Authors: Gary Giddins
Bing’s public statements were typically reserved, mostly mourning the loss of Eddie’s talent. He elaborated a little in 1939,
writing that Eddie “had good sense and saved me from many a jam. And I don’t mean music session. Naturally, when I got into
a musical solo spot, it was a great comfort to have such an artist with me. Eddie made me do my best when the break came,
and I give him full credit.”
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Mutual friends were astonished by Bing’s seeming lack of emotion. Only a few intimates were allowed to see how tortured he
was by Eddie’s passing, having advised him to undergo the operation. “Joe Venuti confirmed he was absolutely wrecked,” Barry
Ulanov said, “and I don’t think he was capable of that kind of attachment again.”
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In his 1948 biography, Ulanov suggests that Lang’s death hastened Bing’s retreat from jazz. But surely the influence of Jack
Kapp and the obligations of stardom would have channeled him into the
mainstream with or without Eddie. Bing’s recordings had long reflected his inclination to move in and out of jazz, and as
Ulanov wrote, his jazz style “might have proved too strong for complete public acceptance.”
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Yet in Eddie Lang, he had a partner on- and offstage, a trusted friend with the same musical moorings, the same attitudes,
the same rhythmic pulse.
Bing tracked down Dixie in the Caribbean and phoned her to ease the shock of Eddie’s death. When Dixie, Sue, and Everett’s
wife, Naomi (who took Kitty’s place on the voyage), arrived in Hollywood, Dixie moved in with Sue. Bing followed on the Santa
Fe
Chief,
traveling with Mary Pickford, the eternal waif of silent pictures and a loyal Crosby fan; her companion, Countess DiFrasso
(American heiress Dorothy Taylor, subsequently an escort of mobster Bugsy Siegel); and Sue’s husband, Nick Stuart. Dixie greeted
them at the Pasadena station. Bing and Dixie moved in with Sue and Nick and then rented the Stuarts’ home while they traveled.
With Paramount paying the musician and line charges, Bing was able to complete his Chesterfield contract on the West Coast.
Paramount wanted as much of Bing as it could get. A couple of weeks into
College Humor,
the studio prepared him with a new script
(Too Much Harmony),
to go into production almost immediately. It also announced plans to feature Bing in a musical version of a stage play
Cloudy with Showers
(never made) and a series of two-reel shorts, all of which reinforced his decision to go Hollywood for good.
In anticipation of their first child, the Crosbys began to build their first real home, at 4326 Forman Avenue in the Toluca
Lake area. Dixie’s dad, Evan Wyatt, supervised the construction, which included a miniature balcony off the front hallway.
At a party, actor Jack Oakie asked Wyatt its purpose and was told, “That’s so Bing can sing to his guests as they arrive.”
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Paramount requested Bing to fill out a publicity questionnaire. This time Bing and not Everett provided the answers. Eleven
years later Ed Sullivan discovered the form in his files and published it in his syndicated column.
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It is an illuminating portrait of Bing and the period. Bing gave his New York address (160 West Fifty-ninth Street) as home,
his name as Harry Lillis Crosby Jr., and his childhood ambition “to be an actor.” His favorite fictional heroes: Robin Hood,
Robinson Crusoe, François Villon.
*
Real-life hero: Theodore Roosevelt. First radio job: with AI Rinker on KFI, Los Angeles, 1927. First childhood job: selling
the
Saturday Evening Post.
Married: Dixie Lee. No children. Five outstanding figures in history: Jesus, Richard the Lion-Hearted, Napoleon, Disraeli,
Lincoln. Outstanding figures of 1933: in sports, Babe Ruth; in theater, John Barrymore; in literature, Shaw; in music, Ravel;
in politics, Mussolini. Favorite stage actors: Alfred Lunt, Katharine Cornell. Film actors: Helen Hayes, Lee Tracy. Radio
artists: Burns and Allen. Comedian: Jimmy Durante. Dish: Lobster diavolo. Flower: gardenia. Jewel: diamond. Axiom: Take it
easy. Least favorite color: lavender.
