Bing Crosby (115 page)
Authors: Gary Giddins
19
. Westmore and Davidson,
The Westmores of Hollywood,
p. 94
.
20
. Frost interview,
op.
cit.
21
. Tuttle memoir.
22
. “Crosby-Lombardo billing keeps Guy out of Par picture!”
Variety,
July 5, 1932.
23
.
Hattie,
by Carlton Jackson (Madison), cited in
Bing,
Dec. 1991.
24
.
Variety,
Oct. 18, 1932.
25
.
Spokesman-Review,
Oct. 28, 1932.
26
.
New York Daily Mirror,
cited in Alvin H. Marill, “Bing Crosby,”
Films in Review,
June-July 1968.
27
.
New York American,
in ibid.
28
. In a letter from Jason S. Joy of the MPAA to Harold Hurley at Paramount, Sept. 30, 1932: “The exception referred to is
the sequence in the bathroom, into
which are injected a couple of undress shots which we cannot help but consider unfortunate in that they do not seem to be
called for by the action, and in fact appear almost offensively out of place in a story as free as this is from sex implications.
While we have not yet got to the point of making scenes like these a Code matter, nevertheless they are being so generally
injected into pictures that we are becoming more than a little concerned. Censors in a number of places inevitably cut them
out; and so, if you are thinking of trimming the picture at all, we would urge you very earnestly to consider eliminating
at least one of these shots, in the interest of censorship and, we believe, good taste and sound policy.” MPAA files, AMPAS.
29
. Tuttle memoir.
30
.
Variety,
Dec. 13, 1932.
16. Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?
1
. AI, Rosemary Clooney.
2
. Whitney Balliett,
Saturday Review,
June 27, 1953.
3
. AI, Gary Crosby.
4
. AI, Barry Ulanov.
5
. CBS signed blackface singer and future character actor Jay C. Flippen to fill out its programming in Bing’s absence.
6
.
Variety,
Aug. 8, 1932.
7
. John A. Myer, M.D., “Cigarette Century,”
American Heritage,
Dec. 1992.
8
. Strangely, Bing’s version is ponderous and orotund. It survived as a classic tenor saxophone solo by Chu Berry until Sinatra
found the right gait for it, though the definitive version was recorded in 1958 by Billy Eckstine
(Imagination,
EmArcy), who often revived Crosby ballads.
9
. Informed in 1994 of Bing’s true birth date, Hope paused, then howled with pleasure, “That Bing! That Bing!”
10
. AI, Bob Hope.
11
. Ibid.
12
.
Variety,
Dec. 6, 1932.
13
.
New York Herald Tribune,
Dec. 3, 1932.
14
.
Variety,
July 26, 1932.
15
. A 1944 ad, C. Liggett & Myers Tobacco Co., unidentified magazine. Collection of Eric Anderson.
16
.
Variety,
Jan. 31, 1933: “Bing Crosby pays the Shuberts $50 for the rights to do ‘Brother Can You Spare a Dime at the Palace.’”
17
. Vallée begins his October 27, 1932, Columbia recording as follows: “This is Rudy Vallée again, stepping perhaps a bit
out of character.”
18
. Studs Terkel liner notes,
Songs of the Depression,
a record anthology issued by Book of the Month Club, 1980.
19
. Crosby and the nation would have been astonished to learn that twenty years on, “the Depression’s theme would become prosperity’s
forbidden melody,” as Murray Kempton wrote
(Part of Our Time,
1955), after Jay Gorney was probed by the House Un-American Activities Committee as a communist.
20
. On that record, Lennie had accompanied Jack Fulton’s vocal on celesta. Another connection with the song is that Sue Carol
helped introduce it.
21
. Writing about “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” in the 1970s, musicologist Charles Hamm concluded, “It was difficult to
lose faith in a country that had produced
a Bing Crosby.” Liner notes,
Brother Can You Spare a Dime?: American Song During the Great Depression
(New World), 1977.
22
.
Variety,
Jan. 10, 1933.
23
.
