Bing Crosby
Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby (
May 3,
1903 –
October 14,
1977) was an
American singer and
actor whose career lasted from
1926 until his death in
1977. He was one of the most successful artists of the
20th century.
Arguably the first true multi-media star, Bing Crosby's influence on
popular culture and
popular music is enormous -- from
1934 to
1954 he held a nearly unrivaled command of
record sales,
radio ratings and
motion picture grosses. He is usually considered to be a member of popular music's "holy trinity" of ultra-icons, alongside
Elvis Presley and
The Beatles1.
Bing Crosby popularized singing with conversational ease, or
crooning. His musical interpretations amalgamated rhythm and romance with scat singing, whistling, rhythmic improvisation and melodic paraphrasing as elements of a hotter, sexier sound than had been conceived before.
Crosby is also credited as being the major inspiration for most of the male singers that followed him, including the likes of
Frank Sinatra,
Perry Como and
Dean Martin.
Tony Bennett summed up Crosby's impact, stating, "Bing created a culture. He contributed more to popular music than any other person - he moulded popular music. Every singer in the business has taken something from Crosby. Every male singer has a Bing Crosby idiosyncrasy."
1 Crosby also exerted a massive influence on the development of the postwar recording industry. In 1947 he invested US$50,000 in the
Ampex company, which developed the world's first commercial
reel-to-reel tape recorder, and Crosby became the first performer in the world to pre-record his radio shows and master his commercial recordings on magnetic tape. He gave one of the first Ampex Model 200 recorders to his friend, musician
Les Paul, which led directly to Paul's invention of
multitrack recording. He was, along with
Frank Sinatra, one of the principal backers behind the famous
United Western Recorders studio complex in Los Angeles.
In
1962, Crosby was the first person to receive the
Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
Harry Lillis Crosby was born in
Tacoma, Washington on
May 3,
1903 in a house that his father built (1112 North J Street, Tacoma, Washington). His family later moved to
Spokane, Washington in 1906 to find work. He was the fourth of seven children - five boys
Larry (1895-1975), Everett (born 1896), Ted (born 1900) and
Bob (1913-1993) and two girls Catherine (born 1905) and Mary Rose (born 1907) - born to
English-
American Harry Lowe Crosby (1871-1950), a bookkeeper and
Irish-American Catherine Harrigan (1873-1964), (affectionately known as Kate), the daughter of a builder from
County Mayo in
Ireland. His paternal ancestors Thomas Prence and Patience Brewster were born in
England and immigrated to the
U.S. in the 17th century; Brewster's family came over on the
Mayflower.
It should be noted that Bing Crosby had no birth certificate and that his birth date was shrouded in mystery until his childhood
Roman Catholic church in Tacoma, Washington, released the baptismal records that revealed his date of birth.
In 1910 Crosby was forever renamed. The six-year-old Harry Lillis discoved a full page feature in the Sunday edition of Spokesman-Review, "The Bingville Bugle." The "Bugle", written by humorist Newton Newkirk, was a parody of a hillbilly newsletter complete with gossipy tidbits, minstrel quips, creative spelling and mock ads. A neighbor, 15-year-old Valentine Hobart, shared Crosby's enthusiasm for the "bugle," and noting Crosby's laugh, took a likeing to him and called him Bingo from Bingville. The last vowel was dropped and the name shortened to Bing, which stuck.
In 1917 Crosby took a summer job as property boy at Spokane's "Auditorium" where he witnessed some of the finest acts of the day, including a blackface performer named
Al Jolson who spellbound Crosby with his ad-libbing and spoofs of Hawaiian songs that brought down the house. Crosby would later say that, "To me, he was the greatest entertainer who ever lived."
Bing enrolled in the
Jesuit-run
Gonzaga College in
Spokane, Washington in the fall of
1920 with the intent to become a lawyer. He maintained a B+ average. While in Gonzaga he sent away for a set of mail order drums. After much practice he soon became good enough and was invited to join a local band which was made up of mostly local high school kids called the "Musicaladers", managed by one
Al Rinker. He made so much money doing this he decided to drop out of school during his final year, to pursue a career in show business.
