THE A-Z OF BING’S MOVIES

Prepared by Keith Parkinson and published in instalments in BING magazine from 1989 to 2011.

Keith offers his personal opinions on the various components of Bing’s career on the silver screen.

Amendments should please be notified to Malcolm Macfarlane.

Click on a letter.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z

A

ABEL, WALTER (1898-1987) Actor. He appeared in three Crosby movies in the early forties: Holiday Inn (1942) Star Spangled Rhythm (1942) and Duffy’s Tavern (1944). He was not a Paramount contract player but when he worked for that studio, he was cast as a figure of authority. In Holiday Inn, he was Fred Astaire’s manager, in Star Spangled Rhythm he was Frisbee, the studio head and in Duffy’s Tavern he was a film director. His screen career as a character actor embraces five decades. He made his debut in Liliom in 1930 and in the mid-seventies he was still adding authority to films like the thriller Silent Night, Bloody Night (1974). 

ABIE’S IRISH ROSE Released at the end of 1946, this was Bing’s second foray into movie production.  In 1944, he formed ‘Bing Crosby Producers’ with other financiers with the intention of releasing feature films through United Artists.  Abie’s Irish Rose followed The Great John L., which was released in 1945.  Joanne Dru and Richard Norris co-starred and Bing appointed John Scott Trotter to compose the film’s score.  The most accurate review of the film I have found is that written by Leonard Maltin: “Outdated when written in 1920s and even worse now.”

ABRAHAM Song. Music and lyrics were written by Irving Berlin and it featured in two of Bing’s films. In the 1942 Holiday Inn it was used to celebrate Abraham Lincoln’s birthday in a sequence featuring Bing in black face supported by Marjorie Reynolds (with Martha Mears’ voice), Louise Beavers and Joan Arnold and Shelby Bacon. The latter two played the children of the cook, played by Beavers. The music only was used for a tap dance by Vera-Ellen and George Chakiris (then known as George Kerris) in White Christmas (1954).

ACADEMY AWARDS Bing won one such award, commonly known as an Oscar, for his part as Father O’Malley in Going My Way (1944). He sang four songs that won Oscars. These were “Sweet Leilani from Waikiki Wedding (1937) “White Christmas” from Holiday Inn (1942), “Swinging on a Star” from Going My Way (1944) and “In the Cool Cool Cool of the Evening” from Here Comes the Groom (1952). He sang the following Oscar nominated songs: “Love In Bloom” from She Loves Me Not (1935) which lost to “The Continental”, “Only Forever” from Rhythm on the River (1941) which lost to “When You Wish Upon A Star”, “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive” from Here Come The Waves and “Aren’t You Glad You’re You” from The Bells of St. Mary’s both 1946 and losing to “It Might As Well Be Spring”. These were followed by “You Keep Coming Back Like A Song” from Blue Skies (1947) which lost to “On The Atcheson Topeka And The Santa Fe”, “Zing A Little Song” from Just for You (1955) which lost to “Do Not Forsake Me”, “Count Your Blessings Instead of Sheep” from White Christmas (1955) which lost to “Three Coins In The Fountain”, “True Love” from High Society (1957) which lost to “Que Sera Sera” and “The Second Time Around” from High Time (1961) which lost to “Never On Sunday”. Other Oscar winners connected with Crosby films were:

· Herman Rosse for Art Direction, King of Jazz (1930)

· Barry Fitzgerald for Supporting Actor, Leo McCarey for Direction, Frank Butler and Frank Cavett for Screenplay, Leo McCarey for original story and also for best film, all for Going My Way(1944)

· Stephen Dunn for Sound Recording, The Bells of St. Mary’s (1946). Bing was also nominated as Best Actor for The Bells of St. Mary’s but failed to win the award.

• Grace Kelly for Best Actress and George Seaton, Screenplay, for The Country Girl (1954). Bing was also nominated as Best Actor for The Country Girl but failed to win the award.

AC-CENT-TCHU-ATE THE POSITIVE Song. This Johnny Mercer (lyrics) - Harold Arlen (music) number was written specifically for the Paramount picture Here Come the Waves but was also sung in the 1944 short film Sing with the Stars made for the U.S. Coast Guard as part of the Army-Navy Screen Magazine series. In the first film, Bing duets with Sonny Tufts when they both appear in black face as part of a show mounted for service personnel. In the short film, Bing sings the song solo, accompanied by the Band of the 11th Naval District Coast Guard. The song was nominated for an Academy Award but lost.

ACCIDENTS WILL HAPPEN Song. It is untypical of a Crosby song to begin with an opera singer practising scales but this happens when the song has its main showcase spot in Paramount’s Mr. Music (1950). Bing sings the song twice before he duets with Dorothy Kirsten at a show which is staged in order to attract financial backers. The writers were Johnny Burke and James Van Heusen who saw their royalties boosted when Bing recorded the song twice for Decca. In April 1950, Jay Blackton accompanied him duetting with Dorothy Kirsten and two months later he soloed the song accompanied by the Victor Young Orchestra.

ADAMS, ERNIE (1885-1947) Actor. By no means an actor of prominence. Ernie Adams was one of those reliable sub-character actors willing to accept assignments involving one or two days' work. The best measure of the man can be gained from parts he played in his two Crosby movies: he was ‘A Sailor’ in We’re Not Dressing (1934) and ‘A Citizen’ in The Princess and the Pirate (1944) although his part in the latter was no briefer than Bing’s own fleeting appearance. His film career began in silent pictures and he died after a brief appearance in The Pretender, made in the same year as his death. In between times, he also appeared in stage musicals and such series ‘B’ pictures as the Hopalong Cassidy westerns.

ADAMSON, HAROLD (1906-1980) Lyricist.  Bing sang just one of his songs on screen.  That was “We’ve Got Another Bond to Buy” which was featured in the short Hollywood Victory Caravan (1945).  The music for the song was provided by regular collaborator Jimmy McHugh, who worked on 19 movies with Adamson.  Some of the songs he wrote that became standards include “I Couldn’t Sleep a Wink Last Night”, “A Lovely Way to Spend an Evening” and “My Resistance is Low”.

ADESTE FIDELES Song. This traditional Christmas carol had been associated with Bing for ten years by the time he sang it in The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945). In the film, Bing sings it with a children’s choir. Together with “White Christmas” and “Silent Night” it is one of a trio of Crosby songs that became regularly featured on Bing’s radio and television shows each Christmas until the time of his death.

ADVENTURES OF ICHABOD AND MR. TOAD, THE Film. Made in 1949 for Walt Disney, Bing narrated the story of Ichabod Crane in the first part of this animated feature. Since its theatrical release, the Disney Organisation separated the two segments, which have since appeared on television as part of the Disneyland series. The Ichabod story was written by Washington Irving as ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’ and Decca released the story on two 78s with Bing singing the three songs from the film: “Ichabod”, “Katrina” and “The Headless Horseman” .The original concept of the film was to be a combination of animation and live action along the lines of Song of the South which had been a popular success for the Disney Organisation two years previously. Early publicity for the film was under its working title of Two Fabulous Characters.

AFRICAN ETUDE Song. This was one of the five songs Johnny Burke and James Van Heusen wrote especially for the second ‘Road’ picture Road to Zanzibar (1941). It was never commercially recorded by Bing and to hear it you will have to seek out the “Going Hollywood” album series for the soundtrack version. It features twice in the picture, its strong jungle rhythm benefiting from the support the native bearers provide for Bing’s rendition.

AFTER ALL, YOU’RE ALL I’M AFTER Song. This was written for the film She Loves Me Not by Edward Heyman and Arthur Schwartz but was not used.

AFTER SUNDOWN Song. Nacio Herb Brown (music) and Arthur Freed (lyrics) were commissioned by M.G.M. to write the songs for Going Hollywood (1933) and “After Sundown” comes in the second half of the movie when Bing sings it off camera during a montage of romantic scenes involving himself and leading lady Marion Davies.

AFTER YOU Song. Towards the end of the Paramount film Double or Nothing the plot is heading towards a happy ending with a show which will raise money towards an “All lived happily ever after” conclusion. A scat version of this Sam Coslow - Al Siegel composition is rendered by Bing (as orchestra leader Lefty Boland), Martha Raye, France Faye and Harry Barris. Bing did not record the song for commercial issue.

AGER, MILTON (1893-1979). Composer. Ager was credited for original music together with Mabel Wayne for Universal’s King of Jazz (1930). It was his second film assignment coming shortly after he had written his most famous song: “Happy Days Are Here Again”. That song, written at the time of the Wall Street stock market crash, was a collaboration with Jack Yellen, who collaborated with Ager on all his major hits, including the King of Jazz score. Those songs, on which Bing performed, were “Music Hath Charms”, “A Bench in the Park” (Rhythm Boys) and “Happy Feet” (Rhythm Boys). In addition Bing recorded the Ager-Yellen composition “Song of the Dawn” for Columbia in 1930. Specifically written for King of Jazz it was sung in the film by John Boles because Bing was under-going a brief residence in the slammer following a drink-driving offence. The other film song by Ager came in 1932 in the Sennett short Blue of the Night. This was “Auf Wiedersehen, My Dear” which Ager co-wrote with Ed Nelson, Al Hoffman and Al Goodhart and which Bing sings at the beginning of the film in a nightclub setting. Bing also sang the song in the Paramount short Hollywood on Parade (No. 2 – 1932)

AHLERT, FRED E. (1892-1953) Composer. Ahlert’s main claim to fame was as part composer of Bing’s signature tune “Where the Blue of the Night”. It was sung by Bing in the Sennett short Blue of the Night (1932). Ahlert shared composer credit with Bing and Roy Turk.

AIN’T GOT A DIME TO MY NAME Song. One of four songs provided by Johnny Burke and James Van Heusen for Road to Morocco (1942). Bing sings it whilst wandering through the streets of a North African town.

AKST, HARRY (1894-1963) Composer. In Paramount’s The Big Broadcast (1932), Bing sings one of Akst’s most famous compositions, “Dinah” to the accompaniment of Eddie Lang’s guitar. Akst usually collaborated, and in the case of “Dinah”, composer credits are shared with Sam Lewis and Joe Young. This one song is Akst’s only film association with Bing. He was mainly employed by Fox and Warner Bros. to provide songs for their contract vocalists such as Ted Lewis and Tony Martin.

ALADDIN’S DAUGHTER Song. Johnny Burke and James Van Heusen wrote this number for the 1942 Road to Morocco but it was not used.

ALBERGHETTI, ANNA MARIA (1936 -  ). The fifteen-year-old singer/actress had a key role as a blind classical singer in Here Comes the Groom. She had arrived in the U.S.A. a year previously for a Carnegie Hall Concert and made her film debut in The Medium that same year. Her movie career lasted just ten years with her final appearance being in the Jerry Lewis comedy Cinderfella. The films in the intervening years are not memorable.

ALBERNI, LUIS (1887-1962). Ten years separated the two appearances this Spanish born actor made in Crosby films. He had the important part of the Marquis in the Sennett short I Surrender Dear (1931) but when he was in the more prestigious Road to Zanzibar (1941), he was seventh billed as ‘Native Shop Proprietor’. Alberni came to Hollywood in the silent era and he was appearing in small parts, usually as an excitable Latin, until his big screen retirement in 1952.

ALGAR, JAMES (1912-1998) Director. Algar was one of the three main animators on Disney’s cartoon feature The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949) for which Bing narrated the Ichabod Crane segment. Algar spent his entire career with the Disney Organisation and was the Director of many of the acclaimed “True Life” Adventure nature features. His animation skills were used on such everlasting cartoon favourites as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Fantasia (1940) and Bambi (1942). He was also a screenwriter on such Disney films as The Legend of Lobo (1962) and The Incredible Journey (1963).

ALIAS JESSE JAMES (1959). Bing was one of many celebrities making fleeting appearances in a gun battle at the climax of this Bob Hope film made for United Artists. Those more qualified to tote a gun and who helped Hope in the final shoot-out alongside Bing, were Roy Rogers, Gary Cooper, Ward Bond, James Arness and Hugh O’Brian. The film had a title song, which was recorded by Guy Mitchell.

ALL BY MYSELF Song. In Blue Skies Bing and Joan Caulfield sing this Irving Berlin composition whilst dancing at a party. Bing recorded the song solo for Decca in July 1946 to tie in with the film’s release.

ALL STAR BOND RALLY This was a short film made and released in 1945. It was produced by 20th Century-Fox on behalf of the U.S. Treasury Department. Its purpose was to promote the sale of the seventh issue of War Bonds and it is hardly surprising that Bing’s vocal contribution was the song “Buy, Buy Bonds”. Entertainers gave their services freely but also sparingly, as will be deduced from the roster of celebrities crammed into a running time of eleven minutes. Those appearing included Frank Sinatra (singing “Saturday Night Is the Loneliest Night of the Week”), Bob Hope, Betty Grable and husband Harry James, Harpo Marx and Linda Darnell. The short was supplied to cinemas free of charge for showing as a public service and Bonds could then be purchased at the cinema

ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT Song. One of the least hummable of Cole Porter’s compositions. It was sung by Bing in English and French to Zizi Jeanmaire in Paramount’s 1956 remake of Anything Goes.

ALL YOU WANT TO DO IS DANCE Song. The title of this song sums up Bing’s amorous frustrations at Mary Carlisle his leading lady who prefers the ballroom to his more romantic intentions in Paramount’s Double or Nothing (1937). It was written by Arthur Johnston (music) and Johnny Burke (lyric) especially for the film.

ALLEN, GRACIE (1902-1964). As far as Bing’s films are concerned, Gracie Allen was always one-half of the Burns and Allen comedy partnership. Burns and Allen functioned as a team and they were always extra to the plot as far as their comedy film appearances were concerned. Remove Burns and Allen and the story would still develop. Between 1932 and 1935, Gracie was in five Crosby pics:

· The Big Broadcast (1932) as a receptionist

· Hollywood on Parade No. 2 (1932) A short for Paramount

· College Humor (1933) as a caterer

· We’re Not Dressing (1934) as a naturalist

· The Big Broadcast of 1936 (1935) co-inventor with husband George of a “Radio Eye”

George married Gracie in 1926 when both were popular in vaudeville. Radio, movies and television kept the team popular with Gracie appearing in only two films without her husband. In television’s first flush of greats in the 1950s the Burns and Allen Show will be in most top five lists for comedy.

ALLEN, JUDITH (1913-1996). Miss Allen shows us how fickle love can be. In Too Much Harmony (1933), she starts the movies as Jack Oakie’s fiancée and ends with Bing as husband to be. The following year, in She Loves Me Not, she begins the film as Bing’s betrothed and abandons him midway through the plot. Her adequate singing voice can be heard assisting Bing in Too Much Harmony with “Thanks” and “Buckin’ the Wind”. She was near her popularity peak when appearing with Bing, having been discovered by Cecil B. DeMille for his 1933 epic This Day and Age. By the end of that decade, she was playing in cheap melodramas and westerns.

ALLEN, STEVE (1921-2000). When Bing’s Mack Sennett shorts were knitted into the compilation film Down Memory Lane, Steve Allen provided linking dialogue in the guise of a disc jockey presenting a television programme. This was type-casting at its best because Allen’s fame as a radio DJ turned to greater things in the mid-fifties when he presented the highly rated Steve Allen Show on American television. He has had occasional film parts, the most notable seeing him cast in the title role in The Benny Goodman Story (1956).

ALLISTER, CLAUDE (1893-1970). Bing’s early film appearance in Reaching for the Moon (1930) did not involve him in the plot of the film. The film’s story had Claude Allister playing Sir Horace Partington Chelmsford, and that character’s name tells us all we need to know about Allister. He was always the British accented dandy, probably most memorable as Ronald Colman’s sidekick Algy in Bulldog Drummond. His last film of any consequence was Kiss Me Kate (1953).

ALTON, ROBERT (1897-1957). As choreographer, Alton staged the musical numbers on two consecutive Crosby pictures of the mid-fifties - White Christmas and The Country Girl. His career began on Broadway in the thirties but his most memorable career phase was his tenure at M-G-M between 1944 and 1953. That saw him contributing to some of Hollywood’s greatest ever musicals including The Harvey Girls (1946), Ziegfeld Follies (1946), Till the Clouds Roll By (1947), Good News (1947), The Pirate (1948) Easter Parade (1948), Annie Get Your Gun (1950), Show Boat (1951) and The Belle Of New York (1952). His brief stint with Paramount embraced the Bing assignments at a time when large-scale M-G-M musicals were in decline.

ALWAYS Song. This strong Irving Berlin ballad was given scant Crosby treatment in the 1946 Blue Skies. Bing sang a few lines and then waited until the 1960s before committing it to wax.

AMOR (also known as Amor Amor) Song. This popular 1940s song was featured in a 1944 Pathe Gazette, which featured the opening of the Stage Door Canteen in London. Jack Buchanan introduced Bing to the servicemen assembled there on August 31, 1944 and Bing then proceeded to sing “Amor Amor”. The composer credits go to Ruiz, Mendez and Skylar.

AMOS ‘N’ ANDY Bing was in two films which featured this comedy duo, but never the trio shall meet because Bing played a guesting role in each. In Check and Double Check (1930) he was one of the Rhythm Boys whose voices were used in the “Three Little Words” number and in The Big Broadcast of 1936 (1935) his four minute vocal sequence was spliced into the movie. Amos ‘n’ Andy were two white men, Freeman F. Gosden and Charles Correll, who appeared in blackface as two Negro comedians. They enjoyed enormous popularity on American radio and successfully transferred their humour to television in the 1950s for a series of 25-minute situation comedy shows. Their media popularity is spoken of in hushed tones in the 21st century because of the political incorrectness of their act. 

AND YOU’LL BE HOME Song. In the film Mr. Music (1950) Bing sits on the edge of a stage and sings this accompanied by a chorus of students. In the plot, this is a Paul Merrick (played by Crosby) composition. In reality it was written by the reliable Johnny Burke and James Van Heusen.

ANDERSON, EDDIE “ROCHESTER” (1905-1977). “Rochester” taught Mary Martin how to “sing jazz” in Birth of the Blues (1941). He appeared in two other Crosby films: Star Spangled Rhythm (1942) and You Can Change the World (1951) but he did not share the screen with Bing in either. Born to show business parents, he started his career in all-black revues and graduated to small roles in films in the early thirties when he was usually cast as a raspy-voiced banjo-eyed comic. Fame came in a big way on Easter Sunday 1937 because that was when he debuted on Jack Benny’s radio show. He was in a number of films with Benny (The Horn Blows at Midnight, Buck Benny Rides Again, The Meanest Man in the World) but his most significant appearance was playing the lead in the 1943 Cabin in the Sky. He followed Benny into television and was a mainstay in “The Jack Benny Show” as Benny’s manservant.

ANDERSON, JOHN MURRAY (1886-1954). Ignored by film reference works, Anderson was an early ‘talkies’ pioneer who worked on Bing’s first feature, King of Jazz as Director. It was his one cinematic moment of glory. Previously a stage director it was his lavish conceptions that have made King of Jazz timeless viewing in entertainment terms. At the time, Anderson’s apparent disregard of budgetary controls caused concern at Universal Studios and removed any prospect of the film making money for the studio.

ANDERSON, ROLAND (1903-1989). Art Director. Anderson worked exclusively for Paramount Pictures and always in collaboration. Up until 1950, he shared art direction credits with Hans Dreier, thereafter with Hal Pereira. His Crosby film credits are:

· Paris Honeymoon (1939)

· Holiday Inn (1942)

· Here Come the Waves (1944)

· Road to Utopia (1946)

· A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1949)

· Just for You (1952)

· White Christmas (1954)

· The Country Girl (1954)

ANDRE, LONA [Laura Anderson] (1915-1992). Miss Andre began her supporting player career in 1933, the year in which she made brief appearances in her two Crosby films. In College Humor she was Ginger and in Too Much Harmony a chorus girl. She progressed through to the late forties as a minor leading lady and then retired to be a businesswoman. She was married for four days to actor Edward Norris, which probably provided a more interesting scenario than that offered by such of her films as Under the Pampas Moon (1935), Ghost Valley Riders (1940) and The Case of the Baby Sitter (1947).

ANDREWS SISTERS, THE (LaVerne, Maxene and Patty). Although frequent vocal companions to Bing during the 1940’s, the sisters made only one film appearance with him. That was in Road to Rio (1948) when they sang, “You Don’t Have to Know the Language” with Bing at a ship’s concert. Their film career began in 1940 in Argentine Nights and they then made appearances in several Abbott and Costello comedies. The Poverty Row Studios claimed their services in the mid-forties for the likes of How’s About It (1943) and Moonlight and Cactus (1944). They were effective in providing the voices for two Disney cartoon features: Make Mine Music (1946) and Melody Time (1948). When LaVerne died in 1967, Maxene and Patty enjoyed a brief nostalgic revival with a ‘borrowed’ third sister.

ANDREWS, STANLEY (1892-1969) Character actor.  You can tell the sort of parts Stanley Andrews played by his billing.  He was in three Bing pictures.  In Dixie (1943), he played Mr. Masters.  He was “an official” in Road to Utopia (1946) and Captain Harmon in Road to Rio (1948).  All could have been played by hundreds of similar bit part actors registered with central casting during Hollywood’s prolific 1940s decade.  He ended his show business career with the sort of regular employment most actors strive for but never achieve: he played the old ranger host of television’s “Death Valley Days” from 1952 to 1965.

ANGELS IN THE OUTFIELD An M.G.M. movie released in 1951 featuring the Pittsburgh Pirates Baseball team. Bing is seen on a golf course and he speaks briefly about angels.

ANGELS OF MERCY Both a one reel short film and its title song sung by Bing. It was released on all of America’s major film circuits at the end of 1941 to draw attention to the work of the American Red Cross. Irving Berlin wrote the song.

ANN-MARGRET (1941- ) Born Ann-Margret Olsson, this Swedish-born actress, singer, dancer was well established as an entertainer when she played the part of Dallas in the 1966 remake of Stagecoach. It was Bing’s last major film appearance. A-M’s first film was Pocketful of Miracles (1961) and she then made three musicals: State Fair (1962) Bye Bye Birdie (1963) and Viva Las Vegas (1964). Her strongest role was in the 1971 Carnal Knowledge and that film and the 1975 musical Tommy both resulted in Oscar nominations. She was married to TV actor Roger Smith until his death in 2017, and he, as her personal manager, guided her career with an increasingly strong bias towards a night club act and TV series.

ANSARA, MICHAEL (1922-2013). Ansara’s only appearance in a Crosby picture saw him eleventh billed as a guard in Road to Bali (1953). This probably tells us all we need to know about him. He is a swarthy character actor normally found halfway down the cast list. Although of Lebanese extraction, he is often in Westerns as an American Indian. His career began in 1944 in the adventure film Action in Arabia. Highlights since have been in The Robe (his best part, as Judas), Julius Caesar, The Greatest Story Ever Told and Guns of the Magnificent Seven.

ANY BONDS TODAY (Song). One of the many American patriotic songs written by Irving Berlin. Bing sang this in Blue Skies (1946). The plot finds the Crosby character on a World War Two Bond raising tour and this song is aimed at boosting sales.

ANYTHING GOES (1936). The first of two versions filmed by Paramount and musically superior because of its strong score by Cole Porter, Leo Robin, Frederick Hollander, Richard Whiting, Edward Heyman and Hoagy Carmichael. The latter was added to the team because Bing was impressed by the song “Moonburn” and wanted it in the film. All the Porter songs were from his successful Anything Goes stage musical to which Paramount bought the rights in February 1935, when the show had been running for four months on Broadway. Filming commenced in September 1935, whilst the show was still playing at the Alvin Theatre.  Ethel Merman was in the stage production and she was signed to reprise her role of Reno Sweeney after Paramount producer Benjamin Glazer negotiated a release from her theatre commitment.  The original plot and dialogue were the work of P. G. Wodehouse and Guy Bolton.  Paramount assigned Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse to revise the show.  Changes were necessary because the criminal element in the stage production was too sympathetic.  Once that duo had toned down the glorification of crime Walter De Leon, Sidney Salkow, John Moffitt and Francis Martin worked on the film script.  Jerry Tucker played Junior in the film and in a 1998 interview, he explained that he was aged nine at the time of filming.  His one lasting memory of making Anything Goes was tossing a football with Bing whilst waiting for the director to call action. The film casts Bing as Billy Crocker an accidental passenger on a ship bound for England. A series of mishaps involving gangsters, mistaken identities, disguises and Bing being jailed lead to the mandatory happy ending with enough opportunities along the way for Bing to sing five songs. The film has been retitled Tops is the Limit to avoid confusion with the 1956 re-make.

ANYTHING GOES (1956). Cole Porter’s score for this Technicolor remake was supplemented by three mediocre numbers from Sammy Cahn and James Van Heusen. The start of shooting was delayed whilst Bing was hospitalised for the removal of a kidney stone and this enabled co-star Donald O’Connor to reschedule his own commitments in order to be in the movie. The plot of the 1936 version was totally rewritten with the one remaining similarity being the shipboard setting. In this one Bing plays Bill Benson, a musical comedy star travelling to England via Europe and back and singing five songs in the process. This film ended an association between Bing and Paramount, which had lasted almost a quarter of a century.

ANYTHING GOES Song. A Cole Porter standard not sung by Bing in either of the film versions. This honour went to Ethel Merman (1936) and Mitzi Gaynor (1956). The latter version had uncredited lyrical alterations by Ted Fetter.

APALACHICOLA, FLA Song. Hope and Crosby sang this one in a carnival setting in Road to Rio (1948). Its purpose was to draw the crowds and it worked. Johnny Burke and James Van Heusen wrote the song and Bing and Bob interpolated a few bars from “Swanee River” and “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny” when they delivered it in the movie.

APPLE FOR THE TEACHER, AN Song. This Johnny Burke - James V. Monaco composition was featured in two consecutive Crosby films. In The Star Maker (1939) it is part of a Broadway Revue with Bing duetting with Linda Ware and receiving support from a children’s’ chorus. The following year Bing, Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour sing a few lines in Road to Singapore in order to gather an audience for the sale of ‘Spotto’ (a miracle liquid cleanser). The song surfaced again in 1947 when Gene Autry sang it in The Last Roundup.

APRIL PLAYED THE FIDDLE Song. A song about springtime romance is sung at a restaurant as part of a floor show to boost business in If I Had My Way (1940). Bing is supported on stage by The Six Hits and a Miss.  Johnny Burke and James V. Monaco wrote the song along with most of the film’s vocal numbers.

A PROPOS DE RIEN Song. My schoolboy French tells me this song is about nothing. It is certainly less than memorable even though composed by those Crosby song tailors Johnny Burke and James Van Heusen. Nicole Maurey introduces the song in Little Boy Lost (1953) when she treats it as a nonsense number to amuse her son. It is crucial to the plot because its composer in the film is Bing who hopes it will trigger his son’s memory when he hears it crooned by Crosby. It does no such thing, even though Bing tackles it twice.

AREN’T YOU GLAD YOU’RE YOU Song. Although Burke and Van Heusen only composed one song for the film The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945), “Aren’t You Glad You’re You” received an Oscar nomination. Bing the philosopher sings it to teenager Joan Carroll in the film and we feel as uplifted as she does from the experience.

ARLEDGE, JOHN (1906-1947). In King of Jazz (1930), John put his vaudeville experience to work when he sang “Has Anybody Seen Our Nelly” as part of a quartet and danced “Rhapsody In Blue” together with assorted others. This early film role led to second lead and character parts. The latter embracing Gone with the Wind (1939), The Grapes of Wrath (1940) and I Wonder Who’s Kissing her Now (1947), his last film.

ARLEN, HAROLD (1905-1986) Bing sang songs by Arlen in eight films spanning his main movie career years. They were:

· Sing Bing, Sing (1932)

· We’re Not Dressing (1934)

· Star Spangled Rhythm (1942)

· Sing with the Stars (1944)

· Here Come the Waves (1944)

· Out of This World (1945)

· The Country Girl (1954)

· Pepe (1960)

Arlen wrote beautiful melodies and these attracted the most talented of lyric writers. His collaborators have included Johnny Mercer, Leo Robin, Dorothy Fields and Ralph Blane. Singing the songs on the big screen was a Hollywood’s Who’s Who of vocal talent such as Judy Garland, Fred Astaire, Dinah Shore and Tony Martin. To keep this entry to a manageable length I will select what I consider to be his five most prominent non-Bing movies:

· Babes in Arms (1939)       

· The Wizard of Oz (1939)

· Blues in the Night (1941)

· Cabin in the Sky (1943)

· A Star is Born (1954)

To prove he was no singer of his own compositions he made an album for CBS in the early 1960s: “Harold sings Arlen”. His movie career petered out at about the same time but by then Hollywood musicals had left their golden years far behind.

ARLEN, RICHARD (1899-1976). Arlen acted in just one film with Bing when he played “Mondy” Mondrake, a student to Bing’s drama professor Frederick Danvers, in the 1933 College Humor. By then Arlen had been in films for ten years and had taken lead roles as well as providing major support, as in College Humor. His peak as a silent star was in Wings (1927). From the 1930s onwards, he alternated between hero parts in ‘B’ pictures and supporting roles in ‘A’ productions. In the latter category The Mountain (1956) and The Best Man (1964) stand out. He married and divorced Jobyna Ralston, his co-star in Wings.  He worked in films up to the year of his death.

ARMETTA, HENRY (1888-1945). Halfway down the cast list of Too Much Harmony (1933) we find the part of Gallotti played by Henry Armetta. This is where he was usually found, invariably playing a comic, excitable, thickly accented Latin. He only made one film with Bing, finding most of his film opportunities away from Paramount. He is best remembered for his later film roles in The Big Store (1941) with the Marx Brothers, and Anchors Aweigh in the year of his death.

ARMSTRONG, LOUIS (1900-1971). One of the best-known musicians of the twentieth century, Louis was instantly recognised vocally or visually. His career involvement with Bing extended beyond film work, although he left a lasting impression of his artistry on celluloid with his Crosby pictures. The first was Pennies from Heaven in 1936, followed fifteen years later with a guest spot in Here Comes The Groom as an airplane passenger joining Bing and others in singing “Misto Cristofo Columbo”. His last movie with Crosby was his most memorable, when he played himself in High Society (1956). He was born on Independence Day in New Orleans, the birthplace of Jazz. His trumpet playing made him famous long before his screen debut in Pennies from Heaven. Some twenty-two films followed, the last being Hello Dolly in 1969. During the last twenty years of his life, his appearance in a film usually lifted its entertainment quotient immediately he appeared. Parts in The Glenn Miller Story (1954) and The Five Pennies (1959) attest to this. A CBS TV documentary he made in 1957 sums him up quite well - it was called Satchmo the Great.

ARNHEIM, GUS (1897-1955). Bandleader/composer.  It is in his capacity as bandleader that Arnheim is generally associated with Bing.  He was active both on record and radio in the early years of Bing’s career.  In that same era, he also made one contribution to Crosby on film.  That was as co-composer, with Harry Barris and Gordon Clifford, of “It Must Be True”, a song featured in the Mack Sennett short Dream House (1931). Bing enjoyed singing it sufficiently to record it on three separate occasions: 1930, 1939 and 1954.  Two of his better known compositions are “I Cried for You” and “Sweet and Lovely”.  It is interesting to note that he was employed by Stan Kenton as a pianist-arranger because Kenton’s music was far removed from the conventional style of Arnheim.

ARNT, CHARLES E. (1908-1990). For three consecutive years, this small part character actor appeared in Paramount pictures with Bing. He will be best remembered as the lunatic Benny the Goof in Two for Tonight (1935) when he initiated a soda water fight with Bing in a scene at the Purple Cafe. Flanking that appearance were bits in Here Is My Heart (1934) and Rhythm on the Range (1936). He played a steward in the latter and then proceeded to be typecast for the next twenty-five years as a meek busybody. He began his character role appearances in Hollywood movies in the early thirties and never made a major impact. Two of his bigger box office films prior to his retirement in the early sixties were Sitting Pretty (1948) and Wild in the Country (1961).

ARTHUR, JOHNNY (1882-1952). Jerry Colonna’s sidekick in Road to Singapore (1940) was Johnny Arthur in character as the aptly named Johnny Willow. Arthur was a small whining comedian in character roles from the early 1920s. His bread and butter acting came from numerous Our Gang shorts but he secured parts in ‘A’ pictures like Twenty Million Sweethearts (1934) and Stage Struck (1936), as well. Singapore was his only Crosby pic.

AS LONG AS I’M DREAMING Song. “The Doctor’s as good as Frank Sinatra” said a passenger on the sleigh on which Bing serenaded Joan Caulfield when he sang this song in Welcome Stranger. A Johnny Burke-James Van Heusen composition so typical of the work they wrote to order for Bing’s movies.

ASKIN, LEON (1907-2005). As Chief Ramayana, Head of the Headhunter Tribe in Road to Bali, Leon Askin was embarking on a Hollywood career which saw him typecast as the unpleasant foreigner well into the 1990s. As a nine year-old boy, he had recited a 17-stanza eulogy for Emperor Francis Joseph in front of the city hall of Vienna’s ninth district and he later emigrated to the USA. Not normally seen in black face, he was usually the heavyweight slavic type in movies such as Knock on Wood (1954), One, Two, Three (1961), The Perils of Pauline (1967) and Young Frankenstein (1974). He makes a contribution to some memorable “Road” confusion in Bali when Bing and Bob Hope both expect to be married to Dorothy Lamour. What the boys don’t know is that Ramayana intends marrying Dottie and killing his two American rivals. Leon Askin went on to be active in TV as General Burckhalter in the Bing Crosby Productions series Hogan’s Heroes.

ASTAIRE, FRED (1899-1987). Actor, dancer, vocalist, composer and choreographer, although it’s the first two which concern us here in the context of Bing’s films. He took top billing with Bing in two of the biggest grossing musicals of the 1940s - Holiday Inn (1942) and Blue Skies (1946). In Holiday Inn he played Ted Hanover, part of a show business trio with Bing and Virginia Dale. His duets with Bing were “I’ll Capture Your Heart” and “Let’s Start the New Year Right”. In Blue Skies, he was Jed Potter, an ex-vaudeville partner of Bing’s, with whom he sang “A Couple of Song And Dance Men”. It was as a result of carrying out a little on-screen hoofing with Crosby that he could tactfully answer “Bing Crosby” when asked to name his favourite dancing partner. He was born Frederick Austerlitz and built his career on a dancing partnership with his sister Adele, which held together until the early thirties when she retired to marry Lord Charles Cavendish. That provided the spur to move into movies and it was in that medium that he found his greatest success. Adele was replaced by Ginger Rogers who was paired with him in ten films. Not wildly successful at the box office when they were released, they are now regarded as classics. The film Dancing Lady (1933) introduced him to picturegoers when he partnered Joan Crawford. That same year he began an unbroken run of fine films which took him to the end of that decade: Flying Down to Rio (1933), The Gay Divorcee (1934), Top Hat (1935), Roberta (1935), Follow the Fleet (1936), Swing Time (1936), Shall We Dance (1937), A Damsel in Distress (1937), Carefree (1938) and The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939). There is a theory that an entertainer’s peak years never extend beyond seven, and in Astaire’s case, they are probably the 1930s. However, the 1940s and 1950s saw him partnering such ladies as Rita Hayworth, Eleanor Powell and Cyd Charisse. In 1946, he announced his retirement but two years later he was enticed back with the opportunity to team with Judy Garland in Easter Parade. Some memorable movies from this twenty year time span include: You Were Never Lovelier (1942), Yolanda and the Thief (1945), The Barkleys of Broadway (1949), Royal Wedding (1951), The Band Wagon (1953), Daddy Longlegs (1955), Funny Face (1957) and On the Beach (1959). On the Beach was his first dramatic role and it signified the end of his musical career, with one minor exception. That exception was Finian’s Rainbow (1968) when he proved he couldn’t dance like his old self. In 1974, he took a more sedate turn round the dance floor with Jennifer Jones when he had a character part in The Towering Inferno. A tenuous link with Bing came with That’s Entertainment, also in 1974. He was one of the narrators for this assembly of notable musical items from M-G-M vaults, which featured some Bing clips from that studio. His last films included the forgettable Purple Taxi (1977) a French, Italian, Irish production and Ghost Story (1981). The last ten years of his life were devoted to public appearances and interviews, which dwelt on his peak years and the magnificent contribution he made to the art of dancing in the twentieth century. 

AT YOUR COMMAND Song. Bing sings the song over the radio in the Mack Sennett featurette I Surrender Dear (1931). It has special meanings for Marion Sayers, who has been kissed by Bing earlier in an episode of mistaken identity. When she hears the song, she is re-united with Bing and a happy ending is provided in the last two minutes of this one-reeler. The 1946 compilation Road to Hollywood also featured the song. Bing composed the song with ex-Rhythm Boy Harry Barris and established tunesmith Harry Tobias. 

ATES, ROSCOE (1892-1962). Pronounced R-R-R-Roscoe Ates, because Ates’ movie career was built round his comic stutter combined with his rubber face and bulging eyes. In Hollywood on Parade No. 4 (1933), Bing is given the opportunity to sing “Boo-Boo-Boo” to girls on exercise machines because Ates’ stuttering puts them out of rhythmic-sync. His other bit in a Crosby picture was as the horse cab driver who over-charges in Birth of the Blues (1941). Ates entered films in 1929 following 15 years as a concern violinist with stage and vaudeville experience. He put his comic talents to work in Hollywood mainly as a sidekick to screen cowboys, although bigger budget efforts included Alice in Wonderland (1933) and The Errand Boy (1961), which was also his last film. He was in three serious dramas, which proved he could turn his hand to less obvious comic parts: Gone with the Wind (1939), Chad Hanna (1940) and Come Next Spring (1956).

AUER, MISCHA (1905-1967). An alphabetical coincidence places Mischa after our previous entrant and serves to highlight a number of similarities. Both entered films in the late twenties, both were regarded as comic character actors and both made capital of a possible thyroid condition, which gave them bulging eyes. Auer’s maternal grandfather was also a violinist and it was he who brought him to the States from Russia in 1920. His only Crosby film was East Side of Heaven (1939), when he was fourth billed as Nicky, Bing’s friend and room-mate. It was a cue from Auer that provides Bing with the opportunity to sing “That Sly Old Gentleman” to Baby Sandy, because Auer’s attempt at a Russian song has the opposite effect as a lullaby. Around this time Auer was also a guest on Bing’s weekly ‘Kraft Music Hall’ broadcasts. Mischa Auer appeared in more than sixty Hollywood films before settling in Europe in the late forties. His first truly memorable part was in the 1936 My Man Godfrey, which won him an Oscar nomination and bigger supporting roles. His long, sad face and droll delivery enlivened such films as Three Smart Girls (1937), You Can’t Take It With You (1938), Destry Rides Again (1939), Hellzapoppin (1941), Lady In The Dark (1944) and Brewster’s Millions (1945). The European movies were no match for the Hollywood comedy production line and only Mr. Arkadin (1955) remains in the memory.

AUF WIEDERSEHEN, MY DEAR Song. In the early thirties Bing sang this Milton Ager, Ed Nelson, Al Hoffman, Al Goodhart composition in two shorts. In the Mack Sennett featurette Blue of the Night it wraps up his last appearance in a nightclub and in Hollywood on Parade No. 2 he sings it to Gracie Allen on learning she is married to George Burns. The Blue of the Night sequence was re-used in the 1949 compilation Down Memory Lane.

AVALON BOYS Only rarely do we find a Crosby film song not issued commercially. Such a one is “There’ll Always Be a Lady Fair”, a Cole Porter composition used in the 1936 Anything Goes movie. Bing sings this with the Avalon Boys and what superb harmonies ensue. The Avalon Boys were a quartet led by Chill Wills, a Hollywood character actor whose only Bing movie link is here.

AVE MARIA Song. One of those lump in the throat compositions that hits the soundtrack when the going gets simultaneously serious and sentimental. Written by Franz Schubert and sung by Father O’Malley and Genevieve Linden (Bing and Rise Stevens) in Going My Way (1944). The Robert Mitchell Boys choir adds a suitably celestial choral backing.

AYLMER, SIR FELIX (1889-1979). Actor in Bing’s only British movie, The Road to Hong Kong (1962). This oh so typically English actor played the Grand Lama in the sequence set in Tibet where Crosby and Hope are sent for a memory potion. Aylmer had distinguished himself as a stage actor in the twenty or so years preceding his film debut in The Wandering Jew (1933). His first love remained the theatre even when he was in demand for well-written character parts. He also wrote plays and adapted several of them for the cinema. His main cinematic output has been in British productions, some of the better known being: Victoria The Great (1938), Night Train to Munich (1940), The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp (1943), Henry V (1944), The Way Ahead (1945), The Wicked Lady (1945), Hamlet (1948), So Long At The Fair (1950), Quo Vadis (1951, Anastasia (1956), Separate Tables (1958) and Exodus (1960). The last four were made in the USA. His final picture was the British made Decline and Fall in 1968.

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BABCOCK, EDWARD CHESTER (1913-1990). The real name of songwriter James Van Heusen, where a full entry will be found. In The Road to Hong Kong he was the name of Bob Hope’s character, as an in-joke.

BABY SANDY (1938-2024). If Sunday press exposes were short of copy in the late thirties they could have run the story “Baby Sandy is a Girl” because the baby boy character in the 1939 East Side of Heaven was the thirteen month old Alexandra Lea Henville. The film refers to him throughout and baby Sandy plays a pivotal role in the film’s plot. The film’s fade out shot is of Baby Sandy cradled in Bing’s arms as he sings East Side of Heaven. When a film career starts at the top, it can only move in one direction. East Side of Heaven was followed by four ‘Baby Sandy’ films and then four indifferent features, the last one being Johnny Doughboy in 1942. She was a spent force by the age of five and went on to become a legal secretary. She married and divorced twice, and had three sons.

BABY SITTER, THE Cartoon. Paramount’s cartoon unit quiet frequently promoted their own contract players.  In the mid-forties the “Saturday Evening Post” strip “Little Lulu” was brought to the big screen and in 1947 the cartoon The Baby Sitter was made.  The story shows how Lulu is assigned as baby sitter and her attempts to keep baby in his cot leads to a dream sequence.  This finds Lulu at the Stork Club [a nightclub for babies!] where the stage show features nappified versions of W.C. Fields, Bing, Bob Hope and Jerry Colonna. 

BACON, IRVING (1893-1965) Character actor.  Bacon lent his doleful simpleton-like presence to seven Crosby films.  He popped up in minor roles in Crosby pictures over a twenty-year period.  He is seen first in the Mack Sennett short Sing, Bing, Sing (1932) when he is the disapproving father of Bing’s girl (Florine McKinney).  He has bit parts as an announcer in Rhythm on the Range (1936) and as a lecturer on seals in Sing You Sinners (1938).  He plays the taxi driver Gus in Holiday Inn (1942) and is next seen selling hamburgers in Riding High (1950).  Also in 1950 he could be found selling jewellery in Mr. Music before bowing out of the Crosby film world the following year when he played Bates, the butler, in Here Comes the Groom.  There was nothing flashy about the comic support Bacon provided in the thirty plus years he spent in films.  He contributed to over 200 movies and was probably never out of work for more than a few hours.

BAGGOT, KING (1874-1948). Actor-director.  A good example of how the mighty can fall.  He popped up as a gambler in Mississippi (1935).  He was a much in demand handsome leading man in silent films from 1911 (The Scarlet Letter) until 1923 (The Thrill Chaser).  Then he became a director and in 1925 made Tumbleweeds, a critically admired western.  Yet by the end of the 1920s, he was all but forgotten and ended his career playing bit parts.

BAILEY, PEARL (1918-1990). Primarily a singer, Pearl Bailey made two strong impressions on me as a television performer. In the late 1950s, she appeared drunk on a live “Sunday Night at the London Palladium” broadcast and in the mid-seventies contributed to that fateful Pasadena concert being recorded for television and at the end of which Bing fell. The celluloid link with Crosby was at the very beginning of her Hollywood career when she sang “Tired” in that compendium of Paramount talent, Variety Girl (1947). Her subsequent film output is not too lengthy to list in its entirety. 1948 - Isn’t It Romantic 1955 - Carmen Jones 1956 - That Certain Feeling 1958 - St. Louis Blues 1959 - Porgy and Bess 1960 - All the Fine Young Cannibals 1970 - The Landlord. Best known as a jazz singer she won a Tony Award as Dolly in the all-black production of “Hello Dolly!”

BALL, ERNEST R. (1878-1927) Composer.  The Oxford Companion of Popular Music described him thus: “He is remembered best for a number of sham Irish (but unforgettable) songs”.  Bing sang two of them in films.  The first was “A Little Bit of Heaven” from I Surrender Dear (1931).  The other was “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” from Top o’ the Morning (1949).  Ball’s songs were favourites of John McCormack, who in turn was admired by Bing.  He will go down in musical history as a founder member of ASCAP.

BARBIER, GEORGE (1865-1945) Character actor.  He was Mr. Clapsaddle, the sponsor of the radio show in The Big Broadcast (1932), J. Thorval Jones, the film producer in She Loves Me Not (1934) and J.P. Todhunter, the company president in Waikiki Wedding (1937).  From that trio of pictures we know he was often cast as an important personage with a slightly funny name.  He was training for the priesthood when he was smitten by the acting bug.  A successful ten-year career on Broadway led to twenty years in films.

BARNES, GEORGE (1893-1953). American director of photography. He was the regular cameraman on Bing’s films from the late forties until the time of his death. The eight Bing films he photographed were: The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945),  The Emperor Waltz (1948),  Riding High (1950) [co-director of photography with Ernest Laszlo],  Mr. Music (1950),  Here Comes the Groom (1951), Just For You (1952),  Road to Bali (1953) and Little Boy Lost (1953).  In addition, he was co-photographer on The Greatest Show on Earth (1952). He began his film career in 1919 and made the transition from black and white to colour successfully in the 1940s. The Technicolor richness of The Emperor Waltz attests to this. If you have seen some of the more popular films Barnes photographed you will have a memory of the impact his visuals made. A few with still lingering images for me are Rebecca (1940), Jane Eyre (1944),  Spellbound (1945),  Sinbad the Sailor (1947),  Samson and Delilah (1949) and The War of the Worlds, his last film, shot in 1953. Trivia buffs need to know that he was married seven times, once to Joan Blondell from 1932 to 1936.

BARRAT, ROBERT (1891-1970) Tall, imposing character actor in over 150 screen roles. He was often cast as a foreigner and a heavy. He was in two consecutive Road films with Bing, Bob and Dottie: Utopia in 1946 and Rio in 1948. In the first, he was Sperry who, together with colleague McGurk, is at odds with Hope and Crosby for most of the story. In Road to Rio, he is Johnson of Johnson’s Mammoth Carnival where Bing and Bob perform their “Apalachicola” routine. Like all bit part players, he had to take the rough with the smooth and go where the work lay. This is why the ‘A’ pictures like The Life of Emile Zola (1937) and Joan of Arc (1948) rub shoulders with such dross as King of the Jungle (1933) and Son of Ali Baba (1952).

BARRETT, JUDITH [Lucille Kelley] (1909-2000) Leading lady in 1930s ‘B’ pictures.  Examples are Flying Hostess (1936) and Television Spy (1939).  When she was offered the occasional bigger budget film, she was lower down the cast list.  Her one film with Bing was Road to Singapore (1940).  She played Bing’s girlfriend Gloria Wycott.  It was made as her career came to a sudden halt.  She disappeared from the public eye, making no further films after 1940. She was married to Bing's friend Lindsay Howard from 1940-1952.

BARRIS, HARRY (1905-1962). For the purpose of tracing Harry Barris’ contribution to Bing’s celluloid career we need to put in three separate compartments. As a Rhythm Boy, he appeared with Bing and Al Rinker in four films over a fifteen month time span. They were:

a)  King of Jazz (1930)

b)  Two Plus Fours (1930)

c)  Check and Double Check (voice only) (1930)

d)  Confessions of a Co-Ed (1931)

In b) they were augmented Rhythm Boys with Ed Deering and Spec O’Donnell joining the trio to receive billing as “The College Boys”. The songs from the four Rhythm Boys films were:

a)  “Music Hath Charms”, “Mississippi Mud”, “So the Bluebirds and the Blackbirds Got Together”, “A Bench in the Park” and “Happy Feet”.

b)  “The Stein Song”

c)  “Three Little Words”

d)  “Ya Got Love”

Phase two of the Crosby/Barris movie association is the use of songs co-written by Barris and featured by Bing in five films made between 1931 and 1933. The songs Barris helped write are:

i)   “I Surrender Dear”

ii)  “At Your Command”

iii) “It Must Be True”

Bing sang “I Surrender Dear” in the film I Surrender Dear (1931), One More Chance (1931), The Big Broadcast (1932) and College Humor (1933). He sang “At Your Command” in I Surrender Dear and “It Must Be True” in Dream House (1931).

The final phase of the association is the involvement of Barris in about one Crosby picture a year from 1937 to 1944. There is a strong probability that it was the Crosby muscle that secured these small acting assignments for Harry Barris and the studio played safe by casting him as a musician of sorts in all but one film. He also had the chance to sing once more with Bing in the first of these. It was Double or Nothing (1937) and he played an orchestra leader who joins Bing, Martha Raye and Francis Faye on the song “After You”. The other appearances are:

· Sing You Sinners (1938). A band leader.

· Rhythm On The River (1940) A saxophone player.

· Birth Of The Blues (1941) Suds, A jazz musician.

· Holiday Inn (1942) A musician.

· Dixie (1943) A drummer.

· Here Come The WAVES (1944) A club announcer.

BARRYMORE, ETHEL (1879-1959). Actress. In Just for You (1952), Miss Barrymore is cast as Allida De Bronkhart, the headmistress of St. Hilary’s School for Girls. It was a relatively small part for “The First Lady of the American Theatre” but she was past her acting peak.  Bing observed: “I noticed that when Ethel was rehearsing for scenes apparently she was not concerned with her lines, the business or the props.  But when Elliot Nugent, the director, finally said, “Let’s take it” her first take was perfect.”  Nugent was unprepared for such perfection and kept requesting retakes, with Barrymore’s reading of the part deteriorating.  Bing remarked, “Like any true champion she’d built herself up for one major effort and that was it.”  Ethel Barrymore was a Crosby fan.  “He doesn’t know it,” she said, “but the family and I love his stuff.  We’ve got practically all of his records back to the time he was with Paul Whiteman.”  In fact, Bing was aware of her feelings towards him.  On August 15th, 1949, she had celebrated her seventieth birthday, which conveniently coincided with her fiftieth year as an actress.  The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences had arranged their most ambitious taped radio programme up to that time.  At 10.30 p.m., one hundred and fifty colleagues paid tribute to her, with Bing singing “Happy Birthday”.  Ethel Barrymore had been in films since 1914 and saw films as a way of filling in time between theatrical engagements. She made her last silent film in 1919 - The Divorcee, and her talkie debut did not come until 1933 when she played the Czarina in Rasputin and The Mad Empress. Between that film and Just For You she managed to land solid parts in better movies, such as None But The Lonely Heart (1944), The Spiral Staircase (1946), The Farmer’s Daughter (1947), The Paradine Case (1948), Portrait of Jenny (1949) and Pinky (1949). After her Crosby picture she made only four more films, the best remembered of which is Young At Heart (1955).

BARTLETT, SY (1909-1978) Screenwriter/producer.  Sydney S. Bartlett devised the story of Road to Zanzibar (1941) along with Don Hartman.  It was his only involvement in a Crosby film although he was responsible for the story of The Princess and the Pirate (1944), a Bob Hope comedy in which Bing made a brief appearance.  He wrote some good stuff once he left lightweight comedy assignments behind.  Critical and box-office triumphs included Twelve O’ Clock High (1949), The Big Country (1958) and Cape Fear (1962).  He wrote the first two and produced the third.  All of them starred Gregory Peck, with whom he formed a production company.  He wrote and produced Che in 1969 and then retired. 

BARTON, JAMES (1890-1962) Actor.  He was in one Crosby movie, Here Comes the Groom (1951).  He played Pa Jones, the father of the Jane Wyman character.  He was pleased when Bing married her because he was not happy having Franchot Tone (her other suitor) as his son-in-law.  Although he was usually cast as a rough diamond, his background equipped him to play just about any character part that came along.  He’d been a straight actor in stock, played in vaudeville and burlesque as part of an act with his parents, tap danced and been cast in Broadway musicals.  His film career began in the silent era and he continued appearing in Hollywood movies until the time of his death.  His last part was in The Misfits (1961).

BE CAREFUL, IT’S MY HEART Song. Written for Holiday Inn (1942) by Irving Berlin, Bing sings it in a scene when he is rehearsing with Marjorie Reynolds for a St. Valentine’s Day nightclub appearance.

BEACH OF DREAMS. This was a story written by Harry Hervey about missionaries on a tropical island. It was a serious tale owned by Paramount and it became the basis for the first Road film, Road to Singapore (1940). Frank Butler and Don Hartman re-worked it into a comedy classic.

BEAUTIFUL GIRL Song. If you want to know how easy it is to record a song, watch Bing at the beginning of Going Hollywood (1933) as he casually puts “Beautiful Girl” in the can before departing for Hollywood. Written by Nacio Herb Brown (music) and Arthur Freed (lyrics) it turned up later that year in the film Stage Mother and again in Singin’ in the Rain (1952) when Jimmie Thompson sang it. It was common for M-G-M and Freed to re-use compositions in this way.

BEAVERS, LOUISE (1902-1962) Actress.  Typecast as usual as a cook, she played Mamie in Holiday Inn (1942) and joined in the singing of “Abraham” with other cast members.  If she wasn’t playing a cook she was playing a housekeeper or maid. Her best performance came in 1934 when she played Aunt Jemima in Imitation of Life.  She obviously did not object to the type of acting jobs she was given because a late career highlight was playing the title role in “Beulah”, a popular television show.  Her Hollywood film career came to an end after appearing in the Bob Hope comedy The Facts of Life (1960)

BELASCO, LEON (1902-1988). Character actor.  He was in two consecutive 1942 Bing films: Holiday Inn, as the owner of a flower shop and Road to Morocco as Yusef.  The latter role was typical of the way Hollywood treated him because of his Russian origins.  If a bit part player was needed to play an ethnic type, Belasco was the man.  He came to films from being a bandleader and must have been in at least a hundred films, which allowed him to exercise his excitable personality in comic roles.

BELLS OF ST. MARY’S, THE Film. This was the Christmas, 1945, attraction at New York’s Radio City Music Hall, and Bing was at the premiere. The film was the most profitable film RKO ever made and took $8 million on its initial American release. It went on to make more money than its ‘inspiration’, the 1944 Going My Way. It would be unjust to refer to it as a remake of that film but Bing was still Father O’Malley and plot similarities were not too well hidden. The audience did not mind. It was a popular success in its own right and director Leo McCarey knew exactly what he was doing when he wrote it as soon as he had measured the success of Going My Way. As it is readily available to buy for home viewing it seems pointless reviewing the plot of this 126 minute sentimental drama. A one-line attempt could read “Bing goes to the run down parish of St. Mary’s and Ingrid Bergman disapproves of his relaxed approach until he solves a few problems and converts a sourdough into a benefactor”.  Ingrid Bergman was released from her David O. Selznick contract to make the film in return for the remake rights to A Bill of Divorcement and Little Women plus $175,000. She never really warmed to her leading man even though the atmosphere on the set become more friendly as shooting progressed. “I didn’t get to know Bing at all”, she wrote. “He was very polite and nice, and couldn’t have been more pleasant, but he was always surrounded by a little group of three or four men chattering away and protecting him from everybody else.”  The clever critics disliked it.  The one on the ‘New York Times’ wrote: “The whole storyline developed towards the wheedling of a building for the school is unconvincing and vaguely immoral.” James Agee, writing in ‘The Nation’, said, “I find very objectionable the movies increasing recognition of the romantic-commercial values of celibacy.” Bing’s contract with Paramount was due for renewal at the time of the film’s initial release and brother Everett was in a strong position to negotiate a new deal with them that guaranteed Paramount Bing’s exclusive acting services for the next seven years.

BELLS OF ST. MARY’S, THE Song. This title song from the film was a 1917 composition by Douglas Furber and A. Emmett Adams. It was written for a musical comedy of the time. It is placed at the end of the film and Bing is accompanied by a chorus of nuns. As a piece of music, it has been tackled in extremely different ways. Clyde McPhatter provided a soul interpretation in the fifties and Australian bushranger Slim Dusty did it his way in the sixties. Ice Cream van chimes and music box abbreviations confirm it is now out of copyright.

BELOIN, EDMUND (1910-1992) Writer of comedy screenplays.  He had a hand in four that involved Bing.  My Favourite Brunette (1947) was a Bob Hope script he co-wrote with Jack Rose that involved Bing in a gag sequence.  He collaborated with Rose again for Road to Rio (1948) but took full credit for A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1949).  His final Crosby effort was a collaboration with Richard Breen for Top o’ the Morning (1949).  His skill in developing comedy material was honed between 1936 and 1943 when he wrote for “The Jack Benny Show” on radio.  Benny then used him as writer on a couple of his films.  Most of Beloin’s work was for Paramount and he tailored later scripts for Jerry Lewis (The Sad Sack in 1957 and Don’t Give Up the Ship in 1959) and Elvis (G.I. Blues in 1960).

BENCHLEY, ROBERT (1889-1945). It was at the end of Benchley’s career that he brought his humorous style to bear on a couple of Crosby pictures. He played himself in Duffy’s Tavern (1945) when he is in a scene narrating a bedtime story to the four Crosby boys. The story happens to be about their dad, who makes a brief appearance. The following year he is used to great advantage in Road to Utopia (1946) which he introduces and then acts as occasional narrator. He is also glimpsed in the short Hollywood Victory Caravan (1945) in which Bing sings one song. Benchley was a literary man and pre-Hollywood he was a newspaper editor. He became Managing Editor of “Vanity Fair” and later on drama editor of “Life” and theatre critic for the “New Yorker”. He made his mark in films as writer/narrator/actor in a series of shorts made between 1928 and 1945. These were nothing more than ten-minute lectures with self-explanatory titles like The Sex Life of the Polyp (1928), How to Sleep (1935), The Courtship of a Newt (1938) and Keeping in Shape (1942). At the time, they seemed very funny. By the early thirties producers were conscious that Benchley could add value to their feature products, particularly as he often wrote his own material. This led to appearances in such as China Seas (1935), Foreign Correspondent (1940), The Major and the Minor (1942) I Married a Witch (1942) and Weekend at the Waldorf (1945). For many years, he coped with an alcohol problem.

BENDIX, WILLIAM (1906-1964). Actor. Like Bing, a Paramount contract player, but it seemed as though the two were destined to appear in the same film without meeting. They avoided being in the same scene in three of Paramount’s all-star compendium films, Star Spangled Rhythm (1942), Duffy’s Tavern (1945) and Variety Girl (1947). When they were cast together, it was perfect casting. It happened just once, in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1949). Bing is Hank Martin who finds himself waking up in the year 582 AD by being prodded with the lance of Sir Sagramore (Bendix). Bing later prevents the execution of his friend and the good humour positively bubbles when they are joined by Sir Cedric Hardwicke for the “Busy Doing Nothing” sequence. Bendix made his Broadway acting debut as an Irish Cop in 1939. In 1942, he moved to Hollywood and was soon churning out a film every two to three months. He was one rung above character actor although type-casting usually saw him as a simpleminded soul. He proved a good foil for Alan Ladd in The Glass Key (1942) and The Blue Dahlia (1946). Whilst his film career was taking hold, he went to the heart of the listening public with his weekly sit-com The Life of Riley. This was filmed in 1949 and then became a successful television series in the fifties. He was most at home in action/adventure pictures, hence Two Years Before the Mast (1946), Streets of Laredo (1949), Submarine Command (1951) Macao (1952) and The Deep Six (1958). He decided to transfer his film career to England in the late fifties and cheap but popular films like Idol on Parade (1958) and Johnny Nobody (1961) kept him in the public eye. His last film, released the year after his death, was Young Fury.

BENNETT, JOAN (1910-1990). Actress and leading lady to Bing in two consecutive 1935 movies, Mississippi and Two for Tonight. As is to be expected, Bing wound up with Miss Bennett in both films. Joan was the younger sister of actress Constance. She entered films at the age of six and became a “star” in 1929 when she was cast opposite Ronald Colman in Bulldog Drummond. By the time she was acting with Bing, she was a box-office draw. She was acting in films until the late seventies and appeared in a fair number of clinkers. The few redeeming movies she made after the 1930s included The Woman in the Window (1944), Father of the Bride (1950) and We’re No Angels (1955). Towards the end of her career she was enticed to what was then the land of Hollywood has-beens (Italy) where she made a fairly impressive horror picture, Suspiria (1977). I do not know of any film in which she appeared which had a plot more intriguing than her own potted biography. The bare bones are this. She married at 16, became a mother at 17 and divorced at 18. Her second husband was producer-writer Gene Markey (married 1932, divorced 1937). Her next producer was Walter Wanger whom she married in 1940. That marriage lasted for a quarter of a century but had a strange interlude mid-way when Wanger was jailed for shooting Jennings Lang, Miss Bennett’s agent, when he was in a jealous rage. Her fourth marriage was in 1978 to movie critic David Wilde.

BERGMAN, INGRID (1915-1982). Actress who made one film with Bing, but it burnt itself into the cinematic memory. She was Sister Benedict in The Bells of St. Mary’s and although relationships on set were generally professional rather than overly friendly, the screen relationships of Father O’Malley and Sister Benedict were warm and endearing. Her film career began in Sweden and it was Hollywood producer David O. Selznick who was confident that he could make a lot of money out of her that resulted in her English-speaking screen debut in Intermezzo (1940). There were more hits than misses in the early Hollywood years: Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941), Casablanca (1943), Gaslight (1944), Spellbound (1945) and Notorious (1946). It was notoriety that saw her popularity instantly plummet when she left her husband for Italian director Robert Rossellini in 1949. It was not until she made Anastasia in England in 1956 that she began to prove her worth as a box-office draw once more. The successes were not as thick on the ground as during her Hollywood hey-day however, with only The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958), Cactus Flower (1969) and Murder on the Orient Express (1974) standing out. By the 1970s she was in demand by directors for the art house cinema market and she was nominated for an Academy Award as best actress for her performance in Ingmar Bergman’s Autumn Sonata. She died of cancer.

BERLE, MILTON (1908-2002) Comedian. In Let’s Make Love (1960), he was one of the three tutors employed by Yves Montand to turn him into a polished entertainer. Bing was Montand’s vocal coach. Gene Kelly gave dancing lessons and Berle dispensed the finer art of comic delivery. Berle was treading the boards at the age of four and in silent movies at the age of eight. Adult movie roles began in 1937 but nothing memorable came out of Hollywood. It was television that made him famous. He hosted variety shows in the States from 1948 and when he was at his TV peak in the mid-fifties, he was known as “Mr. Television”. However, by the late fifties America’s television love affair with ‘Uncle Miltie’ was on the wane and he took another stab at the big screen. By and large the parts were small but the films themselves had better production values than earlier. Titles such as The Bellboy (1959), It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, World (1963), The Loved One (1965) and The Oscar (1966) are respectable contributions to his filmography.

BERLIN, IRVING (1888-1989). Composer who wrote the songs for three of Bing’s most popular films. His contribution to Crosby pictures is detailed below together with the songs, which were sung by Bing:

1. Reaching for the Moon (1930). When The Folks High up Do the Mean Low Down (with Bebe Daniels and June McCloy)

2. Angels of Mercy (1941): Angels of Mercy

3. Holiday Inn (1942): I’ll Capture Your Heart (with Fred Astaire and Virginia Dale and reprised with Astaire, Dale and Marjorie Reynolds). Lazy; White Christmas (with Marjorie Reynolds); Happy Holiday (with Marjorie Reynolds); Let’s Start the New Year Right (sung twice, on the second occasion with Fred Astaire, Marjorie Reynolds and Virginia Dale); Abraham (with Marjorie Reynolds, Louise Beavers, Joan Arnold and Shelby Bacon); Be Careful, It’s My Heart; Easter Parade; Song of Freedom; I’ve Got Plenty to Be Thankful For

4. Blue Skies (1946); I’ve Got My Captain Working for Me Now (with Billy de Wolfe); All by Myself (with Joan Caulfield); I’ll See You in Cuba (with Olga San Juan); A Couple of Song and Dance Men (with Fred Astaire); You Keep Coming Back Like a Song (sung twice); Always; Blue Skies; The Little Things in Life; Not For All the Rice in China; Russian Lullaby; Everybody Step; How Deep Is the Ocean; Getting Nowhere; Any Bonds Today; This Is the Army Mr. Jones; White Christmas

5. White Christmas (1954): White Christmas (sung twice, the second time with Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney and Gloria Wood); The Old Man (with Danny Kaye); Heat Wave (with Danny Kaye); Let Me Sing and I’m Happy (with Danny Kaye); Blue Skies (with Danny Kaye); Snow (with Rosemary Clooney, Danny Kaye and Gloria Wood); I’d Rather See a Minstrel Show (with Danny Kaye and Rosemary Clooney); Mandy (sung twice, first with Danny Kaye, then with Rosemary Clooney); Count Your Blessings Instead of Sheep (with Rosemary Clooney); What Can You Do with a General; Gee, I Wish I Was Back in the Army (with Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney and Gloria Wood)

If it were necessary to have a claim to place Berlin amongst the top popular composers of the twentieth century, it would be supported by these incontestable facts:

a)  He wrote both words and music

b)  His success spanned half a century

c)  His songs had durability - many are now standards.

To see the man in action (he could only play and compose in the key of f) he was a most unassuming type. His singing talent was better left in the bathroom. Bing tellingly said: “You have to hug him to hear him.” His contributions to non-Crosby films provide a list of hit musicals including: The Jazz Singer (1927), Kid Millions (1934), Top Hat (1935), Follow the Fleet (1936), On the Avenue (1937), Carefree (1938), Alexander’s Ragtime Band (1938), This is the Army (1943), Easter Parade (1948), Annie Get Your Gun (1950), Call Me Madam (1953) and There’s No Business Like Show Business (1954). There was talk of a movie to be based on his life, appropriately titled Say It with Music. Berlin had little enthusiasm for the project and despite a proposed strong cast, including Bing, Sinatra, Dean Martin and Louis Armstrong, nothing materialised.

BESSER, JOE (1907-1988) Broad comedian who made occasional films.  His one Crosby film link was as Joe Greb in Say One For Me (1959).  He played the part of Robert Wagner’s theatrical agent.  As an ex-vaudevillian, Besser’s characterisations lacked subtlety.  For that reason, he was an ideal late addition to membership of the Three Stooges comic team when the death of one of the original Stooges created a vacancy in their act.

BEST, WILLIE (1916-1962).  Black actor who played a steward in Dixie (1943).  We could leave it there because Best was in films at a time when most black actors were stereotyped as wide-eyed comic dimwits.  Like Stepin Fetchit and Mantan Moreland, Best was invariably found in self-demeaning roles.  Thankfully, there has been no place on screen for such performances since the middle of the last century.

BETWEEN THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA Song. Shoe-horned into the Sennett short Sing, Bing, Sing (1932) for no reason other than that it is a good song. Bing waited a quarter of a century before committing it to wax. Written by Ted Koehler and Harold Arlen, the song is rightly regarded as a standard for all middle of the road singers to tackle at some stage in their careers.

BEVAN, BILLY [William Bevan Harris] (1887-1957).  There is a sequence in Too Much Harmony (1933) where a rehearsal for a Broadway show is taking place.  Billy Bevan is seen directing the performers.  It was a tiny part for an actor who had been starring in two-reel comedies some five years earlier.  He made about 70 of them for Mack Sennett between 1920 and 1929.  By the time of Too Much Harmony, he was taking any bit part that kept him in the film business.  For the next twenty years, he popped up in character parts for most of the Hollywood studios.  He retired from the screen in 1952.

BEWARE (I’M BEGINNING TO CARE) Song. Written by Johnny Burke and James V. Monaco as part of their score for East Side of Heaven (1938). It was recorded as a demo with Bing’s vocal being supported by John Scott Trotter, piano and Perry Botkin, guitar, but it was not subsequently used in the film.

BICKFORD, CHARLES (1889-1967). Actor. He was the tycoon J. L. Higgins in the Crosby picture Riding High (1950). As Bing’s boss in the film, he orders Bing to get rid of the racehorse Broadway Bill. Of course, Bing refuses, thereby rescuing the plot! Bickford arrived in Hollywood from Broadway at a time when stage actors were needed to cope with the demands of clear diction for the newly arrived talkies. He rarely starred in films, but his powerful screen presence meant that he quite often brought dignity to a part that wasn’t always worthy of his talents. I have indulged myself in selecting my personal favourite Bickford films from his output covering nearly forty years: The Farmer Takes a Wife (1935), High Wide and Handsome (1937), Of Mice and Men (1940), The Song of Bernadette (1943), The Farmer’s Daughter (1947), Johnny Belinda (1948), A Star is Born (1954), The Big Country (1958) and Days of Wine and Roses (1962).

THE BIG BROADCAST Film released in 1932 and the first in the Paramount series. It was whilst filming this one in the summer of 1932 that Bing was signed to his initial Paramount contract. The plot capitalised on the current popularity of radio, the studio assuming that listeners would welcome seeing their favourites on the big screen. The action takes place at Station WADX, which meant that Paramount cut costs and managed with one basic set. Top billed, Bing played himself and provided the vocal on “Where the Blue of the Night”, “I Surrender Dear”, “Dinah”, “Here Lies Love”, “I’ve Got Five Dollars” and “Please”. In the film, his job is on the line because of his persistent unpunctuality. He is sacked and it is George Burns, the radio station manager, who persuades the station’s main sponsor to take Bing back. Speciality acts in the film included Kate Smith, The Mills Brothers, The Boswell Sisters and Arthur Tracy.  Because so many of those acts were resident on America’s East Coast, Paramount re-opened its New York Astoria studio, situated on Long Island.  Bing’s contribution was filmed in Hollywood, however.  When the film was released in October, 1932, the critic for the “Hollywood Citizen News” summed it up nicely when she wrote: “(Frank) Tuttle has taken a weak romantic story, a rather appealing array of stars.....and produced an amusingly entertaining picture.  By dint of his ingenuity and high appreciation of satire, Tuttle has made The Big Broadcast good film fare.”  The film did only average business in the big cities.  However, its lack of sophistication made it a hit in the sticks and overall Paramount was satisfied with its performance. 

THE BIG BROADCAST OF 1936 Paramount’s second big broadcast film released in September 1935. In this one, Bing had a guest spot, singing “I Wished on the Moon”. It was the only Big Broadcast film to show a loss even though costs were kept down by director Norman Taurog. During the thirteen months the picture was being ‘assembled’ Taurog photographed stage acts as and when they passed through California. Amongst those captured on film are Richard Tauber, singing “Melody In F”, The Vienna Boys Choir, singing “Tales From The Vienna Woods” and Bill Robinson, dancing “Miss Brown To You”. The Ethel Merman performance of “It’s the Animal in Me” was a song sequence cut from the 1934 picture We’re Not Dressing.

BILLBOARD GIRL 1931 Mack Sennett short. The title refers to Margie ‘Babe’ Kane with whom Bing falls in love when he sees her picture on a billboard. Although she is in love with someone else, Bing wins her over in the closing minutes of this two-reel comedy. In 1935, Astor pictures acquired the rights to the Sennett library and issued an edited version of the film under the title “Bring on Bing”. In 1946, the same company used two Crosby vocals from the film in the feature compilation Road to Hollywood (1946).

BINDER, MAURICE (1925-1991) Title designer.  You will only find one title designer in this A-Z.  It was the credit Binder received for his work on The Road to Hong Kong (1962).  His work on that one went unnoticed. That same year he was receiving plaudits for his opening credit sequence on the first James Bond film.  The graphics for Dr. No let you know there was something a little special about the film that was about to unfold.  The producers of the Bond films wisely employed Binder for the opening graphics on subsequent Bonds until his death at age 66.

BING CROSBY’S WASHINGTON STATE 1968 documentary short. The film was commissioned to promote the tourist attractions of Washington State. It was a 28-minute travelogue concentrating on the more scenic elements of that State. Bing was an obvious choice as narrator because it was the State of his birth. At the end, Tacoma is visited and Bing refers to it as his birthplace.

BINGO CROSBYANA Cartoon. Warner Bros., the studio that first introduced Bing to animation enthusiasts, represented him in more than half a dozen cartoons.  Not what you would expect of a rival studio to Paramount but cartoon Crosby was frequently in the company of Warner stars.  The first Warner’s cartoon short I have traced is Bingo Crosbyana, directed by Friz Freleng for the “Merrie Melodies” series and released in the summer of 1935.  The Bingo character is a bug who takes the part of a crooner-guitarist. 

BING PRESENTS ORESTE Paramount trailer. At least I regarded it as a trailer when I saw it in 1956 as a ten-minute promotion for The Vagabond King which was shown at my neighbourhood cinema the following week. The film turned out to be a bore and its star, Oreste Kirkop, went into instant retirement from movies. Paramount probably knew they had a dud on their hands when they prevailed on Bing’s goodwill to help give it some clout at the box-office. Filmed when Bing was making Anythng Goes in June 1955, his assignment was to introduce Oreste to an eager public and then the maltese operatic star was seen singing “Vesti La Giubba”, “Cara Mia” and “Begin the Beguine” accompanied by Victor Young and the Paramount Orchestra. A previous lost cause of a film was The Great John L. But when Bing contributed to radio promotional material for that box-office flop at least he had a good excuse - he was one of its backers when it was made in 1945.

BINYON, CLAUDE (1905-1978). Although Binyon directed films for five years from 1948 to 1953, it is as a screenwriter that he became involved with Crosby movies. His Crosby half dozen are:  

· College Humor (1933). Screenplay with Frank Butler.

