The Bing Crosby Story

“The amazing thing about Bing Crosby,” one of his long-time friends recently said, “is not that he has sold more phonograph records than anyone else, nor that he has been a top box-office star for years, nor even that he has amassed one of Hollywood’s greatest personal fortunes. The really amazing thing is that Bing has done it all in a light-hearted way. His story of success is almost entirely devoid of tense moments.”

From the very outset of his career, Bing has accepted his enormous public acclaim with considerable surprise. He has never been heard to say that he was much of a singer, and although he won an Oscar for Going My Way, he habitually minimizes his acting ability. In January, 1943, when his Toluca Lake place burned down, and the loss of his enormous record collection was widely publicized, many fans, assuming that it contained all of his old records, immediately sent him replacements from their own collections. Most of them were discs which Bing had never owned before.

The large staff at the Crosby Building on Sunset Boulevard has been unable to keep his press clippings pasted up currently. Yet it is doubtful that Bing. a voluminous reader, would even bother to read a story about himself. To this day, he fails to understand why people are interested in the normal and ordinary details of his personal life, which already have been extensively documented by live biographers, including his brother, Ted. According to brother Larry, Bing has always had a yen to write. “But,” says Larry, “if he ever does get around to his autobiography, he will insist that it stand up on its own merits as a job of writing and not go out as just another rehash of his life. Why, we’ve had dozens of offers for Bing to sign a daily column written by a ghost writer, but he’ll have none of it. Someday, he wants to do it himself.”

Bing has an almost instinctive hatred of pretense and ostentation and is inclined to be abrupt with people who give him a smoochy buildup. In contrast to his flamboyant and easy-going youth, Bing appears to have made a more exact appraisal of what his time is worth. He has probably never sat down and figured it out on paper, but he evidently feels that when he is not working, he should be doing something he enjoys. Some years ago, Bob Crosby was trying out his band for a job at the fashionable Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Boston, when Bing arrived in town after a visit to the nearby racetrack. Sensing a valuable publicity break, the manager of the hotel asked Bob if he could get Bing to pose for pictures with him, and Bob, without thinking, said, “Of course.” That afternoon, Bob asked Bing to come up to the Roof for the band’s tryout, but neglected to tell him about the photographers who would be there. When the elevator arrived at the Roof, and Bing saw the battery of cameramen waiting in the ballroom, he turned to the elevator operator and quietly said, “Down.”

“Every floor that elevator went down I could see that job flying farther away,” says Bob. “I was sort of hurt at the time, but now I realize how wrong it was for me to have put Bing in a spot like that without asking him first. In spite of all the nonsense he’s had to put up with, Bing’s been a wonderful brother to me.”

Since he has been able to control the scheduling of his radio shows for Chesterfield, Bing has systematically planned his life. When he is involved with work in Hollywood, he spends every available moment at his home in Holmby Hills, or on the Bel Air golf course. On weekends, Bing drives to his home-away-from-home, the beautiful modern house at Pebble Beach, where he can live as a private citizen. “Pebble Beach gives Bing a peaceful haven, I suppose, from the flood of attention he gets in Hollywood,” a Monterey newspaperman reported. “Up here, people don’t give movie stars a second glance.”

Bing spends his summers in other peaceful surroundings at his 20,000-acre ranch 60 miles from Elko, Nevada. No one bothers Bing for his autograph in Elko, but ranchers frequently stop him to ask how his cattle are enduring the summer heat, or how the trout are biting.

Last year, Bing purchased a vacation lodge at Hayden Lake, Idaho, where each fall he gives his boys a wonderful month of fishing and hunting as a payoff for their hard summer’s work as cowhands.

On the surface, Bing’s way of life would seem to have simplified his relations with people. But in effect, it has resulted in widening the vistas of his already complex personality. The people who met him during the years that he owned an interest in the Del Mar race track would swear that horse-racing is his principal interest. Musicians claim that singing is the love of his life. Professional golfers like Jimmy Demaret or Cary Middlecoft will tell you that Bing lives for the moments he can spend on the golf course. Bing is continually surprising people with his knowledge, all seemingly acquired without effort. Some years ago, for instance, he came back from a brief trip to South America and surprised all of his friends by demonstrating a fluent command of the Spanish language.

