Bing Crosby (44 page)

The motif of Bing’s voice as universally recognizable was a bit presumptuous, since the first four Sennetts (two more followed
in 1932) were shot
before
Bing succeeded on network radio, when his fame on the airwaves was based almost exclusively on Arnheim’s West Coast broadcasts
and his guest appearances on other local programs. Yet even then, Bing and other invisible singers were accused of seducing
wives and daughters with their laryngeal wiles. Radio’s role in the battle of the sexes had greatly changed. Back in 1923,
when mostly men donned earphones to surf the air on crystal sets, a Mrs. Cora May White of Minneapolis divorced her husband
because “radio mania”
³⁵
had alienated his affections. Now men complained of perverse crooners beguiling their women. Their scorn provided another
theme for the Sennett shorts. Bing, embodying a rare balance of humility and audacity, never merely wins the girl: he steals
her, usually from one of her parents (never both) and her fiance, who loathe radio crooners and conspire in vain to foil his
unstoppable charms. A class distinction is explicit in these battles. While Bing is a regular Joe, the foiled suitors are
rich and prissy (effeminate Franklin Pangborn plays the unlikely lover twice) or European and prissy. They usually end up
falling into a pool of water or getting whacked on the backside as Bing drives off with the lady.

I
Surrender Dear
is unusual among the Sennetts in allowing Bing to indulge in vaudeville verbosity and banter, a result of the teaming with
Arthur Stone. He mimes his own recording of “Out of Nowhere,” using postures he picked up in his barnstorming days with Al
and Harry. The second short,
One More Chance
(for which his salary was raised to $750), is more overtly personal and departs from the formula to present him as a married
salesman, Bing Bangs. He parodies “I Surrender, Dear” with lyrics about a laundry detergent (leading to a routine later recycled
and much improved in
Road to Singapore),
before leaving with his wife, Ethel Bangs, for California. They endure many disasters on the way: an Indian threatens to
scalp Bing, who, wearing a wretched hairpiece, says, “Maybe you’re right,
so far it’s only a bald spot.” When Ethel announces her intention to leave him for her lover, Percy, Bing confronts her in
a nightclub scene that recalls his public rewooing of Dixie, and sings “Just One More Chance.” It’s an extraordinary moment,
because the real Bing shines through in all his swinging, funny, improvisational glee.
³⁶
His spontaneity clearly startled actress Patsy O’Leary, who looks genuinely surprised when he kisses her and cannot keep
a straight face as he rocks the tune. He concludes by finger-popping his cheek.

A lingering instinct for minstrelsy is pursued in
Dream House.
Bing plays singing plumber Bing Fawcett, who accidentally gets black house paint on his face, leading a black casting director
to hire him as a black actor. When he kisses the leading lady (before spiriting her away from his rival and her mother), he
inadvertently gives her a blackface mustache and goatee that suits her mannish hairdo, as he dons a womanly turban.
³⁷
Transvestism is more salient in
Billboard Girl,
in which the swishy brother of Bing’s paramour pretends to be her (he wears his sister’s undergarments for authenticity)
and Bing can’t tell the difference. Bing ultimately whisks the real sister away from her fiance and irate father, whose objections
echo those expressed in life by Dixie’s dad. While making this film, Bing realized he could avoid hairpieces by wearing hats,
and wore one in every scene.

Before Sennett’s cameras rolled, Marchetti and Everett had invited offers from radio and vaudeville. Having picked up a few
pointers from Leonard Goldstein, Everett mailed two records — “I Surrender, Dear” and “Just One More Chance” — to William
S. Paley, president of the Columbia Broadcasting System. What Kapp and Sennett had done for Bing on records and in movies,
Paley could accomplish on network radio. The prize was a nightly fifteen-minute show that would be relayed by the network
all over the country. A CBS representative offered Bing an audition with the proviso that he come to New York, but Bing had
qualms about making the trip. He was beginning to realize his Hollywood dreams and did not want to be apart from Dixie. Yet
when word got back that Russ Columbo was pursuing the same course, Bing agreed to give it a shot. For his resourcefulness,
Everett was officially signed on as Bing’s manager.

Yet Paley had never received Everett’s package. While Bing was ruminating about the audition, the CBS chief was on board the
SS
Europa,
en route to the Continent. On his third day at sea, or so it
was related in a CBS press release, Paley heard “I Surrender, Dear” wafting from the stateroom of a fellow passenger. He ascertained
the name of the singer and radioed his New York office for information. Upon arriving in Europe, Paley was advised of Bing’s
fame in California, shown a Sennett short, and warned that “radio and theatrical impresarios were vying in submission of contracts
to the young baritone.”
³⁸

This was not entirely true. Roger Marchetti was asking $2,500 per week for Bing, an astronomical fee that, as
Variety
reported, “drew a batch of yawns.”
³⁹
The best offers the lawyer received were an RKO vaudeville tour at $1,500 and a featured spot in
Earl Carroll’s Vanities
at $1,000. NBC expressed interest, but not beyond a three-figure salary. Nonetheless, Paley instructed Columbia to sign Crosby
for a sustaining show at $1,500, a remarkable sum for a show subsidized by the network in the hope of luring a sponsor. (Kate
Smith received a third of that for her sustainer.) In later years Paley would embellish the story, making it a near perfect
match for Mack Sennett’s: the CBS underlings tell him he’s crazy (Bing is a drinker and unreliable), but he overrules them
and mandates a contract.