· Mississippi (1935). Adapted for the screen with Herbert Fields.

· Sing You Sinners (1938). Story and screenplay

· Holiday Inn (1942). Screenplay

· Dixie (1943). Adapted for the screen

· Pepe (1960). Screenplay with Dorothy Kingsley.

He signed with Paramount in 1932 and the first five films on the above list are typical of his work. Other so-so work includes If I had a Million (1932), Accent on Youth (1935), True Confession (1937), This is the Army (1943) and Incendiary Blonde (1954). His flirtation with directorial chores produced forgotten Paramount A-minus movies like Family Honeymoon (1953). He wisely returned to writing and rounded off his career with such films as Rally ‘Round the Flag Boys (1958), North to Alaska (1960) and Satan Never Sleeps (1962).

BIRDS OF A FEATHER Song. Written by Johnny Burke and James Van Heusen as part of the score commissioned by Paramount for the 1941 Road to Zanzibar, it was then used for its musical content only in a sequence where Hope and Crosby do impressions of two orchestra leaders meeting. The song itself was recorded by Bing in December of 1940 when it was part of a Decca recording session covering the songs from the film.

BIRTH OF THE BLUES Film. This 1941 Paramount production stands up well in the 21st century.  At 85 minutes, it is as compact as possible, it brims over with songs (fifteen, of which Bing sings on eight) and because it is set in the early jazz era it retains its period feel. The story covers the development of New Orleans Jazz at the turn of the century. Bing plays Jeff Lambert who leads the band, thwarts a gang of villains led by J. Carrol Naish and conducts a romance with Mary Martin. Things were less than comfortable with Miss Martin at the time as she was pregnant, and director Victor Schertzinger scheduled the shooting of the film in such a way that her contributions were filmed as hastily as possible. The musical content of the film is as strong as in any Crosby movie. As well as having a hit song written by Johnny Mercer - “The Waiter and the Porter and the Upstairs Maid” - it relied heavily on tried and tested jazz standards like “Birth of the Blues” and “St. Louis Blues” as well as evergreen standards such as “By the Light of the Silvery Moon” and “Wait till the Sun Shines Nellie”. Buddy de Sylva, the film’s producer was co-lyricist of the title song. The film can be said to be roughly based on the formation of Nick LaRocca’s Original Dixieland Jazz Band and supposedly the first white group to play black music.

BLACK MOONLIGHT Song. Stanley Green was right first time when he described this song as “a dolorous dirge of a suicidally inclined Harlem resident.” Although we closely associate this song with Bing it was introduced in the Paramount film Too Much Harmony by Kitty Kelly, who mimed to Barbara Van Brunt’s vocal. The film was made in June and July 1933 and Bing recorded it the following month. It would be reasonable to assume that he felt the song fitted him like a glove and committed it to wax at the first opportunity. The song’s composers, Sam Coslow and Arthur Johnson, wrote all the songs for Too Much Harmony.

BLACKMER, SIDNEY (1895-1973) Actor.  Blackmer played the father of Grace Kelly in High Society (1956).  In that film, his arrival on the scene required him to masquerade as “Uncle Willie” to mask an earlier deception.  His first recorded role was in the silent serial The Perils of Pauline (1914).  He was rarely off the screen for very long thereafter.  He was a leading man who eventually settled for character parts in films like High Society.  These supporting roles were quite substantial as evidenced by his last big screen appearance in Rosemary’s Baby in 1968.

BLAKELEY, JAMES E. (1910-2007). Film actor turned editor. It is Blakeley the actor that interests us here. He had been in films for a couple of years when he was cast as Buster de Costa in Two for Tonight (1935). Together with actor Douglas Fowley, he played one of Bing’s half-brothers in that film. When America entered World War II he joined the Army Air Corps. He married Mary Carlisle in 1942. She had been one of Bing’s leading ladies and she was his only link with show business until the end of the decade. In 1950, he returned to films as an editor and served a further half century in Hollywood.

BLONDELL, JOAN (1909-1979). Actress who was in one Crosby film as his leading lady: East Side of Heaven (1939). She plays Bing’s fiancé Mary Wilson, to whom he is always about to get married but ...  A bright, bubbly actress, Joan Blondell enlivened many a routine picture from her debut in the 1930 film Office Wife to her retirement half a century later with The Woman Inside. Joan Blondell made her name in the thirties as a wise cracking broad with a heart of gold. Her part in East Side of Heaven was untypical. At the time, she was reaching the end of her Warner Bros.  heyday where she had scored in such films as Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933), Footlight Parade (1933), We’re in the Money (1935) and Gold Diggers of 1937 (1936). The next decade saw memorable performances in the likes of Topper Returns (1940), A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945) and Nightmare Alley (1947). In the nineteen fifties, she concentrated on stage work. Her more memorable later films saw her assigned character parts in such as The Cincinnati Kid (1965) and Grease (1978). On the personal side, she tried three show business marriages. They were to cameraman George Barnes (1933-35), actor Dick Powell (1936-45) and producer Mike Todd (1947-50). All failed, but provided her with a rich vein of material to mine for her semi-autobiographical novel ‘Center Door Fancy’, which came out in 1972.

BLORE, ERIC (1887-1959) British born actor specialising in playing haughty characters.  His part in his sole Crosby picture was as Charles Kimble in Road to Zanzibar (1941).  He’s the swindler who sells the boys a diamond mine.  Prior to that film appearance, he was a regular in the Astaire-Rogers musicals made at RKO.  And before he arrived in Hollywood in the 1920s he had worked as an insurance agent until show business claimed him for revues in London’s West End.  It must have been quite a comedown for him to end his career by appearing in the Bowery Boys film Bowery to Bagdad (1955).

BLUE, BEN (1901-1975) Sad faced comic actor.  He played the dim-witted Sitska in Paris Honeymoon (1939), whose drugging of Akim Tamiroff’s drink towards the end of that picture brought about a happy ending.  He arrived in Hollywood from vaudeville where his speciality was eccentric dancing.  Astute producers used him to provide comedy highlights in dozens of shorts and features.  His last big screen appearance was in Where Were You When the Lights Went Out in 1968.  Around the time of making that film, he was forced to close down his California based nightclub because he couldn’t meet the tax demands of the Internal Revenue.

BLUE, MONTE (1890-1963) Romantic lead in the 1920s who settled for character roles in a couple of hundred films before deserting the movies all together in the 1950s to join a circus.  He had minor roles in a couple of Road films.  In Singapore (1940), he played a high priest and in Morocco (1942) he was one of Anthony Quinn’s henchmen.  It is significant that his last film part was in Apache (1954) because he was part Cherokee Indian.

BLUE HAWAII Song. This song from Paramount’s 1937 Bing movie Waikiki Wedding was written by Leo Robin and Ralph Rainger. After an earlier solo, Bing is joined by Shirley Ross for vocal honours in a sequence in the film where both are on a boat trip to a volcanic island. Lyric writer Robin had to persuade Rainger to write music to fit the words. Even when the composing task was completed Rainger thought it inferior and protested at its publication. Of course, it went on to become a standard and Paramount got their money’s worth by using it as the title for a 1961 Elvis Presley vehicle with the star singing the song over the opening credits.

BLUE OF THE NIGHT (1932). One reeler made as part of a job lot for producer Mack Sennett in 1931/32. Six were shot in all, starting in the spring of 1931, and released by Educational Pictures over the next two years. Blue of the Night was the penultimate in the initial release pattern. In the twenty-minute running time we have a great deal of plot plus four Crosby vocals. Bing plays himself, a famous radio singer. Leading lady Margie ‘Babe’ Kane boasts she is engaged to Bing, failing to recognise him when they both take a trip by train. Her husband to be, played by Franklin Pangborn, is annoyed at this betrayal/deception before denouncing Bing as an impostor. The film’s famous ending has Bing driving off with the girl and singing “Where the Blue of the Night Meets the Gold of the Day” as conclusive proof that he is that well-known baritone. Bing’s other vocals are “Auf Wiedersehen, My Dear”, “My Silent Love” and “Ev’ry Time My Heart Beats”, none of which were recorded for issue on record. Various clips from this Sennett short were included in the 1949 compilation film Down Memory Lane.

BLUE SKIES Film. This 1946 Paramount Picture was stuffed with songs written by Irving Berlin, so it should come as no surprise that the idea for the picture was also his. Arthur Sheekman wrote the screenplay about two former song and dance men (Bing and Fred Astaire) who vie for the attentions of leading lady Joan Caulfield. You could say that Bing was undisputed winner as the plot allows him to marry her twice. The time span of the movie covers 1919 to 1946 and uses 17 old and 4 new Berlin songs in a series of settings of “theme” nightclubs. It was never intended that Fred Astaire should co-star with Bing. Dancer Paul Draper was signed up and then dropped when the studio discovered his acting skills were not on a par with his dancing technique. The film’s budget was $3 million and its world-wide rentals tripled that figure on its initial release.

BLYTH, ANN (1927-   ). Bing’s leading lady in Top O’ the Morning (1949) who also appeared in the short film You Can Change The World, released the following year. She played Barry Fitzgerald’s daughter in the former, and as such was on the receiving end of a couple of love ballads from Bing. The question we have to answer is whether she is a singer turned actress or vice versa. Certainly, her early career channelled her into light opera where she was a soprano with the San Carlo Opera Company. She played juvenile roles in Hollywood movies, making her presence felt in the Oscar nominated part of Joan Crawford’s daughter in Mildred Pierce (1945). Musical films which followed Top O’ the Morning include some memorable M-G-M starring parts in The Great Caruso (1951), Rose Marie (1954), The Student Prince (1954), Kismet (1955) and The Helen Morgan Story (1957). The last film marked her retirement from Hollywood. The movies had no further use for leading ladies with trained singing voices. Since then she has made infrequent forays into musical stage productions.

BOLAND, MARY (1880-1965) Actress.  She was in two 1935 Paramount pictures which featured Bing.  In Two for Tonight, she was third billed as Mrs. J.S.K. Smythe, the debt ridden mother of the Crosby character.  She followed that with a guest appearance in The Big Broadcast of 1936. Mary Boland made a name for herself playing tragic roles on the Broadway stage.  Only when she entered films did she find her true forte playing scatter-brained wives and mothers.  Her most famous role came the year before she filmed with Bing when she played opposite Charlie Ruggles in Ruggles of Red Gap.  She retired from films when she reached her seventieth birthday.

BOLTON, GUY (1885-1979) Playwright, novelist and screenwriter.  It is his skill as a playwright, which earns him an entry in this A-Z.  Along with P. G. Wodehouse he wrote the play “Anything Goes” which Bing filmed in 1935 and 1955 when it was revised for the screen by Howard Lindsay and Russell Crouse on the first occasion and Sidney Sheldon for the 1956 release.  “Girl Crazy” and “Lady Be Good” are two of his works that will withstand revival for many years to come.

BONANOVA, FORTUNIO (1893-1969) Operatic baritone who turned to playing mainly comic supporting roles in Hollywood films.  He made two appearances in Bing films.  He had a bit part as a waiter in Dixie (1943) and a slightly more substantial part as Tomaso Bozanni in the following year’s Going My Way. Fortunio Bonanova flitted from film to film throughout the 1940s and 1950s.  He’d frequently appeared on Broadway before making his first big screen appearance in 1932.  However, it wasn’t until 1941 that he made an impact with audiences when he played the part of a singing tutor in Citizen Kane.  Between film assignments, Bonanova found time to write operettas, novels and plays.

BONNE NUIT Song.  This was one of three Ray Evans-Jay Livingston compositions written for Bing to sing in Here Comes the Groom (1951).  It won’t take a lot of guesswork to conclude that it is a lullaby.  In the film, Bing croons it to send a couple of children to dreamland.

BOO-BOO-BOO Song.  A song tailor made for Bing by Sam Coslow and Arthur Johnston who were obviously capitalising on the myth that such phrasing cropped up in most of Crosby’s vocals.  It was first tried out on audiences in a 1933 Paramount Hollywood on Parade short when the song’s two composers accompanied Bing, Jack Oakie and Skeets Gallagher.  That appearance served as a publicity taster for Too Much Harmony, released later that year, when it became a Crosby solo.  Bing never made a commercial recording of the song, presumably because it was not his type of material.

BOX OFFICE TOP TEN: PERSONAL & FILM RANKINGS. The true measure of any Hollywood film star has nothing to do with critics and everything to do with audiences.  The more often people visit a cinema to see an actor in a film the more popular he or she is in the eyes of the cinema owner.  Every year in the U.S.A from 1915 to 2013, Quigley publications  asked exhibitors to name box office stars based on ticket sales.  Obviously, a star who has three movies released in a year has an advantage.  But in Hollywood’s peak years, when actors were on a roll the studios made sure they were never far away from the cameras.  The list of the annual box-office top ten moneymakers is the best available measure of who pulls in the crowds.  John Wayne appeared on these lists more often than any other star.  Between 1949 and 1976 there were only three years he wasn’t cited.  These are the full top ten listings, which included a Crosby ranking:

1934: Will Rogers, Clark Gable, Janet Gaynor, Wallace Beery, Mae West, Joan Crawford, Bing Crosby, Shirley Temple, Marie Dressler, Norma Shearer

1937: Shirley Temple, Clark Gable, Robert Taylor, Bing Crosby, William Powell, Jane Withers, Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers, Sonja Henie, Gary Cooper, Myrna Loy

1940: Mickey Rooney, Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable, Gene Autry, Tyrone Power, James Cagney, Bing Crosby, Wallace Beery, Bette Davis, Judy Garland

1943: Betty Grable, Bob Hope, Abbott & Costello, Bing Crosby, Gary Cooper, Greer Garson, Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Mickey Rooney, Clark Gable

1944: Bing Crosby, Gary Cooper, Bob Hope, Betty Grable, Spencer Tracy, Greer Garson, Humphrey Bogart, Abbott & Costello, Cary Grant, Bette Davis

1945: Bing Crosby, Van Johnson, Greer Garson, Betty Grable, Spencer Tracy, Humphrey Bogart/Gary Cooper, Bob Hope, Judy Garland, Margaret O’Brien

1946: Bing Crosby, Ingrid Bergman, Van Johnson, Gary Cooper, Bob Hope, Humphrey Bogart, Greer Garson, Margaret O’Brien, Betty Grable, Roy Rogers

1947: Bing Crosby, Betty Grable, Ingrid Bergman, Gary Cooper, Humphrey Bogart, Bob Hope, Clark Gable, Gregory Peck, Claudette Colbert, Alan Ladd

1948: Bing Crosby, Betty Grable, Abbott & Costello, Gary Cooper, Bob Hope, Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable, Cary Grant, Spencer Tracy, Ingrid Bergman

1949: Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Abbott & Costello, John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, Betty Grable, Esther Williams, Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable

1950: John Wayne, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Betty Grable, James Stewart, Abbott & Costello, Clifton Webb, Esther Williams, Spencer Tracy, Randolph Scott

1951: John Wayne, Martin & Lewis, Betty Grable, Abbott & Costello, Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Randolph Scott, Gary Cooper, Doris Day, Spencer Tracy

1952: Martin & Lewis, Gary Cooper, John Wayne, Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, James Stewart, Doris Day, Gregory Peck, Susan Hayward, Randolph Scott

1953: Gary Cooper, Martin & Lewis, John Wayne, Alan Ladd, Bing Crosby, Marilyn Monroe, James Stewart, Bob Hope, Susan Hayward, Randolph Scott

1954: John Wayne, Martin & Lewis, Gary Cooper, James Stewart, Marilyn Monroe, Alan Ladd, William Holden, Bing Crosby, Jane Wyman, Marlon Brando

Now to look at the box-office performance of the films in which Bing appeared.  The following list shows every film in which Bing appeared which featured in the top ten money-makers in the year of its release.  It covers North America and the U.K.  The sources of information are ‘Variety’ (USA) and ‘Kine Weekly’ (U.K.).  Sixteen different movies registered.  They are:

  Year             UK                          Ranking                                 USA                  Ranking

   1940                                                                     Road to Singapore                      *

   1941                                                                     Road to Zanzibar                        *

   1942     Holiday Inn                          5                                                                     *

   1943                                                                     Star Spangled Rhythm                *

   1944     Going My Way                   4                 Going My Way                             1

   1946     Bells of St. Mary’s              2                 Bells of St. Mary’s                        1

                                                                                Blue Skies                                  3

                                                                                Road to Utopia                           4

   1947     Blue Skies                           *                 Welcome Stranger                        7

   1948     Road to Rio                        4                 Road to Rio                                  1

                                                                                Emperor Waltz                           7

   1953     Road to Bali                       2         

   1954                                                                     White Christmas                          1

   1955     White Christmas                 2                 The Country Girl                             6

                                                                                High Society                                4

   1957    High Society                        1

   1962    The Road to Hong Kong       *

Now and then films were not ranked according to box office takings.  They were listed alphabetically and * indicates a place in the top ten.

If a comparison is made between Bing as a box-office draw and his films, the films cover a later time span.  Bing first registered at the U.S.

 box-office in 1934 and made his final entry in 1954.  The period for the films is about the same in length but several years later.  One reason is that Bing was turning out a remarkable number of films by today’s standards and was competing with himself for most of the 1930s.  Pre-1940 he was not in any film that could be regarded as sufficiently prestigious to appeal to those who went for the picture rather than its star.  The Road series changed that and also drew in the Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour devotees.  All but one of the Road films made the top ten in either the U.K. or the U.S.A.  If I’d guessed at the one that didn’t make it I would have plumped for Hong Kong, yet it was Morocco.  That was released in 1942 when the British and American lists were headed by Mrs. Miniver.  My expectations were that a need for wartime escapism plus the success of the first two Road pictures would have guaranteed it a placing but it failed to register.  Looking at U.K. vs. U.S.A., Bing was more popular in his own country (13 entries as opposed to 9 in the U.K.). Quite often a place in the British lists was achieved a year after the film had been tabulated in ‘Variety’s’ list.  That follows release patterns for American films, which only became eroded towards the end of the twentieth century.  The records for the last seventy years of going to the cinema on both sides of the Atlantic show that no film star has bettered Bing.  His films have had a longer time span in the charts and featured more frequently than any other actor living or dead. 

BRACKEN, EDDIE (1915-2002) Actor, born Edward Vincent Bracken, who never appeared on screen with Bing in three Crosby pictures. In Star Spangled Rhythm (1942), he played sailor Johnny Webster taking his friends on a tour of the Paramount backlot under the impression that his dad owned the studio. That film’s finale had Bing singing “Old Glory”. Two years later, he appeared as himself in Duffy’s Tavern and then in 1945 he was in Out of this World. This was a Crosby non-picture in that Bing’s voice came out of Bracken’s mouth each time Eddie burst into song. The 1940s was Eddie Bracken’s decade and afterwards, although he remained in show business, he never enjoyed the fleeting popularity that came when America was at war. The hits during those four years were Caught in the Draft (1941), The Fleet’s In (1942), Sweater Girl (1942), The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1944), Hail the Conquering Hero (1944) and Hold that Blonde (1945). By the early 1970s, he had to content himself with scraps of film work such as providing a voice for the feature cartoon Shinbone Alley. Otherwise, cabaret work and occasional TV appearances serve as the public’s only reminder of a promising newcomer of half a century ago.

BRADLEY, GRACE (1913-2010) Actress.  She specialised in playing temptresses until she thought she was too old for that sort of role.  Hence, she retired from the screen at the age of thirty.  The names of her characters in her two Crosby films give a good idea of the type of lady she was portraying.  In Too Much Harmony (1933), she played Verne la Monte and for Anything Goes (1936) she was Bonnie La Tour.  She was especially memorable in the latter film when her companion is the “Rev” Dr. Moon and her husband “Snake Eyes” Johnson, who is Public Enemy Number One.  The year after making Anything Goes, she married Bill Boyd who some years later guested on Bing’s radio show when his Hopalong Cassidy character was finding a new generation of Saturday morning matinee admirers.

BREEN, RICHARD L. (1919-1967) Screenwriter.  He shared a screenplay credit with Edmund Beloin for Top o’ the Morning (1949), his sole contribution to the Crosby film library.  That film was one of his first assignments after going to Hollywood following service in the Navy.  Some of his better work still plays regularly on television, including his Oscar winning Titanic (1953).  He was on a roll after that one and Dragnet and Pete Kelly’s Blues followed.  The last work before his death was writing Tony Rome as a suitable vehicle for Frank Sinatra. 

BRENDEL, EL (1890-1964) [Elmer G. Brendel]. Actor usually using a Swedish dialect in comic roles.  He was seen in a couple of one-reelers which featured Bing (Hollywood on Parade and Star Night at the Cocoanut Grove) but it was not until the 1940 release If I Had My Way that the two shared scenes on screen.  Then Brendel was fourth billed as Axel Swenson, the construction worker who is a close friend of Bing.  He graduated to films at the end of the silent era.  Before then he had been in vaudeville and Broadway musicals.  After If I Had My Way, his film appearances became few and far between and by the time he called it quits he had gravitated towards such ‘B’ picture fare as Paris Model (1953) and The She-Creature (1956).

BRING ON BING Film released by Astor Pictures Corporation in 1935. It was a short short in that it was an edited version of the 21 minute Billboard Girl made for Mack Sennett in 1931. The two songs from that picture retained for Bring on Bing were “For You” and “Were You Sincere”.

BRITISH MOVIETONE NEWS carried the official opening of the Stage Door Canteen in Piccadilly, London. This was carried out by the Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden in August 1944. The newsreel then shows Dorothy Dickson introducing Bing, who sings “San Fernando Valley”.

BROOKE, HILARY [Beatrice Peterson] (1914-1999) Actress.  Bing fans will remember her from Road to Utopia (1946) where she was cast as Kate, the girlfriend of the villainous Ace Larsen.  Her job was to obtain the all-important map showing the location of the goldmine from Bing and Bob.  Before reaching Hollywood in 1937, she had been a model.  She played prominent parts in major films such as Road to Utopia or took the female lead in low-budget films like Confidence Girl (1952).  She remained in the public eye in the 1950s when she was a regular guest on the weekly television series “My Little Margie”.  In 1960, she gave up show business to keep house for her new husband, Ray Klune, who was the general manager at M-G-M.

BROOKS, SHELTON (1886-1975) Vaudevillian who composed songs for his own use as well as the likes of Sophie Tucker and Al Jolson.  His most recorded song was “The Darktown Strutters’ Ball” which he wrote in 1917 and which has its own separate entry in this A-Z.  It was featured in The Star Maker (1939) and Little Boy Lost (1953).  When vaudeville came to an end so did his songwriting success although he continued appearing in stage shows until the 1950s.

BROTHER CAN YOU SPARE A DIME Film released in 1975, which utilised Bing’s recording of the title song together with his first recording of “Where the Blue of the Night”.  A caricature of Bing was also glimpsed when a segment of the early thirties colour cartoon Hollywood Steps Out was utilised. The 109-minute feature ‘Brother Can You Spare a Dime’ was a collection of clips documenting America from the depression to the bombing of Pearl Harbour.

BROWN, JAMES (1920-1992) Actor.  He was in Going My Way (1944), his only Crosby film appearance.  Bing as Father O’Malley is asked investigate what goes on when Ted Haynes Jnr. (James Brown) visits the apartment of Carol James (Jean Heather).  Nothing untoward, of course, because James Brown specialised in playing stalwart, upstanding men.  In the same year as Going My Way, he played a young romantic lead in Our Hearts Were Young and Gay.  His on screen image made him the ideal co-star for a faithful dog in the long running television series “The Adventures of Rin-Tin-Tin”.  Although he didn’t forsake films until the 1970s, he launched a line of bodybuilding equipment in the 1960s. 

BROWN, LEW [Louis Brownstein] (1893-1958) Lyric writer.  Bing tackled two of his songs on film.  He sang, “I’d Climb the Highest Mountain” in the Sennett short One More Chance (1931) when Sidney Clare provided the music.  Then in Birth of the Blues (1941), Brown co-wrote the title song with Buddy De Sylva and Ray Henderson.  Brown is most often referred to in the middle of the De Sylva and Henderson musical sandwich.  This is because a biopic of the threesome was the subject of a Hollywood musical in 1956: The Best Things in Life Are Free and also because Brown’s most famous songs were composed as part of that trio.  Three of their successes that will forever be available are “Sonny Boy”, “I’m a Dreamer Aren’t We All” and “If I Had a Talking Picture of You”.

BROWN, NACIO HERB (1896-1964) Songwriter.  The other musical Brown who impacted on Bing’s career was co-composer with Arthur Freed of the songs for Going Hollywood (1934).  There were half a dozen, everyone a winner.  As well as the title song Bing sang “Temptation”, “We’ll Make Hay While the Sun Shines” (with Marion Davies), “Our Big Love Scene”, “After Sundown” and “Beautiful Girl”.  Brown waited until Hollywood found a voice before he quit work in real estate and joined M-G-M to contribute to that studio’s early foray into musicals.  His best remembered work for that studio spanned nearly a quarter of a century.  The Broadway Melody began it all in 1929 and Singin’ in the Rain ended his run in 1952. 

BUCKIN’ THE WIND (Song). This Sam Coslow - Arthur Johnston opus was written for the Paramount production Too Much Harmony (1933). It is the finale piece in the movie and Bing is joined by Judith Allen and chorus. Paramount clearly saw it as a strong song and in a 1933 Hollywood on Parade short they had Bing sing the song as he drove to an automobile race. Curious, then, that Bing never made a commercial recording of this catchy number.

BUMSTEAD, HENRY (1915-2006) Production designer.  Bumstead shared art direction credit with Hans Dreier on two Bing films.  They were Top o’ the Morning (1949) and Little Boy Lost (1953).  The shared credit was mainly because Dreier was head of the Paramount design unit but Bumstead was probably more than an apprentice.  His sole designer credit came in 1956 with The Man Who Knew Too Much.  Two years later his skills were acknowledged by his peers when he received an Academy Award nomination for his work on Hitchcock’s Vertigo.  He subsequently won two Oscars, the first in 1962 for To Kill a Mockingbird and the second and last to date for The Sting (1973).  He was still working at the end of the last century on such major films as Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997).

BUONO, VICTOR (1938-1982) Well-built character actor.  He was Sheriff Potts in Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964), who ended up buried in the concrete cornerstone of a building.  I first noticed Buono in his debut film, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane (1962).  He literally dominated the screen despite competing with the combined talents of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford.  He received an Academy Award nomination for his performance.  By then he had come to the attention of Sinatra’s production company and he was cast in Four for Texas (1963) before moving on to Robin the following year.  During the rest of the 1960s, he received substantial supporting roles in several major films.  Then he was suddenly out of fashion.  He spent most of the 1970s in made-for-television movies. His last big screen appearance was in The Man with Bogart’s Face, released two years before his death.

BURKE, JAMES (1886-1968). Actor. A regular character actor for thirty years, with appearances in four Crosby pictures during the peak studio years. The part he played in a Bing picture, which made its greatest impact with viewers, was probably as one of three unsuccessful kidnappers in Rhythm on the Range (1936). Prior to that, he was Cromwell Dexter in the 1933 College Humor. He was also the Riverboat Captain in Dixie (1943) and a policeman in Here Comes the Groom (1951). One additional Bing related appearance was as the Union Secretary in the Bob Hope comedy My Favourite Blonde (1942), in which Bing had a cameo role. Burke had character parts in about 150 films. He appeared regularly in the Ellery Queen ‘B’ picture series. Before his debut in College Humor, he had spent 25 years in vaudeville. He was working well past retirement age, his last Hollywood bit part being in the 1965 release The Hallelujah Trail.

BURKE, JOHNNY (1908-1964). Lyric Writer. If you have a set of ‘Bing’s Hollywood’ LPs then the fifteen discs in that set will confirm the importance of Johnny Burke in Bing’s film career. Burke’s lyrics received the Crosby seal of approval. They were not overly sentimental and they promoted optimism. Burke was almost exclusively occupied in writing for Bing and his other work seems insignificant against his Crosby output. Here are the films where Bing sang a Johnny Burke lyric. Burke’s collaborators are shown after the film’s title.

· Pennies from Heaven (1936) (with Arthur Johnston). Pennies from Heaven; One Two Button Your Shoe; Let’s Call a Heart a Heart; So Do I.

· Double Or Nothing (1937) (with Johnston) The Moon Got in My Eyes; It’s the Natural Thing to Do; All You Want to do is Dance.

· Doctor Rhythm (1938) (with James V. Monaco) My Heart is Taking Lessons; On the Sentimental Side; This is My Night to Dream.

· Sing You Sinners (1938) (with Monaco) I’ve Got a Pocketful of Dreams; Don’t Let That Moon Get Away; Laugh and Call it Love.

· East Side of Heaven (1939) (with Monaco) Sing a Song of Sunbeams; Hang Your Heart on a Hickory Limb; That Sly Old Gentleman; East Side of Heaven.

· The Star Maker (1939) (with Monaco) A Man and his Dream; Go Fly a Kite; An Apple for the Teacher; Still The Bluebird Sings.

· Road to Singapore (1939) (with Monaco) Sweet Potato Piper; Too Romantic; An Apple for The Teacher (again); Captain Custard (with music by Victor Schertzinger).

· Swing with Bing (1940 Short Film) (with Monaco) The Little White Pill on the Little Green Hill.

· If I Had My Way (1940) (with Monaco) Meet the Sun Halfway; I Haven’t Time to be a Millionaire; The Pessimistic Character; April Played the Fiddle.

· Rhythm on the River (1940) (with Monaco) Only Forever; When the Moon Comes over Madison Square; Rhythm on the River; That’s for Me; What Would Shakespeare Have Said.

· Road to Zanzibar (1941) (with James Van Heusen) It’s Always You, You Lucky People You; African Etude.

· Don’t Hook Now (1942 Short) (with Van Heusen) Tomorrow’s My Lucky Day.

· Road to Morocco (1943) (with Van Heusen) Road To Morocco; Ain’t Got a Dime to My Name; Moonlight Becomes You.

· Dixie (1943) (with Van Heusen) Sunday Monday or Always; She’s From Missouri; A Horse that Knows the Way Back Home; If You Please.

· Going My Way (1944) (with Van Heusen) The Day after Forever; Going My Way; Swinging on a Star.

· Here Come the Waves (1944) (with Van Heusen) Moonlight Becomes You (again).

· Duffy’s Tavern (1945) (with Van Heusen) Swinging on a Star (again).

· Road to Utopia (1946) (with Van Heusen) Sunday Monday or Always (again); Goodtime Charlie; It’s Anybody’s Spring; Welcome to my Dreams; Put it There Pal.

· The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945) (with Van Heusen) Aren’t You Glad You’re You.

· Welcome Stranger (1947) (with Van Heusen) Smile Right Back at the Sun; Country Style; My Heart is a Hobo; As Long as I’m Dreaming.

· Variety Girl (1947) (with Van Heusen) Harmony.

· The Emperor Waltz (1948) (with various, as noted) The Friendly Mountain (Joseph J. Lilley); The Kiss in Your Eyes (Richard Heuberger); The Emperor Waltz (Richard Strauss)

· Road to Rio (1948) (with Van Heusen) Apalachicola, Fla; But Beautiful; You Don’t Have to Know the Language.

· A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1949) (with Van Heusen) If You Stub Your Toe on the Moon; Once and for Always; Busy Doin’ Nothing.

· Top O’ the Morning (1949) (with Van Heusen) Top O’ the Morning; You’re in Love With Someone.

· Riding High (1950) (with Van Heusen) Sure Thing; Some Place on Anywhere Road; Sunshine Cake; The Horse Told me.

· Mr. Music (1950) (with Van Heusen) And You’ll be Home; High on the List; Wouldn’t it be Funny; Accidents Will Happen; Wasn’t I There; Life is so Peculiar.

· You Can Change the World (1951 short) (with Van Heusen) Early American.

· Road to Bali (1953) (with Van Heusen) Chicago Style; Hoot Mon; To See You Is to Love You; The Merry-Go-Run-Around.

· Little Boy Lost (1953) (with Van Heusen) A Propos De Rien; Cela M’est Egal; The Magic Window.

· Pepe (1960) (with Arthur Johnston) Pennies from Heaven

Not at all a bad C.V. is it? Some of the 1950s songs didn’t seem as strong as his earlier work, but taken in total as an eighteen year career with three main partners, it is an extremely fruitful collaboration with the world’s greatest singer. There was one Academy Award for “Swinging on a Star”. Considering that he was working on one Crosby movie every eight months, it is not surprising that Burke had little involvement with non-Bing films. He started making a living as a dance band pianist and collaborated with Arthur Johnston on one film - Go West, Young Man (1936) - before establishing his Bing connection. In 1946, he worked with Jimmy Van Heusen on the British musical flop London Town. It was originally intended that Bing would appear in the film and the score written for it sounds tailor made for the Crosby style. Pepe apart, he ended his career after Little Boy Lost with one last Paramount picture. That was the forgettable 1956 musical The Vagabond King, when he provided lyrics for Rudolph Friml’s music.

BURNS, BOB (1893-1956). Actor. He is equally well known to Crosby aficionados as the regular comedian on Bing’s Kraft Music Hall broadcasts in the 1930s. It was whilst he was at his broadcasting peak that he appeared in two of Bing’s Paramount pictures: Rhythm on the Range (1936) and Waikiki Wedding (1937). He was Bing’s pal in both, taking third billing as Buck in Rhythm on the Range and Shad Buggie in Waikiki Wedding. Burns was born in Arkansas and built his persona round the naive country boy who talked common sense as a less topical Will Rogers. He was nicknamed ‘The Arkansas Philosopher’ and ‘Bazooka’. It was the bazooka that he blew quite regularly on the KMH and if anyone could claim to play the instrument, as it was intended to be played it was Burns because he invented it. His popularity wavered after he left the Kraft show and he retired from movies in 1944 after appearing in Belle of the Yukon.

BURNS, GEORGE (1896-1996). One-half of the comedy team of Burns and Allen as far as Bing’s movie career is concerned. Gracie Allen (1902-1964) was inseparable from her husband as an entertainer until the date of her death. Between 1932 and 1935, they shared the screen with Bing on five separate occasions:

· The Big Broadcast (1932) George was Radio Station Manager and Gracie his receptionist.

· Hollywood On Parade No. 2 (1932 short film) as themselves.

· College Humor (1933) as caterers at the College

· We’re Not Dressing (1934) as George and Gracie Martin, two desert island naturalists.

· The Big Broadcast of 1936 (1935) as joint inventors of a type of television receiver.

By the end of the 1930s, Burns and Allen deserted movies and concentrated on radio. They had a popular half hour show - The Burns and Allen Show - and Crosby guested. Burns and Allen, in turn, appeared as guests on Bing’s shows. The show successfully transferred to television in the 1950s and became popular in the UK when transmitted by the BBC. Following Gracie Allen’s death, George continued with other female partners but none had Gracie’s innocent comedy charm. He appeared solo on television, in nightclubs and variety before returning to films after a 35 year break in Neil Simon’s The Sunshine Boys (1975). It was a triumph and earned him an Oscar as Best Supporting Actor. Other comedy parts followed in the 1980s, including TV movies. In addition several ‘autobiographies’ conveyed his humour on the printed page. Forever the optimist, he booked the London Palladium for 1996 to celebrate his one hundredth birthday but sadly although he attained the 100 mark, he was not well enough to fulfil the engagement.

BUSY DOING NOTHING Song.  If there were music videos in 1949 this Johnny Burke-James Van Heusen composition from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court would provide a good example of how sound and vision could complement each other.  Bing, Sir Cedric Hardwicke and William Bendix perform the song as they journey to “meet the people.”  Decca Records are to be congratulated in assembling their top singer and the two actors for a studio recording of the song.

BUT BEAUTIFUL Song. The obligatory film love ballad from Road to Rio (1948), Bing serenades Dottie behind a cinema screen on a ship bound for Brazil. Like most of Bing’s commissioned movie songs from this period it was written by Johnny Burke and James Van Heusen. Burke was covered a few entries ago, and Stanley Green in his ‘Encyclopaedia of the Musical Film’ analyses this song with the comment “a philosophical view of love.” That would seem to apply to all of Burke’s sentimental ballads written with the Crosby voice in mind.

BUTLER, DAVID (1894-1979) Actor turned director.  David Butler’s first work on a Crosby picture was as co-author of the story on which East Side of Heaven (1939) was based, although he had directed the 1931 version of A Connecticut Yankee.  He made his film debut as an actor in 1918 but by the time he directed his first Bing film, If I Had My Way, in 1940 he had spent well over ten years behind the camera.  He was adept at comedy so it was no surprise to find him in charge of the third “Road” film, Road to Morocco (1942).  His workmanlike direction kept him employed through to the 1960s although little of his later work stands the test of time.  His last film was C’mon, Let’s Live a Little in 1967.

BUTLER, FRANK (1890-1967) Actor turned screenwriter.  His work on Crosby pictures spanned twenty of Bing’s most popular years on screen.  His first Crosby credit was as joint screenplay writer with Claude Binyon on College Humor (1933) and his last as co-story and co-screenplay writer on Road to Bali (1953).  Between times, he had helped devise the story and/or co-written the screenplay on Waikiki Wedding (1937), Paris Honeymoon (1939), and The Star Maker (1939).   With Don Hartman, he wrote the screenplays of all the Paramount “Road” films with the exception of Rio and Utopia.  His best contribution to a Bing film was writing the screenplay of Going My Way (1944) together with Frank Cavett.  The pair won an Oscar for their fashioning of Leo McCarey’s story.  The first solo writing credit he earned on a Crosby film was for the slightly more serious Welcome Stranger in 1947.  In that same year, he could be glimpsed on the Paramount set in Variety Girl.  After his work on Road to Bali, he worked on two further films, Strange Lady in Town (1955) and The Miracle (1959) before retiring at the age of seventy.

BUY, BUY BONDS Song. Bing sang this ‘commercial’ in the 1945 short All Star Bond Rally. Both the film and the song were an exhortation to support the U.S. Treasury Department’s Seventh War Loan. Leo Robin and Ralph Rainger wrote the song, which Bing never recorded for commercial release.

BY THE LIGHT OF THE SILVERY MOON Song. In Birth of the Blues (1941), Jeff Lambert (Bing) sings the song in a movie house in front of a lantern slide backdrop. A year after the film went into release it proved sufficiently popular for Bing to make a recording of the song for Decca. Edward Madden and Gus Edwards were its composers.

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CABOT, SEBASTIAN (1918-1977) Actor.  His only appearance in a Crosby picture was as Monsignor Stradford in Say One for Me (1959).  Bing, as Father Conroy, arranged a television show with him.  Cabot’s twenty stone frame made him instantly recognisable in the thirty years he spent in films from 1936 until he transferred his acting talents to television after appearing in the Jerry Lewis comedy The Family Jewels.  London born, his first screen appearance was in Alfred Hitchcock’s Secret Agent.  He moved to Hollywood in the mid-fifties and that was where he died of a stroke at the age of 59.

CAHN, SAMMY (1913-1993) Lyric writer. Between 1956 and 1964, Cahn wrote fourteen songs for Bing to sing in six movies. The music for them all was provided by James Van Heusen. They range from the instantly forgettable (“A Second Hand Turban and a Crystal Ball”) to the once heard, never forgotten (“Style”). The full tally is:

· Anything Goes (1956), Ya Gotta Give the People Hoke; A Second Hand Turban and a Crystal Ball.

· Say One for Me (1959), Say One for Me; I Couldn’t Care Less; The Secret of Christmas.

· High Time (1960), The Second Time Around.

· Let’s Make Love (1960), Incurably Romantic.

· The Road to Hong Kong (1962), The Road to Hong Kong; Teamwork; Let’s Not Be Sensible.

· Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964), Style; Mister Booze; Don’t be a Do-Badder.

On several of the songs, Bing is joined by other vocalists. Full details will be found under the entries for each individual song. Cahn’s most fruitful collaborations have been with Van Heusen, although his first attempts at writing the words go back to the mid-thirties. His first film hit came in 1942 with “I’ve Heard that Song Before” from Youth on Parade (1942) with “I’ll Walk Alone” from Follow the Boys coming two years later. He is most strongly associated with Frank Sinatra in terms of tailoring a lyric to suit the vocalist. Two Academy Award songs - “All the Way” from The Joker Is Wild and “High Hopes” from A Hole in the Head - illustrate this. Cahn also had the knack of writing a hit song from a film’s title and helping a mediocre movie to greater glory than it deserves. Some examples are Because You’re Mine (1952), Three Coins in the Fountain (1954) and Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967). Other movies that contain Cahn songs include The Kid from Brooklyn (1946), Peter Pan (1953), Love Me or Leave Me (1955), The Court Jester (1956), Pal Joey (1957), Star! (1968) and A Touch of Class (1973). By the time he was writing for such dross as The Stud (1978) it didn’t matter anymore. By then he had written a successful autobiography of sorts, “Yes, I Cahn”, and also developed a one man show. The show found its way onto an album and is an enjoyable ego-trip for a self-confessed non-singer.

CALHERN, LOUIS (1895-1956) American actor whose only appearance in a Crosby film also happened to be his last completed assignment. He died shortly after High Society finished shooting. In that film, he brought his distinguished screen presence to the role of Uncle Willie to Grace Kelly’s Tracy Lord. His career began as a leading romantic lead in silent pictures. During the thirties and forties, he was in such “serious” films as 20000 Years in Sing Sing (1933), The Life of Emile Zola (1937), Dr. Erlich’s Magic Bullet (1940) and Notorious (1946). By the 1950’s M.G.M. had got the measure of his capabilities and rewarded him with strong character parts. These began with the role of Buffalo Bill in Annie Get Your Gun (1950). The Asphalt Jungle (1950), Julius Caesar (1953), The Student Prince (1954) and The Blackboard Jungle (1955) followed. He went straight into The Teahouse of the August Moon immediately after he had completed work on High Society, only to suffer a heart attack on location in Tokyo.

CALL ME TONIGHT (Song). Harry Warren (music) and Leo Robin (lyrics) wrote this song for Just for You (1952). In the film’s plot, it was written to be featured in a school show. One could shower praise on Warren and Robin for accurately gauging the amateurish quality necessary to typify the low standard appropriate for the event. In the film’s story Bing is passed the song by two schoolboys. As fictional composer/producer Jordan Blake, he evaluates it by first of all singing it and then passing criticism. In reality, Decca must have held a low opinion of it as well. It was the only song written for Bing to sing in the picture that did not achieve permanency by way of a commercial recording.

CAMERON, ROD (1910-1983) Actor, although his one and only Bing picture appearance did not allow him much time to shine in the histrionics department. He is seen briefly as a petty officer in Star Spangled Rhythm (1942). But then Bing’s appearance in the same movie was not exactly padded out. He returns to prominence as far as Crosby followers are concerned during the early 1960s. The 20-minute weekday radio slots shared by Bing, Rosemary Clooney and Buddy Cole carried a number of advertising spots and Rod Cameron was often extolling the virtues of a lozenge that made breathing easier. His resonant tones were just right. As a film actor, Cameron never made the big time except as the star of low and medium budget westerns. Paramount first noticed him in the late thirties when he was doubling for Buck Jones and Fred MacMurray and by 1940, he had bit parts in such as Christmas in July and North West Mounted Police. 1950s titles such as Stage to Tucson (1951), Wagons West (1952), San Antone (1953) and Yaqui Drums (1956) attest to his cowboy interests. His career petered out in the seventies with Love and the Midnight Auto Supply (1978) being his last recorded screen appearance. Trivia collectors will remember how he fed the Hollywood scandal machine in 1960 when he divorced his second wife to marry her mother.

CAMPBELL, LOUISE (1915-1997) Actress.  Bing’s forgotten leading lady.  She was Mary, the wife of Larry Earl (Bing) in The Star Maker (1940).  She started in films in 1937 and by the time she made The Star Maker her career was poised to take off.  She was the type of attractive red head loved by the camera and yet she made three further films in 1940 and then disappeared from the screen.  Thirty years later, she began a second career in television commercials.

CAMPTOWN RACES Song.  This Stephen Foster song was sung by Bing, Coleen Gray and Clarence Muse as they made their way to the racecourse in the 1950 film Riding High.  Bing had recorded the song for Decca some ten years previously and promoted it a couple of times on his Kraft Music Hall programme.  It had found favour during the previous century when it was a staple of minstrel shows.

CANCEL MY RESERVATION (1972 film) One of Bob Hope’s latter-day comedies. Bing no doubt made an appearance as a favour to Hope. It languished on the UK distributor’s shelf for a year before being cut from 99 to 83 minutes and receiving a release on the bottom half of a double bill. Bing’s contribution was left intact but as he was only on screen a matter of seconds it would have made little difference to the film’s running time. The Crosby gag footage occurs during a dream sequence in which Hope imagines he is being lynched. Crosby’s ten-second cameo went no way towards salvaging a sorry comedy.

CANTINFLAS (1911-1993) Mexican born actor whose real name was Mario Marino Reyes. Bing’s first cinematic involvement with Cantinflas came in 1957. The previous year the actor had shot to international stardom in the role of Passepartout in Mike Todd’s Around the World in 80 Days. The following year Columbia Pictures produced a documentary about Variety Clubs International called The Heart of Show business. Cantinflas was one of the celebrities appearing and Bing was one of the film’s narrators. Cantinflas’ only other American feature film was Pepe. He had the main part in that 1960 movie, playing the title role. Bing made a guest appearance when he sang snatches of three songs to Cantinflas, autographed the Mexican’s tortilla and drove away. Pepe failed at the box office and the actor returned to making films aimed at Mexican audiences.

CAPRA, FRANK (1897-1991) Director. Capra wanted to work with Bing before the two got together on the set. He sold Friendly Persuasion to Paramount Pictures in 1948 with the intention of Bing playing the male lead. Budgetary issues intervened and it was two years later before his Crosby ambition came to fruition with the release of Riding High, followed a year later by Here Comes the Groom. There was the prospect of a third film at the end of the ‘fifties - The Jimmy Durante Story - but difficulties arose which prevented the reunion. Capra’s career spanned five decades and almost everyone who went to the pictures before 1960 will have seen at least one of his films. He made popular silent shorts in the 1920s starring Harry Langdon. His first years of major popularity came in the 1930s, starting with It Happened One Night (1934) and continuing with Mr Deeds Goes to Town (1937) and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). After making Arsenic and Old Lace (1940), he made what is now regarded as his best film: It’s a Wonderful Life (1947). By the time he was working with Bing, his style of hometown, honest sincerity plots was fast losing favour and he only managed another couple of films before his retirement.  They were A Hole in the Head (1959) and Pocketful of Miracles (1961). His autobiography was published in 1971. It was called The Name above the Title, to remind us that he was the first Hollywood director whose name preceded the film title in the credits.

CAPTAIN CUSTARD Song. This Johnny Burke-Victor Schertzinger composition was specially written for the first ‘Road’ film, Road to Singapore (1940). It wouldn’t have sounded out of place being sung by Groucho in a Marx Brothers’ film. Instead, Hope and Crosby sing it at a party in the film (and a fight follows, started by an unappreciative member of the audience). This first ever ‘Road’ picture song was never recorded commercially by Bing.

CARLISLE, KITTY (1910-2007). Actress and singer. Miss Carlisle only made a small number of films in her entire career, two of which were made consecutively as Bing’s leading lady. This means that between May and October in 1934 Bing and Kitty were probably together for longer than Bing and Dixie! The activity on the Paramount lot during that six-month period produced She Loves Me Not and Here Is My Heart. In both, the actress gets her man, despite being from different strata of society than our hero. She played the Dean’s daughter and a Princess respectively. Her career began on Broadway and her only film before she was teamed with Bing was Murder in the Vanities, also made in 1934. Her fourth film, A Night at the Opera (1935) looked like being her last. Her marriage to playwright Moss Hart (who died in 1960) put her career on hold until a comeback in the forties to make Larceny with Music (1943) and Hollywood Canteen (1944). She later went into television and was the only panellist to appear on every version of To Tell the Truth from 1956-1991. In 1976, she was appointed Chairman of the New York State’s Council on the Arts. She was seen briefly in the Woody Allen classic Radio Days in 1987 and her last big-screen appearance was in Six Degrees of Separation (1993).

CARLISLE, MARY (1914-2018) Actress. Mary Carlisle was as good as typecast in two of the three films she made with Bing. She was his leading lady in a trio of Paramount pictures from the thirties: College Humor (1933), Double or Nothing (1937) and Doctor Rhythm (1938). In the first one, she was a student being taught by Bing as Professor Danvers. In the other two, she was a rich girl. In Double or Nothing, she was Vicki Clarke, one of the beneficiaries under a strange will that would also bring riches to Bing if he could double $5000 within a month. As heiress Judy Marlow in Doctor Rhythm a chance meeting with Doctor Bill Remsen (Bing) leads to eventual romance and happiness. Her film career began in 1930 and a couple of dozen medium budget films later she retired when she married actor-socialite James Blakeley. In 1951, with show business well behind her, she took over the management of the Elizabeth Arden Beauty Salon in Hollywood.

CARMICHAEL, HOAGLAND HOWARD ‘HOAGY’ (1899-1981). Songwriter/Actor. Three of Hoagy’s compositions were in a similar number of Crosby pictures. Contrary to popular Hollywood practice, Carmichael was content to produce “one off” efforts. The quality of the longevity of his Crosby film trio is incontestable. With Edward Heyman he wrote “Moonburn”, which Bing sang in Anything Goes (1936). Two years later, he collaborated with Frank Loesser on the catchy “Small Fry” for Sing You Sinners (1938). His crowning glory came with “In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening” which netted an Academy Award jointly with Johnny Mercer for Here Comes the Groom (1951). Hoagy was always the one who provided the tune. His friendship with Bing went back to Whiteman days, a time when his most famous composition “Stardust”, was written. He fondly recalled their relationship in his two autobiographies, “The Stardust Road” (1946) and “Sometimes I Wonder” (1965). On the odd occasion when Hoagy wrote both words and music, his own twangy nasal voice provided the definitive vocal interpretation.

CARROLL, JOAN (1931-2016). Actress. Carroll and her family moved to California in 1936 when she was five and she made her film debut in One Mile from Heaven (1937) opposite Claire Trevor and later appeared in Mr. Moto's Last Warning (1939), Basil Rathbone's Tower of London (1939), Anne of Windy Poplars (1940) and Tomorrow, the World! (1944). She played Garland’s younger sister Agnes, who pulls a dangerous prank with the youngest sister, Tootie (Margaret O'Brien), in Meet Me in St. Louis (1944).  Her connection with Bing came when she portrayed the struggling eighth-grade parish student Patsy who at first doesn’t get any sympathy from Ingrid Bergman in The Bells of St. Mary's (1945). This was her last film but she also played the part of Patsy in radio versions of the movie with Bing in 1946 and 1947. She continued to live in Beverly Hills, married James Krack in 1951, had four children and then moved with her family to Colorado.

CARRY ME BACK TO OLD VIRGINNY Song.  When James A. Bland wrote this song in the 1870s, he possibly intended it to be a sentimental plea for Virginia’s expats to sing at pub closing time.  That it turned up in two “Road” pictures shows how those intentions backfired.  In Singapore (1940), Jerry Colonna managed to strip it of any nostalgic appeal and for Rio (1948) Hope and Crosby buried it in the song “Apalachicola, Fla.” as they attempted to attract punters at a carnival.  Nor did Bing’s studio recordings of the song do it justice.  It was part of the “Southern Medley” he recorded with Paul Whiteman in 1929 and it was similarly thrown away when it was part of one of the sing-a-long medleys made for Warner Bros. in 1960.

CARTOONS Bing has been depicted as a caricature in animated shorts since shortly after his name began to appear on 78 records.  The first use of the Crosby voice in a cartoon can be traced to the 7 minute Vitaphone short Crosby, Columbo and Vallee.  The Merrie Melodies short used the soundalike vocals of Bing, Russ and Rudy emanating from a radio as animals danced to the music.  The cartoon was distributed by Warner Bros. in the spring of 1932. 

On April 1st of that year Paramount released a short with the title Just One More Chance.  It formed one of a series known as “Screen Songs” which were made by the Fleischer Brothers, Max and Dave.  It featured popular songs of the day.  Not surprisingly, Paramount arranged for as many of the song titles as possible to relate to songs featured in Paramount pictures.  The series ended in 1938 but from 1934 onwards, songs from Bing’s films were used on five occasions.  They were:

· She Reminds Me of You.  Released 22 June, 1934 with vocals by the Eaton Boys

· Love Thy Neighbour. Released 20 July, 1934 with vocal by Mary Small

· I Wished on the Moon. Released 20 September, 1935 and performed by Abe Lyman’s Orch.

· It’s Easy to Remember. Released 29 November, 1935 with vocal by Richard Himber

· I Can’t Escape from You. Released 25 September, 1936 with vocal by Joe Reichman

It wasn’t until 1934 that the aptly named duo of animators Harman-Ising (Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising) put Bing in the musical cartoon picture.  They were contracted by M-G-M to make a series of shorts called “Happy Harmonies” which were aimed at younger viewers.  One seven-minute cartoon was called Toyland Broadcast.  It depicts a toyshop coming to life with a toy soldier acting as compere for the performances by the toys of radio station ABC.  Bing appears as Jack-in-the box with the Boswell Sisters as the Doll Sisters in a performance of “Boop-oop-a-doo”.  They are accompanied by Paul Whiteman as Humpty Dumpty conducting the clockwork Sambo Jazz Band.

Also from 1934 comes the only Universal short that depicts Bing.  Universal were attempting to emulate the success of Walt Disney’s “Silly Symphonies” series by engaging Walter Lantz to produce a number of “Cartune Classics”.  Because Disney had exclusive rights to use the recently perfected three colour Technicolor process for cartoons Universal made the best they could of the two colour process that they used for King of Jazz (1930).  Lantz provided six titles in the “Cartune Classics” series and the one which concerns us here is Toyland Premier, released in the U.S.A. in time for Christmas, 1934.  The story has Santa in tears because he has no traditional red suit to wear, a situation soon remedied by elves.  To celebrate he throws a party and invites Bing, Shirley Temple, Laurel and Hardy and others.  The guests have to perform a party piece.  Bing “boo-boo-boos” and later serenades Santa with a snippet about Christmas gift lists. 

A Crosby caricature was featured in a "Silly Symphonies" short released on June 26, 1935, by United Artists, produced by Walt Disney and directed by David Hand. It was based on the nursery rhyme Who Killed Cock Robin? It was nominated for an Oscar in the Best Animated Short category. While Cock Robin (caricatured after Bing) serenades the Mae West-esque Jenny Wren, an unseen assailant shoots an arrow into Cock Robin's heart and he falls to the ground, giving the other birds in the tree the impression he has been shot and killed. An extract from the cartoon was featured the following year in Alfred Hitchcock’s Sabotage; the film's opening credits thank Disney for giving permission.

As you would expect, Paramount’s own cartoon unit quiet frequently promoted their own contract players.  In the mid-forties the “Saturday Evening Post” strip “Little Lulu” was brought to the big screen and in 1947 the cartoon The Baby Sitter was made.  The story shows how Lulu is assigned as baby sitter and her attempts to keep baby in his cot leads to a dream sequence.  This finds Lulu at the Stork Club [a nightclub for babies!] where the stage show features nappified versions of W.C. Fields, Bing, Bob Hope and Jerry Colonna.  But Paramount’s star animated performer was a comic strip hero.  From 1933, when he made his debut in Popeye the Sailor, until 1957, when the Paramount animation unit closed down, Olive Oyl’s hero was used to publicise Paramount’s contract players.  In 1934, Popeye sang “June in January” in the short Shiver Me Timbers.  Then, when the Crosby feature Double or Nothing was on release in 1937, Popeye’s animator Dave Fleischer made a Popeye short based on the song introduced by Bing, It’s the Natural Thing to Do.  The title illustrates how Popeye and Bluto vie for the hand of Olive.  They fight, that being the natural thing to do.  In 1954, Paramount released Popeye’s 20th Anniversary.  In it Bob Hope hosts a testimonial dinner and presents Popeye with an engraved cup.  Seated round the table are Olive Oyl, Jerry Lewis, Dean Martin and Bing.  Bing is dressed in a loud shirt and wears a hat, smoking his trademark pipe. 

Warner Bros., the studio that first introduced Bing to animation enthusiasts, represented him in more than half a dozen cartoons.  Not what you would expect of a rival studio to Paramount but cartoon Crosby was frequently in the company of Warner stars.  The "Merrie Melodies" series produced and released by Warner Bros. began in 1931. Initially black and white they went over to colour from the beginning of 1934. These shorts usually had a running time of less than six minutes and were initially intended to promote songs owned by Warner Bros. publishing arms. Two in the series with Crosby connections featured songs destined to become standards in the Great American Songbook. The first was I've Got to Sing a Torch Song. Released on September 30th, 1933 it depicts "Cros Bingsby" singing "Why Can't This Go On Forever" whilst lying in the bath covered in soap suds. The facial and vocal likenesses in the twenty second sequence make it unlikely viewers would fail to recognise Bing but just in case the glass panelled door to the bathroom bears the name Cros Bingsby. Three years later I Only Have Eyes for You came out. Released on March 6th, 1937 the cartoon bird Katy Canary listens to an anonymous crooner. On the wall are photograph type depictions of Bing, Rudy Vallee and Eddie Cantor. Between those two song titled shorts came Bingo Crosbyana, directed by Friz Freleng and released in the summer of 1935.  The Bingo character is a bug who takes the part of a crooner-guitarist.  Then, on 4th December, 1937, came The Woods Are Full of Cuckoos from Warners.  It was about a radio show called “Woodland Community Swing” and included caricatures of radio stars doing their turns.  Walter Finchell is commentator, Louella Possums the reporter and Fred McFurry, W. C. Fieldmouse and Bing Crowsby the performers.  In What’s Up Doc (not to be confused with the 1971 feature film) Bing is seen alongside Edward G. Robinson, Jack Benny and Al Jolson.  Edward G. Robinson was also depicted in What’s Cookin’, Doc which Bob Clampett directed for Warners in 1942.  It cleverly blended live action with animation in an Oscar ceremony setting.  Bugs Bunny is convinced he’ll be honoured as best actor and does imitations of Bing, Bette Davis and Edward G.  But the winner is James Cagney, a Warner Bros. star. Then, in Curtain Razor, it’s Bing and Jolson again, this time with Frank Sinatra.  Frank Tashlin, who found fame as a live action comedy director, served his movie apprenticeship in the Warner Bros. cartoon department.  In 1938, he directed Wholly Smoke which featured cartoon regular Porky Pig.  It had a half-hearted anti-smoking plot and a variety of celebrity caricatures including Bing, the Mills Brothers, Cab Calloway, Rudy Vallee and the Three Stooges.  In 1944, Tashlin directed Swooner Crooner, which garnered an Academy Award nomination.  It depicted Bing and Frank Sinatra as roosters and showed how singers could speed up production on the assembly line when American industry was geared up to boost output during wartime. In 1941, Hollywood Steps Out in the “Merrie Melodies” series depicted caricatures of Bing together with Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable, the Three Stooges and other screen celebrities of the decade. The voice impersonations were impressive. The Crosby segment of the cartoon was utilised in the 1975 documentary feature Brother Can You Spare a Dime? Hollywood Canine Canteen was released by Warners on April 20, 1946. In it a group of celebrity dogs, led by an ‘Edward G. Robinson’ look-alike and including ‘Jimmy Durante’, decide that celebrity dogs need a nightclub of their own. What follows is very similar to Hollywood Steps Out, except that all the celebrities are drawn as dogs. A Bing dog (voiced by Richard Bickenbach) sings “When My Dreamboat Comes Home” but loses a girl to a pencil thin Sinatra dog singing “Trade Winds”. On June 22nd, 1946, Warners Bros. released Hollywood Daffy.  Friz Freleng again directed.  It starts with Daffy Duck walking onto the Warner Bros. lot and attempting to pass the studio guard by disguising himself as various actors.  In the guise of Bing he puts a pipe into his mouth and croons “When My Dreamboat Comes Home”.  Mel Blanc provided a very good Crosby impression but it doesn’t fool the studio gateman. 

Columbia was not noted for its animation unit but it provided several Crosby related shorts.  The first was a cartoon is its Scrappy series with the title Merry Mutineers.  Released in the winter of 1936 it tells of two young lads who are sailing their toy boat when the boat’s crew comes to life.  These piratical sailors are cartoon depictions of Bing, The Marx Brothers, W. C. Fields, Laurel and Hardy and Jimmy Durante amongst others.  Columbia's A Color Rhapsody series (1934-49) included a Crosby caricature in Mother Goose in Springtime (December 1939). Another Columbia cartoon, which was issued in the U.S.A on 6th November, 1947, was still in theatrical release twenty years later.  It was Kitty Caddy.  Cartoon depictions of Hope and Crosby as golfers show them painting old golf balls white and selling them as new for 25 cents. 

CASS, MAURICE (1884-1954) Actor.  Two For Tonight (1935) seems to be Maurice Cass’ first Hollywood film after appearing on Broadway for just short of thirty years.  In a memorable sequence in that film, Bing hides in a tree and sings to the music publisher Alexander Myers who is played by Cass.  It is unfortunate that the publisher is deaf.  From that debut until the shortly before his death he took on comedy parts in several films, concluding with We’re Not Married (1952).

CASTLE, NICK (1910-1968) Dance Director. The ten musical numbers in Paramount’s remake of Anything Goes (1956) were staged by Nick Castle. Castle spent most of the fifties at Paramount Pictures and the two films he made prior to Anything Goes also had memorable dance sequences: Red Garters (1954) and The Seven Little Foys (1955). They provide examples of his skills in drawing passable footwork performances from non-dancers (Guy Mitchell and Bob Hope respectively). He entered the movie business following a stint as a dancer in vaudeville. As a choreographer at Fox Studios, he worked with Shirley Temple and Al Jolson in Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1938) and Swanee River (1940) respectively. In 1941, he moved to Universal and met the challenge of working with Olsen and Johnson in Hellzapoppin (1941) and the Glenn Miller Orchestra in Orchestra Wives (1942). The main Hollywood studio for musicals was M-G-M and it was only natural that he should progress to that outfit for the likes of Summer Stock with Judy Garland in 1950 and Royal Wedding with Fred Astaire the following year. His swansong saw him back where he began, at Fox, for the neglected remake of State Fair (1962).

CAULFIELD, JOAN (1922-1991) Actress. The attractive Joan Caulfield appeared with Bing in Blue Skies (1946) and Welcome Stranger (1947). She also made appearances in two of Paramount’s “all-star” movies to which Bing made slight contributions - Duffy’s Tavern (1945) and Variety Girl (1947). Her singing voice was dubbed by Betty Russell in Blue Skies. If I had to describe her in one word, I would choose “beautiful” because I was quite enchanted by her looks at her peak in the 1940s and so was Bing! We won’t concern ourselves here with Bing’s rumoured off-screen romantic involvement with her. Suffice to say that she apparently expressed regret that Bing’s religion forbade divorce from Dixie in order to legitimise their relationship. Her popularity in the 1940s came from films such as Miss Susie Slagles (1946), Monsieur Beaucaire (1946) and Dear Ruth (1947). She married producer Frank Ross in 1950 and officially retired. Ten years later, they divorced but Joan was then no longer a glamour-puss and her film career was barely rekindled by such ‘B’ westerns as Cattle King (1963), Red Tomahawk (1967), Buckskin (1968) and Pony Express Rider (1976). That was her last film. Considering her film career spanned thirty years, her infrequent stints in front of the cameras left us precious little to remember her by.

CAVETT, FRANK (1907-1973). Screenwriter. The only Crosby picture that Cavett worked on won him a well deserved Oscar as co-scriptwriter with Frank Butler. It was Going My Way (1944), arguably Bing’s best remembered screen role. There is another tenuous Crosby connection because he contributed to the story of Smash-up, the Story of a Woman (1947) allegedly based on Bing’s wife Dixie’s alcohol problems. Cavett’s writing career began in 1939 and peaked with his last assignment. That gained him a second Oscar for collaborating on the story of The Greatest Show on Earth (1952).

CELA M’EST EGAL Song.  Bing sang this to his son at the French railway station in Little Boy Lost (1953).  The English translation of the Johnny Burke-James Van Heusen song is “If It’s All the Same to You”, which does nothing to add to its appeal.  It’s a fun song but considering it comes from the writers of “Swinging on a Star” if falls far short of the popularity that song enjoyed ten years earlier.

CHAKIRIS, GEORGE (1932-   ). Actor/Singer/Dancer. It is the latter skill as dancer that links Chakiris with Bing at the outset of the former’s career. He began in movies at age fourteen singing in the chorus of Song Of Love. He then attended dancing school and his second screen outing as a dancer was in White Christmas (1954). His transition to dramatic actor was gradual but by 1961 he was Oscar nominated for his part in West Side Story. Decreasingly important roles followed and his screen career fizzled with his last role being as a vampire in Pale Blood (1990). In 1992, he could be seen down the road from me in Liverpool in a touring company revival of Oklahoma.

CHAMPION, GOWER (1921-1980) & MARGE (1919-2020) Dancers invariably billed as Marge & Gower Champion because Mrs. C came to the attention of filmgoers before her husband did.  They were in one Crosby film - Mr. Music (1950) - and appeared immediately after Bing and Peggy Lee had duetted “Life Is So Peculiar” when they continued to dance to the music.  The shapely Marge was chosen by Walt Disney as the model for Snow White and the Blue Fairy in Pinocchio.  After Mr. Music, they appeared together on screen in the likes of Lovely to Look at (1952) and Three for the Show (1955).  When the public’s taste for musicals waned, Gower turned to directing and made My Six Loves (1963) and The Bank Shot (1972) amongst others whilst Marge choreographed television shows.

CHAPLIN, SAUL (1912-1997) Composer, arranger, musical director and producer. Born Saul Kaplan, he’d been in show business for about twenty years before he first crossed paths with Bing. This was when he worked at M.G.M. and worked on the musical adaptation of High Society (1956) alongside Johnny Green. Exactly twenty years were to elapse before he used Bing’s “Now You Has Jazz” duet with Louis Armstrong from High Society as one of the musical clips featured in That’s Entertainment - Part 2. At that stage, he was virtually retired but acted as co-producer on that M-G-M compilation movie. In 1947, Bing had a hit with “Anniversary Song”, for which Chaplin wrote the words and adapted the music.

CHECK AND DOUBLE CHECK Film. This was the second feature film in which Bing was featured. Like the first, King of Jazz (1930) he was joined by the Rhythm Boys. They are not seen however but they are heard singing “Three Little Words” whilst members of the Duke Ellington band mime to the song. The Rhythm Boys recorded their contribution in August 1930. It was Bing’s last Hollywood encounter before marrying Dixie Lee on September 29th and it was also his final involvement with RKO Pictures until The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945).

CHICAGO STYLE Song.  At the commencement of Road to Bali (1953), this song quickly establishes Bing and Bob as a couple of second rate vaudevillians.  It is part of their stage act and is sung before an audience in Melbourne whilst parents and their previously innocent daughters wait in the wings to get their hands on the two performers.  Burke and Van Heusen wrote it for the picture and Crosby and Hope went on to make a studio recording for Decca.

CINERAMA’S RUSSIAN ADVENTURE Feature length documentary, which had a limited showing on Cinerama screens in 1966.  Bing made a brief appearance at the opening of this travelogue and then provided the commentary.  The large screen presentation originated as a Sovexportfilm film that utilised about two hours footage of mainly Russian cultural experiences.  The Bolshoi Ballet and Moscow State Circus were covered.  Then an American entrepreneur, J. Jay Frankel, saw an opportunity of releasing the film with an English commentary at a time when Cinerama had just about run its course with no Hollywood Cinerama films in current production.  Yet purpose built Cinerama screens were still in existence and awaiting new product.  The film had its U.K. showing at the Coliseum Cinerama Theatre in St. Martin’s Lane.  Fred Reynolds’ book “The Road to Hollywood” refers to the Crosby commentary as “a factual, humourless recital of events”.

CLEMENTS, STANLEY (1926-1981) Actor. Fourth billed as Tony Scaponi in Going My Way (1944), Clements was well on his way to making a ten year plus career as an adolescent tough, having been featured as “Stash”, one of the East Side Kids, in a number of movies. He certainly gave Father O’Malley a tough time in Going My Way as the leader of a gang of delinquents. He had entered movies in 1941 and found his level in low budget films as a young adult lead. By the 1950s, he was a screen regular in the Bowery Boys films as Stanislaus ‘Duke’ Coveleskie, the last of their series being In the Money in 1958. Clements went on to a steady career of supporting roles in film and TV until his death from emphysema in 1981. For the record, his first wife (1945-1948) was Gloria Grahame.

CLOONEY, ROSEMARY (1928-2002) Singer/Actress. Rosie’s one Bing pic was the 1954 White Christmas. She played Betty Haynes, singing partner and girlfriend to Bing. By that time in her career, almost half of her life had been spent in show business. She began singing on Cincinnati radio with her sister Betty before they joined the Tony Pastor band. Rosemary went solo in 1949. Her Hollywood career was brief and surrounded her Crosby effort with The Stars are Singing (1953), Here Come the Girls (1953), Red Garters (1954) and Deep in My Heart (1955). By then her Bing vocal relationship was beginning to build. For almost all of the fifties she was around when Bing was broadcasting on American radio, usually under Buddy Cole’s supervision. Two well-loved record albums with Bing followed and at the end of the Crosby career she was still providing sterling support on Bing’s concerts. A record career revitalisation occurred in the eighties when she began making albums for the Concord Label. Fond memories of Bing are found in her autobiographies This for Remembrance (1978) and Girl Singer-An Autobiography (1999).

CLOTHIER, WILLIAM H. (1903-1996) Director of photography.  Bing’s last Hollywood feature film was shot by a master of big screen western action movies.  Stagecoach (1966) made full use of the Colorado scenery at a time when Hollywood’s way of competing with television western series was to utilise wide screen grandeur shot on location as opposed to the studio backlot.  Clothier was Hollywood’s leading outdoor colour cinematographer.  He’d worked for the best directors of westerns: John Ford, William Wellman, Sam Peckinpah and Raoul Walsh amongst others.  Gordon Douglas, the director of Stagecoach, was not a member of that illustrious company of western filmmakers but at least Twentieth Century-Fox provided him with the finest cameraman money could buy.  Clothier’s films surrounding Stagecoach provide an impressive body of work representing the last great years of western films before they went out of vogue.  Consider The Horse Soldiers (1959), The Alamo (1960), Cheyenne Autumn (1964), Shenandoah (1965), The Way West (1967), Chisum (1970) and Big Jake (1971).  By the time Clothier photographed his last western, The Train Robbers, in 1973, the genre had run its course.  

COBURN, CHARLES (1877-1961). Actor. Coburn appeared at ten yearly intervals in Bing pictures. Road to Singapore (1940) - Mr. Music (1950) - Pepe (1960). In the first he was Bing’s dad, in Mr. Music a producer and in Pepe one of several guests. Pepe also provided our final opportunity to see him on screen after a prolific career of almost thirty years. He was almost always cast as a hard headed businessman with a heart of gold, as was the case with his 1940 and 1950 Crosby movies. The parts he played were usually too meaty to put him in the character actor category and, when he wasn’t billed ‘above the title’, supporting actor fits him best. It was in that capacity that he won an Oscar for The More The Merrier in 1943. Three memories I have of him from my picturegoing days in the fifties are Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), Around the World in Eighty Days (1956) and How to Murder a Rich Uncle (1957).

COLLEGE HUMOR (Film). This was Bing’s second film made under his Paramount contract. Shot during March and April of 1933 it was in the cinemas by June. Bing is Professor Danvers, who teaches drama (heavily sprinkled with popular music). As well as providing a showcase for Bing to sing a medley of his earlier hits, audiences were treated to a trio of soon to be Crosby standards from the 1930’s: “Learn to Croon”, “Moonstruck” and “Down the Old Ox Road”. When he came to re-record its songs for his 1954 musical autobiography Bing introduced them by saying he never knew what the story was all about.  Buried in the film’s cast list is one James Donlan. He is best remembered today as a marathon drinker and the father of actress Yolande Donlan. He did not find fame at all as a fortune teller when he stated “this Crosby kid can’t act at all. Imagine signing a crooner.”  Not in the cast list but still featuring as a dancer in the film is Marjorie Reynolds, who had a further ten years to wait before co-starring with Bing in Holiday Inn.  Also absent from the film’s credit titles was Joseph L. Mankiewicz, then under contract to Paramount as a writer.  His job was to improve the work of others.  In this case College Humor screenplay writers Claude Binyon and Frank Butler.  Mankiewicz went on to script All About Eve (1950) and Guys and Dolls (1955).  College Humor received cool reviews.  Variety summed it up well when it called it “a light, frothy musical that doesn’t give the customers much of a mental workout”. 

COLLINS, JOAN (1933-   ). Actress. If her one Crosby picture was not significant, I could quite happily omit Miss Collins from this A to Z. However, she did take the ‘Dorothy Lamour’ role in the last Road picture and so is technically Bing’s leading lady on The Road to Hong Kong (1962). Her autobiography “Past Imperfect” made a number of uncomplimentary remarks about working with Bing. These were excised from the American printing of the book. Joan Collins’ film career began with I Believe in You (1952). Three years later she had been signed by 20th Century-Fox and her Hollywood career began with Land of the Pharaohs. By the late seventies, her film career was virtually over but by then American television soap operas had claimed her. She provided some of the best school playground jokes of the 1980s.

