.
4. Thompson, Bing,p. 21.
5. Lucky, p. 43.
6. Thompson, Bing,p. 21.
7. Ibid.
8. Rinker.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. Lucky, p. 83.
12. Rinker.
13. For Columbia’s U.K. release, even Clark’s name vanished, though not entirely. His band was billed as the Charleston Serenaders and Betty Patrick became Tillie Clarke.
14. Variety, Oct. 20, 1926.
15. Spokane Chronicle, Nov. 17, 1926.
16. Letter from Larry Crosby to Ed Mello, Feb. 2, 1951.
17. Spokane Chronicle, Nov. 17, 1926.
18. Interviews with M. L. Higgins and Madeleine Carroll, Copeland memo, op. cit.
19. Spokane Chronicle, Nov. 24, 1926.
20. Rinker.
21. Spokane Chronicle, Nov. 17, 1926.
22. Spokane Chronicle, Nov. 25, 1926.
23. Spokesman-Review, Nov. 1926, cited in Dyar, News for an Empire.
24. “Crosby, Rinker Win Home Town and Boys Go Big at Liberty,” Spokane Chronicle, Nov. 1926, undated clip. BCCGU.
25. Ibid. The reporter went on to write that the “remarkable reception they received last night before a ‘hardboiled’ home town audience left little doubt that they would succeed in the east.”
26. Lucky, p. 83.
27. Rinker.
28. Ibid.
29. Ibid.
30. DeLong, Pops,p. 105.
31. Jack Fulton was still angry about the incident sixty-five years later, conceding Crosby’s talent yet protesting that Bing’s way had to be the only way. AI, Fulton.
32. Lucky, p. 92. He goes on to say, “As there had been nothing like it, it was very popular.”
33. Mezzrow and Wolfe, Really the Blues,p. 120.
34. Ken Murray, “Louis, Bix Had Most Influence on Der Bingle,” Down Beat, July 14, 1950. He also said, “You know, Ken, I got a lot out of Bix Beiderbecke when we were both beating around the country with the Whiteman band. And just as Bix himself found inspiration in Louis Armstrong out on the South Side in the late ‘20s, so did I.”
35. Whiteman’s marquee billing.
36. Variety, Feb. 16, 1927.
37. Ibid.
38. DeLong, Pops,p. 108.
39. O’Brien interview, op. cit.
40. Lucky, p. 84.
41. McDonough interview, op. cit.
42. Rinker.
43. Ibid.
44. Mize, Bing,p. 27.
45. Lucky, p. 84.
46. Thompson, Bing,p. 27.
47. The top five vocal records of 1927. Whitburn, Pop Memories.
48. Slide, The Vaudevillians,p. 51.
10. Rhythm Boys
1. Interview memo for Time, on Francis Cork O’Keefe, M. Gleason, August 1946. TIA.
2. AI, Marti Barris and Joe Porter.
3. Variety, May 5, 1926.
4. O’Brien interview, op. cit.
5. Rinker.
6. Ibid.
7. Variety, June 8, 1927.
8. Variety, June 22, 1927.
9. Lucky, p. 96.
10. AI, Donald Mills.
11. Spokane Daily Chronicle, Aug. 23, 1927.
12. AI, BillChallis.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. Carmichael, The Stardust Road,p. 121.
16. AI, BillChallis.
17. Mezzrow and Wolfe, Really the Blues,p. 148.
18. AI, BillChallis.
19. Ibid.
20. Fred Romary liner notes, Bing Crosby, Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams (RCA Vintage), 1972.
21. Alistair Cooke, Letter from America, BBC, October 1977, reprinted in Bing, Summer 1999.
22. Promotional interview disc for Decca Records, 1955.
23. Confessions, bk. 4, chap. 6. The song lyric is “I’m tired of living and scared of dying.”
24. Kart, Chicago Tribune Oct. 15, 1977.
25. Crosby interview; Evans and Kiner, Tram,p. 92.
26. AI, BillChallis.
27. Sudhalter and Evans, Bix: Man and Legend,p. 240.
28. Lucky, p. 94.
29. Rinker.
30. AI, Dolores Hope.
31. Time memo on O’Keefe, op. cit.
32. Ibid.
33. Western Union telegram from Bing Crosby to Ginger Meehan, New York, January 4, 1928, 12:49 A.M.Georgia State University, Special Collections.
34. Ibid., Chicago, July 4, 1928, 5:07 P.M.
35. Ibid., Chicago, July 10, 1928, 8:07 P.M.
36. Bogue, Ish Kabibble.
37. Ibid.
38. Thomas interview, op. cit.
39. Variety, Apr. 18, 1928.
40. AI, Marti Barris and Joe Porter.
41. Lucky, p. 94.
42. Rinker.
43. O’Brien interview, op. cit.
44. Rinker.
45. Variety, Aug. 15, 1928.
46. Ibid.
47. Letter from Louis Armstrong to unknown recipient, c. 1967. Louis Armstrong House and Archives at Queens College/CUNY.
48. Dance, The World of Earl Hines,p. 146.
49. AI, Gary Crosby.
50. Osborne interview, op. cit.
51. The full inscription reads, “Am I too suave or sveldt [sic]. To Ted, Hazel and the little one. Bing. Brush by Fuller.”
52. Rinker.
53. Ted Crosby, The Story of Bing Crosby,p. 143; also Lucky,p. 95.
54. Challis interview by Ira Gitler, Oral History Program, Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University, N.J.
55. “Popular Records,” The New Yorker, Dec. 29, 1928.
56. Variety, December 26, 1928.
11. Of Cabbages and Kings
1. Universal ad for King of Jazz, in Variety, Dec. 11, 1929.
2. The writer was Paul Schofield, known for the 1926 Beau Geste.
3. For what it’s worth, rumors at the time blamed the rancor on Olsen’s concern that Shutta was carrying on with Cantor.
4. Evans and Kiner, Tram,p. 105.
5. Vallée, Let the Chips Fall,p. 15. “If further proof were needed that there is little or no vanity in Rudy Vallée, I need only point out that throughout the course of four marriages over a period of forty-seven years, there has never been a single progeny to bear my name!” (p. 16).
6. DeLong, Pops,p. 122.
7. Abel Green, “Whiteman-Old Gold Social Bunch Ride De Luxe — 50 Aboard and Happy,” Variety, May 29, 1929.
8. Evans and Kiner, Tram,pp. 114—15.
9. KGM.
10. Ibid.
11. Ted and Larry Crosby, Bing,p. 149.
12. Ibid., p. 157.
13. Evans and Kiner, Tram,p. 115.
14. AI, Kurt Dieterle.
15. Thompson, Bing,p. 34.
16. Ted and Larry Crosby, Bing,p. 156.
17. TV interview, The David Frost Show, Feb. 10, 1971.
18. Lucky, p. 121.
19. AI, Dorothea Ponce.
20. Vallée, Let the Chips Fall,pp. 91—92.
21. Shepherd and Slatzer, Bing Crosby: The Hollow Man,p. 124.
22. Various ads, Los Angeles Evening Express, July 1929.
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid.
25. AI, Phil Harris.
26. Various ads, op. cit.
27. Earl Wilson, “It Happened Last Night,” New York Post (undated clip), 1946.
28. Evans and Kiner, Tram,p. 118.
29. Rinker.
30. Ibid.
31. Lucky, p. 98.
32. Cardinal O’Connell made his remarks before a thousand members of Boston’s Holy Names Society in January 1932, cited in Eberly, Music in the Air,p. 103.
33. Ibid.
34. Lucky, p. 88.
35. Ibid., p. 89.
36. In Variety, Nov. 29, 1929, Bob Landry wrote of the “Gay Love”/“Can’t We Be Friends” disc, “looks like a possible favorite, properly piloted.”
37. Cited in Daniel, Chronicle of the 20th Century,p. 375.
38. Variety, Dec. 11, 1929.
39. DeLong, Pops,p. 143.
40. AI, Bobbe Van Heusen.
41. AI, Kurt Dieterle.
42. Ted and Larry Crosby, Bing,p. 170.
43. Lucky, p. 100.
44. Ibid., p. 102.
45. AI, Bobbe Van Heusen.
46. Ibid. The wire would have been dated 1969. Bobbe married Perlberg before a justice of the peace in Pasadena in February 1928, though she insisted that it was a couple of years later. The sisters’ career began when Irving Berlin’s producer, Hassard Short, heard them in Edmonton and asked them to sing for Berlin over the phone. Short then changed their name from Brock to Brox. They appeared on stage in The Cocoanuts and the Ziegfeld Follies of 1927 and then signed with MGM. Bobbe, whose real name was Josephine, was also known as Dagmar (after silent film actress Dagmar Godowsky). Her sisters were Lorayne, who married trumpet player Henry Busse in 1935, and Pat.
47. Variety, Feb. 26, 1930.
48. Variety, May 7, 1930.
49. Regina Crewe, New York American, May 3, 1930.
50. The picture opened with a running time of ninety-eight minutes, according to Variety, May 7, 1930, suggesting a last-minute cut (restored prints play 105 minutes). The live show opened at forty-two minutes and was soon cut to thirty-seven. Gersh win was paid $5,000 and Whiteman $12,500. Tickets sold for two dollars.
51. New York Times, May 3, 1930.
52. The new sequences for the German edition and one made for Spain were directed by a twenty-four-year-old German immigrant, Kurt Neumann, yet another newcomer launched by King of Jazz; he went on to make many low-budget genre films, e.g., The Unknown Guest, Cattle Drive, Rocketship X-M, Tarzan and the She-Devil, and most famously, The Fly.
53. Variety, Apr. 9, 1930.
54. Lucky, p. 102.
55. Ibid.
56. AI, Rosemary Clooney, to whom Kathryn Crosby told the story in spring 2000.
57. Rinker.
58. Coslow, Cocktails for Two,p. 105.
59. These include the 1935 feature Broadway to Hollywood and such shorts as Roast Beef and Movies and Nertsery Rhytmes (with Ted Healy’s Three Stooges). Most of the surviving footage was marketed in Germany in 1930, including the remarkable “Lockstep” prison number, which debuted in the United States in That’s Entertainment III (1994). For Bing the experience marked the beginning of his lifelong friendship with actor William “Buster” Collier Jr. (the son of matinee idol William Collier Sr., who was also in The March of Time), a fishing buddy and neighbor.
60. Lucky, p. 102.
61. Challis’s swing arrangements include “Clarinet Marmelade” and “Singing the Blues” for Henderson and “Stardust” for Ellington.
12. Dixie
1. “Bing Crosby Debunks Himself,” op. cit.