Music
In
1926, Crosby and his vocal duo partner Al Rinker caught the eye of
Paul Whiteman, arguably the most famous bandleader at the time, while singing at
Los Angeles Metropolitan Theatre. Hired for $150 a week, they made their debut on December 6, 1926 at the Tivoli Theatre in Chicago. Their first recording, "
I've Got The Girl", issued by Columbia, did them no vocal favours as it sounded like they were singing in a key much too high for them. It was later revealed that the 78rpm was recorded at a speed faster than it should have been. As popular as the Crosby and Rinker duo was Whiteman added another member to the group, pianist and aspiring songwriter
Harry Barris. As a result Whiteman dubbed them the
Rhythm Boys and they joined the Whiteman vocal team, working and recording with
Bix Beiderbecke,
Jack Teagarden,
Tommy Dorsey,
Jimmy Dorsey and
Eddie Lang and singers
Mildred Bailey and
Hoagy Carmichael.
Bing Crosby soon became the star attraction of the
Rhythm Boys not to mention Whiteman's Band and in 1928 had his first Number one hit, a jazz influenced rendition of "
Ol' Man River". However, his repeated youthful peccadilloes and growing dissatisfaction with Whiteman forced him to leave the band along with the
Rhythm Boys and join the
Gus Arnheim Orchestra. After signing with
Brunswick and recording under
Jack Kapp the
Rhythm Boys were increasingly pushed to the background with the vocal emphasis on Bing, fellow
Rhythm Boys Harry Barris did write most of Crosby's subsequent hits including "
At Your Command", "
I Surrender Dear" and "
Wrap Your Troubles In Dreams" However, shortly after this the members of the band had a falling out and split, setting the stage for Crosby's solo career.
As the 1930's unfolded it became clear that Bing was the number one man, vocally speaking. Ten of the top 50 songs for 1931 either featured Bing solo or with others. Apart from the short-lived "Battle of the Baritones" with
Russ Columbo "Bing Was King" signing long term deals with
Jack Kapp's new record company
Decca and starring in his first full-length features, 1932's the Big Broadcast, the first of 55 such films of which he was top billed, he appeared in a total of 79 Pictures.
Around this time Bing made his solo debut on Radio, co-starring with
The Carl Fenton Orchestra on a popular
CBS radio show and by
1936, replaced his former boss,
Paul Whiteman, as the host of
NBC's Kraft Music Hall, a weekly radio program where he would remain for the next ten years.
He was thus able to take popular singing beyond the kind of "belting" associated with a performer like
Al Jolson, who had to reach the back seats in New York theatres without the aid of the microphone. With Crosby, as
Henry Pleasants noted in
The Great American Popular Singers, something new had entered American music, something that might be called "singing in American," with conversational ease. The oddity of this new sound led to the epithet "
crooner".
|
Golfballs for the Scrap Rubber Drive during World War Two |
Crosby gave great emphasis to live appearances before American troops fighting in the
European Theater. He also learned how to pronounce
German from written scripts, and would read them in propaganda broadcasts intended for the German forces. The nickname "der Bingle" for him was understood to have become current among German listeners, and came to be used by his
English-speaking fans. In a poll of U.S. troops at the close of WWII, Crosby topped the list as the person who did the most for G.I. morale (beating out President
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, General
Dwight Eisenhower and one Leslie Townes, better known as "
Bob Hope".) and in 1948 he was voted the most admired person alive, ahead of
Frank Sinatra,
Jackie Robinson and
The Pope [Philadelphia Courier, Nov 22, 1947.]
Crosby's biggest musical hit was his recording of
Irving Berlin's
"White Christmas" [
1], which he introduced through a 1941 Christmas-season radio broadcast and the movie
Holiday Inn. Bing's recording hit the charts on Oct. 3, 1942, and rose to #1 on Oct. 31, where it stayed for 11 weeks. In the following years Bing's recording hit the top-30 pop charts another 16 times, even topping the charts again in 1945 and January of '47. The song remains Bing's best-selling recording, and the best-selling Christmas single and second best selling song of all time with estimates between 30 to 45 million albums sold. In 1998 after a long absence, his 1947 version hit the charts in Britain, and
as of 2006 remains the North American holiday-season standard. According to
Guinness World Records, Bing Crosby's
White Christmas has "sold over 100 million copies around the world, with at least 50 million sales as singles.
[ Guinness Sales record ]Motion pictures
According to ticket sales Bing Crosby is, at 1,077,900,000 tickets sold, the third most popular actor of all-time behind
Clark Gable and
John Wayne.
[ Crosby Movies ] Bing is also, according to Quigley Publishing Company's International Motion Picture Almanac, tied for second on the "All Time Number One Stars List" with three other actors -
Clint Eastwood,
Tom Hanks and
Burt Reynolds.