COLONNA, JERRY (1904-1986). Actor, trombone player and singer of sorts. Colonna appeared in three Road pictures, making diminishing contributions. He was Achilles Bombanassa in Road to Singapore (1940) when his suit was effectively ruined by Bing and Bob’s application of Spotto. Colonna got revenge by singing “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny”. He played himself in Road to Rio (1948) in which he led a posse that failed to help the plot or catch anyone. Then, for old time’s sake, he made a brief guest appearance in The Road to Hong Kong (1962). In addition he was in the star-studded but virtually plotless Star Spangled Rhythm (1942) in which Bing appeared. He was a regular on Bob Hope’s radio shows and quite often had a spot in Hope’s movies (e.g. College Swing (1938). He also had brief fame in the early fifties as a result of a short lived recording contract with American Decca.

COLUMBIA PICTURES Hollywood studio.  Founded in 1920 by the brothers Jack and Harry Cohn, the studio released Pennies from Heaven (1936) although the film received its New York premiere at the Paramount Theatre.  In 1957, they also distributed the Variety Clubs International short The Heart of Show business, which Bing narrated in part.  The only Crosby film, which could truly be called a Columbia picture, was Pepe (1960), in which Bing made a brief appearance.  Columbia was not a major studio until director Frank Capra put it on the map in the 1930s.  Its most profitable film in the 1940s was The Jolson Story (1946).  The death of Harry Cohn in 1958 removed the studio’s driving force.

COLUMBO, RUSS (1908-1934) Singer. Columbo belongs in this ‘A to Z’ in order to dispel a hoax perpetrated by a prominent American record collector and compounded by an equally prominent Australian one. In the late 1960s, a short film called The Romantic Rivals was the basis for a limited edition album of Crosby/Columbo duets. These twelve songs were supposedly taken from the soundtrack of a Pathe short, which in itself was a ‘test’ for a proposed feature length film. That feature, which would star the two crooners, was planned for around 1930. Bing had no memory of such a film and no soundtrack recording found its way onto the collectors market. However, a limited edition LP, which originated in Australia, contained a ‘duet’ of “Goodnight Sweetheart”. The record album indicated that the song was from the Romantic Rivals film. That particular song was not one of the dozen stated as being on the American pressed soundtrack album. Conveniently, it was a song commercially recorded by both Crosby and Columbo. With careful engineering an impression of the two vocalists being present at the same recording session was created. Columbo was popular in his day and although not a serious rival to Crosby, he made greater headway than Bing in Hollywood. At the time of his death by an accidentally inflicted gunshot wound he had made eight features, the most popular being his last, Wake Up and Dream (1934).

COMO, PERRY (1912-2001) Singer. Como appeared in a 27-minute tobacco industry film financed by the makers of Chesterfield Cigarettes called Tobaccoland on Parade (1950) with Bing and Arthur Godfrey. Como sang "Because" and at the very end, Bing is seen singing a short version of "Swinging on a Star". In The Fifth Freedom (1951), a ten-minute short extolling the virtues of smoking Chesterfield cigarettes, both Crosby and Como appear in separate segments. Como sings “Bless This House”. Professionally the two appeared together on radio and television but never on the cinema screens. Como’s own relationship with movies was brief. He appeared in four films at a time he was establishing himself as a serious male vocalist alongside Crosby, Sinatra and Haymes. They were Something for the Boys (1944), Doll Face (1945), If I’m Lucky (1946) and Words and Music (1948). Why did his film career come to a sudden halt? One reason given is that at a party on the M-G-M lot after Words and Music was in the can he sang a song that contained uncomplimentary remarks about studio head Louis B. Mayer. Mayer could not carry out the physically impossible manoeuvre suggested by Como so gave him the sack instead.

CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR’S COURT, A Film. Or Connecticut Yankee (its officially registered alternate title in the USA), or A Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (its British release title). Whatever its title, it was a popular film at the time of its release in 1949. It earned $3m in North American rentals and was placed 16th in Variety’s table of money-making films that year. However, its substantial production costs - $3,020,000 - meant Paramount had to wait for overseas rentals and a subsequent re-release before the red ink disappeared from the studio accountant’s ledger. Paramount originally planned to use the Rodgers and Hart score from a successful stage production but M-G-M held the rights and wouldn’t relinquish. This proved to be no great hardship because Crosby’s regular film songsmiths, Johnny Burke and James Van Heusen, came up with a trio of tailor made tunes for Bing: “If You Stub Your Toe on the Moon”, “Once and for Always” and “Busy Doing Nothing”. Because the plot was not overloaded with song sequences, the tried and tested Mark Twain story could be developed to the full. It had been filmed before in 1921 and 1931. Bing played Hank Martin, an American visitor to England in the year 1912. Seven years earlier, back in the States, a blow to the head magically transported him back to 528 AD. There he fell for Rhonda Fleming and his visit to England re-united him with that gorgeous lady.

CONNELLY, REG (1895-1963) Composer and song publisher.  He co-wrote just one Crosby film song and that in collaboration with Harry Woods and Jimmy Campbell.  His name justifies a listing because Bing featured it in three 1933 films.  It was the title song of the Paramount short Just an Echo, found its way into a medley in College Humor and received its final movie reprise in Going Hollywood.  When he died, he left £207,840.  That was a tidy amount considering that his most famous composition was usually sung without any royalties accruing to Connelly.  That was “Show Me the Way to Go Home” a pub closing time favourite, which he wrote and published in 1925.  Before “Echo” he ensured a place in the songwriters’ hall of fame by co-writing “Goodnight, Sweetheart” with Ray Noble and “Underneath the Arches” and “Try a Little Tenderness” with Jimmy Campbell.

COOPER, GARY (1901-1961). Actor. Coop was a friend of Bing. Crosby son Gary was named after him. Yet Crosby and Cooper only appeared on screen once together although they were both in four films:

· Hollywood on Parade No. 2 (short, 1932)

· Star Night at the Cocoanut Grove (short, 1935)

· Variety Girl (1947)

· Alias Jesse James (1959)

It was in Variety Girl where Cooper can be seen very briefly on screen with Crosby in the line-up of Paramount stars singing “Harmony”. The friendship was off screen, although Cooper was persuaded to guest with Bing on radio. Appropriately, Gary was the man who presented Bing with his Oscar for Going My Way at the Academy Awards presentation in 1945. Cooper’s film career began in 1925 and it comes as no surprise that he was regularly cast as an extra in Westerns. A year later, he got his big break as second lead in The Winning of Barbara Worth. He was a star thereafter until his death of cancer. Everyone has a favourite Gary Cooper movie. I will select a personal favourite from each of his three decades of stardom: Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Sergeant York (1941) and High Noon (1952). He was still in front of the cameras after his terminal illness had been diagnosed. The last film in which he appeared was the thriller The Naked Edge (1961), which was shot in England.

CORD, ALEX (1933-2021) Actor. Cord was the leading man in the remake of Stagecoach (1966) because he played the Ringo Kid. It was a big break that led nowhere. He’d had an unbilled bit in The Chapman Report (1964) and a minor role in Synanon (1965) before 20th Century-Fox took a chance and let him follow in the footsteps of John Wayne.  He is best remembered for his portrayal of Michael Coldsmith Briggs III, better known as Archangel, in 55 episodes of the television series Airwolf (1984–1986).

CORNELL, LILLIAN (1916-2015), the actress and singer who appeared in thirteen films in the early 1940s, including Las Vegas Nights (1941) and Rhythm on the River (1940). In the latter, she played Millie Starling, the Basil Rathbone character’s leading lady and sang “What Would Shakespeare Have Said?” She also took part in the famous broadcast on August 16, 1940 from Del Mar when Bing's film Rhythm on the River was premiered and sang a snatch of “Where the Turf Meets the Surf”.

CORRIGAN, RAY “CRASH” [Raymond Bernard] (1907-1976) Stuntman and bit player who graduated to action films before specialising in playing apes. He was the gorilla soothed by Bing in Road to Bali (1953) when Crosby serenaded the animal with “To See You Is to Love You”. Corrigan was a familiar face to lads who frequented the Saturday morning sagebrush shows. He was a regular in the Three Mesquiteers and then The Rangebuster series. From the mid-1940s, he hired himself out to film producers complete with an assortment of gorilla suits. He also established Corriganville, a ranch he hired out for western film location shoots. By the middle of the 1960s, the popularity of film westerns was fast diminishing and Corrigan sold his ranch to Bob Hope for $2,800,000.

COSLOW, SAM (1902-1982) Songwriter. The early contribution by lyric writer Coslow to Bing’s film and recording career is important. He was there at the beginning and he recognised Crosby’s talent at an early stage. He was contracted as a songwriter to Paramount and in 1930, he recommended the studio to use Bing in a musical they were about to film. At that time, Bing was working with the Whiteman Orchestra and the Big Boss said ‘no’. So they had to wait a little longer. The full tally of Coslow composed songs Bing sang on screen follows. Unless otherwise stated Coslow wrote them in collaboration with Arthur Johnston. Note how many are now regarded as Crosby standards.

· One More Chance (1931 short) “Just One More Chance”

· Hollywood on Parade No. 4 (1933 short) “Boo Boo Boo”

· College Humor (1933) “Learn to Croon”, “Moonstruck”, “Down the Old Ox Road”, “Just One More Chance”

· Too Much Harmony (1933) “Thanks”, “The Day You Came Along”, “Buckin’ the Wind”, “Boo Boo Boo”

· Double or Nothing (1937) “After You” (written with Al Siegel)

· Duffy’s Tavern (1945) “Learn to Croon”

· Out of This World (1945) “I’d Rather Be Me” (written with Felix Bernard and Eddie Cherkose)

Also written for Too Much Harmony but not sung in the film by Bing is the Crosby classic “Black Moonlight”. Coslow’s career as a writer for films petered out in the mid-forties. If you want to know more about him, read his autobiography “Cocktails for Two” (1977). If you want to see him, he accompanies Bing on “Boo-Boo-Boo” in Hollywood on Parade No. 4 (1933). If you want to listen to him, he made a handful of recordings for Brunswick in the early thirties .They were dreadful. At least he usually murders the songs of other composers. “You Are My Lucky Star”, for instance, must be the worst ever rendition of that song.

COSMOPOLITAN PICTURES Hollywood film studio set up in 1919 by William Randolph Hearst for the sole purpose of promoting his girlfriend Marion Davies.  Bing was involved in only one Cosmopolitan production.  That was Going Hollywood (1933).  It had a leisurely shooting schedule, which suited Bing because brother Everett had negotiated Bing’s fee on a weekly basis at a rate of $2,000.  Judging by the stories surrounding the making of the picture a good time was had by all.  In the year following the shooting of Going Hollywood, Hearst’s fortunes took a turn for the worse and Miss Davies had lost what little box-office clout she might have had.  Cosmopolitan Pictures quietly expired.

COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS INSTEAD OF SHEEP Song.  Most of the Irving Berlin songs featured in White Christmas (1954) live on.  Bing sang this as a lullaby to Rosemary Clooney in the picture.  Naturally, it had the opposite of its intended effect and she duetted with him instead of falling asleep.  Shortly after there is a brief reprise by Bing which finds Rosie in a less agreeable mood.

COUNTRY GIRL, THE Film. This 1954 Paramount picture was Bing’s most demanding dramatic role to date. He tackled the part of hard drinker Frank Elgin valiantly and earned the Oscar nomination for Best Actor voted him by fellow Academy members. The film’s story charts the trials of near alcoholic Elgin when he is cast in a Broadway musical. The audience has to tussle with two issues during the film’s 104 minutes:

(i) Will Bing overcome his drink problem and be a success in the musical play The Land Around Us.

and

(ii) Will Bing get the girl in the eternal triangle involving Grace Kelly and William Holden.

It won’t spoil your future viewing enjoyment if I tell you “yes” on both counts. The Country Girl is an interesting departure from the typical Crosby movie norm in that the four songs Bing sings are hardly hit parade contenders. When he went serious with Little Boy Lost the year before, composers Burke and Van Heusen had an eye on record sales but The Country Girl remained faithful to Clifford Odets’ 1950 Broadway hit and songs were tailored to the play within a play rather than ‘Bing Sings Pop Songs.’ I remember leaving the cinema feeling rather let down after seeing The Country Girl. I had expected a light-hearted Crosby vehicle. Now I see it in a different light. It is Bing’s finest acting performance.

COUNTRY STYLE Song.  This upbeat number featured in Welcome Stranger (1947).  No doubt, a synopsis of the film was passed to Bing’s movie tunesmiths Johnny Burke and Jimmy Van Heusen.  They noted a barn dance sequence in the film and knocked out the number in half an hour.

COUPLE OF SONG AND DANCE MEN, A Song. This was just one of the nearly two dozen Irving Berlin songs crammed into Paramount’s Blue Skies (1946). It is sung, and danced, by Bing and Fred Astaire during a rehearsal session. It is supposed to be part of a routine from the earlier vaudeville days of the Crosby-Astaire show-business partnership. The real Crosby and Astaire were both Decca recording artistes at the time the film was released and a hit single resulted. Some thirty years later the two got together again in London and re-recorded the song for a best-selling album produced by Ken Barnes.

COWAN, JEROME (1897-1972) Actor.  He played the influential broadcaster Claudius de Wolfe in East Side of Heaven (1939).  He was unsympathetic to the plight of the Crosby character.  He had served his performing apprenticeship in vaudeville, repertory and Broadway before entering films in 1936.  He played in well over one hundred diverse roles before his final film - The Comic - in 1969.

CRAIG, YVONNE (1937-2015). Actress.  If a young female is called Randy Pruitt, you have an idea what casting directors are looking for.  Yvonne Craig was so called in High Time (1960) after graduating from early film roles in Eighteen and Anxious (1957) and Gidget (1959).  She was in a Bing picture before moving on to a couple with Elvis and one with Dean Martin.  But her claim to fames came in the late 1960’s when she was cast as Batgirl in the Batman television series.  She quit acting in the early 1980's and moved into real estate brokerage.

CREWS, LAURA HOPE (1879-1942) Leading lady turned character actress. By the time she was cast in two 1939 Crosby releases, Doctor Rhythm and The Star Maker, Laura Hope Crews had been stereotyped as a matronly mischief maker by casting directors.  In the first film, she played the hypochondriac Mrs. Twombling and in The Star Maker she was Carlotta Salvini, the ex-opera singing mother of Jane Gray (played by Linda Ware).  In that same year, she played her best remembered part, that of Aunt Pittypat in Gone with the Wind.  Seeing her on-screen performances it comes as no surprise that she came to Hollywood at the dawn of the talkies as a speech coach.  She was in constant demand by the major studios up until the time of her death, her last film being The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942).

CRONYN, HUME (1911-2003). In Top O’ the Morning (1949), actor Hume Cronyn was no better and no worse a stage Irishman than the rest of the cast (Barry Fitzgerald excepted!). As Constable Hughie Devine, he is assigned to help find the stolen Blarney Stone, but all is not what it seems and he also turns out to be a murderer. At this stage in Cronyn’s career, he was alternating between the Broadway stage and Hollywood movies. In more recent times, Broadway claimed him more often than the cinema. He started at the top in films with a part in Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt (1943) and sufficiently impressed Hitch to be in that director’s Lifeboat a year later. After the 1940s, only a good acting part would tempt him from his stage work. Such parts were few and far between but included People Will Talk (1951), Hamlet (1964) and The Parallax View (1974). One of Broadway’s appeals to Cronyn was the opportunity it offered him to star with his actress wife Jessica Tandy. They married in 1942 and attempted to structure their careers so that they act together. In the 1980s, such opportunities presented themselves in the successful Cocoon and the follow-up film Cocoon: the Return.

CROONER’S HOLIDAY Film. This was the title given to the Mack Sennett short Dream House (1931) when Astor Pictures re-released it in 1935. They abridged the Sennett one reeler but left the four Crosby vocals intact.

CROSBY, BOB (1913-1993). Actor, singer, bandleader and kid brother of Bing. Brother Bob appeared fleetingly in one Bing Crosby picture. That was Road to Bali (1952) in which he fires a rifle for no other reason than to allow Bing to crack the joke, “I promised him a shot in the picture.” Bob had one earlier off screen link with Bing’s film career. The 1942 film Holiday Inn carried the credit ‘Special arrangements by Bob Crosby’s Orchestra.’ The regular Paramount Musical Director, Robert Emmett Dolan, also received credit on the film. Bob’s show business career began when he was signed up as a band vocalist, first by Anson Weeks and then by the Dorsey Brothers. Singing became secondary once he became the leader of his own Dixieland band. His singing style was not unlike Bing’s but he inevitably suffered by being compared unfavourably to his famous brother. His film work was mainly in minor films, usually from Poverty Row studios, or as a speciality appearance as ‘band leader’ in a major production. The latter category covers Presenting Lily Mars (1943) When You’re Smiling (1953) and Senior Prom (1959). The ‘B’ pictures he made carry such uninspiring titles as Rookies on Parade (1941), Kansas City Kitty (1944) and The Singing Sheriff (1944). By the 1950s, he was accepted for the entertainer he was rather than a close relative of somebody very famous. He made his mark on radio and television in that decade. His last film provided him with his best-remembered screen appearance as Will Paradise in The Five Pennies (1959).

CROSBY BOYS, THE (Dennis, Gary, Lindsay and Phillip). They were sons from Bing’s first marriage to Dixie Lee and all four were involved in Crosby films released in 1945. Bing was not on screen with them in either, something psychiatrists would no doubt find interesting in the 21st century. In the first, Duffy’s Tavern, Robert Benchley tells the four of them a bedtime story. In the second, Out of This World, they are part of an audience at a radio show when dad’s voice emanates from the mouth of Eddie Bracken. In addition, Gary and Phillip had brief moments separately in two of dad’s movies. Gary is glimpsed with Bing at Paramount Studios in the 1942 Star Spangled Rhythm and Phillip has one line as a mobster type in Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964). Lindsay and Dennis died by their own hands in 1988 and 1991 respectively and Gary passed away in 1995.  The remaining brother, Phillip, died in January, 2004.

CROSBY, COLOMBO AND VALLEE. Cartoon short. The Crosby caricature and vocal impersonation have featured in over a dozen animated shorts. This was the first, released by Warner Bros in 1932. The title refers to the three most popular singers at the time in the USA and a non-Bing recording of the song “Crosby, Columbo and Vallee” had a degree of popularity.

CROSBY VOICE Bing’s recordings were often used to quickly tune in audiences to an era or time of year.  A sample of those used towards the end of Bing’s life follows:

RICHARD HAMILTON (1969) This is an Arts Council of Great Britain sponsored twenty five minute short.  It is devoted to the works of artist Richard Hamilton.  The only song heard in the short is “White Christmas”.  Bing’s Decca recording is used to illustrate Hamilton’s painting “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas.”  The painting is of Bing in negative and the effects of colour reversal create a snow scene effect to the Crosby features.

PAPER MOON (1973) Peter Bogdanovitch’s film relies solely on commercial recordings and radio programmes to provide background music for this film, which is set in the U.S.A. in the 1930s.  Bing’s recording of “Just One More Chance” is featured.

BROTHER CAN YOU SPARE A DIME (1975) David Puttnam was involved in this 109-minute compilation of 1930s film footage.  As well as singing the title song, we hear Bing’s recording of “Where the Blue of the Night Meets the Gold of the Day.”  The film’s closing credits wrongly title the latter song “When the Blue...”.

THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH (1976). In this, Bing can be heard singing “True Love”.  At the film’s end, Candy Clark, playing David Bowie’s girlfriend, goes to Bowie's apartment in a Father Christmas outfit.  As the two move around the apartment, part of Bing’s Capitol recording of “True Love” is heard on the soundtrack.

TRACKS (1976)  Made in the U.S.A. and starring Dennis Hopper, director Henry Jaglom makes use of two of Bing’s American Decca recordings: “These Foolish Things” and “(There’ll Be a) Hot Time in the Town of Berlin”, the latter performed with the Andrews Sisters.  Set in 1973, the story concerns Hopper journeying by train across country with a coffin containing the body of an army friend killed in Vietnam.  Hopper reminisces about his childhood and the flashback sequences are highlighted by music of the period.  Astaire, Sinatra, Dinah Shore and others are also heard.

Bing’s voice could still be heard in cinemas around the world following his death.  The following is a selection of films, which used his vocals on cinema releases after 1977.

F.I.S.T. (1978). In this film which starred Sylvester Stallone and Rod Steiger the story concerns the forty year growth of an American labour union.  In the early part of the film the U.S. Decca recording of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” by Bing and the Andrews Sisters is heard on the soundtrack.  The song is playing on the radio in a scene where a Chicago businessman is visited during the Christmas holiday by union representatives.

THE BRINK’S JOB (1978)  This film, based on fact and about a bank robbery, begins in 1944 and in an early scene set in Boston the American Decca recording of “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive”, by Bing and the Andrews Sisters is heard.  This serves to indicate the era without resorting to a caption or explanatory dialogue.  At the end of the film, the same recording is heard as the gang of robbers depicted in the film ascend the courthouse steps for a trial prior to imprisonment.

PENNIES FROM HEAVEN (1982) The 36 years separating this version from the original Crosby movie will prevent any confusion as to what you are paying to see.  This 1982 version uses recordings from the 1930s to advance the storyline.  The film’s setting is the thirties with the actors miming to 78s from that decade.  Bing’s contribution is “Did You Ever See a Dream Walking”.  A soundtrack album to tie in with the film’s release featured Steve Martin singing the title song.

FRANCES (1982) Bing is heard singing “Love Is So Terrific” as background music in this screen biography of Bing’s one time leading lady, Frances Farmer.  This song is taken from the Philco Radio Time broadcast of 31st March 1948.

SOME KIND OF HERO (1982). This one missed a U.K. theatrical release.  Michael Pressman directed a comedy-drama in which the first half hour concerns the film’s hero, played by Richard Pryor.  He is taken prisoner by the Vietnamese.  He registers the passing of time on his cell wall by writing the year each Christmas.  Towards the end of his imprisonment, the public address system broadcasts the Bing and Carol Richards Decca recording of “Silver Bells”.

A CHRISTMAS STORY (1983). This warm family film is set in an Indiana suburb in the 1940s.  It takes a nostalgic look at middle-America and concentrates on a young boy’s view of Christmas.  It shows how the child reacts to the gift of an air rifle, which he wants as a present.  Bing’s Decca 78s are used to give a seasonal early 1940’s atmosphere to the film by the playing of “Jingle Bells”, “It’s Beginning to Look Like Christmas” and “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town”.  Bob Clark directed this Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer release. 

RACING WITH THE MOON (1984) This Paramount picture is also set in the U.S.A. at Christmastime.  The year is 1942 and two teenage boys are awaiting induction into the U.S. Marines.  During their wait, they have affairs with two local girls.  Clever use is made of Paramount News (remember “The eyes and ears of the world”?) when a wartime clip swiftly sets the scene.  Popular songs of the era are played on the soundtrack including Bing’s Decca recording of “Moonlight Becomes You”. 

A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET PART 2; FREDDY’S REVENGE (1985) Bing’s recording of “Did You Ever See a Dream Walking” is heard on the soundtrack of this American horror film about a teenager suffering from nightmares.

ONE MAGIC CHRISTMAS (1985) Denied a theatrical release in the U.K., this Canadian tearjerker has the warm glow of the season of goodwill we’ve come to expect of a Walt Disney production. Mary Steenbergen and husband Gary Basaraba are finding it hard to cope following job redundancy.  Halfway through the film they have a heart to heart talk in their kitchen.  The radio plays softly in the background and Bing’s Decca recording of “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” adds poignancy to a situation where it looks as though the family will be homeless before too long.  But the spirit of Uncle Walt makes sure that all ends happily. 

TOUGH GUYS (1986). This film was a major disappointment.  Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas failed to live up to their performances in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral made thirty years earlier.  Tough Guys depicts them as two ex-cons released from prison and still spiritually belonging to the 1950s.  Bing sings “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore” on the soundtrack.  It is Crosby’s 1970’s recording made for Concord although Burt Lancaster is shown placing a 78 on the record turntable.

RADIO DAYS (1987). Woody Allen’s affectionate tribute to the golden days of American radio crams loads of music from the 1930s and 1940s onto the nostalgia provoking soundtrack.  Bing’s contribution is part of the Decca recording of “Pistol Packin’ Mama” sung with the Andrews Sisters.

SOMEONE TO LOVE (1987). Director Henry Jaglom again selected a Crosby recording for one of his films.  Jaglom also played the film’s leading role as a film maker.  The reviewer for the “Monthly Film Bulletin” wrote: “the use of evocative songs like “Long Ago and Far Away” conjure a nostalgic yearning for romantic times and distant places”.  It is Bing’s Decca recording of that song which is used to help perfectly capture the mood of one of the film’s introspective moments.

LADY IN WHITE (1988). The plot is concerned with the ghost of a girl murdered in 1952.  Halfway through this supernatural thriller is a sequence set during the Christmas season of 1963.  We see a shot of a portable record player.  Without assistance, the turntable starts to revolve and the tone arm descends on a 78.  Bing sings “Did You Ever See a Dream Walking” and the film’s main character, young Frankie, played by Lukas Haas, descends the stairs and sees the ghost of a murdered girl.  The song has a significant part to play in the film’s plot.  As the end credits roll the Crosby vocal is reprised, followed by the lyrics being picked up by a childish voice intended to be that of the murdered girl.

CHRISTMAS IN TATTERTOWN (1988). This thirty-minute cartoon was first shown on television in the U.S.A. in 1988.  It is a Christmas story which adults are able to enjoy.  The simple plot concerns a doll called Muffet who hates Christmas and the sentiment surrounding the season of goodwill.  She is supported in her beliefs by a spider and a fly.  When Debbie, the doll’s owner, plays Bing’s recording of “White Christmas” both spider and fly are reduced to tears.

WHEN HARRY MET SALLY (1989). The theme of this American film is that men and women cannot have sex and still be just friends.  Harry (Billy Crystal) and Sally (Meg Ryan) both graduate in 1977.  They meet again in 1982 and 1987.  It is the second re-union that sees the relationship between the two strengthening and the lengthy sequence embraces the Christmas/New Year festivities of 1987/8.  Bing sings “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” as the story moves towards a happy conclusion.

NATIONAL LAMPOON’S CHRISTMAS VACATION (1989). This film charts the ongoing misfortunes of the Griswold family.  Chevy Chase is again cast as Clark W. Griswold, jnr., for whom disasters loom round every corner.  In a scene set just before Christmas Day he gazes wistfully into the distance and a sequence illustrates his dreams:  a large swimming pool on a hot summer’s day surrounded by bikini clad girls.  The musical item that blends Christmas sentiment with the warm outdoors happens to be the Hawaiian song “Mele Kalikimaka”, sung by Bing and the Andrews Sisters.  A further nod to the Crosby influence on Christmas comes at Griswold’s darkest hour when the family guests pack to leave the disaster stricken house.  Chevy Chase bars their way, grits his teeth and says, “Nobody leaves.  This is going to be the happiest Christmas since Bing Crosby tap danced with Danny Kaye.” 

THE ROAD HOME (1989). Originally titled “Last Angels” when released to poor box-office in the U.S.A., Rank retitled the movie for U.K. distribution.  Its theme had Donald Sutherland learning more about adolescent problems than most of us wished to know.  Reviewer Nigel Floyd had this to say when the film reached the British Isles: “Art movies made by concerned middle-aged parents about mixed-up teenage kids are as irrelevant and inappropriate as a Bing Crosby record at a Beastie Boys concert.”  Bing’s 1943 recording of “San Fernando Valley” seems out of place on the soundtrack where recordings by the likes of Happy Mondays, Raheem, The Pogues and The Cure predominate.

AVALON (1990). The film tells in flashback the family fortunes of the Krichinsky family from 1914 to the mid-60s.  Avalon is a suburb of Baltimore and is the backdrop for mapping out the family fortunes from grandfather Sam Krichinsky downwards.  Bing’s soundtrack contribution is “Silver Bells” which he duets with Carol Richards.  Other musical items include Jolson’s “Anniversary Song”, Buddy Clark singing “I’ll Dance at Your Wedding” and “Racing with the Moon” from Vaughn Monroe.

HENRY AND JUNE (1990). The Henry of the title is author Henry Miller and June is his wife.  It is 1931 and Miller is in Paris.  Director Philip Kaufman decided to use French and American recordings of the period alongside an orchestral score of 1930s classical compositions.  One of his contemporary selections was Bing’s recording of “I Found a Million Dollar Baby”.

HUDSON HAWK (1991). This American comedy thriller was the first major financial disaster of the 1990s as far as Hollywood was concerned.  Bing’s recording of “Swinging on a Star” plays a major part in the plot.  Willis as the Hudson Hawk of the title plans to steal a Leonardo da Vinci from a New York auction house.  He estimates the heist will take the length of time it takes to sing “Swinging on a Star”.  Does he pull it off?  Do you care?

OSCAR (1991). When Sylvester Stallone isn’t playing Rocky or Rambo he tries to turn in performances which don’t clash with his popular image.  As Angelo Provolone in Oscar, he promises his dying father he will go straight.  It is 1934.  In a scene in the first reel, Stallone’s daughter (Ornella Muti) is showing her rebellious side.  She is in retreat in her bedroom smoking and listening to Bing’s 1932 recording of “Sweet Georgia Brown”.  Rebellion didn’t come much worse than that in the 1930s.

NOVEMBER DAYS (1991). Although commissioned by the BBC, this documentary about the fall of the Berlin Wall received wide theatrical release in the U.S.A.  It was made by Marcel Ophuls, who is known for his “no holds barred” style.  Parts of Bing’s May 1942 recording of “Song of Freedom” are used throughout the film.  Anti-Semitism is an issue explored in the film and Bing’s vocal gives added poignancy in a sequence when a Neo-Nazi is interviewed.  Little did Russian Jew Irving Berlin know when he wrote “Song of Freedom” for Holiday Inn how tellingly it would be utilised half a century later.

GRUMPY OLD MEN (1993). This Warner Bros. film includes Bing’s Warner Bros. released recording of “Winter Wonderland”.  About three-quarters through this comedy of the feuding couple played by Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau comes a scene set in Christmas Eve, 1992.  “Winter Wonderland” is heard as we watch a familiar urban snow scene.  The viewer is led to expect a cosy sequence but instead a serious note is struck as we watch a fraught incident about a failing marriage.  The feel good effect of the Crosby vocal is countered by the on-screen disharmony of marital discord.

TRAPPED IN PARADISE (1994). Paradise is a town in the U.S.A. populated by trusting, unsophisticated citizens.  It is visited for the first time on Christmas Eve by Nicholas Cage and his two brothers.  There is a scene in the town’s bank where customers are conducting business whilst Bing’s 1963 recording of “Do You Hear What I Hear” is playing over the public address system.  Cage and brothers rob the bank, bungle an escape and then become reformed characters. 

THE TROUBLES WE’VE SEEN (1994). This Marcel Ophuls documentary uses similar techniques to the earlier November Days.  It won the International Critics prize at the 32nd New York Film Festival.  It is a history of war correspondents and how news is filtered before it reaches readers, viewers and listeners.  The war in Sarajevo is prominently featured and Ophuls juxtaposes apparently unrelated film clips in order to make a point.  Bing is heard singing “White Christmas” to film footage of sledding in the Bosnian mountains.

THINGS TO DO IN DENVER WHEN YOU’RE DEAD (1995). I find it difficult to understand why the American Decca recording of “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive” by Bing and the Andrews Sisters was selected to accompany a scene in this violent gangster film. Just over an hour and a half into the picture Andy Garcia, the film’s leading man, is the subject of a vicious beating. We study his bruised features and for about half a minute the Crosby/ Andrews Sisters recording plays on the soundtrack. The music has no obvious relevance to the action unfolding on screen.

MOTHER NIGHT (1996). Nick Nolte plays a double agent who broadcasts anti-Semitic propaganda to the U.S.A.  Bing’s Decca recording of “White Christmas” is played unedited over the credit titles at the film’s beginning.  Then, forty minutes into the action, there is a sequence set in New York in 1960.  “White Christmas” is heard on the soundtrack.  We see a display of Decca 78s as the Nolte character explains he has 26 copies of the Crosby disc, which he obtained via the U.S. Armed Forces. 

L.A. CONFIDENTIAL (1997).  A thriller from Warner Bros. which proves once again how a Crosby Christmas record can provide instant atmosphere.  It is sometime in the 1950s and it is Christmastime.  About twenty minutes into the film, there is a scene in a liquor store.  Bing and the Andrews Sisters are heard singing “Mele Kalikimaka” when Kim Basinger and a cop visit the store.  Violence ensues.

LOCUSTS, THE (1997). Released on video as “The Secret Sin” this is a most unlikely film to feature a Crosby recording on the soundtrack. Set in Kansas in the early 1960s our hero (Vince Vaughn) runs away from his past to seek anonymity as a ranch hand. The film’s songs are almost all late 1950s recordings with the notable exception of Bing’s “Did You Ever See a Dream Walking”. That song starts up as background music some thirteen minutes into the story. We hear it as Vaughn makes his way in the moonlight to his bunkhouse. The soundtrack recordings preceding Bing are by Brenda Lee and Buddy Holly and it is impossible to fathom why Bing’s recording – legitimately licensed from Sony according to the film’s credits – was considered for a story involving incest, castration and suicide. Crosby soundtrack contributions don’t get more bizarre than this.

THE MYTH OF FINGERPRINTS (1997). This little seen American movie from the mid-nineties is a family drama set over the Thanksgiving weekend. The plot brings surprises and revelations every five minutes or so. A snatch of Bing’s recording of “Don’t Be That Way” and a lengthy excerpt from “Adeste Fideles” are heard on the soundtrack. The latter song is used to good effect two-thirds through the story when actors Roy Scheider and Blythe Danner are preparing a turkey for the oven. Bing’s song lulls viewers into thinking all is well with the world but this is only a temporary respite before more skeletons emerge from the cupboard.

ENEMY OF THE STATE (1998). This is an intelligent thriller set in the U.S.A. towards the end of the twentieth century.  The film’s underlying theme of this Touchstone Picture is the extent of technology’s ability to invade privacy.  Will Smith plays an innocent citizen sucked into a web of political corruption.  His financial background is distorted and his marriage almost destroyed.  The film’s final scene provides a happy ending.  The credits roll.  Bing’s 1947 Decca recording of “They Can’t Take That Away from Me” is played as the audience leaves the cinema with Crosby’s re-assuring voice reminding them it was only a film.

FOREVER HOLLYWOOD (1999). This fifty-minute compilation is shown on a regular basis at the Egyptian Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard.  The Egyptian is operated by the American Cinematheque.  The film glorifies Hollywood.  It ends with Bing singing “Going Hollywood” from the film of the same name.

SNOW FALLING ON CEDARS (2000). The film is set around 1950 but a flashback sequence takes us to 1942.  The editor of a small town newspaper has published an editorial sympathetic to the Japanese community.  He is telling his son about the number of readers who have cancelled the paper as a result of his views.  In the background to the scene, we hear Bing’s Decca recording of “Would You”.

BI-CENTENNIAL MAN (2000). In this Robin Williams comedy he plays a robot.  In one scene, he is seen repairing a phonograph.  The 78 that is played is Bing’s “I Found a Million Dollar Baby”.

HOLLYWOOD ENDING (2001) Directed by Woody Allen, this film sees his return to comedy form with a subject that many would not find amusing.  The plot is about an Academy Award winning director who becomes blind.  Allen avoids original scores for his movies.  He frequently uses recordings from the 1930s and 1940s.  In view of the setting of Hollywood Ending it is not surprising that he makes use of Bing’s recording of “Going Hollywood”.

CATCH ME IF YOU CAN (2002). A true story about Frank Abagnale Jr. who, before his 19th birthday, successfully conned millions of dollars worth of cheques as a Pan Am pilot, doctor, and legal prosecutor. Leonardo DiCaprio plays the real-life conman and Bing and the Andrews Sisters are heard singing “Mele Kalikimaka”.

BAD SANTA (2003). One of the few Christmas season films for adults has Billy Bob Thornton playing a department store Santa each year.  He chooses a different store annually, insults the kids who sit on his knee and robs the stores after closing time.  Disney’s Buena Vista company had a financial hand in this 15 rated un-family film.  About twenty minutes before the end of the film there is a scene, which takes place on Christmas Eve.  Prior to carrying out another robbery Billy Bob is assisting in dressing a Christmas tree and hanging Christmas stockings.  On the film’s soundtrack, we hear Bing singing “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”.  Almost all of the 1962 Warner Bros. recording is used. 

FAHRENHEIT 9/11 (2004). This Michael Moore compiled film is an anti-George W. Bush documentary.  Three-quarters of the way into the film there is footage of U.S. military stationed in Iraq.  It is just before Christmas, presumably in the year 2002.  Bing and the Andrews Sisters can be heard singing “Here Comes Santa Claus” on two occasions during the sequence.

THE POLAR EXPRESS (2004). Another film set at Christmastime which makes use of Bing’s seasonal recordings to provide that goodwill feeling.  This time both “White Christmas” and “Here Comes Santa Claus” can be heard on the soundtrack of a film, which uses animation in an expensive but effective way.  Tom Hanks provides several voices to characters in a story about a boy who doesn’t believe in Santa (at least until the film ends).

THE AVIATOR (2004). The film biography of Howard Hughes contains some chronological inaccuracies but director Martin Scorsese captures the spirit of Hughes’ pioneering, if sometimes misdirected, efforts in the film and airline industry.  Bing is heard twice on the film’s soundtrack during the drama’s first half.  “Thanks” is played shortly after the sequence depicting the premiere of the film “Wings” and “Some of These Days” is featured when Hughes, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, visits the home of Katharine Hepburn (Cate Blanchett).  Neither recording is pertinent to the action but both sit nicely with the period.

RUN FATBOY RUN (2007). Bing’s recording of “Nice Work If You Can Get It” with accompaniment by Buddy Bregman can be heard over the pre-credit sequence of this British comedy. We see guests assembling for the wedding of the film’s leading characters played by Simon Pegg and Thandie Newton. Then Pegg does a runner and the plot concerns his running in a London marathon in order to reconcile with Newton.

FOUR CHRISTMASES (2008). The first song we hear in this seasonal comedy is “White Christmas” sung by Bing, although you need to wait until the film’s closing credits to be certain that you are listening to the Crosby voice. The song is heavily overdubbed to suit the rhythmic needs of young audiences of the current century and is referred to as “the Declan mix” when acknowledging that it is licensed from the current owners of Bing’s Decca catalogue. Other soundtrack singers include Dean Martin, Perry Como and Gary Glitter but it is Bing’s voice that sets the scene for a story set on Christmas Day. Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn are involved in a scenario where the couple visit their divorced parents. The couple observe four dysfunctional family gatherings during the film’s ninety minutes or so - although the movie’s running time does seem to be somewhat longer.

NANNY MCPHEE AND THE BIG BANG (2010). Hollywood likes to make sequels where a previous success makes a follow up picture easy to market. Hence, Nanny McPhee now having to contend with a big bang. This is a film for all the family and an early sequence depicts three children cleaning up the farm in readiness for their two cousins coming to stay. The accompanying soundtrack features Bing singing “The Best Things in Life Are Free”. .It is the first use in a film of a Ken Barnes session recording. Bing was in London to record the song in 1975. The film was originally titled Nanny McPhee Returns on its American release.

THE MUSIC NEVER STOPPED (2011). This stars J. K. Simmons (“Spider-Man,” “Juno”) as a Bing Crosby-loving dad who, in the late ‘60s, has a falling-out with his hippie son (Lou Taylor Pucci). The son can’t really communicate except when rock music is played for him, in a process that seems to unclog his neural pathways, which were damaged by a benign brain tumor. Bing is heard singing the version of “Young at Heart” recorded for the GE show on the soundtrack.

NATIVITY 2: DANGER IN THE MANGER! (2012). A worried new teacher has to juggle a pregnant wife and a class of children on a road trip to the National 'Song for Christmas' Competition. Bing and The Andrews Sisters can be heard singing “Jingle Bells”.

SERENA (2014). Shot in the Czech Republic but starring two of Hollywood’s ‘A’ list players, this melodrama teams Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence as husband and wife running a lumberyard in 1929. Around two-thirds through the film they attend a business dinner and the Rhythm Boys recording of “There Ain’t No Sweet Man That’s Worth the Salt of My Tears” starts up. A drunken Jennifer Lawrence says to her husband: “I love this song. Dance with me.” Bradley Cooper declines and Lawrence waltzes off with one of the business acquaintances. This 8th February 1928 recording with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra is the earliest instance of the Crosby voice being used on screen.

     GET SANTA (2014). A father and son team up to save Christmas once they discover Santa Claus sleeping in their garage after crashing his sleigh and finding himself on the run from the police. “Here Comes Santa Claus”,    “Deck the Halls”, “Away in a Manger” and “I Saw Three Ships” are all heard.

KRAMPUS (2015). A boy who has a bad Christmas ends up accidentally summoning a festive demon to his family home. The seasonal theme inevitably means that Bing will be included on the soundtrack and he pops with “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” and “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town”.

BROOKLYN (2015). Colm Toibin’s novel was faithfully adapted for the screen by Nick Hornby and the feel of Ireland and New York in the early 1950’s is perfectly captured in this film.  Just over halfway through the picture there is a brief scene where an Irish lass (Saoirse Ronan) is taken to Coney Island by her Italian boyfriend (Emory Cohen).  We hear a brief snatch of “Zing a Little Zong” being played over the amusement park’s public address system.  This is the version featuring Bing duetting with Rosemary Clooney and is taken from the Chesterfield broadcast of 11th June 1952.  Jasmine Records are credited with making the recording available.

DEADPOOL (2016). A fast-talking mercenary, played by Ryan Reynolds, with a morbid sense of humour is subjected to a rogue experiment that leaves him with accelerated healing powers and a quest for revenge. The     Crosby recording of "I'll Be Home for Christmas" is heard.

    MOON ROCK CITY (2017). In the future, a band of misfits uncover the saga of an infamous rock star. Bing’s version of “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” is featured.

    BREATHE (2017). This tells the story of Robin Cavendish who becomes paralyzed from the neck down by polio at age 28. The film opens and closes with the duet by Bing and Grace Kelly of “True Love” from “High Society.”

SONJA: THE WHITE SWAN (2018) - the story of Sonja Henie, one of the world's greatest athletes and the inventor of modern figure skating, who decides to go to Hollywood in 1936 to become a movie star. Bing and The Bell Sisters are heard singing "Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie".

    SHAZAM! (2019) - a superhero film. The opening scene is set in 1974 at Christmas and several passengers in a car are talking with the car radio playing in the background. The music being played is Bing singing “Do You Hear What I Hear”.

A RAINY DAY IN NEW YORK (2019) -  A young couple arrives in New York for a weekend where they are met with bad weather and a series of adventures. Bing is heard singing "I Got Lucky in the Rain" over the opening credits of this Woody Allen film.

    NOMADLAND (2020) - Starring Frances McDormand, this Oscar winning film depicts the day-to-day existence of a number of Americans who have chosen itinerant lives housed in all manner of camper vans. Bing’s “White Christmas” can be heard in the background during a scene in a supermarket.

LICORICE PIZZA (2021) - A coming-of-age comedy-drama film starring Alana Haim, Cooper Hoffman, Sean Penn, Tom Waits, Bradley Cooper, and Benny Safdie. Bing and the Andrews Sisters version of “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive” is heard on the soundtrack.

  GLORIOUS (2022) - A horror thriller film starring Ryan Kwanten and J. K. Simmons. Bing and the Bell Sisters are heard singing "Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie" at the beginning.

  ASTEROID CITY (2023) - a comedy-drama film directed by Wes Anderson. Set in 1955, many songs from the era are heard including Bing's version of "The Streets of Laredo".

HAVOC (2025) -a violent crime film starring Tom Hardy.  The Crosby version of "O Holy Night" is heard during a street gunfire scene set at Christmastime.

(The text of this section entitled “Crosby Voice” is available for modification and reuse under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Unported License and the GNU Free Documentation License.)

CROUSE, RUSSEL (1893-1966) Librettist, usually in collaboration with Howard Lindsay.  Crouse and Howard were responsible for the story on which the screenplay of She Loves Me Not (1934) was based.  Both Bing film versions of Anything Goes owe their origins to the1934 stage musical written by the pair.  Cole Porter provided the songs for the stage version for that one.  They were always in good company when their “book” was utilised by songwriters.  Irving Berlin provided the songs for “Call Me Madam” and Rodgers and Hammerstein embellished “The Sound of Music” with several memorable ditties.

CULVER, ROLAND (1900-1984). Actor. Remembered for his one appearance in a Crosby picture as Count Von Stolzenberg-Stolzenberg. In Emperor Waltz, (1946) he comes between Virgil Smith (Bing) and Countess Johanna, his daughter (Joan Fontaine) because he wants her to marry someone with money. Culver was more usually cast as the British gentleman rather than an Austrian aristocrat. Yet he fitted the part well. Born in London, he made his stage debut in 1925 and entered British films six years later. Before he went to Hollywood, he was in the likes of French Without Tears (1939) and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1945). He never amounted to much in the States and from the 1950s he went to wherever the work was available. The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1964) and The Mackintosh Man (1973) stand out as a pair of big budget films, which failed to deliver but where Culver’s presence had an enlivening effect.

CUMMINGS, ROBERT (Bob) (1908-1990). He was Robert in his early years, Bob when he was a television favourite in the 1950s, and Robert again when he played alongside Bing in the 1966 remake of Stagecoach. In that film, he was cast against type as Gatewood, who robbed his father-in-law’s bank and became a fellow passenger on the stage to Cheyenne. He began on Broadway in 1931 when he faked a British accent and represented himself as English actor Blade Stanhope Conway. Then he conned his way into movies by passing himself off as Texan Brice Hutchens to win a part in the western The Virginia Judge (1935). His forte was light romantic comedy and dozens of titles as the ‘real’ Robert Cummings carried him through to the 1950s. When you pay money to see the likes of Three Smart Girls Grew Up (1939), It Started with Eve (1949), Between Us Girls (1942) and Heaven Only Knows (1947) you know what you are getting for your money. When the BBC showed the U.S. television sitcom The Bob Cummings Show those who were breaking the picture going habit remembered how he had kept his youthful looks. How much can be attributed to his well-publicised vitamin diet and how much to his three wives and seven children we will never know. A large screen career revival in the 1960s produced My Geisha (1962), The Carpetbaggers (1964) and his last film Five Golden Dragons (1967).

CURTAIN RAZOR A 1949 Looney Tunes short directed by Friz Freleng and starring Porky Pig. It was notable as a showcase of the versatile voice talent of Mel Blanc. Bingo the Parrot, Frankie the Rooster, and Al the Crow (resembling Bing, Frank Sinatra, and Al Jolson, respectively) sing “April Showers”, each in the distinctive manner of their namesakes.

CURTIZ, MICHAEL (1888-1962) Director. It seems fitting that the one Crosby picture Curtiz should direct was White Christmas (1954), because he was born in Budapest on Christmas Eve. It turned out to be Bing’s most financially successful movie.  Two years later, whilst still at Paramount, he directed The Vagabond King and Bing appeared in that film’s promotional short Bing presents Oreste. Prior to his Paramount days, he was contracted to Warner Bros. Indeed, Harry Warner brought him to Hollywood in 1926 and he made more than one hundred films for that studio. Some are classics such as The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), Casablanca (1943) and Young Man with a Horn (1950). He was past his peak by the time he left Paramount but as well as making White Christmas there he directed King Creole (1958) which is regarded as Elvis Presley’s best film. He quit on a high at the age of 73 with the John Wayne starrer The Comancheros (1961). His loose command of the English language provided David Niven with the title for one of his autobiographical memoirs, when Curtiz was shooting a scene that called for riderless horses his command was “bring on the empty horses.”

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DALE, VIRGINIA (1917-1994) Actress/dancer. Virginia Dale’s best opportunity was in her only Bing picture, Holiday Inn (1942). She was fourth billed as Lila, Fred Astaire’s dancing partner. She helped out vocally on “I’ll Capture Your Heart” and “Let’s Start the New Year Right”. She had entered films at the end of the thirties with such ‘B’ films as No Time to Marry (1938) and World Premiere (1941). She slipped back into ‘B’s’ after Holiday Inn with Headin’ for God’s Country (1943) and retired from films after making Danger Zone (1951).

DALEY, CASS (1915-1975). Actress, singer. To appear in five films featuring Bing Crosby and yet only appear on screen with him very briefly once is a distinction of a kind. The quintet of movies is Star Spangled Rhythm (1942), Duffy’s Tavern (1945), Out of This World (1945) Variety Girl (1947) and Here Comes the Groom (1951). It was in the latter that, as an airline passenger, she joined Bing, along with Louis Armstrong, Dorothy Lamour and Phil Harris in singing “Misto Cristofo Columbo”. She was instantly recognisable as a comedienne because of her buck teeth, but if you were in any doubt this was dispelled as soon as she burst into song. Her loud zany singing categorised her as a female Jerry Colonna. She only made a dozen films, taking a long career break after appearing in the Guy Mitchell vehicle Red Garters (1954). Her last film was Norwood in 1970. She was attempting a show business comeback in the mid-seventies when she had a fatal accident at home. She fell over a glass coffee table and a shard of glass pierced her neck.

DANIELS, BEBE (1901-1971). Actress. In Reaching for the Moon (1931), Bebe was one of the first ladies to join Bing in song. In Crosby’s brief appearance singing “When the Folks up High Do the Mean Low Down” the film’s leading lady takes a chorus of the song. By then she had been in films for over twenty years. Her silent picture parts are best remembered as Harold Lloyd’s leading lady. She became one of Paramount’s leading ladies before moving to RKO and starting a career decline. Her marriage to Ben Lyon in 1930 provided an opportunity to tread the boards and a London Palladium engagement in 1936 saw the start of a ten-year residence in England. Bebe and Ben were popular on BBC Radio and that led to the movie Hi Gang (1941). Lyon went to work for Twentieth Century-Fox for a few years before the family returned for another BBC radio series of even greater listener popularity: Life with the Lyons. This spawned two mediocre films, which ended Bebe’s film career. They were Life with the Lyons (1953) and The Lyons in Paris (1955). She was inactive for the last ten years of her life, following a number of strokes.

DANIELS, LARRY (1922-2015). Actor who became a popular nightclub performer. His only Crosby film was Road to Utopia (1945) where he played the ringleader of a gang who set upon Bing and Bob when the pair found the map of the Klondike goldmine. In vaudeville as a child, he eventually found his niche performing on 1950s television variety shows. These included the Steve Allen and Ed Sullivan shows which could be regarded as extending Daniel's vaudeville career by providing a showcase for acts suitable for family consumption. He ended his career as a stand-up comic.

DARE, DANNY (1905-1996). Choreographer/producer. It is as dance director that we first see the name of Danny Dare on Paramount Picture credits. Of his half dozen Bing associated films he was involved with the dance numbers for Holiday Inn (1942), Star Spangled Rhythm (1942), Here Come the Waves (1944) and Road to Utopia (1946). However, producers earn more money, so he ended his film career in that capacity, taking credit on Variety Girl (1947) and Road to Rio (1948). His last screen credit was in that same year - 1948 - as dance director/producer on Isn’t it Romantic. He went on TV in the 1950s and was director of the How to Marry a Millionaire series.

DARKTOWN STRUTTERS’ BALL, THE. The song was featured in two Crosby films.  In The Star Maker (1939) it was sung by Linda Ware.  Bing sang it in Little Boy Lost (1953) in an important sequence featuring Nicole Maurey.  She meets Bing for the first time at a party when she sings the song in English and Bing then joins in by singing it in both English and French.  It was another ten years before Bing committed it to wax when it formed part of a medley for his “Bing Crosby on the Happy Side” album.

DARRO, FRANKIE [Frank Johnson] (1917-1976) Actor whose slight frame saw him typecast as either a jockey or a young punk.  Some would say he played both in Riding High (1950).  Bing arranged for him to ride Broadway Bill and, as jockey Ted Williams, he unsportingly tried to hold back the horse and prevent him winning the race.  Born to circus performers, he was in films from the age of six.  He appeared in many a Monogram Poverty Row production and when that studio went down in the fifties, he took on any bit part that was offered to him.  Those offers became increasingly hard to come by and he drifted into stunt work in order to pay the bills.

DAUPHIN, CLAUDE (1903-1978). Actor. As Pierre Verdier, in Little Boy Lost (1953), Dauphin is the Frenchman who brings Bing back to France to re-unite him with his son. Between 1945 and 1965, if producers needed a suave sophisticate with a French accent, charm and elegance they hired Dauphin. He made his mark in French films from 1930 onwards but it took Hollywood to turn him into an international actor in such films as The Quiet American (1958) and Grand Prix (1966). His best-known British films are Tiara Tahiti (1961) and Two for the Road (1967).

DAVIES, MARION (1897-1961). Actress. Miss Davies was Bing’s leading lady in Going Hollywood. Without her, the film would not have been made. Her sugar daddy, William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper and magazine tycoon, poured money into films to boost her career. The film’s production company, Cosmopolitan Pictures, was set up in 1919 for the sole purpose of producing her films. She looked O.K. and during the silent era built her career on playing fragile, innocent, virginal heroines. Things changed with the coming of sound. She tended to stutter and scripts were tailored to reduce her dialogue lines. She also enjoyed a drink or two. Going Hollywood picks up her career towards its end. She’d been before the cameras since 1917. In 1935, Hearst moved Marion and her famous bungalow to the Warner Bros lot. Four films followed until her retirement from show business and her final quarter century was spent as a wealthy business executive.

DAVIS JR., SAMMY (1925-1990). Actor, singer, dancer. Although Bing and Sammy both appeared in Pepe (1960), the first time they were on screen together was in Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964). Davis was cast as Will, one of Robbo’s (Frank Sinatra) henchmen. Together with Bing, Sinatra and Dean Martin he sang, “Mister Booze” and “Don’t be a Do-badder” in the film. Davis had been in show business nearly thirty years before his big screen debut in The Benny Goodman Story (1956). He’d been part of the Will Mastin Trio until the end of the forties. The other two were his father and his uncle. He then began to make an impact on record and his talents as a mimic and multi-instrumentalist were just what American television needed in the early fifties. A motoring accident in 1954 resulted in the loss of an eye, but that spurred him on to greater popularity. In 1956, he was a major success on Broadway in the musical Mr. Wonderful. His movies were generally average or worse. The best three are Porgy and Bess (1959), Oceans 11 (1960) and Sweet Charity (1969). He was touring the world doing concerts with Frank Sinatra when lung cancer was diagnosed.

DAY AFTER FOREVER, THE Song. The main Burke-Van Heusen love ballad from Going My Way. Bing sang it with Jean Heather to demonstrate to her how to put over a sentimental song with feeling.  The lesson went home and she acquitted herself well when she sang it solo later on in the picture.

DAY YOU CAME ALONG, THE Song.  Bing sang this at a party in the role of Eddie Bronson in the 1933 film Too Much Harmony.  Like the rest of the songs featured in that film it was written by Sam Coslow and Arthur Johnston.

DE CARLO, YVONNE (1922-2007) Actress. Miss De C’s name on a cast list is all that is needed to tell me it is not my kind of film. However, in her starlet years at Paramount she turns up twice in Crosby pictures. Her sole purpose is as one of a bevy of girls adding glamour to scenes in Road to Morocco (1942) and Here Come the Waves (1944). It took another year before she was noticed by moviegoers in Salome - Where She Danced (1945) - her first lead role. Two 1947 pictures in which she starred gave a good idea of the sort of film to which she was best suited: Song of Scheherazade and Slave Girl. Films I later avoided included Casbah (1948), The Desert Hawk (1950) and Flames of the Islands (1956). Her career received two boosts in succeeding decades. She achieved fame again in The Munsters television series in the 1960’s, and Broadway acclaim in Stephen Sondheim’s hit musical Follies in 1971. But work did not come easily and by the end of that decade she was back to churning out cheap horror fodder in the likes of Satan’s Cheerleaders (1977) and Nocturna (1979).

DEL RUTH, ROY (1985-1961) Director.  His contribution to Bing’s filmography was as director of The Star Maker (1939).  He started his career as a gagman for Mack Sennett some years before Sennett gave Bing his career break.  He was directing silents by the mid-twenties and was in constant employment from then on until the time of his death.  Most of his work was with Warner Bros. where he handled hard hitting dramatic films and at M-G-M where there was a complete contrast when he tackled big budget musicals.  Between working for those two major studios, his talents were for hire and he made Topper Returns for Hal Roach shortly after his stint at Paramount on The Star Maker.  Towards the end of his life, he had to take on whatever assignments came his way.  This resulted in his last two films being The Alligator People (1959) and Why Must I Die (1960).

DEMAREST, WILLIAM (1892-1985). Actor. Although Demarest appeared with Bing on the credits of five films, he only made one ‘proper’ movie with Crosby. That was ‘Riding High’ (1950) in which he played Happy, the partner of Professor Pettigrew, played by Raymond Walburn. The other four were guest spot pictures for Crosby and Demarest:

· Duffy’s Tavern (1945)

· Hollywood Victory Caravan (1945 short)

· Variety Girl (1947)

· Pepe (1960)

Demarest was a dependable character actor who could give any film a lift when he was on screen. He went into films at the dawn of talkies. He was in Jolson’s The Jazz Singer (1927) and by the 1930’s he had been cast in substantial roles in the likes of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1938) and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). His decade was the 1940s, when he was re-united with Jolson in the biopics The Jolson Story (1946) and Jolson Sings Again (1949). Larry Parks mimed the Jolson vocals in both and Demarest received an Oscar nomination for his work on the former. When the studio system began to crumble, acting assignments were not easy to come by. His last big screen part was in the 1975 film The Wild McCullochs.

DE MILLE, CECIL BLOUNT (1881-1959). Producer/Director. During Bing’s “middle years” in movies, Cecil B. De Mille touched base with Crosby on several occasions. It would be wrong to say they worked together as such, but as part of the Paramount family, it was inevitable that they would be involved in the same projects from time to time. Their points of contact on screen were:

1947 Both played themselves in Variety Girl
1952 Bing guested in The Greatest Show on Earth, which De Mille produced and directed.

1952 Both made guest appearances in Son of Paleface.

1957 Both were narrators for the short The Heart of Show business.

The Hollywood connection extended to radio with De Mille hosting ‘The Lux Radio Theatre of the Air’, on which Bing appeared in one-hour dramatisations of his films. In March 1960, Bing received the Cecil B De Mille Trophy from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. This was to mark his contribution to the world of entertainment. De Mille established Hollywood in a way. He was there at its beginning, producing The Squaw Man in 1914. He spent most of his career with Paramount being involved in major movies for five decades. Some of the films which will perpetuate his name and fame as long as there are film historians include Cleopatra (1934), Union Pacific (1939), Samson and Delilah (1949) and The Ten Commandments (1956).

DENT, VERNON (1894-1963) Character actor.  One of the few American bit part actors who rarely graduated from short one-reel comedies.  In the early thirties, he was in three Crosby shorts.  He first appeared alongside Bing in the Mack Sennett short Dream House (1931) where he plays the director at Monarch Film Studios.  Two years later, he was in the back-to-back one reelers Please and Just an Echo, where he plays Bing’s rival for the attentions of Mary Kornman in the former and Bing’s National Park Ranger boss in the latter.  He then became a regular in Three Stooges shorts.

DE PAUL, GENE VINCENT (1919-1988) Composer and pianist.  He wrote the music for the three songs Bing sang in The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949).  Don Raye provided the words to neatly fit the plot and the results were “Ichabod”, “Katrina” and “The Headless Horseman”.  Walt Disney was obviously impressed because De Paul’s next assignment was to work on the songs for the animated feature Alice in Wonderland (1951).  His best remembered work is for Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) with lyrics by Johnny Mercer. 

DE SYLVA, BUDDY [George Gard B.G. De Sylva] (1895-1950). Producer, screenwriter and lyricist. What a curious mix of talents! De Sylva will be best remembered as one third of the song-writing team De Sylva, Brown and Henderson. A film of the trio was made in 1956. Called The Best Things in Life Are Free, Gordon MacRae played De Sylva. De Sylva’s film involvement with Bing was in the early forties. He was producer of Birth of the Blues (1941) in which Bing sang the title song, written by De Sylva and his two song collaborators. Then, in 1944, he was executive producer on Going My Way. He made an impact on Broadway in the late 1920s with the musical Good News. Written with Brown and Henderson, two film versions of that show topped and tailed his Hollywood career. They were released in 1930 and 1947.

DEVINE, ANDY (1905-1977). Actor. Devine was one of Bing’s personal friends, and in the 1930s they made two films back to back: Double or Nothing (1937) and Doctor Rhythm (1938). He also appeared in the Crosby golfing short Swing with Bing (1940). Devine never made the big time but was a valuable supporting actor for half a century. Being fourth billed in his two Bing pics was about par for the course for Andy. He was cast as Half Pint in Double or Nothing and Larry O’Roon, Crosby’s high school buddy, in Doctor Rhythm. The following year he played his most memorable role as Buck, the stagecoach driver, in Stagecoach. His raspy voice was initially deemed unsuitable for sound films but he eventually turned it into an asset when his croak and vast girth made him ideal playing country bumpkins or comic sidekicks to screen cowboys like Roy Rogers. Most readers who have turned fifty will remember him as Jingles, Guy Madison’s sidekick in the 1950s television series Wild Bill Hickok. He never descended into making cheap exploitation pictures just to keep in work and some of his later assignments included The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), How the West Was Won (1962) and The Ballad of Josie (1967).   His last work was supplying his unmistakable hoarse voice for the animated cartoon The Mouse and His Child (1977).

DE WOLFE, BILLY (1907-1974). Actor. De Wolfe’s screen debut was as Mr. Bones in Dixie (1943). He made an immediate impact with his pencil thin moustache, toothy grin and lisping diction. He proved he was no singer when he helped Bing and others to sing “The Last Rose of Summer” in that film. In Blue Skies (1946) he duetted with Crosby on “I’ve Got My Captain Working for Me Now”. In that film he was fourth billed as Toni Amato, Bing’s vaudeville partner at the start of the story. Two other films for Paramount saw both Crosby and De Wolfe in fleeting guest spots: Duffy’s Tavern (1944) and Variety Girl (1947). De Wolfe’s other major films were Tea for Two (1950), Lullaby of Broadway (1951) and Call Me Madam (1953). He retired from films then, apart from brief appearances in Billie (1965) and The World’s Greatest Athlete (1973).

DINAH Song.  Early on in The Big Broadcast (1932), we have the opportunity of seeing guitarist Eddie Lang accompanying Bing for a few bars of “Dinah”.  The song was written by Sam Lewis, Joe Young and Harry Akst.  The Mills Brothers were also in the film.  They had recorded the song with Bing a year before The Big Broadcast went before the cameras and it seemed a missed opportunity not to have them reprise that performance.

DINGLE, CHARLES (1887-1956) Actor.  He was C. J. Chesley, a villain, in Welcome Stranger (1947).  It was his plan to give the senior hospital appointment to Dr. Jenks (Larry Young) over Dr. McRory (Barry Fitzgerald).  He was often cast as a schemer, as in the Bob Hope comedy My Favourite Brunette from the same year and in which Bing made a gag appearance.  Dingle arrived in Hollywood after a career on the stage and his later roles saw him reverting to playing more serious parts.  His last film was The Court Marshall of Billy Mitchell, released the year before his death.

DISSERTATION ON THE STATE OF BLISS Song. If there had been an Academy award for the most unwieldy song title, this would have won in 1955. It was written by Harold Arlen (music) and Ira Gershwin (words) for the 1954 Paramount Picture The Country Girl. It is sung by Jacqueline Fontaine in a cabaret sequence towards the end of the film when a drunken Crosby appears on the scene and helps out. Not a memorable ditty and don’t hold your breath waiting for the title of the song to appear in the lyric - it doesn’t. It was written as “Love and Learn Blues” but when Gershwin realised three previous songs had been called “Love and Learn” he opted for a title change.

DIXIE (Film). This was Bing’s first “three colour” Technicolor film. The first colour feature he made, King of Jazz was shot in the “two colour” process. For the first time audiences had the opportunity to see the singer in his true colours, albeit slightly garish. At this stage of the development of colour film stock, Technicolor insisted on protecting their patent by assigning a consultant/colour director to every film that used their process. In this case, it was Natalie Kalmus. You find her name on the credits of Technicolor movies up until the end of the forties. She shunned realistic colour in favour of ‘chocolate box cover’ brash. This suited the tenor of this nineteenth century tale based loosely on the life of Daniel Decatur Emmett (1815-1904). Bing played him as simply Dan Emmett. Emmett wrote songs for the then popular minstrel shows, although his only original compositions sung by Bing in the film were “Dixie” and “Old Dan Tucker”. Minstrels were invariably Caucasian actors in black face. The Johnny Burke - James Van Heusen song “Kinda Peculiar Brown” says it all. It was omitted from the release print, supposedly because of the sensitive racial elements in the story. When the U.K.’s Channel Four programmed a showing in 1985 it turned out to be a charming, inoffensive tale with Crosby treating us to eight songs including the film’s hit ballad: “Sunday, Monday or Always.” The plot is straight off the Hollywood shelf: struggling composer (Bing) finally makes it big. Having to make the difficult decision along the way of choosing between Dorothy Lamour and Marjorie Reynolds. For once, Dottie came in second. The film was made and released in 1943.

DIXIE (Song) Featured in the film of the same name, it is Dan Emmett’s (Bing’s) most treasured composition. When he tries to sell his compositions, he refuses to include “Dixie” in the job lot for which a publisher paid a hundred dollars. The publisher is only willing to pay one dollar for “Dixie” and Bing knows it is his finest composition. Yet it is not well received by audiences, and it takes Bing’s sweetheart (Marjorie Reynolds) to convince Bing that it should be played and sung at a faster tempo. When it is, the audience takes to it immediately. As always, the non-Hollywood version is different. Emmett wrote "Dixie" in 1859 for a New York Minstrel Show. He sold it without difficulty for the then handsome price of five hundred dollars. It went on to break the bounds of the musical stage and became the anthem of the Southern States during the American Civil War. Bing did not make a studio recording of the song.

DOCTOR RHYTHM Film. This 1938 Paramount Picture starred Bing as Doctor Bill Remsen. He is one of four high school colleagues who meet up with a fifth, a keeper at Central Park Zoo, who allows them access to the zoo after hours. This opening establishes the quintet as ex-relay team members who will still do anything to help each other. Hence, Bing ends up posing as Patrolman O’Roon (Andy Devine) when the latter is unable to report for duty following a bite from a sea-lion. All the character ingredients for a late thirties musical comedy are present:

(a) The wealthy eccentric widow (Beatrice Lillie)

(b) Her beautiful niece and heiress (Mary Carlisle)

(c) The villainous crook and gambler interested in (b) for her inheritance (Fred Keating)

(d) The handsome leading man who creates humorous plot complications (Bing Crosby)

In keeping with the plots of this era:

i)   The leading man sings three romantic ballads

ii)  The ‘real’ policeman receives promotion and a reward

iii) The   wealthy   eccentric   performs   her   party   piece (Beatrice Lillie doing her popular ‘Double Dozen Double Damask Dinner Napkins’)

iv) The villainous crook and gambler is exposed and arrested

v)  The boy gets the girl.

DOLAN, ROBERT EMMETT (1908-1972). Composer, musical director, producer for the whole of the 1940s. Just about every Bing Crosby film from that decade featured Dolan’s name on the credits. He was signed up by Paramount in 1940 and the following year received his first mention as musical supervisor/director on Birth of the Blues. A further dozen Paramount Pictures in which Bing appeared followed, for which Dolan was billed as musical director or credited with the musical scoring. For the record, the films were:

· Holiday Inn (1942)

· Star Spangled Rhythm (1942)

· Dixie (1943)

· Going My Way (1944)

· Here Come the Waves (1944)

· Duffy’s Tavern (1945)

· Road to Utopia (1946)

· Blue Skies (1946)

· Welcome Stranger (1947)

· My Favourite Brunette (1947)

· Road to Rio (1948)

· Top o’ the Morning (1949)

So close was his musical relationship with Bing, that when Crosby defected to RKO for a one-off picture deal, Dolan followed. Thus, The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945) maintained a successful artistic and box office partnership. The link with Bing and Paramount Pictures spilled over into the next decade, when Dolan produced White Christmas (1954) and Anything Goes (1956). He then returned to his first love, the stage, from whence he came before Paramount beckoned.

DONLEVY, BRIAN (1899-1972). Actor. In Birth of the Blues, it was Donlevy who made it all happen. As Memphis, he was the cornet player who was released from jail due to Bing’s ingenuity. The all white jazz band that subsequently fell together provided the framework for the ensuing plot. Donlevy and Bing also had separate cameo roles in Duffy’s Tavern (1945). The short, stumpy actor had a more colourful career before he made his film debut in 1924. The son of an Irish whiskey distiller he fought against Pancho Villa and then lied about his age and became a pilot with the famous Lafayette Escadrille in the First World War. He was in films for forty-five years and left behind a legacy of mainly forgettable performances. The sadistic sergeant in Beau Geste (1939) found him at his acting peak, and in the same year, he appeared in Jesse James, Union Pacific, Behind Prison Gates and Destry Rides Again. By the early fifties he took leads in cheaply made ‘B’ pictures such as Cry in the Night (1956) or character parts in the likes of Never So Few (1959). Before calling it quits, he was in the last three ‘formula’ westerns which came out of Hollywood: Waco (1966), Hostile Guns (1968) and Arizona Bushwackers (1968). His screen career ended with Pit Stop (1969).

THE DONOVANS Song. Early in the film Top o’ the Morning (1949), Bing attends a party at the house of his friendly Irish foil (Barry Fitzgerald). Bing then leads the guests in a spirited rendition of “The Donovans”. The song was composed by the ‘where are they now (and who were they then)’ team of Francis A. Fahy and Alicia Adelaide Needham. The hummable ditty was recorded by Bing for Decca in June of 1949.

DON’T BE A DO-BADDER Song. The film Robin and the 7 Hoods had half a dozen scenes which were staged in such a way that they commanded the attention of the audience from the first note to the last. “Don’t Be a Do-badder” was one such opus. Bing, in his role as Allen A. Dale, visits a children’s orphanage. With strong support from the kids, he sings the Sammy Cahn - James Van Heusen composition. The number is reprised by Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. at the end of the film. It is an amusing closing scene as a wealthy Crosby hands out gifts to the three singing performers who are attired in Santa Claus outfits.  “Don’t Be a Do-badder” was the last film song Bing performed on the big screen.

DON’T FENCE ME IN Song. In the Paramount short Swinging with the Stars (1944), Bing attempts to generate a cinema singsong. He is joined by servicemen as he sings “Don’t Fence Me In” whilst a bouncing ball follows the lyrics at the bottom of the screen. The song started life as a poem written by Montana miner, Robert Fletcher. Cole Porter paid $150 for the rights and adapted the lyrics for a film called Adios Argentina. That film was never made but Warner Bros. used the song in Hollywood Canteen in 1944. Both Roy Rogers with the Sons of the Pioneers and The Andrews Sisters tackled it in that picture. The following year the song’s hit parade popularity resulted in Republic Pictures using it as the title of one of their Roy Rogers series of westerns and the singing cowboy got to sing it again to cinemagoers. By then Bing had recorded the song with The Andrews Sisters for Decca, which ensured its presence on every ‘greatest hits’ compilation issued under his name.

DON’T HOOK NOW Film. This 1942 short film was made for the Professional Golfers Association of America using the facilities of Paramount Pictures. Because Everett Crosby was co-producer, it was inevitable that brother Bing would feature prominently. It was filmed at Bing’s Pro-Am Golf Tournament held at Rancho Santa Fe in January of 1942. He sang “Tomorrow’s My Lucky Day” in the film.

DON’T LET THE MOON GET AWAY Song. In Sing You Sinners, Bing visits a roadside nightclub with girlfriend Ellen Drew. He is recognised by bandleader Harry Barris and sings the James V.  Monaco - Johnny Burke composition to a delighted audience. Such is its popularity with the nightclubbers he is pressed to give the song a brief reprise. If they wanted to hear it a third time they would have to buy the Decca recording made in July 1938 in readiness for the film’s premiere the following month.

D’ORSAY, FIFI (1904-1983) Actress. As Lili Yvonne in Going Hollywood (1933), Fifi D’O started the film as Bing’s fiancée and then proceeded to lose him to Marion Davies. Quite right too, as Davies’ sugar daddy William Randolph Hearst was bankrolling the film. Miss D’Orsay entered films in 1929 opposite Will Rogers in They Had to See Paris. She had been in show business since the age of 19 when she entered the profession at the bottom as a chorus girl. Possibly, because she was a French-Canadian she was regularly cast as a Parisienne sex symbol. She was active in films through to the 1960s appearing in What a Way to Go (1964), The Art of Love (1965) and Assignment to Kill (1968). By then she was spending more time lecturing on religion and apart from a nostalgic comeback in the Broadway musical Follies in 1971, she was content to leave the entertainment side of show business behind her.

DOUBLE OR NOTHING Film. The plot of this 1937 Paramount Picture was a morality tale, which could provoke deep discussion once the audience left the cinema and set out for home. An eccentric millionaire instructs his lawyers to plant twenty-five wallets containing a $100 bill on the streets of the city once he has died. Four honest people (Bing included naturally) return them to the lawyers to learn that they have an opportunity to benefit from the million dollar plus estate. They must double the sum of $5000 within thirty days. There are dirty deals afoot, of course, with the main obstacle being the millionaire’s brother - Jonathan (Samuel S. Hinds) who stands to inherit if the $5000 isn’t doubled. Good triumphs over evil and a doubly happy ending in the ninetieth minute of the film sees Bing winning leading lady Mary Carlisle as well.

DOUBLE OR NOTHING Song from the 1937 film of the same name. Johnny Burke and Victor Young wrote this one and a recording by Bing would have provided publicity for the film. Surprisingly, he did not record it. In the film it is sung by chorus girls when a night club owned by Bing is opened.