2. AI, Frank Lieberman.
3. AI, Rory Burke.
4. Pulliam, Harriman.
5. The movie was Happy Days, and the number with the Boswells was cut from the final print.
6. Letter from Dixie Lee to Edward J. Meeman, 1930, on the occasion of the first of her movies, Cheer Up and Smile (her sixth film), to open in Harriman. Meeman was editor of the Knoxville News-Sentinel. Cited in Pulliam.
7. AI, Pauline Weislow.
8. Meeman letter, op. cit.
9. “It Happened Last Night,” op. cit.
10. Vocco also came to Bing’s aid in Chicago (“My goodness, in the old days, I used to put Bing Crosby to bed — he was drunk all the time, you know — but we became really good friends,” he recalled after Bing’s death); the aid he provided Dixie cemented a lifelong friendship. Vocco interview, Columbia University Oral History Research Office.
11. “It Happened Last Night,” op. cit.
12. The pictures were Let’s Go Places, Harmony at Home, Happy Days, Cheer Up and Smile, and The Big Party.
13. “One of the most elaborate song and dance numbers probably ever screened is ‘Crazy Feet’ with Dixie Lee singing and 32 girls doing tap and jazz routines.” Variety, Feb. 19, 1930.
14. Atkins, David Butler; AI, Robert O’Brien; Ulanov, The Incredible Crosby. For Richard Keene (aka Raymond Keene, said by Bing [Lucky,p. 121] to have arranged Bing’s unsuccessful screen test at Fox), Shepherd and Slatzer, Bing Crosby: The Hol low Man. For White, Los Angeles Times,Sept. 30, 1930. Movies White appeared in with Dixie are Happy Days and Fox Movietone Follies.
15. Charles Samuels, “Bing Crosby the Groaner,” unidentified magazine clip, 1946. BCCGU.
16. Anne Edwards, “Bing Crosby the Going My Way Star in Rancho Santa Fe,” Architectural Digest, April 1996.
17. “It Happened Last Night,” op. cit.
18. AI, Pauline Weislow.
19. AI, Flo Haley.
20. AI, Dr. George J. (Jed) Hummer.
21. AI, Marsha Hunt.
22. Larry and Ted Crosby, Bing,p. 184; also, “Bing Crosby the Groaner,” op. cit.
23. Cooper, Please Don’t Shoot My Dog,p. 23.
24. This was directly before he left with Whiteman on the aborted trip to Vancouver, which led to his breaking his association with the bandleader.
25. Larry and Ted Crosby, Bing,p. 178.
26. “It Happened Last Night,” op. cit.
27. Rinker.
28. Al Hine, “Million Dollar Kettle Drummer,” Esquire, May 1953.
29. Leroy, Mervyn Leroy: Take One,p. 88.
30. Anthony Quinn, RBT.
31. Rinker.
32. Waters, His Eye Is on the Sparrow.
33. “The Survival of African Music in America,” Popular Science Monthly, Sept. 1899. Cited in Van Der Merwe, Origins of the Popular Style,pp. 134—36.
34. AI, Joe Bushkin.
35. AI, Jake Hanna.
36. AI, MiltHinton.
37. Letter from Walter Huston to Marie Manovill, Dec. 31, 1938. Courtesy of Marie Manovill and Gloria Burleson.
38. AI, Bud Brubaker.
39. AI, June MacCloy.
40. Ibid.
41. Armstrong letter, c. 1967, op. cit.
42. Crosby and Firestone, Going My Own Way,p. 112.
43. Spokesman-Review, Sept. 30, 1930.
44. Spokane Daily Chronicle, Sept. 30, 1930.
45. New York Times, Sept. 30, 1930. This was an AP dispatch. Bing was twenty-seven and had not yet clipped a year from his age; the incorrect age given Murray Crosey is simply one of many errors, including Dixie’s real name and birthplace.
46. AI, Basil Grillo.
47. “Dixie Lee Weds Bing Crosby,” Los Angeles Times, Sept. 30, 1930.
48. AI, Flo Haley.
49. Armstrong letter, c. 1967, op. cit.
50. Rinker.
51. Armstrong, Swing That Music, p. viii.
52. Los Angeles Examiner, Mar. 5, 1931.
53. This occurred only two weeks before the death of Knute Rockne, the beloved Notre Dame football coach, in a plane crash (March 30), an event that so disturbed Bing that he did not fly again until 1944, occasionally losing work as a result.
54. Bob Crosby, RBT.
55. This line appears in an unproduced teleplay, Bing and Dixie, by Mel Frank, based largely on interviews gathered by Frank and producer Meta Rosenberg; in this instance, the line was related to Meta by George Rosenberg, her husband and Bing’s longtime agent. AI, Meta Rosenberg, Elizabeth Frank.
56. Confessions, bk. 2, chap. 4.
13. Prosperity Is Just Around the Crooner
1. Sennett, King of Comedy,p. 258.
2. Coslow, Cocktails for Two,p. 111.
3. The show also included an interview with Marlene Dietrich, possibly the first time they met.
4. Coslow, Cocktails for Two,p. 112
5. Sennett, King of Comedy,p. 257.
6. Ibid.
7. AI, Jack Hupp.
8. Mack Sennett Collection, Folder 1450, AMPAS. The letter was written by Bea Englander, representing Sennett. Bing’s ambivalence about leaving the trio is also suggested by an agreement he made with songwriter Walter Donaldson involving an endorsement and photograph (“Featured by The Rhythm Boys”) on the sheet music for the 1931 song “Hello Beautiful.” Neither the Rhythm Boys nor Bing recorded it (Wayne King had the hit; Maurice Chevalier made it a signature theme), but a cover depicting the boys was published and soon withdrawn.
9. The Boswells had had their first hit in April; the Mills Brothers would have one in the fall.
10. Rinker.
11. Lucky, p. 105.
12. Ibid.
13. Kenneth Frogley, “IDN Radio,” Los Angeles Illustrated Daily News, May 28, 1931.
14. Ibid., June 2, 1931.
15. Lucky, p. 107.
16. Rinker.
17. “In those days, every place had a trio, and these guys were heroes to us highschool kids. So when Crosby left, the Cocoanut Grove was without a trio and they had a contest to see who would succeed him.” AI, Jack Hupp. The winners were Jack Smith, Milton Spersal, and Al Teeter, who would get together in school and imitate “So the Bluebirds and the Blackbirds Got Together.” Smith took Bing’s role and remained at the Grove for a few years with Arnheim and, later, Phil Harris, then appeared on the Hit Parade and other shows and with Doris Day in On Moonlight Bay. AI, Phil Harris.
18. Rinker.
19. “[Rinker] was salaried to Bing Crosby Ltd which is owned by Crosby, Barris and Roger Marchetti, local lawyer.” Variety, July 28, 1931.
20. AI, Marti Barris.
21. AI, Marguerite Toth.
22. AI, Basil Grillo.
23. AI, Joe Porter.
24. AI, Basil Grillo.
25. AI, Julia Rinker.
26. Shepherd and Slatzer, Bing Crosby: The Hollow Man.
27. Rinker.
28. Ibid.
29. AI, Skitch Henderson.
30. AI, Don Eagle.
31. AI, Kurt Dieterle.
32. Photoplay, Sept. 1931.
33. Motion Picture Herald, Oct. 10, 1931.
34. Variety, Nov. 10, 1931.
35. Eberle, Music in the Air,p. 13.
36. Another excellent number is “I’d Climb the Highest Mountain,” a fine song he never otherwise recorded.
37. According to the original cast notes, Ginger Rogers was proposed for the role of Bing’s beloved, which went instead to Ann Christy.
38. “Bing Crosby Signs with Columbia,” Columbia Broadcasting System press release, Aug. 22, 1931.
39. “CBS Gets Crosby; Musicians’ Ban in L.A. Only,” Variety, Aug. 25, 1931.
40. Ibid.
PART TWO
14. Big Broadcast
1. Louis Armstrong, Time (1955).
2. AI, Artie Shaw.
3. Young would go on to conduct more Crosby recordings that anyone except John Scott Trotter.
4. AI, Burton Lane. Arthur Jarret, “a fairly popular singer in those days,” chose Lane’s song as his theme after Bing turned it down, “but my song never made it.”
5. AI, Marti Barris.
6. Circumstantial evidence of his involvement in “Where the Blue of the Night’s pretty if rarely heard verse was provided by rival Russ Columbo, who, upon hearing Bing sing the chorus on the air, rushed to record it. Columbo’s version, made five days before Bing’s, lacks the verse, probably because he had no way of knowing that one had been added.
7. Crosby’s authorship has been challenged on only one song, by Harry Tobias, the lyricist who submitted “At Your Command” to Harry Barris. Yet Tobias, in an interview conducted sixty years after the fact, also insisted that he wrote the music, which, if true, would make it the only melody he wrote during a long career as a lyricwriter. Lane said Bing did not request participation in “Love Came Into My Heart,” though he performed it on the air before introducing “Where the Blue of the Night.” Bing minimized his work as a songwriter in a 1976 radio interview with John Salisbury: “I wrote a couple of things with Harry Barris, nothing serious. I wrote a lot of material, parodies, verses, special material on television, radio, and in the films, gag songs, nothing popular, nothing that made a hit.”
8. Thomas, Harry Warren and the Hollywood Musical, p. 2.
9. New York Times, Aug. 30, 1931.
10. Transcription of Sept. 2, 1931, CBS broadcast, The Chronological Bing Crosby, Vol.11 (Jonzo).
11. Salisbury interview, op. cit.
12. Smith, In All His Glory,p. 92.
13. Shepherd and Slatzer, Bing Crosby: The Hollow Man,p. 161.
14. Time memo on O’Keefe, op. cit.
15. Memo of background interview with Simon Ruskin, M. Gleason, Aug. 14, 1949. TIA.
16. “Bing Crosby Debunks Himself,” op. cit.
17. Lucky, p. 111.
18. Letter from Agnes Law to Philip K. Eberle, cited in Eberle, Music in the Air,p. 102.
19. Memo of background interview with Edgar Sisson, May 16, 1949. TIA.
20. AI, Gary Stevens.
21. AI, Artie Shaw.
22. AI, Gary Stevens.
23. Variety, Sept. 8, 1931 ; the same article listed the selections performed on that first show.
24. AI, Gary Stevens.
25. AI, Artie Shaw.
26. AI, Gary Stevens.
27. Variety, Sept. 8, 1931.
28. Columbo’s 1928 recording (with Gus Arnheim) of “Back in Your Own Backyard,” made shortly after Bing’s “01’ Man River,” shows how stiffly rearguard his original attack was. The more winning Columbo sides (“Prisoner of Love,” “All of Me”) followed in 1931, by which time he had assimilated the Crosby style, though he avoided mordents along with rhythm.
29. AI, Ken Roberts. “I think Freddy conducted Monday and Tuesday nights, when Bing wasn’t there. Victor Young was hired specifically for Bing — that’s all he did.”
