Bing Crosby (111 page)
Authors: Gary Giddins
49
. “School Dramatics,” op. cit.
50
. Transcribed from his dedication speech at Gonzaga, 1957.
51
.
Gonzaga
11:4 (Jan. 1920).
52
. The student was Doug Dyckman,
Gonzaga
11:6 (Mar. 1920).
53
. Father Art Dussault, a friend and classmate of Bing’s and later his primary liaison at Gonzaga, told columnist Earl Wilson
(New York Post,
Aug. 4, 1952) that Bing owed a lot to “having been jugged,” suggesting that it had helped train his phenomenal memory for
songs and scripts.
54
.
Gonzaga
11:7(Apr. 1920). Ted was one of the most prolific and ambitious writers at the school. His numerous works include the poem
“Gonzaga” (“And all in their breasts the teachings of their Alma Mater hold / Nor barter their birthright precious for passion
or fame or gold!”), 11:1 (Oct. 1919); verse tributes to the Crosby seafearers and Lincoln; such short stories as “The Girl
on the Job” (a woman who takes a wartime job then gives it up to a man), 11:2 (Nov. 1919), and “Trying Days” (set in a logging
camp), 11:4 (Jan. 1920); and a long journalistic tribute, “Major Gerhard L Luhn, USA,” about a recently departed German-born
(yet “every inch an American… no lurking loyalty for the old land”). Luhn had been a hero of the Mexican and Civil Wars, a
cavalryman and Indian fighter, the veteran of forty army posts, and “a Christian above all”; he organized the first cadet
corps at Gonzaga in 1900.
Gonzaga
11:6 (Mar. 1920).
55
.
Gonzaga
11:9 (June 1920). This long-forgotten juvenilia, clunky but vivid, seems to anticipate many aspects of his career, from his
dusky caricature in the Mack Sennett two-reeler
Dream House,
through parodied caravans in the
Road
pictures. The central image recurs unconsciously in his exalted description
(Lucky,
p. 43
) of meeting Paul Whiteman, the first potentate Bing ever knew. No less prescient is the cymbal, the instrument he brought
with him into the big time, or the pagan setting he came to know in the sodden arms of Prohibition. The young Bing’s vision
of a white-robed ruler served by vassals while an audience sings his praises and music flows suggests how far Bing’s dreams
had begun to distance him from Spokane.
6. Mr. Interlocutor
1
. Rourke,
American Humor,
p. 103
.
2
. AI, Ray Flaherty.
3
. The cost breakdown for college day students was as follows: $50 tuition per semester for College of Arts and Sciences,
$5 breakage deposit, $3 bulletin and library fee, $10 student activities (including season tickets to all ordinary games,
as well as debating and dramatic societies, orchestra, band, and other events) $10 laboratory fee, $2.50 partly refundable
deposit for chemicals.
4
.
Gonzaga Register,
1920-21.
5
. Ibid.
6
. Gonzaga hired Charles E. “Gus” Dorais in May 1920, after Jim Thorpe was obliged to decline because of a prior contract.
7
.
“Dorais Gives Recruits Tryout,”
Spokane Daily Chronicle,
Mar. 31, 1922.
8
.
Lucky,
p. 303
. Bing’s mother worked with Father Sharp in her role as treasurer of the Mother’s Club, which raised money for scholarships
and school functions. He served on its executive board as faculty representative. Mrs. T. J. Corkery, mother of Frank, served
as secretary and later as president. The April 26, 1921,
Spokane Daily Chronicle
lists Mrs. H. L. Crosby as one of two dozen patronesses of a play,
Gonzaga’s Chief.
See also, Schoenberg,
Gonzaga University,
p. 302
;
Gonzaga
12:5 (Mar.1921);
Gonzaga
14:1 (Autumn 1922).
10
. Ibid.
11
. Ad,
Gonzaga Bulletin,
Oct. 7, 1921.
12
. “Work of Michael Pecarovitch Lauded by Southern Critics,”
Spokane Daily Chronicle,
May 5, 1922. Pecarovitch lived in San Pedro, California, and participated in theatricals at Santa Clara, Seattle College,
and Gonzaga.
13
.
Gonzaga
12:2 (Nov. 1920).