“I always thought it remarkable that Bing could have picked up a completely new language in such a short time,” says Johnny Burke. “Then just by accident, when I took my own vacation to South America last summer, I discovered how hard Bing had to study to learn Spanish. On our boat was the same: language teacher who 12 years ago had tutored Bing two hours each day. By the time he arrived in Buenos Aires, Bing spoke Spanish like a native.”

Because of his inbred dislike of pretension in others, Bing has always hidden his own intellectual accomplishments behind a glib facade of jive talk and sporting news. Actually, however, he is one of the best informed men in Hollywood.

“He has so much information and technique stored up inside of him,” an admirer recently remarked, “its a wonder he doesn’t explode.”

Although he is not surrounded by an entourage of yeah-sayers and glad-handers, Bing is very close to many of his business associates. Wally Westmore, his makeup man, is a close friend, as is John O’Melveny, his attorney. Bill Morrow, who writes and produces his radio show, was a fishing buddy long before he went to work for Bing. Johnny Burke and Jimmy Van Heusen, who write his songs, are always welcome guests at the Crosby manor. Barney Dean, whose gags have sparked many of the Crosby-Hope comedies, often travels with Bing to golf tournaments and army camp shows. There is apparently no standard by which Bing chooses his friends. Either he likes a person or he doesn’t; he rarely changes his mind about anyone.

Bing has many bachelor friends, but there is not one among them who does not envy his rewarding family life. Only once or twice during his 21 years of marriage to Dixie has any serious trouble arisen. Last summer when Bing took a holiday in Europe without Dixie, a rumor hit the front pages that they were separating. But like other rumors of dissension in the Crosby household, it evaporated faster than the printer’s ink. This spring, Bing and Dixie have never been happier.

Not long ago, the Crosbys held a wonderfully informal western party at their Holmby Hills home, a real hoe-down affair where everyone came dressed in levis and plaid shirts.

“I haven’t seen Bing enjoy himself so much for years,” one of his guests reported the next morning. “He and the band he’d asked over rambled through every jazz hit since 1900, and although he had an early call at Paramount the next morning, Bing just couldn’t stop singing.”

Dixie and Bing enjoy occasions of this sort. But since their children were born, neither have enjoyed party-giving nor party-going on a large scale. For more than 15 years, their life has centered around their four boys.

“Dixie and Bing have done a wonderful job of raising their boys,” says Bing’s brother Everett. “They stood a pretty good chance of being spoiled, but they’ve been brought up to understand the value of money, hard work, and earning their own rights to a place in the sun. Bing has never pampered any of them, and now that they are getting old enough to do their own thinking, they’ll think right.”

Bing has been Hollywood’s most celebrated father for many years, even before the National Father’s Day Committee, in 1945, designated him as “The Screen Father of the Year,” an honor he has received several times since. Although Bing has never denied his boys anything, he always has managed to find plenty of work for them to do, even when they were little.

“You aren’t going to get anywhere by ducking your chores,” he used to tell them. “I’ve got spies.”

“Yeah, I know,” Gary used to say. “Mom.”

Friends of Bing often recoil at the whip-like quality of his sons’ humor. It isn’t smarty and wise-cracking; rather, it is pertinent and adult, and full of the originality that flavors Bing’s own speech. Even when they were infants, Bing did not talk down to his Irishers, as he calls his boys.

“I remember one night in 1938, when my wife and I were visiting the Crosbys at their ranch in Del Mar,” says Johnny Burke. “It was Bing’s turn to tell the boys their bedtime story. When they were all ready for bed, he started the story of Old King Cole. In his version, Cole was a guy who had been raised in New Orleans around hot music, and he was having a tough time trying to lead the life of a king. He really didn’t go for that chamber music, but nonetheless he still had to call for his fiddlers three. When Gary asked him, ‘Why, pop?’ Bing said, ‘Noblesse oblige, son. He had to go along with the court crowd.’ ”

According to Johnny, all of the popular nursery tales were given an original and imaginative twist by Bing. Little Red Riding Hood, in his version, turned up as a vaudeville performer who broke up with her partner, a quick change artist, after a bum date in Kansas City. When she went home to live with her grandmother, she met a woodsman who gave her a big play, and she liked him, too. Then one day, her partner showed up dressed as a wolf and tried to break up their romance. But the woodsman was brave and chased the wolf away. Of course, Little Red Riding Hood knew all the time the wolf was her old partner—his makeup job was lousy. Bing used to summarize the tale with a moral: “The woodsman was certainly brave, kids, standing up to the wolf like that. But you have to give Little Red Riding Hood credit, too . . . she was a smart little cookie not to let on that the wolf wasn’t really a wolf.”