DOUGLAS, GORDON (1907-1993) Director. It was G.D who directed Bing’s last two ‘proper’ films - Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964) and Stagecoach (1965). He had been in films all his life, starting as an actor and also doing duty as a casting director and gag man. By the mid-thirties he was directing the Our Gang comedy shorts. Popular films selected from each of his directing decades provide a flavour of his versatility:

· Zenobia (1939)

· The Falcon in Hollywood (1944)

· Young at Heart (1954)

· Follow That Dream (1962)

· Viva Knievel! (1977)

Douglas tackled most genres effectively but was never revered by the critics.

DOWN BY THE RIVER Song. Written by Richard Rodgers (music) and Lorenz Hart (words) for Bing’s 1935 hit Mississippi, it has been in most Crosby collector’s top five favourites ever since. Bing sings the song twice in the picture, pledging a love as deep and lasting as the river.

DOWN MEMORY LANE Film. This 1949 release was stitched together from ten Mack Sennett shorts, over half of which were originally silent pictures. Two Bing Crosby shorts made for Sennett’s Educational Company are used: Sing Bing Sing and Blue of the Night. The Crosby vocals cover “In My Hideaway”, “Loveable”, “Auf Wiedersehen, My Dear”, “Ev’ry Time My Heart Beats” and “Where the Blue of the Night”. The BBC have shown the film several times in off peak time slots and it looks exactly like what it is - a cheaply made supporting feature which capitalises on the popularity of Bing, W.C. Fields and Ben Turpin. The film’s writer/narrator, Steve Allen, found fame on American television in the fifties hosting a weekly comedy variety show.

DOWN THE OLD OX ROAD Song. This was written specially for Paramount’s College Humor (1933) by Arthur Johnston (music) and Sam Coslow (lyrics). Smooching students led by Bing, Jack Oakie, Mary Kornman and Richard Arlen sing a seemingly innocent lyric implying that taking a girl down the old ox road means more than a stroll. Further promotion for the song and the film was generated by its inclusion in one of Paramount’s publicity shorts, Hollywood on Parade (the first edition of the 1933 series). In that film, Bing is heard singing it on a car radio. That same sequence was used in a 1976 compilation film, Hooray for Hollywood.

DRAKE, DONA (1914-1989) Actress. Best remembered as a lady in waiting to Dorothy Lamour in the 1942 Road to Morocco. Her name in that picture, Mihirmah, tells us all we need to know about how Hollywood typecast the Mexico City born dynamo, whose real name was Rita Novella but who entered show business as a band vocalist calling herself Rita Rio. She turned up later in a couple of other films in which Bing had non-acting roles: Star Spangled Rhythm (1942) and Hollywood Victory Caravan (1945). Her last film was Princess of the Nile (1954).

DREAM HOUSE Film. This was the third of the half dozen shorts Bing made for Mack Sennett during 1931/32. With a running time of less than twenty minutes, the flimsy plot involves Bing as a plumber gatecrashing a film studio to meet his girlfriend. He is mistaken for an extra when he accidentally has his face blacked. He is also chased by a lion before the traditional Sennett ending of departing with his girl and a song (Ann Christy and the title song respectively). The songs “It Must Be True” and “When I Take My Sugar to Tea” are also featured in the film. The songs remained intact when Astor Pictures released an edited version of Dream House in 1935, some three years later after its January 1932 debut. In the Astor Pictures release Road to Hollywood (1946), the songs were again included in that feature length compilation.

DREAM HOUSE Song. The title song from the Mack Sennett short was written by Earle Foxe and Lynn F. Cowan. Its presentation is placed at the end of the picture as Bing drives off with his girl. It was never recorded in the studio for commercial release but the version lifted directly from the soundtrack has seen daylight on a couple of LP releases

DREIER, HANS (1885-1966) Art Director. To place Dreier’s contribution to over two dozen Crosby pictures during Hollywood’s golden decades of the thirties and forties we need to know his function at Paramount Pictures. He was the technician responsible for designing sets at that studio. Dreier was more properly an Art Supervisor in that the studio placed him in general charge of their filmed output. In fact, he received that credit just once for Dixie (1943). Otherwise, he shared screen credit with the man who did the job on the shop floor. His only sole credit came at the beginning of his career on his first assignment to a Crosby picture: Confessions of a Co-Ed (1931). Prior to that, in silent pictures, he had received accolades for his work on the likes of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) and The Love Parade (1929). His other credits on Crosby films as co-art director are:

· With Bernard Herzburn - Mississippi (1935)

· With Ernest Fegte - Anything Goes (1935), Sing You Sinners (1938), Rhythm on the River (1940), Birth of the Blues (1941), Star Spangled Rhythm (1942)

· With Robert Usher - Rhythm on the Range (1936), The Star Maker (1939), Road to Zanzibar (1941), Road to Morocco (1942)

· With Roland Anderson - Paris Honeymoon (1938), Holiday Inn (1942), Here Come the Waves (1944), Road to Utopia (1946), A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1949)

· With Robert O’Dell - Road to Singapore (1940)

· With William Flannery - Going My Way (1944)

· With Hal Pereira - Blue Skies (1946)

· With Franz Bachelin - Welcome Stranger (1947), Emperor Waltz (1948)

· With Robert Chatworthy - Variety Girl (1947)

· With Earl Hedrick - Road to Rio (1948)

· With Henry Bumstead - Top o’ the Morning (1949)

· With Walter Tyler - Riding High (1950)

Dreier retired in 1951, the year after making his third Academy Award winning film as art director, Sunset Boulevard. His previous Oscars were for Frenchman’s Creek (1944) and Samson and Delilah (1949).

DREW, ELLEN (1915-2003) Actress. Discounting a bit part under her real name of Terry Ray in Rhythm on the Range (1936) and a fleeting appearance in Star Spangled Rhythm (1942), Ellen Drew’s only film with Bing was Sing You Sinners (1938). She was the main female interest in the picture and Fred MacMurray’s girl. Bing steered their relationship towards marriage, for once viewing romance from the sidelines. Like dozens before and after her, she entered the Hollywood arena after winning a beauty contest. She made dozens of films until her screen retirement in the mid-fifties, none of which are fondly remembered today. Trivia collectors will be interested to know she met the second of her four husbands when he was engaged on a Crosby project. The man in question was Sy Bartlett, who was working on the story of Road to Zanzibar. They married in 1941 and remained husband and wife until 1950.

DUBIN, AL (1891-1945) Lyricist. Considering the enormous lyrical contribution Dubin made to Hollywood in the 1930’s, his Crosby film relationship is meagre. Bing sang two Dubin songs in two shorts at the start of the Crosby cinematic career. In Billboard Girl (1931) he sang the ballad “For You” and in Please (1933) the bouncy “You’re Getting to Be a Habit with Me”. The reason why their paths didn’t cross more often was that Dubin was employed by a rival studio - Warner Bros. There, in partnership with Harry Warren, he penned dozens of hits for the warmly remembered musicals of the thirties like 42nd Street (1933), Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933), Dames (1934) and Go into Your Dance (1935). Twelve years after his death, there were plans to film the life stories of Warren and Dubin with Bing cast as the lyric writer and Jackie Gleason as Harry Warren. It never happened because by then rock ‘n’ roll had spoiled the box office potential for a film featuring the likes of such musical evergreens as “Shuffle Off to Buffalo”, “Young and Healthy”, “We’re in the Money”, “I Only Have Eyes for You”, “September in the Rain” and “About a Quarter to Nine”.

DUFFY’S TAVERN Film. When this picture was released in 1945, it was the widely held belief in Hollywood that the more stars you cram into a feature film the greater the box-office return. Indeed, Duffy’s Tavern figured in the money-making leagues but all-star casts didn’t remain fashionable for too long, thankfully. At least, in this example of Paramount’s top contract artistes on parade, Bing appeared in two separate sequences and got to sing “Swinging on a Star”. He was then seen in a sketch with Robert Benchley who was reading a bedtime story to the four Crosby boys. In a segment in which a Crosby photograph is displayed on screen, the soundtrack uses the Crosby voice in the background singing, “Learn to Croon”, “Please” and “Love in Bloom”.

DUMBRILLE, DOUGLAS (1890-1974) Douglas Dumbrille played character roles in over 200 films, usually as a suave villain or corrupt politician. His parts in the three Crosby pictures made at Paramount were a slave trader in Road to Zanzibar (1941), Ace Larson in Road to Utopia (1946) and the racecourse punter who pays Bing’s bail in Riding High (1950). In 1960, he married Patricia Mowbray, the 28-year-old daughter of his actor friend, Alan Mowbray, and then drifted into retirement for the last years of his life.

DUMONT, MARGARET (1889-1965). Actress best remembered as the recipient of insults from Groucho in several of the Marx Brothers’ films. Her sole appearance in a Crosby picture was as Mrs. Wentworth in the 1936 Anything Goes. She was ideally cast as the matronly figure of authority begging deflation by the comedians she worked with like W. C. Fields in Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941), Laurel and Hardy in The Dancing Masters (1943) and Jack Benny in The Horn Blows at Midnight (1945). Her last film was appropriately titled What a Way to Go! made the year before her death.

DURANTE, JIMMY (1893-1980). Actor- comedian- pianist- vocalist. He was in two celluloid outings that featured Bing, although they did not share scenes together. The first film was the promotional short The Heart of Show Business (1957), the second Pepe (1960). Crosby and Durante spent many hours together in front of the microphone on radio and television but their acting styles were not compatible enough to envisage them as a Hope and Crosby team. “Schozzle” entered show business in 1909, playing ragtime piano in New York nightclubs. He formed an act with Lou Clayton and Eddie Jackson and became popular in vaudeville before movies helped to kill that form of entertainment. By then talking pictures had arrived and Jimmy appeared for the first time on screen in Roadhouse Nights (1930). He signed a five-year contact with M-G-M but still ensured he played on Broadway from time to time. The films he made have not stood the test of time but the best from the four decades he was on screen are arguably The Phantom President (1932), The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942), The Milkman (1950) and It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963).

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EARLY AMERICAN Song. Bing sang this at the conclusion of the tedious short You Can Change the World. In a scene set in the home of Jack Benny, the song’s composers, Johnny Burke and James Van Heusen, visit Benny together with Bing. An off-screen orchestra strikes up and Bing delivers. Bing had just recorded the song for the second time but the limited distribution of the film did little to promote the 78rpm release.

EAST SIDE OF HEAVEN Film. This 1939 film was the first of two released by Universal which were outside Bing’s Paramount contract and in which he had a personal stake. For the four songs specially composed for the movie by his regular writers of the time, Johnny Burke and James V. Monaco, Bing used John Scott Trotter for the orchestrations. Trotter’s long association with Bing was well into its stride and the appearance of the Kraft Music Hall regulars, The Music Maids, and the orchestral support by Matty Malneck and his orchestra illustrates how Bing liked to perform in comfortably familiar surroundings from a musical point of view. The plot casts Bing as a singing telegram performer who graduates to becoming a singing taxi cab driver. His true love in the film is played by Joan Blondell, with whom his character had an on/off arrangement to be married. During the film’s 86 minutes, Bing’s efforts reconcile a separated couple played by Irene Hervey and Robert Kent. They have a baby who provides Bing with a convenient opportunity to serenade with “That Sly Old Gentleman” and “East Side of Heaven”. A lightweight vehicle typical of what seemed to satisfy audiences in the 1930s, the film has received several television screenings in the UK.

EAST SIDE OF HEAVEN Title song from the film of the same name. It was written by Johnny Burke and James V. Monaco and is featured twice in the picture. We see Bing singing it to Joan Blondell and then over the radio at the film’s conclusion.

EASTER PARADE Song. One of Irving Berlin’s seasonal songs used in the 1942 film Holiday Inn. It neatly slots into the action when Bing sings it to Marjorie Reynolds as they are return from church on Easter Sunday in an open horse-drawn carriage. In 1948, it served as the title song of an M-G-M musical starring Judy Garland and Fred Astaire in which they duetted the song.

EASTHAM, RICHARD (1918-2005) Actor. Eastham played Bryan Seward in Man on Fire (1957).  He was the Washington lawyer who married Bing’s ex-wife. His early show business career was centred round appearances in long running musicals like “South Pacific” and “Call Me Madam”. He made the move into movies in 1954 with a part in the musical There’s No Business Like Show business. That was followed by his role in the Crosby film. Until his retirement in the late 1980s, he alternated between film and television without making a major impact in either medium. He died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease.

EDUCATIONAL PICTURES Motion pictures production company associated with the six short films Bing made for Mack Sennett during 1931/32. As the company’s name suggests, it came into being (in1919) to make films for showing in schools. Before long, it became a factory for producing one reel comedy shorts on tight budgets. Educational Films involvement with the Sennett shorts was solely as distributors whilst their New York production studio provided work for comedians at the beginning or end of their careers (e.g. Danny Kaye and Buster Keaton). The company filed for bankruptcy at the end of the 1930s.

EDWARDS, BLAKE (1922-2010). Director of Bing’s gentle and under-rated comedy High Time (1960). The following year he went on to direct his best-loved film, Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Edwards entered Hollywood as an actor in Ten Gentlemen from West Point (1942). In the following decade, he gained a reputation as a screenwriter of lightweight comedies such a Rainbow Round My Shoulder (1952) and Operation Mad Ball (1957). He created the successful television series Peter Gunn and by the end of the 1950s, he was entrusted to direct Operation Petticoat (1959) starring Tony Curtis and Cary Grant. He turned producer-director for the Pink Panther series, which had Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau. His marriage to Julie Andrews saw the partnership appearing on the big screen when he directed her in the likes of Darling Lili (1970) and The Tamarind Seed (1974).

EMPEROR WALTZ Film. Billy Wilder directed this Technicolor musical on location in Canada’s Jasper National Park in June 1946. Jasper doubled for the Austrian Tyrol.  The five-week location shoot only resulted in one week’s worth of film due to rainy weather.  This did not overly concern Bing.  He had a willing tennis partner in co-screenwriter Charles Brackett and the location was convenient for fishing and golfing when he wasn’t on call.  The delay in shooting exteriors was of concern to Paramount, though.  There was a threatened shut-down of Hollywood studios at the end of September.  During the middle of that month, the cast worked every night for a week through to the early hours of the following morning in order to complete filming before strike action could affect it.  The action takes place with Bing as Virgil Smith, a phonograph salesman from New Jersey.   He falls for a countess (Joan Fontaine) and eventually gains the approval of the Emperor (Richard Haydn) to marry her. And that’s about it, except that a sub-plot involving Buttons and Scheherazade involves us in the love lives of two dogs. If it sounds lightweight that will explain why it stands up well to present-day viewing. Yet at the time of its release in 1948, it was not well received critically and director Wilder expressed his disappointment. He said, “It came out of a bravado gesture that I made in a meeting of the front office.  They did not have a good picture for Bing Crosby. I kind of thought it would be fun to make a musical.  I have no talent for a musical, because I can’t get it into my head that people break into a song for no reason whatsoever.  So I was handicapped there; I was not up to making a musical.....after being in Germany and cutting an hour and a half documentary about the concentration camps in London.  So I was kind of very eager to do something on the more frivolous side.  But The Emperor Waltz just was no good, it just did not come off.  I never want to see it again.” But the fans must have thought he pulled it off because they laid out four million dollars at the box offices of North America, earning it 7th place on Variety’s list of top money-makers of 1948. Derek Winnert’s critique sums the film up for me.  He wrote: “Sets, costumes, Bing’s trilling, the support, Wilder and Brackett’s writing: they’re all top class.  Crosby’s knees do look funny in lederhosen though.”  Movie trivia collectors will be enlightened to know:   

· During its development it was titled The Countess of Luxemburg

· It was the first major film to receive a television premiere.

· The tennis court of Bing’s Holmby Hills home was used when a suitable ‘Austrian type’ location could not be found.

· Bing took part in a promotional tie in for the film involving the Stetson Hat Company.

· Greta Garbo was sought for the part eventually played by Joan Fontaine.

· It appeared on Harvard Lampoon’s list of the worst films of 1948.

EMPTY SADDLES Song. This was the hit ballad from Bing’s 1936 film Rhythm on the Range. The lyrics paint an evocative picture without the addition of Billy Hill’s music. This is because ‘Empty Saddles’ was originally a poem by J. Keirn Brennan. It provides a striking opening number in the film as Bing croons it astride a white horse in a packed Madison Square Garden.

ENGLUND, KEN (1911-1993) Screenwriter.  He was one of three writers that worked on Here Come the Waves (1944).  Co-credited for the original screenplay for that film were Allan Scott and Zion Myers, but Englund is the only one of the trio who had an ongoing career in Hollywood.  Before he made a living writing lightweight movie scripts he had written for magazines, vaudeville, radio and stage musicals.  Paramount signed him up in 1938, his first assignment being The Big Broadcast (1938).  He wrote for Danny Kaye (The Secret Life of Walter Mitty) (1947) and Martin and Lewis (The Caddy) (1953).  After tackling the screenplay for The Vagabond King (1956), he turned his attention to television scripts.  The one and only time he returned for a big screen project was for The Wicked Dreams of Paula Schultz (1968).  He shouldn’t have bothered.

ERICKSON, LEIF (1911-1986). Actor. Erickson was embarking on a 40-odd year career in films when he played Victor P. Quimby, the fiancé of leading lady, Shirley Ross, in Waikiki Wedding (1937). Of course, Bing ends up with Shirley and Erickson ends up being arrested. Things changed little over the years, with Erickson usually cast in the second lead role. Although Waikiki Wedding was his only encounter with Crosby, in real life he married Bing’s leading lady from Rhythm on the Range (1936) in 1934. This relationship with the volatile and unstable Frances Farmer lasted until 1942, by which time he was serving in the U.S. armed forces (where he was twice wounded). He then found modest parts in major movies such as The Snake Pit (1948), With a Song in My Heart (1952), The Young Lions (1958) and The Carpetbaggers (1964).   For four years from 1967, he appeared in the television series High Chaparral before retiring from the screen in 1977 with Twilight’s Last Gleaming.

ERROL, LEON (1881-1951). Actor. Errol appeared once with Bing on the cinema screen. That was in We’re Not Dressing (1934), when he was third billed as Uncle Hubert, the fiancé of Ethel Merman. By then he had made his name in vaudeville before a film debut in 1924. He made his mark as a versatile rubber-legged comedian who was usually henpecked and/or drunk in the 100 plus film appearances he made in his 40-year career in entertainment. Although he is fondly remembered for the two reel comedy shorts he made between 1933 and the year of his death, he was cast in popular but cheaply made pictures such as Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941) and Higher and Higher (1943). When he died at the age of 70, his final film, Footlight Varieties, was doing the rounds and he was negotiating a television series deal.

ERWIN, STUART (1902-1967) Actor. During 1932 and 1933, Erwin appeared on screen with Bing on three separate occasions. In The Big Broadcast (1932), he played rich Texan Leslie McWhinney and also played piano to accompany Bing’s rendition of “Please”. That same year he was in a ten-minute Hollywood on Parade programmer in which he introduced Bing at the outset of the short. Finally, in 1933, he was cast as Ernest Pratt Baker, film producer and joint admirer of Marion Davies with Bing in Going Hollywood. Erwin was never out of work from his film debut in Mother Knows Best (1928) until his retirement after Disney’s The Adventures of Merlin Jones (1964). He was usually typecast as the shy amiable, tongue tied, folksy and sad eyed friend. He was an ideal character for a typical 1950s TV situation comedy series and The Stu Erwin Show ran for years in the USA. It would be true to say no one disliked Stuart Erwin.

EVANS, MADGE (1909-1981) Actress. She was Bing’s leading lady in Pennies from Heaven (1936) when she played Susan, the social worker. At 27, she was 2 years away from retirement from films with around one hundred already completed. Show business began for her at the age of six and ended in 1938 with the programmer Army Girl. The better-known talkies in which she appeared included Dinner at Eight (1933) and David Copperfield (1935). She played a few parts on the Broadway stage until 1943 and then completely retired from the entertainment industry to enjoy life with her playwright husband, Sidney Kingsley.

EVANS, RAY (1915-2007) Lyricist. Evans wrote the words to three songs Bing sang in the 1951 picture Here Comes the Groom. They were “Your Own Little House”, “Misto Cristofo Columbo” and “Bonne Nuit”. The music was provided by Jay Livingston, Evans’ most frequent collaborator. They met whilst at college and moved from work in radio to films, Broadway and then television. In a ten-year run beginning in 1948 he wrote the words to some of the best pop songs of all time. They include “Buttons and Bows”, “Mona Lisa”, “Que Sera Sera”, “Silver Bells” and “Tammy”.

EVERYBODY STEP Song. One of the few Irving Berlin songs that lacks whistle-ability. Bing sang it in Blue Skies (1946) when he opened the Top Hat Club. In Volume 3 of Fred Reynolds’ “The Crosby Collection”, it is referred to as a “tune (which) depends largely upon its rhythmic attraction rather than any melodic charm.” I wouldn’t disagree with that.

EV’RY TIME MY HEART BEATS Song. It was written by Benny Davis and Gerald Marks and sung by Bing in the Mack Sennett short Blue of the Night (1932) and subsequently used in the 1949 compilation Down Memory Lane. It is featured in that well remembered sequence where Bing is travelling on a train and Margie Kane lies to Bing by telling him she is engaged to Bing Crosby.  She states that night is the first time she hasn’t heard him sing. Crosby hides himself in an upper berth and makes radio-tuning noises before accompanying himself on guitar whilst singing “Ev’ry Time My Heart Beats”.

EWELL, TOM (1909-1994). Actor. In his one Crosby film appearance, Ewell played ‘Cupcake’ in Mr Music (1950). ‘Cupcake’ is actually Crosby’s valet, Haggerty, but their relationship is somewhat friendlier than master and servant. In fact “friendly” nicely sums up the Tom Ewell screen persona. He was friendly towards Judy Holliday in his 1949 debut film Adam’s Rib, towards Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch (1955) and towards Jayne Mansfield in The Girl Can’t Help It (1956). He was never quite popular enough to carry off his own TV programme The Tom Ewell Show for more than a few episodes in 1960. After that, he made infrequent returns to the big screen in such productions as State Fair (1962) and The Great Gatsby (1974). His unusual stage name was a corruption of his even more unusual real name - Yewell Tompkins.

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FABIAN (1943-   ) Poor singer and below average actor whose real name was Fabian Forte. Nevertheless, his appearance in the Crosby picture High Time boosted its box office appeal in 1960. He is one of Bing’s college roommates when Crosby returns to University as a mature student intent on finishing his education. In one of the most unlikely vocal unions of all time, Fabian sings a few lines of “It Came upon the Midnight Clear” with Bing and Nicole Maurey. Whilst under contract to 20th Century-Fox Fabian appeared in Hound Dog Man immediately before High Time and North to Alaska immediately afterwards. But his career as a motion picture star stubbornly refused to take off and he found himself lumbered with parts in the likes of Dr Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs (1966), The Day the Lord Got Busted (1976) and Disco Fever (1978). His singing career, though heavily hyped, made the same impact as his acting.

FAIN, SAMMY (1902-1990). Songwriter. He co-composed two songs that featured in Crosby pictures. In 1931, Bing sang “When I Take My Sugar to Tea” in the Mack Sennett short Dream House and later it was used as an orchestral item in the Paramount feature, Confessions of a Co-ed. His collaborators as composers were Irving Kahal and Pierre Norman. In 1957, he wrote the title song of M-G-M’s Man on Fire with Paul Francis Webster. His song-writing career began in 1929 at the dawn of film sound when he composed for It’s a Great Life. He won Academy Awards for “Secret Love” (from Calamity Jane) in 1953 and for the title song from Love is a Many Splendored Thing two years later. He was still putting pen to manuscript paper in 1977 for the Disney animated feature The Rescuers. In between times, he added to the box office appeal of several movies with his skill at writing popular title songs such as “I’ll Be Seeing You” (1944), “Young at Heart” (1955), “April Love” (1957) and “A Certain Smile” (1958). Although the fifties were his peak years he is fondly remembered by the contributions he made to early thirties Warner Bros. musicals such as Footlight Parade (1933) and Dames (1934) and the standards they spawned like “You Brought a New Kind of Love to Me” and “By a Waterfall”.

FAITH, HOPE AND HOGAN. Film. It was made in the early fifties by the religious organisation, The Christophers, and was put into mainly non-theatrical release in 1953. Ben Hogan was persuaded to make the film by Father Keller of the Christophers and to give the film popular appeal Bob Hope agreed to take part. Bing volunteered, especially as the Hope and Crosby segments were shot on a golf course in Palm Springs. Bing sang “One Little Candle” accompanied by Perry Botkin on guitar towards the end of the short. Bob Hope referred to the film in his autobiography ‘This Is on Me’ when he describes the event as “an hour and half of dialogue between golf shots. The entire country should have seen the film by now, because every time Hogan won a tournament they ran it on television.”

FALK, PETER (1927-2011) Actor. He was fifth billed as Guy Gisborne in his only appearance in a Crosby film Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964). He later took on the role of Columbo, the television detective, when Bing turned it down on the basis that it was too big a commitment and likely to interfere with his golf. Falk always looked unkempt which is why his early film appearances cast him as a hoodlum or blue-collar character [Pretty Boy Floyd (1960) Murder Inc (1960) and Pocketful of Miracles (1961)]. Phase two of his career took him to Italy for action movies like Machine Gun McCain (1968) and Anzio (1968). Subsequently he was cast in mainstream Hollywood movies playing slightly off beat characters.   The most memorable were Murder by Death (1976) The Cheap Detective (1978) Princess Bride (1987) and The Player (1992).

FARMER, FRANCES (1913-1970). Actress and Hollywood tragedy. Miss Farmer only made one film with Bing - Rhythm on the Range in 1936. She came over in that picture as a fair light comedy actress, pleasant to look at and easy to listen to on the soundtrack recording of “The House Jack Built for Jill”. The song was cut from the release print of the film but her duetting with Bing can be heard on a couple of albums subsequently made available.   She was Doris Holloway, Bing’s leading lady, in Rhythm on the Range, her first big part and the third film she made under her Paramount contract. Things were going smoothly for her and she acquitted herself well in her fourth 1936 film Come and Get it. In 1937, she was appearing on Broadway in major productions like Golden Boy as well as fulfilling her Paramount contract.   Her beauty shone through in features like Ebb Tide (1937) Ride a Crooked Mile (1938) and South of Paga-Pago (1940). Then things began to go wrong. She became too outspoken in her political beliefs (she was left of left wing) and succumbed to alcoholism. The latter often brought her in conflict with the law and in 1942 she ‘retired’, spending most of the remains of that decade in various mental institutions. By the late fifties, she was ready to resume a career in films and her old studio Paramount gave her the leading role in a rarely seen cheapie The Party Crashers (1958). But she had been long forgotten by the public and she was hosting a local television programme in Indianapolis at the time cancer was diagnosed. She died of cancer at 57.

FARNON, ROBERT (Joseph) (1917-2005) Composer, arranger and conductor.  All three of the foregoing musical talents of Robert Farnon were utilised on The Road to Hong Kong (1962).  His orchestral score was featured on the Decca soundtrack album released at the time the film was premiered and he provided accompaniment for Bing’s vocals.  He had the distinction of being hired by Frank Sinatra to arrange Sinatra’s only U.K. produced album, “Great Songs from Great Britain”.  A Canadian by birth Farnon was playing with the Toronto Juvenile Symphony Orchestra at the age of eleven.  He came to the U.K. during World War II as leader of the Canadian Band of the AEF.  He liked Britain and stayed, arranging for Geraldo and Ted Heath before making a series of LPs for Decca between film music assignments.  Perhaps his finest score was for Captain Horatio Hornblower RN (1951).  He is associated with “quality” music, which is why he is much respected by his fellow musicians.  

FAYLEN, FRANK (1905-1985) Actor. As a versatile character actor, Faylen was in continuous employment in Hollywood for 30 years. In the ten years from 1939, he was in seven Crosby pictures beginning with The Star Maker. His best remembered role in a Bing pic was as Bill Walters, the drunken editor of the town’s newspaper in Welcome Stranger (1947). His other parts which indicate the widely insignificant characters he played, were:

Star Spangled Rhythm (1942) A soldier

Duffy’s Tavern (1945)              A bar customer

Blue Skies (1946)                     Mack

Variety Girl (1947)                  Stage manager

Road to Rio (1948)                  A gangster

Between times, he was in numerous other non-Bing films, mainly for Paramount. His best role was as the sadistic male nurse in The Lost Weekend (1946). He remained with Paramount until the end of the 1950s and appeared in successful films such as Whispering Smith (1949) and Gunfight at the O. K. Corral (1957). In the next decade, he was in quality productions for Disney such as The Monkey’s Uncle (1965) and 20th Century-Fox for Funny Girl (1968). He had a lasting marriage to Carol Hughes who was also another who didn’t quite make the big time in pictures, although she did take the female lead in the fondly remembered 1940 serial Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe.

FEGTE, ERNST (1900-1976) Art director.  Fegte shared joint credit with Hans Dreier for art direction on Anything Goes (1936), Sing You Sinners (1938), Rhythm on the River (1940), Birth of the Blues (1941) and Star Spangled Rhythm (1942).  The two shared an Academy Award for Frenchman’s Creek in 1945.  In reality, they headed the art direction department at Paramount and had appropriate credit on just about every ‘A’ picture released by that studio for ten years from the mid-1930s. 

FELLOWS, EDITH (1923-2011), child/teenage actress. Miss Fellows falls into the “whatever became of” category. Her only part in a Crosby movie was as Patsy in Pennies from Heaven (1936). When clips of the film are screened at the annual I.C.C. meeting in Leeds someone is bound to ask, “Whatever became of....” etc. because of her captivating performance as the daughter of the man killed by the murderer Bing had met in prison. She is on the receiving end of Bing’s soothing rendition of the film’s title song during one of those thunderstorms, which only Hollywood can conjure up so dramatically. There is an obvious answer to the “Whatever ....” question: she retired from films at the age of twenty, but not before making her mark on thirty plus major movies. She seemed to be cast as a “rotten but nice” girl in such as Madame X (1929), Huckleberry Finn (1931), Jane Eyre (1934), and The Little Adventuress (1938). By 1940 the films she was offered were less memorable and it was probably a good decision to call it quits after Girls Town (1942).

FIELD, MARGARET (1922-2011) [Margaret Morlan] Actress. She appeared in three of Bing’s films when she was under-contract-to Paramount Pictures. That trio of brief appearances comprised Blue Skies (1946), Welcome Stranger (1947) and Riding High (1950). Only Welcome Stranger warranted an on-screen credit way down the cast list. Although she had what amounted to little more than walk-on parts in a dozen other major films it took a pair of early 1950s science fiction films to establish a fan base that followed her to the end of her life: The Man From Planet X (1951) and Captive Women (1952). Her first marriage resulted in a daughter, Sally Field. Sally achieved the fame that eluded her mother. Her second marriage was to actor Jock Mahoney in the early 1950s and she appeared in mainly western films for the rest of that decade, usually billed as Maggie Mahoney. Once low budget dramas became the province of television she extended her acting career' into the 1970s with dozens of small screen appearances. She was long retired from showbusiness at the time of her death.

FIELDS, HERBERT (1897-1958) Playwright and screenwriter.  He was the other Fields involved with Mississippi (1935).  He adapted the story along with Claude Binyon.  His sister, Dorothy, was an accomplished songwriter who sometimes collaborated with him on his librettos for stage musicals, which included the 1927 “A Connecticut Yankee” and “Fifty Million Frenchmen” two years later.  Most of the 1930s found him working on scripts in Hollywood.

FIELDS, W. C. (1879-1946). Actor and screenwriter. If you wanted to deter anyone from drinking alcohol, show them photographs of Fields in the last year of his life. Yet despite his liking for booze, William Claude Dukenfield will be making audiences laugh for as long as his films are screened in the cinema or on television. His one Crosby film came when he was at his box office peak. He was Commodore Orlando Jackson in Mississippi (1935), an appearance he sandwiched between David Copperfield (as Mr Micawber) and The Man on the Flying Trapeze, which he also wrote under the pseudonym Charles Bogle. He liked to hide his writing talents by adopting the most memorable/ridiculous pen names. How about Mahatma Kane Jeeves for The Bank Dick? Or Otis Criblecoblis for Never Give a Sucker an Even Break? Those two films were made towards the end of his show business career. That began at fourteen when he was hired as a juggler by an amusement park owner. Vaudeville and the London and New York legitimate theatres followed before his first film Pool Sharks in 1915. On radio, he was a regular on ‘The Edgar Bergen Show’, playing foil to Bergen’s dummies. He almost met his screen match in 1939 when Universal teamed him with Mae West in My Little Chickadee, but with both performers writing their own lines it ended in a draw.   His last film was a cameo appearance in the mediocre Sensations of 1945.

THE FIFTH FREEDOM Short film. This 1951 one-reeler was funded by Chesterfield Cigarettes with Arthur Godfrey introducing three prominent American entertainers between taking puffs on his cigarette. Bing follows Perry Como, and Bob Hope by singing “You’re a Grand Old Flag” at the film’s end. The film is in Technicolor and it is interesting to observe Bing living up to his reputation of having no dress sense. His checked jacket is louder than the chorus of the patriotic George M. Cohan song he delivers.

FITZGERALD, BARRY (1888-1961) Actor. As a professional Irishman and scene stealer, Fitzgerald laid his charms on three major Crosby films in the 1940s: Going My Way (1944) as Father Fitzgibbon, Welcome Stranger (1947) as Dr Joseph McRory and Top ‘o the Morning (1949) as Sergeant Briany McNaughton. He also appeared briefly as Bing’s dad in Duffy’s Tavern (1945) and was one of the many Paramount contractees making fleeting stops before the camera in Variety Girl (1947). His first screen teaming with Bing won him an Academy Award as best supporting actor and provided the mould for his other features with Crosby as a tetchy/whimsical foil. Fitzgerald’s first film was Hitchcock’s British made Juno and the Paycock (1930). He visited the States as one of the Dublin Theatre’s Abbey Players and John Ford lured him to Hollywood in 1936 to appear in The Plough and the Stars. He remained as the movie colony’s resident Irishman until the early fifties, with his brother, Arthur Shields, who was also in Ford’s 1936 film. Some of his best remembered American pictures are How Green Was My Valley (1941), And Then There Were None (1945) and The Naked City (1948). John Ford enticed him back over the Atlantic for a juicy part in The Quiet Man (1952) which was filmed in Ireland. He made his last two films in England: Rooney (1958) and Broth of a Boy (1959).

FLEMING, RHONDA (1923-2020) Actress. Bing’s leading lady in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1949). She was Bob Hope’s leading lady ten years later in Alias Jesse James for which Bing made a brief gag appearance. In the 1949 outing with Bing, she proved she could act, sing and improve the scenery generally in the dual role of Lady Alisande La Carteloise and Sandy. She duetted with Bing on “Once and for Always” and soloed on “When Is Sometime”. As a result, she was briefly contracted to American Decca. Journalist Ephraim Katz encapsulated her appeal when he called her “A ravishing redhead who photographed exquisitely especially in colour.” Born Marilyn Louis she grew up in Hollywood and was an extra in films whilst still a teenager. She had parts in two good films before her Crosby picture - Spellbound and The Spiral Staircase, both released in 1945. After Connecticut Yankee, she was used in action/adventure films for her looks rather than her acting abilities. Titles such as Yankee Pasha (1954) and Gun Glory (1957) say it all. In the 1960s, she was one of the Hollywood actors whose careers had peaked who tried to extend their careers by appearing in Italian co-productions. She called it quits after Backtrack (1969).

FLIGHT OF FANCY, A Song.  It was one of eight Leo Robin-Harry Warren songs written especially for Bing to sing in Just for You (1952).  The song never made the final cut although Warren’s melody was used as background music on the film’s soundtrack.  Bing made a studio recording for Decca when it was still planned to feature the song in the film for which it was written.

FOLSEY, GEORGE (1898-1988) Trendsetting director of photography.  By the time Folsey photographed The Big Broadcast (1932) and Going Hollywood (1933) he was one of Hollywood’s foremost cameramen, having made his name by pioneering a change from the harsh black and white photography we associate with silent films to the more subtle tones that prevailed with the advent of talkies.  When William Randolph Hearst sought only the best to work with his mistress, Folsey was an obvious choice to photograph Marion Davis in Going Hollywood.  M-G-M employed him on many of their major releases.  If you saw Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) you will have be struck by Folsey’s colour photography.  Ten years later, he was still receiving accolades for his work on such as Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.  As late as 1976 M-G-M were using him to film the new sequences for That’s Entertainment Part II.

FONTAINE, JOAN [Joan De Beauvoir De Havilland] (1917-2013) Actress. Considering her real name, her casting as Countess Johanna in Emperor Waltz seems appropriate. It was her only Crosby movie and a less intense role than the heavy dramatic parts usually offered to her by Hollywood. She followed her sister, Olivia De Havilland into pictures although the two constantly feuded. She was seen on screen from 1935 onwards but had to wait until 1939 before she made an impact. That was in Gunga Din, which was closely followed by The Women (1939), Rebecca (1940) and Suspicion (1941). By the 1950s, her films were less memorable until her popularity was again boosted by leading roles in Island in the Sun (1957) and A Certain Smile (1958). After the break-up of her third marriage to producer/screen writer Collier Young in 1961 she made only two more big screen appearances in Tender is the Night (1962) and The Devil’s Own [aka The Witches] (1966). Her previous marriages were to actor Brian Aherne (1939-1945) and producer William Dozier (1946-1951). She married for the fourth time in 1964 but that union with Alfred Wright Jr. also ended in divorce in 1969. TV and stage parts plus her skills as a licensed decorator and cordon bleu cook then kept her in spending money for many years.

FOR WHAT song. This was written for the film Road to Rio (1947) by Johnny Burke and James Van Heusen. It was the second of two duets intended for Crosby and Hope. The other was “Apalachicola FLA”. It was filmed but dropped from the released print. No studio recording was made of the song by Decca.

FOR YOU song. The big ballad from the little picture Billboard Girl which Bing made for Mack Sennett in 1931. Bing sings it twice towards the end of the film for the benefit of leading lady Margie ‘Babe’ Kane. It was one of the Sennett picture songs that remained intact when part of Billboard Girl was presented in the 1946 compilation Road to Hollywood. The song’s composers were Al Dubin and Joseph Burke and it has been recorded by many singers over the years. Probably the best known version was that by Ricky Nelson in 1964 when it peaked at #6 on the Billboard Hot 100. 

FOSTER, LEWIS R. (1900-1974) Screenwriter/Director. For the writing phase of his Hollywood career, he was billed as Lew Foster and as such appeared on the credits of three Mack Sennett shorts: One More Chance, Dream House and Billboard Girl. All were filmed in 1931 and Foster shared the story and dialogue credit with John A Waldron, Earle Rodney and Harry McCoy. Why four brains were needed for these one-reeler shorts is a mystery to this day. Before his Sennett assignment, he had been script supervisor and gag writer for Hal Roach and it was then that he carried out his first directorial chores on Laurel and Hardy shorts. The quality of his writing improved to such an extent that he won an Academy Award for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). When he moved over to directing, he continued to contribute to the screenplays of his films. They were almost always low-budget, run-of-the-mill adventure pics with exciting titles to persuade young lads to part with sixpence to see such fare as Captain China (1950), Passage West, (1951), Tropic Zone (1953) and Dakota Incident (1956). There was one non-typical project in 1953 when Paramount used him to write and direct the Guy Mitchell-Teresa Brewer musical comedy Those Redheads From Seattle.

FOSTER, STEPHEN (1826-1864). Songwriter. Stephen Collins Foster never wrote a song, which failed to stick in the memory. His melodies were hummable and his lyrics poignant. A Stateside revival of interest in Foster beginning in the late thirties/early forties is partly attributable to a film biography starring Don Ameche called Swanee River and partly to Bing regularly featuring Foster’s compositions on the Kraft Music Hall radio show. Bing sang two of Foster’s songs in three films “Swanee River” (aka "The Old Folks at Home") was in Mississippi (1935) and Road to Rio (1948). Bing sang it with the Cabin Kids in the former and with Bob Hope in the Road picture. In 1950, he sang “De Camptown Races” in Riding High accompanied by Coleen Gray and Clarence Muse. Decca/Brunswick released a ten-inch album called “Bing Crosby Sings Stephen Foster” which can be played frequently without the listener tiring of the eight tracks. Foster died a penniless alcoholic.

FOY, EDDIE JNR. (1905-1983). Actor. There is a scene in Dixie (1943) where two penniless boarders sing “Laughing Tony” to the actor Billy De Wolfe. The singer with the prominent upper lip is Eddie Foy Jnr. It was his only appearance in a Crosby film in a forty-year career in the movies. He never found fame but came close to it in the 1950s. That was when Bob Hope made The Seven Little Foys and revived interest in the vaudeville family, followed two years later in 1957 by Foy starring on screen in the hit musical The Pajama Game. He had already enjoyed a long run on Broadway in the stage production. He bore a remarkable resemblance to his famous comedian father who died in 1928 and Eddie Jnr played his dad on screen in such as Frontier Marshall (1939), Lillian Russell (1940), Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) and Wilson (1944). His last memorable film was the 1960 musical The Bells Are Ringing.

FRANK, MELVIN (1913-1988). Director, screenwriter and producer. Mel Frank’s movie associations with Bing began on a modest scale. He collaborated with Norman Panama on the story of the Bob Hope starrer My Favourite Blonde (1942) in which Bing made a guest appearance. Equally tenuous was his next connection, when he contributed to sketches for Star Spangled Rhythm (1942), another film with a Crosby guest spot. Similarly, Bing guested in Duffy’s Tavern (1945), by which time Frank was again working with Norman Panama to provide both screenplay and sketch material. His first full-blown Crosby assignment was to write the screenplay for Road to Utopia (1946), again with Norman Panama. Eight years elapsed before his most successful job came along - to write the screenplay for White Christmas together with Panama and Norman Krasna. A further eight years passed by which time he was producer and screenwriter of The Road to Hong Kong, alongside Panama. The Panama link goes back to schooldays when they wrote a play together but after their Hong Kong venture, Frank went it alone as director-producer-screenwriter. He based his company in England and enjoyed success with the likes of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966), A Touch of Class (1973) and Lost and Found (1979).

FRAWLEY, WILLIAM (1887-1966). Actor. For ten years, Frawley appeared half way down the cast list in the films he made with Bing Crosby. He was James Smith in Here Is My Heart (1934), John Pederson in Double or Nothing (1937), Phil Westlake in Rhythm on the River (1940) and Max Dolan in Going My Way (1944). But to most people he was Fred Mertz in I Love Lucy on television between 1951 and 1960. A former vaudevillian, he was a gruff, amiable character in over a hundred and fifty Hollywood films before television made him truly famous. After his last film with Bing, he was in such popular fare as Ziegfield Follies (1946), Mother Wore Tights (1947) and The Lemon Drop Kid (1951). When his ‘Lucy’ appearances ended, he had a three year run in another popular series My Three Sons. His isolated return to the big screen was made in 1962 in the film Safe at Home.

FREED, ARTHUR (1894-1973) Producer and lyricist.   Freed was respected the world over as the former but his songwriting talents concern us here. Bing sang his lyrics on six occasions during the 1933 picture Going Hollywood. The songs were the title number, the big hit and subsequent standard “Temptation”, “We’ll Make Hay While the Sun Shines”, “Our Big Love Scene”, “After Sundown” and “Beautiful Girl.” Nacio Herb Brown provided melodies for Freed’s words. Freed’s first successful composition was “I Cried for You.” His partnership with Brown has left us humming the likes of “You Were Meant for Me,” “You Are My Lucky Star,” “Singin’ in the Rain” and “All I Do Is Dream of You.” His fame for decades to come is doubly assured because of the high quality musicals he produced for M-G-M. He was associate producer of The Wizard of Oz in 1939 before taking full responsibility for over forty fondly remembered escapist musicals. I’ll restrict myself to listing my ten favourites: Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), The Harvey Girls (1946), Till the Clouds Roll by (1946), Easter Parade (1948), On the Town (1949), Annie Get Your Gun (1950), An American in Paris (1951), The Band Wagon (1953), Brigadoon (1954) and Gigi (1958). The most famous musical of all time isn’t there but that’s because I’ve seen it so often. It is Singin’ in the Rain (1952) for which he also wrote the songs. His career waned in the early sixties with the demise of the screen musical. His last major success was The Bells Are Ringing in 1960.

FREEMAN, MONA (1926-2014) Actress. There are no doubts that Bing was fond of Miss Freeman. He dated her openly after the death of his first wife. He did not, however, use his pull with Paramount to find her parts in his own movies for that studio. As a result, the three Crosby pictures in which she appeared only provided glimpses of this attractive ex-professional model. She had a bit part in Here Come the Waves (1944), was seen on the Paramount backlot in Variety Girl (1947) and is a spectator in the same audience crowd as Bing in The Greatest Show on Earth (1952). Fortunately, she was seen in more substantial big screen acting roles until her retirement from show business at the end of the fifties. Her Hollywood career began as a teenager when she was signed up by Howard Hughes who then sold her contract to Paramount. She played the innocent bright-eyed teenager in the likes of National Velvet (1944) and Black Beauty (1946). Her adult roles became meatier but the films themselves were less important. The best was The Heiress (1949) but by the middle of the next decade, she was in forgettable ‘B’ productions like Huk (1956) and Dragoon Wells Massacre (1957).

FRERE JACQUES French nursery rhyme.  There is a moving scene in Little Boy Lost (1953) where Bing is trying to revive the memory of his son, who has no recollection of Crosby being his dad.  Bing sings “Frere Jacques” to the boy, who joins in together with Claude Dauphin, but still doesn’t remember his past.  All children who attend French classes are taught “Frere Jacques” to try to convince them that learning to speak a foreign language can be fun.  They soon become disillusioned.

FRIENDLY MOUNTAINS, THE Song. One of the best staged Crosby vocals in any Crosby movie. Bing sings it in Emperor Waltz (1948) in a scene set in the Austrian Tyrol. The location of Canada’s Jasper Park provided a breath-taking backdrop as Bing strolled along singing this Johnny Burke, Joseph J. Lilley composition with the mountain echoes playing the part of the vocal chorus.

FRIENDLY PERSUASION Film.  When Paramount owned this story in the late 1940s, it was possible that Bing would play the head of the Quaker family.  The proposed director, Frank Capra, was not agreeable to the budget capping of $1.5m imposed by Paramount and the project was shelved.  Paramount sold the property to United Artists and in 1956, Gary Cooper played the part pencilled in for Bing. 

FROM THE TOP OF YOUR HEAD Song. The 1935 release Two for Tonight contained five Mack Gordon-Harry Revel compositions. This bouncy number is sung by Bing to leading lady Joan Bennett.

FUNNY OLD HILLS, THE Song. Listing a trio of Crosby film songs consecutively serves as a reminder that Bing’s composers served him well. This opus was good enough to open and close the proceedings in the 1939 Paramount production Paris Honeymoon. It was written by dependable tunesmiths Leo Robin and Ralph Rainger. The plot begins to unfold with Bing preparing for his wedding to Shirley Ross. He sings “Funny Old Hills” as he dresses. The film’s closing scenes depict Bing driving away with butler Edward Everett Horton and new love Franciska Gaal. The trio reprise “Funny Old Hills” as the caption ‘The End’ comes up.

FURSE, ROGER K. (1903-1972) Art director and production designer. It was the latter credit given to Furse for the work on Bing’s British made Road picture. I thought the overall look of The Road to Hong Kong tacky in parts with cardboard looking sets indicating a modest budget. Perhaps Furse did the best he could with the money available. By the time the film was released in 1962, he was well known for his collaborations with Sir Laurence Olivier as set designer. His most colourful work was done for M-G-M’s British based studio in the early 1950s with Ivanhoe (1952) and Knights of the Round Table (1953). He started his career at the top by winning an Oscar for designing costumes for Hamlet (1945). It’s slightly sad to think that his last assignment was the less worthy Hong Kong.

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GAAL, FRANCISKA (1904-1973). She played Manya, where her Hungarian accent stood her in good stead for her role as a rose gatherer in the mythical town of Graustarkian. Her Hollywood career began with The Buccaneer (1938) and ended with The Girl Downstairs (1939), with her Crosby starrer sandwiched in-between.   She was a popular stage performer and film actress in central Europe before Cecil B. De Mille brought her to Hollywood. She returned to Budapest to be with her ailing mother after spending two years in the U.S.A. and found herself trapped there throughout World War II. There was one more film in Austria and a brief Broadway appearance in 1951 before her retirement.

GALLAGHER, RICHARD ‘SKEETS’ (1891-1955) Actor. 1933 was Gallagher’s year with Bing. He appeared in the short Hollywood on Parade No. 4, which promoted Too Much Harmony, in which he was half of the vaudeville team portrayed with fellow actor Jack Oakie.  It was Oakie who joined Crosby and Gallagher in the song “Boo Boo Boo” in Hollywood on Parade, a song soloed by Bing in Too Much Harmony. Gallagher was almost playing himself in Too Much Harmony because he had been a song and dance man on the vaudeville circuit before entering films in 1923. For the next 30 years he was a second lead supporting character in most of his fifty feature films or the lead in his numerous shorts from the mid-twenties. Major films seemed to avoid him. The nearest he came to quality product was Idiot’s Delight (1939) and Brother Orchid (1942). His last appearance in Three for Bedroom C (1952) was typical of the parts he took on.

GANZER, ALVIN (1911-2009) Assistant director.  To list everyone who made an impact on Crosby films would make for boring reading but one unsung hero who went on to better things was Alvin Ganzer.  He was an assistant to the director of three 1940 Paramounts: Birth of the Blues (1941), Going My Way (1944) and Road to Utopia (1946).  It may be coincidence that his move to fully-fledged director saw him involved with musicals.  By the end of the 1940s he was directing shorts in the “Musical Parade” series.  His progression to full-length feature films found him behind less prestigious productions than the Paramount offerings but he knew how to pamper to the youth market.  He directed Country Music Holiday in 1958 and When the Boys Meet the Girls some seven years later.  By then he was much in demand for television work and his name appeared on dozens of popular filmed series.  There can’t be many out there who failed to see at least one of his efforts.  Those that are still remembered today include “Highway Patrol”, “Have Gun - Will Travel”, “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.”, “Gunsmoke”, “The Twilight Zone” and “Hawaii 5-0”.  His behind the scenes work on his three Bing films went unnoticed but his impact on popular television culture of the 1960s made its mark.  He enjoyed the last thirty years of his life in retirement in Hawaii.

GARDNER, ED (1901-1963) Radio comedian.  I can only trace one film in which Gardner featured.  That was Duffy’s Tavern (1945).  He had the main role as Archie, who managed the bar in the permanent absence of its owner.  Bing popped up now and again in the film, which gave audiences the opportunity of seeing two of the most popular radio personalities of the mid-1940s. 

GARGAN, WILLIAM (1905-1979). Actor. Considering the hundreds of reels of film Gargan has left us, it’s surprising that his only brush with Bing was in RKO’s The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945). Cast as Joe Gallagher, he plays the father of Patsy Gallagher (Joan Carroll). Bing, as Father O’Malley, re-unites him with his wife (Martha Sleeper) and daughter Patsy’s worries end, allowing her to graduate. Gargan transferred his career from the Broadway stage to the Hollywood soundstage in 1932. He was rarely first billed, but his gregarious performances were memorable in second lead and character parts for over 30 years. His moment of glory came in 1940 when he was Oscar nominated for his part in They Knew What They Wanted. With his career on a roll, for a short time he starred as Ellery Queen in a series of B pictures, before accepting prominent supporting parts in the likes of The Canterville Ghost (1944) and Miracle in the Rain (1956). The latter was his final big screen appearance. In the late ‘50s, he starred in the television detective series Martin Kane. In 1960, he lost the main tool of his trade: his voice. He had cancer of the larynx and an artificial voice box was fitted. This enabled him to make public appearances on behalf of the American Cancer Society condemning smoking. However, the last twenty years of his life were spent outside mainstream show business.

GARNETT, TAY (1894-1977) Director. In 1949, Garnett directed Bing in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. From then until retirement, none of his films excited critics or audiences. By the time he worked with Bing he had been in films for nearly thirty years. He began as a screenwriter and also turned out gag material for Mack Sennett. By the time Bing was working with Sennett, Garnett had graduated to directing films such as Bad Company (1931). His decade was the 1940s with well-remembered titles like My Favourite Spy (1942), The Cross of Lorraine (1944) and The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946). That last title is generally regarded as his best picture. In the 1960s, he was much occupied with television assignments.  His last bit screen film was Timber Tramp, released in 1973.

GAYNOR, MITZI (1931-2024). Actress and dancer. Mitzi Gaynor’s one film with Bing was his 1956 remake of Anything Goes. She played Patsy Blair, the girl Bing brings from London to Broadway to appear in the show “You’re the Top”. As well as singing the film’s title song, she shared vocal numbers with Bing and Donald O’Connor. Yet she never regarded herself as a singer, having set her heart on becoming a dancer and making her professional debut as a ballerina at the age of twelve. Fox signed her up for film work in 1950 but dropped her four years later when assignments such as My Blue Heaven (1950), Down Among the Sheltering Palms (1953) and There’s No Business Like Show business (1954) failed to establish her as a box office draw. She was not unemployed for long. She had the good luck to fall in love and marry talent agent Jack Bean, who immediately secured work for her in a string of successes, including Anything Goes, The Joker Is Wild (1957), Les Girls (1957) and South Pacific (1958). There were only three more films before her retirement from movies in 1963; all light comedies which failed to make an impact. She wisely decided that her future lay in television and cabaret before going into semi-retirement. There was a possible option to work with Bing again in films in 1965 when they were both lined up for the Irving Berlin musical “Say It with Music”, but that came to nothing. She was re-united with him however on American television variety shows.

GEE, I WISH I WAS BACK IN THE ARMY Song. The sentimental finale to White Christmas serves as a reminder of Christmas Eve 1944. Since then Bing’s character’s fortunes as an entertainer have made him a top line performer. The film concludes with him appearing on Christmas Eve on the stage of his former wartime General’s nightclub. The General enters the club and Bing, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen sing “Gee, I Wish I Was Back in the Army”. The song was one of sixteen Irving Berlin compositions used in the film.

GEMORA, CHARLIE (1903-1961). Character actor, though if you saw him in the street you would not recognise him. His speciality was playing apes. In Road to Zanzibar (1941), he is Agua, the gorilla. When Hope and Crosby are captured by cannibals, Hope is made to fight Agua before the boys escape. Five years later, he played the part of a bear in Road to Utopia. He played the title role in The Gorilla and joined the Marx Brothers in At the Circus (1939).

GERSHWIN, IRA (1896-1985). Lyric writing brother of George. His only film link with Bing was as writer of the four songs in The Country Girl (1954) for which Harold Arlen provided the melodies. He wrote for films and shows rather than composing isolated popular songs. His most successful collaboration was with his brother. The films included Shall We Dance (1937) which featured “They All Laughed”, A Damsel in Distress (1937) which included “A Foggy Day” and The Goldwyn Follies (1938) which introduced “Love Is Here to Stay” to the repertoire of most singers of standard popular songs. His stage musicals included Girl Crazy (1932) with George, and Porgy and Bess with George again providing the music and DuBose Heyward acting as co-lyricist. His most popular work for the big screen immediately preceded The Country Girl when he collaborated again with Arlen on the Judy Garland musical A Star Is Born. Bing did not sing any George Gershwin compositions in any of his films.

GET YOURSELF A PHONOGRAPH Song written by Johnny Burke and James Van Heusen for the film The Emperor Waltz (1948). It was recorded for the soundtrack by Bing but not used.

GETTING NOWHERE Song. A charming little ditty from Blue Skies (1946). In the film, Bing sits at the piano and sings it to his screen daughter, played by Karolyn Grimes. Words and music by Irving Berlin.

GIBBONS, CEDRIC (1893-1960). Probably the most famous and certainly the most influential art director from Hollywood’s golden years. He worked exclusively for M-G-M from 1924 onwards and it was with that studio in 1956 that he had his only association with a Crosby film. That was High Society where Gibbons shared art director credit with Hans Peters. If the truth were known, he acted in a supervisory capacity at M-G-M during his prolific years although his contract permitted him to take sole screen credit. He will be remembered for as long as there is a Hollywood for the simple reason that he designed the Oscar, the Academy Award statuette. He then went on to win a dozen of them. The 1950 one was for “consistent excellence”, the rest for films beginning with The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1929), including The Merry Widow (1934), Gaslight (1944) and An American in Paris (1951) and concluding with Somebody up There Likes Me (1956). He called it quits that same year after working on Lust for Life. Despite his busy life as art director, he found time to co-direct Tarzan and His Mate in 1934 and be the husband of Dolores Del Rio from 1930 to 1941.

GIBSON, JUDITH [Marcia Griffin] (1922-2007) Actress. When Paramount signed Judith Gibson in 1941, it was her appearance alone that attracted them to the 17 year old. Her wholesome good looks were from the family gene bank that created her equally attractive sisters Debra Paget and Lisa Gaye. The studio proceeded to cast Judith in bit parts until she had been groomed by the studio and gained some acting experience. Hence her ranking at number 14 in the cast list of Holiday Inn (1942) as a cigarette girl. How she fared thereafter became a mystery. Her film credits came to a halt and it would seem that Paramount’s investment was not going to pay off. She was only on that studio’s payroll for two years and it could be assumed that she had quit acting.  In fact, she had renamed herself Teala Loring and continued in show business until 1950. The titles of her post-Paramount films give some indication as to why the film reference books ignore her as either Griffin, Gibson or Loring. In 1944, she appeared with Bela Lugosi in Return of the Ape Man. Two years later she had a part in Gas House Kids. The next year she was in Hard Boiled Mahoney. Her final film actually gave her co-star billing with Rex Allen in Arizona Cowboy (1950). Had ‘B’ westerns not been on the way out she could well have hung on in there for a few more years. As it was, she left it to her sisters to keep screen glamour in the family. In the 57th year of her retirement from films, she died following injuries sustained in a car accident.

GIFFORD, FRANCES (1920-1994) Actress. Mary Frances Gifford had a major part in Riding High (1950) with the role of Margaret Higgins. She was cast as Bing’s fiancé. Her only other brush with Bing in the movies was a brief appearance in the finale of the all-star Star Spangled Rhythm (1942). At that time, she had peaked as far as fan adulation was concerned, because she had been the fearless heroine of the serial Jungle Girl the previous year. Juvenile boys were much impressed although she had gone unnoticed in minor roles since she entered films in 1937 immediately after leaving high school. A couple of good films in the first part of the 1940s implied a strong acting career ahead. She had received critical attention in The Glass Key (1942) and Our Vines Have Tender Grapes (1945). An unsuccessful marriage to actor James Dunn and a serious injury in 1948 in a car accident meant she made only one film after Riding High. That was Sky Commando, released in 1953. Five years later, she entered a mental ward in a California hospital and nothing further was heard from her or about her until 1983, when a writer for a film magazine found her in Pasadena. She had apparently fully overcome her physical and mental problems and was working for the city library. She died of emphysema in Pasadena in 1994.

GILLINGWATER, CLAUDE (1870-1939) Actor.  He was General Rumford in Mississippi (1935).  It is the General’s house that is used by Bing and the troupe of actors when they put on a show. His speciality as a character actor was to play crusty old men.  He himself had been a member of a touring repertory company before going to Hollywood in the silent era.  His best remembered film came the year following his Crosby picture when John Ford cast him in Prisoner of Shark Island.  His health began to fail shortly afterwards and he committed suicide in 1939.

GLAZER, BENJAMIN (1887-1958). Screenwriter and producer. Four formative years in films for Bing were heavily influenced by Ben Glazer. He helped provide the screenplay for She Loves Me Not (1934) and then produced The Big Broadcast of 1936 (1935), Anything Goes (1936), Rhythm on the Range (1936) and Double or Nothing (1937). When Glazer bowed out of Bing’s life, film exhibitors in the States voted Bing into fourth place in terms of box office pull. Glazer was born in Belfast and he became a solicitor and then a journalist before writing stories for silent pictures in the early 1920s. He was involved with very few films after his role as producer on Bing’s Paramount pictures. Two years before his death he made a comeback of sorts when he was responsible for the screen adaptation of Carousel.

GLEASON, JAMES (1886-1959). Actor, screenwriter and playwright. It is in the first capacity that the Crosby connection occurs. He was in a few frames of one of Paramount’s promotional shorts that also featured Bing. That was Hollywood on Parade No. 4 (1933). His ‘proper’ acting took place in Riding High (1950), in which he played the racing secretary. By then his face was well known to all regular moviegoers, even if they couldn’t always put a name to his face. He had been a character actor for thirty years with a range of stereotypes embracing reporters, gamblers, fight managers and other big city types. They always had one thing in common: beneath their crusty exteriors lurked a heart of gold. Gleason made over 150 films. Of those I enjoyed, Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), The Bishop’s Wife (1947) and Night of the Hunter (1955) linger in the memory. He worked until the time of his death, his last film being appropriately enough The Last Hurrah (1958).

GO FLY A KITE Song. In The Star Maker (1939), a chorus of kids help Bing perform this Johnny Burke-James V. Monaco number. It is chosen as the song for the stage debut of what developed into a vaudevillian act featuring Larry Earl (Bing) and assorted child performers.

GOD BLESS AMERICA Song. This Irving Berlin composition was recorded by Bing when he was working on the soundtrack sessions for Blue Skies (1946). It was not included in the release print but issues of the soundtrack on disc contain it along with another half dozen songs cut before the film’s release. Bing had already made a studio recording of the song for Decca in 1939.

GODDARD, PAULETTE (1911-1990). Because she was contracted to Paramount during her main years of popularity, it was inevitable that she featured in the same films as Bing from time to time.   They never acted together although they both appeared as themselves in Hollywood on Parade Z3 No. 7 (1933), Star Spangled Rhythm (1942), Duffy’s Tavern (1945) and Variety Girl (1947). She was a striking beauty with a private life of more interest than many of her films. When she was a teenager, she quit her job as a Ziegfeld girl to marry a wealthy industrialist. She left New York and drove to Reno in 1931 in order to obtain a quickie divorce. She decided not to turn the car round and carried on to Hollywood where her looks saw her employed as a Goldwyn girl before being signed up by Hal Roach. She met Charlie Chaplin in 1932 and they started to live together immediately. They married, but she divorced him in 1942 and married Burgess Meredith two years later. That marriage lasted six years and she quit films in the mid-fifties before her final marriage to novelist Erich Maria Remarque.   Her films were never quite good enough to make her a screen legend but picturegoers have fond memories of her in such entertainments as The Cat and the Canary (1939), Reap the Wild Wind (1942) and On Our Merry Way (1948). She attempted an ill-advised comeback in the unfortunately named Time of Indifference (1964). A typical European co-production, Miss Goddard was cast as Claudia Cardinale’s mother.

GODFREY, ARTHUR (1903-1983). Popular radio and TV entertainer and talent scout. Godfrey just about qualifies for inclusion in this A-Z because he appeared in a 27-minute tobacco industry film financed by the makers of Chesterfield Cigarettes called Tobaccoland on Parade (1950) with Bing and Perry Como. At the very end, Bing is seen singing a short version of "Swinging on a Star". Godfrey was also heavily featured in that bizarre advertising short for Chesterfield Cigarettes, The Fifth Freedom. Bing, like Godfrey, had a radio programme sponsored by Chesterfield but ironically Godfrey ended his life as an anti-smoking campaigner having recovered from surgery following lung cancer. Under his talent scout label, winning contestants on his television show included Pat Boone, the McGuire Sisters and the Everly Brothers. He also had brief hit parade successes with “Too Fat Polka”, “Dance Me Loose” and “Slow Poke” amongst others. He made little impact in the UK.

GOING HOLLYWOOD Film. This 1933 movie certainly added to the impetus, which made Bing a box-office draw. Long just a grey memory for those who saw it on the big screen, it enjoyed several satellite television showings in the 1990s. It may not have stood the test of time, but it retains a charm of its own, helped by high production values and half a dozen good songs. Released by M-G-M, it was financed by William Randolph Hearst for his Cosmopolitan Pictures company. It was intended as a lavish showcase for his girlfriend Marion Davies, whose film career waned with the coming of sound.   Hearst bought the best talent for Going Hollywood. Walter Wanger produced, Raoul Walsh directed, Donald Ogden Stewart wrote the screenplay, Lennie Hayton was musical director and Bing was Miss Davies’ leading man. He played a crooner with whom schoolteacher Marion Davies was infatuated. She gets her man. Stories abound regarding the relaxed atmosphere prevailing during the three months the film was in production. The sense of fun during shooting is captured by Bing in the private recording he made as a ‘tribute’ to the director: “Rollicking Rockaway Raoul”. M-G-M found a pristine print of the film in their vaults and excerpts were featured in That’s Entertainment (1974) and That’s Entertainment 2 (1976).

GOING HOLLYWOOD Song. The title song of the film was never recorded for commercial release by Bing. It is a big production number in the film and it’s difficult to understand why Brunswick did not programme it in the recording sessions which covered another five of the Arthur Freed-Nacio Herb Brown compositions. Radio and record publicity could only heighten box office awareness. Forty years after it was first seen and heard by cinemagoers, the song delighted millions of viewers a second time when it was included in the compilation film That’s Entertainment (1974).

GOING MY WAY Film. This was Bing’s biggest box-office success to date. Made in late 1943, it still involves viewers over sixty years later. Paramount budgeted the film at around one million dollars.  $650,000 was for production with the balance being for studio overheads.  McCarey invested a modest amount in the film and profited to the extent of making more than double the Paramount budget.  Bing received a flat fee of $125,000.  Barry Fitzgerald was paid $12,500.  On the film’s initial North American release the film sold 37 million tickets and grossed $6.5 million in rentals.  When Bing died on October 14th, 1977, it was appropriate that the tribute film the BBC scheduled three days later was Going My Way. In the film, Bing plays Father O’Malley, assigned to the rundown St. Dominic’s in a deprived area of New York. The present incumbent is played by Barry Fitzgerald and it is the verbal sparring of the two Fathers that bring humour and pathos to a story with the obligatory happy ending. In this case, a fund to rebuild St. Dominic’s following a fire and a surprise visit from Ireland re-uniting Barry Fitzgerald with his mother. The film was showered with awards, including:

· An Oscar for Bing as Best Actor of 1944.

· Three Oscars for Leo McCarey (Best Director, original story and film)

· Oscars for Frank Butler and Frank Cavett (Best Screenplay)

· New York Film Critics Awards for Best Picture, Best Actor (Fitzgerald) and Best Director (McCarey)

· Golden Globe Award as Best Motion Picture (Drama)

· One of the New York Times’ ten best films of 1944.

· The top of Variety’s list of moneymaking films of 1943/44.

· The Picturegoer Award for the year’s best performance in a film to Bing.

GOING MY WAY Song. Written by Johnny Burke and James Van Heusen for the film of the same name. The song plays an important part in the plot. It is written by Father O’Malley with a view to raising money towards the mortgage on St. Dominic’s. When an old friend of O’Malley’s, opera singer Genevieve Linden (played by Rise Stevens) sings it before the intended publishers, they are unimpressed.   As they leave the theatre, O’Malley sits down at the piano and plays “Swinging on a Star” which the publishers decide to buy instead.  

GOLDWYN, SAM (1882-1974) Producer. Bing worked for Goldwyn once. This was because Bob Hope was contracted to the producer for a series of films. As a result, Bing had a walk-on part in The Princess and the Pirate (1944).  In the early fifties, Paramount wanted to buy the rights to the musical Guys and Dolls with a view to Bing and Hope starring in this Frank Loesser musical. Goldwyn bought it and made it a success with Sinatra and Brando in starring roles. Goldwyn was a true Hollywood legend. His misuse of the English language guarantees he figures in every book of show-business quotes. It doesn’t matter whether he really said “include me out”, “a verbal agreement isn’t worth the paper it’s written on” or “anyone seeing a psychiatrist should have his head examined.” The fact is, his quotes or misquotes did more to keep his name in the showbiz columns than any public relations firm could achieve. He was a film pioneer, tasting success in 1916 when he was involved in the very profitable feature The Squaw Man. He co-produced the first version of Ben Hur in 1925.   Sound films earned him accolades and profits for the next three decades with successes such as Roman Scandals (1933), Dead End (1937), Wuthering Heights (1939), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), Hans Christian Andersen (1952) and Porgy and Bess (1959). He is credited with establishing the screen careers of Ronald Colman, Gary Cooper, David Niven, Lucille Ball, Danny Kaye, Will Rogers and Vera-Ellen.

GOODNIGHT, LOVELY LITTLE LADY Song. Mack Gordon and Harry Revel wrote this one for Bing to sing in We’re Not Dressing (1934). A romantic ballad, it was not used by the leading man to woo his leading lady. Its function was to quieten Droopy the bear. It’s the only song which pacifies it and Bing is the singing sailor assigned to serenade the animal. Unfortunately, Bing was not to hand when the bear attacked one of the female extras on the film’s set and its trainer went to her rescue. Sadly, the trainer was badly hurt and he subsequently died.

GOODTIME CHARLIE Song. This up-tempo ditty was duetted by Hope and Crosby in their fourth Road film when they headed for Utopia. It is featured early in the film when the boys are entertaining in a San Francisco honky-tonk. It was written for Road to Utopia (1946) by regular tunesmiths Johnny Burke and James Van Heusen. There was no studio recording made of this song by Bing.

GORCEY, LEO (1915-1969). The brief appearance by Gorcey in Road to Zanzibar (1941) comes as a surprise to anyone following his career. By the time filming started, he had made his name in show business and the bit part in this second Road movie seemed a retrograde career step. But then Gorcey never conformed. He was noticed by critics in 1934 when he was one of a gang of juvenile delinquents in the Broadway production of Dead End. When the play was filmed two years later, Gorcey reprised his role. The ‘Dead End Kids’ registered with juvenile fans and together with Huntz Hall, Gorcey led the kids through long running, low budget series first as the East Side Kids and then as the Bowery Boys. Before Road to Zanzibar, Gorcey’s contract with Warner Bros. had provided him with substantial parts in Mannequin, Crime School, Angels with Dirty Faces, Pride of the Bowery and several others. He died comparatively young after leading a very full life, which is detailed in his autobiography, ‘Dead End Yells, Wedding Bells, Cockleshells and Dizzy Spells’. It describes a life more colourful than any of the films in which he was involved. Between several brushes with the law, he found time and energy to marry five times.

GORDON, MACK [Morris Gittler] (1904-1959) Lyric writer of some of Bing’s most popular and lasting performances. He was under contract to Paramount from 1933 to 1936 and the studio had introduced him in Hollywood on Parade No. 7 in which Bing also made a brief appearance. His next two consecutive Crosby assignments were We’re Not Dressing (1934) and She Loves Me Not (1934). The music was provided by Gordon’s regular collaborator Harry Revel. The five standards, which originated in the first film were “May I”, “Once in a Blue Moon”, “Love Thy Neighbour”, “She Reminds Me of You” and “Goodnight, Lovely Little Lady”. The three songs in the follow-up film were not as memorable. They were “I’m Hummin’, I’m Whistlin’, I’m Singin’”, “Love in Bloom” and “Straight from the Shoulder”. The re-uniting of Bing with Gordon and Revel occurred in 1935 with Two for Tonight which produced a further five Bing evergreens: “Two for Tonight”, “I Wish I Were Aladdin”, “From the Top of Your Head”, “Takes Two to Make a Bargain” and “Without a Word of Warning”. The following year Gordon moved to Fox and remained on that studio’s payroll until 1950. His later collaborators included Harry Warren (for “Chattanooga Choo-Choo”, “I’ve Got a Gal in Kalamazoo”, “Serenade in Blue” etc.) and Josef Myrow (“On the Boardwalk in Atlantic City”, “You Make Me Feel So Young”, etc.). His last film was in 1956 on the Eddie Fisher/Debbie Reynolds starrer Bundle of Joy.

GRANT, JOHNNY (1923-2008) Radio reporter and interviewer who made occasional films. In White Christmas (1954), he played Ed Harrison. He shared screen time with Bing towards the end of that film in the sequence set in New York. After Bing visited the Carousel Club to watch Rosemary Clooney perform he called on Ed Harrison. It was a typically brief role for Grant. Grant made his film debut in The Babe Ruth Story (1948). By the mid-fifties he was seen fleetingly in teen-oriented flicks like The Girl Can’t Help It and Rock, Pretty Baby (both 1956). However, he is best remembered for the work he did to publicise Hollywood. Working with the Chamber of Commerce, he led the project to preserve the dilapidated Hollywood sign and establish the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He was in the public eye annually as producer of the Hollywood Christmas Parade. It was for his non-film work that he became known as Hollywood’s honorary mayor.

GRAPEWIN, CHARLEY (1875-1956) Actor.  He played Bing’s Uncle Caleb in Rhythm on the River (1940).  In that same year, he appeared in his most memorable role as Grampa Joad in The Grapes of Wrath.  An ex-vaudevillian, he was usually cast as a crusty old so-and-so.  The main exception was his portrayal of Inspector Queen in a series of ‘B’ pictures commenced immediately after his appearance in Rhythm on the River.  Beginning with Ellery Queen - Master Detective he played Ellery’s dad in the series, which featured Ralph Bellamy and then William Gargan in the name role.  He retired from films in 1951 with the aptly titled When I Grow Old.

GRAY, COLEEN (1922-2015) Actress. She was typical of the leading ladies who appeared on screen in Bing pictures around this time. Her only Crosby film was Riding High (1950) when she played Alice Higgins. We know she is the only girl for Bing because at the end of the film he names a horse ‘Princess’, a pet name for her. She had been in three good films before working with Bing - State Fair (1945), Nightmare Alley (1947) and Red River (1948). After Riding High, she was cast in routine crime, western and action films and never sustained the high profile career for which she seemed destined. Titles like Las Vegas Shakedown (1955), The Leech Woman (1960) and her last film, Cry from the Mountain (1986) say it all. 

