Bing Crosby (114 page)
Authors: Gary Giddins
5
. Sennett,
King of Comedy,
p. 257
.
6
. Ibid.
7
. AI, Jack Hupp.
8
. Mack Sennett Collection, Folder 1450, AMPAS. The letter was written by Bea Englander, representing Sennett. Bing’s ambivalence
about leaving the trio is also suggested by an agreement he made with songwriter Walter Donaldson involving an endorsement
and photograph (“Featured by The Rhythm Boys”) on the sheet music for the 1931 song “Hello Beautiful.” Neither the Rhythm
Boys nor Bing recorded it (Wayne King had the hit; Maurice Chevalier made it a signature theme), but a cover depicting the
boys was published and soon withdrawn.
9
. The Boswells had had their first hit in April; the Mills Brothers would have one in the fall.
10
. Rinker.
12
. Ibid.
13
. Kenneth Frogley, “IDN Radio,”
Los Angeles Illustrated Daily News,
May 28, 1931.
14
. Ibid., June 2, 1931.
16
. Rinker.
17
. “In those days, every place had a trio, and these guys were heroes to us highschool kids. So when Crosby left, the Cocoanut
Grove was without a trio and they had a contest to see who would succeed him.” AI, Jack Hupp. The winners were Jack Smith,
Milton Spersal, and Al Teeter, who would get together in school and imitate “So the Bluebirds and the Blackbirds Got Together.”
Smith took Bing’s role and remained at the Grove for a few years with Arnheim and, later, Phil Harris, then appeared on the
Hit Parade
and other shows and with Doris Day in
On Moonlight Bay
. AI, Phil Harris.
18
. Rinker.
19
. “[Rinker] was salaried to Bing Crosby Ltd which is owned by Crosby, Barris and Roger Marchetti, local lawyer.”
Variety,
July 28, 1931.
20
. AI, Marti Barris.
21
. AI, Marguerite Toth.
22
. AI, Basil Grillo.
23
. AI, Joe Porter.
24
. AI, Basil Grillo.
25
.
AI, Julia Rinker.
26
. Shepherd and Slatzer,
Bing Crosby: The Hollow Man.
27
. Rinker.
28
. Ibid.
29
. AI, Skitch Henderson.
30
. AI, Don Eagle.
31
. AI, Kurt Dieterle.
32
.
Photoplay,
Sept. 1931.
33
.
Motion Picture Herald,
Oct. 10, 1931.
34
.
Variety,
Nov. 10, 1931.
35
. Eberle,
Music in the Air,
p. 13
.
36
. Another excellent number is “I’d Climb the Highest Mountain,” a fine song he never otherwise recorded.
37
. According to the original cast notes, Ginger Rogers was proposed for the role of Bing’s beloved, which went instead to
Ann Christy.
38
. “Bing Crosby Signs with Columbia,” Columbia Broadcasting System press release, Aug. 22, 1931.
39
. “CBS Gets Crosby; Musicians’ Ban in L.A. Only,”
Variety,
Aug. 25, 1931.
40
. Ibid.
P
ART
T
WO
14. Big Broadcast
1
. Louis Armstrong,
Time
(1955).
2
. AI, Artie Shaw.
3
. Young would go on to conduct more Crosby recordings that anyone except John Scott Trotter.
4
. AI, Burton Lane. Arthur Jarret, “a fairly popular singer in those days,” chose Lane’s song as his theme after Bing turned
it down, “but my song never made it.”
5
. AI, Marti Barris.
6
. Circumstantial evidence of his involvement in “Where the Blue of the Night’s pretty if rarely heard verse was provided
by rival Russ Columbo, who, upon hearing Bing sing the chorus on the air, rushed to record it. Columbo’s version, made five
days before Bing’s, lacks the verse, probably because he had no way of knowing that one had been added.
7
. Crosby’s authorship has been challenged on only one song, by Harry Tobias, the lyricist who submitted “At Your Command”
to Harry Barris. Yet Tobias, in an interview conducted sixty years after the fact, also insisted that he wrote the music,
which, if true, would make it the only melody he wrote during a long career as a lyricwriter. Lane said Bing did not request
participation in “Love Came Into My Heart,” though he performed it on the air before introducing “Where the Blue of the Night.”