Variety
ranked the top twelve shows as follows: Jack Pearl, Eddie Cantor, EdWynn, Amos ‘n’ Andy, Rudy Vallée, Burns and Allen, Myrt
and Marge, Al Jolson, Bing Crosby, Ben Bemie, Fred Allen, Kate Smith. Feb. 28, 1933.
24
. Milton Berle and Haskell Frankel,
Milton Berle
(New York: Dell, 1975),
p. 144
.
25
. AI, Tony Martin.
26
. Friedwald,
Jazz Singing,
p. 103
.
27
. Ibid.
28
. Earl Coleman, a self-described Black Bing who recorded with Charlie Parker in 1947 and revived his career as a ballad
singer thirty years later, insisted that the first Black Bing was LeRoy Felton, who sang with Benny Carter’s band (e.g., Carter’s
recording of “More than You Know”). Carter himself took a flier at singing in the Crosby style (“Synthetic Love,” 1933). As
early as 1932, Harlan Lattimore, the vocalist with Don Redman’s orchestra, was billed as “the Negro Bing Crosby.” After the
enormous success of Billy Eckstine, other Black Bings included Herb Jeffries, Al Hibbler, Arthur Prysock, and Johnny Hartman.
AI, Earl Coleman, Benny Carter.
29
. This was Bing’s second consecutive hit with a Victor Young tune, after “I Don’t Stand a Ghost of a Chance.”
31
. AI, Barry Ulanov.
32
. KGM.
33
. Ibid.
34
. Bing Crosby, “Mutual Liking for Spaghetti Made Eddie and Bing Pals,”
Down Beat,
May 1939.
35
. AI, Barry Ulanov.
36
. Ibid.
37
. Oakie,
Jack Oakie’s Double Takes,
p. 118
.
38
. Ed Sullivan, “Little Old New York,”
New York Daily News,
Apr. 10, 1944.
40
. Coslow,
Cocktails for Two,
p. 13
4.
41
. Oakie,
Jack Oakie’s Double Takes,
p. 63
.
42
. Ibid.
43
. Coslow,
Cocktails for Two,
p. 13
5.
44
. AI, Mary Carlisle.
45
. Ibid.
46
. AI, Nancy Briggs.
48
. Harrison Carroll,
Los Angeles Evening Herald Express,
Sept. 25, 1934.
49
. AI, Max Wilk.
50
. Frank Steiner of Paramount to Frank Murphy,
Bing,
Oct. 25, 1967.
51
. Andre Sennwald,
New York Times,
June 23, 1933.
52
.
Los Angeles Times,
June 14, 1933.
53
.
Variety,
July 25, 1933.
54
. “Musicomedies of the Week,”
Time,
July 1933.
55
. MPAA files, AMPAS.
56
.
AI, Alan Fisher.
57
. AI, Rosemary Clooney.
58
. AI, Sheila Lynn.
17. Under Western Skies
1
. “Bing Crosby Debunks Himself,” op. cit., cited in
Time,
Jan. 1, 1934.
2
. Long thought to be lost,
Please
was discovered and marketed in the 1990s by film preservationist Bob DeFlores. Only one reel of
Just an Echo
is believed to exist; as of 2000, the collector who found that reel has refused to let anyone else see it. In 1976 DeFlores
asked Bing
about Just an Echo:
“And he says, ‘Well, I’m just not happy with it.’ I said, ‘What’s the matter?’ He says the editing was real poor. He said,
‘I’d be in a Mountie uniform on a horse and the camera angle would be from the left and then all of a sudden a sharp cut and
I’d be somewhere else.’ He remembered this after forty-five years.”
3
. Letter from Bing to Ted Crosby, Tuesday (undated) 1934. HCC.
4
. Collins interview, op. cit.
5
. W. E. Oliver, “Bing Calm Despite Stress,”
Los Angeles Evening Herald Express,
June 14, 1933.
6
. KGM.
7
. Ibid.
8
. Ibid.
9
. Paramount press release by Dave Keene, Oct. 27, 1933.
10
. Ibid.
11
. Oakie,
Jack Oakie’s Double Takes,
p. 129
.
