Bing Crosby

by Gary Giddins

  Mary concluded, “He didn’t want to lose. He finally got the money back, he didn’t have to pay me, and he didn’t want to play again.” One consequence of the time Bing and Mary spent together on the set was the rumor of an affair. Carlisle adamantly denied a romance, conceding that “there was so much gossip, it was unbelievable.” She thought it was fueled because she accompanied Bing to Del Mar and to Spokane as part of the KMH troupe when he received his degree, though her mother chaperoned her on those occasions. “I bought a mink coat on one picture and people said, ‘Oh, Bing bought the mink coat,’ which is why I don’t believe anything I read anymore.” Yet the gossip never made the papers. “You have to remember, Louella Parsons was a good friend because I was a good friend of the Hearsts, and I would be up at the beach house, the ranch, San Simeon. So Louella is not going to print anything that isn’t nice about me. And if she heard something, she’d say, ‘Mary, what is this about a coat?’ And I’d say, ‘Don’t you believe it, I’ll show you the check I paid for it,’ you know, and she’d say, ‘Okay, honey,’ and that was it. They controlled everything in the press.” 43

  The Hearst Editors’ Radio Poll voted Kraft Music Hall best musical program and Bing the best male vocalist for 1937. He also reappeared on the Quigley box-office poll for the second time, ranking after Shirley Temple, Clark Gable, and Robert Taylor.

  Bing started 1938 by completing Doctor Rhythm, arguably the most peculiar picture he ever made. Though routine enough in plot and variety-show diversions, it was a more personal project than its immediate predecessors. What began as a hip, funny, and stylish filmmaking party for old friends was derailed by accidents, infighting, and a capitulation to the sensibilities of southern exhibitors at the expense of Louis Armstrong. The film survives in a blundered post-release print as a fragmentary curiosity. Doctor Rhythm was Bing’s second independent venture with Manny Cohen’s Major Pictures, only this time there was no bidding for distribution. Paramount would release it under the rubric “Adolph Zukor Presents an Emanuel Cohen Production.”

  The comity suggested by the joint billing was entirely cosmetic. Zukor had disdained Cohen for years, ever since he had run the studio and signed Bing, Mae West, and Gary Cooper to personal contracts. He now saw the opportunity for a showdown. That was Zukor’s way. A smiling cobra who bided his time before striking, he had taken control of Paramount twenty years earlier by taking note of the weaknesses of its founder, W. W. Hodkinson, and then using them to turn the board, against him. With Doctor Rhythm, he found a way to rid himself of Cohen, whose name would never appear on another feature film. Executive machinations were of no concern to Bing, however, as he embarked on the venture, surrounding himself with friends and trusted colleagues.

  Frank Tuttle was back, working for the first time with cinematographer Charles Lang, who was shooting his fourth Crosby picture. Tuttle credited Lang with breaking him of his penchant for arty foreground compositions that obscured the background action. Herb Polesie hired on as associate producer. John Scott Trotter wrote arrangements for a score supervised by Georgie Stoll. A new team was configured to write songs, as Johnny Burke joined James Monaco, a veteran composer recently signed to the studio. In his glory years Monaco had written such enduring ditties as “Row, Row, Row” for Ziegfeld Follies of 1912, “You Made Me Love You” for Al Jolson, and “Crazy People” for the Boswell Sisters, but his career had been in eclipse for several years. Jo Swerling and Richard Connell wrote the script, freely adapted from O. Henry’s uninspired story “The Badge of Policeman O’Roon.”

  As usual, Bing was billed as part of a starring quartet, along with his backgammon adversary Mary Carlisle, fellow horse breeder Andy Devine, and — in a particular coup and the primary motivation for the entire project — Beatrice Lillie. 44 Bing had admired the outlandish Canadian-born comedienne ever since he saw her in Charlot’s Revue in 1926. In the intervening years she had become the darling of the English stage, playing Shaw and Coward, though best known for turns in comic revues that earned her the accolade “the funniest woman on earth.” 45 Yet her humor was hardly heartland material, and after a dismal vehicle in the early days of sound, she had been ignored by the film studios.