Of which compliments was he most proud?: “Ring Lardner wrote me, saying he was glad I was returning to the air. My wife generally
comments favorably on my efforts and my dad maintains I sing better than Jolson. Coming from this unbiased source, I treasure
this highly.” Favorite fan: “My mother, because she is very sincere and never hesitates to criticize when she figures criticism
is due.” Did he ever fail to make a broadcast?: “On various occasions, while broadcasting in California, I found the thoroughbred
delights of Caliente superior to the prospect of facing a mike.” How would he retire: “I would go nicely to California — buy
a home, a boat, a car. I’d take up some light business (i.e., buy a piece of a prosperous business); travel abroad a bit;
fish and golf in the interim, and visit the various racetracks. And raise a small family.” Good memory? “Quick memory, but
retentive power bad.” Prompt for appointments?: “Yes, that is, lately.” Favorite expressions: “’Yeah, man,’ is one of them.”
What broadcast of his own did he recall with the most pleasure? “Opening night on the Chesterfield program. After all hope
had been abandoned, it was infinitely pleasurable after many months to get a break again.” Favorite song: “Sweet Sue.” Favorite
classical number: “Prélude à l’apres-midi d’un faune.” Least favorite: “No dislike for anything musical, but Beethoven and
Wagner leave me unresponsive.” Favorite books:
Of Human Bondage, Point Counter Point, A Farewell to Arms, Round
Up (Ring Lardner). Favorite poets: Keats, Browning, Shelley,
Longfellow. Quotation: “’Full many a flower is born to blush unseen and waste its sweetness on the desert air.” Eccentric?
“In dress, tend slightly to the bizarre.” Hunches? “Sometimes I bet a hunch on a horse. A horse named Bingo won at Latonia
and paid 40 to 1. Professionally, I don’t go by hunches.”
A year before Sullivan published those answers, humorist H. Allen Smith included a chapter on his attempt to research Bing’s
life in his book
Life in a Putty Knife Factory
(1943). Allen excerpted a twenty four-page “bio-book” that Bing filled out at CBS in 1933, which restates and amplifies comments
in the Paramount press book, for example, his response to “What would you do if you had a million dollars?” After observing
that he would go to California and buy a prosperous business, fish, golf, visit the track, raise a small family, he continues:
If a million bucks ever came my way, I could doubtless distribute a considerable amount to relatives, etc., in loans, and
still have enough to carry out the program described. I’m pretty socialistic in this connection and really don’t think anyone
is entitled to or should have more than they need to live comfortably. My wants are comparatively simple and with half a million
I could possibly scrape along somehow. In point of fact, if I ever connect with the aforesaid amount, I’ll wash up.
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Small wonder the CBS bio-book was suppressed! In addition to the familiar Crosby wit and verbiage, and the predictive limning
of a character he would play in movies throughout the 1930s, Bing suggests he just might be the sort of wild-eyed usurer capable
of pulling the lever for Norman Thomas.
College Humor
took its title from the popular magazine that H. N. Swanson founded in 1920. Initially intended as a potpourri,of jokes,
cartoons, and verses collected from undergraduate newspapers, it earned a reputation in the 1930s for launching talent; its
contributors included S. J. Perelman and Philip Wylie. The jokes are now as antediluvian as those
in Joe Miller’s Jests
and not as funny, but they underscored a view of college as an interval consecrated to sex, puns, and football, much the
same view propounded by Paramount in its rash of college movies, beginning with the Marx Brothers burlesque,
Horse
Feathers,
and going downhill from there. As a genre, movies set in college peaked in the silent era, a time when Knute Rockne made
higher education synonymous with football and
Good News
translated his Barnumesque hoopla to Broadway, inspiring enduring film parodies by Harold Lloyd
(The Freshman)
and Buster Keaton
(College).
Campus musicals (not dramas, as Paramount discovered with
Confessions of a Co-ed)
drew audiences throughout the 1930s and 1940s, disappeared in the 1950s, rallied in the 1960s as social protest movies, and
resumed their more lunatic pedigrees in the frat house and slasher epics that followed.
The movie
College Humor
is maddeningly inane and dull, and would be no better remembered than
College Rhythm, College Swing,
or
College Holiday
if not for Crosby’s involvement. But it was a hit that validated the genre, produced three popular songs, and substantiated
Bing’s box-office appeal. In the long run, the film proved of greater significance to Bing for professional associations that
took root. Director Wesley Ruggles was sitting pretty with an Academy Award nomination for
Cimarron
when he was given the assignment, boosting its A-picture cachet. A former Keystone Kop and the director originally announced
for
King of Jazz,
Ruggles was the first husband of actress Arline Judge, a friend and drinking companion of Dixie’s, later renowned for her
front-page marital escapades. Ruggles’s association with Bing outlasted the marriage and led, in 1938, to Bing’s breakthrough
performance in
Sing You Sinners.
