Bing Crosby

by Gary Giddins

  At it turned out, the agreement benefited everyone. The best of the original songs were employed, Foster’s melody did little damage, and “It’s Easy to Remember,” the new ballad Rodgers and Hart were obliged to write, turned out to be a major hit and one of the most beloved songs in their matchless oeuvre. Still, Hart was incensed by Bing’s intransigence concerning “Old Folks at Home.” He declared they would never again write for Bing, who, in turn, declined to record their songs until the patriotic “Bombardier Song” of 1942. A shame all around, though Hart’s antipathy toward the interpolated Foster is easy to understand.

  Interpolations were commonplace on the stage and in films. Most of the studios had songwriters under contract who, in exchange for salaries, gave up their publishing royalties. When a studio purchased film rights to a Broadway score, the royalties went to the songwriters, so in order to generate royalties for itself, the studio would replace some of the Broadway songs with those by its own writers, who in many instances were hacks. Needless to say, this galled the Broadway writers. Rodgers and Hart would not hear of it; their contract specifically mandated that they provide all the songs for Mississippi. The Foster song violated their contract and particularly offended them because of its theme of a former slave who longs for the old plantation.

  Bing did not see Foster’s song in that light, and he sings the lamentation with tremendous vitality. In his interpretation, it becomes a universal venting of desire for the lost places none of us can ever regain. Yet for all the emotion he wrings from the lyric and despite its undeniable historical appropriateness, his performance is enfeebled by Foster’s minstrel grammar and the allusion to darkies (in later years Bing sang people). In the picture, Fields opines that the song won’t last two weeks because “people can’t remember the tune,” then walks away whistling it. Jack Kapp must have been whistling, too; with that song, Bing led the way to a trove of nineteenth-century public-domain standards, and within a year he, Armstrong, the Mills Brothers, and other Decca artists were reviving them in bunches.

  Rodgers and Hart were more insulted than injured when the movie credited Foster’s song, retitled “Swanee River,” to them. 31 But their chagrin should have been tempered by Bing’s renderings of their genuine songs, two of which became number one hits. He uses a touch of parlando on “Soon,” emphasizing his range with high sighs and chesty curves, and delivers the definitive interpretation of the marvelous “It’s Easy to Remember.” Its deceptive simplicity — a string of B flats that arcs to a D natural — and the sloping release suit him as well as the wistful lyric and lulling tempo. A third song, “Down by the River,” elicited an indifferent recording but is sung with great relish in the film, building to a rousing finish.

  One fourteen-year-old in North Dakota who never forgot that finish was Norma Egstrom, who saved her pennies to see Crosby movies as an escape from her abusive stepmother. Years later, after she had changed her name to Peggy Lee and become a regular performer on Bing’s radio show, she told him about seeing Mississippi: “He had lost the girl and sang ‘Down by the River’ and I was crying so, because I wanted everything to turn out right for him. And when I told Bing how heartbroken I was, he took me all over San Francisco, one place after another, searching for a pianist who knew that song, and sang it to me. Imagine your idol singing that song to you.” 32

  On paper, the film promised a concoction worthy of Ziegfeld: Bing’s songs and W. C. Fields’s comedy. Sutherland, close to both men, seemed the ideal director. He knew that no one could ad-lib or steal a scene like Fields, who, though drinking heavily, was inspired throughout the shoot. In one of his funniest routines, he recounts his battle with Indians (“I unsheathed my Bowie knife and cut a path through a wall of human flesh, dragging my canoe behind me”). Bing, who often broke up during their scenes together, did not mind the upstaging. A longtime fan, he memorized Fields’s best lines. Sutherland grew concerned, however, as the story — a moldy Booth Tarkington play that had been filmed twice before 33 — shifted in Fields’s favor. He felt obliged to warn Bing: “I’m worried now that he’s going to be so funny, he’s going to steal the picture from you.” Bing shrugged it off. “Is it good for the picture?” Sutherland said it was great. Bing told him, “Forget it, it’s got my name on it, what do I care what Fields steals? I’m not a fundamentalist. This is business. If it’s funny, okay. I think he’s great, don’t you?” 34

