Bing Crosby (77 page)

One bulletin saluted talented women — namely, Dixie and the wives of Gary Cooper, Bill Boyd, Errol Flynn, among others — who
gave up promising careers to marry Hollywood’s leading men and “retire to plain, old fashioned housewifery.”
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In another Bing was described, incredibly, as a prophet without honor in his own country, because while he “serenely goes
his placid way,” few realize he “ranks high among the top 10 stars of Hollywood.”
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The most preposterous of them, however, cried poverty on behalf of stars who had to survive on strict allowances to protect
them from cadgers and unsavory businessmen. It said Bing was obliged — along with Gary Cooper, Carole Lombard, Bette Davis,
Fred MacMurray, and other magnanimous but impractical souls — to make do with a stipend, in his case administered through
his company. “It may sound ridiculous that any person making as high as $5,000 a week actually has only $25 a week for pocket
money. But as a matter of fact, some of the stars are allowed even less than that.”
²⁶
Actually, he was earning $10,000 a week, and as we will see, his “stipend” was $3,000.

Not infrequently, Paramount flacks celebrated the hand that fed them, in Bing’s alleged voice: “Next to love, horse racing,
golf, fishing, political speeches, and maybe a couple of other things, the greatest form of entertainment in the world is,
to my mind, the motion picture” begins one redundant two-pager.
²⁷
His name was regularly appropriated to tell amusing tales about the filming of his most recent pictures. A story put out
in advance of
The Star Maker
was repeated months later in a release for
Road to Singapore,
with only the title and director altered; anecdotes were unchanged for both films. In a 1939 release Bing claims he will
consider himself a success when he achieves “all the things I’ve always wanted to do.”
²⁸
His list begins with his desire to own a yacht (“Who doesn’t, say you!”) and fish for tarpon in Florida, which may have seemed
eerily familiar to anyone who recalled the hero of
Here Is My Heart.

But then, the idea was to blur the real Bing and the screen Bing. You need a scorecard to distinguish between facts, near
facts, and fibs in many of the passages attributed to him, though the ghostwriter’s
motives are usually easy to catch. In 1934, for example, the obliging “Bing” writes:

I don’t smoke much, and I prefer a pipe [true]. Not that smoking might injure my voice [no need to rile potential sponsors],
but I just don’t care about it [not true]. I never rehearse a song, whether it’s for a radio, picture or record, more than
once [partly true; he rehearsed at home], and I always try to learn it by listening to somebody else sing the lyrics [true].
I always wear a hat or cap while broadcasting [true], for no reason except that it’s comfortable [not true]. I’m not superstitious
about anything [apparently true; religion, obviously, does not count]. I don’t bother with a diet of any kind, except when
the doctor orders me to [not true].
²⁹

And so on. A couple of months after that release, Bing signed an article about himself called “Me!” for
Picture-Play,
which published a specimen of his handwriting to prove his authorship.
³⁰
Included with the usual attributes that show him to be quite human (goes to bed early, even at his own parties; is stubborn
and unable to forget slights; can be thoughtless in putting golf ahead of everything else; credits his success to mother’s
prayers and blind luck) is the claim that he quit the Cocoanut Grove because management refused to give him his own orchestra!
As to the diets he never bothered with: “I am forever bordering on the abyss of obesity. I have attempted many diets to overcome
this dangerous inclination, but nothing helps.”
³¹
He playfully takes issue with statements in a previous article by Dixie that was likely written by the same employee who
wrote “Me!”

Still, in the realm of public relations, the Paramount pros might have learned a few things from Larry Crosby, who handled
that mission for Bing Crosby, Inc. Basil Grillo, who straightened out Bing’s business affairs after the war, once remarked
of Larry that his job “consisted mostly of trying to keep Bing’s name out of the paper. I say that facetiously, because with
anybody in the public eye, from time to time somebody’ll take a crack at him.”
³²
Larry did his share of spin doctoring. For example, there was the night of November 28, 1936, when Bing and his racing friend
Lin Howard visited the College Inn in San Diego, after a day spent hunting quail. In the small hours Bing got
into a fracas with a group of sailors. The big question: were Bing and the mariners allies or antagonists? Initially, Bing
explained that a civilian insulted him and he invited him to step outside, where a fight took place involving sailors who
“were on our side.”
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Larry was called in after a witness described the incident less patriotically: the sailors recognized Bing as he left the
bar and heckled him until he offered to take them on one at a time, but police intervened after a couple of blows. “There
wasn’t much to it,” Larry said, “a poke or two — but it was all settled to everybody’s satisfaction. Let’s forget it.”
³⁴
It was forgotten.