The Crosbys’ Pebble Beach home is not far from Bellarmine Prep, where Bing’s three oldest boys are now enrolled. Sometimes they all spend an entire weekend playing golf at Pebble Beach, where the boys have been getting instructions for three years from venerable Peter Hay, the dean of California pros. Bing’s home is built on the 13th fairway, and golfers often catch sight of the boys, sitting like a tree full of owls in the branches of the spreading oak that overlooks the green.

Bing has played backyard baseball with the kids since they were big enough to hold a bat. Athletics always interested them. Today, Gary is a hard-driving fullback on the varsity team, and his younger brothers, Dennis and Philip, are regulars on the B team at Bellarmine. Lindsay, who attends the Good Shepherd School in Beverly Hills, is merely waiting until he puts on enough weight to play.

“You ought to see those kids kick and throw a football around,” says Lin Howard. “Every one of them looks like a pro.”

Next fall, when Linny moves up to Bellarmine Prep; Bing’s family will probably spend more time than ever at Pebble Beach. Although Gary starts in college next fall, he will either enroll at Santa Clara or Stanford, both within easy driving distance of the Monterey Peninsula. Both Bing and Dixie like their home there, and would like to be able to spend more time in it. When all of their boys are going to northern California schools, they certainly will make extra sure to do so.

In any event, Bing and the boys will be hard at work on the ranch again after the school term ends in June. Soon after they arrive at the ranch, each of the boys will be assigned to a crew, and will work, eat, and sleep with the men who run the place the year around. They will get up at daylight, spend the day pitching hay, herding cattle, or mending fences, and be in bed by 8:30 P.M. On Sundays, after Mass, they will go fishing or perhaps take a ride into town to see a movie.

“Someday the boys are going to own the ranch,” Bing has said, “and I want them to know what the men working for them have to do.”

“That life doesn’t hurt Bing any, either,” a friend commented. “He can keep himself in top shape just by following the schedule he sets for the boys.”

Now that the boys have begun to make a splash in the entertainment world, Bing will undoubtedly work harder than ever to keep them in balance. Just recently, the Superior Court approved a contract with Decca Records which gives the boys a royalty of two-and-a-half cents on each of their records. This money will be added to the already considerable fortunes which are being held in trust for them by John O’Melveny, their father’s lawyer.

Although Bing has had no qualms about allowing the boys to display their talents. neither he nor Dixie will let this unduly influence their future. “No son of mine is turning crooner until he finishes his schooling,” Dixie says. “We don’t mind the boys making a record now and then during summer vacation, just as long as it doesn’t interfere with their school work. Gary sings well—all the boys do—but he is going to finish college before he tries to make a profession of it.”

Since his father’s death last fall, Bing has brought his mother closer into his daily life. She now usually spends weekends at his Holmby Hills home, even though her own home is just minutes away. According to brother Larry, Bing has never been at any major crossroads in his life that he did not write or call his mother before making his decision. Her advice and her prayers have obviously been quite beneficial.

“Where Mother might have fallen apart after Dad’s death,” says Bob Crosby, “she has too much to worry about with all of her children and their families. Believe me, she’s still the guiding genius of this family. We all depend on her for advice.”

Kate Crosby still worries about Bing. She worries about the rough and tough way he works his sons; she would treat them gentler, and probably spoil them. But she is rightfully and inordinately proud of her famous son, and is becoming reconciled, as her grandsons grow older, to the fact that Bing’s way worked out pretty well.

Larry, Everett, and Bob, the three Crosby brothers who live in Hollywood, are also a vital part of Bing’s life. Although demonstrativeness is not a characteristic of the Crosby makeup, there exists a deep-seated loyalty in the family. All of Bing’s brothers are caricatured on his radio show. Larry, in real life a quiet, unhurried man with a penetrating dry humor, is pictured as a chronic worrier. Brother Bob’s fatal fascination for the horses is the cause for numerous funny remarks. But brother Everett and his grasping interest in the dollar comes in for the worst pasting of all. Last fall, when Everett left for a tour of Europe with his wife, Bing mentioned on his show that Everett has started a new business over there—greasing channel swimmers. “You know my brother Everett,” Bing continued confidentially “He’s the greatest people-greaser in the world.”