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid. Roberts worked with Bing again during the war, when Bing specifically requested him, and at charity events: “And then many many years later — I guess at about 1976 — I was still working at CBS doing a soap opera every day, and I was walking through the corridors and a friend of mine brought Bing in to be on an interview show with Pat Collins and he saw me and said ‘Kenneth, are you still here?’ He was still such a nice, sweet, simple fellow.”
32. Variety, Oct. 27, 1931.
33. Variety, 1931, cited by Wilbur W. Hindley in the Spokesman-Review, Dec. 27, 1931.
34. Mildred Bailey, Jack Oakie, and Bob Hope also claimed to have coined the name “the Groaner.” Hope and Oakie are out of the question — they did not know Crosby until 1932. Dorsey may have picked up the phrase from Bailey, known for her verbal swiftness (Tommy was not), but he was apparently more aggressive about using it.
35. Duke Ellington, Carter Harmon Interview Collection, Smithsonian Institution, cited in Nicholson, Reminiscing in Tempo,p. 119.
36. Kiner, Directory & Log of the Bing Crosby Cremo Singer Radio Series.
37. Ruskin memo, op. cit. Dr. W. James Gould, Ruskin’s successor as throat specialist to stars and politicians, pointed out in the 1990s that performing surgery on Bing’s node would have been irresponsible.
38. Lucky,p. 113.
39. Ibid.
40. Ibid.
41. Billboard, Nov. 13, 1931.
42. Variety, Nov. 10, 1931. The reporter, Bige, was Joe Bigelow, who later became an account executive in charge of Kraft Music Hall.
43. Memo of background interview with Mclnerny and others, 1940s (undated). TIA.
44. Sisson memo, op. cit.
45. AI, Donald Mills.
46. AI, Frieda Kapp.
47. AI, Burton Lane.
48. AI, Artie Shaw.
49. AI, Red Norvo.
50. AI, Ken Roberts.
51. AI, Gary Stevens.
52. AI, Ken Roberts.
53. They were Paul Bracco and Phil Taylor, interviewed by Time. Mclnerny memo, op. cit.
54. AI, Artie Shaw.
55. Mack Sennett Collection, Folder 1450,AMPAS.
56. In the 1976 John Salisbury interview, Bing was asked to comment on Ellington: “I recorded a couple of times with Duke and used to see him all the time. We were friendly, but I never worked a great deal with Duke. I had great admiration for him as a composer and a bandleader — one of the greatest, one of the all-time greats in both fields, conducting, arranging. A giant, a real giant. And a nice man, a real reasonable type, good taste. Classy guy.”
57. Mize, Bing Crosby and the Bing Crosby Style,p. 125.
58. Gramophone, Dec. 1932, cited in Bing, Apr. 1996.
59. Bing collaborated on the lyrics of this with two obscure songwriters, Irving Wallman and Max Wartell.
60. Ulanov, The Incredible Crosby,p. 88.
61. Thompson, Bing,p. 52.
62. Adams, Here’s to the Friars,p. 155.
63. New York Daily News, Feb. 25, 1932.
64. “Crooner Crosby Faces Suit for Earnings Share,” Los Angeles Times, June 3, 1932.
65. Letter from Eleanor Hard, Editorial Department, Time, to Mr. E. J. Crosby, Dec. 12, 1931. HCC.
66. Letter from E. J. Crosby to Eleanor Hard, undated. HCC.
15. The Crosby Clause
1. Paramount ad, The Big Broadcast (1932), reprinted in Bingtalks, May-Aug. 1995.
2. KGM.
3. Variety, Apr. 26, 1932.
4. KGM.
5. This refers to the second take (B) of “Sweet Georgia Brown.”
6. Los Angeles Times, June 13, 1932.
7. Evans and Kiner, Tram,p. 154.
8. KGM.
9. The working title was The Girl in the Transom.
10. “Stereophonic Sound,” from the film Silk Stockings (1955).
11. At one point Paramount planned to call Crosby’s character Bing Hornsby, and a cast list went out with that name; numerous reviews, including those in Variety and the Spokesman-Review, stated that Bing played Hornsby despite numerous references to Crosby throughout the film.
12. The Tuttle material was drawn from an unpublished memoir, They Started Talking, which despite the ironic title ignores the HUAC hearings; plus “Frank Tuttle Discusses Why He Is ‘Informer’,” New York Herald Tribune, May 25, 1951; “Tuttle Confesses Paying 10G Into Red Coffers— Brands 39 as Commies,” Variety, May 25, 1951; “Film Old Timer Frank Tuttle 10 Yrs. a Red, Names 36 More,” New York Daily News, May 25, 1951; “Film Maker Rues 10 Years a Red,” New York Times, May 25, 1951; “Tuttle Admits to 10 Years as Red; Names 30 Other Commies,” Hollywood Reporter, May 25, 1951; “Tuttle, Ex-Film Director, Ex-Red, Broke,” Los Angeles Examiner, July 3, 1954; “Frank Tuttle, Veteran Movie Director, Dies,” Los Angeles Times, Jan. 7, 1963; and press releases issued by Paramount in 1934 and by Warner Bros. in 1956. The witness who named Tuttle was screenwriter and superinformer Richard J. Collins.
13. McGilligan and Buhle, Tender Comrades,p. 148.
14. Ibid.
15. AI, Nancy Briggs.
16. AI, Basil Grillo.
17. AI, Helen Votachenko. Tuttle was also diabetic. Bing wrote of an incident when producer Herb Polesie and Tuttle visited him to go over a new script: “About half way through, Frank began getting slower and slower in his reading. Finally, with bowed head, he was able to gasp out, ‘orange juice.’ He was going into a coma or some kind of blackout.” Bing and Herb dashed into the kitchen and found oranges, but not a knife to cut them. Bing frantically tore open oranges with his hands until he had a glassful. The moral, he concluded: “Know thine own kitchen.” Bing Crosby, unpublished papers.
18. Clair, who pioneered the creative use of sound, initially declared talking movies “a redoubtable monster.” Many years later, in a 1959 TV interview (Le Million, DVD), he pointed out the decline of the great physical comedians of the silent era and observed that the best comedians of the sound era came from radio.
19. Westmore and Davidson, The Westmores of Hollywood,p. 94.
20. Frost interview, op. cit.
21. Tuttle memoir.
22. “Crosby-Lombardo billing keeps Guy out of Par picture!” Variety, July 5, 1932.
23. Hattie, by Carlton Jackson (Madison), cited in Bing, Dec. 1991.
24. Variety, Oct. 18, 1932.
25. Spokesman-Review, Oct. 28, 1932.
26. New York Daily Mirror, cited in Alvin H. Marill, “Bing Crosby,” Films in Review, June-July 1968.
27. New York American, in ibid.
28. In a letter from Jason S. Joy of the MPAA to Harold Hurley at Paramount, Sept. 30, 1932: “The exception referred to is the sequence in the bathroom, into which are injected a couple of undress shots which we cannot help but consider unfortunate in that they do not seem to be called for by the action, and in fact appear almost offensively out of place in a story as free as this is from sex implications. While we have not yet got to the point of making scenes like these a Code matter, nevertheless they are being so generally injected into pictures that we are becoming more than a little concerned. Censors in a number of places inevitably cut them out; and so, if you are thinking of trimming the picture at all, we would urge you very earnestly to consider eliminating at least one of these shots, in the interest of censorship and, we believe, good taste and sound policy.” MPAA files, AMPAS.
29. Tuttle memoir.
30. Variety, Dec. 13, 1932.
16. Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?
1. AI, Rosemary Clooney.
2. Whitney Balliett, Saturday Review, June 27, 1953.
3. AI, Gary Crosby.
4. AI, Barry Ulanov.
5. CBS signed blackface singer and future character actor Jay C. Flippen to fill out its programming in Bing’s absence.
6. Variety, Aug. 8, 1932.
7. John A. Myer, M.D., “Cigarette Century,” American Heritage, Dec. 1992.
8. Strangely, Bing’s version is ponderous and orotund. It survived as a classic tenor saxophone solo by Chu Berry until Sinatra found the right gait for it, though the definitive version was recorded in 1958 by Billy Eckstine (Imagination, EmArcy), who often revived Crosby ballads.
9. Informed in 1994 of Bing’s true birth date, Hope paused, then howled with pleasure, “That Bing! That Bing!”
10. AI, Bob Hope.
11. Ibid.
12. Variety, Dec. 6, 1932.
13. New York Herald Tribune, Dec. 3, 1932.
14. Variety, July 26, 1932.
15. A 1944 ad, C. Liggett & Myers Tobacco Co., unidentified magazine. Collection of Eric Anderson.
16. Variety, Jan. 31, 1933: “Bing Crosby pays the Shuberts $50 for the rights to do ‘Brother Can You Spare a Dime at the Palace.’”
17. Vallée begins his October 27, 1932, Columbia recording as follows: “This is Rudy Vallée again, stepping perhaps a bit out of character.”
18. Studs Terkel liner notes, Songs of the Depression, a record anthology issued by Book of the Month Club, 1980.
19. Crosby and the nation would have been astonished to learn that twenty years on, “the Depression’s theme would become prosperity’s forbidden melody,” as Murray Kempton wrote (Part of Our Time, 1955), after Jay Gorney was probed by the House Un-American Activities Committee as a communist.
20. On that record, Lennie had accompanied Jack Fulton’s vocal on celesta. Another connection with the song is that Sue Carol helped introduce it.
21. Writing about “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” in the 1970s, musicologist Charles Hamm concluded, “It was difficult to lose faith in a country that had produced a Bing Crosby.” Liner notes, Brother Can You Spare a Dime?: American Song During the Great Depression (New World), 1977.
22. Variety, Jan. 10, 1933.
23. Variety ranked the top twelve shows as follows: Jack Pearl, Eddie Cantor, EdWynn, Amos ‘n’ Andy, Rudy Vallée, Burns and Allen, Myrt and Marge, Al Jolson, Bing Crosby, Ben Bemie, Fred Allen, Kate Smith. Feb. 28, 1933.
24. Milton Berle and Haskell Frankel, Milton Berle (New York: Dell, 1975),p. 144.
25. AI, Tony Martin.
26. Friedwald, Jazz Singing,p. 103.
27. Ibid.
28. Earl Coleman, a self-described Black Bing who recorded with Charlie Parker in 1947 and revived his career as a ballad singer thirty years later, insisted that the first Black Bing was LeRoy Felton, who sang with Benny Carter’s band (e.g., Carter’s recording of “More than You Know”). Carter himself took a flier at singing in the Crosby style (“Synthetic Love,” 1933). As early as 1932, Harlan Lattimore, the vocalist with Don Redman’s orchestra, was billed as “the Negro Bing Crosby.” After the enormous success of Billy Eckstine, other Black Bings included Herb Jeffries, Al Hibbler, Arthur Prysock, and Johnny Hartman. AI, Earl Coleman, Benny Carter.