  Wearing her hair in a mannish bob and trilling double entendres while gesticulating with a long cigarette holder, Bea Lillie combined wordplay, gender confusion, upper-crust parody, and spry physicality for a result that convulsed some and confused others. For her first picture in eight years (and the only suitable opportunity she would ever have in Hollywood), she was promised a major production number in addition to one of her trademark numbers, Rodgers and Hart’s “There’s Rhythm in This Heart of Mine,” and the chance to revive her famous sketch from At Home Abroad, in which she orders “a dozen double damask dinner napkins.” 46 Lillie arrived in Los Angeles in late September, appeared on Kraft Music Hall, and posed for Doctor Rhythm publicity photos with a horse, after which she thanked the photographer and his assistant and then turned to the horse and said, “Thank you, too, you walleyed son of a bitch.” 47

  Louis Armstrong was also signed. After Pennies from Heaven he had appeared for Paramount in the Jack Benny comedy Artists & Models and in Manny Cohen’s unsuccessful Mae West film, Every Day’s a Holiday. Now he was back with Bing, purportedly in a more ambitious role, with two musical numbers and dialogue scenes, generating much publicity. Joe Glaser, Armstrong’s manager, told the Chicago Defender (a black paper) that Louis would have “an opportunity to work throughout the picture in many scenes with Bing Crosby,” 48 enabling him to “surpass all of his acting in previous films.” 49 That was in September. By October, when the picture went into production, Louis’s role had been greatly reduced; though he worked two weeks (a glossy still of him and Bing was widely published), he was now limited to one production number, the climactic performance at a benefit for the police department, described with appalling insensitivity in the Paramount press book:

  The number opens with what seems to be a symphony orchestra in silhouette. Symphonic music swells from the screen. The number ends, the leader turns, bows and leans wearily against a pillar. Then as the light comes up we see that the musicians aren’t a symphony orchestra at all, but a hot negro dance band, and the leader no Toscanini in black full dress, but a chubby darkie in a dress suit of silver cloth. He stands there dreamily until someone toots an impatient note at him from the rear, then he bestirs himself to reality, sighs, raises his trumpet and goes into “The Trumpet Player’s Lament,” which begins,

  “I wish that I could play like José Iturbi,

  Instead of tootin’ notes into a derby…”

  The disconsolate one is Louis Armstrong. 50

  The prevalent treatment of black performers in Hollywood musicals involved isolating their numbers so they could be snipped out when the pictures were distributed in the South. Despite all the publicity attending Armstrong’s participation and the prominence accorded him in billing and press materials, that option became the fallback remedy for Doctor Rhythm — especially after it was understood that Tuttle had shot Louis in front of a racially integrated ensemble. Although MGM presented the mixed Benny Goodman quartet in Hollywood Hotel the year Doctor Rhythm was filmed, Tuttle’s decision may have been viewed by the brass as a provocation; the only promotional stills of the sequence show Louis surrounded by black musicians.

  Certainly, Zukor had the southern market on his mind after the brouhaha caused by Louis’s performance in Artists & Models. Atlanta’s The Georgian protested, “Martha Raye, thinly burnt-corked, does a Harlem specialty with a fat Negro trumpeter and a hundred other Negroes. It is coarse to the point of vulgarity. I have no objection to Negroes on the screen. I like them from Bill Robinson down the line. Their stuff is usually good. But I don’t like mixing white folk — and especially a white girl — in their acts.” 51 The managing editor of the Shreveport Journal personally wrote Zukor to warn him that any attempt to depict Negroes and whites “in social equality” was offensive and might g
enerate repercussions. 52

  But that issue could wait; there were more pressing backstage problems, ranging from the ludicrous to the lunatic. Bing offered a small part to his recently acquitted golf friend, John Montague, arguing, “I knew he’d win out, he comes back here with clean hands and can start over again.” 53 The Hays Office convened a meeting and flaunted its power in barring him from the film. Bing backed off. Then a problem arose with the title. The working title was that of O. Henry’s story, but as the cameras started to roll, something snappier was sought, like Swing Along Ladies or Come Along Lady. One executive proposed Doctor Rhythm, to exploit the “reams of publicity printed about Crosby’s doctorate from Gonzaga University.” 54 Knowing Gonzaga might take umbrage, Larry telegrammed Father Sharp to tell him of the suggestion. As Sharp was out of town, the president, Leo J. Robinson, opened the wire and misread the title as Doctor of Rhythm. He wrote Larry, thanking him for directing the matter to the school’s attention, and asked that the degree “not be referred to in any light manner.” He was primarily irked by a radio burlesque on Fred Allen’s Town Hall Tonight in which an actor portraying Robinson — “a cheap and undesirable caricature” — asked Bing for a job in the movies. 55