14
. Ibid. 12:3 (Dec. 1920).
15
. Another member was George Twohy, Bing’s high-school debating partner.
16
. Rourke,
American Humor,
p. 103
.
17
. Donald O’Connor, for example, has spoken of the sincerity with which an actor was expected to approach a black role. AI.
18
. Ellison, “An Extravagance of Laughter,” in
The Collected Essays.
19
. AI, Bob Hope.
20
. Rourke,
American Humor,
p. 103
.
21
. For example, whites played Charlie Chan and Fu Manchu decades after they were no longer allowed to play blacks, except
in classical theater; consider
The Road to Hong Kong
or
Dr. No
in the 1960s.
22
. Rourke,
American Humor,
pp. 103
—04.
23
. In “Vintage Glimpses of a Lost Theatrical World,” Margo Jefferson writes of a silent film of black pantomimist and dancer
Johnny Hudgins: “His charm so palpable that the burned-cork makeup, which we have come to read as intrinsically degrading,
seems as incidental as the white makeup circus clowns have worn for centuries,”
New York Times,
Oct. 20, 1996.
24
. AI, Gerald Marks. Coincidentally, Marks and Sy Oliver were both New Yorkers born in Michigan.
25
. Letter from Father Arthur L. Dussault, S.J. Jesuit Oregon Province Archives.
26
. AI, Father Patrick J. Ford. S.J., academic vice president of Gonzaga.
27
. Ibid.
28
. Letter from Dussault to “Cathy and Hobie,” Apr. 9, 1990. Jesuit Oregon Province Archives.
29
. Letter from Dussault to Mr. Marion Simms, Sept. 14, 1950. Jesuit Oregon Province Archives.
30
. Tony Thomas interview, op. cit.
31
. George O’Reilly interview, op. cit.
32
. NET interview, op. cit.
35
. Waters,
His Eye Is on the Sparrow,
p. 218
.
36
.
Gonzaga
13:2 (Apr. 1922).
37
.
“Gonzaga Pupils Rehearse Play,”
Spokane Daily Chronicle,
Feb. 8, 1923. Also
Gonzaga
14:2 (Winter 1923).
38
. Strangely, Bing tells a story in
Lucky
about a fan who insisted upon calling him Bim Crosland, which is how he signed the fan’s autograph book.
39
. “Gonzaga Actors Delight Crowd,”
Spokane Daily Chronicle,
Nov. 8, 1923.
40
. Anne Shaw Faulkner, “Does Jazz Put the Sin in Syncopation?”
Ladies’ Home Journal,
Aug. 1921.
7. Musicaladers
2
. Rinker.
The Bing Crosby I Knew
is a 110-page draft for a proposed book, finished in 1978 (a year after Crosby’s death) when Al was seventy-one; he died
three years later. At one point, his suggested title was
It’s a Treat to Beat Your Feet on the Mississippi Mud.
Courtesy of Julia Rinker.
3
. Ibid.
4
. Rinker interview from
The Old Guy on the Orange Juice Commercial: A Biography for Radio of Bing Crosby,
written and narrated by Rod Coneybeare, c. 1977.
5
. Rinker.
6
. The Cotton Pickers, which made its key recordings in 1922 and 1923, should not be confused with McKinney’s Cotton Pickers,
a black band that began recording in 1928.
7
. Rinker.
8
. Ibid.
9
. Ibid.
10
. Ibid.
11
. Rinker interview by John McDonough, 1976.
13
. H. Allen Smith, “Mildred Bailey Plans to Sing Her Life Story from the Stage of Town Hall Next Fall,”
New York World Telegram,
Apr. 12, 1941.
14
. Rinker.
15
. Coneybeare interview, op. cit.
16
. Ibid.
18
. Sidney Copeland, office memorandum, Aug. 3, 1946. TIA.
19
. Ibid.
20
. Ibid.
21
. TV interview,
The Pat Collins Show,
WCBS, New York, 1976.
22
. Crosby interview, radio documentary by John Salisbury, KXL, Portland, Oregon, 1976.
23
. Coneybeare interview, op. cit.
24
. Copeland memo, op. cit.
25
. William Stimson, “Bing Crosby: The Road to Hollywood,”
Spokane Magazine,
Dec. 1977.
