by Gary Giddins
Like most new acts that clicked from the first, Bing and Al evoked proven vaudeville traditions while pushing the boundaries. Not the least of their assets was the same sort of youthful jazz-inflected exuberance and worry-free winsomeness that characterized their loose harmonizations. They were a handsome team, Al with his wavy black hair and dark eyes and Bing with his lighter color and piercing baby blues. Their easy manner and horseplay disarmed audiences dazzled by the charge of their rhythm numbers and the beauty of Bing’s sonorous baritone on ballads. They presented themselves as cutups no less than singers and enjoyed themselves tremendously onstage. Vaudeville was hard, but fun. Bing saved the shirt he wore during the run of the revue. It had a false front and buttoned in the back for speedier changing.
Bing may have been a jazz hound, but he had learned the value of sentiment, not only from the great tenors of his youth but from a famous vaudeville team whose popularity was as fleeting as theatrical memory. In 1976 Bing remarked, “The ballads I sang a lot like Joe Schenck of Van and Schenck. I imitated him. I imitated McCormack, Jolson. I took a lot from Jolson…. We sang a lot of scat. What Ella Fitzgerald does now, only she does it about three hundred times better, and I think Cleo Laine does a lot of it, Mel Tormé. That’s what we were doing. We would sing a chorus straight and sing scat the next chorus and then go back to the lyric for the climax or something. And we’d sing a lot of comedy songs too. We lifted a lot of comedy from Van and Schenck and all the other acts that played Spokane at the Pantages Theater.” 29 The report in Variety on Whiteman’s 1926 signing of Bing and Al describes them as “youths who have been doing a Van and Schenck type of act in picture houses.” 30
Gus Van and Joe Schenck were the best-known tenor-baritone team in vaudeville, having starred for several seasons in the ZiegfeldFollies. They achieved particular success in a minstrel sequence singing Berlins “Mandy” (revived by Crosby in the 1954 White Christmas). Van was a dark, rumpled man who (Brooklyn-born, like his partner) favored southern speech affectations but used his deep baritone to master other dialects as well; Variety reported that he could do “Hebe, Irish, Cockney, Wop, Dutch, and Coon.” 31 He also harmonized with and anchored Schenck’s tenor. With his pale eyes, round face, and sweet voice, Schenck brought an Irish lilt to the day’s sentimental songs. Like Rinker, he worked from the piano. Like Crosby and Rinker, Van and Schenck imparted the contagious rapport of old pals from the same neighborhood.
In their filmed appearances, performing songs like “Nobody But Me” and “He’s That Kind of Pal,” Van and Schenck exhibit surprisingly similar harmonies to those of Rinker and Crosby. And yet Bing’s fascination with solo tenors like Schenck or Skin Young (White-man’s high-pitched singer-violinist) can hardly be detected in even his earliest recordings. One thing Bing and Al did not learn from Van and Schenck was scat. Nor is it likely they did much of it before the spring 1926 release of Louis Armstrong’s startling “Heebie Jeebies” — the first widely noted instance on records of an old New Orleans vocal style, which substitutes nonsense syllables for words.
By that time, Crosby and Rinker had made the papers. On New Year’s Day 1926 the Spokane Daily Chronicle headlined the first in a series of bulletins, LOS ANGELES CAPTURED BY SPOKANE PAIR; RINKER, CROSBY MAKE THEATRICAL HIT. 32 The story told of the bumpy trip two months earlier, the discarding of the “delapidated flivver,” the audition for Fanchon and Marco, the success of their singing and “humorous comedy sketch,” and a purported contract (never realized) that promised to launch them on the big-time Orpheum circuit. The article closed with references to the Crosby and Rinker families and to Roy R. Boomer of the Clemmer Theater, who had brought the pair to “the attention of the theater-going public.” After a month in Los Angeles at the Boulevard and Loew’s State, the Fanchon and Marco unit went on tour, opening in the nearby suburb of Glendale and then making brief stops on a western route that took in Pasadena, Pomona, and Riverside. This was followed by full weeks at theaters along a triangular route that went south to San Diego, north to Long Beach, and west to Santa Ana and finally San Bernardino, where they played three days before returning to Los Angeles for another week at the Boulevard.