29. This was Bing’s second consecutive hit with a Victor Young tune, after “I Don’t Stand a Ghost of a Chance.”
30. Thompson, Bing,p. 58.
31. AI, Barry Ulanov.
32. KGM.
33. Ibid.
34. Bing Crosby, “Mutual Liking for Spaghetti Made Eddie and Bing Pals,” Down Beat, May 1939.
35. AI, Barry Ulanov.
36. Ibid.
37. Oakie, Jack Oakie’s Double Takes,p. 118.
38. Ed Sullivan, “Little Old New York,” New York Daily News, Apr. 10, 1944.
39. Smith, op. cit.,p. 264.
40. Coslow, Cocktails for Two,p. 134.
41. Oakie, Jack Oakie’s Double Takes,p. 63.
42. Ibid.
43. Coslow, Cocktails for Two,p. 135.
44. AI, Mary Carlisle.
45. Ibid.
46. AI, Nancy Briggs.
47. Dietrich, Dietrich,p. 104.
48. Harrison Carroll, Los Angeles Evening Herald Express, Sept. 25, 1934.
49. AI, Max Wilk.
50. Frank Steiner of Paramount to Frank Murphy, Bing, Oct. 25, 1967.
51. Andre Sennwald, New York Times, June 23, 1933.
52. Los Angeles Times, June 14, 1933.
53. Variety, July 25, 1933.
54. “Musicomedies of the Week,” Time, July 1933.
55. MPAA files, AMPAS.
56. AI, Alan Fisher.
57. AI, Rosemary Clooney.
58. AI, Sheila Lynn.
17. Under Western Skies
1. “Bing Crosby Debunks Himself,” op. cit., cited in Time, Jan. 1, 1934.
2. Long thought to be lost, Please was discovered and marketed in the 1990s by film preservationist Bob DeFlores. Only one reel of Just an Echo is believed to exist; as of 2000, the collector who found that reel has refused to let anyone else see it. In 1976 DeFlores asked Bing about Just an Echo: “And he says, ‘Well, I’m just not happy with it.’ I said, ‘What’s the matter?’ He says the editing was real poor. He said, ‘I’d be in a Mountie uniform on a horse and the camera angle would be from the left and then all of a sudden a sharp cut and I’d be somewhere else.’ He remembered this after forty-five years.”
3. Letter from Bing to Ted Crosby, Tuesday (undated) 1934. HCC.
4. Collins interview, op. cit.
5. W. E. Oliver, “Bing Calm Despite Stress,” Los Angeles Evening Herald Express, June 14, 1933.
6. KGM.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. Paramount press release by Dave Keene, Oct. 27, 1933.
10. Ibid.
11. Oakie, Jack Oakie’s Double Takes,p. 129.
12. Lucky, pp. 117—18.
13. Mordaunt Hall, New York Times, Sept. 23, 1933.
14. Variety, Sept. 26, 1933.
15. Louella O. Parsons, Hearst syndicate, Sept. 29, 1933.
16. Variety, Oct. 1933.
17. Variety, Nov. 14, 1933.
18. Time, Jan. 1, 1934.
19. Walsh, Each Man in His Time,p. 257.
20. Davies, The Times We Had,p. 119.
21. Lucky, pp. 119—20.
22. Davies, The Times We Had,p. 120.
23. Ibid.
24. Lucky, p. 121.
25. Transcribed from Both Sides of Bing Crosby (Curtain Calls).
26. Walsh, Each Man in His Time,p. 271.
27. Barrios, A Song in the Dark,p. 398.
28. MPAA files, AMPAS.
29. Lucky, p. 120.
30. Louella O. Parsons, Hearst Syndicate, Jan. 26, 1934.
31. Andre Sennwald, New York Times, Dec. 23, 1933.
32. Time, Jan. 1, 1934.
33. Time, Jan. 22, 1934.
34. Variety, Sept. 19, 1933.
35. AI, Roy Rogers.
36. Salisbury interview, op. cit.
37. Ibid.
18. More Than a Crooner
1. Robert Trout, transcribed script for Wilkins Coffee Time, Oct. 6, 1933. Collection of John McDonough.
2. Billboard, undated clip, 1934.
3. Between Arnheim and Grier, the band was conducted for three shows by Carol Lofner.
4. Alton Cook, “Bing Crosby Record Stayer,” New York World Telegram, July 12, 1934.
5. Fortune (Aug. 1935) described FDR as “the best voice in radio. Until Mr. Roosevelt taught the world how that titanic trombone of tubes and antennae could be played no one had any idea of the possible range of its virtuosity.”
6. Manchester, The Glory and the Dream,p. 81.
7. Leuchtenburg, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal,p. 330.
8. Gross, I Looked and I Listened,p. 172.
9. It’s too late to order it, but the kit contained “a trial-size cake of Woodbury’s facial soap, generous tubes of Woodbury’s germ free, cold, and facial creams, and six baby packets of Woodbury’s facial powder, a sample of each of the six shades.”
10. Bob Crosby, RBT.
11. After shooting wrapped on Catalina, the crew moved to the Paramount lot, where Bing entertained a few visiting Gonzagans, including Mike Pecarovich (then Gonzaga’s coach) and Ray Flaherty, who arrived with members of his team, the New York Giants, winners of the 1934 National Football League championship. “Bing had one of the greatest memories I have ever seen,” Ray recalled. “As those football players came in, he would stand at the door and greet them, ‘Hello, George,’’Hello, Max, “Hello, Bill.’ I think maybe he used to get a program and rehearse it a little bit.” AI, Flaherty.
12. Lucky,p. 125.
13. Ibid.,p. 126.
14. Ibid., pp. 127—28. Crosby wrote “nightie” in Lucky but told a BBC interviewer in 1973 that Lombard actually said “douche bag.”
15. Ibid.,p. 128.
16. Several comic lines were punched into Horace Jackson’s script by writers George Marion Jr. (The Big Broadcast) and Francis Martin (Mississippi).
17. Especially after Bette Davis throttled her on camera in Old Acquaintance with a vengeance unstipulated in the script.
18. Kobal, People Will Talk,p. 361.
19. Hart, Kitty,p. 65.
20. AI, Kitty Carlisle Hart.
21. Letter from Bing Crosby to Ted Crosby, Tuesday (undated) 1934. HCC.
22. This passage obviously augurs the famous “a little sex” scene in Preston Sturges’s Sullivan’s Travels.
23. AI, Kitty Carlisle Hart.
24. Ibid.
25. Salisbury interview, op. cit. On another occasion, he told Ireland’s George O’Reilly that he “fought like the dickens” against having to sing it and that when it became the hit of the picture, he realized he had no ability to predict hits.
26. Benny and Marks, Jack Benny,p. 71.
27. Salisbury interview, op. cit.
28. AI, Kitty Carlisle Hart.
29. Westmore and Davidson, The Westmores of Hollywood,p. 94.
30. Frost interview, op. cit.
31. Ferguson, The Film Criticism of Otis Ferguson,p. 49.
32. Time, Sept. 17, 1934.
33. New York Herald Tribune, May 6, 1934, writer unknown.
34. KGM.
35. Ibid.
36. AI, Howard Crosby.
37. KGM.
38. Variety, Sept. 4, 1934.
39. KGM.
40. Variety, May 1, 1935.
41. Letter from Larry Crosby to Ted Crosby, Saturday (undated) 1935. HCC.
42. Ibid.
43. Swindell, Screwball,p. 154.
44. Letter from Larry Crosby, op. cit.
45. AI, Kitty Carlisle Hart.
46. Tuttle memoir.
47. AI, Kitty Carlisle Hart.
48. New York Daily News, Dec. 22, 1934.
49. Variety, Dec. 25, 1934.
50. Time, Dec. 31, 1934.
51. Marquis Busby, Los Angeles Examiner, Jan. 7, 1934.
19. Decca
1. Lester Velie, “Vocal Boy Makes Good,” Collier’s, Dec. 13, 1947.
2. Interview, Australian radio, April 1977.
3. Bing Crosby Album, Dell 1949, reprinted in Bingang, Dec. 1988.
4. AI, Frieda Kapp.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Lucky, p. 142.
8. Principal sources for Kapp’s background and Decca’s early history are John McDonough’s comprehensive unpublished account, “Decca: 60th Anniversary History,” commissioned and withheld by MCA in 1994; an interoffice memo by Sir E. R. Lewis; AI, Geoffrey Milne; Ronnie Pugh liner notes, Decca Country Classics 1934-1973; and Herman Paikoff, “The American Record Corporation (A Corporate Overview),” The New Amberola Graphic, Autumn 1992, excerpted in Bingang, Dec. 1992.
9. Lewis memo, op. cit.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. Variety, Aug. 7, 1934.
13. AI, Elsie Perry.
14. Garland was one of several performers (including the Boswells and Deanna Durbin) Joe Perry is said to have introduced to making records.
15. Dave Kapp interview by John Krimsky, July 27, 1971. BCCGU.
16. This exchange was facilitated by Herman Starr, another of Jack’s longtime loyal friends. Starr was the chief of Warner Bros.’ film music, but he had been president of Brunswick when Jack was hired. In 1941, when the ten-year Brunswick lease lapsed and returned the company to Warners, Starr sold the company to Decca. Because the original contract between Warners and ARC was signed December 3, 1931, all records made before that date as well as the name Brunswick belonged to Decca, and all records made after that date belonged to Columbia, which is why Brunswick recordings by Bing and others are, to this day, split between the two companies.
17. AI, Frieda Kapp.
18. Mezzrow and Wolfe, Really the Blues,p. 211.
19. Gelatt, The Fabulous Phonograph,p. 268.
20. Letter from Jack Kapp to Time, Jan. 17, 1936.
21. Variety, Feb. 26, 1936.
22. Unpublished interview with Jack Kapp by Lea Nicholson, for Time, Mar. 22, 1941. TIA.
23. Letter from Jack Kapp to Bing Crosby, Aug. 30, 1934.
24. Nicholson interview, op. cit.
25. Although this was a unique gambit for Bing, codas of this sort became a trademark of Billy Eckstine’s ballads in the 1940s.
26. Lucky, p. 141.
27. Ibid. Contrary to all his earlier protestations of not being a crooner, he wrote in this context that he was unworthy precisely because he was a crooner.
28. Seldes, The Public Arts,p. 131.
29. “Bing Crosby a Choir Boy in ‘Silent Night’ Record,” unsigned review in unidentifiable New York newspaper, Dec. 3, 1936. TIA.
