Modern Screen (Jul-Dec 1945)

hopped the wrong train to the wrong town, thus missing the bill, the cardinal sin on the three-a-day circuit. They lost their stage props in Indianapolis. In Omaha, Bing got involved in a hotel room crap session and dropped not only all the money in his wallet but a few hundred he'd borrowed. He couldn't ransom his luggage and the Rhythm Boys went on stage in Jersey City, their last stop on the way back to New York, in the rumpled wardrobe they had on — sweaters, knickers and corduroy pants. That close to Manhattan they knew the squawks would get to Fatha Whiteman pronto by telephone. Bing and Al and Harry crept into Paul's office the next week, expecting to get the riot act read them for their peccadillos. "Come in here, you guys," beckoned Whiteman curtly. "I want to talk to you.'" "Well," sighed Bing to Ah "it's a nice climate out in Spokane, anyway." But if Paul Whiteman knew anything alwnt their whing-ding, he never Jet on. What he said was, "How"d you like to go to Hollywood and make a picture?" "Are we still on salary?" blurted Bing, his sins burdening his guilty conscience. "Sure." Bing felt natural again. He might have known that Bing Crosby couldn't miss. All he asked was, "When do we start?" The Old Gold-Paul Whiteman special train pulled out of New York within the week with the Rhythm Boys aboard. Bing had just come in off a tour and so he wasn't impressed, but when they finally hit Hollywood he had to admit he was a complete green pea, even though he'd got his show business start out there. He'd never faced a camera himself. The picture "The King of Jazz" was to be a musical extravaganza in color and sound, glorifying Paul Whiteman and American jazz. It would cost Universal Studios millions. The whole band was raring to be movie stars but they didn't know the mysterious ways of Hollywood production. "The King of Jazz" had everything— except a story. They, too, would go through the routine — wait and wait. That didn't bother Bing and the boys. On salary and flush, they rented a big nineroom bungalow in Hollywood and Bing. AL Harry and Eddie Lang, the guitarist moved in with an appropriate liquid housewarming. "The fraternity house," they called it. Hep guys and hep gals whipped in and out, parties went on at all hours, and usually over in a corner somewhere somebody was running through a tune. The spring and summer frittered by as the marathon script for "The King of Jazz" wrote and rewrote on and on. The boys had to show up at the studio every morning but usually, outside of a few tests and recordings, there was nothing to do when they got there. Bing turned to golf in the daytime, went head over heels for deep sea fishing, chasing across the channel to Catalina every time he got the chance. But the Rhythm Boys were luckier than the rest of Paul Whiteman's band. They got a chance to keep their hand in with a job at the old Montmartre Cafe and Bing hadn't warbled there a week before MGM asked him out for tests to make short subjects. As usual, all Bing had to do was keep out of trouble and the road was open. But keeping out of trouble, in those days, was not his specialty. The first scramble was a bar friendship in' a Hollywood speakeasy that messed him up with a gang of underworld bootleggers and landed him. dizzy with drink, in their hideout, where a battle with the cops rubbed out Bing's alcoholic pal and trapped him in the inevitable John Law raid that followed. Luckily, they let Bing go. But the next time was different. "The King of Jazz" was in production at last and Bing learned of his lucky break. Besides the scat number that the Rhythm Boys were slated for, "The Bluebirds and the Blackbirds," Paul had picked Bing for a lavish solo song number. "The Song of the Dawn." The news came to Bing after the first week of shooting was over, and to celebrate that there was a studio party — a tragic one for Bing, as it turned out. and into the cooler . . . The old Tom Mix lodge on the Universal lot had been fixed up into a clubhouse for Paul Whiteman's band. It was a spacious mountain cabin on the back lot. ideal for a whing-ding. and this night ii was jumping. The orchestra rocked and rolled, beer flowed like water and bartenders passed out Prohibition highballs as fast as they could mix them. Along with the rest Bing sang himself hoarse and drank himself happy. It broke up in the wee hours and Bing rolled his fliwer over Cahuenga Pass taking a young movie cutie home to the Roosevelt Hotel before he rolled on to the "fraternity house." They idled along Hollywood Boulevard lazily singing and cracking jokes, and then, just as Bing made a turn to draw up at the hotel door — Bam! 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