If At First You Don’t Succeed—Bing Crosby

“It’s a girl!”

These were the wonderful, almost unbelievable words Dr. Abner Moss rushed out of the delivery room to tell Bing Crosby that September fourteenth. “It’s a girl, and mother and daughter are doing perfectly.”

The doctor led Bing to the nursery window, and there she was, Mary Frances, the daughter he and Kathy had named so long ago, had dreamed so much about, had planned for so long. His first little girl, and only a little over a year late.

It was a tremendous moment.

What did Bing say to honor that tremendous moment? He said what about a billion fathers before him have said. He said, “Isn’t she awfully red?”

“Go relax for an hour,” said Dr. Moss. “Then come back and I’ll let you see Kathy, and by then I expect you will be able to see your daughter more clearly. Right now, I forgive you everything. After all, you’ve had a hard day.”

Bing had had a hard day. So had Kathy. It wasn’t until Bing was driving away from the hospital, hurrying home for a few moments so that he could tell baby Harry all about it, that he realized how hard the whole nine months of Kathy’s second pregnancy had been on him—as well as on her. He hadn’t admitted until just now how much he had wanted a girl.

The first time Kathy had been pregnant, they had never referred to the coming baby as anything but “she.” Deciding on her name was the easiest. Mary for the Blessed Virgin; Frances for a beloved aunt who had been the guiding inspiration of Kathy’s childhood.

Now you have to realize, first of all, to understand their feeling about their impending parenthood, that Bing and Kathy grew steadily more in love each day following their marriage. They had gone through a very long courtship, something few Hollywood couples do experience.

They had, over the years of their acquaintanceship before their wedding, surmounted the almost insurmountable obstacles between them. There was the age difference between them. There was the fact that Bing was not only mature but also a celebrity, a millionaire, a corporation, a father and a son and a brother. If the ramifications of his relationship to the world were difficult for him, they were triply difficult for Kathy.

The average young girl would have been swamped by Bing’s relationship to his widowed mother, to his two brothers and their families, by his troubled relationship to his four sons, and subsequently to two of their families, and finally to the memory of a dead wife.

As a matter of fact, a couple of girls were defeated by these odds. Bing has never been the kind of man suited either for loneliness or bachelorhood. Like most charming men, everything in life is made pleasanter for him if there is feminine society mixed in every situation that might occur.

So he dated other girls, even while he dated Kathy. But Kathy won him. She wasn’t so much prettier than the other girls. She wasn’t so much smarter. But she had one of the greatest weapons for winning any man. She adored the man utterly.

Even during the bitter period when Bing denied he intended to marry her, when he mocked her for buying a wedding dress—at least the papers said she had bought herself a wedding dress—her love did not waver. She loved him. She waited.

She became a convert to his religion, which was a faith Dixie Lee Crosby did not accept until the end of her life. Kathy studied his profession by the direct means of keeping up with her own acting. She improved her mind, taking college courses, and most importantly, she kept her own counsel.

The second Mrs. Crosby

Finally, she won, as the whole world knows. Bing came back to her, and she became Mrs. Crosby, the young Mrs. Crosby, the second Mrs. Crosby. It looked perfect, but it wasn’t. It was a very rough spot for a girl in her earliest twenties.

Why? It was a set-up, that’s why. She and Bing moved into his mansion in Holmby Hills. Mansion is the only word for it—a very French, very elegant, huge, rambling mansion in the ritziest section of ritzy Holmby Hills. He had lived there with Dixie. He had raised his boys there. Bing Crosby and the new, second Mrs. Crosby moved in. The original Mrs. Crosby, Kate, Bing’s mother, had been living there for some time. A real personality, Kate Crosby, a strong woman who adores her son, and who is so feminine she looks about twenty years younger than she really is—which is nearly eighty.

Into this French mansion moved the multi-millionaire Bing Crosby and the little girl from Texas, and around them loomed the four bedrooms that had belonged to Bing’s four sons and everywhere there was the memory of tragic Dixie.

This was hardly an idyllic honeymoon atmosphere into which Bing moved his bride, but Kathryn conquered it.