30. Eyman, Ernst Lubitsch,p. 234.
31. Another reason Hart may have been incensed was his apprehension of a comparison with the most famous of all Broadway interpolations — Jerome Kern’s use of “After the Ball” in Show Boat. No one today would think of comparing Kern’s masterwork with Mississippi, but similarities were all too evident in 1935, when the use of Foster’s song might have been interpreted as an overt imitation of Kern.
32. AI, Peggy Lee.
33. In 1924, as The Fighting Coward, and in 1929, as River of Romance.
34. Edward Sutherland, Columbia University Oral History Research Project.
35. Taylor, W. C. Fields,p. 236.
36. AI,BobDeFlores.
37. Quentin Reynolds, “The Kid from Spokane,” Collier’s, Apr. 27, 1935.
38. In widely circulated newstories, Bing was reported to have received between $75,000 and $110,000 per film. The higher figure, which seems most likely in the context of top film salaries for the period and in regard to Bing’s previous contracts, was confirmed by reporting done by Fortune in 1946, for “The Great Throat” (Fortune, Jan. 1947).
39. Another amusing moment occurs early when a music publisher fails to hear a plane crash directly over his head — “deaf as a post, but picks the biggest song hits.”
40. The Spectator, Sept. 27, 1935, collected in Greene, On Film,p. 24.
41. This took place two days before the death of Will Rogers and may have contributed to the drinking that resulted in his near debacle with “Home on the Range.”
42. Simon, The Big Bands,p. 144.
43. Transcribed from session tape.
44. Letter from Joseph Breen to B. B. Kahane, RKO, Jan. 10, 1935. MPAA Files, AM PAS.
45. Typed note from K.L. of Breen office, Aug. 8, 1935. Ibid.
46. Letter from Joseph Breen to Paramount executive John Hammell, Sept. 9,1935. Ibid.
47. Ibid.
48. Variety, Feb. 12, 1936.
49. Time, Feb. 3, 1936.
50. Letter from Joseph Breen to John Hammell, Jan. 28, 1936. MPAA Files, AMPAS.
20. Kraft Music Hall
1. JWTPR, Oct. 29, 1936, by H. C. Kuhl.
2. Oakie, Jack Oakie’s Double Takes,pp. 9—11.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. JWTPR, Mar. 5, 1936, by H. C. Kuhl.
6. Niven, The Moon’s a Balloon,p. 210.
7. Carroll, None of Your Business,p. 3.
8. Final revisions of script for Kraft Music Hall, Dec. 5, 1935.
9. JWTPR, Dec. 5, 1935, by H. C. Kuhl.
10. George McCabe, “Watching the Kraft Music Hall in 1936,” Bing, Spring 1999.
11. Ibid.
12. JWTPR, Jan. 2, 1936, by H. C. Kuhl.
13. Ibid. Jan. 9, 1936, by H. C. Kuhl.
14. In November 1936 Bing wired Venuti: “THE THOMPSON AGENCY ASKED ME LAST WEEK IF YOU WOULD BE ACCEPTABLE TO ME FOR THE EIGHT-WEEK PERIOD[when Dorsey took a break] AND I ASSURED THEM THAT YOU CERTAINLY WOULD BE IN FACT I STIPULATED THAT I WOULD HAVE NO ONE ELSE SO I IMAGINE IF ROCKWELL IS ABLE TO WORK OUT ARRANGEMENT WHEREBY JIMMY’S ABSENCE FROM THE PROGRAM FOR EIGHT WEEKS WILL DEFEAT STANDBY CHARGES YOU SHOULD BE COMING ON FOR THAT PERIOD STOP THINK YOUD BETTER LEAVE THOSE TEXAS MUSTANGS ALONE IF YOU COME HERE ILL PUT YOU ON SOME REAL WINNERS BEST REGARDS TO SALLY. BING CROSBY”
15. JWTPR, Feb. 6, 1936, by H. C. Kuhl.
16. John Salibury interview for radio series The Crosby Years, 1973, cited in Vernon Wesley Taylor, “Hail KMH!,” The Crosby Voice, no. 29, Sept. 1984.
17. Ulanov, The Incredible Crosby,p. 122.
18. AI, Ken Roberts.
19. AI, Eddie Bracken.
20. Carroll, None of Your Business,p. 123.
21. Ibid., p. 122.
22. AI, Gary Crosby.
23. Interviewed by M. Gleason as background for Fortune, Aug. 4, 1946.
24. “’Crosby-isms’ Win Praise as Smart Airwave Patter,” Cheesekraft, May 1938.
25. Ibid.
26. “Hail KMH!,” op cit.
27. Ibid.
28. AI, Noble Threewitt. Also AI, Charlie Whittingham and Dan Smith, and Eddie Read, “The Del Mar Story,” file copy, Del Mar Publicity Office, courtesy of Dan Smith, director of publicity.
29. AI, Bob Hope.
30. Penna, My Wonderful World of Golf.
31. Carroll, None of Your Business,p. 125.
32. This and all subsequent excerpts are from Carroll Carroll’s final-version script for the Kraft Music Hall of May 7, 1936. No recording of the actual show is known to exist.
33. JWTPR, May 7, 1936, by Cal Kuhl. Around this time Kuhl began signing the reports with his nickname rather than his initials.
34. AI, Gary Stevens.
35. AI, Eddie Bracken.
36. Lucky, p. 150.
37. Alton Cook, “Bing Crosby Trick Revealed,” New York World-Telegram, Feb. 29, 1938.
38. Carroll, None of Your Business,p. 159.
39. JWTPR, May 21, 1936, by Cal Kuhl.
40. Ibid., May 28, 1936, by Cal Kuhl.
41. Ibid., July 1, 1936, by Cal Kuhl.
42. Aaron Stein, “Radio Today,” New York Post, Nov. 20, 1936.
43. AI, Marsha Hunt.
44. Arnold, Shadowland.
45. Bing Crosby, “The Role I Liked Best,” reprinted in Bingang, Oct. 1983.
46. Bach and Mercer, Our Huckleberry Friend,p. 56.
47. Letter from Johnny Mercer to Leslie Gaylor, undated, early 1970s.
48. Variety, Aug. 5, 1936.
49. During the interim, they had rented Marion Davies’s house in Benedict Canyon.
50. Letter from Harry Crosby to Ted Crosby, Mar. 20, 1936.
51. Harold Grieve, president of the California division.
52. In Anything Goes, Rhythm on the Range, and many films to come, Bing billed himself at the head of a foursome, following the title card.
53. Variety, Dec. 16, 1936.
54. Armstrong letter, c. 1967, op. cit.
55. Lucky, p. 162.
56. Down Beat, Mar. 1937.
57. Much of the material on Trotter is based on a radio interview he did with his friend Eddie Rice on behalf of the British Crosby Society, late 1960s; and a personal (unpublished) interview he gave James T. Maher, Apr. 5, 1959.
58. JWTPR, July 8, 1937, by Cal Kuhl.
59. Cited in Will Friedwald liner notes, Hal Kemp (Columbia).
60. Maher interview, op. cit.
61. Rice interview, op. cit.
62. AI, Alan Fisher.
63. AI, Rory Burke.
64. AI, Frieda Kapp.
65. Bing Crosby liner notes, John Scott Trotter, A Thousand and One Notes,reprinted in Bingang, Mar. 1996.
66. Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (New York: Viking, 1939). Ironically, Steinbeck described Bing singing “Thanks for the Memory,” which became Bob Hope’s theme song and was not recorded by Bing until 1956; he did perform it on KMH, however, and like many people, Steinbeck failed to distinguish between Crosby records and Crosby radio.
67. Roaring Lion, who headlined at the Village Vanguard in 1945, during the height of his career, wrote Calypso from France to Trinidad — 800 Years of History in 1987 and was still performing as of 2000. In another song, “Four Mills Brothers,” he muted his praise for Bing, describing him as “interesting” in We’re Not Dressing (“Love Thy Neighbor” clearly made an impression on him) and acknowledging his unparalleled “voice control” yet concluding, “But I still prefer to hear the Four Mills Brothers sing, ‘I Ain’t Got Nobody (and nobody cares for me)’.” Asked if he recalled the Lion’s record thirty-seven years after it was recorded, Bing said, “Cute song. ‘Takes off his hat infrequently’ — isn’t that in there?”
21. Public Relations
1. Smith, op. cit., p. 258.
2. Ward, Jazz, p. 64.
3. Too old to play Dick or Tom, he briefly tried the mantles of Abe and Will during the Second World War, costumed as the former for a song in Holiday Inn and as the latter in a screen test for a proposed Rogers biography.
4. AI, Pamela Crosby Brown, his goddaughter.
5. Cited in Michael Brooks liner notes, Bing Crosby: The Columbia Years, 1928—34, 1988.
6. AI, Gary Stevens. See note 10 in Chapter 12 on Vocco.
7. The Paramount press releases alluded to in this section are identified by the obscure system in use at the time. This one, for example, is marked, “Paramount fp September 1933.” The significance of the initials is unclear, and dates are not always provided. Many releases without dates were later inventoried and dated with a ca. They are found in the Paramount files, AMPAS.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Paramount de lapp fp ca. 1934.
11. Part of a series called NBC Personalities, issued by the National Broadcasting System, June 8, 1939. Sample: “All the other kids shouted ‘Bang’ as they shot their make-believe revolvers, but little Harry Lillis was an individualist.” He is also described as playing the title role in Julius Caesar, narrowly averting the falling curtain and taking several bows, and attending college with Al Rinker.
12. Paramount kc ca. 1934.
13. Bing: Paramount huston ca. 1934.
14. Untitled draft, ca. 1934.
15. A completely different release, identically titled “Say It with Music: Bing Crosby’s Life Story as Told to Dave Keene.” Paramount huston ca. 1934.
16. Ibid.
17. That didn’t stop Look from repeating the story that Janis helped give him his start, in a five-page pictorial almost entirely drawn from Paramount press releases, including the cowboys-and-Indians story and his refusal to diet.
18. Paramount huston hb ca. 1935.
19. “Crosby, Inc.” Paramount Lyle Rooks nhf Feb 1938.
20. Paramount huston eb ca. 1935.
21. Paramount Huston kc ca. 1935.
22. Ibid.
23. “Crosby, Inc.,” op. cit.
24. Paramount Bonnet jp-f Aug. 11, 1939.
25. Paramount Bradfield jaf Nov. 11, 1938.
26. Paramount Bradfield vwf Jun. 13, 1938.
27. “By Bing Crosby,” Paramount Bonnet jp Dec. 28, 1938.
28. “By Bing Crosby,” Paramount edwards jp Jan. 8, 1939.
29. Paramount 1934, identifying page missing.
30. A subhead reads, “The crooner king looks himself over and after listing his good points tears down the perfect picture by admitting some really scandalous shortcomings.” Picture-Play, Nov. 1934.
