by Gary Giddins
52. Lucky, p. 81.
53. One grace note during their run was the marriage of Bing’s sister Catherine to Edward Mullin at San Francisco’s St. Ignatius Catholic Church, in a ceremony read by Gonzaga’s dean of faculty, Father Carroll.
54. Rinker.
55. Ibid.
56. Lucky, pp. 42-43.
57. Variety, Oct. 6, 1926; the review (signed Land.) appeared under “New Acts.” The version used here is the one that ran in Variety’s second edition; the first had a few different words and altered punctuaton.
58. AI, RedNorvo.
59. Thompson, Bing, p. 18.
60. Lucky, p. 80.
61. Rinker.
9. Whiteman
1. Variety, Feb. 16, 1927, signed by Gus Kahn, Jean Goldkette, Roger Wolfe Kahn, Joe Rea, Eddie Edwards, Paul Ash, Phil Napoleon, Art Kahn, and five others. Cited in DeLong, Paps, p. 58.
2. Hugh C. Ernst, original program notes. He characterized the piece as follows: “The shrieking clarinet, thumping piano and the clattering traps describe vividly a husky hostler dragging his wife by the hair around their squalid hut behind the stable. The ‘G-r-r-r!’ of the cornet and the moan of the trombone are Fido and Towser barking, yapping and howling outside the door, eager to get into the fray.”
3. DeLong, Pops, p. 104.
4. Thompson, Bing, p. 21.
5. Lucky, p. 43.
6. Thompson, Bing, p. 21.
7. Ibid.
8. Rinker.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. Lucky, p. 83.
12. Rinker.
13. For Columbia’s U.K. release, even Clark’s name vanished, though not entirely. His band was billed as the Charleston Serenaders and Betty Patrick became Tillie Clarke.
14. Variety, Oct. 20, 1926.
15. Spokane Chronicle, Nov. 17, 1926.
16. Letter from Larry Crosby to Ed Mello, Feb. 2, 1951.
17. Spokane Chronicle, Nov. 17, 1926.
18. Interviews with M. L. Higgins and Madeleine Carroll, Copeland memo, op. cit.
19. Spokane Chronicle, Nov. 24, 1926.
20. Rinker.
21. Spokane Chronicle, Nov. 17, 1926.
22. Spokane Chronicle, Nov. 25, 1926.
23. Spokesman-Review, Nov. 1926, cited in Dyar, News for an Empire.
24. “Crosby, Rinker Win Home Town and Boys Go Big at Liberty,” Spokane Chronicle, Nov. 1926, undated clip. BCCGU.
25. Ibid. The reporter went on to write that the “remarkable reception they received last night before a ‘hardboiled’ home town audience left little doubt that they would succeed in the east.”
26. Lucky, p. 83.
27. Rinker.
28. Ibid.
29. Ibid.
30. DeLong, Pops, p. 105.
31. Jack Fulton was still angry about the incident sixty-five years later, conceding Crosby’s talent yet protesting that Bing’s way had to be the only way. AI, Fulton.
32. Lucky, p. 92. He goes on to say, “As there had been nothing like it, it was very popular.”
33. Mezzrow and Wolfe, Really the Blues, p. 120.
34. Ken Murray, “Louis, Bix Had Most Influence on Der Bingle,” Down Beat, July 14, 1950. He also said, “You know, Ken, I got a lot out of Bix Beiderbecke when we were both beating around the country with the Whiteman band. And just as Bix himself found inspiration in Louis Armstrong out on the South Side in the late ‘20s, so did I.”