[Top 10 lists ]Crosby's most popular film,
White Christmas, grossed $30 Million in 1954, which adjusted for inflation to 2004 dollars is $233 million.
[ Crosby Movies ] Crosby also won an
Academy Award as
Best Actor for
Going My Way in
1944 and was also critically acclaimed for his performance as an alcoholic entertainer in
The Country Girl.
Style
Bing Crosby perfected an idea that
Al Jolson had hinted at, namely that the popular performer didn't have to limit himself to a mere series of shticks but could be a genuine artist - in this case, a genuine
musician. Before Crosby, art was art and pop was pop;
Opera singers worried about staying in tune and reaching the upper balcony,
Vaudevillians concerned themselves with their
costumes and
facial expressions. Crosby rendered the difference between the two irrelevant. Where eariler
recording artists had displayed strictly one-dimensional
attitudes, Crosby not only perfected the fully rounded
persona, but brought with it the technical wherewithal of a true concert artist. Crosby projected with a majestic sense of intonation that afforded
Tin Pan Alley the musical stature of European classics and a jazz influenced time that made him both the dominant voice of both the
Jazz age and the
Swing era. Crosby also elaborated on a further idea of
Al Jolson's, one that
Frank Sinatra would ultimately extend further: phrasing, or more specifically, the art of making a song's
lyric ring true. "I used to tell (Sinatra) over and over," said
Tommy Dorsey, "there's only one singer you ought to listen to and his name is Crosby. All that matters to him is the
words, and thats the only thing that ought to for you too."
The greatest trick of Crosby's virtuosity was covering it up. It is often said that Crosby made his singing and acting "look easy," or as if it was no work at all: he simply was the character he portrayed, and his singing, being a direct extension of conversation, came just as naturally to him as talking, or even breathing, or so it seemed. Crosby was indeed a conscious artist, but excelled more at covering it up.
Voice characteristics
Bing Crosby, along with
Frank Sinatra, is usually considered to be the most talented singer of his time. Crosby could, as musicologist J.T.H. Mize's asserts, "melt a tone away, scoop it flat and sliding up to the eventual pitch as a glissando, sometimes sting a note right on the button, and take diphthongs for long musical rides." J.T.H. Mize also inventoried the Crosby arsenal of vocal effects, including "interpolating pianissimo whistling variations, sometimes arpeggic, at other times trilling". While vocal critic Henry Pleasants states that "The octave B flat to B flat in Bing's voice at that time [1930s] is, to my ears, one of the loveliest I have heard in forty-five years of listening to baritones, both classical and popular. it dropped conspicuously in later years. Since the mid-1950s, Bing has been more comfortable in a bass range while maintaining a baritone quality, with the best octave being G to G, or even F to F. In a recording he made of 'Dardanella' with Louis Armstrong in 1960, he attacks lightly and easily on a low E flat. This is lower than most opera basses care to venture, and they tend to sound as if they were in the cellar when they get there."
Mel Torme concurred with Henry Pleasants stating that "His (Bing Crosby) low notes could make your bass woofers beg for mercy."
Career statistics
Bing Crosby has sales statistics that would place him among the most popular and successful musical acts of the 20th century, and would also suggest that Bing Crosby played a central role in American cultural and musical history: 1,700 recordings, 383 of those in the top 30, and of those, 41 hit No. 1. For 15 years (1934, 1937, 1940, 1943-1954) he was among the top 10 in box office draw, and for five of those years (1944-49) he was the largest in the world. He sang four
Academy Award-winning songs - "Sweet Leilani" (1937), "White Christmas" (1942), "
Swinging on a Star" (1944), "In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening" (1951) - and won an acting Oscar for
Going My Way (1944). He also collected 23 gold and platinum records in his career. It should be noted that Gold and platinum records did not come into existence until 1958, after which Crosby was considered retired. In 1962 Crosby became the first recipient of the
Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, a list that now contains a plethora of musical legends. He has been inducted into the respective halls of fame for both radio and popular music. His music sales are estimated at between 500,000,000 (five hundred million) to 900,000,000 (nine hundred million). Until the late 1970s, the
Guinness Book of Records listed Crosby as the biggest selling solo artist.