  Still, rumors of rivalry between them were rife. Crosby was reported to have demanded recuts after a preview (the changes he mandated actually occurred when he came onboard), and Fields was said to have disdained his singing. They were, in fact, friends and Toluca Lake neighbors, occasionally playing golf and drinking together. “Fields had real affection for Bing Crosby,” Robert Lewis Taylor wrote. “In turn, Crosby had an idolatrous, filial attitude toward Fields, whom he always called ‘Uncle Bill.’” 35 When Fields went to visit him at Del Mar racetrack a year later, Bing bought him an expensive pair of binoculars. Film preservationist Bob DeFlores recalled that upon visiting Bing’s baronial home in Hillsborough in 1977, he drawled, “Nice little lean-to you have here.” Without missing a beat, Bing provided the citation: “Bill Fields, Poppy, 1936.” 36

  The only downside of the production for Bing was that his weight had increased to 190 pounds and he was obliged to wear a girdle, a nuisance he accepted with more equanimity than he did the requisite toupee. By this time, however, he made a point of avoiding the scalp doily by wearing hats in as many scenes as possible. Charles Lang devised several fancy shots — reflections in mirrors, Bing singing through harp strings — and managed to make him appealing even with a mustache and muttonchops, about which he remarked to Quentin Reynolds, who profiled him for Collier’s, “Looks like hell, don’t it?” 37 The story wasn’t much, with Bing as a sensible Philadelphian who refuses to engage in a duel, thereby losing the love of Gail Patrick while earning the adoration of her kid sister, Joan Bennett. (Frank Capra had used the same device of rival sisters and family honor the previous year in Broadway Bill, which he remade in 1950 as a vehicle for Bing.) Reviews were mixed, but despite strong competition in a spring rendered heavily Gallic by Les Miserables and Cardinal Richelieu, it made pots of money.

  Paramount was so pleased that it renewed Bing’s contract in a three-year, nine-picture deal, at $125,000 a film, plus a salary of $15,600 for each week past the eighth one devoted to any film, plus a new clause that had become singularly important to Bing. 38 Crosby’s negotiators initially suggested twelve pictures at $200,000 each; they did not expect to get it, but in maneuvering toward common ground, they finally wrangled from Paramount permission for Bing to make one film annually for another studio. That set off fierce competition for his services, with offers coming in from such past associates as Fanchon and Marco, Hearst’s Cosmopolitan Productions, Manny Cohen, and film pioneer Jesse Lasky, who had been ousted by Cohen and now vainly sought to launch a production company with Mary Pickford. Bing signed with Cohen, who already owned an interest in his services, to coproduce an independent feature for Columbia Pictures in 1936.

  The new Paramount covenant began poorly. One remarkable indication of the studio’s confidence in Bing was its perverse reasoning in deciding to release a turkey called Two for Tonight. Initially, it promised to be a sure-fire production: reuniting Bing with Joan Bennett, Frank Tuttle would direct a farce adapted by George Marion Jr., shot by Karl Struss, and supported by such expert hams as Mary Boland, Thelma Todd, and Ernest Cossart. Resting at Rancho Santa Fe, Bing lost twelve pounds in preparation, while Mack Gordon and Harry Revel wrote the songs. What they produced was a calamity. Tired of the usual froth, Tuttle was preoccupied with adapting Dashiell Hammett’s The Glass Key, one of his best pictures, and allowed Two for Tonight to lurch between screwball comedy and romance with timeouts for music. The romance amounted to little: Bing and Bennett “meet cute” when he rolls downhill in a runaway wheelchair and she is scooped onto his lap. “Going my way?” he asks. “Apparently,”
she says. For comedy, Tuttle turned to the silent era for a long, elaborate bout of seltzer-squirting, his homage to a Laurel and Hardy pie-throwing epic. 39

  The inchoate script required retouching by several hands, leaching whatever strength it might have had as a satire of the New York stage. The songs were weak, though Bing mined three hits for Decca. He fared less well with his character, a cipher surrounded by lunatics. Once again he is insensible to the good girl’s true love, preferring bad girl Thelma Todd. His singing, however, is electric, despite self-deprecating crooning jokes, whether swinging “From the Top of Your Head to the Tip of Your Toes” or emoting “Without a Word of Warning.”