35. Whiteman’s marquee billing.
36. Variety, Feb. 16, 1927.
37. Ibid.
38. DeLong, Pops, p. 108.
39. O’Brien interview, op. cit.
40. Lucky, p. 84.
41. McDonough interview, op. cit.
42. Rinker.
43. Ibid.
44. Mize, Bing, p. 27.
45. Lucky, p. 84.
46. Thompson, Bing, p. 27.
47. The top five vocal records of 1927. Whitburn, Pop Memories.
48. Slide, The Vaudevillians, p. 51.
10. Rhythm Boys
1. Interview memo for Time, on Francis Cork O’Keefe, M. Gleason, August 1946. TIA.
2. AI, Marti Barris and Joe Porter.
3. Variety, May 5, 1926.
4. O’Brien interview, op. cit.
5. Rinker.
6. Ibid.
7. Variety, June 8, 1927.
8. Variety, June 22, 1927.
9. Lucky, p. 96.
10. AI, Donald Mills.
11. Spokane Daily Chronicle, Aug. 23, 1927.
12. AI, BillChallis.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. Carmichael, The Stardust Road, p. 121.
16. AI, BillChallis.
17. Mezzrow and Wolfe, Really the Blues, p. 148.
18. AI, BillChallis.
19. Ibid.
20. Fred Romary liner notes, Bing Crosby, Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams (RCA Vintage), 1972.
21. Alistair Cooke, Letter from America, BBC, October 1977, reprinted in Bing, Summer 1999.
22. Promotional interview disc for Decca Records, 1955.
23. Confessions, bk. 4, chap. 6. The song lyric is “I’m tired of living and scared of dying.”
24. Kart, Chicago Tribune Oct. 15, 1977.
25. Crosby interview; Evans and Kiner, Tram, p. 92.
26. AI, BillChallis.
27. Sudhalter and Evans, Bix: Man and Legend, p. 240.
28. Lucky, p. 94.
29. Rinker.
30. AI, Dolores Hope.
31. Time memo on O’Keefe, op. cit.
32. Ibid.
33. Western Union telegram from Bing Crosby to Ginger Meehan, New York, January 4, 1928, 12:49 A.M.Georgia State University, Special Collections.
34. Ibid., Chicago, July 4, 1928, 5:07 P.M.
35. Ibid., Chicago, July 10, 1928, 8:07 P.M.
36. Bogue, Ish Kabibble.
37. Ibid.
38. Thomas interview, op. cit.
39. Variety, Apr. 18, 1928.
40. AI, Marti Barris and Joe Porter.
41. Lucky, p. 94.
42. Rinker.
43. O’Brien interview, op. cit.
44. Rinker.
45. Variety, Aug. 15, 1928.
46. Ibid.
47. Letter from Louis Armstrong to unknown recipient, c. 1967. Louis Armstrong House and Archives at Queens College/CUNY.
48. Dance, The World of Earl Hines, p. 146.
49. AI, Gary Crosby.
50. Osborne interview, op. cit.
51. The full inscription reads, “Am I too suave or sveldt [sic]. To Ted, Hazel and the little one. Bing. Brush by Fuller.”
52. Rinker.
53. Ted Crosby, The Story of Bing Crosby, p. 143; also Lucky, p. 95.
54. Challis interview by Ira Gitler, Oral History Program, Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University, N.J.
55. “Popular Records,” The New Yorker, Dec. 29, 1928.
56. Variety, December 26, 1928.
11. Of Cabbages and Kings
1. Universal ad for King of Jazz, in Variety, Dec. 11, 1929.
2. The writer was Paul Schofield, known for the 1926 Beau Geste.
3. For what it’s worth, rumors at the time blamed the rancor on Olsen’s concern that Shutta was carrying on with Cantor.
4. Evans and Kiner, Tram, p. 105.
5. Vallée, Let the Chips Fall, p. 15. “If further proof were needed that there is little or no vanity in Rudy Vallée, I need only point out that throughout the course of four marriages over a period of forty-seven years, there has never been a single progeny to bear my name!” (p. 16).
6. DeLong, Pops, p. 122.
7. Abel Green, “Whiteman-Old Gold Social Bunch Ride De Luxe — 50 Aboard and Happy,” Variety, May 29, 1929.
8. Evans and Kiner, Tram, pp. 114—15.
9. KGM.
10. Ibid.
11. Ted and Larry Crosby, Bing, p. 149.
12. Ibid., p. 157.
13. Evans and Kiner, Tram,
p. 115.
14. AI, Kurt Dieterle.
15. Thompson, Bing, p. 34.
16. Ted and Larry Crosby, Bing, p. 156.
17. TV interview, The David Frost Show, Feb. 10, 1971.
18. Lucky, p. 121.
19. AI, Dorothea Ponce.
20. Vallée, Let the Chips Fall, pp. 91—92.
21. Shepherd and Slatzer, Bing Crosby: The Hollow Man, p. 124.
22. Various ads, Los Angeles Evening Express, July 1929.
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid.
25. AI, Phil Harris.
26. Various ads, op. cit.
27. Earl Wilson, “It Happened Last Night,” New York Post (undated clip), 1946.
28. Evans and Kiner, Tram, p. 118.
29. Rinker.
30. Ibid.
31. Lucky, p. 98.
32. Cardinal O’Connell made his remarks before a thousand members of Boston’s Holy Names Society in January 1932, cited in Eberly, Music in the Air, p. 103.
33. Ibid.
34. Lucky, p. 88.
35. Ibid., p. 89.
36. In Variety, Nov. 29, 1929, Bob Landry wrote of the “Gay Love”/“Can’t We Be Friends” disc, “looks like a possible favorite, properly piloted.”