They were no longer alone, on- or offstage. A week after Bing and Al auditioned, Fanchon and Marco held another audition at Loews State, where they paired two attractive female dancers, Bobby Thompson and Doreen Wilde, who arrived separately but knew each other from previous shows. Doreen was a few years younger than Bing but was far better traveled. As a young girl in El Monte, a small town east of Los Angeles, she studied ballet with Ernest Belcher (father of dancers Lina Basquette and Marge Champion) and Spanish dancing with Eduardo Cansino (father of Rita Hayworth), among others. She was appearing in specialty acts in high-priced nightclubs by the age of seventeen. She toured with the Duncan Sisters, Ken Murray, and Jimmy Durante (“quite young, very ugly, played a wicked piano”), worked from Hawaii to New York, and received a hundred-dollar tip from Al Capone and free tap lessons from Bill Robinson. (“He taught me everything I ever knew about tap,” Doreen recalled.) She was dismayed to find that her mentor could not enter a restaurant in her company. Yet thanks to Robinson and another black dance legend, Peg Leg Johnson, with whom she toured, Doreen developed a style that combined tap, ballet, and contortionist body twisting featured in her eye-opening publicity photos. Doreen had almond eyes, a wide mouth, and black hair bobbed in the manner of Louise Brooks. 33
Fanchon recognized in her a spry youthfulness comparable to that of Crosby and Rinker, and he sought a partner for her. By happy coincidence, he chose Bobby Thompson, whom Doreen had met touring in the first mainland production to play Hawaii. Bobby was a few years older; she could sing as well as dance; and she was blond and beautiful — the perfect complement to Doreen. Fanchon asked them to work up a number with a couple of boys who were just getting started but were “really good.” 34
“She brought two boys out,” Doreen recalled. “Al Rinker was tall and thin with curly black hair and played a piano like youVe never heard before. Bing was a character. He was sort of short and stubby and he had a special way of singing. They were very cute. We liked them right away and they liked us.” 35 During rehearsals they devised a routine in which Doreen danced as Bing sang “Mary Lou,” a brand- new song by an unlikely coalition of bandleader Abe Lyman, pianist J. Russel Robinson (formerly of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band), and filmmaker George Waggner (best remembered as director of The Wolf Man). Bing’s performance of the song went over so well, however, that they cut the dance. “Mary Lou” was a constant in the boys’ act that year. It was arguably the first of Bing’s signature songs, though he did not record it until 1976, when he celebrated his demi-centennial at London’s Palladium. On that occasion, he said, “Fifty years ago I stepped on the stage of a little neighborhood theater in West Los Angeles [always pronounced by Bing with a hard g]. And my big ballad that afternoon was a plaintive little plea….” 36
In the course of doing a grueling four shows a day, five on weekends, Bing, Al, Doreen, and Bobby grew close. At first the relationships were platonic, “just like brothers and sisters.” They boarded in the same hotels and on one occasion got bounced during a Shriners’ convention when the foursome was caught sleeping in the same bed (“the only place we could get,” Doreen would recall). Soon they came up with a quartet number — one that stayed in the show: “Before the ensemble came out for the finale, why Bing and Al and I came out and Bobby and I did the Charleston and they banged up the piano and Bing hum-drummed. He loved to do that — just snap his fingers and tap his feet. He was a doll.” One incident that gave them something to laugh about concerned Doreen’s specialty dress, which had long sleeves with underarm slits, “so you could do your walkovers and lift up your arms.” 37 While visiting her dressing room during a show, Doreen’s mother noticed the slits and helpfully sewed them up. After making a costume change and walking onstage, Doreen realized that she could not do her number and backed off.
By now Bing was beginni
ng to enjoy the showbiz life a little too eagerly: the high-kickers in the chorus line, the contraband booze, the gambling joints on both sides of the border. He could hardly believe his luck, singing for good money without a worry in the world. Away from the Jesuits and his mother for the first time in his life, he inhaled as much life as his lungs could handle. “For in that youth of mine,” confessed Augustine, apparently in a similar mood, “I was on fire to take my fill of hell.” 38 Bing was a long way from home, and he wanted to keep it that way. On their evening off, when the troupe arrived at the Hotel Santa Ana, Bing wrote a chatty letter to a friend in Spokane, Dirk Crabbe, using Mildred’s home as the return address.
Sunday
Dear Dirk—;
How’s everything and have you watered any showcases * of late? Received a letter from Walter the other day and he tells me that you and the little Anderson girl are quite thick. I expect you will be pulling off that marrying business before long. Good groceries at their hut anyhow so you’re not so dumb at that.