GREAT JOHN L, THE Film. Bing formed Bing Crosby Productions Incorporated jointly with Harry Lowe Crosby and father and son had equal billing in institutional terms.  The partnership was a device that produced financial concessions, with Bing’s father taking no active part in the production company.  The first production was The Great John L. (1945) a film biography about the boxer John L. Sullivan with unknown actor Greg McClure in the leading role.  When the film was released in the U.K., the distributors felt that the cinema going public would not know what to make of its original title.  As a result, it was released as A Man Called Sullivan!  The film was a financial flop.  

GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH, THE Film. Made in 1951 and released in 1952, this was an extremely successful circus film directed by Cecil B. de Mille. It was a Paramount production and took advantage of that studio’s contractees by showing Hope and Crosby munching popcorn whilst watching a circus act. The film’s main stars were Cornel Wilde, Betty Hutton, Charlton Heston, Dorothy Lamour and James Stewart.

GREEN, JOHNNY (1908-1989). Composer, conductor, arranger, musical director. Green was able to more or less top and tail Bing’s film musical career. He co-wrote “Out of Nowhere” with Edward Heyman, the song featured in the 1931 films I Surrender Dear and Confessions of a Co-ed. A quarter of a century later, he adapted and supervised the music for High Society with the assistance of Saul Chaplin. His last Crosby connection came with Pepe in 1960 when he is credited with music supervision and background score. Johnny Green entered films in 1929 as a rehearsal pianist for Paramount. He spent ten years with M-G-M as that studio’s general music director. He won Academy Awards for collaborations on the scoring of Easter Parade, An American in Paris, West Side Story and Oliver. He retired from films in 1969 after working on They Shoot Horses, Don’t They.

GRIGGS, LOYAL (1907-1978) Director of photography.  His versatility is easily established.  He worked on Little Boy Lost (1953) together with Farciot Edouart when they had to match the French monochrome location photography with studio footage.  One year later, he photographed White Christmas, where the rich reds and greens of the Technicolor process added a seasonal dimension to Paramount’s most successful Crosby musical.  He began working with that studio thirty years earlier on special effect photography.  The year before he shot White Christmas, he was photographer on the western Shane, his work on which won him an Academy Award.

GROFE, FERDE (1892-1972). Composer, conductor, orchestrator. Ferdinand Rudolph Von Grofe garnered one Crosby film credit for orchestrations on King of Jazz, Universal’s major 1930 two-color musical. He had spent seven years until 1927 as principal arranger for Paul Whiteman’s Orchestra so he was an obvious choice for a film, which strongly featured Whiteman and his music. His two musical career highpoints were scoring Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” in 1924 and winning an Oscar twenty years later for his score on Minstrel Man.

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HALL, THURSTON (1883-1958). American character actor. He was not playing to type when he was cast as Mr. Proctor in The Star Maker (1939). In that Crosby picture he was the theatre owner who allowed Larry Earl (Bing) and his singing newsboys to make their debut on stage. His other film with Bing was Welcome Stranger (1947) when he took the part of Congressman Beeker. That was more his acting scene, because in most of his several hundred Hollywood pictures he was usually either a hard-boiled businessman or an influential politician. When he entered films in 1915, he was willing to forsake touring with his own acting troupe in order to take a chance in movies. Early parts saw him in leading roles such as Mark Anthony in Cleopatra (1917). However, by the mid-thirties he was a solid character player in the likes of Professor Beware (1938) and The Blue Bird (1940). He was in films until the time of his death.

HANDY, W(illiam) C(hristopher) (1873-1958). Songwriter. Bing sang two of his compositions in Birth of the Blues (1941) - “Memphis Blues” and “St. Louis Blues”. By then Handy had written the main body of his work, having gradually lost his sight in the 1930s. A revival in his popularity occurred in the 1950s. Louis Armstrong recorded the album ‘…Plays W. C. Handy’ in 1954 and three years later Nat ‘King’ Cole portrayed him in the Handy biopic St. Louis Blues.

HANG YOUR HEART ON A HICKORY LIMB Song. Bing and the Music Maids sing this in East Side of Heaven (1939). It is featured in a scene set in a restaurant with the Maids taking the part of waitresses. The performance is noted by an influential broadcaster and the rest is Hollywood plotting history. The composers are Crosby film score regulars Johnny Burke and James V. Monaco. Burke said the inspiration for the lyric derived from one of his wife’s expressions. When their daughter asked to go swimming, Mrs. B. would say “Hang your clothes on a hickory limb / and don’t go near the water.” In the same year, one of life’s coincidences resulted in Jack Lawrence writing the popular “Yes, My Darling Daughter” prompted by the same rhyme.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU Song. Also sung by Bing in East Side of Heaven. As a singing messenger, it is probably his most frequent assignment! It is one of the movie’s (and the world’s) most used song. It found fame in two instalments. The music, by Mildred J. Hill, was published in 1893 in a collection of children’s songs. The words that we know were written by Patty Smith Hill in 1935. Despite trying to keep part of my private life out of the public domain, people still sing it to me once a year.

HAPPY FEET Song. One of several Jack Yellen-Milton Ager compositions featured in Universal’s King of Jazz (1930). This one was sung by the Rhythm Boys and Sisters G. The boys made a recording of it with the Whiteman Orchestra and it received a commercial release to coincide with the film’s distribution.

HAPPY HOLIDAY Song. In the film Holiday Inn this song is the first one sung in the newly opened club of the title. The setting is New Year’s Eve and Bing, Marjorie Reynolds and chorus perform it before a packed house. Like all the songs in the picture, the composer was Irving Berlin.

HARDWICKE, SIR CEDRIC (1883-1964) Actor. He was Lord Pendragon in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1949). For many people the lasting cinematic memory of Hardwicke is when he strolls over a studio hill in the company of Bing and William Bendix as the trio sings “Busy Doing Nothing”. At this stage of his career, Hardwicke was shuttling back and forth across the Atlantic on acting assignments and Yankee was sandwiched between the British productions The Winslow Boy and Now Barabbas. He made his name and reputation on the London stage and his 1934 knighthood was bestowed in recognition of his theatre and film work. He was first glimpsed on screen in a British short in 1913 but it was twenty plus years on before his best work was being screened. He’d been enticed to Hollywood to appear in such as Les Miserables (1936) and The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939). He acted up until the time of his death leaving behind memorable performances in The Lodger (1944), Nicholas Nickleby (1947), Richard III (1955), The Ten Commandments (1956) and his last film The Pumpkin Eater (1964).

HARDY, OLIVER (1892-1957). Actor and half of the world’s best-loved film comedy partnership. Born Oliver Norvell Hardy Jr but known as Ollie by his on-screen companion, Stan Laurel. He made his last film appearance in Riding High (1950). It was a walk-on part when he played a losing punter at the racetrack. He had completed his last film with Stan, the unfunny French-Italian co-production Atoll K and although the two planned a movie comeback in the mid-fifties Riding High was to be Hardy’s last film. It came forty years after his first involvement with the cinema because it was in 1910 that he opened a small movie theatre. Four years later his patrons could watch him on the screen in his first acting assignment, Outwitting Dad. He first appeared with Laurel in 1917 in Lucky Dog but the real on-screen partnership didn’t begin until 1926 with Duck Soup. There’s little point in listing the team’s films, titles have little relevance. You simply paid to see a Laurel and Hardy film. You knew what you were getting for your money. Their popularity dipped in the 1950s but the following decade saw a massive revival in popularity when the BBC began screening their best comedy shorts, made for Hal Roach until 1940. Video and then DVD ensured their continued popularity.

HARMONY Song. This Johnny Burke- James Van Heusen song was composed specially for a duet by Crosby and Bob Hope in a sequence featured in the all-star Variety Girl (1947). When the film was released in the UK, it was edited and the Crosby-Hope vocal cut, leaving the pair’s comedy golfing sketch as their only contribution. Bing never made a studio recording of the song.

HARRIS, PHIL (1906-1995). Actor, musician and singer. Phil Harris was a close personal friend to Bing. He was in two Crosby movies of the 1950s: Here Comes the Groom (1951) and Anything Goes (1956). In the first, he makes a brief appearance alongside Louis Armstrong, Cass Daley, Dorothy Lamour and Frank Fontaine.   That quintet joins Bing in singing “Misto Cristofo Columbo” in a scene set on board a plane. His more substantial role as Steve Blair in the Anything Goes remake casts him as the father of Mitzi Gaynor. It’s unfortunate that he had no vocal chores in that second film because his instantly likeable personality took on another dimension when he sang. In fact, it was his voice alone which Walt Disney hired for Phil’s last three films. He provided voices for Baloo the bear in The Jungle Book (1967), J. Thomas O’Malley in The Aristocats (1970) and Little John in Robin Hood (1973). Career and personal highlights in his early days include:

· 1931 Forming his own band, which made regular radio broadcasts

· 1933 Making his film debut in Melody Cruise

· 1940 Appearing as himself in Buck Benny Rides Again. His association with Jack Benny on radio lasted through the 1940s with Harris as musical director on “The Jack Benny Show”.

· 1941 Marrying Alice Faye.

HART, LORENZ (1895-1943). Bing only sang four Hart compositions on screen but they were four gems. In The Big Broadcast (1932), he sang a snatch of “I’ve Got Five Dollars” but it was the 1935 film Mississippi which provided him with three songs that appear on most top ten lists of favourite Bing renditions. These collaborations with partner Richard Rodgers were “It’s Easy to Remember”, “Down by the River” and “Soon”. Hart’s track record in a comparatively short life resulted in 29 musicals being written with Rodgers which played Broadway and London theatres. Twelve of those were bought by Hollywood for film adaptation. His tragic life is documented in several biographies, the most objective being “Thou Swell, Thou Witty” by his sister-in-law, Dorothy Hart.

HARTMAN, DON (1900-1958). Screenwriter, director, producer and songwriter. It is Hartman’s writing skills that provide the Bing association. He shares screenplay credit on Bing’s three best-loved Road films: Singapore (1940), Zanzibar (1941) and Morocco (1942). He shared screenplay credit with Walter DeLeon and Francis Martin. There is a further tenuous association with Bing on another couple of films to which Hartman contributed.   These are the Bob Hope comedies My Favourite Blonde (1942) and The Princess and the Pirate (1944) in which Bing made brief appearances. Before entering films in 1930, Hartman had been an actor, songwriter and supplier of material for radio shows. He was put in charge of production at Paramount in 1951 and established his own production company in 1956.

HAYDN, RICHARD (1905-1985). Actor and director. You only needed to see one Richard Haydn performance to eagerly await his next film. He was always in supporting parts when he appeared in front of the camera. His onscreen work with Bing was as Emperor Franz Josef in The Emperor Waltz (1948). He then directed Crosby in Mr Music (1950). Paramount originally selected him to direct Bing in Here Comes the Groom the following year but that task was eventually carried out by Frank Capra and Mr Music turned out to be his last directorial assignment.   His final appearance was in the 1974 comedy Young Frankenstein.

HAYTON, LENNIE (1908-1971). Pianist, bandleader, arranger, composer and musical director. Hayton’s Crosby connection is in his capacity as M.D. on the 1933 picture Going Hollywood as far as films are concerned. Their general musical relationship goes somewhat deeper. He worked alongside Bing in the Paul Whiteman Orchestra between 1928 and 1930. The two made appearances in King of Jazz (1930) and Hayton also worked with Bing during the latter’s early days on radio. Hayton was appointed musical director for M-G-M in 1940.   It was a post he was to hold until 1953 and resulted on his working on some of the best musicals to come out of Hollywood. These included On the Town (1949) - for which he won an Oscar - and Singin’ in the Rain (1952). He was considered a major talent in films up until the time of his death with two later triumphs being Star (1968) and Hello Dolly (1969). He married Lena Horne in 1947.

HEAD, EDITH (1907-1981). Costume designer and possibly the best-known backroom talent in Hollywood. She was involved with almost every major Paramount movie during Bing’s tenure with that studio. She even defected to RKO to make The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945) at a time when studios were not known to loan their prime production talent. She worked on all the Paramount Road pictures but her first assigned Bing pic was The Big Broadcast (1932).  Subsequently she was costume designer on the following Crosby associated films: The Big Broadcast of 1936 (1935), Mississippi (1935), Double or Nothing (1937), Waikiki Wedding (1937), Sing You Sinners (1938), Paris Honeymoon (1939), The Star Maker (1939), Rhythm on the River (1940), Birth of the Blues (1941), Holiday Inn (1942), Star Spangled Rhythm (1942), Going My Way (1944), Here Come the Waves (1944), Duffy’s Tavern (1945), Out of This World (1945), Blue Skies (1946), Welcome Stranger (1947), Variety Girl (1947), The Emperor Waltz (1948), Riding High (1950), Mr. Music (1950), Here Comes the Groom (1951), Just for You (1952), Little Boy Lost (1953), White Christmas (1954), The Country Girl (1954) and Anything Goes (1956). In addition, she worked on some films on which Bing had peripheral involvement: My Favourite Brunette (1947), The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), Son of Paleface (1952) and Scared Stiff (1953). She was more involved in costuming the ladies and she had little influence on the Crosby wardrobe if it was a modern dress picture.  She did recognise his preferences in casual wear.  When she saw rough weave woollen material that she thought he would like for a sports jacket she bought some and passed it on to him.  It wasn’t to her particular taste but she knew what Bing liked.  About his jackets she commented, “They looked like horse blankets.”  She began freelancing at about the time Bing also left Paramount and they were both involved at Columbia with Pepe (1960). In 1967, she again found a permanent studio employer with Universal and her talents were used on such as Hitchcock’s Family Plot (1976) and Airport 77 (1977). In her forty plus years in the world’s film capital, she won eight Academy Awards for costume design.  Although she worked behind the scenes, she was recognisable because of her fringe and dark glasses.  I don’t think I’ll be shattering any illusions if I reveal that she wore a wig and the dark glasses were to hide a squint.  About the latter she always contended that she was better able to visualise how costumes would look when shot on film in black and white.

HEADLESS HORSEMAN, THE Song from The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949). Like the other songs from this Disney full-length cartoon which Bing performed on the soundtrack, the writers were Don Raye and Gene de Paul.

HEART OF SHOW BUSINESS, THE Promotional film for Variety Clubs International. The facilities of Columbia studio were donated for this 40-minute fund raiser. Participants contributed their services free of charge and Bing was one of five narrators together with Cecil B. DeMille, Burt Lancaster, Edward G. Robinson and James Stewart. Director Ralph Straub used the onscreen talents of Harry Belafonte, Victor Borge, Maurice Chevalier, Jimmy Durante, Sophie Tucker, etc. The film was not shown in the UK.

HEATWAVE Song. Written by Irving Berlin, it turned up in two Bing films: Blue Skies (1946) and White Christmas (1954). It was sung in the former by Olga San Juan but Bing took a crack at it for the latter when it was performed as a duet with Danny Kaye.

HEFLIN, VAN (1910-1971). Actor. He appeared with Bing when both were nearing the end of their film careers, although Heflin was unaware of the heart condition, which would end his life whilst he was still at his acting peak. The film they did together was the remake of Stagecoach (1966). Heflin played Curly Wilcox, the character out to capture the Ringo Kid and collect the reward. Heflin’s show business career began on the Broadway stage when he was eighteen. He entered films in 1936 due to the efforts of Katharine Hepburn who wanted him to appear with her in A Woman Rebels. If I had to select a film for each decade to illustrate Heflin’s craft, my choice would be The Three Musketeers (1948), Shane (1953), The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) and Airport 70 (1970). That last film was Heflin’s swansong. He died of a heart attack whilst swimming. On screen, he always gave the impression of taking the art of acting seriously.

HEISLER, STUART (1894-1979). Heisler was an editor who progressed to director. It was in the first category that he worked on We’re Not Dressing (1934). His next brush with Bing on the big screen was also his most prestigious work for Hollywood: director on Blue Skies (1946). He was a part of the movie capital since its birth. He began as a prop man in 1913 and moved up through the ranks. Blue Skies was not typical Heisler, being sandwiched between The Glass Key (1942) and Tokyo Joe (1949). He was never lauded by the critics, probably because he was most at home making action films. Fifties journeyman assignments like Beachhead (1954) and The Burning Hills (1956) are typical. He moved into television work in the 1960s, where he no doubt felt comfortable in meeting the less stringent requirements of that medium.

HENDERSON, RAY (1896-1970). Composer. Born Raymond Brost, Henderson was one third of the song writing team of DeSylva, Brown and Henderson. The only Henderson composition Bing sang in a film was “Birth of the Blues”, featured in the 1941 Paramount picture of the same title. The peak years of the songwriting trio were over by then. Their heyday occurred around the time of their hit shows “Sunny Side Up” in 1929 and “Good News” the following year. There was a film biography of the partnership in 1956 called The Best Things in Life Are Free in which Henderson was portrayed by Dan Dailey.

HENDRIX, WANDA (1928-1981). Actress born with the made-for-showbiz name of Dixie Wanda Hendrix. She was fourth-billed as Emily Walters in the Bing picture Welcome Stranger (1947) although she did not have a plot significant role as the daughter of the drunken editor of the town newspaper. That same year she was herself in Paramount’s talent showcase Variety Girl.   These early film appearances showed an early promise that was not fulfilled. She accepted routine parts in such as Song of Surrender (1949), Montana Territory (1952) and The Black Dakotas (1954). She attempted an unsuccessful comeback in Stage to Thunder Rock (1964). She was married to Audie Murphy in 1949 for a scant year. He was the first of three husbands.

HENRY, WILLIAM (1918-1982) Actor. Henry played Egbert Clark in Double or Nothing (1937). Egbert was the brother of Bing’s leading lady, Mary Carlisle, in the film. It was made at the start of Henry’s adolescent acting career. He began at age eight and played bit roles whilst still undergoing schooling. Things began looking up a few years after Double or Nothing and by the mid-1940s he had adopted the more manly first name of Bill as star in a several low budget “B” pictures with titles such as The Invisible Informer (1946) and The Denver Kid (1948). He was my hero for a while in the serial Canadian Mounties vs the Atomic Invaders (1953). His career petered out in the early 1970s, but not before he had appeared in a couple of quality westerns in the 1960s: Two Rode Together (1961) and The Man who Shot Liberty Valance (1962).

HENVILLE, ALEXANDRA LEA (1938-2024) Child actor whose career was over by the time she was four. Known to the world as Baby Sandy she made her debut in East Side of Heaven (1939) as a boy! The scene we all remember is cab driver Crosby serenading him/her with That Sly Old Gentleman. She was under contract to Universal before she was one year old and followed her Bing picture debut with Sandy, Little Accident, Sandy is a Lady, Sandy Gets Her Man and Sandy Steps Out. By then it was 1941. She had been voted baby of the year by “Parents” magazine and featured on the cover of “Life” magazine. Her last film, released just after her fifth birthday, was Johnny Doughboy. When she grew up, she got a proper job as a legal secretary. She married and divorced twice, and had three sons.

HER DILEMMA   Film. This was the British release title of Confessions of a Co-ed (1931). We weren’t into Americanisms in those days.

HERE COME THE WAVES Film. This 1944 flag waver for Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service was about as subtle a recruitment film as Top Gun (1986) proved to be for U.S. Navy pilots. Bing is Johnny Cabot, a successful singer not a million miles removed from the newer fella Frank Sinatra. Betty Hutton plays a dual role, the blonde Miss H. falling for Bing whilst her brunette twin gets him in the end. Bing is accepted by the U.S. Navy despite being colour blind and the scheming of the blonde Betty Hutton results in his being put in charge of a recruitment show aimed at swelling the ranks of WAVES. This enables us to hear the ever popular “Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive” sung in a Navy revue. By the time of the film’s release at Christmas, 1944, it was apparent that World War II was nearing its end and it was seen as escapist entertainment of the first order. Audiences put it into Variety’s top moneymaking films of 1944/5 and even the serious critics fell for it. In his first review of 1945, James Agee wrote in The Nation: “I would enjoy Crosby even if he did not amusingly kid Sinatra.” But does anyone know why it took Bing thirty years to get round to recording one of the film’s major ballads, “That Old Black Magic”? Or why the title song, specially written by Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen, was thrown away in the closing sequence to be sung by a chorus? Paramount and Decca had always capitalised on the publicity and sales generated by a title song 78 tie-in release.

HERE COMES THE GROOM Film. There are a couple of tenuous links between this and the previous film.  Both are connected with the film’s Academy Award winning song “In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the evening”. Johnny Mercer wrote the words and Betty Hutton was the songstress he had in mind when he composed it. It was to be featured in a film about Mack Sennett with Hutton being cast as Mabel Normand. A musical about Sennett and Normand had to wait a couple of decades when Mack and Mabel came to Broadway and the Johnny Mercer-Hoagy Carmichael composition of “Cool” stayed in a drawer. Then Bing heard a demonstration disc sung by Mercer with Hoagy providing piano accompaniment and the song was in. The other standout novelty song in the film was “Misto Cristofo Columbo”, written by Ray Evans and Jay Livingston. When the film was in the planning stage Robert Riskin, one of the film’s four writers, envisaged James Stewart playing the lead role of foreign correspondent Pete Garvey.  Stewart turned down Riskin’s offer and as a result the writer then sold the property to Paramount.  He believed the story had comedy potential and told the studio it would be ideal for Bob Hope.  However, Paramount executive Irving Asher felt that Bing would be perfect casting in the leading role.  Bing agreed to make the film and he was instrumental in the part of the French orphan boy going to Jackie Gencel.  He had noticed the boy when he was on vacation in Paris in the summer of 1950 and saw the film Plus de Vacancies Pour le Bon Dieu, a film in which Gencel played a street urchin.  Bing coached the boy sufficiently for him to speak his lines in Here Comes the Groom. The film’s other young performer, the blind girl Theresa, was played by Anna Maria Alberghetti.  She was given the part by the film’s director, Frank Capra, after he had seen her singing on the Ed Sullivan Show.  The plot outline is about Bing, a foreign correspondent who wants to adopt two French war orphans. To achieve this he has to be a married man. He knows the very girl. She is his ex-fiancée, Jane Wyman, who is about to wed her boss (Franchot Tone). The reviewer for “Time” magazine wrote: “Crosby and Capra (the film’s director) are up to their oldest tricks and ought to amuse all but those optimistic moviegoers who dare to hope for new ones.” Here Comes the Groom was placed 19th in “Variety’s” top grossing films of the year, which in this case was 1951.

HERE IS MY HEART Film. Made in 1934, it signified the end of Bing’s original commitment to Paramount Pictures, which had called for an initial five movies over a three-year period. It could have been specially written for Bing, as he is seemingly typecast as a millionaire radio crooner. In fact, it was a remake of The Grand Duchess and the Waiter, a silent picture made in 1926 with Adolph Menjou in the lead.   The story features Bing out to win the heart of the fair Princess Alexandra (Kitty Carlisle).   There are the usual plot complications but the film’s brief running time of 75 minutes still allows Crosby to croon three songs, which he truly made his own: “June in January”, “With Every Breath I Take” and “Love Is Just Around the Corner”. In case there is any doubt, Bing’s Paramount contract was extended for another three years after Here Is My Heart. This must have surprised Bing because he went on record in August 1934 with the comment: “As soon as the current film musical craze has petered out - it is just about washed up right now - I’m through.”

HERE LIES LOVE Song. This Leo Robin-Ralph Rainger song was especially composed for the 1932 Paramount Picture The Big Broadcast. The first time we hear it is when Arthur Tracy sings it in a night-club scene. Then the orchestra of Vincent Lopez plays it in another night-club scene. Bing finally gets a crack at it in a touching scene where he sings the song whilst tearing up the photographs of the girl that jilted him. 

HERVEY, IRENE [Irene Herwick] (1909-1998) Actress.  Early in East Side of Heaven (1939), Bing, in the role of a singing messenger employed by the postal service, meets Mona Barrett (Irene Hervey), an old friend who had since married.  That was also Irene Hervey’s status in real life because she had recently married her second husband, Allan Jones, father of Jack.  He was big box-office as a singer whilst she was gaining recognition as a versatile actress. She had been in films since 1933 and her dimpled looks had lifted the ‘B’ pictures in which she had major roles or the major features in which she took supporting parts.  The 1935 Charlie Chan in Shanghai was in the former category, Destry Rides Again (1939) the latter.  She divorced Allan Jones in 1957 and managed to find employment on television as well as appearing in some significant big screen successes like Cactus Flower (1969) and Play Misty for Me (1971).

HEYMAN, EDWARD (1907-1981). Lyric writer. Heyman had two songs in three separate Crosby pictures of the 1930s. They were “Out of Nowhere” in I Surrender Dear (1931) and Confessions of a Co-ed (1931) and “Moonburn” in Anything Goes (1935). A third song didn’t make it although he wrote “After All, You’re All I’m After” for She Loves Me Not (1934). By the end of the 1930s Heyman was a permanent Hollywood fixture, writing the words for songs in average movies such as Delightfully Dangerous (1945), Northwest Outpost (1947) and The Kissing Bandit (1948). His classiest song was probably “Love Letters” which he wrote in collaboration with Victor Young.

HICKMAN, DARRYL (1931-2024) Actor.  At the age of eight Hickman was playing a bit part in his second film, The Star Maker (1939).  He was one of the seven singing newsboys who joined Bing in singing “If I Was a Millionaire”.  Like many child actors of the time, he had a stage mother who had him attending dance classes at three, performing with a juvenile troupe like Larry Earl (Bing) ran in The Star Maker at age five and making his film debut at seven.  By the time he was a teenager he was a veteran in Hollywood terms, still managing to play significant parts such as the young George Gershwin in Rhapsody in Blue (1945).  Before the age of forty, he had to accept work on such schlock assignments as The Tingler (1959).  So he began producing for television and made only one further feature film appearance.  That was in Network (1976), which was a satire about American television.  Once again, like in The Star Maker, Darryl Hickman was using life’s experience to good effect on film.

HIGH ON THE LIST Song. Composed for the film Mr. Music (1950) by Bing’s film songwriters of the period, Messrs. Burke and Van Heusen. This was one of several strong ballads in the picture. In the film, it is referred to as one of the earlier hits of songwriter Paul Merrick (Bing), although Merrick is trying to pass it off as a recent composition when he is bereft of inspiration.

HIGH SOCIETY Film. Is there any reader that has not seen this 1956 musical triumph? Just in case this listing is placed in a time capsule for the benefit of posterity, I’ll repeat the précis of the plot printed in the ‘Radio Times Film and Video Guide’: “Time is short if playboy/composer C. K. Dexter-Haven (Crosby) is to reclaim his beautiful ex-wife Tracy Lord (Grace Kelly) before she marries another, especially with cynical reporter Mike Connor (Sinatra) caught up in the romantic complications.”  Producer Sol C. Siegel knew that M-G-M would be watching the performance of High Society very closely because it was his first film for that studio after moving from 20th Century-Fox.  He said his greatest problem was working the filming into the individual schedules of Crosby, Sinatra and Kelly.  The latter was already at his disposal because of her existing contract with M-G-M, which paid her $1,000 a week plus bonuses.  Siegel paid well to secure the other talent he wanted.  Both Sinatra and Cole Porter received a quarter of a million dollars.  Bing’s remuneration was $200,000 plus a percentage of the gross, which brought him about the same again.  The cost of the story was negligible because it was already owned by M-G-M where it had been produced in 1940 as The Philadelphia Story.  Because Siegel wanted High Society to be a showcase for Louis Armstrong’s vocal and trumpet performances, he shifted the locale to Newport, Rhode Island, so that Satchmo played himself as a participant at the Newport annual jazz festival.  The apparent affection Bing and Louis held for each other is well known, although this was perhaps more of a public display if we accept Armstrong’s account of their relationship:

“When we finished High Society Bing gave me a golden money clip which I used, inscribed ‘To Louis from Bing’.  And when he had a baby girl, I sent him a telegram, ‘Now you have jazz’.  He had a whole wall of my records and every record he makes I buy.  Be we aren’t social.  In fact, I’ve never been invited to the home of a movie star - not even Bing’s.”

This is the most significant Crosby musical of the 1950s.  High Society was the top ticket seller in the U.K. for 1957.  Against its cost of $1,500,000, it earned $5,800,000 in North America alone.  It is possible to measure the film’s popularity in the context of twentieth century cinema going.  London’s prestige cinema from the birth of the talkies in 1928 until its redevelopment in 1961 was the Empire in Leicester Square.  This West End showcase for M-G-M films was the finest barometer of that studios’ product at the time of their London opening.  Its seating capacity was 3,500 and all of M-G-M’s films were premiered there before entering a general release pattern.  From our point of view, it was historically important because detailed house records were kept of all the films shown there.  So we find the most popular week on record was from 11th May to 18th May, 1929 when 82,849 people saw The Broadway Melody.  The biggest day was Tuesday, 27th December 1938.  On this public holiday, 14,388 people paid to see Robert Donat in The Citadel.  Our interest comes much later, when weekly audiences were quite often below that Christmas high of 1938.  Bing made two films in the mid-fifties for M-G-M and they both played the Empire within a twelve-month span.  They were High Society and Man on Fire.  In the peak years M-G-M made 52 ‘A’ pictures a year, so extended runs were unnecessary, but from the late forties the tendency was to allow a film to play as long as it was good box-office.  High Society was perceived as something special and it was booked to run over the Christmas, 1956 period.  It became the Empire’s most successful booking for that year.  It opened on Thursday, 13th December 1956 and the first week’s audience totalled 46,728.  Week two was of six day’s duration because of Christmas Day when the figure went down to 39,758.  The New Year week then took the figure back up to 45,487.  The figures for the full weeks were the best since The Dam Busters, which began a seven week run on 16th May, 1955.  High Society ran for six weeks and for the last two of those weeks it played simultaneously at the adjoining Ritz Cinema, which was also owned by M-G-M.  The West End story doesn’t end there.  In May 1958 the Mario Lanza starrer Seven Hills of Rome was booked by the Empire and disappointed at the box-office.  The next available Metro film, Raintree County, was not ready for exhibition so High Society was revived for one week to replace the Lanza musical.  Its audience that week was 13,306, which bettered the 13,222 achieved by Seven Hills of Rome on its London opening.  Perhaps it ought to be revealed that all was not as rosy in the garden for Bing as far as films were concerned.  Man on Fire did the worst opening week business of 1957 at the Empire when it had its British premiere on 28th November.  11,012 people bought tickets to see it. 

HIGH TIME Film. On the other hand, this 1960 musical comedy for 20th Century-Fox is in a different league. That does not mean it fails to make for rewarding viewing. Bing excels at this sort of light comedy, even if he doesn’t fall into the Cary Grant category. The film also contains a Sammy Cahn-James Van Heusen composition now regarded as a standard - “The Second Time Around”. If the picture failed it is because it attempted to appeal to the youth audience by casting Fabian and Tuesday Weld whilst hoping to bring in more mature audiences who were attracted by the top billing of Bing Crosby. The film fell between two stools and never secured a full circuit release in the U.K. The plot concerns Crosby, a widower who owns a chain of fast food restaurants, returning to university to further his education. Half a dozen films have taken this basic premise in the last forty years but, whilst they rely on broad comedy, in High Time Bing introduces a gentler humour and some old fashioned romance with his personal choice of leading lady, Nicole Maurey.

HIGH TOR Regarded by the “Guinness Book of Film Facts and Feats” as the first ever television movie, this musical adaptation of a 1936 Broadway play was transmitted by the American CBS television network on March 10, 1956. It has never been screened in Great Britain, although the Decca album was issued by Brunswick in the U.K. There were some good songs in the adaptation although none were considered hit parade material, hence none was released as a 78/45 single outside of the U.S.A. The coupling chosen for that single was “When You’re in Love” / “John Barleycorn”, but the strongest ballad in the show was “Once Upon a Long Ago”, sung twice, first by leading lady Julie Andrews and then by Bing. The songs were written by the play’s original author, Maxwell Anderson, and the producer of the television presentation, Arthur Schwartz.

HILL, BILLY (1899-1940). American composer who wrote two of Bing’s best-loved cowboy songs. In We’re Not Dressing (1934) we are only treated to a snatch of “The Last Round-up” although Bing had recorded a full version of it the previous year. Two years later, there is a beautiful performance by Bing of “Empty Saddles” in Rhythm on the Range. Hill usually wrote his own words but for “Empty Saddles” he put a tune to a poem by J. Keirn Brennan. He studied classical music before becoming a cowboy, that latter occupation explaining his affinity with the above songs and other hits such as “Wagon Wheels” and “Call of the Canyon”. Bing also had great success with Hill’s “There’s a Cabin in the Pines”.

HINDS, SAMUEL S. (1875-1948) Actor.  Hinds was nearing sixty when he made his Hollywood debut, so it is no surprise that when he appeared in his two Crosby films he played a character one generation older than Bing’s leading ladies.  In Rhythm on the Range (1936), he was Frances Farmer’s dad and one year later in Double or Nothing he was Mary Carlisle’s uncle.  He was also in The Big Broadcast of 1936 (1935), although he was not seen on screen in the Crosby segment.

HOFFMAN, AL (1902-1960) Composer.  Hoffman co-wrote two songs, which Bing sang in three of his early films.  For the short Blue of the Night (1932) the standard “Auf Wiedersehen, My Dear” was sung in a night club setting and in Hollywood on Parade No. 2 (1932), he sings the same song to Gracie Allen on learning she is married to George Burns. The long forgotten “Ya Got Love” was featured by the Rhythm Boys in Confessions of a Co-Ed (1931) in the sequence which showed them performing at a school dance.  Ed Nelson and Al Goodhart were listed as co-writers on both.  The year prior to receiving credit on the two Crosby films, Hoffman’s composing career had been given a boost when “Heartaches” became a hit.  Plenty of music lovers were less than complimentary about his wartime effort “Mairzy Doats” but he probably redeemed himself with songs such as “Takes Two to Tango” and “Papa Loves Mambo” in the 1950s.

HOLDEN, FAY (1895-1973) [Dorothy Fay Hammerton] In Double or Nothing (1937) she is left a modest bequest by her father-in-law so that a plot can develop surrounding his remaining fortune.  She had been a dancer before leaving England for Hollywood and making Double or Nothing the year after her debut in I Married a Doctor.  She will be forever remembered as Mickey Rooney’s mother in the Andy Hardy series and made her final big screen appearance in the last one, Andy Hardy Comes Home (1958).

HOLDEN, WILLIAM (1918-1981) Actor and a very good one when he was on form. Such an instance was in The Country Girl (1954) when he played Bernie Dodd the Broadway director who fought for the Crosby character to be given a chance again and again whilst doing his best to win the affections of Grace Kelly, Bing’s wife in the film. Holden had been marginally involved in two previous Crosby pictures. Like everyone else in the cast, he had a small part in Variety Girl (1947) and in 1951 he was in the deadly dull short You Can Change the World. It took him less than a year to become a star. A Paramount talent scout spotted him when he was acting as a student. He played an extra in Prison Farm (1938) before the ink on his contract was dry, had one line in Million Dollar Legs shortly afterwards and made the big time as Joe Bonaparte, the boxer-violinist in Golden Boy in what should rightly be regarded as his first real screen role. His handsome features ensured he had major roles in quality pictures thereafter. There were a few clinkers but his golden decade was the 1950s when he scored in Sunset Boulevard (1950) Born Yesterday (1951), Stalag 17 (1953) and The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957). Subsequent films tended to be action movies rather than acting assignments similar to The Country Girl. Alvarez Kelly (1966) and The Wild Bunch (1969) are typical. His last good film was Network (1976).   By then drinking had thickened the once handsome features and although his last films were still mainstream he was no longer a box-office dependable.

HOLIDAY INN Film. This 1942 Paramount picture proved to be Bing’s most successful movie excursion to date. This was no doubt helped by the first teaming of Crosby with Fred Astaire, the craving by the English speaking world for escapist entertainment during the Second World War and the strong Irving Berlin score - including the most popular record ever made, “White Christmas”. The film’s plot begins on Christmas Eve and ends on New Year’s Eve two years later. Bing quits his nightclub act with Fred Astaire and Virginia Dale to settle for a rural life in Connecticut. The tug of show business sees him opening his place as a nightclub, but only on American public holidays. The romantic sub plot finds Bing and Fred vying for the affections of Marjorie Reynolds, the nightclub’s female entertainer. Bing wins her but Fred doesn’t do so badly in settling for Virginia Dale. The film’s holiday angle provided the challenge to Irving Berlin to pen songs relating to Independence Day, Easter, Lincoln’s and Washington’s Birthday, Valentine’s Day and Thanksgiving. Publicity for the film made reference to Berlin writing thirteen new songs.  However, “White Christmas” was written a few years earlier when Berlin was trying to place it in the Astaire-Rogers musical Top Hat, which was shot in 1935.  Bing introduced the song on a Kraft Music Hall programme some eight months before the Holiday Inn premiere.  In addition, both “Lazy” and “Easter Parade” were written by Berlin before he was assigned to write the songs for Holiday Inn.  Shooting through the winter of 1941/42 the film was sneak previewed in July and readied for a premiere in August of 1942 with Crosby waxing ten Decca sides of songs from the picture in May of that year.  Two months after the film was premiered it was showing throughout North America.  Paramount took regard of the appraisals submitted by cinema managers whenever studio product was exhibited.  One report from the sticks was submitted by E. A. Seaggs, manager of the Lincoln Theatre in Robinson, Illinois.  Holiday Inn played at his cinema from Wednesday to Saturday, September 23-26, 1942.  He wrote: “One of the best song and dance productions ever made.  Played four days where our usual run is two days.  Business picked up each day with several coming back to see it twice.  (I saw it three times myself).  Book this for extended time.  You won’t be sorry.”  This from a hard-nosed businessman in the U.S.A.  What was the reaction from rural England?  In 1993, the attendance figures for the Majestic cinema in Macclesfied were discovered.  They revealed that the most popular film shown there in 1943 was Holiday Inn. The North of England audiences had wide ranging tastes, which is why Frank Randle in Somewhere on Leave was in second place.

The set of Holiday Inn was responsible with bringing together Frank Sinatra with his idol Bing Crosby for the first time.  Sinatra was in Hollywood working on M-G-M’s Ship Ahoy.  He was featured in that picture as the boy singer with Tommy Dorsey’s orchestra.  He was friendly with ex-Dorsey trumpeter Yank Lawson who had moved on to work with the Bob Crosby band.  Lawson recalled: “We were doing the music for Holiday Inn and Sinatra asked me if he could go out and see the filming.  He wanted to watch Bing work.....Crosby was the big star of that time and Sinatra was still just the singer with the band.  Frank met me out at the Paramount lot and I took him in.  He just loved it, watching Bing.”  

A few other facts about the film are:

· Both Mary Martin and Rita Hayworth were potential leading ladies before Marjorie Reynolds was cast    

· The singing voice of Marjorie Reynolds was provided by Martha Mears  

· The idea for the musical was hatched by Berlin and producer Moss Hart who conceived it as a Broadway revue

· Berlin’s song “This Is a Great Country” was intended for the film but was not used

· The 1942 Oscar for best song went to Irving Berlin for “White Christmas”

· It was the first Crosby picture to register in the UK box-office top ten league table, where it took 5th placing in 1942.

· It broke all previous records at cinema box-offices during its first run of Paramount theatres

· It made Variety’s list of top twenty money making films of 1941/42

· It had a profitable revival in the U.S.A. in 1949

HOLLANDER, FREDERICK (1896-1976) London born composer (to German parents) who didn’t have too much luck in placing his songs in Crosby musicals. The catchy duet “The House That Jack Built for Jill” was deleted from the release print of Rhythm on the Range (1936) and “Memories” was written for the same film but was not used. “Am I Awake?” and “Hopelessly in Love” were written for the remake of Anything Goes (1956) but not used. The solitary composition that made it to a Bing picture was a good one, though. That was “My Heart and I”, featured in the first version of Anything Goes (1936). It followed Hollander’s first success when he wrote “Falling in Love Again” in his pre-Hollywood days for Marlene Dietrich to sing in The Blue Angel (1930). A couple of subsequent compositions were made famous by Crosby duettists. Dorothy Lamour popularised “Moonlight and Shadows” and Connie Boswell had a hit with “Whispers in the Dark” After a twenty-year stint in Hollywood, Hollander returned to Germany in 1956.

HOLLOWAY, STERLING (1905-1992) Character actor. He appeared in three Crosby films - Going Hollywood (1933), Doctor Rhythm (1938) and Star Spangled Rhythm (1942), but it is the 1938 movie for which he is best remembered by Crosby watchers. He played Luke, the milk roundsman, who joins Bing and another high school colleague to break into Central Park Zoo in the opening scenes of the film. They then deliver a high-spirited rendition of their school song “Public School 43”. Holloway was a screen regular playing delivery boys/country bumpkins/soda jerks in over one hundred films during the studio production line decades of the thirties and forties. He started without making use of his voice in the silent era and ended using just his voice only in Disney cartoons such The Aristocats (1970).

HOLLYWOOD CANINE CANTEEN Cartoon released by Warner Bros. on April 20, 1946. In it, a group of celebrity dogs, led by an ‘Edward G. Robinson’ look-alike and including ‘Jimmy Durante’, decide that celebrity dogs need a nightclub of their own. What follows is very similar to Hollywood Steps Out, (see below) except that all the celebrities are drawn as dogs. A Bing dog (voiced by Richard Bickenbach) sings “When My Dreamboat Comes Home” but loses a girl to a pencil thin Sinatra dog singing “Trade Winds”. The director was Tex Avery.

HOLLYWOOD DAFFY 1946 cartoon. This Warner Bros. release was directed by cartoon regular Friz Freleng (1905-1995). It begins with Daffy Duck walking onto the Warner Brothers lot and attempting to pass the studio guard by disguising himself as various screen personalities. In the guise of Bing, he puts a pipe into his mouth and croons “When My Dreamboat Comes Home”. Sadly, his ruse does not fool the guard, which is unfortunate because Mel Blanc does a very passable impression of the Crosby voice.

HOLLYWOOD HANDICAP 1938 short film.  This and the following entry were typical of the work, which kept Louis Lewyn productions buoyant during the 1930s.  Filming on location meant no studio overheads.  This ten-minute programme filler was made at the Santa Anita racetrack and released through M-G-M.  The simple plot involved stable hands raising money to race a horse.  The director was Buster Keaton.  His fall from grace as a master of screen comedy was rapid and by the mid-thirties he was accepting movie assignments in order to pay the bills.  As for Bing’s appearance, he is seen together with Hollywood notables like Mickey Rooney, Al Jolson and Dorothy Lamour as spectators at the Hollywood Derby, which was being run at the racetrack on the day filming took place.  A simple chance encounter that made cinema audiences sit up and point at the screen.

HOLLYWOOD ON PARADE Series of short films. These were typical of support features of the early 1930s. Most of the major studios had similar series and used them to promote their contract players. Louis Lewyn produced two such series for Paramount in 1932 and 1933, with running times of around ten minutes each. They appeared on a monthly basis. The films portrayed movie stars off duty in what were supposed to be taken for candid shots but which were usually well-orchestrated publicity pieces used to create interest in the studio contractees. Bing was in the February 1932 edition and then in the January, April and July editions of the following year. The Crosby footage is as follows:

· February 1932. Dialogue with George Burns and Gracie Allen followed by the Bing singing “Auf Wiedersehen, My Dear”.

· January 1933. Dialogue between Bing and Mary Pickford following a sequence where Miss Pickford is seen listening to Bing singing “Down the Old Ox Road” on the car radio.

· April 1933. Bing, Jack Oakie and Skeets Gallagher sing “Boo-boo-boo”. Bing sings “Buckin’ the Wind”.

· July 1933. Dialogue between Bing, John Barrymore and Harry Langdon

HOLLYWOOD STEPS OUT Cartoon. Released by Warner Bros. on May 24, 1941, this colour cartoon depicts caricatures of Bing together with Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable, the Three Stooges and other screen celebrities of the decade. The voice impersonations were impressive. The Crosby segment of the cartoon was utilised in the 1975 documentary feature Brother Can You Spare a Dime?

HOLLYWOOD VICTORY CARAVAN Documentary short. Made at the end of the Second World War for the U.S. War Activities Committee it was shown in American cinemas in 1945 to encourage citizens to continue buying war bonds. Paramount produced and distributed the film and it featured several of their contract players of the time. Bob Hope, Betty Hutton, Alan Ladd, Robert Benchley, Barbara Stanwyck and William Demarest appeared alongside Bing. The Crosby contribution was “We’ve Got Another Bond to Buy”, which no doubt pleased the U.S. Treasury Department.

HOLM, CELESTE (1917-2012) Actress. She had a major part in High Society (1956) as Frank Sinatra’s sidekick Liz Imbrie. In the film, both were on the payroll of ‘Spy’ magazine with Holm playing the part of the photographer assigned to cover the wedding of Tracy Lord (Grace Kelly). It was her tenth year in films, having signed a contract with Twentieth Century-Fox in 1946 following a successful run on Broadway in the role of Ado Annie in Oklahoma.   She won an Oscar for her performance in a supporting role in her third film, Gentleman’s Agreement. Two more Oscar nominations followed for Come to the Stable (1949) and All About Eve (1950). High Society found her at her popularity peak and she appeared in only four more films before her farewell to Hollywood appearance in The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover in 1978.

HONOR CADDIE Short. A Technicolor one-reeler made in 1949 to whip up support for scholarships for caddies.  Hardly the worthiest of charitable causes, it warranted the participation and support of that well-known golfer Bing Crosby who lipsynchs to the version of “Tomorrow’s My Lucky Day” used in Don’t Hook Now (1942).

HOORAY FOR HOLLYWOOD 1976 compilation film narrated by Mickey Rooney. It was a tribute to the films and stars of Hollywood in the 1930s and used film clips from that decade. Bing was seen singing “Down the Old Ox Road” from an edition of Hollywood on Parade mentioned above. A dialogue sequence from the Sennett short Sing, Bing, Sing (1932) was also included.

HOOT MON Song sung in Road to Bali by Crosby and Hope. The two are dressed in kilts and play the bagpipes as they entertain an audience, which includes Dorothy Lamour as Princess Lalah. The song is given a brief reprise later in a sequence where dancing girls are produced from a wicker snake basket. If you viewed the film on its first U.K. television outing on Christmas Day, 1965 you would have missed the reprise version because the BBC edited the sequence in view of the scantily clad females. Like all of the songs specially composed for the film, the words and music were by Johnny Burke and James Van Heusen respectively.

HOPE, BOB [Leslie Townes Hope] (1903-2003) Actor/comedian associated with Bing on film from 1940 onwards. The list of movies in which they both appeared spans 32 years. For the record the films are:

· Road to Singapore (1940) as Ace Lannigan

· Road to Zanzibar (1941) as Hubert Fearless Frazier

· My Favourite Blonde (1942) as Larry Haines. Bing made a gag appearance

· Road to Morocco (1942) as Orville Turkey Jackson

· Star Spangled Rhythm (1942) as a master of ceremonies

· The Princess and the Pirate (1944) as Sylvester the Great. Bing made a gag appearance

· All Star Bond Rally (1945) Short. As himself

· Hollywood Victory Caravan (1945) Short. As himself

· Road to Utopia (1946) as Chester Hootan

· Variety Girl (1947) as himself

· My Favourite Brunette (1947) as Ronnie Jackson. Bing made a gag appearance

· Road to Rio (1948) as Hot Lips Barton

· You Can Change the World (1951) Short. As himself

· The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) Brief appearances by Crosby and Hope as themselves

· Son of Paleface (1952) as Junior Potter. Bing made a gag appearance

· Road to Bali (1952) as Harold Gridley

· Scared Stiff (1952) as himself in gag appearance with Bing

· Faith Hope and Hogan (1953) Short. As himself

· Showdown at Ulcer Gulch (1958) Short. As himself

· Alias Jesse James (1959) as Milford Farnsworth. Bing made a gag appearance

· The Road to Hong Kong (1962) as Chester Babcock

· Cancel My Reservation (1972) as Dan Bartlett. Bing made a gag appearance

Their professional relationship extended beyond cinema films. They regularly appeared on each other's radio shows and during World War Two gave their services to entertain the troops or sell war bonds. They were teamed together on ten recordings beginning with the twinning of “Road to Morocco” with “Put it There, Pal” in 1944. Television saw them frequently appearing together on the same show, sometimes unexpectedly as “surprise” guests. They were both good golfers and spent time together on various courses both in the States and the U.K. When Hope made an eightieth birthday tour of British venues, he devoted a large section of his act to recalling their friendship. Ten years earlier, it was highly likely that Bing would have strolled on from the wings part way through Hope’s performance. Their show business personas depicted them as constantly feuding and although this was a sham perpetuated by their gag writers, quite often it was the unrehearsed ad lib which brought the biggest laughs from their audiences. Born in Eltham in 1903, Bob’s parents went to the U.S. when he was four and the family settled in Cleveland. Hope gagged that it was his idea to leave England when he realised that he would never be crowned King. He grew up knowing that he was born to entertain. At ten, he won a Charlie Chaplin impersonation contest. According to his studio biography, he was a newsboy, soda jerk and boxer before he made his living touring in an act of “song, patter and eccentric dancing”. By then vaudeville was coming to an end and he wisely switched to the musical theatre, securing a part in the Broadway hit Roberta in 1933. Whilst in New York he had his first opportunity to try out for the movies and he appeared in eight comedy shorts. However it was his success on radio, which brought him to the attention of Hollywood, hence his feature film debut in The Big Broadcast of 1938. That film also introduced him to his theme song, “Thanks for the Memory”. He began to develop the cowardly character he portrayed so well in The Cat and the Canary in 1939 and it surfaced in box-office hits for several years thereafter in films such as The Ghostbreakers (1940), Caught in the Draft (1941), Monsieur Beaucaire (1946) and My Favourite Spy (1951). By then there was recognition that he could take on more serious comedy roles. The Seven Little Foys (1955) was a good example. That was followed by Beau James (1957) and The Facts of Life (1960). Unfortunately Hope was unable to sustain quality adult comedy for the rest of his big screen career. I was a faithful fan for a few of his 1960s comedies - I’ll Take Sweden (1965), Boy Did I Get a Wrong Number (1966) and Eight on the Lam (1967) but the standard became increasingly poor. Either Hope’s ability to select good material or his failure to keep up to date with changing times let him down. It wasn’t that he couldn’t find good writers. When he performed in this country, topical gags were written for him by the likes of Bob Monkhouse, Dennis Goodwin and Dick Vosborough and the laughs generated were well earned. Either to gain more control or increase his income he billed himself executive producer for his final film, Cancel My Reservation (1972). It was no funnier than his films of the previous decade. Of course, Hope’s name could add marquee value to films even then. His regular emcee duties at the annual presentation of the Academy Awards assured him a world-wide audience. He still toured the world to entertain American troops stationed abroad and his Stateside television shows gathered respectable ratings.   But somehow you got the feeling he was coasting along on his reputation. In his later years eye problems reduced his public appearances although his interest in golf did not diminish until his last few years. He was regularly called the richest entertainer who ever lived, a fact he never failed to deny. Bob Hope will go down in history as the middle twentieth century’s major contributor to American entertainment in its broadest sense.

HOPELESSLY IN LOVE Song. This was one of two songs Leo Robin and Frederick Hollander wrote for the 1936 version of Anything Goes. It was not used. The songwriters also composed Am I Awake, which was similarly by-passed.

HOPKINS, MIRIAM (1902-1972). Actress. She played Curly Flagg in She Loves Me Not (1934) and although she did not get Bing in the end - that honour went to Kitty Carlisle - it is her praise of Bing which results in his being reinstated as a student to Princetown university. She had been a contract star with Paramount for the previous four years and had made a massive impact on audiences and critics alike in the best version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932). The year after her Crosby film, she moved to Goldwyn and in 1939 to Warner Bros. It was at that studio that she made her best-remembered films, usually as a blue-eyed blonde floozy. Her forties successes included Virginia City (1940), Old Acquaintance (1943) and The Heiress (1949). She descended to taking character roles in the early fifties and her last released film was The Chase (1966).

HORNBECK, WILLIAM (1901-1983). Film editor. The pace of Bing’s Mack Sennett shorts fairly zips along. In a running time of twenty minutes, a plot and four songs unfold in what were supporting films, which must have eclipsed the popularity of the main feature on occasion. Credit has to be given to the editor who assembled these two-reelers, which are still entertaining us today. Hornbeck worked on them whilst employed as supervising editor for Sennett. He met his boss in 1916 when he came to work for Keystone as a lab assistant. By the time he was working on the Crosby featurettes he felt he could do better. So in 1934 he came to England to work for Alexander Korda, where he was put in charge of editing. He returned to the States at the outbreak of war and his only other Crosby credit came with Riding High (1950). His best work followed: A Place in the Sun (1951), Shane (1953), and Giant (1956). By 1966, he was vice-president of Universal.

HORNBLOW, ARTHUR, Jr. (1893 -1976). Producer. He produced two Crosby films: Mississippi (1935) and Waikiki Wedding (1937). The former was one of the first responsibilities he took on after joining Paramount from Sam Goldwyn. He married Myrna Loy between his two Crosby assignments and moved to M-G-M in 1942, the same year the two were divorced. He was involved with some good films including The Asphalt Jungle (1950) and Oklahoma! (1955).

HORSE THAT KNOWS THE WAY BACK HOME, A Song. In a scene in Dixie (1943), Bing as Dan Emmett performs his minstrel act with his colleagues but sings this Johnny Burke - James Van Heusen song solo. Bing never made a studio recording of the song and he did not feature it in his radio shows. If you don’t have Dixie on video then you need to track down a copy of the Jasmine CD “Going Hollywood” Volume 3 to sample this seldom heard Crosby vocal.

HORSE TOLD ME, THE Song. On the other hand, this other Burke-Van Heusen composition had reasonable exposure on disc and radio. It comes from Riding High (1950) and is given a spirited rendering by Bing and assorted partygoers when the film’s plot makes it seem as though financial difficulties are a thing of the past.

HORTON, EDWARD EVERETT (1886-1970). Actor. Strictly speaking EEH was only in one genuine Crosby picture: Paris Honeymoon (1938), although he was third billed after Douglas Fairbanks and Bebe Daniels in the 1930 Reaching for the Moon. Bing was shoehorned into that picture to perform “When the Folks High up Do the Mean Low Down.” In Paris Honeymoon, Horton played Ernest Figg, the butler to millionaire cowboy Lucky Lawton (Bing Crosby). Horton specialised in manservants or sidekicks and was on view throughout the late thirties in similar roles in the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers RKO musicals. He made about 150 films and his befuddled performances could brighten the most ordinary movie. My own favourites from his first three decades in Hollywood are Ruggles of Red Gap (1924), Lost Horizon (1937) and Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941). The opportunities for Horton to display his type of humour diminished after the Second World War and the last thirty years of his career generally found him in less memorable films.

HOT TIME IN THE TOWN OF BERLIN Song. Bing’s 1944 recording of this John De Vries - Joe Bushkin song was heard on the soundtrack of the Dennis Hopper film Tracks (1976). It was sung by Frank Sinatra in The Shining Future (1944) a short that also featured Bing.

HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT FOR JILL, THE Song. A delightful ditty cut from the release print of Rhythm on the Range (1936). Would it really have mattered if this Paramount picture ran for three minutes longer than its 85? It was recorded for the soundtrack as a duet between Bing and Frances Farmer. Thankfully, someone lifted it from the cutting room floor and it surfaced in the mid-1970s on a record album of songs similarly excised from Hollywood musicals. Bing’s solo recording of the Leo Robin-Frederick Hollander song was issued by Decca at the time of the film’s release.

HOW DEEP IS THE OCEAN Song. Bing sings this song in Blue Skies (1946). He performs it at a nightclub in an off-stage setting with the help of an on-stage chorus. Like all of the songs in the film it was written by Irving Berlin. Bing had recorded it successfully in 1932 and by the time the film was made it was regarded as an evergreen.

HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS WITHOUT REALLY TRYING Film.  Bing expressed an interest in playing in the film version of this winning Broadway musical.  Frank Loesser wrote the songs and when it went before the cameras in Hollywood in 1967, Rudy Vallee played the part which would have suited Bing.  Robert Morse played the main role.

HURST, BRANDON (1866-1947) Actor.  He had small parts in four Crosby movies.  His first such appearance was as Hedges, the butler, in If I Had My Way (1940).  He followed that immediately with Rhythm on the River (1940), when he was Bates, the butler.  For Road to Morocco (1942) there was a change of pace where he appeared briefly as an English radio announcer.  He was unbilled for his fleeting appearance in Road to Rio (1947), the last film he made.  He was also given bit parts in three Bob Hope comedies in which Bing made gag appearances.  London born, Hurst relocated in Hollywood after a show business start on the English stage.  He was in silents from 1923 but later on Hollywood hired him as much for his voice as his acting talent.  He was almost always cast as a precisely spoken Englishman, hence the parts he took in his Crosby films.  After all, aren’t all good butlers also Brits? 

HUSSEY, RUTH [Ruth Carol O’Rourke] (1914-2005). Actress. Fourth billed in Mr. Music (1950) she played Bing’s fiancée Lorna Marvis, but she didn’t get her man. Nancy Olson won Bing and we didn’t much mind because the appropriately named Hussey was mercenary and eventually settled her affections on a multi-millionaire. She was usually the second female lead in films of the forties and eventually made a greater impact on the Broadway stage, which was where her career began before she was discovered by M-G-M in 1937. Before Mr. Music, her most notable film role had been in The Philadelphia Story (1940) for which she received an Oscar nomination as the cynical magazine photographer. The remake, High Society (1956) cast Celeste Holm in that part. After her solitary appearance in a Bing picture, her best part was in her last film: The Facts of Life (1960).

HUTTON, BETTY (1921-2007) Actress/singer. Miss Hutton starred with Bing in one film and in a ten-year time span shared the same reels of film with him on a further four occasions. Her “proper” Crosby picture was Here Come the Waves (1944) where she made a double impact as Susie and Rosemary Allison. Some people would regard one Betty Hutton as too much but at this stage of her career, she was not as frenetic on screen as she was to become on phonograph record. In the other Crosby related films she was only in the same scenes as Bing in Duffy’s Tavern (1945), in which she sang in the chorus which accompanied Crosby on “Swinging on a Star”. She soloed “His Rocking Horse Ran Away” and “He Says ‘Murder’ He Says.” The other three films were:

· Star Spangled Rhythm (1942). She was Polly Judson, the film’s main character

· Hollywood Victory Caravan (1945). Short. As herself

· The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) As Holly, the film’s leading lady.

She was part of a further link with Bing when she married choreographer Charles O’Curran. He was her second husband and worked on Here Comes the Groom (1951) and Road to Bali (1953). O’Curran was behind one of her increasingly temperamental tantrums. She walked out of her Paramount contract when the studio refused to bow to her demand that he directed her future films. She had been with that studio since 1941 and her 1952 departure meant she made only one minor film before her descent into obscurity.   That was Spring Reunion (1957). She did make a start on the 1967 western Red Tomahawk before quitting. She was a favourite of the popular newspapers and magazines because of her antics, such as:

· filing for bankruptcy after spending an estimated $10 million

· marrying (and divorcing) five husbands

· cancelling performances when she appeared in stage productions in attempts to revive her career

· being discovered working lonely and broke as a cook and housekeeper in a Rhode Island Catholic rectory

· hospitalisation for intensive psychiatric care

· acting as a greeter at a Connecticut jai-alai establishment

None of this should detract from the enjoyment she gave to millions of cinemagoers when she was at her peak in such successes as Annie Get Your Gun (1950) and Somebody Loves Me (1952). For the record, her sister was big-band vocalist Marion Hutton (1919-1986).

HYAMS, LEILA (1905-1977). Actress. She was the female lead in The Big Broadcast (1932). She played the secretary to George Burns and she was in love with Bing. However, Bing had other ideas and played the role of matchmaker by uniting her with Stuart Erwin. She was in the same promotional short as Bing the following year when both made brief appearances in Hollywood on Parade No 7. At the time of making The Big Broadcast, she had been a dependable feminine addition to films since the silent era. Her best acting part immediately preceded her Crosby movie when she was the heroine in Freaks (1932). She was married to talent agent Phil Berg and she retired in 1936. There was no enticing her back to acting and she enjoyed a further forty years out of the limelight.

HYMER, WARREN (1906-1948). American character actor. Leslie Halliwell described him as usually taking the part of “a dim witted gangster”. His three Crosby films endorse that. If proof were needed consider his character’s names. For She Loves Me Not (1934) he played Mugg Schnitzel. In Rhythm on the Range (1936) he was Brain. And in Birth of the Blues (1941) he answered to Limpy! Just so that you’ll recognise him next time you see him on screen, he was the gangster assigned to kill Miriam Hopkins in his first Bing picture. In typical Hymer fashion he made a hash of things and captured Judith Allen instead.   He never rose above the typecasting roles he was assigned in his films with Bing. By way of evidence, a sample of his non-Bing films reveal titles such as Baby Face Morgan (1942) and Joe Palooka, Champ (1946)

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It is more than coincidence that the letter "I" sequence of this A-Z of Bing's films is dominated by 35 songs out of the 37 entries. The only non-songs in this listing are films titled after ballads Bing performs in his pictures. Quite simply, Bing was able to express his feelings in song at crucial parts in the plot. Not only was the story advanced, but a tailor-made song was worth a good five minutes of plot exposition. And hadn't the audience visited the cinema so to see him sing rather than act anyway?

I KISS YOUR HAND, MADAM Song.  The madam Bing refers to when he sings it in The Emperor Waltz (1948) is Joan Fontaine.  There are some choices to make regarding the song’s correct title and its composers.  It is sometimes referred to as “I Kiss Your Hand, Madame” and the composers Sam M. Lewis, Joe Young and Ralph Erwin are occasionally joined by Fritz Rotter on sheet music covers.

I WISH I WERE ALADDIN Song. Featured in the Paramount Picture Two for Tonight (1935). Bing sings it to Joan Bennett when she visits him in prison.   Like the other songs in the film it was written by Mack Gordon and Harry Revel.

I WISHED ON THE MOON Song. This is the only Bing song in the Paramount Picture The Big Broadcast of 1936 (1935), the film which immediately followed Two for Tonight. Like a lot of the other songs used in the movie it was simply dropped into the plot for no apparent reason. Bing delivers the song walking from a log cabin to the edge of a lake in an attractive but obvious studio built setting. The music was written by regular Crosby composer Ralph Rainger but the words were the work of the scathingly witty Dorothy Parker. “I Wished on the Moon” became something of a standard taken up by jazz tinged vocalists like Mel Torme, June Christy and Billie Holiday, all of whom did it justice. That is more than can be said for the commercial recording Bing made for Decca about the time he filmed his four-minute contribution to The B.B. of 1936. He recorded one vocal chorus for what was nothing other than a dance band recording by the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra. The underlying reason for not punching his weight with the song in the recording studio was an apparent dislike for the song publisher’s representative.

I WONDER WHO’S KISSING HER NOW Song. A ballad totally suited to the Crosby style but only available on the soundtrack of The Star Maker (1939) save for a couple of radio performances. In the film, it is used in a sequence where children are being auditioned for Bing’s troupe of juvenile performers. One young lady is too shy to perform so Bing sings the song to encourage her. Written by Will M. Hough, Frank R. Adams and Joseph E. Howard it became a major hit for Perry Como in 1947.

ICHABOD Song. A bouncy ditty sung by Bing on the soundtrack of the Disney full-length cartoon The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949). Like all the songs from the Ichabod segment of the film it was written by Don Raye and Gene de Paul. There are two Decca recordings that Crosby made of the song. A full length version was made in December of 1947, to be followed eighteen months later by the song’s inclusion on the first of four 78 sides designed to tell the story of the film as a tie-in with the film’s October, 1949 release.

I’D CLIMB THE HIGHEST MOUNTAIN Song. Introduced by Bing in the 1931 Mack Sennett short One More Chance, it was brought to the attention of moviegoers fifteen years later when it was one of the musical excerpts utilised in the compilation picture Road to Hollywood. The song is appropriately placed near the end of the Sennett short when Bing is in a car together with his wife and father-in-law. The car is being towed up a mountain at the time. In true Sennett tradition, the car ends up in a river after running out of control. The song is the only Crosby film song from the collaborating Lew Brown and Sidney Clare. It is good example of a number seemingly tailor-made for the Crosby treatment, which did not benefit from a studio recording.

I’D RATHER BE ME Song. Three people collaborated on this rather ordinary ballad which Bing’s voice delivered in Out of This World (1945). The writers were Sam Coslow, Felix Bernard and Eddie Cherkose and they had to provide a song which expressed the wish of telegram messenger Eddie Bracken to be an ordinary guy and not a singing idol. Frank Sinatra was the singing sensation on whom the character was modelled and Crosby provided the voice, which added credibility to Bracken’s performance.

I’D RATHER SEE A MINSTREL SHOW Song. Danny Kaye and Rosemary Clooney join Bing in singing this Irving Berlin composition in the 1954 film White Christmas. It is used in a sequence where the trio are rehearsing in order to stage a show destined to make Major General Waverly’s (Dean Jagger) Vermont inn a success during a winter bereft of snow. The Decca recording made to capitalise on the film’s release saw the song utilised in a medley featuring Bing and Danny Kaye. Rosemary Clooney was contracted to Columbia records and unable to take part in the session.

IF I HAD MY WAY Film. Made between February and April of 1940 this second film Bing made for Universal Pictures was in the cinemas within a month of production ceasing. Crosby had a financial stake in the picture and there was no good reason to wait too long for a return on his investment. Directorial and musical talents from the earlier Universal outing - East Side of Heaven - were utilised by Bing. Director David Butler worked well with Crosby and went on to direct Road to Morocco (1942).   Songwriters Johnny Burke and James V. Monaco knew just what made Bing comfortable when love songs were called for and came up with a quartet of good songs (but not the title song). The choice of leading lady was the young Gloria Jean. At fourteen she was seen by the studio as a successor to Deanna Durbin. Two duets with Bing and one solo vocal outing in the film proved she had the singing talent if not the special appeal of Miss Durbin. In a 1973 interview, she had memories of working alongside Bing in what was her second picture.  She said: “I loved Bing Crosby.  He gave me advice and help that I shall remember all my life.  One particular amusing thing I remember is that when we recorded together he always put his chewing gum on the microphone.”  The plot was as silly and sentimental as they came at this time.  Bing played a construction worker trying to help orphan Gloria Jean. Gloria’s uncle is the rich but miserable Allyn Joslyn. He won’t help but great uncle Charles Winninger is willing if broke. Help comes in the form of Winninger’s vaudevillian friends giving their services free and Bing and buddy El Brendel putting on a show which indirectly leads to a happy ending as Joslyn relents.   Audiences had the added bonus of seeing old-timer Eddie Leonard performing his hit song “Ida, Sweet as Apple Cider” when the film played cinemas. However, the print which was made available to the BBC for television screening was shorn of this historical moment.

IF I HAD MY WAY Song. The title song from the film was written in 1913 by the team of Lou Klein and James Kendis. Yet it seems a typical Crosby ballad, which fits the film’s action when Bing serenades Gloria Jean having told her he is leaving town. When you think about it, the film’s title had nothing to do with the plot.  Put another way, there are a dozen Crosby films that could have been called If I Had My Way without audiences storming the box-office claiming they had been misled by an inappropriately named movie. So was the film so called because the song had a suitable attention grabbing title? Possibly. Bing made his recording for Decca almost a year before the film went before the cameras.

IF I WAS A MILLIONAIRE Song. Another oldie given a new lease of life by being featured in a Crosby movie. The film was The Star Maker (1939). The story was loosely based on the life of Gus Edwards, the song’s co-composer along with Will D. Cobb. The song surfaces towards the beginning of the film when Bing is rehearsing a bunch of kids with a view to turning them into a vaudeville act. If we ignore the fact that the song was written some thirty years before Bing gave it a whirl, it would be easy to believe that it was precisely honed to suit his easy-going ballad style of the time. Decca had Bing record it with a further three Gus Edwards’ compositions for a medley issued in 78 form under the overall title “Medley of Gus Edwards Song Hits”.

IF YOU PLEASE Song. This one was written specifically for Bing by his regular film songwriters of the time Johnny Burke and James Van Heusen. It was one of two strong ballads composed by the team for Dixie (1943).   (The other one was “Sunday, Monday or Always”.) In the film, it was the song Bing sang to Marjorie Reynolds that led her to suggest that his compositions were good enough to be published.

IF YOU STUB YOUR TOE ON THE MOON Song. Another one from the shared manuscript paper of Burke and Van Heusen. It was written for the film A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1949). It provides a fine musical start to the film’s early flashback to 1905. It allows Bing the blacksmith to pass on some philosophical advice to a group of youngsters observing him at work. The kids are quick learners and join in as the song progresses.

I’LL CAPTURE YOUR HEART Song. Although Irving Berlin did not primarily write songs to order for film actors, this one was composed especially for the film Holiday Inn (1942). He couldn’t go wrong in racking up royalties once the song benefited from double exposure from Bing and Fred Astaire assisted by Virginia Dale. It is the ballad, which opens the picture when the trio performs a nightclub routine. When the film’s plot reaches its happy ending, the song is used in the finale with the addition of a vocal from Marjorie Reynolds (voiced by Martha Mears).

I’LL SEE YOU IN CUBA Song. Another Irving Berlin composition, this time composed a quarter of a century before it was featured in the Crosby musical Blue Skies (1946). It started life in the Broadway show “The Ziegfeld Midnight Frolics” and it is utilised in the film without being an integral part of the plot. Bing and Olga San Juan duet the song in the Paramount picture.

I’LL SI-SI YA IN BAHIA Song. One of nine Leo Robin-Harry Warren songs used in the Paramount film Just for You (1952), it starts the story moving in a scene where Bing, as a Broadway producer/songwriter, demonstrates how he wants a vocalist to deliver his composition.

I’M AN OLD COWHAND Song. The only Johnny Mercer composition featured in the 1936 box-office success Rhythm on the Range. It brings the film towards a rousing conclusion as Bing and cast assemble round a camp fire just in time for the anticipated happy ending. Amongst those providing vocal assistance are the Sons of the Pioneers, one of whom was Roy Rogers before he found solo fame. Bing enjoyed singing the song and included a re-recording of his July 1936 Decca hit in his musical autobiography set in 1954.

I’M HUMMIN’, I’M WHISTLIN’, I’M SINGIN’ Song. There is a scene in She Loves Me Not (1934) where Bing demonstrates his up-beat frame of mind when he sings this Harry Revel-Mack Gordon song to Kitty Carlisle. The film concludes with him driving off with Kitty and reprising the song so that the audience can leave the cinema hummin’, whistlin’ and singin’ the catchy number.

I’M PUTTIN’ ALL MY EGGS IN ONE BASKET Song. Written by Irving Berlin for the Astaire-Rodgers film Follow the Fleet (1936) it was filmed as a Crosby vocal for Paramount’s Blue Skies (1946). It was to form part of a medley and can be found on recordings of the soundtrack of the film. Bing never made a commercial recording of the song. Fred Astaire’s Columbia Records version came to be regarded as the definitive interpretation.

IN MY HIDEAWAY Song. A composition from the Sennett short Sing, Bing, Sing (1932) that did not benefit from a studio recording by Crosby. It was brought before the public for a second time in 1949 when it was in one of the clips used in the compilation film Down Memory Lane, which utilised Sennett material. Like all songs from the Sennett one-reelers it was included on the LP “Where the blue of the night...” (9199 508) but it is not a song which sticks in the memory. Written by K. L. Binford, I have only encountered it in the Crosby short from 1932 although Buddy Rogers enjoyed a modest success with his recording of it that same year.

IN MY MERRY OLDSMOBILE Song. This one never received airplay from the BBC at the time of its revived popularity. That was in 1939 when Bing sang it with a bunch of kids in the Paramount production The Star Maker. The BBC banned all forms of advertising even though I doubt whether you could have purchased this American motor car in the UK at a time when this country was gearing up for war. It is used in a scene that attempts to recreate the stage act of Gus Edwards, who wrote the song together with Vincent Bryan at the turn of the century. Twenty years after its film revival Bing used it on television when Oldsmobile sponsored his television show.

IN THE COOL, COOL, COOL OF THE EVENING Song. A bright number, which deserved its Academy Award Oscar as the best film song of 1951. That was the year it was featured in the film Here Comes the Groom. Co-composer Hoagy Carmichael remarked at the time: “Naturally I was overjoyed at receiving my Oscar.  I’m not sure that my lyricist, Johnny Mercer, was as overjoyed as I because he already had a vulgar display of three Oscars at his home from former years.”  It was the only Carmichael-Mercer composition in the film. That was because it was originally planned to feature it in a Paramount picture, which was written for Betty Hutton that never took off. That projected film was to be called Keystone Girl.  It received more exposure in Here Comes the Groom than any song was ever accorded in a Bing film. We first hear a snatch of it from Jacky Gencel, who plays one of the orphans eventually adopted by Bing. In an extension of that same scene, a few more lines are duetted by Crosby and Gencel. The song is accorded full treatment when Bing and leading lady Jane Wyman duet in a scene when it seems as though she is going to marry her boss.….but read on! Bing sings a few bars when he is inhabiting the gatehouse of Wyman’s intending husband to be. When Bing’s romantic fortunes are taking a turn for the better another chorus is provided by Bing and his “orphans” Gencel and Beverly Washburn. A little later, preparations are being made for Wyman’s wedding to Franchot Tone and bridesmaid Alexis Smith gives the song a twirl.   The grand finale finds Bing marrying Wyman and Smith settling for Tone. This provides just cause for the newlyweds and their children to leave the wedding ceremony singing “In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening”. One year later Bing made a cameo appearance in the Bob Hope starrer Son of Paleface. Perhaps as a thank you, Bob sang a few lines of “Cool” in his film.

