Modern Screen (Jul-Dec 1945)

Crosby's larynx, but they've only added a husky, resonant tone to his rich voice. How can Bing Crosby miss? Bing on the air waves was the Co/oanut Grove success story all over again, on a nation wide scale. He couldn't miss. It wasn't a national youth hysteria like the Sinatra swoon madness. It was more solid for by now Bing had graduated from his wild Rhythm Boy hot jazz way of singing numbers. For solo stuff he had to sing sweet and deeper, and the intimate manner of his Boo-boo-boo's and informal whistling sent him out just as if he were leaning over the piano in your own parlor and singing to you. "Crooner" was the slang name that fastened onto him like a tick. When his sustaining program turned into a sponsored show for Cremo Cigars, Bing picked up a tune that he sang particularly well, "When the Blue of the Night Meets the Gold of the Day" and started using it as his theme song. As far as he knew, a New York radio career stretched out before him — that and nothing else. Hollywood hadn't made marriage with radio yet. Sunset and Vine was still just a crossroads two blocks below Hollywood Boulevard and that's all. The movies were doing their best, in fact, to ignore radio stars. But it was a losing battle. Paramount planned a picture to glorify the new and potent personalities of the air, "The Big Broadcast of 1932." One day Ev came with the news as Bing was rehearsing a new number. Paramount wanted him in the picture. He stopped in the middle of a bar. "Okay," he said, then finished the tune. "I guess I can work it in." Bing had heard of the rushed up pieture. George Burns and Gracie Allen, Kate Smith, the Mills Brothers, Boswell Sisters, Arthur Tracy, Cab Calloway, Vincent Lopez, all were signed for specialties, shot in New York, snipped to Hollywood to piece together a picture. Bing thought it meant a day's work for him in a New York studio. "It'll be nice getting back to California," said Ev. "What do you mean 'California?' " "You're in the story," Ev explained. "You and Burns and Allen are in the script. We're going to Hollywood." "You mean I've got to act?" Bing exploded. "Why, that would be a plain case of defrauding the public." That's the way he felt about becoming a movie star, and basically Bing's attitude hasn't changed much since. When, halfway through "The Big Broadcast," Paramount signed up Bing, Kate Smith and Burns and Allen to long-term movie contracts, Bing made them write it out in black and white that he'd never be starred in a picture. For a long time, too, even after he'd become one of the biggest box office kings since Rudy Valentino, he stuck to that clause. The first day on the set he walked up to Frank Tuttle (the director who made Alan Ladd a star years later in "This Gun For Hire"). "Look," said Bing, "I don't know anything about acting. I just sing a little." "Then don't act," said Tuttle. "Just be yourself. Be Bing Crosby." Bing cottoned on to that advice in "The Big Broadcast" and he never let it go. Stuart Erwin and Leila Hyams were the stars in "The Big Broadcast." Bing walked nonchalantly through the story and sang "Please" and "Just One More Chance," two of his biggest song hits still. Over his protests, he also had his ears pinned back with tape to make him beautiful. And if Bing had known what the disgusted gang around Paramount were saying, those wind-wing ears would have burned a scarlet red. Because the idea of casting Bing Crosby, a lowly boo-boo82 boo radio crooner, to act, shocked everyone in the studio. "Good Lord — if they had to have a crooner," complained the scoffers, "why didn't they get somebody with something on the ball — like Rudy Vallee or Russ Columbo? But this guy Crosby!" It was their turn to take on a crimson complexion when "The Big Broadcast" smashed to a hit all over the land— the only way Bing Crosby could miss would be to throw rocks at the camera. Nor did his radio career miss a lick. Bing kept singing from Hollywood all the time he made his picture, then back to New York to carry on, this time for Chesterfield cigarettes. He sang at New York night clubs on featured evenings. He made personal appearances at the Paramount Theater on Broadway and smashed the house record. "College Humor," a rah-rah musical kidding campus cutups, was ready for Bing when he got back to Hollywood. Bing crooned "Down the Old Ox Road" and the youngsters couldn't stand it. Suddenly, in the crooning field there just wasn't any competition at all. Bing was like young Alexander the Great of Macedonia. He wasn't thirty — but there weren't any more worlds for him to conquer. Bing still refused to star. But that didn't keep him from picking some of the best stars in Hollywood for his leading ladies — or as Bing preferred to put it — he was their leading man. The gals were the official stars but they didn't kid themselves. It was this guy Bing Crosby who packed them in. And it was Bing Crosby who, after only one year in pictures, showed up on the First Ten in the annual Box Office ratings — along with old standbys like Will Rogers, Mae West, Wally Beery, Marie Dressier. hates to watch the birdie . . . But from the start Bing was not impressed. From the start