Screenwriters Claude Binyon and Frank Butler separately went on to write more than a dozen of Bing’s most important films,
including
Sing You Sinners, Going My Way, Holiday Inn,
and most of the
Road
pictures. Sam Coslow and Arthur Johnston, who wrote the score, had already given Bing “Just One More Chance” and would turn
out several more of his signature hits. According to Coslow,
College Humor
was the “prize that every songsmith in the land coveted.”
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Most of the cast were pretty long in the tooth to play college students, but the atmosphere was convivial, especially for
Bing and his pals Richard Arlen and Jack Oakie. Like Bing, Arlen was an expert swimmer and spirited carouser, but he grew
intense and stiff in front of a camera — never more so than as the hulking, unshaven, hard-drinking football star who, after
expulsion from school, turns painfully maudlin. As his roommate, Oakie, a gifted comic ham, endures
a disturbingly violent initiation into the fraternity before replacing Arlen to win the big game. Oakie described a ritual
required to make Bing starlike: the glued ears (“many’s the time Dick Arlen and I flipped those ears loose to get off early”)
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and the donning of corset, padded shoulders, shoe lifts, and hairpiece. Oakie razzed him as “the robot of romance.”
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Bing, oddly enough, does not play a student (that would come a year later), but rather Professor Danvers of the drama department,
a representative of the adult world, albeit one who teaches by singing and is swooned over by coeds, including Barbara Shirrel,
Arlen’s girl and Oakie’s sister, played by the appealing Mary Carlisle. After defending Arlen against expulsion, Danvers loses
his job and runs off with Barbara, becoming a successful crooner. “You can hear him but you can’t see him,” marvels Oakie,
spooning with his girl to the car radio. Bing’s role was pumped into the script as an afterthought — it’s Oakie’s movie —
and he doesn’t show up for reels at a time. He’s a one-man chorus in the first half, singing a few strains while the plot
is tugged forward by the students. In the second half, he continues as a musical commentator while displaying world-class
obtuseness about women, especially Barbara, whose infatuation (“He’s a swell egg,” she confides) provides him with the picture’s
one memorable line. He has just been dismissed and is furiously packing his belongings when she walks in and asks him, “Do
you mind if I take off my shoes?” He retorts, “I wouldn’t care if you took off your, ahh, shoes.”
Bing doesn’t exactly underact; he doesn’t do much acting at all. When he plays anger, his breathing seems rehearsed, and he’s
little more than an extra during the big game. Still, while Oakie mugs like the devil to keep the film alive, Crosby and his
husky easygoing voice steal it. The picture is a creaking antique, but Bing’s performance is attractive in a way that Oakie’s
entertaining shtick and Arlen’s histrionic glowering are not. The best of his songs, “Learn to Croon,” is introduced as a
classroom sing, with a Kate Smith lookalike delivering the line “just bu bu bu bu.” “Down the Old Ox Road,” which concerns
a lovers’ lane and is expanded by a long recitative, caused controversy. As directed by Ruggles, it becomes, in Coslow’s opinion,
“a sneaky bit of lyrical quasi-pornography.”
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Everyone can find the Ox Road, the production demonstrates, except three long-nosed virgins who wear glasses and oversize
collars and are definitely out of
place on a campus that thrives on sex and touchdowns. Burns and Allen are wasted as Scottish caterers.
The picture represented a break for Mary Carlisle, a twenty-year-old blonde with a provocative glint in her eye who was under
contract to MGM but on perennial loan-out to Paramount for college movies. This was her biggest part to date, and Bing liked
her well enough to cast her in two subsequent films, by which time he had the clout to approve his leading ladies. They became
friends on the second film
(Double or Nothing,
1937), but on the first he kept to himself, retiring to his dressing room as soon as he completed a scene and to the track
or golf course at the end of the day. She admired his professionalism: “I worked with Lionel Barrymore and a lot of good actors,
but Bing had something about him that was so natural, like Spencer Tracy. They were thinkers, very intelligent, and Bing was
well read and terribly funny — he had a really marvelous vocabulary. He always knew his lines. It was always something else
that went wrong in a scene, never Bing.”
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