37. Cited in Daniel, Chronicle of the 20th Century, p. 375.
38. Variety, Dec. 11, 1929.
39. DeLong, Pops, p. 143.
40. AI, Bobbe Van Heusen.
41. AI, Kurt Dieterle.
42. Ted and Larry Crosby, Bing, p. 170.
43. Lucky, p. 100.
44. Ibid., p. 102.
45. AI, Bobbe Van Heusen.
46. Ibid. The wire would have been dated 1969. Bobbe married Perlberg before a justice of the peace in Pasadena in February 1928, though she insisted that it was a couple of years later. The sisters’ career began when Irving Berlin’s producer, Hassard Short, heard them in Edmonton and asked them to sing for Berlin over the phone. Short then changed their name from Brock to Brox. They appeared on stage in The Cocoanuts and the Ziegfeld Follies of 1927 and then signed with MGM. Bobbe, whose real name was Josephine, was also known as Dagmar (after silent film actress Dagmar Godowsky). Her sisters were Lorayne, who married trumpet player Henry Busse in 1935, and Pat.
47. Variety, Feb. 26, 1930.
48. Variety, May 7, 1930.
49. Regina Crewe, New York American, May 3, 1930.
50. The picture opened with a running time of ninety-eight minutes, according to Variety, May 7, 1930, suggesting a last-minute cut (restored prints play 105 minutes). The live show opened at forty-two minutes and was soon cut to thirty-seven. Gersh win was paid $5,000 and Whiteman $12,500. Tickets sold for two dollars.
51. New York Times, May 3, 1930.
52. The new sequences for the German edition and one made for Spain were directed by a twenty-four-year-old German immigrant, Kurt Neumann, yet another newcomer launched by King of Jazz; he went on to make many low-budget genre films, e.g., The Unknown Guest, Cattle Drive, Rocketship X-M, Tarzan and the She-Devil, and most famously, The Fly.
53. Variety, Apr. 9, 1930.
54. Lucky, p. 102.
55. Ibid.
56. AI, Rosemary Clooney, to whom Kathryn Crosby told the story in spring 2000.
57. Rinker.
58. Coslow, Cocktails for Two, p. 105.
59. These include the 1935 feature Broadway to Hollywood and such shorts as Roast Beef and Movies and Nertsery Rhytmes (with Ted Healy’s Three Stooges). Most of the surviving footage was marketed in Germany in 1930, including the remarkable “Lockstep” prison number, which debuted in the United States in That’s Entertainment III (1994). For Bing the experience marked the beginning of his lifelong friendship with actor William “Buster” Collier Jr. (the son of matinee idol William Collier Sr., who was also in The March of Time), a fishing buddy and neighbor.
60. Lucky, p. 102.
61. Challis’s swing arrangements include “Clarinet Marmelade” and “Singing the Blues” for Henderson and “Stardust” for Ellington.
12. Dixie
1. “Bing Crosby Debunks Himself,” op. cit.
2. AI, Frank Lieberman.
3. AI, Rory Burke.
4. Pulliam, Harriman.
5. The movie was Happy Days, and the number with the Boswells was cut from the final print.
6. Letter from Dixie Lee to Edward J. Meeman, 1930, on the occasion of the first of her movies, Cheer Up and Smile (her sixth film), to open in Harriman. Meeman was editor of the Knoxville News-Sentinel. Cited in Pulliam.
7. AI, Pauline Weislow.
8. Meeman letter, op. cit.
9. “It Happened Last Night,” op. cit.
10. Vocco also came to Bing’s aid in Chicago (“My goodness, in the old days, I used to put Bing Crosby to bed — he was drunk all the time, you know — but we became really good friends,” he recalled after Bing’s death); the aid he provided Dixie cemented a lifelong friendship. Vocco interview, Columbia University Oral History Research Office.
11. “It Happened Last Night,” op. cit.
12. The pictures were Let’s Go Places, Harmony at Home, Happy Days, Cheer Up and Smile, and The Big Party.
13. “One of the most elaborate song and dance numbers probably ever screened is ‘Crazy Feet’ with Dixie Lee singing and 32 girls doing tap and jazz routines.” Variety, Feb. 19, 1930.
14. Atkins, David Butler; AI, Robert O’Brien; Ulanov, The Incredible Crosby. For Richard Keene (aka Raymond Keene, said by Bing [Lucky, p. 121] to have arranged Bing’s unsuccessful screen test at Fox), Shepherd and Slatzer, Bing Crosby: The Hol low Man. For White, Los Angeles Times, Sept. 30, 1930. Movies White appeared in with Dixie are Happy Days and Fox Movietone Follies.
15. Charles Samuels, “Bing Crosby the Groaner,” unidentified magazine clip, 1946. BCCGU.
16. Anne Edwards, “Bing Crosby the Going My Way Star in Rancho Santa Fe,” Architectural Digest, April 1996.
17. “It Happened Last Night,” op. cit.