Bing Crosby's desire to pre-record his radio shows, combined with a dissatisfaction with the available aluminum recording disks, was a significant factor in the development of
magnetic tape recording and the radio industry's adoption of it. He used his power to innovate new methods of reproducing himself. In 1946 he wanted to shift from live performance to recorded transcriptions for his weekly radio show on
NBC sponsored by Kraft. But
NBC refused to allow recorded
radio programs (except for advertisements).
The live production of radio shows was a deeply-established tradition reinforced by the
ASCAP union. The new
ABC network, formed out of the sale of the old
NBC Blue network in 1943 to Edward Noble, the "Lifesaver King," was willing to break the tradition. It would pay Crosby $30,000 per week to produce a recorded show every Wednesday sponsored by
Philco. He would also get $40,000 from 400 independent stations for the rights to broadcast the 60-minute show that was sent to them every Monday on three 16-inch aluminum discs that played 10 minutes per side at 33-1/3 rpm. Crosby wanted to change to recorded production for several reasons. The legend that has been most often told is that it would give him more time for his golf game. And he did record his first
Philco program in August 1947 so he could enter the
Jasper National Park Invitational Gold Tournament in September when the new radio season was to start. But golf was not the most important reason.
Crosby was always an early riser and hard worker. He sought better quality through recording, not more spare time. He could eliminate mistakes and control the timing of performances. Because his own
Bing Crosby Enterprises produced the show, he could purchase the latest and best sound equipment and arrange the
microphones his way (mic placement had long been a hotly-debated issue in every recording studio since the beginning of the electrical era). No longer would he have to wear the hated toupee on his head previously required by
CBS and
NBC for his live audience shows (Bing preferred a hat). He could also record short promotions for his latest investment, the world's first frozen orange juice to be sold under the brand name
Minute Maid.
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Bing Crosby with the first US manufactured audio tape recorder, The Ampex Model 200, which was first used to record his radio show on April 25, 1948. |
The transcription method however had problems. The 16-inch aluminum program discs were made from master discs running at
78 rpm and holding only 4 minutes per side. This presented editing and timing problems that often caused gaps or glitches in the flow of the 60-minute program. Also, the acetate surface coating of the aluminum discs was little better than the wax that Edison had used at the turn of the century, with the same limited dynamic range and frequency response. In June of 1947,
Murdo MacKenzie of
Crosby Enterprises saw a demonstration of the German
Magnetophon that
Jack Mullin had brought back from Radio Frankfurt with 50 reels of tape at the end of the war. This machine was one of the magnetic tape recorders that BASF and AEG had built in Germany starting in 1935. The 1/2 inch ferric-coated tape could record 20 minutes per reel of high-quality sound. Alexander M. Poniatoff ordered his
Ampex company (founded in 1944 from his initials A.M.P. plus the starting letters of "excellence") to manufacture an improved version of the Magnetophone.
Bing Crosby hired Mullin and his German machine to start recording his Philco show in August 1947 with the same 50 reels of Farben magnetic tape that Mullin had found at a readio station at
Bad Neuheim near
Frankfurt while working for the U.S. Amry Signals Unit. The crucial advantage was editing. As Bing wrote in his autobiography, "By using tape, I could do a thirty-five or forty-minute show, then edit it down to the twenty-six or twenty-seven minutes the program ran. In that way, we could take out jokes, gags, or situations that didn't play well and finish with only the prime meat of the show; the solid stuff that played big. We could also take out the songs that didn't sound good. It gave us a chance to first try a recording of the songs in the afternoon without an audience, then another one in front of a studio audience. We'd dub the one that came off best into the final transcription. It gave us a chance to ad lib as much as we wanted, knowing that excess ad libbing could be sliced from the final product. If I made a mistake in singing a song or in the script, I could have some fun with it, then retain any of the fun that sounded amusing." Mullin's 1976 memoir of these early days of experimental recording agrees with Bing's account: "In the evening, Crosby did the whole show before an audience. If he muffed a song then, the audience loved it - thought it was very funny - but we would have to take out the show version and put in one of the rehearsal takes. Sometimes, if Crosby was having fun with a song and not really working at it, we had to make it up out of two or three parts. This ad-lib way of working is commonplace in the recording studios today, but it was all new to us."