  Larry advised Cohen that Bing would not precipitate a clash with Gonzaga, and the studio relented, not knowing that Bing had taken the matter in hand with authoritative diplomacy, writing Father Robinson, “Larry has just shown me your letter of recent date and I am sorry that the undignified reference to the presentation of the degree was made on the Town Hall Tonight radio program. This is the type of thing that they generally do on their show…. I don’t think there will be anything more of this nature, however. At least I hope not, as the ceremony and the honor the degree stands for is much too important to me to be either caricatured or referred to in the spirit of levity on the radio or in the newspapers.” Concerning the title, he pointed out that it was Doctor Rhythm, a “substantial difference” from Doctor of Rhythm, implying no “connection with the ceremony at Gonzaga as the character I play in the picture is a doctor, a general practitioner in New York.” He noted that the title was not finalized and “if we can think of anything better we will make the change.” 56 That would not be necessary.

  Bing’s finesse was of no use a couple of weeks later, when Tuttle was directing a scene set in the Central Park Zoo in which Andy Devine’s inebriated character frees the animals, including a cage full of monkeys. A net had been draped over the soundstage, but as the actor opened the latch, a lot of monkeys — 150 according to a newspaper account, 300 according to a Paramount press release, 350 according to Bing’s autobiography — broke out, ripping the net apart and escaping. Four hysterical hours later forty of the monkeys had been seized; the rest toured Los Angeles, many of them swarming through trees in the district of Belmont High School. Cohen offered students a one-dollar bounty per head for every monkey captured. Monkey sightings were reported for weeks.

  The studio got better publicity when Bing challenged Bob Hope to a round of golf. Hope was about to film The Big Broadcast of 1938, the picture in which he and Shirley Ross sing “Thanks for the Memory,” so the outing bolstered two pictures. On the first hole only, for the benefit of press photographers, Ross caddied for Bob and Mary Carlisle for Bing. The loser was supposed to work as a stand-in for a day on the winner’s picture. Bing won handily, though no one knows if Bob spent a day baking under the lights on the Doctor Rhythm set. 57

  The fun and games turned treacherous by late January 1938, after principal shooting ended, when the film was assessed at $350,000 over its $800,000 budget. Various technical problems were blamed, as well as Cohen’s desire to give greater prominence to Bea Lillie. Zukor charged in, demanding control. Cohen’s only leverage was his possession of the script and cutting print, and he withheld them. Paramount seized the negative, created its own print, and tried unsuccessfully to get Tuttle to supervise the editing. Why Tuttle refused is not clear, as he omits the episode from his unpublished memoir, though he writes at length of what a delightful experience the film was for him and Bing: he describes working with Bea Lillie as “one of the biggest kicks of our careers.” 58 The studio assigned Herb Polesie the impossible task of cutting the film with no more than, as Variety noted, “his own conception of what the playwright had in mind.” 59

  Emanuel Cohen was a tiny (under five feet) tin-pot Napoleon who became head of production in Paramount’s darkest days, 1932, making numerous enemies as he bullied artists and displaced such industry stalwarts as B. P. Schulberg and Jesse Lasky. After his own fall some thought he was a model for the eponymous double-crosser in What Makes Sammy Run? by B. P.’s son, Budd, who denied it. Herman Mankiewicz said Cohen’s only virtue was his diminutive size: “You don’t have to see the sonofabitch — unless you look under the desk.” 60 Yet in the early 1930s, when Paramount’s value plummeted and Zukor (unable to repurchase stock he borrowed to acquire a chain of theaters) declared bankruptcy, ham-handed Manny was credited with keeping the studio afloat. He encouraged adult features like A Farewell to Arms and the sex farces of Mae West and Carole Lombard and launched the unexpectedly nimble crooner, Crosby. Now it was over for him. In exchange for a settlement of $400,000, he turned over all materials relating to Doctor Rhythm and relinquished claims to the nine pictures he made for distribution by Paramount, as well as the lease to his studio property. He was said to be planning productions with Gary Cooper and Mae West, but they never materialized.