18. AI, Pauline Weislow.
19. AI, Flo Haley.
20. AI, Dr. George J. (Jed) Hummer.
21. AI, Marsha Hunt.
22. Larry and Ted Crosby, Bing, p. 184; also, “Bing Crosby the Groaner,” op. cit.
23. Cooper, Please Don’t Shoot My Dog, p. 23.
24. This was directly before he left with Whiteman on the aborted trip to Vancouver, which led to his breaking his association with the bandleader.
25. Larry and Ted Crosby, Bing, p. 178.
26. “It Happened Last Night,” op. cit.
27. Rinker.
28. Al Hine, “Million Dollar Kettle Drummer,” Esquire, May 1953.
29. Leroy, Mervyn Leroy: Take One, p. 88.
30. Anthony Quinn, RBT.
31. Rinker.
32. Waters, His Eye Is on the Sparrow.
33. “The Survival of African Music in America,” Popular Science Monthly, Sept. 1899. Cited in Van Der Merwe, Origins of the Popular Style, pp. 134—36.
34. AI, Joe Bushkin.
35. AI, Jake Hanna.
36. AI, MiltHinton.
37. Letter from Walter Huston to Marie Manovill, Dec. 31, 1938. Courtesy of Marie Manovill and Gloria Burleson.
38. AI, Bud Brubaker.
39. AI, June MacCloy.
40. Ibid.
41. Armstrong letter, c. 1967, op. cit.
42. Crosby and Firestone, Going My Own Way, p. 112.
43. Spokesman-Review, Sept. 30, 1930.
44. Spokane Daily Chronicle, Sept. 30, 1930.
45. New York Times, Sept. 30, 1930. This was an AP dispatch. Bing was twenty-seven and had not yet clipped a year from his age; the incorrect age given Murray Crosey is simply one of many errors, including Dixie’s real name and birthplace.
46. AI, Basil Grillo.
47. “Dixie Lee Weds Bing Crosby,” Los Angeles Times, Sept. 30, 1930.
48. AI, Flo Haley.
49. Armstrong letter, c. 1967, op. cit.
50. Rinker.
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br /> 51. Armstrong, Swing That Music, p. viii.
52. Los Angeles Examiner, Mar. 5, 1931.
53. This occurred only two weeks before the death of Knute Rockne, the beloved Notre Dame football coach, in a plane crash (March 30), an event that so disturbed Bing that he did not fly again until 1944, occasionally losing work as a result.
54. Bob Crosby, RBT.
55. This line appears in an unproduced teleplay, Bing and Dixie, by Mel Frank, based largely on interviews gathered by Frank and producer Meta Rosenberg; in this instance, the line was related to Meta by George Rosenberg, her husband and Bing’s longtime agent. AI, Meta Rosenberg, Elizabeth Frank.
56. Confessions, bk. 2, chap. 4.
13. Prosperity Is Just Around the Crooner
1. Sennett, King of Comedy, p. 258.
2. Coslow, Cocktails for Two, p. 111.
3. The show also included an interview with Marlene Dietrich, possibly the first time they met.
4. Coslow, Cocktails for Two, p. 112
5. Sennett, King of Comedy, p. 257.
6. Ibid.
7. AI, Jack Hupp.
8. Mack Sennett Collection, Folder 1450, AMPAS. The letter was written by Bea Englander, representing Sennett. Bing’s ambivalence about leaving the trio is also suggested by an agreement he made with songwriter Walter Donaldson involving an endorsement and photograph (“Featured by The Rhythm Boys”) on the sheet music for the 1931 song “Hello Beautiful.” Neither the Rhythm Boys nor Bing recorded it (Wayne King had the hit; Maurice Chevalier made it a signature theme), but a cover depicting the boys was published and soon withdrawn.
9. The Boswells had had their first hit in April; the Mills Brothers would have one in the fall.
10. Rinker.
11. Lucky, p. 105.
12. Ibid.
13. Kenneth Frogley, “IDN Radio,” Los Angeles Illustrated Daily News, May 28, 1931.
14. Ibid., June 2, 1931.
15. Lucky, p. 107.
16. Rinker.
17. “In those days, every place had a trio, and these guys were heroes to us highschool kids. So when Crosby left, the Cocoanut Grove was without a trio and they had a contest to see who would succeed him.” AI, Jack Hupp. The winners were Jack Smith, Milton Spersal, and Al Teeter, who would get together in school and imitate “So the Bluebirds and the Blackbirds Got Together.” Smith took Bing’s role and remained at the Grove for a few years with Arnheim and, later, Phil Harris, then appeared on the Hit Parade and other shows and with Doris Day in On Moonlight Bay. AI, Phil Harris.