We came in here from Long Beach yesterday and this is a pretty little town of about 75,000 souls. Long Beach is the niftiest town I was ever in. Swell golf courses, good bathing and beauteous gals. I was indeed sorry to leave. We play San Bernardino and then go into L.A. for a week before going to Frisco, Oakland etc which territory will consume about 10 weeks.
Received a copy of the Chronicle containing a clipping relating to our work. I expect a number of the cornfeds up there thought it was applesauce, but it is all quite true. We have been very fortunate and are situated now in an envious position which should make us some real dough. At any rate I am sufficiently satisfied with this locality to stay here as long as I’m getting groceries and a flop and if I ever return to Spokane it will be merely for a visit. People up there have no conception of the opportunities presented down here, both commercial and recreational. Long Beach has only 100,000 people but it makes Spokane look like Tekoa. Of course the larger towns are even more wonderful.
I have seen Hazlett Smith several times at the Ambassador. The next time I am in L.A. we’re going to get together and do things. He certainly plays classy looking twists.
While in San Diego I ran into Pete and Ed Smith (Kappa Sig from U.SC.) and of course we must go to Tia Juana and get stiff. Am enclosing a portrait taken in the Holy City. We had just come from the Foreign Club where I woti some dough. Hence the happy grin. While down there in San Diego we stayed with Jay at the Beach and we didn’t miss a thing.
Was quite surprised to learn that Wink and Alice are still clubby and that Betty and Ray Johnson are likewise afflicted. Understand that the Band might go to Frisco in which visit I shall probably see them there. I hope so.
There are certainly plenty of filthy bands around L.A. Tone don’t mean a thing. Rythm [sic] and heat are the only requisites together with novel arrangements. There are so dam [sic] many hot sax-men down here that it isn’t even peculiar. All the good men make plenty dough. Anywhere from 85 to 150 per week and the cafe jobs are a snap.
Well Dirk I fear this letter is getting a bit lengthy and tiresome so will cease. Drop me a line soon and give me all the dirt on the boys & girls. Say hello to the gang.
Your friend
Bing. 39
The fledgling entertainer did not entirely leave the Jesuits behind with the cornfeds. “He was always drunk,” Doreen said. “After every show at night he just got himself plastered, yet he would never miss mass. I don’t know how he even made the shows, but he was up to go to church every Sunday morning. It was a riot.” As ever, he was loquacious: “When Bing talked he used words that made you feel like an idiot. Even an intelligent person would feel like an idiot because he used words that were not in the dictionary, but they sounded good.” Most of all he was funny — “funny to talk to, funny when he ate.” 40
For a brief spell, Bing and Doreen were romantically involved, but Bobby was the one he fell for, the first in a line of sweet-faced, sharp, showbiz troupers with whom he was smitten. To Al, who took up with a brunette in the chorus line (“16 Lightning Flashes — Fanchon’s Own Steppers”), Bing’s romances were casual and all too typical of show-business relationships. But according to Doreen, who met her own true love on the vaudeville circuit, Bing and Bobby (“the most fantastic couple”) were quite serious. “Very much in love. They really were,” she said. “They were going to get married in Tia Juana, but her mother said she wasn’t going to let her get tied up with a poor singer, so they separated.” 41
On returning to Los Angeles in early February, Bing and Al bought a secondhand Dodge to continue the tour and squire their girls. The second lap of The Syncopation Idea brought them to San Francisco with stopovers in Oakland and Sacramento. The stay in the Bay Area precipitated Bing’s long friendship with the Hearst family. A young stage-door Johnny named Bill called on Doreen at Loew’s Warfield, where they played a highly successful week in a show that also featured the new Garbo film (The Torrent), comedy shorts, and selections from Carmen. Doreen demurred, complaining that she was too tired to go out after five shows a day, and suggested he call on her during the revue’s next tour of San Francisco. She was unaware that Bill, a Berkeley student, was William Randolph Hearst’s son and a Crosby-Rinker fan.
Of his first encounter with Bing, William Hearst Jr. said, “He was very gentle and unprepossessing — not pushy at all. You’d never know he was a show person — always smiling and grinning and very easy to get along with.” 42 Bill invited Bing and Al to a party at his father’s San Simeon estate. The boys asked Doreen, Bobby, and another dancer to go with them. They were put up in cottages for three days, visiting the main house only at dinner (some twenty-five guests were catered to). They saw Marion Davies once, during an early-morning swim. She waved.
All this a mere thirteen weeks after they pulled out of Spokane.