31. Ibid.
32. AI, Basil Grille
33. New York Sun, Nov. 30, 1936.
34. Ibid.
35. Complaint for Injunction, no. 410003, filed in California Superior Court Dec.17, 1936, by O’Melveny, Tuller & Myers on behalf of Harry L. Crosby Jr., also known as Bing Crosby, Plaintiff.
36. Ibid.
37. Judgment by Judge Rubin S. Schmidt, filed in California Superior Court, Jan.4, 1937, in case of Harry L. Crosby Jr. v. Ben S. McGlashan.
38. Answer to Injunction, filed in California Superior Court, Dec. 25, 1936, by Rollin L. McNitt on behalf of Ben S. McGlashan.
39. Sanjek and Sanjek, American Popular Music Business in the 20th Century,p. 51.
40. One controversy that did not arise until more than two decades after Crosby’s death derived from an FBI memo, written June 21, 1937, by Clyde Tolson to J. Edgar Hoover, concerning racketeers and con men preying upon the Hollywood community. The sole reference to Crosby is as follows: “An instance was cited in this connection of an individual who preyed upon the sympathies of a number of motion picture actors and actresses on the plea that he was afflicted with a disease, and was unable to support himself. It seems that as a result of his contacts with a number of persons in the industry he received considerable sums of money. He is reported in one instance to have received $10,000 from Bing Crosby, and $1,600 from the mother of Ginger Rogers, and it is stated that in all he probably secured between $40,000 and $50,000. One of the persons involved took it upon herself to make certain inquiries concerning the individual and found that he was hiring expensive automobiles with some of the money which he secured from persons in the motion picture colony.” In December 1999, three days before Christmas, the New York Post ran an inexplicably vicious attack on Crosby in which virtually every statement was misreported. It summed up the foregoing account: “Toison revealed that Crosby had once coughed up $10,000 because of a threat hanging over his head.” It claimed that Tolson’s memo and Crosby’s other FBI files had just been released; in fact, they had become public knowledge in 1992 and had been widely posted on the Internet for more than five years. Bill Hoffmann and Murray Weiss, “Bing Crosby’s Single Life,” New York Post, Dec. 22, 1999.
41. His financial records for the years 1933 through 1946 were assembled by For tune and set out in a memo by M. Gleason, Aug. 13, 1946. TIA.
42. Letter from Todd W. Williams to Bing Crosby, Mar. 18, 1937. Courtesy Mark Scrimger.
43. The list, published in the New York Sunday News, Jan. 6, 1936: 1. William Randolph Hearst, 2. Mae West, 3. steel executive C. W. Guttseit, 4. General Motors president Alfred Sloane Jr., 5. Marlene Dietrich, 6. 20th Century-Fox president Winfield Sheehan, 7. General Motors executive William F. Knudsen, 8. Bing Crosby, 9.Woolworth president B. D. Miller, 10. IBM president Thomas J. Watson.
44. “Mysterious Montague,” Time, July 19, 1937.
45. Ibid.
46. Dick Lee, “Golf Wizard ‘Vicious Thug,’ Refused Bail,” New York Daily News,Aug. 25, 1937.
47. Ibid.
48. Cal Tinney, “Went to Bat for Golfer Montague,” New York Post, Oct. 30, 1937.
49. Lamoyne A. Jones, “Film Friends Say Montague Led Good Life,” New York Herald Tribune, Oct. 24, 1937.
50. “Montague’s ‘Million’ in Films Drops to Shorts at $20,000,” AP story in New York Herald Tribune, Oct. 28, 1937.
51. Ibid.
52. An exhaustive attempt to locate an obituary for Montague proved unsuccessful.
53. The same month she took her vows (July 1952) a son, Howard, was born to Ted, who had divorced and was remarried to Margaret Mae Mattes.
54. Bing wrote of Jones, “Grover is an excellent writer and commands considerable respect both in the picture business and in the magazine field. As far as picture scripts are concerned, I don’t imagine he has [a] superior.” Letter from Bing Crosby to Ted Crosby, dated Wednesday (probably early 1935). HCC.
55. Ibid.
56. Collier’s ran the article on April 27, 1935.
57. The story of Ted and the book and subsequent repercussions (which will be detailed in volume two) was pieced together through correspondence between the principals as well as AIs with Basil Grillo, Gary Crosby, Phillip Crosby, Howard Crosby, Mary Francis Crosby, Ray Flaherty, Nancy Briggs, Mozelle Seeger, Lillian Murphy, and Gloria Haley. Also Kathryn Crosby, My Life with Bing.
58. Letter from Larry Crosby to Ted Crosby, Apr. 12, 1935. HCC.
59. Bing’s participation in a book he claimed reluctantly to condone makes it a more stimulating work. Passages that suggest Bing’s touch (“Everett was cognizant of the more than moderate popularity of Bing”) may indeed be his; snippets of dialogue may relate more truth than the synthetic context indicates — the bitterness Bing displays at having been aced out of “Song of the Dawn,” for example, waxes in piquancy if one imagines Bing vetting the manuscript.
60. Letter from Larry to Ted, Apr. 12, 1935, op. cit.
61. Letter from Larry Crosby to Ted Crosby, July 22, 1935. HCC.
62. Letter from Ted Crosby to Larry Crosby, Oct. 6, 1936. HCC.
63. Letter from Ted Crosby to Larry Crosby, Dec. 1, 1936. HCC.
64. Letter from Larry Crosby to Ted Crosby, Mar. 9, 1937. HCC.
65. Letter from George Joy to Larry Crosby, May 7, 1937. Dad Crosby told Ted that Bing tried to fit one of his songs into a broadcast but was stopped “at the last moment” by the sponsor. Letter from Harry Crosby to Ted Crosby, Mar. 20, 1937. HCC.
66. Letter from Larry Crosby to Ted Crosby, Saturday, undated. HCC.
67. Letter from Harry Crosby to Ted Crosby, Jan. 20, 1937. HCC.
68. Letter from Larry to Ted, Mar. 9, 1937, op. cit.
69. Letter from Larry Crosby to Ted Crosby, Apr. 27, 1939. HCC.
70. Ibid.
71. E. Nils Holstius, Gramophone,Oct. October 1937, reprinted in Bing, Feb. 1971.
72. Look, July 6, 1937. The article reported that all the stamps were removed and given to a missionary society, which sold them to collectors.
73. Letter from Larry to Ted, Apr. 27, 1939, op. cit.
74. Smith, op. cit., p. 255.
75. Ted and Larry Crosby, Bing, Preface.
76. Ibid., unnumbered dedication page.
77. Smith, op. cit, p. 258.
78. Letter from Ted Crosby to Larry Crosby, Apr. 30, 1937. HCC.
79. Letter from Francis J. McKevitt to Bing Crosby, Mar. 21, 1938.
80. Ibid.
81. Letter from Harry Crosby to Ted Crosby, Sept. 29, 1936. HCC.
82. Letter from Harry Crosby to Ted Crosby, Dec. 29, 1936. HCC.
83. Letter from Harry Crosby to Ted Crosby, Oct. 13, 1936. HCC.
84. Letter from Harry Crosby to Ted, Jan. 20, 1937, op. cit.
85. Letter from Mary Rose Peterson to Ted Crosby, Dec. 17, 1934.
86. Ibid.
87. Letter from Harry to Ted, Jan. 20, 1937, op. cit.
22. Homecoming
1. Recorded for a fourteen-part BBC radio series, cited in Thompson, Bing,p. 242.
2. Letter from Bing Crosby to the Reverend Francis [sic] Curtis Sharp, May 4, 1937. BCCGU.
3. Ibid.
4. Letter from the Reverend Curtis J. Sharp, S.J., to Bing Crosby, May 14, 1937. BCCGU.
5. Ibid.
6. Letter from Larry Crosby to the Reverend Leo Robinson, S.J., June 12, 1937. BCCGU.
7. “Zippy Air of His Old Home Is Delight to Bing Crosby,” Spokesman-Review, Oct. 22, 1937.
8. Ad, Spokesman-Review, Oct. 20, 1937.
9. Letter from Ted Crosby to Larry Crosby, Oct. 13, 1937. HCC.
10. “Gonzaga University Golden Jubilee, Harry Lillis Crosby Doctor of Letters,” submitted by Reverend Sharp, July 1937. BCCGU.
11. Spokesman-Review, Oct. 22, 1937.
12. “Crosby Talent Quest Winners Will Be Chosen at Fox Theatre Tonight,” Spokesman-Review, Oct. 21, 1937.
13. “Hollywood Bid Surprised Her,” Spokesman-Review, Oct. 23, 1937.
14. “3500 ‘Pals’Give Ovation to Bing,” Spokesman-Review, Oct. 23, 1937.
15. Spokesman-Review, Oct. 24, 1937.
16. Lloyd Pentages, “I Cover Hollywood,” Los Angeles Examiner, Aug. 10, 1934.
17. Sharon A. Pease, “Bing Crosby (Dr. of Square Shooting) Known as Squarest Guy in Hollywood,” Down Beat, Feb. 1938.
18. Crosby and Firestone, Going My Own Way,p. 39.
19. New York Journal-American, Jan. 23, 1938.
20. AI, Pauline Weislow.
21. AI, Phillip Crosby.
22. AI, Rosemary Clooney.
23. AI, Phillip Crosby.
24. A few spelling errors, almost certainly made by the printer, have been corrected: the mistakes included feminity for femininity, Cooper for Couper, Bodkin for Botkin, Colona for Colonna, Chesapeak for Chesapeake, Swanee for Swannee.
25. Telegram as sent to John and Ginger Mercer four days before the second presentation, with misspellings (Breakway, Northhollywood) intact. From DIXIE AND BING CROSBY,Western Union, June 21, 1938.
26. All references from the second playbill, “The Westwood Marching and Chowder Club North Hollywood Branch Presents its 2nd Breakaway Minstrel Show Saturday, June 25, 1938.”
27. Ibid.
28. Transcribed from the Decca record “Mr. Crosby and Mr. Mercer,” recorded July 1, 1938, also known as “Mr. Gallagher and Mr. Shean.”
29. Time, 1938 (undated clip). TIA.
30. Cagney, Cagney by Cagney,p. 109.
31. Letter from Lotte Lehmann to Marie Manovill, Apr. 1, 1938.
32. Letter from Rose Bampton to Marie Manovill, Apr. 4, 1938.
33. Ibid.
34. Paramount Bradfield vwf, July 6, 1938.
35. Paramount Bonney jaf, August 5, 1938.
36. Ibid.
37. AI, Phil Harris.
38. “Picture Making Second to Crosby’s Track Winners,” New York Daily Mirror,Aug. 20, 1938.