Crosby also invested US$50,000 in
Ampex to produce more machines. In 1948, the second season of Philco shows was taped with the new Ampex Model 200 tape recorder (introduced in April) using the new Scotch 111 tape from the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing (3M) company. Mullin explained that new techniques were invented on the Crosby show with these machines: "One time Bob Burns, the hillbilly comic, was on the show, and he threw in a few of his folksy farm stories, which of course were not in Bill Morrow's script. Today they wouldn't seem very off-color, but things were different on radio then. They got enormous laughs, which just went on and on. We couldn't use the jokes, but Bill asked us to save the laughs. A couple of weeks later he had a show that wasn't very funny, and he insisted that we put in the salvaged laughs. Thus the laugh-track was born." Crosby had launched the tape recorder revolution in America. In his 1950 film
Mr. Music, Bing Crosby can be seen singing into one of the new Ampex tape recorders that reproduced his voice better than anything else. Also quick to adopt tape recording was his friend Bob Hope, who would make the famous "Road to..." films with Bing and Dorothy Lamour.
Mullin continued to work for Crosby to develop a videotape recorder. Television production was mostly live in its early years but Crosby wanted the same ability to record that he had achieved in radio. The Fireside Theater sponsored by Proctor and Gamble was his first television production for the 1950 season. Mullin had not yet succeeded with videotape, so Crosby filmed the series of 26-minute shows at the Hal Roach Studios. The "telefilms" were sent to television stations and projected into a camera using a film chain. This would be the same method used by Desi Arnaz in 1951 for the production of
I Love Lucy, making Desilu the industry model for the independent syndication of filmed episodic series. Crosby did not remain a television producer but continued to finance the development of videotape. Mullin would demonstrate a blurry picture on
December 30,
1952, but he was not able to solve the problem of high tape speed. It was the Ampex team led by Charles Ginsburg that made the first videotape recorder. Rather than speeding tape across fixed heads at 30 ips, Ginsburg used rotating heads to record at a slant on tape moving at only 15 ips. The helical scan model VR-1000 was demonstrated at the NAB show in Chicago on
April 14,
1956, and was an immediate success. Ampex made $4 million in sales during the NAB convention and by 1957 most TV production was done on videotape. Ampex developed a color videotape system in 1958 and recorded the spirited debate between Khrushchev and Nixon on a demonstration model at the Moscow trade Fair September 25, 1959. By this time, Crosby had sold his videotape interests to the 3M company and no longer played the role of tape recorder pioneer. Yet his contribution had been crucial. He had opened the door to Mullin's machine in 1948 and financed the early years of the Ampex company. The rapid spread of the tape recorder revolution was in no small measure caused by Crosby's efforts.
The decade following the end of World War II witnessed what has been called the "revolution in sound." The Decca Company introduced FFRR 78 rpm records (Full Frequency Range Recording) that had the finest frequency response (80-15,000 cps) of any recording process before magnetic tape recording. Decca's method of reducing the size of the groove and designing a delicate elliptical stylus to track on the sides of the groove would be the same innovation of the new microgroove process introduced by Columbia in
1948 on the new 33-1/3 rpm LP vinyl record. Crosby's sponsor Philco would join Columbia in selling a new $29.95 record player with jeweled stylus (not steel) tracking at only 10 grams (not 200) for these LPs. No longer would records wear out after 75 plays. Crosby's Ampex Company would be joined by Magnecord, Webcor, Revere, and Fairchild in selling one million tape recorders to a rapidly growing consumer audio component market by 1953. The 1949 Magnecord tape recorder had stereo capability eight years before any vinyl record had it. These components soon began to feature the transistor invented by Bell Labs in 1948. Crosby's 1942 film Holiday Inn (where he first sang his most famous song) would be remade in 1954 as White Christmas, the first film to use Paramount's new VistaVision wide-screen film process with multi-channel magnetic sound.
Crosby was married twice, first to actress/nightclub singer
Dixie Lee from 1930 until her death from
ovarian cancer in
1952. They had four sons (
Gary,
Dennis,
Phillip and
Lindsay). Dixie was an
alcoholic, and the 1947 film
Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman is indirectly based on her life. After Dixie's death, Bing married the much-younger actress
Kathryn Grant in 1957 and they had three children together,
Harry,
Mary (best known for portraying Kristin Shepherd, the woman who shot J.R. Ewing on
Dallas) and
Nathaniel.
In 1978, he and Bob Hope were voted the
Bob Jones Award, the highest honor given by the
United States Golf Association in recognition of distinguished sportsmanship in golf.
Shortly after 6:00 p.m. on
October 14,
1977, Bing Crosby died instantly when he suffered a massive
heart attack after a round of eighteen holes of golf in
Madrid, Spain. He was 74 years old. His last words were reported as, "That was a great game of golf fellas." However, according to his companions and recorded by biographer Gary Giddens, Crosby then said, "Let's go get a Coke." Due to incorrect instructions from his family, the year of birth engraved on Bing Crosby's tombstone is 1904, rather than the correct date of 1903.
