Modern Screen (Jul-Dec 1945)

stro Paul as "a couple of kids I picked up in a Walla Walla ice cream parlor." Paul used Walla Walla instead of Spokane because it sounded funnier. Bing and Al drew $150 a week apiece. They opened with Whiteman at the Tivoli Theater on the South Side of Chicago in snappy blue jackets with shiny brass buttons, cream flannels and, of course, bow ties. Bing put slickum on his corn colored hair and stage makeup. He was pretty cute. Opening night he and Al dummied in the band, Al strumming a guitar without any strings and Bing pretending to puff into a huge tuba horn. When their cue came, they hopped up and over to a tiny white piano, center stage, and went right into their songs. Chicago jazz hounds yelled and whistled. They loved it. It was the same in Cleveland and Detroit. In St. Louis, Cincinnati, Indianapolis — wherever Paul Whiteman took them on his Midwest tour on his way back East. Bing penned his triumphs back home. The idea was "look out Broadway!" Bing was cocky that opening night at Broadway's Paramount Theater. He'd been forgetting he was just a rustic kid from the raw West. The applause had made him think he was some punkins. He forgot that all along Pops Whiteman had been easing him in as a curbstone cowboy from Walla Walla, wisely softening up the audience to get ready for a laugh. Because Crosby and Rinker weren't music — not then. They were comedy — actually a double burlesque of juvenile jazz. As usual, Bing and Al gave the big event little mind. They'd hauled freight into New York four days before the show opened and, true to form, had spent those four days — and the four nights as well — seeing "the big town. They tried to see how many speakeasies they could crash and how many Harlem hot spots they could close. flop in new york . . . The Paramount was crammed to the eaves for Whiteman's opening. The crowd loved the King of Jazz. But New York's the Big League of show business and a tough audience with a stubborn "show me" complex built for a Missouri mule. So when "Pops" pulled his Walla Walla line and the Big Noises from Spokane pranced up to their places in the trick blue spotlights and their trick blue outfits, there was a dead, expectant silence. When they finished their act there was the same silence broken, maybe by a trickle of weak applause. Both were stunned. They didn't get it. After 3 shows they caught on — Broadway just wasn't having any of Walla ' Walla. After the last show, Father Whiteman beckoned them into his dressing room. "Oh, oh," said Bing, "back to the pickle works." It wasn't quite that bad. Crosby and Rinker were yanked off the bill, but they weren't rubbed out of Paul Whiteman's book. "It's a funny town," he soothed them. "But you'll crack it yet. Stick around and work for me in the night club. I think you'll go to town there." The Whiteman Club opened a month from Bing's Paramount pink slip parting. Park Avenue was there, along with Broadway. Every Manhattan big shot, including Jimmy Walker, showed up the opening night because Paul Whiteman was a New York institution — but again, it was no go — Bing and Al got over like a load of wet coal. Pops WhitemaD had to confess he was mistaken. Something had to be done. And something was. Paul Whiteman was the doctor. He and a few people who'd heard Bing sing on records. Bing wasn't even listed Ponds Make-up Pat "Pond's blonde shades are soft and natural as can beF1 Mrs. \^ m. Rhinelander Stewart New doable-formula discovery gives Make-up Pat foolproof flattery in Every Shade ! So easy to be your own make-up artist with Pond's new Make-up Pat ! Lovely "water color" shades wash with enchanted evenness over your skin. And every shade flatters! Because Make-up Pat has a double formula. The lighter shades are in a featherweight formula — to go on sheer, unchalky. The darker shades have a richer formula for rosy gl<>^. No other cake make-up that we know of has this newly discovered ' "fit"' of shade and formula. That's why we think you'll like Pond's Make-up Pat better than anv make-up you ve ever tried. 6 grand shades — 69^, 39^, plus tax. "/ love the 'unstagey' way it gives my skin smooth, gloning color!''' Mrs. A. J. Drexel, III Wear ll every day— it protects your akin! Just smooth on Make-up Pat with damp-to-wet spongeor cotton. Let dry. Blend smooth. It acts as a "buffer" against outside dirl and weather!