39. AI, Charles Whittingham.
40. AI, Noble Threewitt.
41. Harrison Carroll, Los Angeles Evening Herald-Express, Aug. 8, 1938.
42. NewYork Times, Aug. 14, 1938.
43. Ibid.
44. “By Bing Crosby,” 5 Paramount Bradfield SW, July 26, 1938. This release was published verbatim in the New York Journal-American, Sept. 4, 1937, with the head line, CROSBY’S HAY-BURNERS BEAR BRUNT OF HOLLYWOOD JIBES.
45. Ibid.
23. A Pocketful of Dreams
1. Anthony Quinn, RBT.
2. Budd Schulberg, What Makes Sammy Run? (NewYork: Random House, 1941).
3. Geist, Pictures Will Talk,p. 58.
4. “Bing Crosby the Groaner,” op. cit.
5. The rapscallion Bing of the Sennett shorts was not entirely displaced; he often ended up competing with a suitor (Waikiki Wedding) or a parent (Double or Nothing).Yet the plots of all but a few of his 1930s films are shaped from the same mold.
6. “Bing Crosby Works for Bing Crosby Now,” New York World-Telegram, Aug. 6,1936.
7. Mel Neuhaus, “Interview: Bing Crosby,” 1976, published in Laser Marquee, Nov. 1994.
8. Variety, June 17, 1936.
9. Variety, July 15, 1936.
10. Variety, July 29, 1936.
11. Hawaii Star-Bulletin, cited in “The Musical Tantrum,” Honolulu Magazine, June 1988, reprinted in Bingang, Dec. 1988.
12. Owens, Sweet Leilani,p. 70.
13. Ibid., p. 72.
14. Ibid., p. 72.
15. Sheila Graham, “Crosby Plans to Quit Film,” syndicated column, Sept. 4, 1936.
16. Interview with Edward A. Sutherland, Columbia University Oral History Research Project.
17. Tuttle memoir.
18. A talented performer, Ross deserved a better career than she had. Born in Omaha in 1909, she introduced “Blue Moon” in a small role in the picture Manhattan Melodrama in 1934. Waikiki Wedding was her big break, leading to her celebrated duet with Bob Hope in The Big Broadcast of 1938. She made two more films with Hope and reunited with Bing, albeit in a secondary role, for Paris Honeymoon, then went to Broadway, where her career ended in the 1940s, after she turned down the lead in Guys and Dolls because her husband was dying. Ross died in 1975.
19. Thompson, Bing,p. 113.
20. Owens, Sweet Leilani,p. 77.
21. Tuttle memoir.
22. Anthony Quinn, RBT.
23. Ibid.
24. Owens, Sweet Leilani,p. 80.
25. Variety, Mar. 31, 1937.
26. Time, undated clip. TIA.
27. New York Times, Mar. 25, 1937.
28. Melody Maker, Apr. 17, 1937.
29. Variety, Mar. 31, 1937.
30. Variety, Jan. 5, 1938.
31. “Timeline: Hawaiian Entertainment Milestones,” Billboard, Apr. 30, 1994.
32. Promotional interview disc for Decca Records, 1955.
33. AI, Mary Carlisle.
34. The picture is replete with howlers. Frawley turns in the money, yet he is supposed to be a small-time crook; Bing provides the accompaniment for a song by flicking on a car radio, without turning on the ignition; Bing outwits the heirs with an architectural trick that would have cost more than the fortune he hoped to snag; etc.
35. Irene Thirer, “Frank Tuttle Specialty Is Holiday Movie Wares,” New York Post,Mar. 25, 1937.
36. Letter from Joseph Breen to John Hammell, Apr. 16, 1937. Also letter from F. S. Harmon of MPAA to Breen, Sept. 16, 1937, on Will Hays’s response to the scene in question. MPAA files, AMPAS.
37. The clause forbidding Paramount to bill him as the “sole star” is in his contract for Double or Nothing. AMPAS. In the film’s onscreen credits, Crosby and Raye are listed in larger type, followed by Devine and Carlisle in smaller type, thus continuing what had become a Crosby tradition of billing him as part of a quartet.
38. AI, Trudy Erwin.
39. Ibid.
40. AI, Mary Carlisle.
41. Ibid.
42. Ibid.
43. Ibid.
44. Ironically, Devine plays the character O. Henry describes as “a well-set-up, affable, cool young man.” Pocket Book of O. Henry Stories (New York: Washington Square Press, 1948).
45. Phyllis Hartnoll and Peter Found, The Concise Oxford Companion to the Theater (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).
46. The famous sketch was written for her by Dion Titheradge, and in the film is played by Lillie and three Hollywood specialists in flustered, effete servility: William Austin, Harold Minjir, and the matchless Franklin Pangborn.
47. AI, Mary Carlisle.
48. Chicago Defender, Aug. 7, 1937, cited in Stratemann, Louis Armstrong on Screen.
49. Chicago Defender, Sept. 25, 1937. Cited in Stratemann, p. 73.
50. Paramount’s Doctor Rhythm press book, which credits Armstrong with “Specialty Numbers.”
51. Dudley Glass, The Georgian, cited in Variety, Sept. 15, 1932.
52. Dolph Franz to Adolph Zukor, Aug. 25, 1937. AMPAS.
53. Hollywood Citizen News, Oct. 28, 1937.
54. Music Files, Paramount Pictures, cited in Bloom, Hollywood Song.
55. Letter from Father Leo J. Robinson, S.J., to Larry Crosby, Oct. 31, 1937. BCCGU.
56. Letter from Bing Crosby (on Major Pictures Corporation letterhead) to Father Leo J. Robinson, Nov. 3, 1937. BCCGU.
57. Crosby scored 37 36 73 to Hope’s 40 44 84.
58. Tuttle memoir.
59. Variety, Jan. 26, 1938.
60. Cited in Bach, Marlene Dietrich,p. 189.
61. Tuttle memoir.
62. Melody Maker, May 28, 1938.
63. Ibid., Aug. 6, 1938.
64. Ibid.
65. On the David Frost Show, Feb. 10, 1971, Bing and Louis exchanged the following comments (note: Louis was not in Rhythm on the River):
DF: How many different things have you done together? High Society…
BC: Pennies from Heaven. Rhythm on the River.
LA: There were some other pictures, too, you know.
BC: Doctor Rhythm. We did a lot of radio together.
LA: We had some nice hustles together.
66. AI, Joe Bushkin.
67. Newsweek, May 9, 1938.
68. Paramount’s Doctor Rhythm pressbook.
69. Indeed, Bing plays his comic scenes with aplomb, underscoring his KMHpersona by prescribing “continuous pedular agitation” to a patient who needs to walk more and fighting a pack of sailors as a way of winking at those who read in the papers of his navy encounter. He affects a number of silent-comedy stances.
70. Tuttle memoir.
71. Sidney Skolsky, “Tintypes,” New York Daily Mirror, Aug. 18, 1938.
72. Ibid.’
73. Atkins, Arthur Jacobson,p. 107.
74. Ibid., p. 108.
75. AI, Donald O’Connor.
76. Salisbury interview, op. cit.
77. Atkins, Arthur Jacobson,p. 110.
78. Ibid., p. 199.
79. Ibid., p. 130.
80. “By Bing Crosby,” Paramount herbert vpf, Jan. 24, 1938.
81. Kate Cameron, “Crosby, MacMurray in Paramount Hit,” New York Daily News, Aug. 18, 1938.
82. Time, Aug. 20, 1938.
83. Life, Aug. 1938.
84. New York Times, Aug. 29, 1938.
85. Ibid.
86. The Film Criticism of Otis Ferguson,p. 231.
87. Life, op. cit. The upper case T in twins is Life’s, as are the misspellings of the boys’names.
88. Anthony Quinn, RBT.
89. AI, Donald O’Connor.
90. Bauer, Bing Crosby,p. 119.
91. Rosten, Hollywood,p. 342.
24. Captain Courageous
1. AI, Gary Crosby.
2. “Crosby Returns from Bermuda Trip with Many Stories but No Shirts,” NBC press release, Oct. 27, 1938.
3. Ibid.
4. Since the early 1980s Crosby has often been portrayed as a virtuoso philanderer, sometimes with a snide zealotry that would have made the Puritans roll their eyes. That Crosby disported himself in his early years we have seen. That he cheated on Dixie during the 1940s and after, embarking on a love affair for which he almost cashiered their marriage, we shall see, in volume two. But rumors aside, instances of such behavior in the period under discussion are not substantiated.
5. Since more than one research archive includes in its files for Florence George and/or Everett Crosby an arrest record concerning a woman of the same name and one Ira Sturman, charged at his apartment, on February 9, 1929, with possession of narcotics and ten gallons of liquor, it may be prudent to note here that that Florence was a dancer and no relation to Everett’s wife, who was twelve years old at the time of her namesake’s misadventure. Everett was forty-two when he married Florence in New York, on May 9, 1939 (director Victor Schertzinger was best man); they had no children.
6. Ted married Hazel Nieman (children, Patricia Antonia, Catherine Anne, and Helen Delores, who entered the Holy Names order as Sister M. Catherine Joan). His second marriage was to Margaret Mae Mattes (children, Howard Mattes and Edward Nathaniel).
7. Mary Rose married Albert Peterson (a daughter, Carolyn), William Miller (a son, William), and James Pool.
8. Letters from Harry Crosby to Ted Crosby, Sept. 7 and Sept. 29, 1936. From the latter: “[Dell] was the cause of it all, after Mother got Bob to send for her, for that woman Dell to go along, we knew would spoil it all, so Marie writes us that Dell is through with her, and we take it that Dell has departed.” HCC.
9. The marriage to Marie Grounitz produced a daughter, Elizabeth Ann. The children of Bob’s second marriage are Cathleen Denyse, Christopher Douglas, George Robert Jr., Stephen Ross, and Junie Malia. The remaining siblings, Kay and Larry, married, respectively, Edward Mullin (a daughter, Marilyn) and Elaine Couper (a son, John, and a daughter, Molly).