13
. Mordaunt Hall,
New York Times,
Sept. 23, 1933.
14
.
Variety,
Sept. 26, 1933.
15
. Louella O. Parsons, Hearst syndicate, Sept. 29, 1933.
16
.
Variety,
Oct. 1933.
17
.
Variety,
Nov. 14, 1933.
18
.
Time,
Jan. 1, 1934.
19
. Walsh,
Each Man in His Time,
p. 257
.
20
. Davies,
The Times We Had,
p. 119
.
22
. Davies,
The Times We Had,
p. 120
.
23
. Ibid.
25
. Transcribed from
Both Sides of Bing Crosby
(Curtain Calls).
26
. Walsh,
Each Man in His Time,
p. 27
1.
27
. Barrios, A
Song in the Dark,
p. 398
.
28
. MPAA files, AMPAS.
30
. Louella O. Parsons, Hearst Syndicate, Jan. 26, 1934.
31
. Andre Sennwald,
New York Times,
Dec. 23, 1933.
32
.
Time,
Jan. 1, 1934.
33
.
Time,
Jan. 22, 1934.
34
.
Variety,
Sept. 19, 1933.
35
. AI, Roy Rogers.
36
.
Salisbury interview, op. cit.
37
. Ibid.
18. More Than a Crooner
1
. Robert Trout, transcribed script for
Wilkins Coffee Time,
Oct. 6, 1933. Collection of John McDonough.
2
.
Billboard,
undated clip, 1934.
3
. Between Arnheim and Grier, the band was conducted for three shows by Carol Lofner.
4
. Alton Cook, “Bing Crosby Record Stayer,”
New York World Telegram,
July 12, 1934.
5
.
Fortune
(Aug. 1935) described FDR as “the best voice in radio. Until Mr. Roosevelt taught the world how that titanic trombone of
tubes and antennae could be played no one had any idea of the possible range of its virtuosity.”
6
. Manchester,
The Glory and the Dream,
p. 81
.
7
. Leuchtenburg,
Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal,
p. 330
.
8
. Gross,
I Looked and I Listened,
p. 172
.
9
. It’s too late to order it, but the kit contained “a trial-size cake of Woodbury’s facial soap, generous tubes of Woodbury’s
germ free, cold, and facial creams, and six baby packets of Woodbury’s facial powder, a sample of each of the six shades.”
10
. Bob Crosby, RBT.
11
. After shooting wrapped on Catalina, the crew moved to the Paramount lot, where Bing entertained a few visiting Gonzagans,
including Mike Pecarovich (then Gonzaga’s coach) and Ray Flaherty, who arrived with members of his team, the New York Giants,
winners of the 1934 National Football League championship. “Bing had one of the greatest memories I have ever seen,” Ray recalled.
“As those football players came in, he would stand at the door and greet them, ‘Hello, George,’’Hello, Max, “Hello, Bill.’
I think maybe he used to get a program and rehearse it a little bit.” AI, Flaherty.
14
. Ibid.,
pp. 127
—28. Crosby wrote “nightie” in
Lucky
but told a BBC interviewer in 1973 that Lombard actually said “douche bag.”
16
. Several comic lines were punched into Horace Jackson’s script by writers George Marion Jr.
(The Big Broadcast)
and Francis Martin
(Mississippi).
17
. Especially after Bette Davis throttled her on camera in
Old Acquaintance
with a vengeance unstipulated in the script.
18
. Kobal,
People Will Talk,
p. 361
.
20
. AI, Kitty Carlisle Hart.
21
. Letter from Bing Crosby to Ted Crosby, Tuesday (undated) 1934. HCC.
22
. This passage obviously augurs the famous “a little sex” scene in Preston Sturges’s
Sullivan’s Travels.
23
. AI, Kitty Carlisle Hart.
24
. Ibid.
25
. Salisbury interview, op. cit. On another occasion, he told Ireland’s George O’Reilly that he “fought like the dickens”
against having to sing it and that when it became the hit of the picture, he realized he had no ability to predict hits.