First, she looked after Kate Crosby’s happiness. After all, the elder Mrs. Crosby was widowed and lonely. She had long roomed at Bing’s but Kathryn moved her into a wing that was adjacent to the master bedroom, and what was subsequently going to be a nursery, too, on the other side of her suite This suite was just for her own use, where her friends or her other sons and daughters-in-law, and her other grandchildren could come calling on her without going through the rest of the house, if they preferred it that way. She could have her meals when she liked, go to bed or get up as it pleased her.

But also, the wing was immediately adjacent to the suite that was Kathy’s and Bing’s, so that if she wanted their company, there it was.

That was the first step. The next was Bing’s office. He had an office, down on the Strip, about a half a dozen miles away. He’d had it for years, to go over with his brother, Everett, the details of their corporation, which handles everything from inventions to frozen orange juice to record deals. But it was a very officy-office and man-like, and hadn’t been changed by so much as a stick of furniture for ages.

Therefore, having made over a couple of the boys’ rooms into the wing for Kate, Kathy now made over another bedroom into a home office for her husband. While Bing was on a fishing trip in Alaska, Kathy, as a complete surprise to him had the room furnished. She put in every innovation that has hit offices lately, air-conditioning, sound-conditioning, electric typewriters, hidden lights, soft carpets, wonderful draperies. She said it might be nice for Bing on rainy days, when he didn’t want to go out. There were only about four rainy days all last winter in Hollywood—and there were only about six days when Bing didn’t prefer to work in his new office at home.

There was, too, the subject of their own bedroom. King-sized beds have now become almost a commonplace, but the Crosby bed was especially ordered and about the only name you can give it—because it is so long, so deep, so wide and so wonderful—is Emperor.

And there, one happy January morning when they had been married a little more than two months, Kathy gave her husband the happiest news any wife can tell her husband. She was pregnant.

That’s when Bing and Kathy first began talking about Mary Frances. They understood now that this new girl baby was the beginning of a new Crosby family, their family.

All during the next nine months they discussed ‘her,’ Mary Frances. As Kathy’s pregnancy advanced, it became Bing’s custom when kissing her good night, to pat her protuberant tummy and say, “Goodnight, Mary Frances.”

So then, in August, ‘Mary Frances’ was born—but ‘she’ was Harry. Harry Lillis Crosby II, and don’t let anybody fool you that he is really called Tex. He’s not. He’s Harry. Bing called him Tex once, for a joke, and the papers picked it up, much as they picked up Humphrey Bogart’s calling his wife Baby when actually he never called her anything but Betty.

Another pregnancy

Four months after Harry’s birth, Kathy was happily pregnant again. They went down to consult Dr. Moss. He said Kathy was in great shape.

Dr. Moss also volunteered a piece of information. Nobody had asked him, but he said, “In 80% of the cases, the second child has the same sex as the first child.” Bing knew. In five of his cases.

So this time, he and Kathy did not call the incoming baby ‘she.’ Actually, they didn’t call it ‘he’ either. Just baby. Or new baby. No sex. No name. No goodnight pats to it. Harry had been born in August and the new baby would be born in September, September 12th.

As they waited for their second child, the life of Bing and Kathy became simpler and simpler, the simplicity of two people falling more and more deeply in love. Little Harry had his nursery adjoining their bedroom. It had been, originally, of course, one of the Crosby boys’ bedrooms, but now Kathy turned it into a room all cream and gold, with wonderful old marble tops put into the area that would be a baby’s bath corner, and with the adjoining adult bathroom turned into a giddy place indeed, full of light and color and mirrors.

It was, of course, a room meant for a girl. Just as the antique cradle Kathy purchased was right for a girl. The cradle was of wood, hand carved in the shape of a swan, and it was more than four hundred years old. For it, Kathy purchased the most feather-light mattress, the most silken sheets in the daintiest pastels, the laciest pillowcases, threaded through with ribbons in pink and blue and white.

With Harry’s arrival, all those touches went—but not the cradle. But as the second baby began approaching, Kathy wondered if perhaps she ought not to give up that adorable swan cradle after all. These were the kinds of thoughts she had, usually, after she had waked to give Harry his 2:00 a.m. bottle. She didn’t tell Bing. He didn’t tell her his thoughts either.