photographers had to pester him even to have his face photographed. The gallery expert at Paramount, John Engstead, wrote a famous contract with Bing back in those days. "I, Bing Crosby," it read, "promise to sit for pictures once a month in consideration of one bottle of Cutty Sark Scotch Whisky." Interviewers soon gave up on Bing. He hated publicity. He said "I'm no glamour boy. I'm not even a star," and just stared with his mouth closed. He hated the fuss and bother of being a celebrity. After "College Humor," Bing incorporated himself and started the Crosby family organization which efficiently runs his affairs now from the three story Crosby Building on the Sunset Boulevard strip. Ev managed Bing and added clients to form a big agency business. Larry came down from a Seattle advertising job and took over Bing's publicity and promotion. Harry, Senior, and Kate Crosby moved to Southern California and Bing built them a home out in his favorite section, the San Fernando Valley (they still live there.) Pop Crosby's accountant experience got busy on Bing Crosby, Inc.'s books. Not long ago, Ted rounded out the family corporation by leaving his job in northern California and taking over the running of Bing's defense plant at Del Mar. Bing's sisters, Catherine and Mary Rose, are the only members who aren't a part of Bing Crosby's great success today. They're both married to non-professionals and live in northern California. Of course, baby brother Bob's in the service. In this way, Bing has escaped what he loathes about Hollywood — trouble, fuss, bother, worship. The taped back ears, for instance. In "Here is My Heart" a new makeup man came on the picture. He forgot to glue back Bing's ears and the director was so busy with his work that he didn't notice until eight shooting days had passed. Then one day he noticed, clapped his hand to his brow, and cried, "My God — Bing — your ears are loose — get them in place!" Bing calmly puffed his pipe. "Too late now," he said. "Unless you want to shoot the whole picture over." And he added, "from now on it's never again." It was, too. Bing has been as the Lord made him in the ear department ever since. He has endured a hairpiece to replace his thinning cornsilk for years but he still calls the toupe "Crosby's Curse," and sheds it the minute he's away from a camera. For a long time Bing's radio career had noaudience shows because Bing actually hated the sound of applause. It made him feel like he was fooling somebody into thinking he was a star. How he hates that word "star." at ease! . . . He never has lived like one. Bing and Dixie rented a little house near Sue Carol's when they came back to Hollywood for "College Humor." But out in the San Fernando Valley was the Lakeside Country Club where Bing found his real after-hour fun slapping the golf pill around with Dick Arlen, Babe Hardy, Johnny Weissmuller and the boys (before Bob Hope came along.) He decided he ought to live handy to the course, so he started the big colonial Toluca Lake house where he lived until it burned down last year. Bing and Dixie's boys began coming along before they got into the new house, but their first, Gary Evan (named after Gary Cooper, who was always a good Paramount Pal of Bing's) was christened — along with Dick Arlen's boy Rickie — right after they'd moved to Toluca Lake. Dixie had abandoned her own movie career temporarily to become Mrs. Crosby and for keeps when the twins came along. Afterwards, she made a picture at Paramount, a thing called "Love In Bloom." They don't talk about that one and "Redheads on Parade" was her last acting effort. Dixie's greatest production was the twins, Phillip and Dennis, first twins ever born to a big Hollywood star and another record for the incredible Bing. Even when it came to a family he couldn't miss! popularizer . . . Bing took a vacation trip to Hawaii with Dixie. He came back with those lurid Kanaka beachboy shirts and an idea for a picture. The shirts — well — after all, they've made Bing happy! But the movie — inspired by the dreamy music of Harry Owens at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel where the Crosbys stopped — turned into "Waikiki Wedding" and who can't hum the tunes, "Sweet Leilani" and "Blue Hawaii?" And when Bing took a flyer away from Paramount to put his own money into a picture at Columbia — up came "Pennies From Heaven" and one of his greatest hits. When he teamed up with Dorothy Lamour and Bob Hope in those jungle jokesters and the "Roads to This-and-That" — well, it was Dottie's sarong, Bing's tonsils and Bob's cracks that kept Paramount out of the red for months and months. But as he stepped airily up the ladder of success he never figured himself a speck different from his pals of dimmer days. Somehow he managed to work a lot of them into his good luck. Harry Barris has worked in almost every Bing Crosby picture, Jimmy Grier arranged Bing's early Woodbury programs and Jimmy Dorsey, another pal of the Whiteman days, supplied the first band for the Kraft Music Hall show. As the pictures rolled by, unknowns who played with Bing became stars — Donald O'Connor got his first break in "Sing You Sinners" and Marjorie Reynolds blossomed