26
. Bing Crosby, “Requiem for Rock ‘n’ Roll,”
Music Journal,
Jan. 1962. “A music company in my native Spokane was our jazz classroom. We met there to listen to the latest and practice
playing by ear. With my pal Al Rinker, I practically lived in the place. I’m sure that our parents were as worried about our
‘crazy’ music as today’s parents have been about Rock ‘n’ Roll.”
27
.
Joseph Mitchell, “In Which Bing Crosby Debunks Himself; Broken Hearts? No, Just Broken Bottles,” New
York World Telegram,
Dec. 16, 1931.
28
. AI, Don Eagle, a Spokane musician, a generation younger than Bing, who worked with him in A
Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
and interviewed Rinker and others for a series of sketches published in
Bingang.
29
. Bing’s June 24, 1937, letter to Stubeck and Stubeck’s comments from Copeland memo, op. cit. The store was at Sprague and
Wall.
30
. Lincoln Barnett, “Bing, Inc.,”
Life,
June 18, 1945.
31
. Jack Sheehan, “A Brush with Celebrity,”
Showbiz,
1995, reprinted in
Bing,
no.114 (Dec. 1996). In November 1975 Bing read an article by Sheehan about Bud Ward, the Spokane-born amateur golfer, and
sent him a flattering letter with his own recollections of Ward. Sheehan wrote Bing and told him of his aunt Dorothy’s death.
Bing wrote him to say he remembered meeting him at Hayden Lake.
32
. Rinker.
33
. Ibid.
34
. Copeland memo, op. cit.
35
. Ibid.
36
. “Bing We Hardly Knew Ye,” op. cit.
37
. Ibid. Material on Lareida’s also drawn from AI with of Nancy Gale Compau of the Northwest Collection, Spokane Public Library,
who, in addition to research aid, related information from her father, who frequented Lareida’s. Also Stimson, A
View of the Falls,
unidentified clip. BCCGU.
38
. Letter from H. Neal East to Bing Crosby, Feb. 19, 1935. HCC.
39
. “Bing Crosby: The Road to Hollywood,” op. cit.
40
. Ibid.
41
. Bill Salquist, “Hometown Remembers Because Bing Did,”
Spokane Daily Chronicle,
Oct. 15, 1977.
42
. Rinker.
43
. Ibid.
44
. McDonough interview, op. cit.
45
. Rinker.
46
.
Spokane Chronicle,
May 19, 1918. After the resolution was passed by the County Council of Defense banning
The Birth of a Nation
from “Spokane county,” it was made public in an announcement by Clemmer on behalf of the league of motion picture men of
the Spokane district.
47
. “Now the Klemerklink for Doc Clemmer’s Young Friends,”
Spokane Chronicle,
Apr. 28, 1916.
48
. “New Firm Takes Over Clemmer,”
Spokesman-Review,
May 2, 1925. It was the 149th theater that Carl Laemmle’s Universal Pictures had taken over in a period of sixty days. Universal
operated the theater until 1929, when Ray Grombacher leased it and renamed it the Audian. It later became the State Theater
and is now the Met,a concert theater.
50
. Rinker.
51
. Ibid.
52
. Author visit, also AI, Michael Smith, manager of the Met, and
Spokane Chronicle,
May 30, 1986. After the State (Clemmer) and Garland (which opened in 1945) closed, the only single-auditorium theater in
Spokane was the Dishman, which
showed pornography. In 1988 the Metropolitan Mortgage & Securities Co. restored the Clemmer/State as the Met, magnificently
re-creating the original design by E. W. Houghton and structure by August Paulsen.
53
. Dussault attended Bing’s tryout at the Clemmer and later recalled, “Many of the boys from school used to go down and cheer
Bing and Al on.” Letter to Stanley Antepenko, Sept. 22, 1976. Jesuit Oregon Province Archives.
54
. Dyar,
News for an Empire.
56
. See
Chapter 8
for Crosby’s use of the term in his letter to Dirk Crabbe.
58
. Rinker.
59
. “My Boy Bing,” op. cit.
60
. Rinker.
62
. Madeleine Carroll, a twenty-two-year-old neighbor was interviewed by a
Time
reporter; Copeland memo, op. cit.