Bing minimized his work as a songwriter in a 1976 radio interview with John Salisbury: “I wrote a couple of things with Harry
Barris, nothing serious. I wrote a lot of material, parodies, verses, special material on television, radio, and in the films,
gag songs, nothing popular, nothing that made a hit.”
8
. Thomas,
Harry Warren and the Hollywood Musical,
p. 2.
9
.
New York Times,
Aug. 30, 1931.
10
. Transcription of Sept. 2, 1931, CBS broadcast,
The Chronological Bing Crosby, Vol.11
(Jonzo).
11
.
Salisbury interview, op. cit.
12
. Smith,
In All His Glory,
p. 92
.
13
. Shepherd and Slatzer,
Bing Crosby: The Hollow Man,
p. 161
.
14
.
Time
memo on O’Keefe, op. cit.
15
. Memo of background interview with Simon Ruskin, M. Gleason, Aug. 14, 1949. TIA.
16
. “Bing Crosby Debunks Himself,” op. cit.
18
. Letter from Agnes Law to Philip K. Eberle, cited in Eberle,
Music in the Air,
p. 102
.
19
. Memo of background interview with Edgar Sisson, May 16, 1949. TIA.
20
. AI, Gary Stevens.
21
. AI, Artie Shaw.
22
. AI, Gary Stevens.
23
.
Variety,
Sept. 8, 1931 ; the same article listed the selections performed on that first show.
24
. AI, Gary Stevens.
25
. AI, Artie Shaw.
26
. AI, Gary Stevens.
27
.
Variety,
Sept. 8, 1931.
28
. Columbo’s 1928 recording (with Gus Arnheim) of “Back in Your Own Backyard,” made shortly after Bing’s “01’ Man River,”
shows how stiffly rearguard his original attack was. The more winning Columbo sides (“Prisoner of Love,” “All of Me”) followed
in 1931, by which time he had assimilated the Crosby style, though he avoided mordents along with rhythm.
29
. AI, Ken Roberts. “I think Freddy conducted Monday and Tuesday nights, when Bing wasn’t there. Victor Young was hired specifically
for Bing — that’s all he did.”
30
. Ibid.
31
. Ibid. Roberts worked with Bing again during the war, when Bing specifically requested him, and at charity events: “And
then many many years later — I guess at about 1976 — I was still working at CBS doing a soap opera every day, and I was walking
through the corridors and a friend of mine brought Bing in to be on an interview show with Pat Collins and he saw me and said
‘Kenneth, are you still here?’ He was still such a nice, sweet, simple fellow.”
32
.
Variety,
Oct. 27, 1931.
33
.
Variety,
1931, cited by Wilbur W. Hindley in the
Spokesman-Review,
Dec. 27, 1931.
34
. Mildred Bailey, Jack Oakie, and Bob Hope also claimed to have coined the name “the Groaner.” Hope and Oakie are out of
the question — they did not know Crosby until 1932. Dorsey may have picked up the phrase from Bailey, known for her verbal
swiftness (Tommy was not), but he was apparently more aggressive about using it.
35
. Duke Ellington, Carter Harmon Interview Collection, Smithsonian Institution, cited in Nicholson,
Reminiscing in Tempo,
p. 119
.
36
. Kiner,
Directory
&
Log of the Bing Crosby Cremo Singer Radio Series.
37
. Ruskin memo, op. cit. Dr. W. James Gould, Ruskin’s successor as throat specialist to stars and politicians, pointed out
in the 1990s that performing surgery on Bing’s node would have been irresponsible.
39
. Ibid.
40
. Ibid.
41
.
Billboard,
Nov. 13, 1931.
42
.
Variety,
Nov. 10, 1931. The reporter, Bige, was Joe Bigelow, who later became an account executive in charge of
Kraft Music Hall.
43
. Memo of background interview with Mclnerny and others, 1940s (undated). TIA.
44
. Sisson memo, op. cit.
45
. AI, Donald Mills.
46
. AI, Frieda Kapp.
47
. AI, Burton Lane.
48
. AI, Artie Shaw.
49
. AI, Red Norvo.
50
. AI, Ken Roberts.
51
. AI, Gary Stevens.
52
. AI, Ken Roberts.
53
. They were Paul Bracco and Phil Taylor, interviewed by
Time.
Mclnerny memo, op. cit.
54
. AI, Artie Shaw.