After Bing's death, his image as an ideal father (fostered in part by his family's participation on his famous holiday television specials) was nearly destroyed when his eldest son, Gary, wrote a highly critical memoir (
Going My Own Way) depicting Bing as cold, remote, and both physically and psychologically abusive. His son Phillip frequently disputed his brother Gary's claims about their father. In an interview conducted in 1999 by the Globe, Phillip is quoted as saying, "My dad was not the monster my lying brother said he was, He was strict, but my father never beat us black and blue and my brother Gary was a vicious, no-good liar for saying so. I have nothing but fond memories of dad, going to studios with him, family vacations at our cabin in Idaho, boating and fishing with him. To my dying day, I'll hate Gary for dragging dad's name through the mud. He wrote
Going My Own Way out of greed. He wanted to make money and knew that humiliating our father and blackening his name was the only way he could do it. He knew it would generate a lot of publicity. That was the only way he could get his ugly, no-talent face on television and in the newspapers. My dad was my hero. I loved him very much. He loved all of us too, including Gary. He was a great father." Phillip died in
2004; the media reported the causes as "natural" or "unspecified" because the coroner declined to release specific details.
Two of Bing's children, Lindsay and Dennis, committed suicide. It was widely published at the time of Lindsay's
December 11,
1989 death that he ended his life the day after watching his father sing "White Christmas" on television. Dennis ended his life two years later, grieving over his brother's death, and battered, just as his brother had been, by alcoholism, failed relationships, and lackluster career. Both brothers were subsisting on small allowances from their father's trust fund; both died of self-inflicted gunshot wounds to the head.
Denise Crosby, Dennis' daughter, is also an actress and best known for her role as
Tasha Yar on
Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Nathaniel Crosby, Bing's youngest son from his second marriage, was a high-level golfer who won the
U.S. Amateur at age 19 in 1981, becoming the youngest-ever winner of that event (a record later broken by
Tiger Woods).
At his death, Bing was worth over $150 million USD due to his shrewd investments in oil, real estate, and other commodities, making him one of Hollywood's then wealthiest residents along with
Fred MacMurray and best friend
Bob Hope. He left a clause in his will stating that his sons from his first marriage could not collect their inheritance money until they were in their 80s. Bing felt that they had already been amply taken care of by a trust fund set up by their mother, Dixie Lee. All four sons continued to collect monies from that fund until their deaths. However, none lived long enough to collect any of their inheritance from their father.
*Bing Crosby possesses the most recorded
human voice in history (Schwartz, 1995)
* Just after
World War Two a
Yank Magazine poll declared him the person who had done the most for
G.I. morale during the war
* In
1992,
Artie Shaw offered his opinion of Crosby's place in
American culture in these terms: "The thing you have to understand about Bing Crosby is that he was the first
hip white person born in the United States"
1* He turned down an offer to play "
Columbo" because he didn't want it to interfere with his
golf schedule
* Crosby's final popular record was a 1977 duet with rock superstar
David Bowie, "
Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy". The collaboration came about after Crosby's children had to brief their father about Bowie, whom Crosby hadn't heard of up to that point
*Just before his sudden death, Bing was playing 18 holes of golf, where he shot a respectable score of 85 -- and won the match. Of his death, biographer Giddins has written: "His last words were characteristic. Walking off the eighteenth green of the La Moraleja Golf Club, in a suburb of
Madrid, Bing Crosby said, 'That was a great game of golf, fellas,' and then took a few steps and was gone"
2. According to the Summer 2001 issue of Club Crosby's BINGANG magazine, his actual last words were, "Let's go have a Coca-Cola."
Bing Crosby - The Final Round*Crosby was interred in the
Holy Cross Cemetery in
Culver City, California* "I rate him [Bing Crosby] in the top ten of all actors. He'd do anything and do it well."
Frank Capra (Thompson, p243)
* Crosby's height was 5'7" (1.70 m)
* His childhood home in
Spokane, Washington now serves as the Alumni Association office for
Gonzaga University. His dorm blanket hangs in the stairwell, and other memorabilia can be found on the first floor as well as in the "Crosbyana Room" at the Crosby Student Center. A statue of Crosby is located at the front steps of the student center, although his pipe has frequently been stolen as a prank. There is a campus legend that Crosby was asked to leave Gonzaga after trying (and failing) to use a pulley to bring a piano to his fourth floor dorm room in DeSmet Hall; the piano reportedly shattered on the ground below.