IN THE LAND OF BEGINNING AGAIN Song. This 1918 song was totally suited for the poignant scene in The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945) where the parents of Patsy Gallagher (played by Joan Carroll) are reunited. Written by Grant Clarke and George W. Meyer, it adds weight to an already touching sequence. Early television prints lacked the whole sequence including Bing’s rendition of the song, but it has been restored for subsequent versions.

INCURABLY ROMANTIC Song. In Let’s Make Love (1960), Yves Montand fancies Marilyn Monroe. To win her over, he seeks to expand his skills as a singer, dancer and comedian by receiving tuition from only the top performers in their field. A singing lesson is given by Bing, Milton Berle teaches comic delivery and Gene Kelly the art of the dance. For Montand’s vocal efforts the song selected is “Incurably Romantic”, written for the movie by Sammy Cahn and James Van Heusen. Some of the Crosby vocal magic must have rubbed off because by the film’s end Montand and Monroe are a twosome. As it happens, Bing was already working at Twentieth Century-Fox filming High Time and probably knocked off this other Fox assignment during his lunch hour.

IT CAME UPON THE MIDNIGHT CLEAR Song. There is a seasonal interlude in High Time (1960) where Bing sings this 19th Century carol together with one of his tutors, played by Nicole Maurey, and his fellow students, one of whom was Fabian. Bing’s vocal companions have rarely been as unsuited. Composer credits for the song are the Reverend Edmund Hamilton Sears (words) and Richard Storrs Willis (music). A couple of years after High Time Bing included it on his penultimate Christmas album.

IT MUST BE TRUE Song. It was more than ten years before Dixie that Bing first sang in black face. Accidentally having his face painted in the Mack Sennett short Dream House (1931), he was engaged as a Negro for the film within a film. This results in him singing “It Must Be True” to leading lady Ann Christy. Gordon Clifford provided lyrics to a collaboration between bandleader Gus Arnheim and ex-Rhythm Boy Harry Barris. Bing rated the song highly and recorded it three times. The sequence from Dream House involving the song was used in 1946 as part of the Road to Hollywood compilation.

IT’S ALWAYS YOU Song. Johnny Burke and James Van Heusen always came up with one big romantic ballad when they received a Crosby picture assignment. For Road to Zanzibar they wrote “It’s Always You” and Bing sang it beautifully to Dorothy Lamour as he paddled down the river in a canoe with her as his sole companion. A few scenes later on, it would seem that Dottie had been killed and Bob Hope joins Bing in a sad reprise of the song only to find that all is well as Ms Lamour adds her voice to the duet.

IT’S ANYBODY’S SPRING Song. For Road to Utopia the romantic Crosby ballad from Burke and Van Heusen was “Welcome to My Dream”. However, “It’s Anybody’s Spring” remains in the memory because of the comedy sequence where Bing sings accompanied by Bob Hope on accordion. The two perform the song in the hope of winning ten dollars in a talent contest but lose out to a monkey.

IT’S BEGINNING TO LOOK LIKE CHRISTMAS Song. Not featured in a Crosby film but used on the soundtrack of A Christmas Story (1983). A charming, nostalgic film set in the 1940s, it makes use of three of Bing’s Decca Christmas songs. (The other two are “Jingle Bells” and “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town”). If A Christmas Story turns up on the box during the festive season, watch it. No schmaltz - just a look at how we like to think Christmases used to be.

IT’S EASY TO REMEMBER Song. Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart only wrote songs for one Crosby picture but they provided him with three songs that stand head and shoulders above typical film scores of the time. In addition to “It’s Easy to Remember”, they gave him “Soon” and “Down by the River” to sing in Mississippi (1935). Bing plays Tom Grayson, a performer in a group of travelling players in the film. When the troupe put on a show, Bing sings this song. It was a production afterthought. Rodgers and Hart had returned to New York when Paramount asked for another song. They felt the audience would feel short changed unless Bing could deliver four songs in the picture. The writers obliged, recorded a demo and mailed it to California. It all sounds as easy as Bing’s effortless delivery of “It’s Easy to Remember”. For the record, the fourth Crosby song in Mississippi was the Stephen Foster composed “Swanee River” (aka "The Old Folks at Home").

IT’S MINE, IT’S YOURS Song. Written by Ira Gershwin and Harold Arlen for The Country Girl (1954), this is typical of the material Bing had to work with in a film calling for him to pull out all the stops on his dramatic skills. The song provides our first opportunity to hear Bing sing in the film. He performs it at an audition for a part in a Broadway show. He gets the job, in case you wondered.

IT’S THE NATURAL THING TO DO Song. This is the one Paramount wanted the audience to whistle after they left the cinema having seen Double or Nothing (1937). Written by Johnny Burke and Arthur Johnston, Bing sings it to Mary Carlisle halfway through the film. Then, as the usual happy ending unfolds, Bing gives it another shot.

IT’S THE NATURAL THING TO DO Cartoon. Paramount released the Popeye cartoons and the studio thought nothing of asking animator Dave Fleisher to build a ten-minute short around one of their properties. The cartoon was named after the song and was released in 1937 to capitalise on the publicity surrounding Double or Nothing. The short opens with Olive Oyl in the kitchen whilst Popeye and arch-enemy Bluto battle it out in the back yard. A telegram arrives from the Popeye fan club reading: “Cut out the rough stuff and act more refined. It’s the natural thing to do.” The two characters make an effort to reform but the film ends with them brawling once again as “It’s the Natural Thing to Do” is heard on the soundtrack.

I’VE GOT A POCKETFUL OF DREAMS Song. This jaunty number is the first featured song written by Johnny Burke and James V. Monaco for Paramount’s Sing You Sinners (1938). In the film, when the singing Beebe Brothers launch their night-club act, Bing receives vocal assistance from “brothers” Donald O’Connor and Fred MacMurray. When a permanent job results they reprise the number later in the film with their mother, played by Elizabeth Patterson, joining in. Fame and fortune follow and the film ends with the three brothers giving the song another performance.

I’VE GOT FIVE DOLLARS Song. Although I stated above that Rodgers and Hart only wrote the score for one Crosby picture, he used just one more of their songs in a film. He sang a snatch of “I’ve Got Five Dollars” in The Big Broadcast (1932), three years before he starred in Mississippi. We hear a few lines of the song duetted with Stuart Erwin in a scene set in a radio studio. Twenty-four years later Bing recorded the song for Verve Records.

I’VE GOT MY CAPTAIN WORKING FOR ME NOW Song. Like all the songs in Blue Skies (1946) this was written by Irving Berlin. A flashback early on in the film shows Bing and Billy de Wolfe performing the number in a night-club setting.

I’VE GOT PLENTY TO THANKFUL FOR Song. Another one from the pen of Irving Berlin, it was featured in Holiday Inn (1942). Together with the other songs in the film, it was linked to a public holiday, this one being Thanksgiving Day. Towards the end of the film, Bing is in a pensive mood. He plays a recording he has made of “I’ve Got Plenty to be Thankful For”, making his mood even blacker by interjecting remarks as he listens to his own voice.

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JAGGER, DEAN (1903-1991) Actor. In White Christmas (1954), the song “The Old Man” is sung by Bing and Danny Kaye at the start and finish of the picture. The action is separated by ten years but the “old man” is the same - General Waverly, played by Dean Jagger. It was Jagger’s sole Crosby film and came midway between two films of the fifties for which he is best remembered. The first was Twelve O’Clock High (1949) for which he won an Academy Award as best supporting actor. The other was King Creole (1958), when he played Elvis Presley’s father. Jagger always looked older than his years because of his lack of hair and serious demeanour, but he never lacked film work and was on screen for fifty years following his debut in The Woman from Hell in 1929.

JAMISON, BUD (1894-1944) Character actor who usually played the heavy.  The much anthologised sequence at the end of the Mack Sennett short Blue of the Night (1932) has Bing establishing his identity to the police patrolman by singing the film’s title song.  That patrolman was Bud Jamison.  In his only other bit in a Bing picture, he was unrecognisable in a Santa Claus outfit in Holiday Inn (1942).  He filled in the years between those two Crosby films by appearing in dozens of Columbia short films, usually disapproving of the antics of that studio’s Three Stooges. 

JEAN, GLORIA (1926-2018) Actress, whose real name was Gloria Jean Schoonover. Her only Bing-pic was If I Had My Way (1940). She was the film’s “leading lady”, albeit juvenile lead as the fifteen year old orphan helped by Bing. It was one of those films made for Universal outside Crosby’s Paramount contract. Gloria Jean had her own song in the film - “Little Grey Home in the West” - as well as duetting with Bing on a couple of Monaco-Burke numbers. This was good going for someone who was only making her second film appearance. She enjoyed working with Bing.  Sixty plus years after the event she recalled: “Bing was great to work with and he was swell to me.  He gave me the camera lead in many scenes and pushed to get me extra shots.  He even gave me a surprise birthday party on the set.”  Her screen prominence in If I Had My Way is explained by the fact that Universal had signed her the previous year to be groomed as a replacement for Deanna Durbin should that adolescent studio money-spinner retire, defect to another studio or lose her charm. In fact, Miss D’s popularity remained strong and Gloria Jean never got the parts. She was in the W. C. Fields’ starrer Never Give a Sucker an Even Break the year after If I Had My Way but the films which followed say it all by their long forgotten titles: Get Hep to Love (1942), Mister Big (1943), Ghost Catchers (1944) and so on through to There’s a Girl in My Heart (1950). By then it was apparent that she wasn’t going to make that difficult transition to adult roles and only three more films followed, the last being The Madcaps (1963). At the age of forty, show business was behind her and she gained employment as a hostess, greeting and seating dinner guests at a restaurant in Studio City, California.

JEANMAIRE, ZIZI (1924-2020) More of a dancer than an actress or singer, she took a crack at all three in her only Crosby film, Anything Goes (1956). It was an OK performance in an OK film. Billed over Mitzi Gaynor on the film’s credits, she played Gaby Duval, a dancer who so impresses Donald O’Connor that he brings her from Paris to New York in order to star with Bing in a Broadway musical. The complication is that Bing has already seen Mitzi Gaynor in London and offered her the same deal. Audiences heard her sing, “I Get a Kick Out of You” and saw her dance in a ballet sequence but her screen impact was no more impressive than the film itself. It was her second Hollywood film, the first being Hans Christian Andersen (1952). After Anything Goes, it was home to France and a couple more films before calling it quits.

JENKINS, ALLEN [Alfred McConegal] (1900-1974) Character actor. He appeared in about 175 supporting parts one of which was in Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964). He was the hood called Vermin. It was a role he could play blindfold after being typecast as a thick, small-time hoodlum in just about every Warner Bros. gangster film of the 1930s. He was as essential as Bogart, Raft or Cagney in such as Dead End (1937), Brother Orchid (1940) and Lady on a Train (1945). But like all good character actors of that period we took him for granted and although we recognised his face, his name in the cast list was meaningless. A film hood to the end, that’s the last part he took in the remake of The Front Page (1974).

JENNINGS, GORDON (1896-1953) Special effects expert. Whether it was a talking camel or an eclipse of the sun, if it happened in a Paramount Picture, Jennings was the man who faked it. His ten years on Crosby films covered Road to Morocco (1942), Dixie (1943). Going My Way (1944), Blue Skies (1946), Road to Rio (1948) A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1949) and Here Comes the Groom (1951). He retired in the 1950s. Nowadays computer technology achieves everything and more that Jennings was capable of creating.

JIMMY VALENTINE Song. The opening minutes of The Star Maker (1939) find Bing at the piano entertaining a group of orphans with this catchy ditty. The song’s composers were Edward Maddox and Gus Edwards. Bing’s character in the film, Larry Earl, was a thinly disguised version of Edwards. Bing’s Decca recording of the song was part of a Gus Edwards medley. A Crosby blow-up of the song exists with improvised lyrics not quite appropriate for singing to a group of kids.

JOHNSON, NOBLE (1881-1978) American actor who specialised in playing native chiefs, which is the part he essayed in Road to Zanzibar in 1941.  In 1916, together with his brother, he produced films aimed at black Americans audiences.  His first acting assignment was as Man Friday in the 1922 version of Robinson Crusoe.  He more or less retired from films in the 1950s but left viewers with something to remember him by with appearances in a couple of films that are constantly revived: King Kong (1933) and The Jungle Book (1942).

JOHNSON, TOR (1903-1971). Totally bald, muscular and menacing actor.  He was admirably suited for the role of Samson in Road to Rio (1948).  He was only on screen a couple of minutes in that and several earlier films and no one speculated that he would play a leading role some eight years later.  Yet in 1956, he was billed alongside Bela Lugosi in what is generally regarded as the worst film ever to escape from Hollywood, Plan 9 from Outer Space.  Little of note followed that career highlight.

JOHNSTON, ARTHUR (JAMES) (1898-1954) Composer. Arthur Johnston was employed to provide the music for mainly Paramount movie assignments, which in Bing’s case covered the years 1933 to 1937. He is responsible for some of the best-loved Crosby ballads of all time, as this C.V. will attest. Just before the Paramount connection, he collaborated with Sam Coslow on “Just One More Chance” for the Sennett short One More Chance in 1931. Paramount had Bing record the same song for another 1931 release, Confessions of a Co-ed, but the song never made it to the release print. Johnston and Coslow received their first Crosby feature assignment in 1933 with College Humor. “Just One More Chance” received a reprise in that film together with three new songs - “Moonstruck”, “Down the Old Ox Road” and “Learn to Croon” .Bing gained some soundtrack mileage from the last title when he was heard, but not seen, singing it in Duffy’s Tavern (1945). The same duo wrote the entire score for Too Much Harmony (1933). Four songs from that one became Crosby standards. They were “Thanks”, “The Day You Came Along”, “Black Moonlight” and “I Guess It Had to Be That Way” although only the first two were sung by Bing in the film. A couple of additional Crosby vocals from the film never made it to wax: “Buckin’ the Wind” and “Boo-boo-boo”.  However that last trifle provided the opportunity for Bing and the composers to appear on screen together when Paramount plugged the picture in a Hollywood on Parade short the same year and Coslow and Johnston accompanied the Crosby vocal. Johnston and Coslow also wrote a song for Bing’s next Paramount picture, We’re Not Dressing (1934). The title was “Live and Love Tonight” but it was not used in the film. Two years later Johnston was used by Columbia to write the music to Johnny Burke’s words for Pennies from Heaven. Another quartet of Crosby classics were the result: “One, Two, Button Your shoe”, “Let’s Call a Heart a Heart”, “So Do I” and of course the title song. The latter turned up a quarter of a century later in another Columbia film, Pepe, when Bing sang a snatch of it to Cantinflas in a short medley. Johnston’s last work on a Paramount/Crosby flick was again in collaboration with Johnny Burke. Bing sang three of their songs in the 1937 Double or Nothing. They were “The Moon Got in My Eyes”, “It’s the Natural Thing to Do” and “All You Want to Do Is Dance”.  After Double or Nothing Johnston did no further writing for Hollywood films. This entry lists a good dozen plus standards. If they were released on an album, they would emphasise the importance of Johnston in the first decade of Bing’s vocal career.

JONES, PAUL (1901-1968) Producer. For the first half of Bing’s most successful decade at the box-office, Jones was a producer at Paramount, overseeing some big money earners for that studio. His Crosby pictures covered Road to Zanzibar (1941), Road to Morocco (1942), Dixie (1943) and Road to Utopia (filmed 1944 and released 1946). You can see that his forte was comedy. He worked exclusively at Paramount and his other work in the comedy genre included My Favourite Blonde (1942) and Monsieur Beaucaire (1946), both with Bob Hope, The Caddy (1953) and Pardners (1956), both with Martin and Lewis, and Who’s Minding the Store (1963) and The Disorderly Orderly (1964), both with Jerry Lewis alone. Jones’ life was spent in Hollywood. He started as an assistant director, progressed to being a writer, moved up to associate producer and then spent a quarter of a century producing films, which made us laugh.

JOOBALAI Song. There’s a rousing moment in Paris Honeymoon (1939) where Bing joins festival revellers in singing this Leo Robin-Ralph Rainger composition. The melody had a feel to it, which created the impression that it was a traditional song that had been around a century or so.

JOSLYN, ALLYN (1901-1981) Actor. His only Crosby picture was If I Had My Way (1940) when he played the part of Jarvis Johnson, the rich uncle of Gloria Jean, who wants nothing to do with his niece following the death of her father. He was rarely seen in a sympathetic role during his near forty years in Hollywood. He began his life as an entertainer on Broadway before breaking into movies in 1936. He was good at looking bewildered and brought his crumpled features to dozens of films including Only Angels Have Wings (1939), The Shocking Miss Pilgrim (1947) and The Jazz Singer (1953). His last film was in 1973, with most of the 1950s and 1960s finding him working in television on such series such as “The Ray Bolger Show” and “The Addams Family”.

JUNE COMES AROUND EVERY YEAR Song. Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen wrote two songs for Out of This World. This was one. Like the film’s title song, it has not stood the test of time considering the combined talents of its composers. In common with the other Crosby songs in this Paramount Picture, Bing’s voice emanated from Eddie Bracken’s mouth.

JUNE IN JANUARY Song. Bing’s other “June” film song has stood the test of time and has been covered by several balladeers in addition to Crosby since it was first sung in Here Is My Heart (1934). Leo Robin and Ralph Rainger wrote it and Bing sings a duet with his own record of it in his hotel room in a memorable and enjoyable sequence. It also closed the film when the story’s happy ending was reached and Bing duetted it with leading lady Kitty Carlisle.

JUST AN ECHO Short film. Paramount distributed this second of two Crosby twenty minute shorts made by Arvid E. Gillstrom Productions. The first one was Please and both were made in 1933 with the same cast and production staff. Bing is a country park ranger in Just an Echo. He falls for the head ranger’s daughter, played by Mary Kornman, and in the closing minutes gets the girl.

JUST AN ECHO IN THE VALLEY Song. Featured, as you would expect, in the above film. Jimmy Campbell and Reg Connelly wrote the words to music by Harry Woods and all three benefited from snatches of the song being used another couple of times in 1933. In Paramount’s College Humor, it formed part of a medley when Bing provided a musical illustration of great dramatic love scenes and he also sings a few lines in Going Hollywood. Bing regarded it as a significant part of his early musical career and re-recorded it for his musical autobiography in 1954.

JUST FOR YOU Film. Technicolor was seen as an essential part of Paramount’s non-dramatic productions from around 1950 and this 1952 film benefited from the process. Bing plays a widower whose life is preoccupied with writing songs and producing Broadway musicals. His son and daughter are neglected as a result of Bing’s work and it takes a love affair between Crosby and Jane Wyman to bring about family harmony. The film’s main treat is the score. It was Bing who arranged for Paramount to hire Harry Warren to write the music for the film. Warren’s peak years had been spent writing for Warner Bros. in the thirties. Warren recounts how he received a telephone call from Bing at six o’clock one morning.  Bing wanted to know if Warren was working and when he found out that he was unemployed he offered him the Just for You assignment.  The lyric writer was to have been Crosby crony Johnny Mercer. When he proved unavailable, Bing chose another thirties songwriter, Leo Robin. Robin had collaborated with Al Dubin on some of Bing’s earlier Paramount musicals. When Warren and Robin had completed the songs for Just for You Warren recalled: “We played all the songs for Crosby over a couple of days and in each case it was a polite nod of approval, with a ‘fine’ at the end.  No fuss, no bother.  The only time we saw him was when he was on the set when he was working, and there were no problems.”  Crosby and Wyman duetted the Oscar nominated “Zing a Little Zong” twice and the song’s popularity no doubt helped Just For You to register 17th in “Variety’s” top money making films of 1952. The strong supporting cast list included Ethel Barrymore, nearing the end of her career and playing the headmistress of a girls’ school and Natalie Wood, who was about to graduate to adult parts and see her name above the title.  Just for You earned rentals in the U.S.A. and Canada totalling $2.9m. 

JUST FOR YOU Song. The title number from the 1952 film. As with the other songs in the film, the composers were veterans Leo Robin and Harry Warren. The song plays a pivotal part in the plot. In the film’s story line it is written by Bing’s son. He sends it to the singer played by Jane Wyman. She rejects the song but Bing gives it a try and is impressed by his son’s abilities.

JUST ONE MORE CHANCE Song. This Sam Coslow - Arthur Johnston ballad had a Crosby related cinema career embracing forty plus years. It was first heard in the Mack Sennett short One More Chance (1931) in which Bing serenaded his film wife in a nightclub scene at the end of the one-reeler. A clip from that film turned up in Road to Hollywood, an Astor Pictures compilation of Sennett shorts released in 1946. In the same year as the Sennett short was made, Bing recorded the song for the Paramount feature Confessions of a Co-ed but the recording was not used. Two years later, it did manage to make its Paramount Picture debut when it was included in a medley for College Humor. It was part of the same medley as “Just an Echo in the Valley”, mentioned above. The song’s final film outing to date was in the 1973 Paramount Picture Paper Moon. That film was set in the thirties and the Crosby recording was played on the radio in one scene.

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KAHAL, IRVING (1903-1942) Lyricist. Bing sang just one Kahal song during his film career. That was “When I Take My Sugar to Tea”, which was the opening song in the Sennett short Dream House (1931). “Sugar” was to wait until 1957 before Bing committed the song to wax for the “New Tricks” album with Buddy Cole. Kahal will be associated with two cinematic triumphs from the early thirties. He collaborated with Sammy Fain on both “You Brought a New Kind of Love to Me” which Maurice Chevalier sang in The Big Pond (1930) and “By a Waterfall”, which was a major production number in the Warner Bros. production Footlight Parade (1933).

KAHN, GUS (1886-1941) Lyricist. Like Irving Kahal, Kahn was another songwriter who died at a relatively early age. Thirty years separated the two Kahn songs, which Bing contributed to films, neither of which he recorded for commercial issue. The first was for the Sennett short Sing, Bing, Sing (1932) when he sang “Lovable”. (In 1928 Bing cut another song of the same name with the Whiteman Orchestra where the lyric writers were Ralph Holmes and Seymour Simons.) Then in 1960 Bing was joined by Nicole Maurey and chorus on “You Tell Me Your Dream” for High Time. Kahn’s life was the subject of the 1952 biopic I’ll See You in My Dreams when Danny Thomas portrayed the lyricist. That film featured all of Kahn’s big hits, including “Ain’t We Got Fun”, “It Had to Be You”, “Makin’ Whoopee” and “Yes Sir That’s My Baby”.

KALMAR, BERT (1884-1947) Lyricist and screenwriter. “Three Little Words”, sung by the Rhythm Boys for their guest shot in Check and Double Check (1930), was Bing’s only film song from the pen of the prolific Kalmar. His name is forever linked with lifetime partner Harry Ruby and Hollywood legends The Marx Brothers. Not only did Kalmar and Ruby write many of Groucho’s on screen ditties, they also had a hand in the screenplays for the Brothers’ Horsefeathers (1932) and Duck Soup (1933). Kalmar was honoured with a Hollywood biopic when Fred Astaire played him in Three Little Words (1950).

KALMUS, NATALIE (1878-1965) Technicolor consultant. At least that’s the credit she received on four of Bing’s movies. They were Dixie (1943), Blue Skies (1946), The Emperor Waltz (1947) and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1949). It was a con really, because all that happened was that she collected a cheque from Paramount and the other film studios which used the Technicolor process. Her husband was Dr. Herbert T. Kalmus, who invented the film colour process first used in 1917. A two-colour process was used until 1936 when Technicolor as we know it today was introduced. Clever Natalie insisted on being credited as “color consultant” on all Technicolor films from 1933 until the Kalmus patent expired in 1949.

KANIN, GARSON (1912-1999) Director, screenwriter, playwright, novelist. It was his play “The Live Wire” which formed the basis of the Bing film High Time (1960). He directed over a dozen pictures including Bachelor Mother (1939) and Tom, Dick and Harry (1941). His stage plays included “Born Yesterday” and “The Rat Race”. His screenplays covered such hits as A Double Life (1948), Adam’s Rib (1949) and It Should Happen to You (1954). And he provided the story for the only good rock ‘n’ roll movie ever made - The Girl Can’t Help It (1956). His later years were been spent writing memoirs of his Hollywood days, such as “Tracy and Hepburn”.

KANTER, HAL (1918-2011) Screenwriter and director. He worked in the former capacity for his contribution to a Crosby picture when he was one of three writers employed on Road to Bali (1953). He was only just getting into his stride at that time, having proved his worth to Paramount by contributing dialogue to the Bob Hope starrer My Favourite Spy (1951). Hal Wallis entrusted him to direct the Elvis Presley Paramount release Loving You (1957) and he went on to prove himself adept at directing light comedy with some fondly remembered fluff like Bachelor in Paradise (1961), Pocketful of Miracles (1961), Move Over Darling (1963) and Dear Brigitte (1965). Television claimed him as a producer in the seventies.

KASZNAR, KURT [Kurt Servischer] (1913-1979) Character actor specialising in playing eccentrics.  His sole appearance in a Crosby film was in the role of Victor Lawrence in the 1956 version of Anything Goes.  He got the plot underway when, as a producer of Broadway musicals, he teamed Bing with Donald O’Connor.  He left Austria in the 1930s and acted in theatre productions until Hollywood started to use him in the early 1950s.  His busiest year on screen was in 1967 when he appeared in Casino Royale, The Perils of Pauline, The King’s Pirate and The Ambushers, all of which were major productions.  The following year he found regular television work in the series “Land of the Giants” and he never returned to the big screen.

KATRINA Song. It featured in the Ichabod sequence of the Disney full-length cartoon The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949). The lady in question was wooed by Ichabod. Don Raye and Gene de Paul wrote the lilting song that rival suitor Brom Bones used to win her over. Record buyers could choose from a full-length version Bing recorded in 1947 or an abbreviated version which was part of the four 78 sides recorded in 1949 to tie in with the release of the Disney film.

KAYE, DANNY (1913-1987) Actor/singer. Kaye’s only big screen appearance with Bing was in the 1954 box-office hit White Christmas. He was Private Phil Davis to Bing’s Captain Bob Wallace. Kaye bagged the part when first Fred Astaire and then Donald O’Connor became unavailable. Kaye was right for the part both in his lightweight acting technique and his ability to join Bing for a few Irving Berlin compositions. If you care to trace his career, it has more than its fair share of ups and downs. He was in some unfunny two-reel comedies in the 1930s. Then Kaye’s success on Broadway resulted in Sam Goldwyn signing him for some very popular films. Up in Arms (1944), Wonder Man (1945), The Kid from Brooklyn (1946), The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947) and A Song Is Born (1948) gave him an unbroken five-year run of popular family comedies. The 1948/49 career highlights were undoubtedly the appearances at the London Palladium. In the 1950s, the films were not consistently good. The best from that decade was The Court Jester (1956), the most popular Hans Christian Andersen (1952), the most disappointing The Five Pennies (1959) and the worst Me and the Colonel (1958). Kaye’s recordings seemed to the fall into two categories. Some, such as “I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now”, were pleasant vocals that stood up to several plays. Others, like “Dinah” were irritating after a couple of listens. When he pitched his talents at the kiddie market with such as “Tubby the Tuba”, he was guaranteed regular BBC Light programme airtime. Now his singing seems to be just plain unfashionable so maybe his day is yet to come. Kaye’s recording career became more or less non-existent from the 1960s onwards. That was when he concentrated on work on behalf of UNICEF, hour-long television variety shows on U.S. television and a return to Broadway. By 1970, he’d made his last film, The Madwoman of Chaillot (1969). It was not a success. He was also gaining a reputation for being difficult. In the Broadway musical, “Two by Two” his co-stars complained that he was unpredictable and that no two of his performances were alike. He tended to leave the plot behind and do his own thing. In fairness, this did not harm ticket sales. The punters were just as happy to see Kaye entertain as follow the plot of the show. Kaye died following heart bypass surgery. He was almost a superstar. His careers on record, film, television and stage and his humanitarian work were just a little too diverse to put him right at the top of the entertainment tree.

KEITH, ROBERT (1898-1966) Actor. His solitary Bing picture was Here Comes the Groom (1951) in which he played Bing’s buddy George Degnan, who was also the editor of the newspaper for which the Bing character was a foreign correspondent. He’d been in films since the silent days, making his debut in The Other Kind of Love (1924). There’s a gap of almost twenty years in his film appearances because he went behind the scenes to write dialogue for Universal and Columbia. After his part in Here Comes the Groom, he had fairly major character roles in Battle Circus (1953), Young at Heart (1954), and Guys and Dolls (1955) through to his final big screen appearance in Posse from Hell (1961). He was the father of the actor Brian Keith.

KELLAWAY, CECIL (1893-1972) Actor. Seen on screen briefly with Bing in Birth of the Blues (1941), Kellaway was also in Star Spangled Rhythm (1942) and Variety Girl (1947), where he played himself in both of these “all-star cast” Paramount pictures. He arrived in Hollywood from Australia in the late 1930s. He was already a well-known actor down-under but opportunities for furthering his career in films were limited, which is why he travelled to the States. It was a sound business decision because he went on to make well over a hundred films there. Two stood out sufficiently to justify Oscar nominations: The Luck of the Irish (1948) and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1968). In both he played loveable, twinkly-eyed character parts. Audiences could never accept him as a villain.

KELLY, GENE (1912-1996) Actor, dancer, choreographer, director and singer of sorts. The multi-talented entertainer just about qualifies for an entry in this A to Z. He was with Bing in Let’s Make Love (1960) when he gave dancing lessons to Yves Montand. (Bing gave Montand singing lessons). Kelly was originally hired as producer of Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964) but left three weeks before filming. It was later suggested that he left because of disagreements with Frank Sinatra over the amount of dancing numbers in the movie. Ten years on, he was one of the narrators in That’s Entertainment together with Bing and nine other well-known Hollywood names. Kelly entered films in 1942 with For Me and My Gal and exited some 43 years later in the compilation That’s Dancing. In the intervening years, he charmed cinemagoers in just about every film in which he appeared. A writer in the “New Yorker” magazine summed him up with the line, ‘His grin could melt stone.” Alongside Al Jolson’s Jazz Singer clip where he sings “Toot, Toot, Tootsie”, the most widely seen film musical excerpt is Kelly singing and dancing the title song from Singin’ in the Rain (1952).

KELLY, GRACE (1928-1982) Actress. She was Bing’s leading lady in Crosby’s best dramatic picture of the 1950s, The Country Girl (1954) and his best musical, High Society (1956). In the first, she plays Georgie Elgin, the wife who has to cope with alcoholic husband Frank (Bing Crosby). For that part, she won a best actress Academy Award and the New York Film Critics’ Award. In her second Crosby film, she’s Tracy Lord, the girl Bing woos and wins. In both she is the cool blonde, which is what attracted director Alfred Hitchcock to her. He used her to good advantage in three of his films - Dial M for Murder (1954), Rear Window (1954) and To Catch a Thief (1955). For the three mid-fifties years when she was involved with either Bing or Hitch she could do no wrong. Hollywood and her fans were saddened when she married Prince Rainier and quit the movie capital for Monaco. She had met Rainier whilst working on her third Hitchcock thriller and by the time she was appearing with Bing for the second time she knew that her acting days were over. Her Hollywood career had lasted just five years. She died in a car crash when she was travelling with her daughter. Her biographers have uncovered a romance between her and Bing. As is usual where revelations of this nature are concerned, the parties involved are dead and unfortunately unavailable for comment.

KELLY, PATSY (1910-1981) Actress. She was in Going Hollywood (1933) where she befriended Bing’s would be girl friend, played by Marion Davies. It was to become a typical role as the wisecracking friend of the heroine, where her deadpan comedy style carried her through several films after her feature debut in Going Hollywood. She decided to quit after making Ladies’ Day in 1943. But when show business is in the blood it isn’t as simple as that. She returned to movies with a part in the Doris Day hit Please Don’t Eat the Daisies in 1960. The crowning glory of her career was in 1971 when a Broadway revival of No, No, Nanette won her a Tony award.

KENNEDY, JIMMY (1902-1984) Songwriter. When Bing sang a snatch of “South of the Border” to Cantinflas in Pepe (1960) we had a brief sample of the work of one of Britain’s most successful songwriters. Of course, being remote from Hollywood his impact on American movies was negligible. However, if you turned on the wireless in this country during the war years, by the time the set had warmed up you were likely to hear “Hometown”, “My Prayer”, “We’re Gonna Hang out the Washing on the Siegfried Line” or “Lili Marlene”, for which Kennedy wrote the English lyric. His connection with radio was significant in the technical sense. He wrote “The Teddy Bears’ Picnic” in 1933 and the engineers at the BBC used Henry Hall’s 78 recording of the song out of normal broadcasting hours to test the quality of transmissions. Kennedy’s songs stopped making an impact on the popular music scene around 1960, which was the year his last hit, “Love Is Like a Violin”, was published.

KENNEDY, TOM (1885-1965) Bit part player.  His “bit” in a Bing film was as a bartender in Dixie (1943).  The justification for his appearance in this A-Z relate to his other credentials.  He was the brother of Edgar Kennedy, the master of the “slow burn”.  Both were Keystone Kops.  As well as appearing in films and on television right up until the time of his death, Tom generated a second income as a professional wrestler.

KERN, JAMES V. (1909-1966) Screenwriter and director. Most film scholars will remember Kern for helming such forties films as April Showers (1948) and Two Tickets to Broadway (1951). Before he took on the responsibilities of director, he gave up his career as a lawyer to write for the Hollywood studios. He came up with the original story for Bing’s If I Had My Way in 1940 in collaboration with William Counselman and that film’s producer/director David Butler. He then fashioned the screenplay with Counselman. His work was never truly memorable and it seems appropriate that his later years were spent directing hundreds of American television shows.

KEYES, EVELYN (1916-2008) Actress. Whether or not it was at the behest other studio, Evelyn Louise Keyes shaved a couple of years from her age when she entered movies in 1938 and referred to 1919 as her year of birth. She was signed to a personal contract by Cecil B DeMille and she made her film debut in that director’s The Buccaneer (1938). In the summer of 1938 she acted, unbilled, in Paris Honeymoon. Her obituary in the Daily Telegraph related how that film’s director, Frank Tuttle, coached her when she asked what was required of her. His advice was, “Just swoon, darling, every time you hear Bing croon.” Fame came in 1939 when she was cast as Suellen O’Hara in Gone with the Wind. But I think it safe to bet that most people reading this will link her to The Jolson Story (1946), In that one she played Mrs. Jolson, an amalgam of Jolson’s four wives. Jolson was married to Ruby Keeler from 1928 to 1939 and Columbia studio wisely played safe when filming The Jolson Story by creating a fictitious partner for Al. After that, her Hollywood career more of less petered out, her last role of note being in The Seven Year Itch (1955). If biopics come back into vogue, the scriptwriters will have some strong story material for The Evelyn Keyes Story. Pre-Hollywood she was a nightclub dancer. Her first husband, Barton Bainbridge, committed suicide in 1940. In 1941, she made Ladies in Retirement and started an affair with its married director, Charles Vidor. The pair married in 1944 and divorced a year later. There was a reported romance with Glenn Ford, with whom she made six films. She went out with Howard Hughes at about the same time. Columbia boss Harry Cohn wanted her for his wife and when she married John Huston in July of 1946, Cohn made difficulties for her because of her contract with his studio. She left Huston in 1950 and lived with Mike Todd from 1953 to 1956, before he married Elizabeth Taylor. She became Artie Shaw’s eighth wife the year after Todd left her. That marriage lasted until the mid-1980s. She summed things up quite nicely in 1999 when she said: “I was the original Cinderella girl, looking for the happy ending in the fairy story. But my fantasy prince never came.”

KILBRIDE, PERCY (1888-1964) Actor in Welcome Stranger (1947). Kilbride was Nat, the taxi driver who tells Bing (playing Dr. Jim Pearson) that Bill Walters, the drunken editor of the town’s newspaper, is ill. In Riding High (1950), Kilbride played Pop Jones, the owner of the barn that stabled Bing’s racehorse. In the three years between his Crosby pictures Kilbride made the big time in a small way when he was cast as Pa Kettle, the peppery farmer in the film The Egg and I. Audiences took to him and Universal Pictures created a film series starring him and his female counterpart Ma Kettle, played by Marjorie Main. It seemed as though the series ran forever even though there were only half a dozen entries, ending with Ma and Pa Kettle at Waikiki in 1955. That series ended his acting career which had almost always seen him cast as a country bumpkin following his Hollywood debut in 1933.

KINDA PECULIAR BROWN Song cut from the British release print of Dixie (1943). Never recorded for commercial release nor featured on radio by Bing, the only way you’re ever going to get to hear this Johnny Burke-James Van Heusen composition is to track down a copy of the Jasmine CD “Going Hollywood” Volume 3.

KING, DAVE (1929-2002) British comedian/singer/actor. By the time Dave King acted in a Crosby picture his popularity had peaked. He played the part of a restaurant owner in Bing’s British Road picture in 1961 when Hope and Crosby were bound for Hong Kong. Five years earlier, he had a record contract with Decca which had seen him in the British hit parade in fifth place with a cover version of Dean Martin’s “Memories are Made of This”. That was followed by an appearance at the Royal Variety Performance in November 1956 and a bill topping fortnight at the London Palladium the following April. Then there was a regular Saturday evening BBC series, “The Dave King Show” and a 1959 guest spot on the top rated “Perry Como Show”. That U.S. television showcase resulted in him being given a thirteen-week series on the Kraft Music Hall which was then drawing an estimated audience of forty million. Everything seemed to be going Dave’s way but very quietly, his career dissolved. He signed with Pye Records and had three singles released, none of which sold at all well. He disappeared from our television screens except for the smallest of roles. I caught him in the early 1970s at a tiny theatre in Lytham-St-Annes when he was taking the leading part in the Woody Allen comedy “Play it Again, Sam”. This might seem a lengthy entry for someone who had not much more than a bit part in a Crosby film. But listen to his recordings. He has clearly been influenced by one vocalist - Bing.

KING OF JAZZ (1930) Film. This Hollywood film gave most people their first opportunity to see what Bing looked like. Made by Universal Pictures in the expensive two-colour Technicolor process, the film itself was a no expense spared exercise when the Hollywood studios mistakenly believed that spectacle and a cast of hundreds were sufficient to entice audiences into picture palaces. As well as appearing with Harry Barris and Al Rinker as The Rhythm Boys, Bing soloed “Music Hath Charms” whilst the opening titles were on screen. Because he did not have a marketable box office identity, Bing’s name did not appear on the film’s credits.  The plan was to give Crosby a spot singing “Song of the Dawn”. Unfortunately, he was in clink when that sequence was being shot and John Boles stood in for Bing. Listen to Bing’s 1930 recording of the song and you might reach the conclusion that the ballad did not suit his style anyway. King of Jazz is an important film in terms of Hollywood history as well as an early Bing showcase. Here are some business facts about it:

· It was Hollywood’s most expensive musical to date at a cost of $1.6 million   

· It made a loss of $1 million.

· To earn overseas revenues Universal shot 9 foreign versions

· Paul Whiteman received $250,000 for his contribution

The film’s trailer served as more than an appetiser for the full feature film.  It was seven minutes long and potential audiences probably thought they had seen all they wanted to see, thus affecting future box-office earnings.  Sensing that disappointment was in the offing for its shareholders, Universal attempted to boost the film’s New York takings.  King of Jazz opened at the Roxy, probably the finest cinema in the U.S.A. at the time.  George Gershwin agreed to appear on stage during the first week’s run.  This was as a favour to Whiteman, who gave Gershwin’s career a major boost in the mid-twenties.  So on May 2, 1930, Gershwin played “Rhapsody in Blue” accompanied by the Whiteman orchestra.  Still, business was only so-so and on its second week at the Roxy, it produced the lowest revenue in the cinema’s three year history.  The theatre manager, S.L. “Roxy” Rothafel, cancelled the stage show to keep costs down and shortly afterwards prematurely ended the film’s planned extended run.  A re-edited version of the film was released in 1933 to help reduce its losses. In some areas that achieved better business than on its original showings.

KINGSFORD, WALTER (1882-1958) Character actor. In Double or Nothing (1937), Bing finds a wallet in the film’s opening sequence. It contains the business card of solicitors Dobson and Mitchell and when Bing and colleagues confront those lawyers it is Kingsford as one-half of the legal partnership who tells them what to do next. It was a typical Walter Kingsford part. He played in well over a hundred Hollywood films, usually as a distinguished type. He was a veteran of the London stage and his figure of authority resulted in M-G-M casting him as the hospital chief Dr. Carew when they filmed their Doctor Kildare series between 1938 and 1942. He was on screen for the rest of his life. His final appearance was in the Danny Kaye starrer Merry Andrew in the year of his death.

KINGSLEY, DOROTHY (1909-1997) Screenwriter. Although Bing appeared in two films for which she co-wrote the screenplays, Bing did not speak any of her lines. He had a guest shot in Angels in the Outfield (1951) and sang snatches of three songs to Cantinflas in Pepe (1960). On radio, however, he read many of her lines when he guested on Bob Hope’s shows because she was one of Hope’s regular writers until securing a better-paid job in Hollywood. M-G-M musicals provided a showcase for her talents on lightweight feel-good musicals and she worked on hits like Kiss Me Kate (1953) and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954). She suited Frank Sinatra and worked on Pal Joey (1957) and Can-Can (1960). Her last big screen credit was on the partly British musical Half a Sixpence in 1967. By that time, the Hollywood musical was all but dead and she fashioned a second career for herself by creating the television series “Bracken’s World”.

KINSKY, LEONID (1903-1998) Character actor specialising in playing Eastern Europeans.  He was in one Bing film - Rhythm on the Range (1936) - where, true to form, he played Mischa, a man not from these parts.  You’ll spot him in the scene where the cast gather to assist Bing in singing “I’m an Old Cowhand”.  He’d arrived in Hollywood from Russia via South America some four years earlier and was fully employed by several studios until he announced his retirement from acting in the late 1940s.  He was fortunate to be cast in some major films like The Great Waltz (1938) and Casablanca (1943).  Just as television was eroding cinema audiences, he created a new career by devising presentations for industry.  He was enticed back to the sound stages in 1955 to appear in The Man with the Golden Arm and made his final film appearance the following year in Glory.

KIRSTEN, DOROTHY (1910-1992) An American lyric soprano who sang leading roles at the Metropolitan Opera for 30 years and was particularly renowned for her performances of Puccini heroines. She appeared as herself with Bing in Mr. Music (1950) when they duetted “Accidents Will Happen”. Bing and Dorothy also recorded the song for Decca. At the height of her career, in the 1950s and 60s, Miss Kirsten appealed not only to opera fans, who knew her as an attractive, intelligent, thoroughly musical singer and a fine actress, but also to a broader public that knew her from her frequent radio and television appearances. Her film career was negligible. Apart from Mr. Music and a small part in the chorus of Happy Days (1930), her only other film was in The Great Caruso (1951) with Mario Lanza. Miss Kirsten’s autobiography, ‘A Time to Sing,’ was published in 1982 and in this, she hinted at a very close relationship with Bing which was sacrificed because of their careers. Her first marriage, to Edward MacKayes Oates, ended in divorce in 1949. In 1951, she married Dr. Eugene Chapman, who died in 1954. In 1955, she married Dr. John Douglas French and he pre-deceased her in 1989.

KISS IN YOUR EYES, THE Song. Featured in The Emperor Waltz (1948), Bing sings this Johnny Burke-Richard Heuberger composition to Joan Fontaine in a romantic interlude. Burke’s regular collaborator James Van Heusen did not work on the songs for The Emperor Waltz and the music for this ballad was originally written by Heuberger for a light opera.

KITTY CADDY Cartoon. The American trade paper “Film Daily” did not review every short cartoon but thought this one worth pointing out to potential exhibitors. They said: “hilarious golf match which is continually interrupted by reasonable facsimiles of Hope and Crosby. Above par for laughter.” Released in the U.S.A. on November 6, 1947, Columbia was still renting it to cinemas in the late 1960s.

KITTY OF COLERAINE Song. This traditional Irish folk song got Bing out of jail in Top o’ the Morning (1949). He’d been arrested for vagrancy and managed to prove his Irish ancestry by singing the song to the police sergeant. Bing never recorded the song commercially.

KOEHLER, TED (1894-1973) Lyric writer. He provided the words for two songs originally featured in Mack Sennett shorts and forever after associated with Bing. In One More Chance (1931), he wrote lyrics to the Billy Moll-Harry Barris tune that produced “Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams”. For Sing, Bing, Sing in 1932, Harold Arlen, one of his regular partners, provided him with the melody for “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea”. In 1934 his song “Stormy Weather”, written in collaboration with Arlen again, formed part of a Crosby medley in We’re Not Dressing (1934). Bing’s last on screen shot at a Koehler-Arlen song came in 1960, when a few lines from “Let’s Fall in Love” were sung to Cantinflas in Pepe. In 1943, Koehler stretched his talents and wrote the script for the feature film Stormy Weather. Many people have never forgiven him for writing “Animal Crackers in My Soup’” for Shirley Temple.

KORNMAN, MARY (1917-1973) Actress. She made three in a row with Bing in 1933: Please, Just An Echo and College Humor. The first two were short films and in both of them it is a motor car, which brings her to the attention of her leading man - Bing. In Please Bing comes to her aid when her car breaks down and in Echo she smokes a cigarette in her car until forest ranger Crosby drives up. By the time, she made these films she was a screen veteran having spent the previous ten years as the only girl in the Our Gang series of comedies. She retired in 1940 without making an impact in feature films. Titles such as Queen of the Jungle (1935) and Swing it Professor (1937) say it all.

KRASNA, NORMAN (1909-1984) Screenwriter. His Bing link is his collaboration with Melvin Frank and Norman Panama on the script of White Christmas (1954) and his solo writing effort on Let’s Make Love (1960). His forte was comedy and he received an Academy Award for Princess O’Rourke (1943), which he also directed. His first on screen credit was for Hollywood Speaks in 1932 and his last for I’d Rather be Rich in 1964.

KURI, EMILE (1907-2000) Set decorator. Not a specialist skill one encounters outside the movies. Kuri deserves mention because he won an Academy Award twice for set decoration: The Heiress (1949) and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954). Both Oscars were earned around the time he was running down his work with Paramount before joining Walt Disney. He was partly responsible for the sets used for the first Bing film to which he was assigned. That was Top o’ the Morning (1949) when he shared credit with Sam Comer. By the time of Bing's follow up Paramount picture, Riding High (1949), he had no collaborator and he worked alone on Here Comes the Groom two years later before being given two of his most memorable assignments for that studio. They were War of the Worlds and Shane, both released in 1953. By the mid-fifties, he was working exclusively with Disney on such demanding projects as The Absent Minded Professor (1961) and Mary Poppins (1964). His last work was on Disney's Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971).

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LA RUE, JACK (1903-1984) Actor. The name may mean little but the face will register immediately. He played the villainous Le Bec in Road to Utopia (filmed 1944) and the equally unsavoury Tomatoes in Robin and the 7 Hoods twenty years later. He was also in My Favourite Brunette (1947), a Bob Hope picture in which Bing made a gag appearance. In that one La Rue played a thug called Tony. By now, you will have placed him. His grim visage branded him a bit part gangster from his debut in Lady Killer (1934) to his last role in Won Ton Ton (1976).

LADD, ALAN (1913-1964) Actor. A good question for the Crosbyana edition of Trivial Pursuits is “Which major Hollywood actor was in four Bing Crosby pictures without appearing with him on screen in any of them?” Alan Ladd was one of many victims of Paramount’s policy to assemble all-star bills in order to show off their roster of talent, which proved once and for all that more is less when it comes to overloaded cast lists. Ladd’s apprenticeship days were behind him when he was featured in Star Spangled Rhythm (1942), Duffy’s Tavern (1944), Hollywood Victory Caravan (1945) and Variety Girl (1947). By the time the last one was released he’d been in pictures for fifteen years and a star for five. He shot to fame in 1942 with This Gun for Hire followed by The Glass Key. He was an unlikely hero at 5 ft. 5 in. but with the use of trenches and orange boxes he managed to hold his own against various leggy leading ladies and assorted toughs for most of his career. He was with Bing’s studio until the mid-fifties and he never surpassed his performance in Paramount’s Shane (1953). That was when his star started to slip. He came to the UK when he left Paramount and made a couple of undistinguished actioners in 1954: The Red Beret and The Black Knight. An even worse move was to make a film in Italy in 1961 (Duel of Champions). By then he knew his career was almost over. His last screen appearance was in The Carpetbaggers, released in 1964, the year he died. By that time, his looks had suffered because of his descent into alcohol and drugs. There had been a probable suicide attempt the previous year and the overdose of sedatives, which killed him seemed to be premeditated.

LAEMMLE, CARL (1867-1939) Motion picture pioneer and producer. Laemmle was head of Universal when he produced King of Jazz (1930). By then he had been producing films for over twenty years. Movies were a growth industry and Laemmle’s Universal studio turned out product so fast that most of his family both near and distant found themselves on the payroll working in some executive capacity. Hence the Ogden Nash couplet, “Uncle Carl Laemmie had a very large faemmle”. His fortunes started to wane shortly after King of Jazz, mainly due to the depression, which affected all of Hollywood for a time. In 1935 he sold the studio for $5 million.

LAKE, VERONICA [Constance Frances Marie Ockelman] (1919-1973) Actress. It’s no coincidence that Paramount used Veronica Lake in the same capacity as Alan Ladd in Star Spangled Rhythm (1942), Duffy’s Tavern (1944) and Variety Girl (1947). They went through a phase of cramming all their contract players into virtually plotless films during the movie hungry mid-forties. Like Ladd, she made a fourth film to which Bing contributed. That was Out of This World (1945), where she was Eddie Bracken’s leading lady in a film which utilised the Crosby voice. She co-starred with Ladd in his first two major successes for Paramount - This Gun for Hire and The Glass Key. Her career went into decline before Ladd’s and by the end of the 1940s, her significant period was over. Three low budget films were made over the next twenty years and, like Ladd, she sought solace in the bottle. She was found working as a barmaid in New York in the early 1960s and the resultant publicity led to her moving to England where she wrote “Veronica”, a fairly entertaining autobiography. She summed herself up when she wrote, “You could put all the talent I had into your left eye and still not suffer from impaired vision.”

LAMOUR, DOROTHY [Mary Leta Dorothy Kaumeyer] (1914-1996) Actress and singer. Unlike Ladd and Lake, her star continued to shine in her public and private life up until the time of her death. Her Crosby films and the roles she took are Road to Singapore (1940) as Mima, Road to Zanzibar (1941) as Donna Latour, Road to Morocco (1942) as Princess Shalmar, Dixie (1943) as Millicent Cook, Road to Utopia (1944) as Sal, Road to Rio (1948) as Lucia Maria de Andrade, Road to Bali (1953) as Princess Lalah McTavish and The Road to Hong Kong (1962) as herself. Because she was a Paramount contract star, she was unable to escape from being seen in the 1940s collages Star Spangled Rhythm, Duffy’s Tavern and Variety Girl, all of which featured Bing. Plus, in the “hardly a Bing picture” category, My Favourite Brunette (1947) and The Greatest Show on Earth (1952). And finally, she showed up in Here Comes the Groom (1951) to join in the chorus of ‘Misto Cristofo Columbo”. In her pre-Hollywood period she was crowned Miss New Orleans in 1931 and then entered show business as a singer. There have been several CDs devoted to her vocals and had she not made the transition to acting she could have remained in the public eye as a ballad singer. As it was, her first film, The Jungle Princess (1936), shot her to stardom and she was seldom out of a sarong until she showed she was adept at light comedy as foil to Bing and Bob in the Road series. She more or less retired from films in the early 1960s, although there were three ill-advised returns to the sound stages in Pajama Party (1964), The Phynx (1970) and Creepshow 2 (1987).

LAND AROUND US, THE Song. Specially written for the 1954 film The Country Girl by Ira Gershwin and Harold Arlen, the song is also the name of the Broadway play in which Bing is to make his comeback. We see Bing perform the song during the show’s dress rehearsal. As with the other three songs written for the film by Gershwin and Arlen, I am unaware of any other vocalist tackling the number on record.

LANE, BURTON (1912-1997) Songwriter. Lane wrote the music to just one Crosby film song and Ralph Freed provided the words. That was the catchy “Smarty” from the 1937 film Double or Nothing. Lane was just making his mark as a composer, his film song debut having been for Dancing Lady (1934). He was capable of writing both words and music although some of his best work has been with other lyricists. Bing sang several Lane songs over the years and his interpretations of Lane’s collaboration with Frank Loesser for “Finian’s Rainbow” are well suited to the Crosby voice. Lane’s work was rarely second rate. His last major success was with Alan Jay Lerner on the Broadway hit, which became a Hollywood film: “On a Clear Day You Can See Forever”.

LANE, CHARLES [Charles Gerstle Levison] (1905-2007) Actor. With around 400 hundred films to his credit it’s a question of “now you see him, now you don’t” when it comes to spotting Lane in one of his hundreds of bit parts. You’ll recognise him typecast as the rent collector in It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). After making his debut in a Crosby film in Two for Tonight (1935), Bing watchers could make a positive sighting when Lane played Bernard Schwartz, the song publisher to whom the Crosby character pitched “When the Moon Comes over Madison Square” in Rhythm on the River (1940). [At the end of the 1940s, the real Bernard Schwartz would change his name to Tony Curtis when he entered films.] Lane next cropped up in a Bing-pic as the cinema manager in Birth of the Blues the following year. There was a gap of eight years before he was again in a Crosby film when he played bit parts in Riding High (1949) and Here Comes the Groom (1951). He portrayed an F.B.I. officer in the latter. Potential Lane spotters need to look out for a thin, long faced scowler invariably cast as a petty bureaucrat with no more than a couple of lines of script to memorise. How else could he have played in 65 films between 1940 and 1942? Lane arrived in Hollywood in 1931 and was a regular on the big screen until the 1960s, the decade in which he transferred to television for regular appearances in such shows as “The Beverly Hillbillies”. But his greatest achievement had nothing to do with film appearances. He had the longest marriage in Hollywood history. He married actress Ruth Covell the year he arrived in Hollywood and they remained together until she died in 2002.

LANG, CHARLES B. (1902-1998) Director of photography. Lang’s camera work was behind half a dozen Crosby pictures. He worked on We’re Not Dressing (1934), She Loves Me Not (1934), Mississippi (1935), Doctor Rhythm (1938), Here Come the WAVES (1944) and Blue Skies (1945). On the last one, he shared credit with William Snyder. He entered films as a laboratory assistant at Paramount in the early 1920s and by 1926, he had his first assignment when he was co-photographer on The Nightpatrol. He remained with Paramount until 1952 when his freelance work allowed him to photograph an increasing number of films in colour. However, his best work is considered to be subtle black and white photography and his only Academy Award was for the 1933 version of A Farewell to Arms. He was on top form until his retirement at seventy. He always worked on class A productions, his last two films being Butterflies Are Free (1972) and 40 Carats (1973).

LANG, EDDIE [Salvatore Massaro] (1902-1933) Guitarist, whose artistry is heard on the soundtracks of King of Jazz (1930) and The Big Broadcast (1932). He accompanied Bing on “Please” in the latter (with Stuart Erwin on piano). He was a significant figure during Bing’s early solo years and the two were close personal colleagues following a friendship, which occurred when both were on the Whiteman payroll. The two worked together on radio and recordings until Lang’s unfortunate death following a routine tonsillectomy.

LANGDON, HARRY (1884-1944). Actor. In issue number 7 of the 1933 short series Hollywood on Parade, Langdon is seen in a brief comedy sketch with Bing and John Barrymore that is set on the golf course. He never made a successful transition from silent pictures where at one time he was held in high regard alongside Chaplin, Keaton and Lloyd. Several studies on his artistry have been published over the years and all conclude that he was a victim of his ego. Whatever the reason for his fall from fame, he soon became out of touch with public taste and in 1931 declared himself bankrupt.

LA PLANCHE, LOUISE (1919-2012). Actress who had a number of bit parts in Bing’s films. La Planche’s mother had moved to southern California from Kansas and had two daughters, Louise and Rosemary. Louise began her movie career at age 3, playing a gypsy girl in the silent film version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame in 1923. Both sisters participated in numerous contests from dancing to beauty pageants, and Rosemary La Planche went on to win the title of Miss America in 1941. Louise won the title of Miss Catalina in 1939, which led to her signing with MGM, where she had an uncredited role in the movie Strike Up the Band with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland. She went on to sign a 4-year contract with Paramount Pictures and had uncredited bit parts in Holiday Inn (“girl”), Road to Morocco (she played a harem girl who painted Bob Hope’s toenails), Star Spangled Rhythm (“Swing Shift Singer”) and Here Come the Waves (“photographer”). Louise married Lester Freedman, a clothing manufacturer, and gave up her film career to concentrate on raising her family.

LAST ROSE OF SUMMER, THE Song. It took Bing twenty years to record this song after he was first heard featuring it in his stage act in the 1943 film Dixie. In the movie, he sang it as part of his minstrel act. Then he was vocally supported by Billy de Wolfe, Lynne Overman and Eddie Foy jnr. The words are from a poem of Thomas Moore’s which are set to the music of a traditional Irish air. The end result makes for a beautiful ballad. Dublin born Moore’s skill was putting words to traditional Irish airs. Peter Gammond was spot on when he wrote that Moore was responsible “for the rise and popularity of many pseudo-Irish songs of great charm and lasting quality.” The song was not given a studio recording until a Warner Bros. sing-a-long album in 1962.

LAST ROUND UP, THE Song. Like “The Last Rose of Summer”, Bing didn’t give this the treatment it deserved when he included it in a medley sung during We’re Not Dressing (1934).   It forms part of the “I Positively Refuse to Sing” sequence. He did, however, record it for 78 issue a couple of months before We’re Not Dressing went before the cameras. Words and music are by Billy Hill, who was the foremost American composer of cowboy songs during the 1930s.

LASZLO, ERNEST (1904-1984) Director of photography. Hungarian born cameraman Laszlo worked on two Bing films. He had sole D of P credit on Road to Rio (1948) and shared the chores on Riding High two years later with George Barnes. He was under contract to Paramount for many years and when the studio system crumbled was much in demand for prestige pictures. One of these, Ship of Fools (1965), won him an Academy Award.

LAUGH AND CALL IT LOVE Song. Like all but one of the songs featured in Sing You Sinners (1938), Bing shared vocals with his screen brothers, Donald O’Connor and Fred MacMurray. As the three Beebe Brothers they included it in their night club act. It was one of three songs specially composed for the film by Johnny Burke and James V. Monaco.

LAWFORD, PETER (1923-1984) Actor who sang a little. If you had to hazard a guess at a Lawford/Crosby film link, you might plump for Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964). You’d be wrong but as Lawford was part of the Sinatra clan in the 1960s you’d be given half a mark. Lawford never appeared on screen at the same time as Bing but both were involved in the multi-talent films Pepe (1960) and That’s Entertainment (1974). A couple of books which were published after Lawford’s death tell the story of the son of a British Knight visiting California in 1938 and staying on to become a lightweight leading man in several M-G-M films of the forties and fifties. Lawford’s descent into drink and drugs led to an earlier than necessary death.

LAZY Song. Just one of a dozen or so winners from Holiday Inn (1942). Words and music by Irving Berlin, who never understood why people needed to collaborate on songs. The song slots neatly into the plot. Bing retires from show business to take up farming and “Lazy” is sung to counterpoint the reality of the strenuous life of working the land. Some songs fit Bing like a glove and this is one of them.

LeBARON, WILLIAM (1883-1958). Producer. He produced Too Much Harmony (1933) and Rhythm on the River (1940) with Bing as star. That second picture was his last for Paramount before moving to 20th Century-Fox when he used his talents to develop that studio’s colourful musicals. Think of the light escapist fare starring the likes of Alice Faye, Betty Grable and Carmen Miranda and you’ll get a measure of the man’s achievements before his eventual retirement at the end of the 1940s.

LEARN TO CROON Song. One of several written for Bing’s second Paramount feature College Humor (1933) by Sam Coslow and Arthur Johnston. Bing is cast in the unlikely role of a college professor and sings “Learn to Croon” at a college dance. In Duffy’s Tavern (1944), the voice of Bing is heard singing the song when it emanates from a phonograph. It is just possible that moviegoers heard the song before they saw Bing deliver it in College Humor. That’s because it was used in a 1933 Paramount on Parade short when Jack Oakie impersonated Bing’s singing style.

LEDERER, CHARLES (1910-1976) Screenwriter who also directed three films. Did it really take four people to write the dialogue for Double or Nothing (1937)? So the film’s credits would have us believe. For this hour and a half lightweight Crosby comedy, Lederer developed a story already written by M. Coates Webster. He was assisted by Erwin Gelsey, John C. Moffitt and Duke Atterberry. That was the way Lederer usually worked and few of his credits are for solo screenplays. The standout exception is Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953). The films Lederer directed are long forgotten.

LEE, PEGGY [Norma Deloris Egstrom] (1920-2002) Singer, songwriter and actress. To keep this entry to a manageable size, it is the latter category that I will cover here. In 1950, Peggy guested in Mr. Music when she sang “Life Is So Peculiar” with Bing. At that time, she had been a regular on Bing’s radio programmes and would be used on Decca’s album of the film White Christmas (1954) because Rosemary Clooney’s contract with Columbia Records prevented her repeating her co-starring role on wax. Peggy Lee was first glimpsed on celluloid in 1943 when she had a guest spot in Stage Door Canteen. Her first dramatic leading role was in the first sound remake of The Jazz Singer (1953). She followed this with an equally effective acting part as Jack Webb’s leading lady in Pete Kelly’s Blues (1955). Between those two, she sang some of her own songs on the soundtrack of Disney’s feature cartoon Lady and the Tramp (1955). She ended her flirtation with Hollywood in 1970 when her singing voice was also used for Pieces of Dreams.

LET ME SING AND I’M HAPPY Song. A Jolson song in a Crosby film? Some mistake, surely? But a snatch of this early Irving Berlin composition is sung by Bing and Danny Kaye in White Christmas (1954). It is utilised in a montage illustrating how Crosby and Kaye’s entertainment careers have progressed since their discharge from the army. The Jolson connection began when Al sang it in the 1930 film Mammy, but its revival in The Jolson Story (1946) brought it to the attention of far more viewers.

LET’S CALL A HEART A HEART Song. One of four songs specially composed by Johnny Burke and Arthur Johnston for the 1936 Pennies from Heaven. Bing sings it in a nightclub scene and he cut a Decca single of the song on July 29, 1936.

LET’S FALL IN LOVE Song. There was no ‘proper’ recording by Bing of this 1930s standard by Ted Koehler and Harold Arlen. We are treated to a few lines from the song when Bing sandwiches it between ‘Pennies from Heaven’ and ‘South of the Border’ in Pepe (1960). We see it in that brief sequence when Cantinflas comes across Bing in his car at the film studio entrance and they finish up singing together. Its other link with Bing came in 1937 when a Crosby soundalike crooned it in the Columbia picture It Happened in Hollywood.

LET’S MAKE LOVE Film. Bing guested in this 1960 20th Century-Fox film. His contribution to the film took place on June 15, 1960, the same day he filmed his guest sequence for the above-mentioned Pepe. His hour’s work on the film enabled him to coach Yves Montand so that the Frenchman could woo Marilyn Monroe with his rendition of “Incurably Romantic”. Crosby’s lesson was so successful that Montand and Monroe had a brief fling off set.

LET’S NOT BE SENSIBLE. Song. With the retirement of Johnny Burke, it was Sammy Cahn who collaborated with tunesmith James Van Heusen on songs for the final Road picture, The Road to Hong Kong (1962). “Let’s Not Be Sensible” is a romantic ballad and both Bing and Joan Collins take a crack at it. The issue of the soundtrack album could have been an afterthought because the duet in its original form was incomplete. The film’s action recommences before Bing has the opportunity to sing the last word in the song’s lyric ‘love’. To make the recording presentable for release to the public, conductor Robert Farnon used Mike Sammes to sing the missing word, which was then spliced into the soundtrack version. Of course, this means it is now impossible for anyone who knows of this deceit to listen attentively to the song without waiting impatiently for the concluding bars.

LET’S START THE NEW YEAR RIGHT Song. One of Irving Berlin’s calendar songs for Holiday Inn (1942). We first hear the song in the sequence where the inn is opened to the public for the first time on New Year’s Eve and Bing sings it on the stroke of midnight. The song ends the film when it is reprised by Bing, Fred Astaire, Marjorie Reynolds and Virginia Dale.

LET’S TAKE THE LONG WAY HOME Song. There’s no mistaking what’s on Bing’s mind when he makes this musical suggestion to Betty Hutton in Here Come the WAVES (1944). As a result, Miss Hutton realises she has fallen for Bing. Johnny Mercer wrote the words to Harold Arlen’s tune.

LEVANT, OSCAR (1906-1972) Composer, actor, pianist, author and professional neurotic. He was only in the one Crosby film but Oscar Levant was memorable as Billy Starbuck in Rhythm on the River (1940). He was cast as the assistant to Basil Rathbone, a composer suffering from writer’s block. Starbuck’s every other line was either sarcastic or cynical, which fitted the image Levant so loved to project. The same Levant persona can be detected on the radio appearances he made with Bing. There were many sides to the man. His writing skills extended to three autobiographies which allowed him to proclaim his genius, his hypochondria and his insomnia. He befriended George Gershwin and his musical skills made him the foremost interpreter of Gershwin’s compositions. Levant became a successful concert pianist but only after struggling to make ends meet by giving piano lessons and working with dance bands. He wrote scores for early Hollywood musicals such as Love Comes Along (1930) and Music Is Magic (1935). He was Al Jolson’s pianist when Jolie took over the Kraft Music Hall half-hours from Bing. He acted in major Hollywood films like An American in Paris (1951) and The Band Wagon (1953). He became much in demand on late night talk shows on American television where he would regale his audience with his psychological hang-ups. In the end, life imitated art and he spent the last twenty years of his life in and out of hospitals, mainly for treatment for his addiction to the many pills and potions he took.  He died of a heart attack.  I will always remember him as the originator of the line, “I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin.”

LEWIS, ROBERT (1909-1997) American theatre director.  As far as I can trace, Lewis only directed one film.  That was Anything Goes (1956).  When he died, his obituaries stressed the part he had played in raising the profile of acting on the American stage.  He was a founding member of the Group Theatre in the 1930s and co-founding member of the Actors’ Studio in 1948.  He did not quite conform to the adage “those who can do, those who can’t teach” because he’d had acting experience in films since 1943 when he was in Paris After Dark.  He appeared in a handful of films in the forties, the best remembered of which are Ziegfeld Follies (1946) and Monsieur Verdoux (1947).

LIFE IS SO PECULIAR Song.  When Burke and Van Heusen wrote the songs for Mr. Music (1950), it can’t be said that they delivered one of their more memorable scores.  The strongest song proved to be “Life Is So Peculiar”, remembered by audiences leaving the cinema because it was featured three times.  At a party, Bing is joined by Peggy Lee to give the song its initial outing.  Later on, it returns in a scene when Bing’s character in the film is presenting his new show at a college.  The Merry Macs sing it and then Bing and Groucho Marx give it a go. 

LILLEY, JOSEPH J (1913-1971) Vocal coach who progressed to musical director.  He made his first contact with Bing in 1942 when he received an on-screen credit as vocal arranger for Holiday Inn.  He was similarly employed on Star Spangled Rhythm (1942), Dixie (1943), Going My Way (1944), Here Come the WAVES (1944), Road to Utopia (1946), Blue Skies (1946) and Welcome Stranger (1947).  His first credit as musical director was shared with Troy Sanders on Variety Girl (1947), when the musical score was also attributed to him.  On The Emperor Waltz the following year, it was back to vocal arranger although he grabbed some song writing royalties by adapting a traditional Swiss melody for the charming “The Friendly Mountains” to fit Johnny Burke’s lyrics.  Road to Rio (1948), A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1948), Top o’ the Morning (1949), Riding High (1950) and Mr. Music (1950) all resulted in vocal arranger credit.  Just for You (1952) saw further vocal arrangement credit sandwiched in-between Here Comes the Groom (1951) and Road to Bali (1953), when he was again listed as musical director.  His final credits for Crosby movies were for musical direction again on White Christmas (1954) and Anything Goes (1956).  By then Bing had started to use him on television assignments.  He’d been used for the television film High Tor (1955), when he arranged the music for this Arthur Schwartz-Maxwell Anderson collaboration.  After that, Bing ensured he was assigned as vocal arranger for the singer’s one hour specials.  Chances are, if you listened to the radio in the U.S.A. during the 1940s then you would here the announcement “vocal arrangements and orchestrations by Joseph Lilley” at least once a week.  Lilley worked on radio with Rudy Vallee, Andre Kostelanetz, Paul Whiteman, Lanny Ross, Alec Templeton and many others.  Similarly, if you saw a Paramount Picture in the 1950s, vocal arrangements were down to Lilley when it was a Martin and Lewis, Bob Hope or Guy Mitchell film shot for that studio.  Lilley went on to be Musical Director on seven Elvis Presley films in the 60s. His final film work was as a choral arranger for On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (1970) before he died from cancer at age 57. This is a lengthy entry for a small cog in a big wheel, but Joseph J. Lilley was an important behind the scenes force when it came to Bing, movies and music during the ten key years of Crosby at Paramount.

LILLIE, BEATRICE [Constance Sylvia Munston] (1894-1989) Canadian born comedienne/actress who made her mark with Crosby followers in one film, Doctor Rhythm (1938), when she played the ditzy Lorelei Dodge-Blodgett.  It provided an opportunity for her to perform her set piece involving a double dozen double damask dinner napkins, a sketch she performed on Bing’s radio show some ten years later.  In fact, she was a regular on Bing’s various shows between 1947 and 1950.  She only made seven films, rationing herself to one a decade after Doctor Rhythm.  They were On Approval (1944), Around the World in Eighty Days (1956) and Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967).  Between times, she was one of those personalities famous for being famous because of the company she kept.  Noel Coward, Winston Churchill, George Bernard Shaw and Charlie Chaplin were listed as intimate friends.  Her autobiography, “Every Other Inch a Lady” was published in 1972.

LINDON, LIONEL (1905-1971) Director of Photography.  Another backroom boy in the Joseph Lilley category.  He was under long-term contract to Paramount since forging a link with that company in 1923 when he was assistant to director Cecil B. DeMille on the silent version of The Ten Commandments.  All his Crosby pictures were shot in the 1940s from Going My Way (1944) to Top o’ the Morning (1949).  The ones in between were Duffy’s Tavern (1945), Road to Utopia (1946), Welcome Stranger (1947) and Variety Girl (1947).  He received an Academy Award for his cinematography on Around the World in Eighty Days (1956) and continued working on major Hollywood shot films until two years before his death.

LINDSAY, HOWARD (1889-1968) American actor-playwright-stage director.  It’s Lindsay’s writing skills which earn him an entry here.  He adapted a novel by Edward Hope into the play on which Bing’s 1934 film She Loves Me Not was based.  That same year he collaborated with Russell Crouse and Cole Porter on the musical Anything Goes, which Bing filmed twice, in 1936 and 1956.  His acting and directing careers were in the silent movie days.

LITTLE BIT OF HEAVEN, A Song.  You could easily miss Bing singing a snatch of this Ernest R. Ball-J. Keirn Brennan sentimental Irish ballad.  It was featured in I Surrender Dear, a 1931 Mack Sennett short.  In the film, Bing tries to soothe an Irishman whose wife has been mistaken for a girl Bing is seeking.  The same scene was featured in the 1946 compilation Road to Hollywood, which raided the Sennett vaults and stitched together four of Bing’s early thirties short films.

LITTLE BOY LOST Film.  In the autumn of 1952, Bing spent time in France working on this somewhat sombre Paramount film before returning to Hollywood to put the finishing touches to it.  Filming in France began in September 1952. Paramount planned to film more of Little Boy Lost in France than was achieved.  This was because of constant rain.  Paramount had no studio facilities booked in France and the unit returned to Hollywood.  When the film required more location shooting before completion this was achieved in May 1953, when Bing was in Paris recording his “Le Bing” album.  The film was released in the autumn of 1953 to mild critical acclaim.  Bing selected his leading lady.  Nicole Maurey had the qualities that appealed to him.  She had not appeared in an English language film before although she made her film debut in her native France at the age of eighteen in 1943.  The film was an early example of Bing flexing his acting muscles as opposed to the typical light Crosby screen vehicle we had grown to expect.  Johnny Burke and James Van Heusen wrote two “French” and one standard light Crosby-type ballads for Bing to sing during the film’s 95 minutes.  The film would have played just as well without the crooning but Paramount were no doubt unsure of foisting a Bing picture on his loyal public without including a song or two.  American critic Pauline Kael gave the film a fair if harsh review.  She wrote:

“Bing Crosby is inoffensive in the lead, though he lacks an actor’s tension: he’s colourlessly “natural”.  Perhaps the picture is as effective as it is partly because the little boy (Christian Fourcade) is so totally unlike American children that we can see how Crosby would find it impossible to believe that this was his son.  It should be a stinker and it isn’t quite - the movie’s lameness and dullness seem to make it more touching.”            

Typical Bing fare had been released by the studio at the beginning of the year in the form of Road to Bali.  Surprisingly, both films did identical box office business with North American rentals of $3 million.  At the year end they shared joint 19th position in Variety’s top twenty money making films of 1953.

LITTLE LOVE, A LITTLE WHILE, A Song.  Another Maxwell Anderson-Arthur Schwartz song from High Tor.  For its Decca album release, it was lifted directly from the soundtrack.

LITTLE ONE Song.  We all have our favourite songs from Bing’s last musical of note.  Nine Cole Porter compositions featured in High Society (1956) and there’s little to choose between them.  They are all memorable.  “Little One” is sung by Bing to Lydia Reed, who plays Grace Kelly’s little sister in the film.  Louis Armstrong’s trumpet helps out on this strong ballad and the song is picked up later in the story by Lydia Reed who does her best to sing it in French.