55
. Mack Sennett Collection, Folder 1450,AMPAS.
56
. In the 1976 John Salisbury interview, Bing was asked to comment on Ellington: “I recorded a couple of times with Duke
and used to see him all the time. We were friendly, but I never worked a great deal with Duke. I had great admiration for
him as a composer and a bandleader — one of the greatest, one of the all-time greats in both fields, conducting, arranging.
A giant, a real giant. And a nice man, a real reasonable type, good taste. Classy guy.”
57
. Mize,
Bing Crosby and the Bing Crosby Style,
p. 125
.
58
.
Gramophone,
Dec. 1932, cited in
Bing,
Apr. 1996.
59
. Bing collaborated on the lyrics of this with two obscure songwriters, Irving Wallman and Max Wartell.
60
. Ulanov,
The Incredible Crosby,
p. 88
.
62
. Adams,
Here’s to the Friars,
p. 15
5.
63
.
New York Daily News,
Feb. 25, 1932.
64
. “Crooner Crosby Faces Suit for Earnings Share,”
Los Angeles Times,
June 3, 1932.
65
. Letter from Eleanor Hard, Editorial Department,
Time,
to Mr. E. J. Crosby, Dec. 12, 1931. HCC.
66
. Letter from E. J. Crosby to Eleanor Hard, undated. HCC.
15. The Crosby Clause
1
. Paramount ad,
The Big Broadcast
(1932), reprinted in
Bingtalks,
May-Aug. 1995.
2
. KGM.
3
.
Variety,
Apr. 26, 1932.
4
. KGM.
5
. This refers to the second take (B) of “Sweet Georgia Brown.”
6
.
Los Angeles Times,
June 13, 1932.
7
.
Evans and Kiner,
Tram,
p. 15
4.
8
. KGM.
9
. The working title was
The Girl in the Transom.
10
. “Stereophonic Sound,” from the film
Silk Stockings
(1955).
11
. At one point Paramount planned to call Crosby’s character Bing Hornsby, and a cast list went out with that name; numerous
reviews, including those in
Variety
and the
Spokesman-Review,
stated that Bing played Hornsby despite numerous references to Crosby throughout the film.
12
. The Tuttle material was drawn from an unpublished memoir,
They Started Talking,
which despite the ironic title ignores the HUAC hearings; plus “Frank Tuttle Discusses Why He Is ‘Informer’,” New
York Herald Tribune,
May 25, 1951; “Tuttle Confesses Paying 10G Into Red Coffers— Brands 39 as Commies,”
Variety,
May 25, 1951; “Film Old Timer Frank Tuttle 10 Yrs. a Red, Names 36 More,”
New York Daily News,
May 25, 1951; “Film Maker Rues 10 Years a Red,”
New York Times,
May 25, 1951; “Tuttle Admits to 10 Years as Red; Names 30 Other Commies,”
Hollywood Reporter,
May 25, 1951; “Tuttle, Ex-Film Director, Ex-Red, Broke,”
Los Angeles Examiner,
July 3, 1954; “Frank Tuttle, Veteran Movie Director, Dies,”
Los Angeles Times,
Jan. 7, 1963; and press releases issued by Paramount in 1934 and by Warner Bros. in 1956. The witness who named Tuttle was
screenwriter and superinformer Richard J. Collins.
13
. McGilligan and Buhle,
Tender Comrades,
p. 148
.
14
. Ibid.
15
. AI, Nancy Briggs.
16
. AI, Basil Grillo.
17
. AI, Helen Votachenko. Tuttle was also diabetic. Bing wrote of an incident when producer Herb Polesie and Tuttle visited
him to go over a new script: “About half way through, Frank began getting slower and slower in his reading. Finally, with
bowed head, he was able to gasp out, ‘orange juice.’ He was going into a coma or some kind of blackout.” Bing and Herb dashed
into the kitchen and found oranges, but not a knife to cut them. Bing frantically tore open oranges with his hands until he
had a glassful. The moral, he concluded: “Know thine own kitchen.” Bing Crosby, unpublished papers.
18
. Clair, who pioneered the creative use of sound, initially declared talking movies “a redoubtable monster.” Many years
later, in a 1959 TV interview
(Le Million,
DVD), he pointed out the decline of the great physical comedians of the silent era and observed that the best comedians of
the sound era came from radio.