* From 1946 until the mid-1960s, Crosby was part-owner of the
Pittsburgh Pirates* He was a major supporter of the
United States Republican Party and actively campaigned for
Wendell Willkie in the
1940 Presidential election, after which he decided not to campaign again.
* 1927
* 1938
* 1944
* 1944
* 1953
* 1955
* 1964
* 1977
The King of Jazz (1930)
Two Plus Fours (1930) (short subject)
Check and Double Check (1930)
Reaching for the Moon (1930)
The March of Time (1930) (unfinished)
Confessions of a Co-Ed (1931)
One More Chance (1931) (short subject)
Billboard Girl (1932) (short subject)
Hollywood on Parade (1932) (short subject)
The Big Broadcast (1932)
Hollywood on Parade No. 11 (1933) (short subject)
Blue of the Night (1933) (short subject)
Dream House (1933) (short subject)
Sing, Bing, Sing (1933) (short subject)
Hollywood on Parade No. 9 (1933) (short subject)
College Humor (1933)
Too Much Harmony (1933)
Please (1933) (short subject)
Going Hollywood (1933)
Just an Echo (1934) (short subject)
We're Not Dressing (1934)
I Surrender Dear (1934) (short subject)
She Loves Me Not (1934)
Star Night at the Cocoanut Grove (1934) (short subject)
Here Is My Heart (1934)
Mississippi (1935)
Two for Tonight (1935)
The Big Broadcast of 1936 (1935)
Anything Goes (1936)
Rhythm on the Range (1936)
Pennies from Heaven (1936)
Waikiki Wedding (1937)
Double or Nothing (1937)
Don't Hook Now (1938) (short subject)
Dr. Rhythm (1938)
Hollywood Handicap (1938) (short subject)
Sing You Sinners (1938)
Screen Snapshots: Stars on Horseback (1939) (short subject)
Paris Honeymoon (1939)
East Side of Heaven (1939)
The Star Maker (1939)
Road to Singapore (1940)
Screen Snapshots Series 19, No. 6 (1940) (short subject)
Swing with Bing (1940) (short subject)
Rhythm on the River (1940)
If I Had My Way (1940)
Angels of Mercy (1941) (short subject)
Road to Zanzibar (1941)
Birth of the Blues (1941)
My Favorite Blonde (1942) (Cameo)
Holiday Inn (1942)
Road to Morocco (1942)
Star Spangled Rhythm (1942)
Show Business at War (1943) (short subject)
Dixie (1943)
Going My Way (1944)
Road to Victory (1944) (short subject)
The Princess and the Pirate (1944) (Cameo)
Here Come the Waves (1944)
The All-Star Bond Rally (1945) (short subject)
Duffy's Tavern (1945)
Hollywood Victory Caravan (1945) (short subject)
The Bells of St. Mary's (1945)
Screen Snapshots: Hollywood Celebrations (1945) (short subject)
Road to Utopia (1946)
Screen Snapshots: Famous Fathers and Sons (1946) (short subject)
Blue Skies (1946)
My Favorite Brunette (1947) (Cameo)
Welcome Stranger (1947)
Variety Girl (1947)
Road to Rio (1947)
The Emperor Waltz (1948)
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1949)
Screen Snapshots: Hollywood's Happy Homes (1949) (short subject)
Jolson Sings Again (1949) (voice only)
Top o' the Morning (1949)
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949) (voice)
Alberta Vacation (1950) (short subject)
Riding High (1950)
Screen Actors (1950) (short subject)
Mr. Music (1950)
You Can Change the World (1951) (short subject)
Here Comes the Groom (1951)
Angels in the Outfield (1951) (Cameo)
The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) (Cameo)
Son of Paleface (1952) (Cameo)
Just for You (1952)
Crusade for Prayer (1952) (short subject)
Road to Bali (1952)
Off Limits (1953) (appears on a TV)
Scared Stiff (1953) (Cameo)
Little Boy Lost (1953)
White Christmas (1954)
The Country Girl (1954)
Hollywood Mothers and Fathers (1955) (short subject)
Showdown at Ulcer Gulch (1956) (short subject)
Bing Presents Oreste (1956) (short subject)
Anything Goes (1956)
High Society (1956)
The Heart of Show Business (1957) (short subject)
Man on Fire (1957)
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1958) (short subject) (voice)
Alias Jesse James (1959) (Cameo)
Say One for Me (1959)
Let's Make Love (1960) (Cameo)
High Time (1960)
Pepe (1960) (Cameo)
The Road to Hong Kong (1962)
Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964)
Cinerama's Russian Adventure (1966) (documentary) (narrator)
Stagecoach (1966)
Bing Crosby's Washington State (1968) (short subject)
The World of Sport Fishing (1972) (documentary)
Cancel My Reservation (1972) (Cameo)
Just One More Time (1974) (short subject)
That's Entertainment! (1974) (narrator)
The Bing Crosby Show (1954)
The Edsel Show (1957)
Bing Crosby in London (1961)
The Bing Crosby Show (1964-1965)
Bing Crosby in Dublin (1965)
Goldilocks (1971) (voice)
Dr. Cook's Garden (1971)
Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire: A Couple of Song and Dance Men (1975)
The Bell Telephone Jubilee (1976)
These Are Crosby's
Gramophone records or LPs.