LITTLE THINGS IN LIFE, THE Song.  Irving Berlin wrote the words and music to the twenty plus songs used in the 1946 Paramount Picture Blue Skies. It was inevitable that time would prevent a full treatment of all the numbers and “The Little Things in Life” is featured in a medley of three songs, which Bing is heard to sing over a montage of shots depicting night clubs he has owned.  In 1930, Bing recorded the song for RCA-Victor and he did not attempt to provide Decca with an updated version when he selected nine songs to record to coincide with the film’s release.

LITTLE WHITE PILL ON THE LITTLE GREEN HILL, THE Song.  The 1940 short Swing with Bing was a personal project of Bing’s.  It promoted his favourite sport: golf.  He asked Johnny Burke and James V. Monaco to provide a song.  “Little White Pill...” was unlikely to sell very many copies for Decca if it was recorded for sale on the open market and its only off-screen availability is on a Australian produced LP of Bing’s soundtrack songs.

LIVE OAK TREE, THE Song.  This was one of several songs composed by Leo Robin and Harry Warren for the 1952 film Just for You.  A schoolgirl chorus joins Bing when he sings it at a school picnic.  Not the most memorable of songs, I can’t trace a recording other than the one Bing made for Decca. 

LIVING ONE DAY AT A TIME Song.  The CBS musical High Tor was shot on film in the November of 1955 and Decca released an album of the songs.  All were written by Maxwell Anderson and Arthur Schwartz and this is one such example of their philosophical tone.

LIVINGSTON, JAY (1915-2001) Songwriter.  His composing skills were noticed by Paramount towards the end of Bing’s peak film years.  He wrote three songs with Ray Evans for Here Comes the Groom (1951).  For the record, the songs were “Your Own Little House”, “Misto Cristofo Columbo” and “Bonne Nuit”.  Paramount had the Livingston-Evans partnership under contract from 1945 to 1955 during which time they kept the studio in the public ear by winning Academy Awards three times in the best song category.  Those Oscar statuettes were for “Buttons and Bows” from The Paleface (1948), “Mona Lisa” from Captain Carey, USA (1950) and “Que Sera, Sera” from The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956).  Oddly enough, none was for a musical.  Livingston was usually the melody man with Evans coming up with the words.  In 1957, there was a perfect marriage of words and music with their beautiful ballad “Tammy”.  Bing sang a good version of this on the radio but it was Debbie Reynolds’ wistful rendition that provided a timeless interpretation.  Livingston’s songwriting career faded as the vogue for melodic film title songs passed.  He did leave us with the popular theme from the television show Bonanza, which no doubt took care of his pension needs. 

LOCKHART, GENE (1891-1957) Actor.  In Going My Way (1944), he was Ted Haines Snr.  He’s the disapproving father of Haines Jr. (James Brown) who believes that his son is living outside marriage with Carol James (Jean Heather).  Six years later, he was again halfway down the cast list in a Crosby picture: Riding High.  As J. P. Chase, millionaire, by placing a bet on the horse Broadway Bill he causes the odds to plummet.  Those two roles sum him up.  He was able to play heavies or comic eccentrics with equal ease.  A veteran of vaudeville he went on to add value to over one hundred Hollywood movies from Smilin’ Through (1922) to Jeanne Eagles, released the year of his death.

LOESSER, FRANK (1910-1969) Song-writing composer.  Bing sang two of his songs in as many films.  Loesser got off to a good start by collaborating with Hoagy Carmichael on “Small Fry” for Sing You Sinners (1938).  Six years later, he penned “The Road to Victory” for Bing to sing in the bond raising short The Shining Future.  However, these are l(o)esser works when measured against his complete musicals such as “Guys and Dolls”, “The Most Happy Fella” or “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying”.  He won an Academy Award in 1949 in the best song category for “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”.  Hollywood legend had it that Loesser’s wife was not as agreeable as her husband, which earned her the sobriquet “the evil of two Loessers”.

LOMBARD, CAROLE (1908-1942) Actress.  After being glimpsed in two Hollywood on Parade shorts in which Bing appeared she co-starred with him the following year in We’re Not Dressing (1934).  They were fellow castaways separated by the fact that she was a millionaire’s daughter and he was a humble sailor.  They gelled well together on screen and Bing had happy memories of their collaboration.  When she appeared in We’re Not Dressing she was a Hollywood veteran, having made her debut in A Perfect Crime (1921).  Like Crosby, she made some one-reel comedies for Mack Sennett.  She was the foremost screwball comedienne of the 1930s, making her reputation in such critical and box-office hits as My Man Godfrey (1936), Nothing Sacred (1937) and To Be or Not to Be (1942).  To Be... was her last film.  She was killed in a plane crash in January 1942, whilst returning from a War Bond tour.

LOMBARDO, CARMEN (1903-1971) Composer and saxophonist.  Canadian born brother of Guy, he wrote two songs with Joe Young for a couple of early Crosby shorts.  A parody of “Snuggled on Your Shoulder” was featured in Sing, Bing, Sing (1932) and “You’re Beautiful Tonight, My Dear” appeared in Just an Echo (1933).  Both songs benefited from recording studio interpretations by Bing.  Carmen’s career as a musician in his brother’s band ran from 1929 until the year before his death from cancer.

LONDON TOWN Film.  This 1946 British musical was the nearest Bing came to making a major movie outside Hollywood until his final Road picture.  Rank wanted to establish itself as a studio with international clout and J. Arthur unwisely thought that if enough money was thrown into a project it would succeed.  Its star was one of Britain’s most popular comedians of the time - Sid Field.  Bing had been approached to appear in the film and the fact that the songs were written by his personal songsmiths Burke and Van Heusen is a strong clue to Rank’s pre-production plans.  The British studio had half an eye on Crosby okaying the project.  Furthermore, Rank hired American Wesley Ruggles to direct.  He’d had earlier working relationships with Bing on College Humor (1933) and Sing You Sinners (1938).  The whole London Town episode was a bit of a shambles.  To bolster box-office potential the cast contained such disparate talents as Petula Clark, Tessie O’Shea, Claude Hulbert and Kay Kendall.  The film has been shown on British television from time to time and its main interest now is to watch Field going through the set pieces from his stage routines with foil Jerry Desmonde.  Ironically, the overlong 128 minutes production was trimmed for release in the States by editing out Field’s performance.  The film was retitled My Heart Goes Crazy for its American audience.  Bing obviously spotted the suitability of the Burke-Van Heusen score because he recorded two of its songs for Decca in the summer of 1946: “My Heart Goes Crazy” and “So Would I”.

LOO, RICHARD (1903-1983) Chinese/Hawaiian actor.  He played bit parts in hundreds of Hollywood films.  Whenever an oriental role needed filling R.L came to the aid of the party.  Next time you watch Road to Morocco (1942) look out for the montage featuring radio announcers.  Richard Loo is the Chinaman.

LORD, DEL (1895-1970) Director.  Lord played a minor part in Bing’s rise to cinematic fame:  he directed the Mack Sennett short Dream House (1931).  But if you went to the pictures in the 1940s his name must have a familiar ring to it because he directed most of the Three Stooges shorts for Columbia Pictures.  Love them or hate them, the Stooges were part of every Columbia feature film booking in suburban cinemas for twenty years.  Del Lord will never have a season at the National Film Theatre but he’s as much a part of film history as Hitchcock or Disney.

LOVABLE Song.  This Gus Kahn-Harry Woods number was important to the plot of the Sennett short Sing, Bing, Sing (1932).  Bing sang it outside the bedroom window of his girl Helen (Florine McKinney) and they then proceeded to elope together.  Eighteen years later that clip turned up in the compilation film Down Memory Lane.  Bing never made a studio recording of the song.

LOVE IN BLOOM Song.  Bing had mixed feelings about the potential of this song although he included it in his 1954 musical autobiography just twenty years after he recorded it to tie in with the film in which it was featured, She Loves Me Not.  He sang it in that film as a duet with Kitty Carlisle.  Ten years on, it was played off-screen in Paramount’s all-star Duffy’s Tavern.  Now regarded as Jack Benny’s signature tune, it was composed by Leo Robin and Ralph Rainger who credit Bing with making it the hit it became. 

LOVE IS JUST AROUND THE CORNER Song.  In Here Is My Heart (1935), the Crosby character is a millionaire and whilst on his luxury yacht he duets the song with Cecilia Parker.  Later in the film, he uses it to serenade Kitty Carlisle.  Leo Robin wrote the words to fit the melody for a one-off collaboration with Lewis Gensler and Bing liked the song well enough to reprise it for his 1954 musical autobiography.

LOVE IS SO TERRIFIC Song.  Bing is heard singing this in the background in a scene from Frances (1982).  That film has another tenuous link with Bing’s films.  It was the screen biography of Frances Farmer, his leading lady in Rhythm on the Range (1936).  The version used in Frances was taken from a Philco Radio Time broadcast of 1948.

LOVE THY NEIGHBOUR Song.  One of the songs written by Mack Gordon and Harry Revel for the 1934 picture We’re Not Dressing that went on to become a Crosby classic.  No vocalist seems to have tackled it over the last seventy-odd years but it remained in the Bing catalogue longer than some of his other songs simply because he re-recorded it in 1947 and then gave it a further brief whirl for his musical autobiography on the song’s twentieth anniversary.

LUND, JOHN (1913-1992) Actor.  Although one of the many Paramount contractees featured alongside Bing in Variety Girl (1947), Lund will always be remembered as the man who lost out to Bing in High Society (1956).  As George Kittredge he found that Tracy Lord (Grace Kelly) really preferred to marry C.K. Dexter Haven (Crosby).  Lund had the clean cut looks of a 1940’s leading man, which was why Paramount signed him to a long-term contract.  Handsome he might have been, but he always came across as dull.  His career as a leading man was more or less over when he made High Society and when he appeared in his last film - If a Man Answers (1962) - his time had passed. 

LUPINO, IDA (1918-1995) Actress/director/screenwriter.  When Bing got the girl in Anything Goes (1936), she was Ida Lupino in the role of Hope Harper.  At 18, she was already making her mark in the movies having been a veteran of half a dozen British films made during 1933.  Paramount signed her up for seven years but did not allow her to realise her full potential.  She was then under contract to Warner Bros. but found the studio using her in the parts they considered too weak for Bette Davis.  By the 1950s, she had turned to writing and directing some surprisingly tough films like Outrage (1950) and The Hitchhiker (1953).  Her husbands were all in the film industry.  Actor Louis Hayward came first from 1938 to 1945.  Then Columbia Pictures executive Collier Young followed (1948 to 1950).  At the time of her death, she was married to actor Howard Duff.

LYNN, DIANA (1926-1971) Actress.  When I set questions for “Mastermind” based on Bing’s films I intend to pose the question, “Which actress was in four films which also featured Bing but who never appeared on screen with him?”  It was Diana Lynn.  An extra point will be awarded if her real name of Dolores Loehr is offered.  The films were Duffy’s Tavern (1945), Out of This World (1945), Hollywood Victory Caravan (1945) and Variety Girl (1947).  She was obviously under contract to Paramount at the time, having made her real acting debut in The Major and the Minor (1942).  That promising start was not consolidated, the studio using her in ordinary roles in ordinary pictures.  By the 1950s, she had sunk to appearing in the likes of Bedtime for Bonzo (1951).  After The Kentuckian (1955) she called it quits at the age of 29.  She had a change of mind and came out of retirement for Company of Killers in 1970.  It wasn’t good enough to set her on the comeback trail and she died the following year anyway.

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MacARTHUR, CHARLES (1895-1956) Screenwriter, playwright and director.  It was MacArthur the writer that linked him to Bing back in 1930 when he provided dialogue and sketches for King of Jazz.  He was just getting into his writing stride then but hits soon followed.  Best known are plays The Front Page and Twentieth Century and films Gunga Din and Wuthering Heights.  The two films were both made in 1939.

McCAREY, LEO (1898-1969) Director, producer and screenwriter.  McCarey more or less exercised his three aforementioned skills on his first outing with Bing.  That was for arguably Bing’s best ever screen effort: Going My Way (1944).  McCarey produced, directed and provided the story basis and netted himself three Oscars in the categories of best film, best director and best original story.  A sort of sequel was too good to miss and he fashioned The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945) around the life of his aunt.  McCarey formed his own production company - Rainbow Productions - in order to make the film and then appointed himself producer, director and screenwriter.  It was another massive box office success.  After those two significant contributions to Bing’s screen career, six years elapsed before they were re-united when he directed the short You Can Change the World (1951).  That promotional film for the Christopher’s Association marks Bing’s most dire film appearance.  What a contrast.  McCarey’s Hollywood work links him with the best from directing four of Laurel and Hardy’s finest short films through to his mid-forties association with Bing.  Along the way, he proved to be a dab hand at getting the best from a number of comedians who never seem to go out of fashion.  That run of critical and box office success began in 1932 with Eddie Cantor in The Kid from Spain.  The following year he directed the Marx Brothers in their best film, Duck Soup.  Another year passed and he helmed two winners: Six of a Kind starring W.C. Fields and Belle of the Nineties with Mae West.  Finally, in 1936, he directed Harold Lloyd in The Milky Way.  By then he wanted to move slightly upmarket as far as screen comedy was concerned and he found himself adept with straight actors in comic roles in Ruggles of Red Gap (1935) and Love Affair (1939).  It was after his Bing period that the public found that they could take him or leave him.  After the middle forties, his only film remembered with any great affection was An Affair to Remember (1957), which was itself a remake of Love Affair.  He retired after making Satan Never Sleeps in 1962.

McCAREY, RAY (1904-1948) Director.  Brother of the more famous Leo, he was around at the start of Bing’s Hollywood career, when he directed the RKO-Pathe comedy Two Plus Fours (1930).  Like his brother, he worked with Stan and Ollie, but he never graduated to films with decent budgets.  When you read his filmography, you are hard pressed to recall any of his output.  The Gay Intruders, released the year after his death, is a typical entry.

McCOY, HARRY (1894-1937) Actor and screenwriter.  Bing Crosby “Mastermind” question 2: Who deserved to be known as the real McCoy by working on the story and dialogue of four consecutive Bing films?  It was Harry, who spent most of his Hollywood career working for Mack Sennett.  He received on-screen credit for the four shorts made in 1931 which starred Bing.  They were I Surrender Dear, One More Chance, Dream House and Billboard Girl.  In 1911, McCoy began working as an actor and appeared in several films with Charlie Chaplin.  By the 1920s, he was working behind the scenes and he became regarded as a reliable slapstick gag man.  His last credited work seems to have been the Crosby assignments for the Sennett studio.

MacDOUGALL, RANALD (1915-1973) Director, screenwriter and producer.  He carried out the first of those tasks on his sole Bing assignment.  That was for Man on Fire (1957).  It was a strong role for Bing and is often overlooked when praising the dramatic Crosby, probably because by then Bing had demonstrated his serious acting side in Little Boy Lost (1953) and The Country Girl (1954).  MacDougal started on the bottom rung of the show business ladder as an usher at Radio City Music Hall in New York.  He climbed a rung to write radio plays.  Then Warner Bros. employed him as a screenwriter.  He then became president of the Screenwriters Guild.  He was nearing the top of the ladder by 1954 when he took on his first directorial assignment.  The film was Queen Bee.  Man on Fire was his second job as director.  By 1968, he had made it as producer.  A last screen credit was as writer-producer on The Cockeyed Cowboys of Calico County (1970).  Bing worked in television in the 1960s with MacDougall’s wife, Nanette Fabray.

McHUGH, FRANK (1898-1981) Actor.  McHugh made around 150 feature films in Hollywood.  He appeared twice with Bing, both in Crosby’s “Father” pictures.  The first was the splendid Going My Way (1944), the second the less well liked Say One for Me (1959).  He also worked with Bing in the television sitcom series The Bing Crosby Show in 1964/5.  In the years between supporting Father O’Malley and Father Conroy, he played some of his most memorable character roles in the likes of State Fair (1945), Mighty Joe Young (1945) and There’s No Business Like Show Business (1954).  When he was in light-hearted roles he always made use of his contagious laugh.  His final Hollywood part was in Easy Come, Easy Go (1967).  Based on his screen persona, that title could double as McHugh’s epitaph.

McHUGH, JIMMY (1894-1969) Songwriter.  Bing sang just one McHugh song on screen.  That was “We’ve Got Another Bond to Buy” in the 1945 bond-raising short Hollywood Victory Caravan.  McHugh usually wrote in collaboration with Dorothy Fields and Harold Adamson and Bing recorded several of his songs for Decca.  McHugh started writing for the movies at the dawn of the talkies.  A couple of standards that lived on long after the films they were written for are “Don’t Blame Me” from Dinner at Eight (1933) and “A Lovely Way to Spend an Evening” from Higher and Higher (1943). 

McINTIRE, JOHN (1907-1991) Actor.  His sole contribution to Crosbyana was as Inspector Fallen in Top o’ the Morning (1949).  In that film, due to a misunderstanding he is responsible for demoting the Barry Fitzgerald character.  That in turn leads to Fitzgerald’s distrust of Joe Mulqueen (Bing Crosby).  McIntire spent most of the 1950s as a character actor or dependable second lead.  Fame came overnight.  When Ward Bond died in 1960, a vacancy occurred for a wagonmaster on television’s very popular weekly “Wagon Train” show and the job went to McIntire.  He divided his time thereafter between television series and quality Hollywood movies.  One of his last film assignments was providing a voice for the cartoon feature The Rescuers (1977).

MacKENNA, KENNETH (1899-1962) Stage actor turned director turned script editor turned screen character actor.  At the end of a varied show business career MacKenna appeared as President Tribble in High Time (1960).  In the film, he wisely refuses to accept the resignation of Helene Gauthier (Nicole Maurey) when he is told that she spent her summer vacation with one of her pupils (Bing).  None of the films he directed in the 1930s are remembered today but he made a memorable appearance as Judge Kenneth Norris in Judgement at Nuremberg immediately following his Crosby film.

MacLEAN, DOUGLAS (1890-1967) Silent screen comedian who became a producer.  His one credit on a Crosby movie was as producer on Two for Tonight (1935).  Three years later, he retired from picture making and enjoyed a long spell picture going.

MacLEOD, GAVIN (1931-2021) actor, Christian activist, and author whose career spanned six decades. MacLeod is probably best known for his long-running television roles starting with Joseph “Happy” Haines in McHale’s Navy (73 episodes, 1962–1964), then on The Mary Tyler Moore Show (168 episodes, 1970–1977) as Murray Slaughter, and finally The Love Boat (250 episodes, 1977–1986) as Merrill Stubing, the ship’s captain. In addition, he made numerous other appearances on film and television and one of these was with Bing. In “High Time” (1960), MacLeod played science Professor Thayer and had several amusing scenes.

McLEOD, NORMAN Z(ENOS) (1898-1964) Director.  McLeod had a light touch.  He helmed Pennies from Heaven (1936) and Road to Rio (1948).  He also directed Alias Jesse James (1959) in which Bing made a cameo appearance.  Comedy was his forte.  His first movie job at the age of 21 was gag writer.  He’d worked with the Marx Brothers on two of their funnier films so he was well prepared to tolerate the antics of Bing and Bob when he took them to Rio.  Actors like W. C. Fields and Danny Kaye made their best films with him.  Choice examples of his comedy work from three decades prove his contribution to Hollywood’s funnier money-spinners: Topper (1937), The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947) and My Favourite Spy (1951).  He retired after making Alias Jesse James.

McMAHON, HORACE (1906-1971) Actor.  A gentle, old-fashioned name for a character actor initially typecast as a gangster or jailbird.  He was the former in his one Crosby film - Birth of the Blues (1941) - when he played Wolf, one of Blackie’s gangster henchmen.  He’s his usual menacing self during the cafe sequence where Crosby, Teagarden and Martin sing “The Waiter and the Porter and the Upstairs Maid” following which McMahon helps to start a riot.  After his success on Broadway in “Detective Story”, in which he played a police lieutenant, McMahon was offered more respectable parts including a cop in the long running television series “Naked City”.  His last film confirmed his crooked days were behind him when he appeared on the right side of the law in the Frank Sinatra film The Detective (1968).

MacMURRAY, FRED (1908-1991) Singer/saxophonist who became an actor.  Fred MacMurray had an important role in Sing You Sinners (1938) when he played Bing’s elder brother.  That was their only time spent together on the big screen although both were featured in the all-star Paramount production Star Spangled Rhythm in 1942.  MacMurray was also considered along with Jack Oakie for what eventually became the first Road film.  MacMurray’s initial attempt as an entertainer followed a few recordings he made for RCA Victor.  “All I Need Is Just One Girl” was made in March 1930 and it has been re-issued a couple of times since - not for its musical merit, more for its curiosity value.  His show business career proper dates from 1933 when he was spotted by a Paramount talent scout.  He was appearing on Broadway with a group known as the California Collegians in the musical “Roberta” and shortly thereafter was making his movie debut in Friends of Mr. Sweeney.  He was one of a handful of actors who could move from dramatic roles like Double Indemnity (1944) to light comedy such as The Egg and I (1947).  His screen career was longer than Bing’s.  This was due to a revival in the 1960s sparked by Disney using him in family comedies such as The Absent Minded Professor (1961) and The Happiest Millionaire (1967).  During that same decade he appeared in a successful situation comedy series on American television called “My Three Sons”.  His final film was The Swarm in 1978.  He was diagnosed as suffering from throat cancer and for the last years of his life, he stayed out of the limelight, enjoying retirement in the company of June Haver, the actress he married in 1954.

MAGIC WINDOW, THE Song.  Written by Johnny Burke and James Van Heusen for Bing to sing in Little Boy Lost (1953), that non-musical film with songs.  It’s the final song in the movie and Bing sings it to Jean - the boy of the film’s title, played by Christian Fourcade - when the two are boating on a visit to the zoo.

MAIDEN BY THE BROOK, THE Song.  Written by Leo Robin and Ralph Rainger for the Crosby picture Paris Honeymoon (1939).  The song was one of two compositions that were not used.  The other was “Work While You May”.  The film ran for 92 minutes and Bing had not starred in a film with a longer running time up until then so the decision to limit the vocals to five might have been made for the purpose of keeping the film’s length down.

MAIDEN OF GUADALUPE, THE Song.  Ten or so years later, it was common for films to have a running time exceeding a hundred minutes.  Just For You (1952) came in at 104 minutes and contained nine vocals.  This was one of three Leo Robin-Harry Warren songs from the film, which Jane Wyman soloed.  She recorded it for Decca where it enjoyed the distinction of being coupled with Crosby’s “Zing a Little Zong” for single release.  Can you remember how it goes?

MAJOR PICTURES Crosby’s deal with Paramount Pictures allowed him to make a limited number of films outside that studio.  Two films for Major Pictures were made in 1936 and 1937: Pennies from Heaven (1936) and Doctor Rhythm (1938).  Emanuel Cohen was behind the organisation of Major Pictures.  He’d been part of the ravamped Paramount Pictures Inc. when it emerged from bankruptcy in 1935.  Previously he had been with Paramount Newsreel and now was studio head of the new Paramount.  Bing’s two films with Major Pictures gave him investment opportunities and eventual substantial profits.  The studio facilities of Paramount were used for both films but Pennies From Heaven was released through Columbia with Doctor Rhythm being distributed by Paramount.

MALNECK, MATTY (1904-1981) Composer/orchestra leader.  A familiar name to purchasers of Bing’s Decca records, Malneck had one association with Bing’s Hollywood.  In East Side of Heaven (1939), he is seen early on in the film and later leads the “radio” orchestra used towards the end of the movie.  He was with Paul Whiteman as a violinist when Bing was a Rhythm Boy and remained as an arranger with that orchestra until 1937.  His orchestra supported Bing on eleven recordings and his violin playing was usually prominently featured.  His composing career often found him collaborating with Johnny Mercer and he played a part in Bing’s early solo career as co-writer of “I’m Through with Love” which Bing recorded in 1931.  His main film assignment came in 1959 when he supervised and conducted the band sequences in the comedy Some Like it Hot.

MAN AND HIS DREAM, A. Song.  It was the main romantic ballad written by Burke and Monaco for the 1939 film The Star Maker.  We hear it quite early on in the film when Bing buys a piano and sings the song to his girl, played by Louise Campbell.

MAN ON FIRE Film.  Made in the early months of 1957 this serious drama did not make the same impact as Bing’s earlier non-musical roles.  It was his first totally non-singing part although the Crosby vocal of the title song is heard over the opening credits.  That was a last minute decision.  The Ames Brothers had already made a recording of the song for soundtrack purposes.  In the event, their version was used over the end titles.  A combined plot and critique can be found in Leonard Maltin’s “Movie and Video Guide”: “Divorced father (Crosby) refuses to grant his remarried ex-wife partial custody of their son in this modest domestic drama.”  There was speculation at the time the film was in production about Bing forming a relationship with leading lady Inger Stevens.  Although Bing personally approved of her casting, the fact that they had a few dates together meant little in the long term.  Financially the film disappointed at the box-office.  This affected Bing personally because he had a 25% stake in the movie.  It was the second of a two-picture deal made under the same terms with M-G-M.  The success of the first more than made up for the poor performance of Man on Fire.  It was High Society (1956).  Of course, box-office takings don’t equate to a film’s quality.  The most balanced summary I have found on Man on Fire comes from David Shipman’s book about Hollywood’s golden years.  He writes, “It was generally disregarded by the press and lit no fires at the box-office, which was a pity, for Crosby’s naturalistic work here was comparable to that of Spencer Tracy.”

MAN ON FIRE Song.  Written by Paul Francis Webster and Sammy Fain, a pair who specialised in writing title songs for Hollywood films during the 1950s.  The studio’s original intention was for the Ames Brothers to sing the title song.  The film was to be 100% dramatic Bing and it seemed inappropriate for Crosby the crooner to break the spell.  However, when producer Sol C. Siegel heard Bing’s Capitol recording he decided that Crosby should sing over the film’s opening titles and the Ames Brothers should reprise their RCA recording over the closing credits.

MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH, THE Film.  This 1976 British Lion production was a vehicle for the then popular David Bowie.  I found the plot slightly baffling but Bing’s contribution towards the end of the film made me sit to attention.  Bowie’s girlfriend in the film, played by Candy Clark, visits him wearing a Father Christmas outfit.  As the two move around Bowie’s apartment part of Bing’s Capitol recording of “True Love” is heard on the soundtrack.

MANCINI, HENRY (1924-1994) Composer, songwriter and arranger.  Mancini scored High Time (1960).  It was at the beginning of his cinematic fame, his next but one film being Breakfast at Tiffany’s, released the following year.  Mancini’s star was rising just as Bing was turning his back on Hollywood.  Mancini gave many a film a lift with his strong melodies although it can be argued that Crosby’s movies had no need of a musical boost.  Mancini’s rise was gradual.  He had played piano and arranged for the Glenn Miller Orchestra.  That made him a natural choice as musical arranger for the bio-pic The Glenn Miller Story (1954).  His work on the television series “Peter Gunn” led to composing assignments for the big screen, the best remembered of which were for the Pink Panther series which provided work on and off for twenty years.  But by the mid-sixties he had made his mark as a standalone orchestrator/arranger and a series of record albums for RCA sold well on initial release and as re-issues.

MANDER, MILES (1888-1946) Actor, producer, director, novelist, playwright, film exhibitor and screenwriter.  There is a scene towards the end of Road to Singapore (1940) where an irate dignitary, Sir Malcolm Drake, finds his suit ruined by ‘Spotto’, the miracle cleanser being touted by Bing and Bob.  That victim is played by Miles Mander.  By 1940 Mander was winding down after spending the last twenty years of his life involved with half a dozen different jobs connected with entertainment.  And before that he had been a sheep farmer in New Zealand!  Born in Wolverhampton in the UK, he arrived in Hollywood in 1935, leaving behind a legacy of British films on which he had made his mark as actor, screenwriter or director - sometimes all three at the same time.  The film capital provided him with a constant stream of roles, none of them major.  He is best remembered as Benjamin Disraeli in the 1938 film Suez.  After Road to Singapore he alternated between bit parts in “A” films like The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945) and more important roles in less important films such as the two Sherlock Holmes mysteries The Scarlet Claw and Pearl of Death, both made in 1944.

MANDY Song.  This was just one of sixteen songs written by Irving Berlin and used in the 1954 movie White Christmas.  It began to earn royalties for Berlin in 1918, the year in which it featured in “Yip, Yip Yaphank”.  The following year it found success in the “Ziegfeld Follies of 1919”.  In 1934, Eddie Cantor sang it in the film Kid Millions.  Several recordings kept it before the listening public prior to Paramount using it in White Christmas.  It crops up twice in that film and gives Bing the chance to duet first with Danny Kaye and then Rosemary Clooney.  When Decca came to record Berlin’s score for issue as a long-playing record it became part of a medley with Danny Kaye again duetting with Bing.  A solo version was recorded by Bing with Buddy Cole for 1950s radio.

MANKIEWICZ, JOSEPH L(eo) (1909-1993) Director, producer and screenwriter.  One of the great Hollywood talents associated with Bing.  JLM was coming to end of his time as a writer of material for others to direct when he delivered Too Much Harmony (1933) to Paramount.  He’d held a job with that studio since 1929.  By the mid-thirties, they had recognised his worth and made him a producer.  But Mankiewicz knew his future lay in literate and intelligent films which would find their way onto critics ‘all-time best’ lists through to the 21st century.  He explained his move to directing when he said, “I felt the urge to direct because I couldn’t stomach what was being done to what I wrote.”   He won Oscars for the screenplay and direction of A Letter to Three Wives in 1949.  The same thing happened the next year for All About Eve.  He was one of the few people who made Shakespeare accessible to the masses when he directed Marlon Brando in Julius Caesar in 1953.  He collaborated with the bard on that one.  By 1955, he felt that he could tackle a musical and he worked on the screenplay of Guys and Dolls as well as directing it.  After many years when it seemed he was incapable of putting a foot wrong, he walked into a disaster.  It was Cleopatra (1963).  His last film was the entertaining Sleuth (1972).  He didn’t get to write the screenplay on that one but by way of compensation he was provided with the acting talents of Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine as the film’s two main (and only) characters.

MANONE, JOSEPH MATTHEW “WINGY” (1904-1982) Trumpeter, vocalist and bandleader.  Wingy was on screen in just one Crosby picture.  He and his band were used in Rhythm on the River (1940).  One sequence in that film is worth the price of admission or the cost of rental for home viewing.  It occurs when Wingy and his musicians go with Bing to a pawnshop to redeem the band’s musical instruments.  They embark on a spirited and seemingly spontaneous rendition of the film’s title song.  And once you know that Wingy only has one arm it is impossible to ignore his trumpet playing technique whenever he is in the frame.  He lost his right arm in a streetcar accident as a child.  He did make other films.  The titles of Juke Box Jenny (1942) and Sarge Goes to College (1947) go some way to explaining why they are long forgotten.  His relationship with Bing was that of friend and professional colleague.  He was a frequent guest on Bing’s radio show between other engagements.  These included working in Las Vegas where he died in 1982.

MARCH OF THE MOVIES Compilation film.  Released in 1966, this Ben Lyon narrated support feature used two Crosby sequences from 1930 and 1931.  Bing sings “When the Folks High up Do the Mean Low Down” with Bebe Daniels in the entire Crosby footage taken from Reaching for the Moon.  Listeners to the BBC Light programme radio series “Life with the Lyons” in the 1950s won’t need reminding that Bebe Daniels was married to Ben Lyon.  The other Crosby contribution to March of the Movies was a clip from the Sennett short Dream House.  It was taken from towards the end of that film when Bing is shown being chased by a lion.

MARCH OF TIME, THE Aborted film. The advent of talking pictures resulted in all the major Hollywood studios jumping on the “all Talking, all singing, all dancing” bandwagon. Universal’s contribution was King of Jazz (1930), in which Bing and the Rhythm Boys featured heavily. M-G-M had already enjoyed good box-office grosses with a couple of 1929 efforts: The Broadway Melody and Hollywood Revue of 1929. A third project was to be The March of Time but the studio wisely pulled the plug when they sensed that the public wanted a little more than a few musical acts strung together with a flimsy plot line. By then the soundtrack performances of some musical numbers were already in the can. Bing’s surviving vocal contribution was “Poor Little G-String.”

MARCH OF TIME Documentary news series.  Every major Hollywood studio had its newsreels.  Twentieth Century-Fox had Movietone News but in 1942, they obtained the rights to distribute “March of Time”.  Not as topical as the twice-weekly newsreels, these one-reel programme fillers usually concentrated on issues of the time.  One edition was devoted to the contribution to the war effort of American entertainers and brief footage of Bing is included along with shots of Sinatra, Armstrong, Benny, Hope and other big crowd pullers and bond sellers of the early 1940s.

MARION, FRANCES (1888-1973) Screenwriter.  By the time that Frances Marion provided the story basis for Donald Ogden Stewart’s screenplay of Going Hollywood (1933) she was one of Hollywood’s highest paid writers.  She had well over one hundred screen credits when she tailored that film for Marion Davies.  When Davies was at her peak in the early 1920s, Frances Marion directed her in several successful films.  So when the fading star was looking for a vehicle that would boost her popularity without taxing her acting skills, it was only natural to hire a colleague who understood her capabilities.  Earlier in 1933, she had written the witty script of Dinner at Eight and in 1937 she provided the screenplays for Camille and Knight Without Armour before withdrawing from the Hollywood scene.

MARSH, JOAN [Nancy Ann Rosher] (1913-2000) Actress.  She had a bit part in King of Jazz (1930), but we remember her in Road to Zanzibar (1941) when, as the attractive Dimples, she assisted Bing when Bob Hope was fired from a cannon.  Her entry in films during the silent era at the age of six was down to the assistance of her father, Charles Rosher, a respected cinematographer.  When she reached her early twenties, she found it easy to obtain parts as a glamorous platinum blonde and before her Road film she was seen in major productions such as Anna Karenina (1935) and Idiot’s Delight (1939).  When the glamour faded, she quit movies and went into the stationery business.

MARSHALL, E(verett) G. (1914-1998) Actor.  In Man on Fire (1957) Bing’s lawyer is played by E. G. Marshall.  It was a typical role for the dependable, forceful, determined character actor who must have been sent many scripts like that of Man on Fire simply because he was born to play solid, morally strong types.  The younger generation will remember him as the righteous lawyer from the television series “The Defenders”.  Cinemagoers know him best as one of the Twelve Angry Men (1957) that fellow juror Henry Fonda converted to his way of thinking.  Marshall began his film career in quality dramas like The House on 92nd Street (1945) and Call Northside 777 (1948).  Television claimed him when the more serious film roles for which he was best suited became few and far between. He will be remembered for his 132 appearances in the TV series "The Defenders" from 1961 to 1965.

MARSHALL, GEORGE (1891-1975) Director.  Although he never directed a “proper” Crosby picture, Marshall was the man at the helm on Star Spangled Rhythm (1942), Variety Girl (1946) and Scared Stiff (1953), three movies in which Bing was allocated a little screen time.  They were not typical of the directorial assignments by which Marshall is now remembered.  He began as an actor at Universal in 1912.  He was directing westerns by 1916 and full-length talkies from 1932 onwards.  Although he proved adept at bringing out the best with comedy actors - he worked with Laurel and Hardy, W. C. Fields and Bob Hope - he also directed some taut thrillers like The Blue Dahlia (1946).  By the 1950s, he was seen as being capable of working in most genres and turning out critically approved box-office successes.  Houdini (1953) showed that Tony Curtis was an actor as well as a teen idol.  Red Garters (1954) was a stylised musical for Paramount of which M-G-M would have been proud.  The Sheepman (1958) combined a traditional western storyline with humour.  He should have retired whilst he was still being given quality assignments.  Instead, he carried on working until the end of the 1960s and rounded out his directorial career with the dire Wicked Dreams of Paula Shultz (1968) and Hook Line and Sinker (1969).

MARTIN, DEAN (1917-1995) Singer and actor.  Dino and Bing first crossed paths on the big screen in 1953 when Martin and Jerry Lewis popped up for a gag appearance in Road to Bali and Hope and Crosby reciprocated in Scared Stiff.  This might have been a well thought out Paramount ploy because by 1953 Bing and Bob were being replaced by Dean and Jerry as that studio’s top box-office musical comedy team.  But by the time the final Road picture took Hope and Crosby to Hong Kong, the Martin and Lewis partnership had been dissolved five years.  By then Martin was making a gag appearance in that film with Frank Sinatra.  And it was undoubtedly the latter who was responsible for bringing both crooners together in decent roles for Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964).  Bing played Allan A. Dale and Dean was John.  They were perfectly cast.  The sequence in which Dean sings “Any Man Who Loves His Mother” whilst clearing the pool table is a joy to watch.  By the time Robin was made, Bing was heading for semi-retirement and Dean was working flat out in films, television, cabaret and some uninspired but regularly released albums for Reprise.  Dean readily acknowledged his vocal hero was Bing.  He even recorded “If I Could Sing Like Bing” for Capitol and did a stunning impression of Bing as Father O’Malley in the Martin and Lewis film At War With the Army (1950).  Yet he had no need to copy his idol because his laid back romantic ballad style was in a class of its own.  As his singing moved towards self-parody in the late 1960s so his selection of acting roles became less particular.  Rough Night in Jericho and The Ambushers, made in 1967, were OK if unmemorable.  Airport in 1970 proved that given the right part, he could carry a picture but when he accepted a role in Mr. Ricco (1975) and bits in the two Cannonball Run films in the 1980s it seemed that casting directors had overlooked his strong screen persona.

MARTIN, MARY (1913-1990) Singer and actress.  She was a perfect singing and acting partner to Bing in Rhythm on the River (1940) and Birth of the Blues (1941).  In an article for the magazine “Music and Rhythm” in 1942 Bing wrote, “Mary Martin has a remarkably flexible style, adaptable to any type of song.  A keen sense of humour gives her a particular dexterity with comic deliveries.”  It was only pregnancy that prevented her from partnering Crosby for a third consecutive year in Holiday Inn.  They did appear in the same film in 1942 but that was the all-star Star Spangled Rhythm, which did not allow the two to spark off each other.  If evidence is needed as to how strongly they gelled on screen just watch them sing “Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie” from their second film.  They were together in song on radio during the 1940s beginning with her debut on the Kraft Music Hall at the end of July 1941.  But Mary found her lasting fame on the Broadway stage in a series of musicals which have fortunately remained available in the record catalogues over the decades.  “South Pacific”, “The Sound of Music” and “I Do, I Do” found her creating roles which were eventually passed on to others  but which seemed as though they were written just for her at the time of the original stagings.  Her last link with Bing came in 1987.  WTTW Chicago produced the television programme “Remembering Bing” which was networked in the States on November 28 of that year.  That drew on her association with Bing and the programme was timed to mark the tenth anniversary of Bing’s death.  Shortly afterwards she was involved in a car accident and by then her show business career had ended.  Another of Bing’s co-stars, Ethel Merman, couldn’t have put it better when she said of Martin, “She’s OK if you like talent.”  Mary Martin’s autobiography, “My Heart Belongs”, is worth a read.

MARX, GROUCHO [Julius Henry Marx] (1890-1977) Comedian.  The wisecracking brother of the subversive quartet, which originally comprised Harpo, Chico and Zeppo until the last named left the act to become a theatrical agent.   Groucho was in one Bing feature film, Mr. Music (1950).  He played himself and joined Bing, Peggy Lee and the Merry Macs in a rendition of “Life Is So Peculiar”.  In fact, Groucho always played himself irrespective of his character’s name.  The cast list might refer to him as Rufus T. Firefly or Doctor Hackenbush but under that greasepaint moustache, he was still Groucho.  In addition to Mr. Music, he appeared in two short films which also featured Bing.  At the start of the Crosby Hollywood career, he was in a 1933 Paramount on Parade with brother Harpo and near the end of it he was in the “Saturday Evening Post” promotional one-reeler Showdown at Ulcer Gulch (1958).  Harpo also appeared in Showdown, as did Chico.  In the late 1940s, Groucho guested on several occasions on Bing’s Philco Radio Time for a few comedy sketches and duets with Crosby.  Groucho’s film appearances have always kept him in the public eye.  From The Cocoanuts with three of his brothers in 1929 through to the disastrous Skidoo forty years later several generations have been introduced to his on-screen anarchism.  Just as Marx Brothers' films are never out of circulation and absent from television screenings for very long, so Groucho’s autobiographical books are rarely out of print.  In his 83rd year, he performed in a one man show at New York’s Carnegie Hall and proved that despite frailness and senility he could still respond with an insult or ready quip, as appropriate.

MAUREY, NICOLE (1925-2016) Actress.  French born Maurey was Bing’s leading lady in two of his more dramatic pictures.  She had contrasting roles in each.  In Little Boy Lost (1952), she played Bing’s wife, Lisa, who is shot by the Gestapo.  Eight years later, she played French literature teacher Helene Gautier in High Time.  In that one the plot concerned a tutor/pupil relationship with Bing which resulted in romance.  She originally trained as a dancer and began acting in French films at the age of eighteen.  Her first American film was Little Boy Lost and the success of that led to her appearing in mainly British and Hollywood films such as The Constant Husband (1955), Me and the Colonel (1958) and The Scapegoat (1959).  None were big box-office so it must have been a surprise when Bing personally contacted her for his leading lady in High Time.  She had enjoyed working with him on her first English language picture so agreed to his request without bothering to read the script.  A couple of British films, which were moderately successful followed.  They were Don’t Bother to Knock (1961) and Day of the Triffids (1963).  After that her career petered out.  She only made two more films in France before retiring from the screen.

MAY I? Song.  This Mack Gordon-Harry Revel love ballad was sung twice by Bing in the 1934 film We’re Not Dressing.  He serenaded Carole Lombard on board a yacht and again when fishing from a rock.  It was a key song from Bing’s early years and he chose to re-record it for his 1954 musical biography. 

MAYER, EDWIN JUSTUS (1896-1960). Screenwriter.  His one contribution to Bing’s career on celluloid was co-scripting Here Is My Heart (1934).  Together with Harlan Thompson, he adapted the 1926 silent film The Grand Duchess and the Waiter, in which Adolph Menjou played the part taken on by Bing eight years later.  Mayer himself began his film career in silents, writing title captions.  Little work of merit preceded his Crosby assignment for Paramount.  The studio began to appreciate his skills when he was assigned as writer to Cecil B. DeMille’s 1938 big-budget film The Buccaneer.  He then averaged less than one film every two years up until his retirement in 1958 when Paramount remade The Buccaneer and gave him screenwriter credit.  His most fondly remembered movie between the two Buccaneers was To Be or Not to Be (1942).

MAYNARD, KEN (1895-1973) Screen cowboy.  The fickle public was responsible for Maynard falling from being one of Hollywood’s most popular western stars to being a stunt rider in Road to Morocco (1942).  He was overqualified to lead a group of horsemen in a chase in that film but that was the only work he could find.  After entering films in 1923 Maynard moved on to sound films and, together with his horse Tarzan, he became the hero of pre-teen moviegoers at Saturday matinees everywhere that movies were shown.  He was probably the screen’s first singing cowboy and until the mid-thirties turned out several oaters a year, quite often acting as executive producer.  Alcoholism might have contributed to his fall from fame.  By the end of the 1930s, he was touring the rodeo circuit.  After his work on Morocco he tried to revive his screen career in a few very low budget westerns but by then Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Bill Boyd, Johnny Mack Brown and others had captured the imagination of the kids who rode the range for a threepenny bit or a tanner every week.  At the time of his death of malnutrition, he was living alone in a trailer.

MEEK, DONALD (1880-1946) Actor. He was Gramp in Pennies from Heaven (1936).  It was Bing who rescued him and daughter Edith Fellows from the fate of an old folk’s home and an orphanage respectively.  Glasgow born Meek was aptly named.  Slight, bald and forever cast as a timid character, his film career coincided with the introduction of sound and continued up to the time of his death.  He came from the golden age of Hollywood when character actors were in constant demand and Meek averaged four films a year.  Not for him ‘B’ pictures.  He never signed a long-term contract with any of the major studios.  Instead, producers sought out his services whenever they needed a Donald Meek type for their films.  He appeared in some of the best-loved and well-remembered features of the thirties and forties.  A random selection as evidence throws up Top Hat (1935 - a year in which ten films in which he appeared were released), The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938), Stagecoach (1939), My Little Chickadee (1940) and State Fair (1945).

MEET THE SUN HALFWAY Song.  Universal’s If I Had My Way (1940), contained several upbeat songs written by Johnny Burke and James V. Monaco.  “Meet the Sun Halfway” sets the tone of the light-hearted picture in the first reel when Bing and Gloria Jean sing it at a concert.  The couple then reprise the song in the film’s last reel in a scene featuring a family reunion.

MELLOR, WILLIAM C. (1903-1963) Director of photography.  Two-time Academy Award winner as cinematographer on A Place in the Sun (1951) and The Diary of Anne Frank (1959), Mellor worked on Crosby films during the early part of the 1940s.  His first Bing picture was Road to Singapore (1940).  The following year he photographed Birth of the Blues and then returned to his second Road assignment - Morocco - in 1942.  But his crowning Crosby achievement was Bing’s first three-colour Technicolor movie the following year.  That was Dixie, which received as much critical attention for its rich colour tones as it did for its acting and musical content.  Directors with clout began to request Mellor and although Paramount gave him his first job as a lab assistant it did not buy a lifetime’s loyalty to that studio and he moved to M-G-M and Fox in order to lens quality productions.  Bing used him on Abie’s Irish Rose (1945) but he is best remembered for the broad canvas colour films of the 1950s.  My selection for his hall of fame would be Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), Giant (1956) and Peyton Place (1957).  William C. Mellor died whilst working on The Greatest Story Ever Told, which was released two years after his death.

MEMPHIS BLUES Song.  In Birth of the Blues (1941), there is a scene early in the film where Bing sings this song from the back of a horse drawn cart.  It was one of several songs with its roots in early New Orleans jazz.  Its composer, W.C. Handy, had written the song in 1912 and sold it to a New York publisher for $50.  It became Handy’s first big success.  Bing did not record the number for commercial release.

MERCER, JOHNNY (1909-1976) Lyric writer, composer, singer and co-founder of Capitol Records.  Born John Herndon Mercer in Savannah, Georgia, his real name may be forgotten but his place of birth is always apparent in his vocal phrasing.  His songs contributed to seven Crosby pictures.  The first was the hit “I’m an Old Cowhand” used in Rhythm on the Range (1936).  He created another hit for Bing, assisted by Mary Martin and Jack Teagarden, with “The Waiter and the Porter and the Upstairs Maid”, one of the vocal highlights of Birth of the Blues (1941).  A third winner for Bing was “That Old Black Magic”, featured in Star Spangled Rhythm in 1942 but not recorded for release on record by Bing until 1976.  This seems a curious oversight as it was reprised by Bing in the major feature Here Come the WAVES some two years later.  So far, Mercer had been providing a single song per movie for Bing to sing.  His only opportunity to write an almost complete film score for a Crosby picture came with Here Come the WAVES. The big hit from that movie was “Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive” which was also sung by Bing in a short film Sing with the Stars made for the U.S. Coastguard at about the same time as WAVES.  The other Mercer compositions heard in the latter film were “Let’s Take the Long Way Home”, “There’s a Fella Waiting in Poughkeepsie” and “I Promise You”.  A further song, “My Mama Thinks I’m a Star” was written for the film but not used.  Harold Arlen provided the music for all of these songs.  Arlen was on duty again the following year when he collaborated with Mercer on a couple of Bing vocals to which Eddie Bracken mimed: “Out of This World” and “June Comes Around Every Year”.  These were for the Paramount production Out of This World.  Five years elapsed before another Mercer composition made it to the big screen for Bing to sing.  The film was Here Comes the Groom (1951) and the song was “In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening”.  Paramount had already hired Ray Evans and Jay Livingston to write the songs for the film.  It was by chance that Bing heard a recording of “In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening” by the joint composers Johnny Mercer and Hoagy Carmichael.  He liked it sufficiently to have it included in Here Comes the Groom and the song went on to win the Oscar for the best song of 1951.  It was Mercer’s last film link with Bing although the two enjoyed a friendship that lasted until Mercer’s death the year before Bing died.  Bing was appearing at the London Palladium when Mercer’s passing due to a brain tumour was announced. He was contacted by the BBC and provided a brief tribute to the man who was his vocal partner on several Decca discs as well as penning many items in his recording repertoire.  Mercer enjoyed sharing the limelight on record as much as he did providing lyrics for some of the foremost composers of popular music.  Amongst the dozen or so famous composers he worked with are Gordon Jenkins, Jerome Kern, Andre Previn and Harry Warren.  After over thirty years in the business, he was still turning out excellent work as a singing and writing partner.  His vocal album called “Two of a Kind” which he made with Bobby Darin never overstays its welcome on the turntable whilst his lyrics to Henry Mancini’s “Moon River” will be earning royalties as long as quality vocalists choose to include it in their repertoire. An insightful book about Johnny Mercer’s life is “Our Huckleberry Friend”, co-written by his wife Ginger and published in 1982. 

MERKEL, UNA (1903-1986) Actress.  In Road to Zanzibar (1941), she was Julia Quimby, Dorothy Lamour’s partner in conning Bing and Bob.  It was a time of transition for this prolific character actor.  During the 1920s, she had been a stand-in for Lillian Gish.  For most of the 1930s, she had played the girl friend of the film’s leading man, usually as a wisecracking dame.  Then came the “aunt of the leading lady” roles before she finally graduated to playing mothers.  She was never out of work for long but decided to retire when in her early sixties.  Her last part on screen was in Spinout (1966), an Elvis Presley musical.

MERMAN, ETHEL [Ethel Zimmerman] (1908-1984) Singer/actress.  She was prominent in Crosby films during the years when Bing was establishing himself as a strong box-office draw.  Her first Bing picture was the 1934 We’re Not Dressing when she was fourth billed as the fiancée of Leon Errol.  The following year she appeared in The Big Broadcast of 1936, although she did not share any screen time with Bing.  It was the year after that when they were teamed in the successful Anything Goes.  Merman had already played the role of Reno Sweeney in this Cole Porter musical when it had a profitable run on Broadway in 1934.  She sang the film’s title song, a standard, which Bing never got around to making in the recording studio.  In fact, it took him twenty years to wax “You’re the Top”, the other main song hit from the film which Merman and Crosby duetted in Anything Goes.  Merman’s strident voice seemed tailor made for belting it out on stage in massive auditoriums and her film career was secondary to her main love of the musical theatre.  She made a further nine movies before her death but only the musicals Call Me Madam (1953) and There’s No Business Like Show Business (1954) did justice to her talent.  She made several recordings for Decca, which captured her personality surprisingly well, although her waxing of “Whispering” cannot be described as typical Merman fare.  Unfortunately, she was persuaded to record disco versions of some of her hits a few years before her death.  With luck, they will never be re-issued on CD.

MERRILY SONG, THE Song.  This was written for use in the Disney animated feature The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949).  It was not utilised, the only three compositions used being written by Don Raye and Gene de Paul.  The writer credits for “The Merrily Song” read Morey, Gilbert, Wolcott and Churchill.

MERRY-GO-RUN-AROUND, THE Song.  The regular Crosby film writing team of Johnny Burke and James Van Heusen wrote this for Road to Bali (1952).  It provided the film’s only opportunity for the film’s three leads (Crosby, Hope and Lamour) to sing together.  The song is performed in a jungle sequence.  A fairly lightweight ditty, Bing recorded if for Decca to tie in with the film’s release.  On disc, Peggy Lee substituted for Lamour.

MERRY MACS, THE American vocal group.  Paramount was determined that the audience left the theatre humming, whistling and singing “Life Is So Peculiar” after seeing Mr. Music (1950). Bing duets the Burke-Van Heusen song with first Peggy and then Groucho Marx.  Before the latter performance, the Merry Macs have a go.  Mr. Music was to be the fifth and last film appearance of this close harmony quartet.  They had backed Bing on a couple of 78 issues in 1940 having started a successful recording career in the mid 1930s.  The group was formed in 1931 by the brothers Joe, Ted and Judd McMichael when they were known as The Personality Trio.  Their vocal appeal was enhanced when Cherry Mackay joined the group in 1934.  It was then that they billed themselves as The Merry Macs.  At the time Mr. Music was filmed, only Ted and Judd McMichael remained of the original foursome.  The group broke up in the 1950s.

MERRY MUTINEERS Cartoon. Columbia was not noted for its animation unit but it provided a couple of Crosby related shorts.  Merry Mutineers was the first in its Scrappy series. Released in the winter of 1936 it tells of two young lads who are sailing their toy boat when the boat’s crew comes to life.  These piratical sailors are cartoon depictions of Bing, The Marx Brothers, W. C. Fields, Laurel and Hardy and Jimmy Durante amongst others. 

METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER Film studio. Bing’s work for M-G-M more or less topped and tailed his film career.  His first link with the studio was Going Hollywood (1933) when the studio had a distribution agreement with Cosmopolitan Pictures.  Cosmopolitan was bankrolled by William Randolph Hearst to ensure that his girlfriend Marion Davies was cast in major Hollywood productions.  A couple of years later Bing was to be seen in the M-G-M short Star Night at the Cocoanut Grove.  Like all of the major studios, M-G-M produced a series of short films to support its feature product.  Star Night was from their “Colortone Musicals” series.  In 1951, M-G-M released a film about baseball, Angels in the Outfield.  It was about the Pittsburgh Pirates, a team in which Bing had a financial interest.  Which is why Bing made a brief appearance when he was interviewed on a golf course.  And then came the big one: High Society (1956).  That was followed a year later by the non-musical Man on Fire.  There was an inconsequential appearance in the M-G-M/EMI release Cancel My Reservation in 1972, where Bing made a gag appearance as a favour to Bob Hope, the film’s star.  Finally, forty-one years after the lion first roared before Bing’s name appeared on the credits, he was seen in That’s Entertainment (1974) and That’s Entertainment II (1976).  In the first, he was seen on the studio backlot introducing sequences from Going Hollywood and High Society.  In the second, Fred Astaire introduced two further Crosby sequences from each film.  Several books have been written about the most successful and most glamorous Hollywood studio during the film capital’s heyday.  The company was established in 1924 when three studios united.  They were Metro (formed in 1915), Goldwyn (formed 1917) and Mayer (formed 1918).  Bolted on to the studio was the extensive Loew’s theatre chain.  The studio hired Irving Thalberg as production chief and the M-G-M film factory became the most polished and prosperous film studio of the 1930s.  The studio slogan “more stars than there are in the heavens” may not have been arithmetically correct but in those pre-Trades Descriptions Act days it seemed near to the truth.  During the 1940s and 1950s, M-G-M was the studio for lavish musicals.  The post-war period saw a dip in fortunes for all the Hollywood studios.  In 1952, U.S. government legislation forced the separation of the studio from its cinema chain.  Television saw a reduction in cinema audiences and the roster of studio stars diminished when contracts came up for renewal.  Almost half a century after its formation two events occurred that were inconceivable during the studio’s golden years.  In 1970 the studio was bought by Kirk Kerkorian of Las Vegas.  One of the first acts he instigated was the sale of hundreds of thousands of studio props.  An auctioneer paid $1.5 million for the whole lot.  He resold them to a nostalgic public for $12 million.  The highest single bid achieved was $15,000 for Judy Garland’s ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz.  At the end of the 20th century, M-G-M was in the ownership of a French bank.  Its film library was in the hands of Ted Turner.  He merged the M-G-M product with some early Warner Bros. and RKO features to give him control of well over 3,000 films and these are the mainstay of his successful movie channel.  Turner Entertainment has also restored some splendid soundtracks.  The days of M-G-M being Hollywood’s prime studio are well in past but the studio’s legacy seems to be in good hands.

MIDDLETON, CHARLES (1874-1949) Character actor usually cast as a villain.  But not for his two Bing film appearances.  In both Welcome Stranger (1947) and Road to Rio (1948) he plays a farmer.  Remembered by boys of all ages as Ming the Merciless in the Flash Gordon serials.

MILADY Song.  Written by the team of Johnny Burke and James Van Heusen for Mr. Music (1950), it strikes me as unlikely that they composed it with Bing in mind.  It was sung at the rehearsal of a student show early on in the film and it is subsequently reprised when the concert was ultimately staged.  The vocalist remained uncredited.  If it was intended to be regarded as a throwaway song of no lasting merit then isn’t it odd that Decca teamed Bing and Dorothy Kirsten for a studio recording of the number?  Bing usually managed to plug his latest recordings on his weekly radio show but “Milady” was never again given a Crosby outing after he preserved it on wax for Decca in April 1950.

MILESTONE, LEWIS (1885-1980) Director.  In 1935, Lewis Milestone directed Bing in Anything Goes.  Although his career had peaked at the beginning of that decade with All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) and The Front Page (1931) this was not obvious at the time.  By the time he made Anything Goes he’d spent ten years directing and he had a further thirty years of directorial work ahead before retiring at the age of eighty.  By then he’d sold himself short too frequently that he was directing episodes for several television series between big screen assignments.  His most memorable post-Anything Goes work was Of Mice and Men (1940).  Twenty years of indifferent work followed which resulted in a surprise when M-G-M hired him for the remake of Mutiny on the Bounty (1962).  It was a major disappointment.  A couple of years previously he had directed Oceans 11.  No doubt, Sinatra found him the ideal puppet to allow the indisciplined Rat Pack to do as they liked and still turn out a box-office winner.  Sadly, he was replaced by Terence Young during the shooting of what turned out to be his last film: The Dirty Game (1965).

MILLAND, RAY [Reginald Truscott-Jones] (1905-1986) Actor.  In We’re Not Dressing (1934), Milland was cast as “Prince” Michael Stefani.  The inverted commas around Prince give the game away.  He was an imposter who thought he had a better chance of winning the favours of Carole Lombard by pretending to be royalty.  But cads never get the girl in films like We’re Not Dressing.  Milland also shared the cast list with Bing - but not screen time - in Star Spangled Rhythm (1942) and Variety Girl (1947).  When Milland arrived in Hollywood from Wales in 1930, he was utilised as a lightweight leading actor in the Cary Grant mould.  Fifteen years later, he proved himself as a serious actor when he walked off with an Academy Award for his part as an alcoholic in The Lost Weekend.  Unfortunately, there were not enough weighty parts around for him to continue in serious roles and he was soon back to more routine pictures.  To provide himself with a challenge he directed himself in five profitable but undistinguished films between 1954 and 1965.  In the early 1960s director Roger Corman used him in some classy horror films after which it looked as though Milland’s days of fame were over.  Then he dispensed with the hairpiece that seemed to be a requirement in order to be taken seriously as a Hollywood leading man.  Wigless, he played a substantial role in Love Story (1970).  That extended his career by a further fifteen years, although he had to resort to a few made-for-tv movies in order to stay before the camera.  If you haven’t read his autobiography “Wide Eyed in Babylon” then seek out a copy if only to discover that he could match David Niven with light hearted Hollywood anecdotage.

MILLER, DAVID (1909-1992) Director.  His first important directorial duty was Top o’ the Morning (1949).  He had been an editor until he made Billy the Kid in 1941.  The following year he directed Sunday Punch and Flying Tigers before a seven year gap prior to working on his sole Bing film.  He followed Top o’ the Morning with Love Happy, a Marx Brothers comedy made when the team was past their peak.  His work can be classified as uneven.  Between run of the mill action films like Saturday’s Heroes (1951) and Hammerhead (1968) can be found such gems as Lonely Are the Brave (1962) and Captain Newman M.D. (1964).  But somehow he never built up a reputation for quality over a sustained period. He retired in 1976 after filming Bittersweet Love.

MILLICAN, JAMES (1910-1955) Bit part character actor.  Millican played a truck driver in My Favourite Blonde (1942), the Bob Hope film in which Bing made a brief appearance.  In the all-star films Star Spangled Rhythm (1942) and Duffy’s Tavern (1945), he was a sailor and a pretend assistant director.  Like so many general-purpose actors in the 1940s he earned his keep by taking on whatever acting crumbs were offered.  He was generally a tough heavy in “B” westerns.  When he died at the early age of 45, he had just completed three cowboy films in a row: Chief Crazy Horse (1955), The Man from Laramie (1955) and Red Sundown (1956).

MISSISSIPPI. Film.  Shot during the early months of 1935 and released in the late spring of that year, Mississippi is a seldom-revived little gem.  With a running time of an hour and a quarter, it squeezed a good plot, four delightful Crosby ballads and some good comedy routines involving Bill Fields into a critical and box-office success.  Studio recordings of the film’s songs were made on February 21, 1935 and I would be hard pressed to find another Decca session that could better the end result.  Stephen Foster’s “Swanee River” together with Rodgers and Hart’s “It’s Easy to Remember”, “Down by the River” and “Soon” provide a quartet of ballads which provide as much listening pleasure today as when they were issued on 78s to tie in with the film’s release.  The plot derives from Booth Tarkington’s play “Magnolia”.  It was adapted as a silent movie in 1924 under the title The Fighting Coward starring Buddy Rogers and five years later, it became a starring vehicle for Wallace Beery with the title River of Romance.  Then Paramount had the good idea of using it as the basis for a musical and initially Lanny Ross was pencilled in for what eventually became the Crosby part. The story opens with Gail Patrick playing Bing’s girlfriend.  When Bing refuses to duel over her, her sister, played by Joan Bennett decides that he is the man for her.  Predictably, the film ends with Bing and Joan planning to live happily ever after. 

MISSISSIPPI MUD Song.  The first chance most people had of seeing Bing sing on screen was when he appeared in King of Jazz (1930) with the Rhythm Boys.  The trio sang this Harry Barris - James Cavanaugh composition and audiences marvelled at the singers’ healthy complexions made possible by the novel two colour Technicolor process.  Bing enjoyed singing this one.  He recorded it three times before 1930, sang it when the Rhythm Boys were briefly re-united in 1943 and covered it with Buddy Cole’s accompaniment in 1954 for his musical autobiography set.

MISTER BOOZE Song.  In Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964) the police raid a club expecting to find gaming in progress.  Instead, they find themselves attending a revivalist meeting.  Bing is leading the congregation with a song pointing out the evils of drink.  Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. all testify to the damaging effect of alcohol but it is Bing’s musical preaching which gives credence to this Sammy Cahn-James Van Heusen composition.

MISTO CRISTOFO COLUMBO Song.  One of two catchy fun songs from Here Comes the Groom (1951), the other one being “In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening”.  It is sung in a scene set on board an aeroplane with Bing serenading fellow passengers.  Dorothy Lamour, Cass Daley, Phil Harris and Louis Armstrong join in.  It’s almost as though Bing selected his personal friends to join him on this one.  Ray Evans and Jay Livingston were responsible for setting the record straight by letting us know that Columbus “proved to all the squares that the world was round.”

MITCHELL, GRANT (1874-1957) Actor.  He played the father of Marjorie Reynolds in Dixie (1943) and will be remembered for banning Bing from seeing his daughter because he believes that it was Bing’s pipe, which caused the fire that burned down the family home.  He then relents a little by agreeing that Bing can marry his daughter if Bing becomes successful as an entertainer during the following six months.  Students of plots such as this will know how the film ends after seeing the first reel.  Mitchell had been in films since the beginning of the 1930s and was often typecast as a prim and proper pillar of the community.  He retired from the screen in 1948.

MITCHELL, ROBERT (1912-2009) Choirmaster. The Robert Mitchell Boys Choir helped out on half a dozen of the songs Bing sang in Going My Way (1944). Bob MitchelI found himself unemployed when his career as a cinema organist came to an end with the advent of the talkies. He wanted to continue in the movie business and it took a few years for him to form the Bob Mitchell Boys Choir, conveniently based in Los Angeles. This led to steady work in the film industry from the end of the 1930s through to the late 1950s. After Going My Way, his best remembered work is in a film starring the singer who was responsible for making Mitchell unemployed virtually overnight. That was Al Jolson, who starred in the first talking feature film and whose story was told in the Jolson Story (1946). That box-office hit used the Boys Choir in early sequences. In 1992, he was able to return to his first love: He began accompanying silent films in revival houses and was performing at Los Angeles’ Silent Movie Theatre until a few months before his death from pneumonia.        

MOHR, HAL (1894-1974) Director of photography.  On King of Jazz (1930), Mohr was assisted by Jerome Ash and Ray Rennahan as photographer.  He was team leader as far as camera work on that film was concerned, having been a director of photography for ten years.  During that time, he had been an innovator in the early years of moving pictures.  He had managed a newsreel company and in 1929, he introduced crane shots to the film industry.  He was one of the first to use dolly and boom shots, which allowed for far greater fluidity of movement when it came to an assignment like the prestigious King of Jazz.  Recognition by his peers resulted in an Oscar for A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935) and a shared Oscar for Phantom of the Opera (1943).  He was still working well into his seventies, mainly on television.

MON COEUR EST UN VIOLON Song.  Bing did not sing this Miarka Laparcerie / Jean Richepin composition in Little Boy Lost (1953).  That honour went to Nicole Maurey.  But its strong melody must have appealed to Bing because he recorded the song twice around the time that Little Boy Lost was being made.  On 12 March 1953 he recorded an English version, “Violets and Violins”, with lyrics provided by Jack Lawrence.  John Scott Trotter accompanied Bing on that Los Angeles recording session.  Then he sung it in French under its original title for that marathon session in Paris on 16 May 1953 with Paul Durand et son Grand Orchestre.  The outcome of that day’s work was the album “Le Bing”.  In the British Isles, the song is associated with comedian Ken Dodd.  Doddy made it a number one hit in the 1960s under the title “Love is Like a Violin” and thereafter adopted it as his signature tune.

MONACO, JAMES V. (1885-1945) Songwriter.  Monaco’s career in music started when he was a nightclub pianist.  He provided melodies for seven Crosby pictures.  In fact, his screen assignments from 1938 to 1940 were exclusively for Bing films.  During that productive three years it was the reliable Johnny Burke’s tailor made lyrics to Monaco’s tunes which resulted in a string of quintessential Crosby recordings.  Here are the films and their songs:

· Doctor Rhythm (1938): “My Heart Is Taking Lessons”, “On the Sentimental Side” and “This Is My Night to Dream”

· Sing You Sinners (1938): “I’ve Got a Pocketful of Dreams”, “Don’t Let That Moon Get Away” and “Laugh and Call it Love”

· East Side of Heaven (1939): “Sing a Song of Sunbeams”, “Hang Your Heart on a Hickory Limb”, “That Sly Old Gentleman” and “East Side of Heaven”

· The Star Maker (1939): “A Man and His Dream”, “Go Fly a Kite”, “An Apple for the Teacher” and “Still the Bluebird Sings”

· Road to Singapore (1940): “Sweet Potato Piper”, “Too Romantic” and “An Apple for the Teacher”

· If I Had My Way (1940): “Meet the Sun Halfway”, “I Haven’t Time to be a Millionaire”, “Pessimistic Character” and “April Played the Fiddle”

· Rhythm on the River (1940): “Only Forever”, “When the Moon Comes over Madison Square”, “Rhythm on the River”, “That’s for Me” and “What Would Shakespeare Have Said”

Burke and Monaco wrote to order and they also came up with “The Little White Pill on the Little Green Hill” for Bing’s golfing short Swing with Bing filmed in January, 1940.  After the Burke-Monaco partnership dissolved, Monaco worked on musicals for 20th Century-Fox, providing songs for Fox contract artistes like Betty Grable and Dick Haymes.  He was still employed by that studio when he died at the age of sixty.

MONTAND, YVES (1921-1991) French actor-singer.  Montand was an accomplished singer when he co-starred with Marilyn Monroe in Let’s Make Love (1960).  Even so, he was assigned Bing as a singing tutor in that film.  “Incurably Romantic” was thus given a touch of the Crosbys when Bing coached him before recommending that Montand took up dancing.  His career as an entertainer began in the early 1940s when Edith Piaf discovered him singing at the Moulin Rouge.  She felt he had acting potential and he made his screen debut in one of her films in 1946.  His biggest success was in The Wages of Fear (1953).  Let’s Make Love marked his Hollywood debut.  He became a minor international star and was more at home making political thrillers than Hollywood musical misfires like On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (1970).  He was known as a ladies man and his off screen performances often made news.  There is an item of trivia to confirm this: his body was exhumed six years after his death in order to settle a paternity suit.  

MOON AND THE WILLOW TREE, THE Song.  Johnny Burke and Victor Schertzinger wrote this song for Dorothy Lamour to sing in Road to Singapore (1940).  It was a strong ballad and Decca saw the merit in arranging for Bing to record it to coincide with the film’s release. 

MOON GOT IN MY EYES, THE Song.  Johnny Burke collaborated with Arthur Johnston on this romantic ballad featured in Double or Nothing (1937).  Its presentation in the film is unusual in that Bing’s musical accompaniment is provided by a female vocal orchestra imitating the sound of various instruments.

MOONBURN Song.  Bing is on the run on board ship in Anything Goes (1936).  In one sequence, he disguises himself as a sailor and sings this Edward Heyman-Hoagy Carmichael composition.  It was the first Hoagy Carmichael melody to be written specifically for a film.  Bing’s Decca recording is held in high regard by jazz buffs because it features piano accompaniment by Joe Sullivan.

MOONLIGHT BECOMES YOU Song.  The most famous of all Bing’s moon songs, partly because it was featured in two box office hits from his peak Hollywood period.  Its initial airing was in Road to Morocco (1942) when Bing used it to woo Dorothy Lamour in a scene set in a palace garden.  Later in the same film, it is used for comic effect when Hope and Crosby see a mirage of Lamour and the three of them sing the song with voices interchanged.  Two years on it was the only Burke-Van Heusen song to be placed in Here Come the Waves.  That film acknowledged that it was not a new composition by having Betty Hutton play a 78 recording on her phonograph.

MOONSTRUCK Song.  This was Bing’s first “moon” song to make it in a movie.  Sam Coslow and Arthur Johnston composed it for College Humor (1933).  Bing sings it to Mary Carlisle twice during the course of the film.  The first time is at a dance and the reprise comes when Mary Carlisle thinks Bing - playing a professor - is leaving her college.

MOORE, IDA (1883-1964) Character actress who was usually cast as someone’s kindly old mum by the time she was in her sixties.  She made an impact in Mr. Music when she was Nancy Olson’s Aunt Amy and took on the responsibility of chaperone when Nancy visited Bing’s apartment.  She gained a small part in The Country Girl four years later but by then her career was winding down and she only appeared in a couple more Hollywood films before her retirement from the screen.

MOORE, MATT (1888-1960) Actor.  Matt Moore had two older brothers in films - Owen and Tom.  Before he reached the age of thirty, he was a romantic lead in silents and early talkies.  By the age of forty, he was out of favour and his screen future lay in supporting roles.  Which is where we find him in his only Crosby film: he played the ship’s captain in Anything Goes (1936).  Rather than graduate to appearing in “B” pictures, he waited until decent parts were offered in major productions.  For that reason, he only appeared in a dozen films after Anything Goes until his death at the age of 72.  His last two parts were in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) and An Affair to Remember (1957).

MOORE, THOMAS (1779-1852) Songwriter (and poet, singer and author).  You won’t find an entry in this A-Z for anyone who was born before Irish composer Thomas Moore.  He deserves a place because of Bing’s liking of Moore’s sentimental songs.  In Dixie (1943) it was “The Last Rose of Summer” that Bing sang on stage assisted by Billy de Wolfe, Eddie Foy jnr. and Lynne Overman.  Six years later, in Top o’ the Morning, the equally sentimental “O ‘tis Sweet to Think” was duetted with Ann Blyth.  Bing recorded the latter for Decca to tie in with the film’s release but “The Last Rose of Summer” was not given a studio recording until a Warner Bros. sing-a-long album in 1962.  Dublin born Moore’s skill was putting words to traditional Irish airs.  Peter Gammond was spot on when he wrote that Moore was responsible “for the rise and popularity of many pseudo-Irish songs of great charm and lasting quality.”

MORLEY, ROBERT (1908-1992) Actor and playwright. In the last Road picture, Morley played “The Leader”. In The Road to Hong Kong (1961) it was his intention to send two monkeys into space but he changed his mind and decided to send Bing and Bob instead. By then Morley was a seasoned performer. He made his London stage debut in 1929, his Broadway debut in 1938 and his first Hollywood film (Marie Antoinette) also in 1938. His tripled-chinned performances could add interest to the most mundane films and his humorous magazine articles indicated that he did not take himself seriously. His son, Sheridan, wrote an affectionate biography called “Robert, My Father” which was published the year after Robert’s death.

MORROS, BORIS (1891-1963) Music director who also produced films and spied on Russia as an American agent. Morros was a man who lived three lives during his six score years and twelve. He was born in Russia and wrote songs and directed operas before he moved to New York and worked on Broadway. He was a booking agent as well as managing two New York theatres. Paramount hired him and he had an unbroken run as musical director on five of Bing’s films for that company in the late 1930s. They were Rhythm on the Range (1936), Waikiki Wedding (1937), Double or Nothing (1937), Sing You Sinners (1938) and Paris Honeymoon (1939). Then, in 1939, he became an independent producer. His first film following this career change was The Flying Deuces (1939) starring Laurel and Hardy. His entry in “The International Motion Picture Almanac” published during the year of his death listed him as working on army training films in 1943 but the publication was silent on his work as an American agent. We may never have learned of his non-theatrical activities had he not written “Ten Years a Counterspy” which was published in 1957. But he was first and foremost a film producer and it must have been no surprise that he sold the film rights to his life. The outcome was Man on a String (1960) with Ernest Borgnine as Morros.

