Modern Screen (Jul-Dec 1945)

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we DURA-GLOSS^ Try Dura-Gloss on your fingernails, today . for charm and gaiety in your whole appearance. There's an exclusive ingredient in Dura-Gloss called "Chrystallyne" that helps protect the polish against chipping and peeling . mahes it adhere tightly and smoothly to your nails . . . That's why you hear so many women say, "Dura-Gloss stays on." to^have a^idi 10<t a hottle, plus tax, at cosmetic counters. BUY WAR .BONDS. Cuticle Remover Polish Remover Dura-Coat LORR LABORATORIES, PATERSON, N. J. • FOUNDED BY E. T. REYNOLDS tried them out. They had a sixteen weeks contract before they knew it. "Two Boys and a Piano," they called themselves. They toured California and got over heavy with the strictly rah-rah set, but other places they didn't click. Frankly, Al and Bing were on the noisy side and they were very hey-hey and Fanchon and Marco used them for the one tour only. But back in Los Angeles, they landed a job in Will Morrisey's Music Hall Revue, for another tour. The show stumbled up and down the Coast, dropping acts as it went and as the bankroll melted. For some reason, Bing and Al survived — mainly because they didn't give a damn. Because Bing was an entirely different young bucko those days from the sober solid citizen he is today. In a way, this trip was his first wild oats fling. He was full of trick licks and snappy stuff, but the rich, deep melody that's forever Crosby today wasn't there yet. Bing and Al were flashy, that about sums it up— and clever. Their giddy young heads were turned by the glamorous, exciting, hellfor-breakfast show business life. They acted like what they were — hot-spot rahrah jelly beans turned loose with no limits. There were plenty of chorus cuties in the Music Hall Revue and nobody took their work too seriously. Bing and Al had a brief but torrid act. They sat on a piano in the orchestra pit under a baby spot. They could handle it with a hangover. So they had hangovers. The show finally blew up in a mighty whing-ding on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley, where somebody in the cast had the fatal idea of putting on a midnight show. A fraternity at Cal took them over after the show — or rather, took over the show. There were buckets of bathtub gin. Mix that with visiting chorus girls, a couple of fraternity houses full of boys and kids with Bing Crosby's wild haired enthusiasm for fun — result — Scandal, capital S. The orgy spread to the college buildings, with chorines tossing a scanty here and a scanty there in the hallowed halls. The cops came and The Music Hall Revue went. That included Bing and Al. So they were back in Los Angeles and broke — -as usual — and out of a job, but no more downhearted than puppy dogs in a park. If they didn't work, they played, and in the lazy days around their hotel room, Bing and Al kept the victrola buzzing. Bix Biederbecke, Frankie Trumbauer, the Memphis Five — all the hot combos of those days. They learned a lot, ate it up and their razz-ma-tazz act improved. In no time they were booked again for a tour of West Coast theatres. All the movie temples then had stage shows. Bing and Al left again for San Francisco at $100 a week. They lugged their bags to the theatrical hotel and strolled down Market Street to look the movie house over. A block away a big marquee blazed with a magic name, "Paul Whiteman." Bing was a little kid again listening to records at the Sinto Athletic Club in the Spokane barn. His eyes popped in awe. "Al!" he whispered. "Look — and we're playing right on the same street!" The first thing they did was take in Paul Whiteman's band, then in the peak of its fame and glory. They sat in the front row and dizzily drank in the offerings of the king of jazz with all his artists — Pingatore, Teagarden, Roy Bargy, Henry Busse. Here was the real stuff, solid, symphonic, terrific. They crept out of the holy place and down the street to their shabby little act. Later, back in the hotel room, all Bing could say to Al Rinker was, "Golly — imagine playing with a band like that!" He didn't say who. He didn't have to. Both minds were thinking of the same thing.