Upon finishing in Sacramento and returning to Los Angeles, Bing and Al learned they would not be required for the next Fanchon and Marco tour, unlike Bobby and Doreen, who went directly into rehearsal. They found themselves, to use the show-business euphemism, at liberty. Having saved some money, they took an apartment in the San Fernando Valley and scoured the trade papers for work. They were now experienced vaudevillians and didn’t need Mildred or anyone else to tell them how to find gigs. A few weeks later they learned that Will Morrissey’s Music Hall Revue was casting at the Majestic Theater; they auditioned and were hired at the same price as before, seventy-five dollars each. Morrissey’s shows were coproduced by Arthur Freed, an erstwhile vaudeville performer who, as a producer in the 1940s and 1950s, would redefine the movie musical at MGM. In 1926 he was already a successful songwriter with access to financial backing.
According to Bing, the producers rechristened the Majestic the Orange Grove Theater for the duration of the show, “thinking that tag would give it more verve.” 43 The company rehearsed for weeks, but the ill-fated presentation was forced to open a day late, on April 30; the costumes had not arrived on time. 44
Bing and Al were not initially featured. Freed remembered, “We loved Bing, but didn’t know what to do with him because the show was already running. So we put him in the pit to sing between acts and he went over so big that we had trouble raising the curtain for the second act!” 45 In truth, Bing and Al worked on an elevated stand in the pit for four months until the revue hit San Diego. The show’s chief attractions were Midge Miller, Morrissey’s wife; Eddie Borden, a sketch comedian who parodied Aimee Semple McPherson and others; singer Lee Kent; comedian Eddie Lambert; an adagio team; and a chorus line. Those were the acts expected to entice customers. Bing and Al were gravy. Yet night after night, the audiences — rich with important Hollywood movers and shakers — responded mostly to Two Boys and a Piano, demanding encores that stopped the show.
Bing began to meet some of the brightest talents of the day. During the first month of Morrissey’s revue, the English musical Chariot’s Revue opened at Hollywood’s El Capitan Theater, fresh from a triumph
ant run in New York. It introduced America to three established stars of the British stage: Beatrice Lillie, Gertrude Lawrence, and Jack Buchanan. Morrissey, who was friendly with producer André Chariot, arranged for Bing and Al to see a Wednesday matinee; they were bowled over by the show’s sophistication, fast pace, and love of language revealed in extended comic skits. One night after the curtain fell, Morrissey invited them to accompany him to a party Chariot was giving for his headliners. They drove to a house in the Hollywood Hills and, in Al’s words, “tried to play it cool,” sipping Mumm Extra Dry champagne and meeting the stars. 46 Late that evening Chariot’s pianist sat down at the Steinway, and Lillie cracked everyone up with her double entendres and mock scowls in material such as “Susannah’s Squeaking Shoes,” followed by Lawrence with a signature number (“I Don’t Know”) and a Noël Coward ballad. Buchanan did a medley from the show. Morrissey, by this time feeling no pain, rose and asked if everyone would like to hear a few songs by the young men in his show. “We were full of champagne and ready,” Al recalled. 47 He went to the piano as Bing pulled out his pocket cymbal, and they dashed through “When the Red, Red Robin Comes Bob, Bob, Bobbin’Along.” Asked for a second number, Al suggested the Tommy Lyman number Mildred always played, “Montmartre Rose.” Bing agreed and ladled his best syrup on the plight of that sorrowful fille de joie, his high notes receiving full attention and much applause, notably from the three English stars, who rushed to him with compliments. It was a heady moment: the beginning of his ascendancy as Hollywood’s own crooner. Lillie and Buchanan later worked with him, but Bing never recorded “Montmartre Rose.”
At another party, Bing met a young musician who, after fitful encounters over a period of more than twenty years, became one of his closest friends, Phil Harris. “I was working a place called Edgewater Beach Club, one of the first of the beach clubs, with Henry Halstead, who had a pretty big band on the coast,” Harris recalled. “Bing came in for just one night with a private party and we kind of hit it off because I was playing drums then and he played that cymbal. He was doing comedy songs, something like — I used to kid him about it later — ‘Aphrodite, where’d you leave your nightie last night’ or something. We hit it off pretty good.” 48 He went to see Crosby and Rinker in Morrissey’s show, which he characterized as an “Olsen and Johnson kind of thing,” referring to the vaudeville team known for shameless hokum and lunatic jokes. 49 Phil was most impressed by Bing’s timing: “He was singing those rhythm tunes pretty good — I don’t remember him doing any ballads. Those things were rolling.” 50