  Tuttle credited Polesie as “a contributor to the success of Doctor Rhythm… as adviser on story construction and picture planning,” but others also had input on the post-production edit. 61 Acting on Zukor’s orders to revise the footage to evenly balance Bing and Bea, LeBaron hired producer George M. Arthur to supervise, committing $150,000 for new scenes pending the response to a sneak preview. How much work was done is not known; but when the completed film was officially previewed several weeks later at the Los Angeles Paramount, it ran eighty minutes and there was no sign of Louis Armstrong. None of the remarkably favorable reviews noted his disappearance — except in black newspapers and England’s Melody Maker, which raised a ruckus, reporting that the cut was made “in spite of Bing Crosby’s urgent request to leave Louis in the film.” 62

  Bing told the Pittsburgh Courier, a black paper, that cuts were made to accommodate increased footage of Bea Lillie, affecting his and Andy Devine’s scenes as well as Louis’s. He continued to exert pressure on Paramount, which ultimately agreed to supply a complete print with the Armstrong sequence to theaters requesting it. Only theaters in black communities did so, including the Regal in Chicago, which billed Louis as the star, and the Regent in Brooklyn. Those prints are not believed to have survived, and except for a few stills, the sequence is presumed lost. Late that summer Larry Crosby offered Melody Maker an explanation, denying “racial or professional jealousy” and repeating the need to give more footage to Beatrice Lillie. 63

  In truth, the film is so dizzy with specialty numbers, mistaken-identity gambits, and chases that Louis’s number might very well have slowed the proceedings. Besides, his featured number, “The Trumpet Player’s Lament,” which Armstrong recorded for Jack Kapp at the same session that produced two of his masterpieces (“Struttin’ with Some Barbecue” and “Jubilee”), was unworthy of him. Trashing jazz and everything he stood for (“I wish that I could play like José Iturbi…”), it was perhaps better off buried. Yet in noting that “Louis appeared in front of a white [actually mixed] band in the film,” Larry leaves the unmistakable impression that Zukor took to heart the warnings of southern exhibitors. 64 Larry concluded, “Bing, who is Louis’ bosom pal, was dissatisfied with the results and has sworn to get Louis a big part in the next Crosby musical.” 65

  Alas, that musical was far from “next.” It was postponed eighteen years, until they made High Society at MGM (1956), though there were many collaborations on radio, a movie cameo, and a hit record (“Gone Fishin’”) in the interim. Bing
’s feelings for Louis are captured in a story told by Joe Bushkin, the pianist who led the quartet that backed Bing on his tours in the mid-1970s.

  This will give you an insight about Bing. We went to the track to see an Australian horse called Turn Unstoned. So I always like to bet, not as a big gambler or anything, at least fifty dollars…. So I see the fifty-dollar window, there’s three people there. I can go right there and get the goddamn ticket and tell Bing, I got you covered. But I thought, that was not a housebroken way to operate with Bing. I was very conscious of Bing’s style and I figured if he said, Put two dollars down, I was going to give him a two-dollar ticket. I had to do that. The goddamn line at the two-dollar window — this was before they had the automatic teller — was huge and I get to the thing, sweating it out, because the horses are on the track. And I order twenty-six two-dollar tickets, fifty dollars for me, two for him. And the guy keeps punching two-dollar tickets on me and the bells rang and people in back of me are really pissed off because they can’t make a bet. It was a scene. So I go back and I told Bing what I bet. He said, What? He really got uptight with me. He said, For chrissake, if you win is it going to change your style of living? I said, No, Bing. He said, But if you lose, think of all the Louis Armstrong albums you could have picked up for that money. 66

  Doctor Rhythm made money, but not the usual windfall, although the reviews were generous. Newsweek reported that at one preview, the laughter drowned out “substantial portions of the dialogue” while “members of press, profession and public were heard to proclaim it Bing Crosby’s best picture and many took in much more territory.” 67 Lillie received much of the attention for her parody of a coloratura and her routine involving dinner napkins. The movie’s grosses were helped by the early release of Bing’s recordings of the film’s songs, which received extensive radio play, especially the cheerful “My Heart Is Taking Lessons” and the winsome “On the Sentimental Side.”