A few days later, in December, Bing instigated a suit that would not be forgotten for some time. He took action against Ben
McGlashan, the owner and operator of station KOPJ in Los Angeles, for having played his records on two daily programs over
the past ten months, presenting them in such a way as to suggest that Bing was in the studio. As filed by his attorney, John
O’Melveny, Bing argued that he was known for “personal, original, and individual interpretations”
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distinct from those of other performers; that the records were clearly labeled “Not Licensed for Radio Broadcast”;
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and that the defendant unfairly competed with his ability to earn royalties — estimated at two and a half to four and a half
cents per record — and advertising revenue.

Ruling in Bing’s favor, Judge Ruben S. Schmidt enjoined McGlashan from broadcasting the Crosby voice or otherwise profiting
from it without written permission from Crosby.
³⁷
He was probably irked by McGlashan’s arrogant defense, which denied Bing’s distinctiveness (then why play his records?),
claimed every show ended with the announcement that the audience had been listening to phonograph records, and avowed that
not-licensed stickers were without meaning — that once consumers bought a record, they could do with it as they pleased.
³⁸
The judge’s decision was no surprise. Fred Waring had won a parallel judgment a year before in Philadelphia. In 1939 both
decisions were affirmed in federal court by Judge Vincent L. Leibell, in the case of
Paul Whiteman
v.
WNEW.

A bargain would have to be struck, allowing radio access to records, and artists access to the profits. Beyond the lawsuits,
the issue was forced by a congenial spieler named Martin Block, whose
Make-Believe Ballroom
in New York broadcast records he bought at
the nearby Liberty Music Shop. In his chronicle of the music industry, David Sanjek writes that Block “made the profession
of disc jockey a respectable one.”
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One of his early beneficiaries was Decca Records, which earned attention from Block at a time when merchants were intimidated
by the established labels out to torpedo Jack Kapp. A few weeks before Judge Leibell’s foregone ruling, Victor, Decca, and
Columbia began offering broadcasters records for monthly licensing fees. Radio stations howled, to little avail. At long last
the recording industry had its pound of flesh from the medium that a decade earlier almost destroyed it. Many stations continued
to resist the record labels by signing contracts with transcription services, which produced discs by major performers exclusively
for broadcast. But they soon capitulated. Bing’s role in the battle prefigured his momentous struggle in 1946, when he took
a different stand and single-handedly toppled network radio’s policy of live entertainment in favor of prerecorded programs.

In terms of publicity, this was a neutral issue, as were most of the controversies surrounding Bing.
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The press generally gave him a free ride for twenty years. The Treasury did not. Bing was assessed $128,524 in back taxes
from 1933 and 1934. No sooner did he request that the Board of Tax Appeals redetermine the debt than the Treasury launched
a publicity campaign of its own, pursuing such Hollywood notables as Chaplin, De Mille, Laughton, Dietrich, and the Will Rogers
estate. Bing was charged with nonpayment of $159,810. Two years later he was dunned for another $178,000 for the same years.
Most of his fans could not have cared less about governmental claims of overdue taxes, but many were dismayed when Bing and
other players crossed a picket line in the studio strike of 1937, fueling later rumors of his rank-and-file conservatism.
He had much to conserve. His 1936 income was gauged at $508,000: $375,000 for three pictures, $108,000 for thirty-nine
KMH
shows, $30,000 for a dozen recording sessions plus royalties.
⁴¹

Yet that year and for several to come, Bing faced genuine financial jeopardy, a fact known only to his accountant, Todd W.
Johnson; his attorney, John O’Melveny; and himself. Johnson attempted to explain the situation to Bing in a four-page letter
in March 1937.
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Working with the figure of $500,000 as Bing’s probable 1937 income, he began by subtracting $100,000 for business expenses,
including
Everett’s 10 percent. Bing and Dixie’s federal and state tax bills, on the remaining $400,000, would come to $236,900. Their
taxes would be larger than in preceding years, he explained, because Bing’s past salaries, excepting $3,000 a week, had been
paid to Bing Crosby, Inc., not to Bing as an individual, which was now the case. The tax bite left Bing with $163,100.