  During post-production, the film was sheared to barely an hour’s running time. If they had cut another forty minutes, they might have had a very good two-reeler. There was talk of shelving it entirely rather than dilute Bing’s box-office clout. Instead, it was slated for late-summer release as a test. Bing was already known to be critic-proof; if audiences would pay to see him in this, a picture guaranteed to elicit bad reviews and negative word of mouth, Bing’s box-office power would be affirmed rather spectacularly. As it happened, Two for Tonight turned a handsome profit and was held over at several theaters. Nor were reviewers uniformly censorious. Graham Greene, writing in the London Spectator, considered it “very amusing and well written entertainment” and described Bing as “attractively commonplace.” 40 On the other hand, Greene disdained the Irving Berlin songs in RKO’s Top Hat, the year’s one indisputably great hit musical, which deservedly trounced Two for Tonight when they played rival theaters in New York.

  The year was turning out to be a personal triumph for Bing financially; between records, radio, and movies, he grossed more than $500,000. In other respects, he was treading water. His pictures made money but did little to enhance his stature. Mae West, enjoying her last year as a box-office queen, was Paramount’s top draw, followed by Claudette Colbert, Gary Cooper, and Bing. Other studios, however, were dominated by their musical stars — Astaire and Rogers at RKO, Shirley Temple at Fox, Eddie Cantor at Goldwyn, Jeannette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy at MGM. Weeks before Two for Tonight opened, Paramount sought to make amends by announcing what it considered a classy project. Bing’s next film would be Tony’s High Hat, costarring Metropolitan Opera contralto Gladys Swarthout. Apparently, the studio neglected to consult Bing, who publicly declined. The plot, counterposing jazz and the classics, was a familiar gambit in the 1930s. Bing did not like the story idea and contended that he could not hold his own with an opera star. But Paramount, intent on finding a more credible answer than Kitty Carlisle to MGM’s MacDonald or Columbia’s Met star Grace Moore, convinced Bing to make a test with Swarthout and reannounced the project with a more didactic title, Opera Versus Jazz. After Bing and Gladys sang “Home on the Range” and “Thunder Over Paradise” for the ears of the bosses, the project was nixed. Swarthout was teamed, instead, with John Boles in Rose of the Rancho. Two years later she left Hollywood for good.

  The Swarthout episode may have indirectly stung Jack Kapp, ironically enough, considering how closely Paramount’s misguided ambition jibed with his own desire to establish Bing as a singer of light classics. The day Variety printed Paramount’s announcement of Tony’s High Hat, August 14, Bing took out his frustration on Jack in an argument that was recorded and covertly circulated. 41 It was Bing’s first time in the studio since “Silent Night,” six months earlier, and his first session with the Dorsey Brothers in more than two years. The session was brought about by Rockwell-O’Keefe, the agency that had arranged for Bing to take over the Kraft Music Hall. Cork O’Keefe hoped to find a berth on the show for the Dorseys, too. Their band was an obvious candidate, its very sound a reflection of Bing’s musical influence; as drummer Ray McKinley once explained, “The emphasis on the trombones was to give the band a Bing Crosby quality.” 42 Bing had not heard the new Dorsey band, which was playing the Glen Island Casino in New Rochelle, and as he and Dixie planned to spend much of August at the Saratoga races, Cork hoped to lure him out to listen. When Bing complained that he did not want to brave the crowds or don the hairpiece, Cork suggested a record date.

  Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey were two of the most temperamental men in the music business. Known as the battling Dorseys, they battled chiefly each other and were not exactly enjoying their much touted, celebrity-studded engagement at Glen Island — not with Tommy, the mandarin loner, taking all the bows as conductor and Jimmy, the acerbic tippler, giving him the fish eye from the reed section. One evening, weeks before Bing traveled to New York, Jimmy griped about a tempo and Tommy tromped off the stage, never to return. Thus ended the Dorsey Brothers and commenced two of the most successful bands of the Swing Era. For the immediate future, however, O’Keefe wanted them both on Kraft. He pleaded with Tommy to do the record date, and Tommy relented. He would do it for Cork and Bing, he said, but would not speak to his brother. August 14 was a sizzler, but tempers were cool when Bing arrived. The brothers were happy to be reunited with him, if not with each other, and were primed — both were perfectionists — with solid arrangements (probably by the band’s pianist, Bobby Van Eps) of the five songs from Two for Tonight.