So the months went by. Kathy managed to get Anatomy of a Murder in before she showed too much. During that period, she hired a wonderful nurse, Jeannette McGunnigle, in addition to Susie Mae Smith, who has been with Kathryn for a long time. Jeannette, who is just as Scotch as her name sounds, and Jeannette allowed as how, madame, she’d be glad to stay when the new bairn appeared, too.

By mid-summer, Harry was dining with his parents, downstairs in the elegant dining room. He wasn’t especially aware of this honor, of course, but he’d lie in the special folding basket his parents had purchased for just these occasions and he’d crow and throw his legs about in a great fashion. The one thing that most delighted him was to have his father sing him a lullaby. His father was delighted to oblige, any old time.

Then it got to be Sept. 12th when the new Crosby baby was due. Kathy had been having contractions for almost a week, and from her hospital work (she technically has the title of scrub tec for that) she knew her time was very near. Only it wasn’t quite there. Not on the 12th, or the 13th or even the morning of the fourteenth and that is when she began to get too nervous.

She called Dr. Moss. “Come on over here,” ho said, “and I will give you a shot to induce labor.”

Bing went along with her. It was just noon when they reached the doctor’s office. Kathy got her shot. “It should work in an hour or two,” said Dr. Moss. “Don’t go anywhere where you are too far from the hospital.”

Dr. Moss’ office is on a section of Hollywood Boulevard where there are many shops of all types. Kathy came down from his office and looked around her smiling. “How about a sandwich?” her adoring husband asked.

Her stomach lurched at the very word. “I couldn’t,” Kathy said. “Look, darling. You go to a drive-in and eat and I’ll walk down to Barker’s and shop.”

“You’re sure you’re all right? You’re sure you don’t need the car?”

“No, no,” she said. “I just want to shop. I’ll be back in half an hour.”

But she wasn’t. It was harder to walk than she had thought it would be. The shop was only two short blocks away but it seemed miles. She pushed on, though, and just inside the shop door she saw a sofa, and stretched out comfortably.

She sank down on it and was thankful that no one recognized her. Then her big, dark eyes, for no reason whatsoever, lighted on a wastebasket on sale.

What kind of a wastebasket, what color, what material it was made of, she couldn’t have told you. What the Crosby house did not need was wastebaskets. So she ordered six of them, and then she started walking back to the doctor’s office. It seemed miles and miles and miles.

When she finally went into Dr. Moss’ inner room, she found him and Bing both white-faced. “Do you know you’ve been gone two hours?” they gasped. “Quick, get in the car and head for that hospital. The baby will come any minute.”

The baby didn’t though. She never arrived until seven in the evening, and though she weighed almost seven pounds, she didn’t look it, she was so very dainty, such a little girl, with a full head of red, red hair. Mary Frances. Mary Frances Crosby, their dream daughter, there at last.

It was almost nine before they let Bing see Kathy and by that time, he had revisited Mary Frances several times and revised his opinion tremendously. He saw that she wasn’t red at all, or not much, no more than a lovely glow. He looked at her tiny hands, balled up into little fists and he saw her baby mouth, sweet as Kathy’s, and he thought of the double lullabies he’d now be singing, to his Harry and to his little girl, his daughter, his very first daughter.

Kathy said to him, the first moment he was allowed to see her, “Oh, darling, isn’t Mary Frances beautiful?”

“Beautiful?” said Bing. “Is that all? She’s much more than beautiful. I swear to you, Kathy, I never saw a baby of her age who was so alert.”

“Her what?” gasped Kathy—and then she began to laugh. “Bing, our daughter is just two hours old.”

“Nevertheless,” said Bing, and then he stopped, while the laughter overcame him, too, and so they laughed in unison and kissed one another, while their tears of pure happiness wet their faces.

Mary Frances?

She just slept.

THE END

See Bing in SAY ONE FOR ME for 20^th.

 

It is a quote. MODERN SCREEN MAGAZINE DECEMBER 1959