After subtracting $13,100 for disallowed expenses, Johnson told Bing he would have $150,000, or $12,500 per month, for “personal
use or investment.” Yet in the preceding two months, Bing and Dixie had spent that much ($25,000) as follows: $9,575.03 to
Dixie for household and other uses, $13,431.95 lost by Bing at the racetrack, and $1,868.98 for Bing’s miscellaneous personal
expenses. In addition, “large sums were spent for care of racehorses, wardrobe, entertainment, etc.,” which the government
would not allow. Even if Bing spent only his expected income, the accountant warned, he would be unable to repay an $85,000
bank note he had taken for investments, a racehorse, and other “capital expenditures.” The bottom line, he emphasized, was
that for every dollar Bing earned, only thirty cents was available for his discretionary use.

Johnson worried that he might be “taking a chance of incurring [Bing’s] ill-will” in commenting on his “personal expenditures”
but maintained that as his friend, he wanted to make sure “that your untiring efforts and long days and hours of work will
result in your accumulating a considerable fortune, instead of having nothing left when your career is ended.” Then he gave
up the niceties and typed in panicky capital letters:

ALL OF YOUR PERSONAL EXPENDITURES COME OUT OF YOUR PART OF YOUR EARNINGS AND DO NOT COME OUT OF THE GOVERNMENT’S PART.

Such storm warnings would have seemed simply unbelievable to the public. Bing’s fortune was part of his élan. In the mid-1940s,
when his income from records was higher than that from films, his income as an entertainer would approach and finally settle
in the area of seven figures — figures that did not take into account his diverse business interests. But even then the combination
of confiscatory taxes and large expenditures gave his accountant palpitations.

Given those amounts and the frequent stories in which Bing was listed among the ten highest paid Americans (he was ranked
eighth in 1936, in a list topped by William Randolph Hearst and including only two other entertainers, Mae West and Marlene
Dietrich),
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Larry’s task was not merely to keep his name out of the papers but to underscore his most attractive qualities, not least
his indifference to protocol. The public was so enamored of Bing’s eccentricities that what might have been bad publicity
for others redounded in his favor, as in 1937, when he attended the British film colony’s Armistice Day celebration in an
ordinary suit while the other men wore white tie and tails. When a few months later, in February 1938, he barred photographers
from
KMH
broadcasts because they broke his concentration, the “bulb pressers,” as he called them, knew they were licked and relented.

He even benefited from one of the era’s strangest scandals. Four years earlier, in 1933, John Montague had arrived in Hollywood
and quickly earned a reputation as an exceptional but mysterious golfer. With his 220-pound impeccably attired frame and a
fedora or cap shading his ingratiating smile, he evidently charmed all he met and became the valued crony of several Hollywood
notables, most prominently Bing. Actors appreciated his demand for privacy and his secrecy regarding the source of his wealth
(his long disappearances into the desert led some to speculate gold mines). Mysterious Montague, as the press called him,
refused to play in tournaments and shunned photographers; he broke the cameras of several who attempted to take his picture.
His abilities were hyperbolized after he challenged Bing to a match using only a rake, shovel, and baseball bat, and won.
Westbrook Pegler called him a modern Paul Bunyan, and Grantland Rice reported the rumor that he whacked a bird off a telegraph
wire with a 170-yard drive. Former U.S. Amateur champion George Von Elm called him “the greatest golfer in the world.”
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Time
glowingly profiled him twice, attesting to his sheer brawn with tales of his lifting Oliver Hardy, briefly Montague’s roommate,
with one hand, and ending an altercation at the Lakeside Club by “standing husky Cinemactor George Bancroft on his head in
his locker and closing the door.”
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