Bing was signed to a fifteen-minute show, Monday through Saturday: the routine would be three vocals, one instrumental by
the band, and no talk except by the network’s announcer. In Bing’s recollection, Paley wanted him on the air right away but
had to wait while Marchetti settled the American Federation of Musicians ban instigated by Abe Frank. CBS was taking no chances.
It postponed its announcement of Bing’s signing until the AFM ruled that his unfavorable status applied only to Los Angeles.
⁴⁰
The stall allowed Marchetti to settle with Frank before he learned of Bing’s improved finances; Frank demanded a payoff of
$7,500, which was nearly two-thirds of what he had paid Bing for a year’s work at his club. Still, the delay was no more than
a week or two, and Bing left for New York on August 11. CBS scheduled his debut for August 31, a Monday evening at 11:00
P.M
. Bing did not make it.

Bing’s voice has a mellow quality that only Bing’s got. It’s like gold being poured out of a cup.

— Louis Armstrong,
Time
(1955)
¹

The thing you have to understand about Bing Crosby is that he was the first hip white person born in the United States.

— Artie Shaw (1992)
²

The two weeks preceding the broadcast were busy ones for Bing, who had not been back to New York in fifteen months. A few
days after his arrival, he was booked by Jack Kapp for a three-hour session that proved momentous on two counts. Bing worked
for the first time with Victor Young, the conductor and composer soon to emerge as one of Hollywood’s finest musical directors
and someone with whom he developed a particularly close and lasting rapport.
³
And he was paired with three important songs that he forged into all-time standards: “Star Dust” (Bing was the first to record
Mitchell Parish’s lyric to Hoagy Carmichael’s magical, Bixlike melody, verse and chorus), “Dancing in the Dark” (from
The Band Wagon),
and the less sturdy but much revived “I Apologize.” They represent Bing in his ardent, pleading mode, technically assured
but studied, as though he were mining to the fullest a commercially viable approach.

He spent several days auditioning theme songs for his radio show. The title of the leading candidate, fashioned for him by
composer Fred Ahlert and lyricist Roy Turk, underwent two revisions: first, it was transposed from “When the Gold of the Day
Meets the Blue of
the Night” to “When the Blue of the Night (Meets the Gold of the Day)”; then the word
when
was replaced with the more intriguing
where.
The other leading candidate was “Love Came Into My Heart,” written by nineteen-year-old Burton Lane and Harold Adamson for
Earl Carroll’s Vanities of 1931.
Bing learned about it from music publisher Jack Robbins, who asked Burton to play it for the singer. “Bing came up to [Robbins’s]
offices,” Burton recalled, “and I played the song and he liked the way I played it and he asked me to accompany him when he
auditioned the song for the studio. He was not auditioning himself — he was auditioning two songs, mine and ‘Where the Blue
of the Night,’ which was a much better song. So we were ushered into a room at CBS, the two of us, and apparently we could
be heard by people in another office who would make the decision. The other song was chosen and it was perfect, a lovely song.”
⁴

Harry Barris’s daughter, Marti, said “it broke his heart”
⁵
that Bing did not choose “I Surrender, Dear” as his theme, but strong financial and musical reasons justified his preference.
A successful theme song, mandatory in the 1930s (every top band and radio star had one), might identify an entertainer for
decades, accruing mechanical royalties with each performance. Ahlert and Turk cut Bing in on the copyright, allegedly because
he worked with Turk on the song’s verse, ensuring him a significant income over the years. Although Bing was accused of making
a deal with Ahlert and Turk, which the team denied, his consideration of the Burton Lane tune and his reputation among songwriters
indicates that this was not the usual case of quid pro quo authorship.
⁶

Bing was in a position to demand cut-ins on dozens of songs (as Jolson did before him and Presley after), but he appears to
have been scrupulous about taking credit only on those to which he made a contribution; he shares the copyright on twenty-three
(including seven he never recorded), almost all collaborations with friends, chiefly Barris, Young, and Johnny Burke, and
only two of any commercial significance — his theme song and Victor Young’s enduring melody “I Don’t Stand a Ghost of a Chance
with You.”
⁷
Bing went on to write several parodies that he recorded privately and pressed on a handful of discs for friends, but he had
no illusions about his songwriting talent. Late in his life he wrote, “I really think I’d trade anything I’ve ever done if
I could have written just one hit song.”
⁸

Financial considerations aside, Bing’s choice was eminently musical. “Where the Blue of the Night” is an ideal signature tune
because the main eight-bar phrase can be played in just about any tempo, lending itself to compression and dramatization.
The lyric is relatively neutral (unlike, for example, the dejected avowal “I Surrender, Dear”), and although the melody resembles
Gilbert and Sullivan’s quintessentially British “Tit-Willow,” it has the unmistakable appeal of an Irish lullaby. Wistful
and nostalgic, the song boasts a rousing release suited to Bing’s range and attack, and works equally well in either three-four
(it was conceived as a waltz) or four-four time. Bing recorded it in November, backed by Bennie Krueger’s band and Eddie Lang’s
splendid guitar, an exceptional, well-tempered performance, devoid of vanity and honeyed with understated emotion. The song
became so closely associated with him that few recorded it except in homage. Yet Bing remained undecided about his theme when
the show premiered, a week after the tryout with Lane. By then, some thought he was beginning to look undecided about singing
at all.