Everett’s attitude about remarks like that is typical of all of Bing’s brothers: “Why should I mind? I don’t care if they make me sound like a jerk as long as it helps the show—and I get my ten per cent.”

It would be easy to underestimate the significance of Everett’s and Larry’s contributions to Bing’s success. In 1931, Everett, a garrulous truck salesman, quit his job in Los Angeles to gamble on Bing’s future as a singer in New York. Today he handles the Crosby enterprises, and makes it possible for Bing to concentrate exclusively on his career as an entertainer. Larry, who came down to Los Angeles from a Seattle newspaper job in 1933, is responsible for establishing Bing’s far-reaching fan club organization which is composed of more than 400 clubs in America, 80 in Canada, and another 300 in other nations of the world. For 18 years, Larry has directed Bing’s efficient fan mail service, which each month sends replies to each of the 10,000 to 25,000 people who write Bing personal letters. Five secretries and three IBM electric typewriters are kept busy eight hours daily, classifying, sorting, and answering Bing’s mail; and even they will be unable to process all the mail which will come during Bing’s 20th anniversary. Larry also manages the Crosby Research Foundation, and handles Bing’s vast donations to charity.

The list of his donations last year filled three typewritten pages and included orphanages, child-care centers, medical research, scholarships, and innumerable religious projects. For many years all of the royalties from his recording of “Silent Night,” which to date has sold more than 5,000,000 copies, were given to 15 charitable organizations. During his entire career, Bing has never been known to refuse help to any priest with a worthy cause.

But Bing’s favorite charity for the past ten years is the annual Crosby Pro-Amateur Golf Tournament at Pebble Beach, which has already provided the funds for four community youth centers on the Monterey Peninsula. Bing pays all the bills, including the $10,000 prize money. This year, the tournament, attended by 20,000 people, raised more than $40,000, after federal taxes, which will go directly into a program to build and improve recreational facilities for boys and girls’ of all denominations. Bing takes a great personal interest in the tournament and in the athletic programs of the centers. Last fall, when Joe Lilly, Bing’s arranger at Paramount, flew up to Pebble Beach to play the tunes for Mr. Music, he was astonished when Bing met him at the airport with his car loaded down with cases of soda pop

“You aren’t going to drink all that stuff?” he asked Bing.

“No, I have to drop it off for the boys over in Carmel,” Bing replied.

Bing stopped by the Carmel center and unloaded the pop himself.

Bing’s participation in worthy causes is not restricted to cash donations. He has been one of the principal supporters of Father Peyton’s Family Hour program on Mutual. Father Patrick Peyton, whose theme is: “The Family Who Prays Together, Stays Together,” first met Bing over the phone when he asked him to appear on his initial broadcast on VE day. Bing, who was then working in Bells of St. Mary’s, agreed at once.

“Only two other players in Hollywood, Ann Blyth and Loretta Young, have appeared on our programs more often than Bing,” says Father Peyton. “Every time he has been asked, he has done everything he could for the cause of family prayer.”

Bing has always been a devoted churchgoer. He and the boys frequently sing together at early Mass. As a result of his appearances as a priest in Going My Way and Bells of St. Mary’s, Bing was responsible for giving the public an entirely new insight into the activities of a priest in modern society. Today, he is America’s best known lay Catholic, whose public identification with his religion is clearly indicated by the many letters he receives yearly asking him to say a special prayer for people in need.

Bing Crosby is, indeed, a many-sided man. But the image which most people hold of him will undoubtedly continue to be that of an easy-going, friendly singer whose own responses to life are incredibly normal and like those of his fellow Americans. At 48 Bing somehow manages, although he is balding and spreading at the waist, to present an exterior of almost indestructible youthfulness.

Twenty years ago, when he was just beginning his career as America’s greatest singer, Bing felt sure his days were numbered. Shortly after he had finished his first sensational appearance at the Paramount Theater in New York, he called in his brother Everett and asked how things were going.

“Just great, Bing,” Everett told him. “I have all sorts of things booked for you.”

“Tine up everything you can,” Bing replied. “This can’t possibly last.”

There is no one in America more surprised than Bing Crosby that it did.

THE END

—BY TOM CARLILE

(Bing is currently at work in Paramount’s Here Comes the Groom, co-starring Jane Wyman.—Ed.)

 

It is a quote. MODERN SCREEN MAGAZINE MAY 1951