|
Bing Crosby's album White Christmas has not been out of print since 1954 and has entered the Billboard Top 40 charts 5 times including multiple times in the top five. |
*1953
Le Bing: Song Hits of Paris*1953
Some Fine Old Chestnuts*1954
White Christmas soundtrack (w/
Peggy Lee and
Danny Kaye)
*1954
Bing: A Musical Autobiography*1956
High Society*1956
Songs I Wish I Had Sung the First Time Around
*1956 Bing Sings Whilst Bregman Swings
*1957 Bing with a Beat
*1957 New Tricks
*1958 Fancy Meeting You Here ( w/ Rosemary Clooney)
*1959 How the West was Won
*1959 Join Bing and Sing Along
*1960 El Senor Bing
*1960 Bing and Satchmo
*1960 101 Gang Songs
*1961 Holiday in Europe
*1962 On the Happy Side
*1962 I Wish You a Merry Christmas
*1963 Return to Paradise Islands
*1963 Great Country Hits
*1964 That Traveling Two-Beat (w/ Rosemary Clooney)
*1965 The Songs I Love
*1968 Thoroughly Modern Bing
*1968 The Songs I Love
*1968 Hey Jude Hey Bing
*1971 A Time to Be Jolly
*1972 Bing 'n' Basie
*1975 A Southern Memoir*
1975 That's What Life Is All About*1975
Bingo Viejo*1975
A Couple of Song and Dance Men*1976
Bing Crosby Live at the London Palladium*1976
At My Time of Life*1976
Feels Good Feels Right*1976
Beautiful Memories*1977 ''
SeasonsCall Me Lucky: Bing Crosby's Own Story (as told to Pete Martin) (1953) Autobiography.
Bing Crosby: The Hollow Man by Donald Shepherd, Robert F. Slatzer (1981) Highly critical.
My Life With Bing by
Kathryn Crosby (1983) By his wife.
Bing Crosby: Day by Day by Malcolm Macfarlane (2001) Exhaustively detailed.
Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams-the Early Years, 1903-1940 by
Gary Giddins (2001) Generally held to be the best biography (of his early years â€" a second volume may come eventually).
*
iTunes Essentials - Bing Crosby* Ken Barnes (2005)Crosby/Jolson Alliance. Bing Crosby meets Al Jolson [CD Liner Notes]London, Sepia
* Giddins, Gary.
A Pocketful of Dreams: The Early Years, 1903-1940. Boston, New York, & London: Little, Brown and Company, 2001. ISBN 0316886459
#
A Pocketful of Dreams, p. 259#
A Pocketful of Dreams, p. 3
*
The Steven Lewis Internet Museum (Internet Archive mirror)*
Bing Crosby, Elvis Presley Comparison Page*
Bing Crosby sales estimates*
Bing Crosby sales estimates*
Technological Influence*
Bing Crosby Internet Museum*
Most Popular Entertainer of the Twentieth Century - a statistical analysis arguing why this title should go to Bing Crosby
*
Immortal Talent's of Bing Crosby - (A definitive fan site)
*
Most popular Singers of the 20th century*
Bing on the Phil Silvers Show*
Bing Crosby discography*
Conference Bing Crosby (November 2002)*
Bing Crosby Article - by Dr. Frank Hoffmann*
Bing Crosby on the Movieland Directory