10. Letter from Harry Crosby to Ted Crosby, Sept. 7, 1936. HCC.
11. Catechism of the Catholic Church.
12. AI, Howard Crosby.
13. Simon, The Best of the Music Makers,p. 147.
14. Bob Crosby, RBT.
15. Letter from Bob Crosby to Ted Crosby, Sept. 21, 1935. HCC.
16. AI, BobHaggart.
17. Chilton, Stomp Off, Let’s Go,p. 72.
18. AI, Bob Haggart.
19. Ibid.
20. Bob Crosby, RBT.
21. Osborne interview, op. cit.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid.
24. AI, Rosemary Clooney.
25. Bob Crosby, RBT.
26. AI, Bob Haggart.
27. AI, Ralph Sutton.
28. AI, Ken Barnes.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid.
32. Ibid.
33. Ibid.
34. AI, Rosemary Clooney.
35. Joe Franklin Show, WOR-TV, Dec. 3, 1976.
36. Lamparski, Whatever Became Of… ? (8th series), p. 37.
37. AI, Les Paul.
38. Mercer recorded his own version in the 1960s with Bobby Darin.
39. Alton Cook, “Taking Rest Cure in Gay Night Life,” New York World Telegram, Sept. 7, 1940.
40. Aldous Huxley, “Popular Music,” in Along the Road.
41. AI, Helen Votachenko.
42. Paramount Bradfield hf Aug. 4, 1938.
43. Ibid.
44. Paramount Bradfield jhf Aug. 11, 1938.
45. Kaminsky, My Life in Jazz,p. 68.
46. Thompson, Bing,p. 243.
47. Erskine Johnson, “Behind the Makeup,” Los Angeles Examiner, June 23, 1938.
48. Kate Cameron, “Bing and Bob Crosby Star at Paramount,” New York Daily News, Jan. 26, 1939.
49. Atkins, David Butler,p. 183.
50. Life, Aug. 14, 1939.
51. Ibid., p. 184.
52. Letter from Bing Crosby to John Mercer, Apr. 13, 1939. Georgia State University, Special Collections.
53. Atkins, David Butler,p. 181.
54. Ibid., p. 181.
55. University of Southern California Archive, Universal Collection, Weekly Status Reports on East Side of Heaven, Jan. 20, 1939.
56. Ibid., Jan. 27, 1939.
57. Atkins, David Butler,p. 186.
58. Ibid., p. 186.
59. Interviewed by Atkins for Directors Guild of America Oral History project, Jan. 14-June22, 1977.
60. Weekly Status Reports, op. cit, Feb. 3, 1939.
61. Ibid., Feb. 17, 1939.
62. Ibid., Feb. 24, 1939.
63. Ibid., Mar. 10, 1939. The forty-four days do not count the delay caused by Blondell’s illness. At first, estimates of the overrun were $13,000, but that figure was reduced to $10,000 after five weeks of polishing the budget. The lower figure was approved April 14.
64. Letter from Joseph Breen to Maurice Pivar at Universal, Jan. 9, 1939. MPAA files, AMPAS.
65. Letter from Joseph Breen to Will H. Hays, Mar. 25, 1939. MPAA files, AMPAS.
66. Ibid.
67. JWTPR, Feb. 16, 1939, by R. J. Brewsrer. Many radio references have the Music Maids appearing with Bing in January and earlier; they made their debut on February 23.
68. AI, Trudy Erwin.
69. Ibid.
70. Ibid.
71. AI,AliceLudes.
72. The more prominent members of the band were Manny Klein, Bobby Van Eps, and Milton DeLugg.
73. Variety, May 10, 1939.
74. Kate Cameron, “Bing Crosby Bows in the Music Hall,” New York Daily News, May 5, 1939.
75. Variety, Apr. 12, 1939.
76. Ad pull-quote, Variety, May 10, 1939.
77. Background interview by M. Gleason, Aug. 4, 1946. TIA.
25. What’s New
1. Recorded for a fourteen-part BBC radio series, cited in Thompson, Bing,p. 243.
2. Green and Laurie, Show Biz from Vaude to Video,p. 45.
3. Ad, Spokesman-Review, Aug. 31, 1939.
4. Ibid.
5. Variety, Aug. 23, 1939.
6. AI, Dante DiPaolo.
7. AI, Rosemary Clooney.
8. Salisbury interview, op. cit.
9. Ulanov, The Incredible Crosby,p. 149.
10. Louella Parsons, “Children Vie with Bing in ‘Star Maker,’” Hearst syndicate, Aug. 22, 1939.
11. Time, Sept. 4, 1939.
12. Memo from Alfred Wright Jr. to David W. Hulburd Jr., “Subject: The Star Maker,” Aug. 23, 1939. TIA.
13. Variety, Jan. 3, 1940.
14. Not to be confused with “My Dog Rover, “ sung at his mother’s sodality with leash in hand. See note 45 to Chapter 4.
15. AI, Bob Haggart.
16. Ibid.
17. John McDonough, Down Beat, Mar. 1994.
18. Time, Nov. 6, 1939.
19. Letter from Arne Fogel to author, 1995.
20. William Ruhlmann, “The Road to Bing Crosby,” Goldmine, Dec. 24, 1993.
21. Time, Sept. 4, 1939.
22. Ibid. An article in Fortune weeks before Time’s (both came out in September 1939) said that Crosby’s “records compose no less than 9 percent of [Decca’s] output.” Time’s far larger figure would appear to be the accurate one, however, as Timeacknowledged Fortune as its main source and changed the number according to its own subsequent fact-checking.
23. See note 16 for Chapter 19.
24. Although the rule indicated here holds generally for pop records, exceptions abound. Al Jolson’s 1940s remakes, for example, are the ones for which he is remembered, in part because the technology had improved and Jolson had become a better singer — the comforting baritone (rather than nattering tenor) popularized by the movie based on his life, The Jolson Story (1946). Similarly, any late-career Judy Garland version of “Over the Rainbow” has greater iconic power than the original for reflecting all the intervening personal drama. With Crosby, the iconic power generally resides with the earlier versions, though the later ones are often musically superior.
25. The 1955 Decca promotional disc (op. cit) and a 1960 interview with Wilfred Thomas, Oct. 15, 1960, cited in Reynolds, Part Two,p. 139.
26. “Washington Breakdown,” recorded by the Alamanac Singers, March 1941.
27. A. Scott Berg, Goldwyn (New York: Knopf, 1989), p. 346.
28. Robinson and Gordon, Ballad of an American,p. 77.
29. Louis Untermeyer liner notes, Bing Crosby, The Man Without a Country and What So Proudly We Hail (featuring Ballad for Americans), Decca DL 8020.
30. Robinson and Gordon, Ballad of an American,p. 96.
31. Ibid., p. 95.
32. Ibid., p. 100.
33. Wallace Stegner, “The Radio Priest and His Flock,” by Wallace Stegner, cited by Albert Fried, FDR and His Enemies,p. 224. Fried himself writes of Coughlin’s “superb delivery, his beautifully modulated baritone voice, his rolling cadences, his delicate trills, his endless alliteration. He was an artist of the airwaves.”
34. Peters, The House of Barrymore,p. 441.
35. Philadelphia Record, Nov. 11, 1940, cited in unidentified clip, “Philly Record Attacks Crosby for F.D.R. Blast,” Nov. 12, 1940. BCCGU. Also “Race Track by WPA,” New York Daily News, May 16, 1940.
26. Easy Riders
1. AI, Bob Hope.
2. Bob Hope, Have Tux, Will Travel,p. 131.
3. Ibid.,p. 129.
4. AI, Dolores Hope.
5. New York Herald Tribune, Nov. 7, 1937.
6. JWTPR, July 14, 1938, by Frank Woodruff.
7. AI, Dolores Hope.
8. AI, Bob Hope.
9. Hope, Have Tux, Will Travel,p. 140.
10. Champagne Waltz and The Texas Rangers.
11. The new title required arbitration when Columbia Pictures complained that it was planning an epic called Singapore. The Columbia entry was never made.
12. Maxene Andrews, interviewed by Mark Scrimger and Bob Pasch, 1992, as transcribed by the author; an edited version was published in Bingang, Dec. 1992.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid. According to Vic Schoen, Dave Kapp produced the session and Jack was not present in the studio, though, of course, Bing may have said as much to him after the fact.
18. Joseph F. Laredo liner notes, Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters (Decca).
19. Lucky, p. 157.
20. AI, Bob Hope.
21. Ibid.
22. Time memo regarding interview with David Butler from M. Gleason to S. Olson, Aug. 4, 1946. TIA.
23. Lucky, p. 157.
24. AI, Melville Shavelson.
25. Lamour, My Side of the Road,p. 88.
26. AI, Bob Hope.
27. Ibid.
28. Lamour, My Side of the Road,p. 89.
29. Anthony Quinn, RBT.
30. Marx, The Secret Life of Bob Hope,p. 140.
31. Anthony Quinn, RBT.
32. Marx, The Secret Life of Bob Hope,p. 140.
33. Parish, The Paramount Pretties,p. 340.
34. AI, Bob Hope.
35. AI, Dolores Hope.
36. Anthony Quinn, RBT.
37. AI, Melville Shavelson.
38. Salisbury interview, op. cit.
39. Neuhaus interview, op. cit.
40. This line and those that follow taken from Crosby’s copy of the script for Road to Morocco. AMPAS.
41. Time Butler memo, op. cit.
42. Ibid.
43. The Film Criticism of Otis Ferguson,p. 356.
44. AI, Mort Lachman.
45. Lucky, p. 158.
46. Time memo, “Cottrell and Company,” 1946. TIA.
47. Ulanov, The Incredible Crosby,p. 165.
48. AI, Melville Shavelson.
49. Lucky, p. 159.
50. AI, Bob Hope.
51. A few of the itemized gags are “What are you, yellow?”; “It’s only a kangaroo”; “No thanks, we ate four days ago”; “[Lamour] disappears during song and Bob and Bing kiss each other”; “I could have won the Academy Award.” Legal papers, Road to Morocco. AMPAS.
52. AI, Basil Grillo.
53. Ibid.
54. Ibid.
55. Ibid.
56. AI, Johnny Lange.
57. AI, Gary Crosby.
58. Person to Person, CBS-TV, 1954. Bing tells the same story in Lucky,pp. 161—62.
59. Lucky, p. 35.
60. AI, Skitch Henderson.
61. AI, Eddie Bracken.
62. AI, Mort Lachman.
63. AI, Melville Shavelson.
64. AI, Rory Burke.
65. Ibid.
66. Ibid.
67. Ulanov, The Incredible Crosby,p. 169.
68. AI, Barry Ulanov.
69. Gerald Mast describes Crosby, Hope, and Lamour as “the Marx Brothers with heart,” Can’t Help Singiri,pp. 223—26.
70. Shipman, The Story of Cinema,p. 597.
71. Seldes, The Public Arts,p. 131.
72. Variety, Jan. 3, 1940.
73. AI, Mort Lachman.
74. Ibid.
75. Martin Scorsese, “Guilty Pleasures,” undated article, American Film, 1994.
76. Time, Mar. 25, 1940.
77. Frank S. Nugent, “Posting a Proceed-With-Caution Sign on Paramount’s ‘Road to Singapore,’” New York Times, Mar. 14, 1940.
78. Photograph, New York Times, Mar. 13, 1940, cited in Dupuis, Bunny Berigan,p. 223.
79. Variety, Mar. 20, 1940.
80. Ibid.
81. Ibid., Apr. 10, 1940.
82. Kate Cameron, “Paramount Goes Gay in a Large Way,” New York Daily News,Mar. 14, 1940.
83. Kay, Box Office Champs,p. 16.