  The first few hours were highly productive. Though slightly hoarse, Bing completed the five tunes without incident. Much joy is evident in “From the Top of Your Head to the Tip of Your Toes,” which glistens with Bing’s jauntiness. “Takes Two to Make a Bargain” is a thin number, but Bing and the musicians (Jimmy takes a clarinet solo) are off and running, with Bing rhythmically interpolating the phrase “I’d like to know” and upping the ante in an embellished second chorus. By “Two for Tonight” Bing sounds a bit worn and raspy, but notwithstanding a couple of spent high notes, he phrases with pleasing élan. Then they took a break.

  In addition to the Two for Tonight score, he was scheduled to record his number from The Big Broadcast of 1936, Ralph Rainger and Dorothy Parker’s “I Wished on the Moon.” It was his sole contribution to a picture carried by Jack Oakie, Lyda Roberti, and the wonderful Nicholas Brothers. Bing sang two choruses under a full moon in a rustic setting and received top billing. Kapp knew the appealing song could be a hit.

  Precisely what ensued in the studio is unclear, though alcohol was evidently poured on fresh wounds. Jimmy was a serious drinker and easier to get along with than Tommy, so it is not unlikely that he and Bing took the break together, consoling each other with their beefs. Bing had two gripes: the Swarthout story, announced that morning, and a fight he was waging at Paramount in an attempt to share in royalties on songs written for his movies. In fact, he was scheduled to meet with Manny Cohen in Saratoga to discuss their imminent production, for which all the songs would be written by independent songwriters and published by Rockwell-O’Keefe’s music wing, Select, guaranteeing Bing’s participation. At Paramount Bing’s demand was blocked by Lou Diamond, the hard-working, generally well liked supervisor of Paramount film shorts and the head of Famous Music, one of the studio’s two music-publishing subsidiaries. Though owned by Paramount, Famous operated independently; Diamond, unmoved by Bing’s pull, refused to cut him in on songs — a perquisite that later became standard in Hollywood contracts, including Bing’s. It didn’t help that Bing and Diamond could not stand each other. According to Sid Herman, Diamond’s successor at the firm, they were incapable of discussing the matter. Famous Music controlled publishing rights for “I Wished on the Moon.”

  After the break, while Kapp was absent, Bing informed the band that he would sing only a single chorus, like in the old days when he was the male vocalist who appeared in the middle of an instrumental performance with a vocal refrain. During the rehearsal Kapp walked into the control booth and couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Bing groused that he was unable to sing more than a chorus because he was hoarse, a fact amply demonstrated by his work that day. Jack tried to convince him that he could no longer get away with a solo refrain, but Bing, who never raised his voice in an argument, remained
childishly rigid as the band sat around, waiting for the final decision. The altercation was recorded — at Kapp’s instigation, perhaps with the intention of later showing Bing how badly he had behaved. But it also shows how funny Bing could be even when sloshed and threatening.

  Jack: Come on will ya, Bing? Sing.

  Bing: You wanna make this thing…

  Jack: I want you to sing.

  Bing:… the way we rehearsed it or not?

  Jack: Sing the first chorus. I don’t care what you do after that, but sing the first chorus.

  Bing: No.

  Jack: Well now, you’re a little bit arbitrary….

  Bing: No, I don’t think so. I think you’re being arbitrary.

  Jack: I leave it to the jury.

  Bing: Man gets a record free [crowd laughter] with a beautiful arrangement, he don’t want, you don’t want my vocal chorus.

  Jack: [shouts over him] Hey, Rockwell-O’Keefe, come on out of there, let’s get with the game. Come on.

  Bing: [shouts back] Let’s go over to Victor! Let’s go to Victor! They’ll take it! Come on.

  Jimmy Dorsey: Brunswick will take it, grab it up in a minute.