MOTHER GOOSE IN SPRINGTIME (1939) A Columbia cartoon in its A Color Rhapsody series. Bing is one of many celebrities caricatured.
MOYER, RAY (1898-1986) Set decorator. Over a ten-year period Ray Moyer worked on four Crosby pictures. As a studio backroom boy, his inclusion in this A-Z would be debatable, especially as his work on his Bing films could not be regarded as out of the ordinary. However, his non-Crosby work was outstanding and justifies his alphabetical listing. In fact, it could be argued that his Bing Crosby film work formed part of his mid-career apprenticeship before moving on to more prestigious movies. Dixie (1943) was his debut film for Bing and that assignment was technically important as being Crosby’s first three colour Technicolor feature. Here Come the WAVES (1944), Road to Rio (1948) and Just for You (1952) followed. 1952 was also the year in which Moyer worked on a couple of films that provided Bing with cameo performances: The Greatest Show on Earth and Son of Paleface. By that time, he had been with Paramount for just twenty years and he had won two Academy Awards for set decoration, both in 1950. At that time separate awards were given for black and white and colour films and Moyer’s double win recognised his work on Samson and Delilah (colour) and Sunset Boulevard (black and white). As the fifties progressed so did his visual impact on Hollywood’s box-office successes. Red Garters (1954), Rear Window (1954), The Ten Commandments (1956), Funny Face 1957) and Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) provided an unbroken run of examples of how attention to set detail enhanced a film’s appearance. Moyer also won an Oscar for his work on Cleopatra (1963).                                 

MR. MUSIC Film.  Bing was not in favour of Paramount retitling Samson Raphaelson’s stage play “Accent on Youth”.  He thought that Mr. Music was immodest as it referred to his character in the film.  Paramount had previously filmed the story in 1935 under its original title and Bing felt a title change unnecessary for the 1950 remake.  Of course, the title was irrelevant.  It was the name above the title, which sold tickets and in 1950 Bing was placed third in the “Motion Picture Herald” list of top ten box-office stars.  Paramount obviously wanted to play down the accent on youth in the original title because it was filmed yet again in 1959 as But Not for Me.  It is interesting to see how the original story was adapted to suit the actors who played the lead.  In Bing’s case, he was composer Paul Merrick and “Halliwell’s Film Guide” summarised: “A college girl is employed to keep an idle middle-aged songwriter’s nose to the grindstone.”  The 1935 plot summary was given as: “A secretary falls in love with her middle-aged playwright employer.”  The middle-aged man in that one was Herbert Marshall.  Clark Gable was only a year away from death when Halliwell’s potted plot line for the final re-make stated: “An ageing, washed-up Broadway producer is loved by his young drama student secretary.”  I thought the Crosby version found him performing on auto-pilot.  The main Johnny Burke-James Van Heusen songs were not their best - “High on the List”, “Wouldn’t It Be Funny”, “Accidents Will Happen” and “Life Is So Peculiar”.  And the film’s title song did not even warrant a Crosby vocal.  It is tucked away in the body of the film and sung by a chorus of amateurs putting on a college show.  Paramount’s initial publicity indicated that filming would start in September of 1949 and one month before that proposed start date Tom Ewell was signed for the part of Cupcake.  The following month the studio was looking for personalities so they could promote the film as an “all-star” production.  Maurice Chevalier, Ethel Merman and Bert Lahr were mentioned to provide added marquee value.  By then the husband and wife dancing team of Marge and Gower Champion had been signed up.  By November 1949, filming was underway.  Nancy Olson had been okayed by Bing as his leading lady.  In control on the set was Richard Haydn, who had graduated from minor acting roles to directing the previous year.  In fact, Haydn couldn’t totally shake off the acting bug and he played a cameo role in Mr. Music when he claimed acting credit under the name Claude Curdle.  If you want to study his performance, he is Jerome Thisbee.  He appears as a backer of Paul Merrick’s new show.  Also making appearances of sorts were Bing’s regular film songwriters.  Framed photographs of Johnny Burke and James Van Heusen hang on the wall of Bing’s apartment.  In later years, a couple of fellow performers came up with amusing memories about working with Bing on Mr. Music.  Tom Ewell was learning the acting game when he approached Bing and explained that he felt tense and wondered how to achieve the relaxed Crosby manner.  “The groaner grinned,” related Ewell, “then he pulled out a roll of bills big enough to choke a horse, patted it gently and said: ‘This sort of helps!’”  Groucho Marx remembered, “It was embarrassing because I sing better than Bing.  Otherwise we get along fine together.....I usually wait until he gets off the set before I start singing, because I don’t want to embarrass him.  We appear as a couple of ancient vaudevillians.  I require very little make-up.”  A fair contemporary critique from the trade paper “Film Daily” read: “artfully contrived romance, with music and comedy.  Bing in fine voice.  Performance ingratiating.  Roundly rewarding show for anybody’s money.”

MULHALL, JACK (1887-1979) Actor.  By the time Jack Mulhall shared screen time with Bing he was on a gentle descent to playing supporting roles.  He’d been a leading man in silent pictures and his voice adapted well to talkies.  But by then age was not on his side and by the time of Reaching for the Moon in 1930 he was playing second lead to Douglas Fairbanks.  He did not appear in the Crosby sequence in that picture.  Some five years later, he was at the bottom of the cast list of Mississippi.  Paramount continued to use him in small parts and in the same year as Mississippi, he was in The Big Broadcast of 1936, Two for Tonight and Anything Goes.  In Two for Tonight, when the character played by Bing is injured, it is “Doctor” Jack Mulhall who attends to him.  For Anything Goes he was cast as the ship’s purser.  By then he took whatever was on offer and when he made his last film, Atomic Submarine (1959) he had been seen in hundreds of films.

MURPHY, DUDLEY (1897-1968) Director.  Even film scholars are likely to say Dudley Who? He directed many films but none are remembered today.  His Crosby link is as co-director of Confessions of a Co-ed (1931) along with David Burton.  The reason he never made much of an impact as a director was partly the man’s versatility.  He was also a producer and screenwriter.  Plus he was never in one place very long.  He directed a few one-reelers in Hollywood and then went to France in 1924 to work on an experimental ballet film.  In the 1930s, he directed some long forgotten features and then he packed his bags and moved to Mexico, again as a director.

MURRAY, LYN (1909-1989) Orchestra leader, composer and musical director.  Although Lyn Murray is better known to Crosby collectors for leading the orchestra on some of Bing’s early 1950s recordings, he had a second career in the movies, making his musical director debut on Son of Paleface (1952), in which Bing made a gag appearance.  His best-known work is as composer of the score of the 1955 Hitchcock thriller To Catch a Thief.

MUSE, CLARENCE (1899-1979) Actor.  Black actor Muse was in two of Bing’s Paramount pictures.  In both of them, he played submissive Uncle Tom characters.  His character’s name was Clarence in both Welcome Stranger (1947) and Riding High (1950) although he was called Whitey as well in the latter.  He was also a prisoner in the Bob Hope comedy My Favorite Brunette (1947), in which Bing had a walk on part at the end.  His screen career would have been different in the 21st century, particularly as he was the holder of a law degree, a founder of the Lafayette Players of Harlem and the composer of a number of spirituals.  In fact, towards the end of his life he played more dignified characters in such as Buck and the Preacher (1972) and The World’s Greatest Athlete (1973).  It was in 1973 that he was one of the first inductees to the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame.  Crosby film watchers will always remember him as adding considerably to the appeal of three songs in Riding High.  He joined Bing on “Someplace on Anywhere Road” and Bing and Coleen Gray on “Camptown Races” and “Sunshine Cake”. 

MUSIC MAIDS, THE Vocal quintet.  At the time that East Side of Heaven went before the movie cameras in February, 1939 Bing was halfway through his fifth season of one-hour Kraft Music Hall broadcasts.  That also happened to be the month when the Paul Taylor Choristers, who had been providing vocal support for Bing on the show, were replaced by the Music Maids.  The film provided an opportunity to see the girls together with Bing.  They were cast as waitresses in a scene in a cafe and joined him in singing “Hang Your Heart on a Hickory Limb”.  At the time, they were a fivesome: Trudy Erwin, June Clifford, Dorothy Messmer, Alice Ludes and Denny Wilson.  During their stay on KMH the composition of the group changed, but in East Side of Heaven we see the originals.

MY FAVOURITE BLONDE Film.  This 1942 Paramount comedy starring Bob Hope came at a time when the Road series was establishing Bing and Bob as comedy sparring partners.  Towards the end of the film Bing, leaning against a pillar asks Bob for a match.  Hope obliges and then mutters, “Couldn’t be”.

MY FAVOURITE BRUNETTE Film.  Five years after Blonde, Hope went before the cameras again with another My Favourite.  The writers came up with a second closing sequence gag.  Hope is due to be executed, but is reprieved at the last minute.  The frustrated executioner throws his cap on the ground.  It is Crosby. 

MY HEART AND I Song.  Although the 1936 Paramount production Anything Goes was based on a Cole Porter musical of two years earlier, the studio decided to supplement the Porter songs with a number of especially composed ones.  Leo Robin and Frederick Hollander came up with a couple.  Bing sings one of them, “My Heart and I” in two separate sequences.  Whilst hiding in a lifeboat he serenades Ida Lupino and later he treats the song less seriously when he tackles it in a foreign accent whilst sporting an obviously false beard.

MY HEART IS A HOBO Song.  It was composed by Johnny Burke and James Van Heusen for Welcome Stranger (1947).  Burke’s clever lyric allows Bing some inner reflection but it does little to advance the film’s plot.

MY HEART IS TAKING LESSONS Song.  Burke was providing lyrics to James Monaco’s melodies when this was written to order for Doctor Rhythm (1938).  Bing sings it early in the film in order to introduce us to his leading lady played by Mary Carlisle.  It is a charming sequence in which Bing is strolling through a park singing “My Heart Is Taking Lessons” with bird song accompaniment.  It catches the lady’s attention and she applauds before tossing him a coin.  It is reprised twice.  The first time is when Bing sings it to the Mary Carlisle character as she boards a liner.  Her final personal serenade is at the end of the film when a happy ending is sealed by Bing taking us up to “The end” title. 

MY LORD DELIVER DANIEL Song.  King of Jazz (1930) provided an early opportunity to see as well as hear Bing but it was the Crosby voice only for this Negro spiritual.  It was used in the film’s early cartoon sequence, which told us how Paul Whiteman was crowned “King of Jazz”.

MY MAMA THINKS I’M A STAR Song.  This was written by Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen for the film Here Come the WAVES (1944).  It was not used in the film and the sentiment conveyed in the song’s title indicates that it could just as easily have served as a Betty Hutton sung ditty.

MY MELANCHOLY BABY Song. Although not usually regarded as a lullaby as such, the tempo at which Bing sings “My Melancholy Baby” to young Carolyn Lee in a scene from Birth of the Blues (1941) shows how effective it can be in sending someone to sleep. The soothing Crosby rendition is helped by the simple trombone and guitar accompaniment. The song was written by George A. Norton and Ernie Burnett some thirty years before Birth of the Blues. Bing made a studio recording for Decca in 1938.

MY SILENT LOVE Song.  Even the most dedicated student of Bing’s film songs will be hard pressed to hum a chorus of this Edward Heyman-Dana Suesse song featured in the Mack Sennett short Blue of the Night (1932).  It opens that film in a scene where Bing is concluding a nightclub engagement.  He never made a studio recording of the song but it was available on an LP of Crosby recordings taken directly from the soundtrack of his early films (Biograph 9199 508 “Where the Blue of the Night...”)

MYERS, HARRY (1882-1938) Actor.  In a scene where Bing sings “Down by the River” in Mississippi (1935) the part of the stage manager is played by Harry Myers.  By then this one time leading man of silent pictures and early talkies was taking whatever work came his way.  He had also directed films.  There is another filmic link with Bing: Myers played the role of the blacksmith in the 1921 version of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.

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NAISH, J. CARROL (1897-1973) Actor.  In view of his deeds and thoughts he was aptly named Blackie in Birth of the Blues (1941).  Perhaps the audience cheered when he got his come-uppance by being shot by one of his own hoodlums.  His background provided an early training ground for some of the darker roles he took on:  he grew up in a tough area of New York and dropped out of school to enlist in the Navy.  He broke into films the hard way.  He arrived in California towards the end of the silent era via a tramp steamer and accepted early work in Hollywood as a bit player and stunt man.  By the early 1930s, the studios had recognised his versatility.  He was equally believable as an Italian, Jew, Indian, Arab and - at the end of his career - Chinaman.  He was in the first Batman serial and continued as a menacing presence in The Monster Maker (1944), The House of Frankenstein (1945) and The Beast with Five Fingers (1946).  By way of contrast, he was cast in several Technicolor musicals including playing Sitting Bull in Annie Get Your Gun (1950).  Like many actors who found film work hard to come by when the studio system started to crumble, he obtained work in television and a new generation came to know him as the small screen’s Charlie Chan in the late 1950s.  Rather than taking on any meagre movie parts that might come his way he simply withdrew from the scene, appearing in only three feature films after 1960.

NAPIER, ALAN (1903-1988) Actor.  He almost put Bing to death in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1949) where he played the part of the executioner.  It wasn’t a typical role for this suave character actor.  His last work for the big and small screen saw him cast as a butler in the Batman television series, which resulted in a cinema spinoff.  That is how most people remember the tall, stately Englishman.  He had worked in Britain on stage and screen until the end of the 1930s.  Hollywood gave him the opportunity to typify dignified Brits in such films as A Yank at Eton (1942), Joan of Arc (1948) - where he was the Earl of Warwick - and My Fair Lady (1964).  Like the previous entry, when the decent parts stopped coming he stopped acting.

NEW YORK EXPERIENCE Electrovision film.  This was the third of a trio of medium length travelogues, which involved computerised projectors and utilised a 180 degree screen.  Bing had some financial involvement as an investor in Electrovision Productions Incorporated, which is why he was in New York to promote the opening of the film.  

NEWMAN, ALFRED (1901-1970) Composer and musical director. Alfred Newman was MD on two films in which Bing appeared. In 1930, he was just making his mark when he worked on Reaching for the Moon. At the end of that decade, he had established himself as an inspired composer and his musical direction for The Star Maker (1939) didn’t stretch him all that much. By then he had received an Academy Award for his score for Alexander’s Ragtime Band (1938). The year following the release of The Star Maker, he received his second composer Oscar for Tin Pan Alley. He was nominated for more Academy Awards than any other musician who worked in films, and he won a record nine Oscars in all. Leonard Maltin, in his Movie Encyclopaedia, describes him as “arguably the most important musical craftsman who ever worked in Hollywood, Newman was associated with more than two hundred films during his 40-year career. He scored every conceivable type of film, and as longtime head of the music department at 20th Century-Fox supervised many other scores as well.” His symphonic scores are constantly being re-recorded whilst specialist companies regularly reissue his original soundtrack work. Newman rarely accompanied popular singers but he found time to act as the musical director for the touring Hollywood Victory Caravan in 1942 when he would have provided support to Bing.  He conducted one Crosby session in 1954 that produced “Who Gave You the Roses” and “We Meet Again”. Alfred Newman was the brother of composer Lionel Newman.

NEWMAN, LIONEL (1916-1989) Composer.  The only link Lionel Newman has with a Crosby picture is his work on Say One for Me (1959).  Newman supervised and conducted the 20th Century-Fox sound stage orchestra for the film’s score.  He had no involvement with the film’s songs, which were written by Cahn and Van Heusen.  His work for Fox embraced a handful of memorable scores such as How to Be Very, Very Popular (1955) and North to Alaska (1960) but he was never in the front rank of Hollywood composers.

NICHOLS, DUDLEY (1895-1960) Screenwriter and director.  Nichols directed three long forgotten films.  Otherwise, his fame rests with his screenplays.  They are memorable.  His work for The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945) is fondly remembered.  That film neatly balanced comedy with pathos.  There was a later Crosby link.  It was Nichol’s screenplay for the 1939 film of Stagecoach, which formed the basis for the 1966 remake in which Bing played Doc Boone.  Nichols was highly regarded by his peers because of the way he could make serious subjects appeal to moviegoers.  Examples from his three decades at the top of his profession are The Informer (1935), The Fugitive (1947) and The Tin Star (1957).  He won one Academy Award for The Informer and was also nominated for The Long Voyage Home (1940), Air Force (1943) and The Tin Star.

NIVEN, DAVID (1909-1983) Actor who proved he could have been just as successful as a writer.  Niven was just passing through Shepperton studios, Middlesex, at the time he established an onscreen link with Bing.  That was for the film The Road to Hong Kong in 1961.  The two had met previously when Niven guested on Bing’s radio show in 1938.  For the British made Hong Kong, Niven was seen as a Lama reading “Lady Chatterley’s Lover”.  Niven’s film career has been well documented by himself in a couple of truth stretching autobiographies with Sheridan Morley attempting to put the record straight with “The Other Side of the Moon”.  What is indisputable is that Niven entertained filmgoers for almost half a century.  He was an extra in the 1935 Mutiny on the Bounty and a shadow of his former self due to terminal illness when his lines in The Curse of the Pink Panther (1983) had to be dubbed.  Between those two appearances, he was as much at home playing Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1948 as he was in Vampira (1974) when he failed to convince us as Dracula.  His best years both as actor and box-office draw were the 1950s.  In Around the World in 80 Days (1956), he delighted as Phileas Fogg and in Separate Tables two years later his dramatic performance won him an Oscar. 

NOBLE, RAY (1903-1978) Bandleader and composer.  Bing’s British rival for vocal popularity in the 1930s was Al Bowlly.  Bowlly’s best recordings were made with Noble.  Noble received billing in a couple of pictures featuring Bing, although the two did not appear on screen together.  Noble appeared with his orchestra in The Big Broadcast of 1936 (1935) in which he played “Why the Stars Come Out at Night”.  Also in that picture were two of his earlier hits.  Both were his own compositions.  “The Very Thought of You” was recorded by Bing in 1934 and “Goodnight Sweetheart”, was a hit for Al Bowlly.  Ten years later Noble was one of the five band-leader/pianists in the finale of Out of This World, the film in which Eddie Bracken borrowed Bing’s voice.  Until 1934, Noble led HMV’s house band, the New Mayfair Dance Orchestra.  Noble’s time in the U.S.A. - initially with Bowlly - made him a radio star and although he returned to Britain from time to time he found the work in the U.K. was not as lucrative.  When he retired in the mid-1950s, Noble made America his home. 

NORTON, JACK (1889-1958) Character actor who specialised in playing amiable drunks...which he was in Anything Goes (1936) and Blue Skies (1946).  In addition, he was in three other Crosby films.  He was cast as music publisher Lilley in Going My Way (1944), a waiter in Here Come the WAVES (1944) and a bus boy in Variety Girl (1947).  Norton came to movies after a long career in vaudeville.  He quit films at the end of the 1940s.  And he never touched alcohol in his life.

NOT FOR ALL THE RICE IN CHINA Song.  Irving Berlin wrote it and Bing sang it in a medley in Blue Skies (1946).  Bing did not make a studio recording of the song. 

NOVAK, EVA (1898-1988) Silent screen leading lady.  Once show business is in the blood it’s hard to quit.  She began as a Mack Sennett bathing beauty.  Then she went on to co-star with Tom Mix in ten of his popular westerns.  Her last credit of any significance was in 1930, but she refused to leave movies.  Which is why she was cast as one of the nuns in The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945).

NOW THAT YOU ARE MAN AND WIFE Song.  In East Side of Heaven (1939), Bing plays a singing postal messenger.  In an early sequence in the film, he calls up Mr. and Mrs. James Monaco and serenades them with “Now That You Are Man and Wife”.  Probably few members of the audience of the time saw anything significant in the couple on the receiving end of Bing’s vocal.  It was James V. Monaco who wrote the music for the Crosby songs featured in the film. 

NOW YOU HAS JAZZ. Song.  Together with the pawnshop sequence where Bing sings “Rhythm on the River” in the film of the same name, I find this the most watchable musical event in any Crosby movie.  Written by Cole Porter for High Society (1956) Bing and Louis Armstrong claim the audience’s attention from the first to the last bars.  When M-G-M released their compilation That’s Entertainment Part Two in 1976 the “Now You Has Jazz” segment from High Society was included.  The version released on the film’s soundtrack album is just that, rather than a studio re-recording.

NUGENT, EDWARD (EDDIE) (1904-1995) Leading actor turned supporting actor.  By the time Eddie Nugent appeared in the first of two Bing pictures, he was taking supporting actor roles.  He made dozens of films in the 1930s and then disappeared from the entertainment scene.  He has a small part in College Humor (1933) whilst the following year’s She Loves Me Not finds him fourth billed in the cast list as Buzz Jones.  In She Loves Me Not, it is the film producer father of Buzz who provides leading lady Kitty Carlisle with a break in movies. 

NUGENT, ELLIOTT (1899-1980) Actor-director-playwright-screenwriter-novelist.  Not a bad c.v. for someone who retired from films due to alcoholism and mental problems after directing Bing in Just for You (1952).  In 1934, he directed his first Crosby picture, She Loves Me Not.  There was then a gap of twelve years before he directed his second Bing film, Welcome Stranger.  Between that one and his last film there is a further Crosby link in that he directed My Favorite Brunette, a Bob Hope starrer in which Bing made a gag appearance.  Nugent made his first screen appearances in the mid-1920s, moving to Paramount as a director in 1932.  The studio knew they could rely on him when it came to comedy, hence his work with Hope, Harold Lloyd and Danny Kaye.  His most famous work as a playwright was “The Male Animal”, a collaboration with James Thurber.

NYE, BEN (1907- 1986) Make-up head at 20th Century-Fox studio.  A familiar name on film credits, Nye made sure that Bing’s scalp-doily was in place for the three movies he made for Fox towards the end of his career: Say One for Me (1959), High Time (1960) and Stagecoach (1966). 

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O PROMISE ME Song.  Bing sings a snatch of this de Koven-Scot composition in Here Comes the Groom (1951).  It is appropriately placed in the film in the scene featuring a wedding ceremony rehearsal.  Bing never recorded the song.

O SANCTISSIMA Song.  Nor did he make a recording of this one.  He sings it in The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945).  When Father O’Malley (Bing) visits Horace Bogardus (Henry Travers) - an about to be reformed capitalist - he hears the nuns singing “O Sanctissima” and joins in. 

O ‘TIS SWEET TO THINK Song.  When Bing and Ann Blyth walk to church in Top O’ the Morning (1949), they sing this traditional Irish tune with Thomas Moore’s lyrics.  Decca recorded the pair for a 78 to tie in with the film’s release and Ann Blyth’s soprano blends well with Bing’s baritone.

OAKIE, JACK [Lewis Delaney Offield] (1903-1978) Actor.  Oakie lent his voice and comic persona to a few of Bing’s early film appearances.  Although they shared the same year of birth, they were first seen together on screen as tutor (Bing) and pupil (Jack) in College Humor (1933).  In that film, they sang “Down the Old Ox Road”.  In the same year they sang “Boo-boo-boo” for a Hollywood on Parade publicity short promoting Too Much Harmony.  Oakie was part of the vaudeville act Dixon (Skeets Gallagher) and Day (Oakie), discovered by Broadway star Bing in that 1933 feature film.  A couple of years later Oakie was one of the acting links between variety turns featured in The Big Broadcast of 1936 in which Bing was on screen for four minutes.  Then, towards the end of 1935, Bing and Oakie did their individual bits in the short Star Night at the Cocoanut Grove.  And if they had been available, Paramount would have starred Fred MacMurray and Jack Oakie in Road to Singapore.  Fortunately, for both Crosby and Oakie that never came about and Oakie went on to play Benzini Napaloni in Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (1940), for which he received an Oscar nomination.  Most of the films that followed found Oakie providing comic relief and by the end of the 1940s, he had more or less forsaken films.  His last two efforts before his retirement were well received - The Rat Race (1960) and Lover Come Back (1962).

O’BRIEN, ROBERT (1919-2005) Screenwriter. O’Brien’s last feature film writing credit before he devoted his efforts to television was Say One for Me (1959). It wasn’t a typical O’Brien assignment. Previously he had been associated with somewhat lighter projects, albeit many had a musical content. Belle of New York (1952), By the Light of the Silvery Moon (1953) and Lucky Me (1954) were three in a row, which performed well at the box-office. Bing must have approved the way in which O’Brien contrived a story to allow Crosby to play a priest for the third time. Maybe the Bob Hope connection was an influencing factor. O’Brien had provided the screenplays for a couple of Hope’s films when Bob was still at his cinematic peak: Fancy Pants (1950) and The Lemon Drop Kid (1951). O’Brien’s notable work for television in the 1960s included “My Three Sons” and “87th Precinct”.

O’CONNOR, DONALD (1925-2003) Actor.  Eighteen years separated the two films in which O’Connor starred with Bing.  He made his feature film debut as Bing’s schoolboy brother Mike Beebe in Sing You Sinners (1938).  His second Crosby picture teamed him as Bing’s fellow performer in Anything Goes (1956).  O’Connor’s first time on screen was as part of the family circus act in Melody for Two (1937).  After Sing You Sinners, he didn’t get the break he expected.  Paramount did not build him up and he eventually went to Universal to appear in a string of low budget pictures.  They appealed to followers of “B” musicals but were hardly audience pullers.  His career received a boost of sorts when Universal decided to star him a series of supporting pictures with Francis, the talking mule.  It was in the middle of his Francis period that he was given a part in what is generally regarded as the best musical about Hollywood - Singin’ in the Rain (1952).  That film led to appearances in other major musicals but by then the Hollywood musical was in decline.  Call Me Madam (1953) and There’s No Business Like Show business (1954) were too late in the day for O’Connor to build a new career in musicals.  Paramount gave him a chance to act when he played the title role in The Buster Keaton Story (1957) but by then he seemed to care little about movies and turned to composing music for the concert hall.  There was one Crosby link for his last big screen appearance when he was a narrator for That’s Entertainment (1974).  Otherwise, his by then overweight figure could be seen on nostalgia slanted chat shows reminiscing about his hey-day.

O’CONNOR, ROBERT EMMETT (1885-1962) Bit part player. Reference books indicate R.E.O’C’s presence in films from 1909 onwards.  He was in Hollywood films for forty years without making an impact.  His two Crosby films are typical of the ten second appearances, which litter his filmography.  In Waikiki Wedding (1937) he was a policeman and three years later he blacked up for the part of the immigration officer in Road to Singapore.

O’CONNOR, UNA (1890-1959) Actress.  Una O’Connor specialised in playing Irish maids, so as Mrs. Breen in The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945) she was cast to type.  It was her only Crosby picture.  Her career began with the Abbey Theatre in Dublin and after making a couple of films in the U.K. she found her career niche in Hollywood.  You can see more of her in her “Mrs. Breen” mode in David Copperfield (1935) as Mrs. Gummidge and The Plough and the Stars (1938) as Mrs. Gogan.  Her last film was Witness for the Prosecution (1958).

ODETS, CLIFFORD (1906-1963) Playwright, screenwriter and director.  Although Odets played a peripheral part in Bing’s film career it proved to be of major significance.  Odets wrote “The Country Girl”, which started its Broadway run in 1950.  It provided Bing with his finest acting opportunity when Paramount filmed it four years later.  Odets wrote three screenplays which have stood the test of time: Humoresque (1947), The Sweet Smell of Success (1957) and Wild in the Country (1961).  That trio provided memorable roles for John Garfield, Tony Curtis and Elvis Presley respectively.

O’DONNELL, WALTER ‘SPEC’ (1911-1986) Actor.  Crosby buffs remember this gawky actor for a couple of insignificant parts he played at the dawn of Bing’s film career.  He was one of the college boys who sang “The Stein Song” in the 1930 short Two Plus Fours and he was an office boy in The Big Broadcast (1932).  He was in pictures from the silent days and faded from the Hollywood scene in the early 1940s.

DENNIS O’KEEFE (1908-1968) Actor. Q: In which Bing Crosby film will you find Dennis O’Keefe listed with the actor credits? A: None. That’s because he was still undergoing his acting apprenticeship when he played a bit part as a heckler in Rhythm on the Range (1936) under the name of Bud Flanagan. In this country that could only serve to confuse him with one half of the music hall act Flanagan and Allen. However that was not the reason he became Dennis O’Keefe. The name change was at the behest of M-G-M. He was born Edward Vance Flanagan and after touring with his parents as part of their vaudeville act he wrote a number of scripts for the “Our Gang” series of comedy shorts before coming a bit player. The year after making Rhythm on the Range M-G-M signed him to a contract and built him up into a leading player. Films like Topper Returns (1941), T-Men (1948) and All Hands on Deck (1961) show that he never made it onto the “A” list of male leads. He was at his best in action pictures. In 1958, he had an American television series, “The Dennis O’Keefe Show”. Apart from his appearance in Rhythm on the Range, he had uncredited appearances in other Bing films namely Reaching for the Moon (1930 - as a dance extra), Double or Nothing (1937 - as a club patron), Too Much Harmony (1933- as a cafe extra) and Mississippi (1935). He died from lung cancer.

OLCOTT, CHAUNCEY (1858-1932).  Lyricist.  He takes co-writer’s credit with George Graff Jr. for the words to “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” which Bing sang in Top o’ the Morning (1949).  Although he was born in Buffalo, N.Y., spent several years appearing on the London stage in light operas and died in Monte Carlo. Olcott specialised in writing sentimental Irish tearjerkers.  Considering his early life saw him touring the States in a minstrel show, that show business detour seemed to have had little influence on the likes of his ballads such as “My Wild Irish Rose” and “Mother Machree”.

OLD DAN TUCKER Song.  An “authentic” minstrel song from Dixie (1943).  Bing’s character in the film - Dan Emmett - actually composed this song for inclusion in his minstrel show and it is in such a setting that Bing sings it as a member of a quartet comprising Billy de Wolfe, Eddie Foy Jnr. and Lynne Overman.

OLD GLORY Song.  This patriotic salute to the stars and stripes was written by Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen for the World War II morale booster Star Spangled Rhythm (1942).  Nothing could follow Bing’s flag waving rendition in the film, which is why Paramount wisely made it the film’s finale.

THE OLD MAN Song.  In White Christmas (1954), the old man in question is Major General Waverly, played by Dean Jagger.  When the film opens, Waverly is leaving the armed forces and Bing and Danny Kaye sing this Irving Berlin composition by way of an affectionate farewell.

OLSEN, MORONI (1889-1954) Character actor.  Playing John Blair, Olsen ensured that If I Had My Way (1940) reached a satisfactory conclusion by making a loan to the cafe that provided work for several vaudevillians.  Olsen’s physical bulk helped him to secure his movie debut in the part of Porthos for the 1935 version of The Three Musketeers.  For the next twenty years, he was seldom out of work for more than a couple of weeks.  He could play villain, best friend, prominent citizen or historical character.  In that latter capacity, he was John Knox in Mary of Scotland (1936), Robert E. Lee in Santa Fe Trail (1940) and Sam Houston in Lone Star (1952).

OLSON, NANCY (1928-    ) Actress.  Signed by Paramount in 1949, she proved to be a good investment when she was nominated for an Oscar the following year for her role in Sunset Boulevard.  Nancy Olson fitted the mould of Bing’s leading ladies during the second half of the Crosby film career so it is surprising that she only shared screen time with him twice.  She was Bing’s girlfriend in Mr. Music (1950) and the film’s happy ending had them both walking away together after the usual on-again/off-again plot complications surrounding their relationships.  Bing and Nancy were reunited in 1955 when she was in the first made for television movie: High Tor.  By then she had decided to retire from acting to spend more time with her first husband, songwriter Alan Jay Lerner.  That marriage lasted seven years until 1957 and she subsequently married Alan Livingston, president of Capitol Records.  Her fresh faced looks made her the ideal young mum for Disney’s family films and she was ideally cast in Pollyanna (1960), The Absent Minded Professor (1961) Son of Flubber (63) and Snowball Express (1972). 

ON THE ROAD TO MANDALAY Song.  A snatch of this Rudyard Kipling song is included in the “I Positively Refuse to Sing” medley, which Bing delivers on board ship in We’re Not Dressing (1934).  It became popular in Frank Sinatra’s repertoire in the late 1950s when he recorded a version notable for its abrupt ending.  That version was denied a U.K. release following objections from the Kipling estate.  However, they eventually found no offence in Bing’s recording (again as part of a medley) for his first sing-a-long album for Warner Bros. Records.

ON THE SENTIMENTAL SIDE Song.  This was the main Johnny Burke-James V. Monaco love ballad from Doctor Rhythm (1938).  The composition appealed to the jazz fraternity and was recorded by the likes of Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday.

ON THE TEN-TEN-TEN FROM TEN-TEN-TENNESSEE Song.  Just For You (1952) contains a scene where Bing goes to enrol his daughter in an exclusive school.  He meets an orchestra leader pal and the two sing this Leo Robin-Harry Warren song.  Ben Lessy joins in the vocal both on film and Decca disc.  Most films can accommodate one novelty song.  In Just for You, “Zing a Little Zong” was successful, with “Ten-Ten-Ten” running a distant second, particularly when sung out of context on record.

ONCE AND FOR ALWAYS Song. Ten years after Doctor Rhythm (1938), Johnny Burke was still writing one love ballad per picture for Bing.  “Once and for Always” was the romantic song for A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1949).  It is sung twice and on the second occasion, Bing and Rhonda Fleming are imprisoned in a dungeon when they sing it as a duet.  They went on to make the Decca recording released to tie in with the film. 

ONCE IN A BLUE MOON Song.  Bing sings this to Carole Lombard when the pair are marooned on an island in the 1934 Paramount Picture We’re Not Dressing.  Mack Gordon and Harry Revel were the writers. 

ONCE MORE THE BLUE AND THE WHITE Song.  This is something of a curiosity as a film related composition.  Towards the beginning of Mr. Music (1950), it is sung as a college song by a group of students.  It is not a particularly memorable Burke-Van Heusen effort but was obviously deemed worthy of a Crosby vocal for Decca Records.  Perhaps the justification for making the recording was so that Bing could then go on to dedicate it to Gonzaga University.

ONCE UPON A LONG AGO Song.  The songs from the television film High Tor grow on you even though that presentation failed to provide any hit recordings at the time Decca released a soundtrack album.  Maxwell Anderson and Arthur Schwartz wrote the songs and “Once Upon a Long Ago” is my favourite Bing recording from that score.  Julie Andrews also gave a solo rendition of the song.

ONE MORE CHANCE Short film. This was the second of six Mack Sennett featurettes, which systematically introduced Bing to his radio and record audiences.  The title is an abbreviated form of the song “Just One More Chance”, which Bing chose as his radio debut in September of 1931, two months before One More Chance received a Stateside release.

ONE, TWO, BUTTON YOUR SHOE Song. Inspired by an old nursery rhyme this Johnny Burke-Arthur Johnston composition was one of four strong songs that the duo wrote for Bing to sing in Pennies from Heaven (1936).  The song’s arrangement was by John Scott Trotter, who was receiving his first film assignment courtesy of Bing. 

ONLY A GIPSY KNOWS  Song. In Doctor Rhythm (1938), Bing shares the stage with Beatrice Lilley as the two duet this Johnny Burke-James Monaco composition.  Bing is in drag to comply with plot requirements and the song was written to suit the Beatrice Lilley character of Lorelei Dodge-Blodgett.  If you wanted to hear it again as a reminder of the Doctor Rhythm score Jasmine Records obliged by including it on CD for Volume 2 of “Going Hollywood”.

ONLY FOREVER Song. One of the strongest Johnny Burke-James V. Monaco film songs composed for Bing.  It was sung by Bing and Mary Martin in Rhythm on the River (1940) where it comprised an integral part of the plot when it was used as collateral security for a loan.  Bing saw it as a sufficiently important part of his film song legacy to re-record it for his musical autobiography.

OUR BIG LOVE SCENE  Song.  This is the song that wraps up Going Hollywood (1933).  Bing sings it on being re-united with Marion Davies.  It was written by Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown.

OUT OF NOWHERE Song. Bing sang this Edward Heyman-Johnny Green composition around the time he was finding his feet in Hollywood.  Most cinemagoers had their first glimpse of the vocal-soloing Crosby when it was the opening number in I Surrender Dear (1931) which was the first Mack Sennett short to gain a theatrical release.  That same year it was used in a feature film when Bing and the Rhythm Boys were shoehorned into Confessions of a Co-ed.  Bing sings it without the Boys in a scene at a school dance. 

OUT OF THIS WORLD Film. Not an easy film to track down for home viewing.  Not a great film to watch once you have obtained a copy.  It has not had a television presentation in the U.K. and it was not re-issued following its initial release.  The fact that it appears in Maltin’s “Movie and Video” guide is an indication that it has been screened at sometime or other on television in North America.  I cannot trace a release on tape or DVD.  The Paramount poster advertising the film called it “the laugh-a-minute lowdown on the birth of swoon.”  But then they would, wouldn’t they?  Leslie Halliwell was nearer the mark when he described it as “a very mild comedy.”  Bing is heard and not seen in the film.  He provides the singing voice of Eddie Bracken so that Bracken can be credible as a singing telegram messenger who has the ability to attract the girls in the same way as Frank Sinatra was doing at the time.  Bracken acknowledges Bing’s contribution at the film’s end by looking directly into the camera and saying, “Thanks, Bing.”  So how come Bing involved himself in a fairly routine comedy?  It was not at the behest of his studio because Paramount saw it unworthy of his on screen involvement.  The answer seems to lie in the brief appearance of Bing’s four sons.  Each of them is given one line of dialogue.  For that, they received $50,000.  Each!

OUT OF THIS WORLD Song. Written by Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen for the film of the same name.  Bing recorded the song for Decca at the same time as “Let’s Take the Long Way Home”. Both Jo Stafford and Tommy Dorsey had hit versions of "Out of This World" in 1945 and it has subsequently been recorded by many singers.

OVERMAN, LYNNE (1887-1943) Character actor who occasionally landed a major role.  The slightly built Overman was a jockey turned vaudevillian who came to the movies via the legitimate theatre.  He appeared in three Crosby films in roles that cast him as an individual operating on the fringes of show business.  In She Loves Me Not (1934) he was the publicity agent, in Two for Tonight, released the following year, he had a more substantial part as Harry Kling, this time a theatrical agent, and in Dixie (1943) he played Whitlock, a minstrel.  In 1942, he was one of dozens of Paramount contract players who showed their faces in Star Spangled Rhythm.  His final film appearance was in The Desert Song, released the year following his death.  His period in films was exactly ten years, during which time he probably averaged an appearance every six weeks or so.  He was more likely to be a friendly cynic than a villain and on three occasions he played the lead role in ‘B’ pictures:  Nobody’s Baby (1937), Persons in Hiding and Death of a Champion, both 1939.

OWEN, REGINALD (1887-1972) Character actor and sometimes leading man.  Reginald Owen was born in Wheathampstead, Hertfordshire, England and graduated from an acting academy to make his mark on the English stage before appearing on Broadway in 1924.  By the end of the twenties, his English accent made him an obvious choice to play gentlemen of distinction and nobility.  His one Bing film was Here Is My Heart (1935) in which he played Prince Vladimir, a Russian noble who was an hotel doorman at the conclusion of the film.  Prior to Here Is My Heart he had played Louis XV twice and later in his career he was Emperor Franz Josef in Florian (1940) and Louis XV again in the Bob Hope starrer Monsieur Beaucaire (1946).  The offer of character parts petered out and by the 1960s, Owen had more or less retired.  Rather than accept roles in low budget films he was selective enough to make sure he took quality assignments.  Hence his last three films: Mary Poppins (1964), Rosie (1967) and Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971).

OWENS, HARRY (1902-1986) Composer, author and bandleader.  Owens only had one song featured in a Bing Crosby film.  That was “Sweet Leilani”, which was included in Waikiki Wedding (1937).  It went on the win the Oscar for the best song of 1937.  Born in Nebraska, Owens formed his Royal Hawaiians Orchestra in Hawaii and brought them to the U.S.A.  That move started the late 1930s vogue for Hawaiian music.  He made one movie himself, Song of the Islands (1942) for which he wrote the score.  He appeared on television in its early days and his Hollywood based show ran for ten years.

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PADRE, THE. This was the original title for Going My Way (1944).  Leo McCarey, who directed the film, thought up the story and decided to change the title when he had a chance encounter with a rain-drenched serviceman who was thumbing a lift and asked McCarey, “Going my way?”

PAIVA, NESTOR (1905-1966) Character actor.  He was a sausage vendor in Road to Morocco (1942), a thief called McGurk in Road to Utopia (1946) and the proprietor of the Cardoza Cafe in Road to Rio (1947).  His casting in that trio of “Road” pictures embraced his acting specialities in some 150 Hollywood movies from his first in Ride a Crooked Mile in 1938 to his last, The Spirit is Willing thirty years later.  He was a bald guy usually found playing vague foreign types with an accent to match. 

PAN, HERMES (1910-1990) Dance director.  He was credited as choreographer on Blue Skies (1946).  It was his sole involvement in a Crosby film and his choreographic efforts with Bing must have made little demand on his skills.  Bing had his own rhythmic way of performing dance steps and Pan wisely allowed Bing’s own way of moving to music prevail.  Pan is forever associated with Fred Astaire. The two resembled each other physically and in the way they danced.  He won an Oscar for dance direction in 1937 in respect of the “Fun House” number in Damsel in Distress.

PANAMA, NORMAN (1914-2003) Screenwriter, producer and director.  He had a major involvement in a trio of Crosby pictures.  He wrote the screenplay of Road to Utopia (1946) with long-time collaborator Melvin Frank.  For White Christmas (1954), he received co-screenplay credit with both Norman Krasna and Frank.  He then took on the dual role of director and screenplay writer (again with Frank) for The Road to Hong Kong (1962).  His true forte was comedy and Paramount used him for the sketches in their all-star films Star Spangled Rhythm (1942) and Duffy’s Tavern (1945) with Bing making singing appearances in both.  Bing was also seen briefly in the Bob Hope starrer My Favourite Blonde (1942) for which Panama received writing credit along with Melvin Frank.  He wrote Danny Kaye’s funniest film, The Court Jester (1956) but when he tried his hand at directing the results were generally less satisfactory.  The Maltese Bippy (1969) was one of his later directorial misfires. 

PANGBORN, FRANKLIN (1893-1958) Comedy actor.  He was first seen with Bing in a couple of Mack Sennett shorts made in 1932: Sing, Bing, Sing and Blue of the Night.  His only feature film with Crosby was the 1938 Doctor Rhythm when he played a department store assistant.  That film typified the Pangborn speciality - a flustered, comic, pathetic individual.  His final screen credit alongside Bing was an appearance in the War Bond fund-raising short Hollywood Victory Caravan (1945).  He carried on popping up in small parts until the time of his death, his last screen appearance being in The Story of Mankind (1957).

PARAMOUNT PICTURES Film studio and Bing’s second home from The Big Broadcast (1932) until Anything Goes (1956).  Bing worked at other studios from time to time but Paramount could rightly claim him as their main revenue earner for a quarter of a century.  The company, which used the Paramount name, began in Hollywood in 1914.  The original studio still stands.  It is a wooden shack down the road from the Hollywood Bowl and is part of just about every sightseeing tour for those interested in the history of the film capital of the world.  The company registered as Paramount Publix was declared bankrupt in 1933 but it was reorganised in 1935 as Paramount Pictures, Inc.  In 1954, the studio introduced VistaVision.  White Christmas was the first film to be shot in that wide-screen process.  Gulf and Western bought Paramount in 1966, by which time the studio system that Bing grew up with had virtually collapsed.  The Paramount mountain still introduces the few films the company releases and the heart occasionally skips a beat as the halo of stars surrounding that mountain peak invoke memories of those entertaining pictures that Bing starred in during Hollywood’s golden years.

PARIS HONEYMOON Film.  Released in 1939 this was a typical Crosby picture of the time.  It was shot in a few weeks from a story by the screenwriters Frank Butler and Don Hartman who were regular Crosby scripters.  They were about to graduate to writing Road pictures.  Leo Robin and Ralph Rainger wrote the standard quota of four songs for Bing.  With a running time of an hour and a half, it was the screen entertainment that regular cinemagoers had grown to expect during the first full decade of the talkies.  “Variety” summed it up as well as anyone with the comment, “entertaining offering that will click substantially at the box office.”

PARKER, CECILIA (1905-1993) Actress.  Cecilia Parker was Suzette in Here Is My Heart (1935) and will forever be remembered by Crosby followers as the young lady with whom he duetted “Love is Just Around the Corner”.  To the rest of the film going community she will be known as Mickey Rooney’s older sister in the Andy Hardy series or the girl who competed with the cowboy’s horse for affection in many a 1930’s western from Mystery Ranch in 1932 to Burn ‘Em Up O’Connor in 1939.  She quit movies in 1942.  She was tempted out of retirement for Andy Hardy Comes Home in 1958.  She would have been better advised to stay home herself.

PARKER, DOROTHY (1893-1967) Satirist, screenwriter, poet, short story writer...and songwriter for the purpose of this A-Z entry.  I can never come to terms with the fact that this acerbic wit should write a love song specifically for Bing (or anyone else for that matter).  Yet she wrote the words and Ralph Rainger the music for “I Wished on the Moon”, which was featured in The Big Broadcast of 1936 (1935).  To know more about the lady you have a choice of biographies written about her during the years following her death.  As far as her film activity is concerned, the 1947 film Smash-Up is of note in that it purportedly mirrored the Bing-Dixie Lee marriage.  Dorothy Parker co-wrote the story for that film.  Her best-known film work is the 1937 version of A Star is Born.

PARNELL, EMORY (1892-1979) Character actor.  When the casting director wanted a Swedish type at a time when every studio had its own pool of contract players Paramount would oblige with Emory Parnell.  Thus, Parnell was cast as Sergeant Olsen in Doctor Rhythm (1938) and Gustav Erickson in If I Had My Way (1940).  When the studio system disintegrated in the 1950s, Parnell moved over to television where he had ongoing roles in the “Life of Riley” and “Lawman” series.

PATHE GAZETTE Magazine type one-reel short that was distributed to cinemas in the UK.  This was Pathe’s non-topical filler found in supporting programmes.  The ten-minute feature was mainly booked to play in cinemas on the ABC circuit.  In one 1944 edition doing the rounds towards the end of 1944, Bing is seen being welcomed to the opening of the Stage Door Canteen in London’s Piccadilly by Jack Buchanan.  Bing then proceeds to sing “Amor, Amor”.

PATRICK, GAIL (1911-1980) Actress.  Born Margaret LaVelle Fitzpatrick, she played an important part in her one Crosby film, Mississippi (1935).  She was cast as Elvira Rumford who was engaged to Bing’s character Tom Grayson at the film’s commencement, only to be replaced in Bing’s affections by her sister Lucy, played by Joan Bennett, at the film’s conclusion.  Gail Patrick was also in The Big Broadcast of 1936 (1935) although she did not appear on screen with Bing.  Whilst under contract to Paramount in the 1930s she had substantial parts in medium budget and B pictures such as The Lone Wolf Returns (1936), King of Alcatraz (1938) and Grand Jury’s Secrets (1939).  She quit films in the late 1940s but found a nice little earner in the 1950s when she became the initiator and then executive producer of the Perry Mason television series.

PATRICK, JOHN (1905-1995) Playwright and screenwriter.  He had one involvement with a Crosby film when he was assigned to write the screenplay of High Society (1956).  He was highly skilled at adapting the work of others.  High Society had started life as the stage play “The Philadelphia Story” written by Philip Barry some twenty years earlier.  Patrick’s other successful adaptations following High Society included the novels Some Came Running (1958), The World of Suzie Wong (1961) and The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968).  When it came to “all his own work”, he will be remembered for the long running plays “The Hasty Heart” and “The Teahouse of the August Moon”.  He won a Pulitzer Prize for the latter.

PATTERSON, ELIZABETH (1874-1966) Actress, born Mary Elizabeth Patterson.  She was Bing’s mum in Sing You Sinners (1938) and Barry Fitzgerald’s housekeeper in Welcome Stranger (1947).  Between those two films, Paramount used her in similar parts playing either loving mothers or crusty old ladies in such as The Cat and the Canary (1939) and Hail the Conquering Hero (1944).  She continued working into her eighties, her last film being Tall Story (1960).

PENNIES FROM HEAVEN Film. Paramount didn’t have it all their own way. Bing’s contract with that studio allowed him to play away from home from time to time. The first time he went into independent production was the 1936 release Pennies from Heaven, which was shot at Columbia. It was sandwiched between thirteen Paramount releases. Bing ring-fenced himself with sufficient musical talent of his own selection to make sure that he had strong support in that department. Louis Armstrong had a major role at a time when black entertainers were expected to be cast in subservient parts. John Scott Trotter, soon to prove his worth as Bing’s M.D. on the Kraft Music Hall, arranged the four songs Bing assigned himself for the film. Those were written to comply with the needs of the plot by Johnny Burke and Arthur Johnston. Bing knew that Johnston could write a good tune because he had collaborated with lyric writers on Bing’s Paramount musicals. Also, Bing liked Burke’s words for “Annie Doesn’t Live Here Any More” and arranged for him to do Pennies From Heaven. He knew from the start that Bing did not favour the straight from the shoulder “I love you” approach to songs and all his compositions are romantic without being overly sentimental. Bing also trusted the film’s producer, Emanuel Cohen. He got to know Cohen at Paramount before Cohen became a casualty of a studio executive shake up. Cohen went independent, set up Major Pictures and arranged distribution through Columbia because they offered the best financial deal.

PENNIES FROM HEAVEN Song from the film of the same name.  It was the first title song to be nominated for an Oscar in the best song category.  Bing recorded it twice within a month, the second time as part of a medley of songs from the film when he took turns to sing it with Frances Langford and Louis Armstrong.  Could Johnny Burke and Arthur Johnston have realised in 1936 that they were composing a standard forever associated with Bing?

PEPE Film that co-incidentally featured Bing singing the chorus of “Pennies from Heaven”.  His audience was Pepe, played by Cantinflas, around whom the 1960 film was built.  The movie was the brainchild of director George Sidney.  Sidney had seen Cantinflas in Mike Todd’s Around the World in Eighty Days (1956) and seems to have spent the intervening years setting up Pepe with a view to emulating the success of the 1956 film by engaging dozens of film personalities for cameo roles in Pepe.  Alas, Sidney was no Todd and although he persuaded the likes of Chevalier, Darin, Sinatra and Durante to be seen on screen for a few minutes he had no strong Jules Verne plot on which to hold audience’s attention for three and a quarter hours.  Bing’s brief dialogue plus a few lines of “Let’s Fall in Love”, “South of the Border” and “Pennies from Heaven” were part of a day’s work which saw him finishing work on High Time and filming a guest appearance for Let’s Make Love.  I saw Pepe at the time of its theatrical release and thought it took a long time to go nowhere.  I next saw it around Chrismastime, 1970, when Granada television screened a heavily edited version, which seemed to be even longer than my first viewing. 

PEPPER, BARBARA (1912-1969) Bit part actress, usually cast as a down and out.  She was Maizie, one of the bar girls in Birth of the Blues (1941), her only Crosby picture.  She was in regular film employment from 1933 to 1964.  She then transferred her allegiance to the small screen where she appeared weekly in “Green Acres” until the time of her death.

PEREIRA, HAL (1905-1983) Art director and set designer.  He took on-screen credit on Blue Skies (1946), Here Comes the Groom(1950), Just for You (1952), Road to Bali (1953), Little Boy Lost (1953), White Christmas (1954) and The Country Girl (1954).  In addition, he was involved on the other Paramount films in which Bing made guest appearances.  He’d been a stage designer until 1942 when Paramount took him on board.  In 1950, he was appointed supervising art director of the entire Paramount output.  This meant that although he was rarely hands-on he was around to take the accolades, such as an Oscar for The Rose Tattoo in 1955.  He retired from films in 1968 in order to become a design consultant for his brother’s architectural firm.  His artistic imprint on the Crosby films listed above is unremarkable.  They were all so obviously studio based and now seem quite tatty even when compared to sets for a television drama.  However, during his days of employment at Paramount, location shooting was a rarity and Pereira must be given credit for attempting to make every film look different.

PERLBERG, WILLIAM (1899-1969) Producer.  Together with George Seaton, Perlberg was responsible for gaining recognition of Bing as a serious actor.  He had been sole producer of the 1950 one-reeler You Can Change the World, and although that had been a rather intense propaganda piece, it placed Bing outside his familiar role of lightweight entertainer.  What followed in 1953 was Little Boy Lost, with The Country Girl coming along the following year.  Perlberg made sure that both contained a handful of songs by Crosby.  They did set the scene for Bing tackling future non-vocals roles such as Man on Fire (1957) and Stagecoach (1966).  Perlberg served his Hollywood apprenticeship as a talent agent before becoming a personal assistant to Columbia Studio head Harry Cohn.  His first brush with film for the thinking man was his production of Golden Boy in 1939.  For the next three decades, he was behind many commercially successful films which did not insult the intelligence of the moviegoer.  He died after co-producing the film adaptation of the musical Half a Sixpence.

PERSONALITY Song.  A curio as far as the Crosby filmography is concerned.  It was in two Road pictures, Utopia (1946) and Hong Kong (1962).  On both occasions it was sung by Dorothy Lamour, even though it suited the Crosby style.  That was to be expected because its writers were Burke and Van Heusen.  Bing must have thought he could do it justice because he recorded it for Decca, albeit two years after his main recording sessions for songs from Road to Utopia.  It was on one of those July 1944 studio dates that he also recorded Would You, the other Lamour solo from Road to Utopia.

PESSIMISTIC CHARACTER Song.  The Johnny Burke-James Monaco cute song from If I Had My Way (1940).  It is a perfectly placed ditty in that film.  The character of Gustav Erickson, played by Emory Parnell, is bemoaning how badly his restaurant is performing.  That’s when Bing sings “Pessimistic Character”.  At the film’s end, it seems that the restaurant is back on its feet.  All down to Bing’s vocal, no doubt.

PHILADELPHIA STORY, THE Film on which High Society (1956) was based.  Philip Barry wrote it for a Broadway production and Donald Ogden Stuart adapted it for the 1940 M-G-M film.

PLAY BALL Song.  An Arthur Johnston-Sam Coslow composition for College Humor (1933) that Bing never committed to wax.  It was the film’s opening number.  Bing, in his character of Professor Danvers, accompanied himself on the piano for this inconsequential ditty.

PLEASE Film.  Made by Metropolitan Pictures and distributed by Paramount, this was almost a throwback to Bing’s Sennett short days of two years earlier.  It was released at the end of 1933 and was shot back to back with Just an Echo.  In both, Bing was supported by the attractive Mary Kornman and the forbidding Vernon Dent. 

PLEASE Song that can be considered Bing’s first signature tune.  In fact, when Bing had a fifteen-minute series called “Bing Sings” on Radio Luxembourg in the early 1950s “Please” introduced the show.  It was written by Ralph Rainger and Leo Robin and saw service in four Crosby films.  Its debut was in The Big Broadcast (1932).  One year later it featured by Bing in a short film of the same name.  Also in 1933, it formed part of a Crosby medley in College Humor.  It was finally heard - but not seen - in Duffy’s Tavern (1945) via a record player.  Bing updated his original 1932 Brunswick recording of “Please” for Decca in each of the following two decades.

POOR LITTLE G-STRING Song. When Bing recorded this in late 1929 he had no box-office clout. Written by Fred Ahlert for the abandoned M-G-M film The March of Time it was intended that the Crosby vocal would accompany a dance sequence. The recording languished in the studio vaults until 2006 when it was included in a compilation of M-G-M soundtracks. A plaintive little ditty it would not have advanced Bing’s vocal career one iota if a recording studio version had been released on 78. Bing had already made recordings of Fred Ahlert compositions but it was not until the following year that Ahlert collaborated with Bing and Roy Turk in providing the melody for “Where the Blue of the Night Meets the Gold of the Day”.

POP GOES THE WEASEL Nursery rhyme.  It was Anthony Newley who made it a pop song around 1960 but Bing beat him to the melody some thirty years earlier when he sang PGTW as a parody generally referred to as “We’re on our Way to Bensonhurst”.  This was a duet with Dick Stewart for the Mack Sennett 1931 short Billboard Girl.  It featured in an early sequence when the pair travels to college by car.

POPEYE’S 20th ANNIVERSARY Cartoon. Popeye was Paramount’s star animated performer.  From 1933, when he made his debut in Popeye the Sailor, until 1957, when the Paramount animation unit closed down, Olive Oyl’s hero was used to publicise Paramount’s contract players.  In 1954, Paramount released Popeye’s 20th Anniversary.  In it, Bob Hope hosts a testimonial dinner and presents Popeye with an engraved cup.  Seated round the table are Olive Oyl, Jerry Lewis, Dean Martin and Bing.  Bing is dressed in a loud suit and wears a sailor hat, smoking his trademark pipe. 

PORTER, COLE (1891-1964). The twentieth century’s most sophisticated composer of popular songs.  Like Irving Berlin, he wrote both words and music.  Whereas Berlin and Bing seemed perfect partners in lyric and melody, so Sinatra can be regarded as the definitive Porter interpreter.  That said, Bing sang Porter compositions in four movies.  The films and their songs are: 

· Anything Goes (1936): You’re the Top; There’ll Always Be a Lady Fair

· Sing with the Stars (1944 short): Don’t Fence Me In

· Anything Goes (1956): You’re the Top; All Through the Night; Blow, Gabriel, Blow

· High Society (1956): Little One; True Love; I Love You, Samantha; Now You Has Jazz; Well, Did You Evah!

Porter wrote primarily for Broadway musicals (there were 23 of them).  Some were adapted for the screen although he also wrote directly to order for Hollywood studios.  “Easy to Love” was written for Born to Dance (1936), for instance.  His fictional film biographies (not such a contradiction in terms if you have seen them) were Night and Day (1946) and It’s De-Lovely (2004). They included Porter songs from several sources.  So too did At Long Last Love, made eleven years after Porter’s death and notable only for the fact that his songs were performed by non-singers such as Burt Reynolds and Cybill Shepherd.  Porter even wrote for television, with “Aladdin” being broadcast in 1958.  Porter’s private life was far from conventional.  A visit to the local library should reveal several biographies detailing his troubled life.

PRIMA, LOUIS (1911-1978) Jazz trumpeter and vocalist who dabbled in films.  An early dabble was a brief appearance in Rhythm on the Range (1936).  The appearance in that Crosby picture followed his big screen debut in the short film Swing It, which was made earlier that same year.  He was in several features in the latter half of the 1930s, the best known of which was Rose of Washington Square (1939).  Because he wrote the hit song “Sing, Sing, Sing” for Benny Goodman it was only reasonable that he should re-emerge on film in 1955 for The Benny Goodman Story.  Perhaps his greatest fame on celluloid is his vocal contribution as the orang-utan King Louis in Disney’s The Jungle Book (1967).  His peak popularity on record was achieved in vocal partnership with Keely Smith to whom he was married from 1952 to 1961.  The last two years of his life were spent in a coma following brain surgery.

PRINCESS AND THE PIRATE, THE Film.  This 1944 Bob Hope starrer featured Bing in its closing minutes.  It was a typical gag appearance that allowed the two to swap insults.  Hope referred to Bing as “a bit player from Paramount.”  Crosby, preoccupied in embracing Virginia Mayo, dismissed Hope with the line “go sell your rack shellac,” a reference to Hope’s half hour radio show sponsored by Pepsodent.

PRINZ, LEROY (1895-1983) Dance director.  Was Bing capable of being directed in his limited forays into dancing on screen?  The Crosby dancing style would be recognisable if seen in silhouette but I’ve always assumed it was always designed by Bing to suit his own limitations.  The Crosby dance steps also exhibited few variations.  Yet he had LeRoy Prinz as dance director in a quartet of films.  Discounting The Big Broadcast of 1936 (1935), where Bing was shoehorned in to sing a song, Prinz is named on the credits of Waikiki Wedding (1937), Paris Honeymoon (1939) and Roads to Singapore (1940) and Zanzibar (1941).  Before entering the film industry Prinz had a career which, in itself, would form the plot basis for at least a modest TV movie.  He was a member of the Foreign Legion.  He then became an aviator and entered show business as a choreographer at the Folies Bergere.  In films from 1932 until 1958, I would say his most striking contributions were made to Yankee Doodle Dandy (1943) and South Pacific, his last film. 

PUGLIA, FRANK (1892-1975) Actor.  Puglia played a bent lawyer in Road to Rio.  It was a typical role.  For over forty years, the Sicilian born actor played villainous characters of foreign origin.  He was one such in Casablanca (1943) and he hadn’t reformed by the time he made his last big screen appearance in The Sword of Ali Baba (1965)

PUT IT THERE, PAL Song.  This Johnny Burke-James Van Heusen composition for the 1946 release Road to Utopia had a life that extended well beyond that film.  It was written as a Hope-Crosby duet and was introduced by the duo in a scene where they are on a sledge, embarking on a search for gold.  Thereafter, they reprised the song at least once on radio and several times on television, quite often modifying the lyrics but always building in mild insults.

QUINN, ANTHONY (1915-2001) Actor.  He appeared in small parts in three Crosby films.  The type of role he portrayed can be readily identified by his characters’ names.  He was Kimo in Waikiki Wedding (1937), Caesar in Road to Singapore (1940) and Sheikh Mullay Kasim in Road to Morocco (1942).  By then he was ready to embark on his own road to stardom.  Ten years later his performances in Viva Zapata (1952), Attila (1954), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1956) and Zorba the Greek (1964) demonstrated the confidence Hollywood and Cinecitta had in his drawing power.  He married the adopted daughter of Cecil B. DeMille in 1936 but the fact that he was still playing minor roles in Bing pictures some six years later provides a convincing argument that his father-in-law did nothing to advance his career.  He made over one hundred films and if I saw his name above the title I was usually sure that it was not my kind of film.  He played every part in a larger than life acting style.  Even his private existence was revealed to be larger than life if his autobiography The Original Sin is anything to go by.

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RAINGER, RALPH (1901-1942) Composer who collaborated with lyricist Sam Coslow and Leo Robin with one or two exceptions.  The most notable exception was “I Wished on the Moon”, when Dorothy Parker provided the words to his tune.  Bing sang the song in The Big Broadcast of 1936 (1935) and everyone who has eavesdropped on the Decca recording session of that number knows exactly how Bing felt about singing it.   At least Bing atoned for his treatment of the song by rerecording it for his musical biography in 1954.  The Rainger film song relationship with Bing began with the original Big Broadcast in 1932.  Rainger’s collaborator on the two Crosby vocals (“Here Lies Love” and “Please”) was Leo Robin who continued to partner Rainger on almost all of Bing’s Hollywood songs.  “Please” was used again for the 1933 short of the same name, College Humor, also made in 1933, and Duffy’s Tavern (1944).  The collaboration continued with another of their songs being placed in She Loves Me Not (1934).  That was “Love in Bloom”, which Bing duetted with Kitty Carlisle.  Paramount used Robin and Rainger later in 1934 for a couple of what were to become Crosby evergreens following their performance in Here Is My Heart: “June in January” and “With Every Breath I Take”, the latter receiving a Crosby vocal the following year in the short Star Night at the Cocoanut Grove.  The Robin-Rainger-Crosby relationship was strongly in evidence in Waikiki Wedding (1937) with “Blue Hawaii” and “Sweet Is the Word for You”.  Rainger also wrote a pseudo Hawaiian ditty together with Jimmy Lowell called “Nani Ona Pua” which Bing sang in the film but which did not merit a studio recording.  1939 saw the final songwriting assignments for a Crosby film being allocated to Robin and Rainger by Paramount.  The film was Paris Honeymoon and the songs were “I Have Eyes”, “You’re a Sweet Little Headache”, “The Funny Old Hills” and “Joobalai”.  Before his death, Rainger had one last shared copyright with Robin.  That was for the War Activities Committee and resulted in “Buy, Buy Bonds” which Bing went on to sing in the War Bond Drive short All Star Bond Rally, shown in 1945.  As well as Rainger’s strong Crosby connection there is the Bob Hope link.  That was “Thanks for the Memory”, the signature tune that was struck up seconds before Hope made any personal, radio or television appearance. 

RAPHAELSON, SAMSON (1896-1983) Playwright.  He wrote, “Accent on Youth” and Paramount acquired the film rights outright.  They used it in 1935 and released it under its original title.  Fifteen years later, they dusted it off and had Arthur Sheekman fashion a screenplay for Mr. Music.  Then, in 1959, they squeezed the last cent out of their investment by assigning John Michael Hayes to write a screenplay, which involved Clark Gable playing the character Bing took on in Mr. Music.

RASUMNY, MIKHAIL (1890-1956) Actor.  As Ahmed Fey in Road to Morocco (1942), Rasumny provided the appropriate degree of menace that resulted in his casting in the first place.  He was one of the pool of character actors that Paramount called upon whenever they wanted a “foreign type”.  He was still on the studio books five years after Morocco when he was in Variety Girl, in which Bing made an appearance.  Rasumny was a cantor’s son from Odessa who arrived in the U.S.A. as a member of the Moscow Art Theatre in 1935.  Five years later, he made his Hollywood debut in Comrade X.  He played character parts in numerous films, always as someone with an accent to indicate he was “not from these parts” until his final appearance in Hot Blood (1956)

RATHBONE, BASIL (1892-1967) Actor.  Rathbone appeared on screen with Bing in Rhythm on the River (1940).  Third billed in the role of Oliver Courtney he played a bogus songwriter who had to rely on others to act as ghost-writers in order for him to maintain his deception.  There is another Crosby film link because Rathbone was the narrator of the Mister Toad half of the Disney cartoon The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949).  Bing was Ichabod’s narrator.  His appearance in Rhythm on the River came when he was beginning to make his mark as Sherlock Holmes.  He’d already starred in the first two of the series and a further dozen modestly budgeted features followed.  When the Holmes films had run their course, he played the detective in a series of half hour shows on American radio. There have been more accurate portrayals of Conan Doyle’s investigating detective but for cinemagoers, Rathbone is the Sherlock against whom all others are compared and found wanting.  Rathbone entered films as early as 1921 when he appeared in the British film Innocent.  Three years later, he moved to Hollywood and was rarely off the screen for the next forty years.  In the 1950s, he played in two films which did justice to his talent: We’re No Angels (1955) and The Court Jester (1956).  Then he fell from favour.  By the 1960s, he was lending his name to cheap horror films and his final film appearance in the year of his death indicates how far he had fallen.  It was Hillbillys in a Haunted House.  Rathbone earned two Oscar nominations for Best Supporting Actor as Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet (1936) and as King Louis XI in If I Were King (1938).

RAYE, DON [Donald MacRae Wilhoite] (1909-1985) Vaudevillian who became a nightclub performer, went to University to study advertising and finally settled on songwriting as a career.  With music provided by Gene de Paul, he provided the story related lyrics to the three songs featured in Bing’s Ichabod half of Disney’s The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949).  The songs, all recorded by Bing at the end of 1947 were “Ichabod”, “Katrina” and “The Headless Horseman”.  Raye’s best remembered and most frequently recorded compositions are “Beat Me Daddy, Eight to the Bar” and “I’ll Remember April”.

RAYE, MARTHA [Margaret Teresa Yvonne O’Reed] (1916-1994) Actress.  Between May of 1936 and July of the following year, Bing saw as much of Martha Raye as he did any other female performer.  In Rhythm on the Range (1936), she played Emma Mazda who was romantically paired with Bob Burns.  For Waikiki Wedding (1937) she played Myrtle Finch who travelled to Hawaii with her friend Shirley Ross.  And then, as Liza Lou Lane, she was in Double or Nothing (1937).  That trio of parts saw her being third or fourth billed in fairly substantial roles considering she made her screen debut in the first one.  She was also given a vocal solo in each of the Crosby movies, which proved she had a strident delivery that could challenge Jerry Colonna any day of the week.  She must have known at an early age that any ambitions to become a leading lady would be severally hampered by her Joe E. Brown sized mouth.  Perhaps that’s why she was seldom seen on the big screen after 1944.  She made a couple of comebacks where she saw the part had promise.  The first was in 1947 when she was in Chaplin’s Monsieur Verdoux, the second in 1962 for the musical Jumbo.  She was not quite so careful in choosing her last two film appearances, a cameo in The Phynx (1970) and Airport ‘79 Concorde (1979) when that short series of aeroplane disaster films had run out of original ideas.  Although absent from films for long periods of time she was never out of the public eye.  She entertained troops during World War II, Korea and Vietnam.  She was in four television series between 1959 and 1984.  She played on Broadway in two major musicals: “Hello Dolly” in 1967 and a revival of “No, No, Nanette” in 1972.  And whilst all that was going on she worked her way through six husbands.  The first was make-up specialist Bud Westmore who, at age 19, was assigned to Rhythm on the Range.  The couple eloped to Las Vegas immediately filming concluded and stayed together for three months before divorcing.  Marriage to musician David Rose followed some time later.  It must have been her show business commitments that made her comment, “I didn’t have to work till I was three, but after that I never stopped.”

REACHING FOR THE MOON Film.  This 1930 starrer for Douglas Fairbanks and Bebe Daniels shoehorned in a musical sequence that was intended to feature Bebe Daniels.  Then it was realised that Daniels was not much of a singer.  At the time the film was being shot Bing and the Rhythm Boys were singing at the Cocoanut Grove.  And so the film cameras were taken to the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles,  which was situated not too far from the film studio, and a scene featuring Bing, Bebe and June McCloy was filmed where the trio sang “When the Folks up High Do the Mean Low Down”.  Irving Berlin wrote the song and Bing did not think it worth recording for release on record.  This despite the fact that Berlin actually studied the Crosby vocal delivery in order to produce something musically appropriate.  When Reaching for the Moon was a drawing board project Berlin was asked to provide several songs.  But the introduction of talkies had resulted in a spate of “all talking, all singing, all dancing” efforts and picturegoers were tiring of them.  Berlin said: “Musicals were all the rage out there (Hollywood) and then they weren’t.  Out went the songs.”  In fact, five Berlin compositions were still in the film at the time of its press showing in November, 1930.  However, by the time of its release on December 29th, four of the songs had been jettisoned.  None of the four had Crosby vocals.  The film was re-issued in 1946 with advertising prominence being given to Bing’s appearance, something the 1930 on-screen credits failed to note.  The Crosby sequence from the film has been seen subsequently in film and television compilations.

REED, THEODORE (1887-1959) Production manager turned director.  Now forgotten or ignored, Theodore Reed was employed as production manager on several of Douglas Fairbanks’ highly successful silent films in the 1920s.  He was employed by Paramount in 1932 as an assistant producer and persuaded that studio to use him as a director.  His directorial debut for the studio was Lady Be Careful in 1936.  His second film for Paramount was the Bing Crosby/Mary Carlisle starrer Double or Nothing made the following year.  Thereafter he took on light inconsequential assignments from the studio before drifting from the Hollywood scene towards the end of the 1940s.

RENNAHAN, RAY (1896-1980) Expert colour cinematographer.  If the expert adjective requires justification watch King of Jazz (1930) and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1949).  The early two-colour Technicolor treatment sticks in the mind long after viewing King of Jazz whilst the rich colours of Connecticut Yankee enrich the filmic experience as well as Rhonda Fleming’s locks.  Rennahan’s peers recognised his expertise, hence the Academy Awards he won for Gone with the Wind (1939) and Blood and Sand (1942).

REVEL, HARRY (1905-1958) Composer.  With words by Mack Gordon, Harry Revel provided melodies for three Bing films of the mid-1930s.  They were:                              

· We’re Not Dressing (1934): May I; Once in a Blue Moon; Love Thy Neighbour; She Reminds Me of You; Goodnight, Lovely Little Lady: 

· She Loves Me Not (1934): I’m Hummin’, I’m Whistlin’, I’m Singin’;  Straight from the Shoulder:

· Two for Tonight (1935): Two for Tonight; I Wish I Were Aladdin; From the Top of Your Head; Takes Two to Make a Bargain; Without a Word of Warning                                                       

Those songs either captured or created the Bing Crosby film song stylist of the early Paramount years.  Revel was born in London and at age fifteen was living in Paris, playing in a Hawaiian band.  He went to the U.S.A. in 1929 and almost immediately teamed up with Mack Gordon.  By 1932, they were spending most of their professional lives writing specifically for Hollywood films.  Bing recorded one of their early efforts, “It’s Within Your Power” in 1932.  The following year he had a hit with the duo’s “Did You Ever See a Dream Walking” but after their Two for Tonight score the only other Revel song he recorded was “Never in a Million Years” in 1937.

REYNOLDS, ADELINE DE WALT (1862-1961) Actress.  She was responsible for bringing a lump to the throat and a tear to the eye in Going My Way (1944).  In that film, she played the mother of Barry Fitzgerald and was on the receiving end of the Bob Mitchell Boys Choir rendition of “Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral” at the film’s end.  Six years later, she popped up briefly in the role of Aunt Amy for Here Comes the Groom.  Adeline De Walt Reynolds began acting at the age of 70 and made her film debut in 1941 with Come Live with Me.  By the time she was cast in Here Comes the Groom she was believed to be the oldest working actress in Hollywood.

REYNOLDS, DEBBIE [Mary Frances Reynolds] (1932-2016) Actress who sang a little.  Discounting Pepe (1960) and That’s Entertainment (1974), Debbie Reynolds was in one Crosby film.  That was the less than successful Say One for Me (1959) in which she was second billed as Holly LaMaise and as such got to sing the film’s title song with Bing and “The Secret of Christmas” with Bing and Robert Wagner.  She entered films in 1948 after winning a Miss Burbank beauty contest, making her debut in June Bride.  Her film peak was Singin’ in the Rain (1952) although her hit recording of “Tammy” served to boost the popularity of that otherwise routine light comedy film.  Some worthy if less than memorable performances followed in such as How the West Was Won (1962), The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964) and The Singing Nun (1966).  By 1971, she was making the run of the mill thriller What’s the Matter with Helen.  Before things became too dire she switched to the musical stage and also established a museum of Hollywood artefacts.  Somehow, she never fulfilled her initial promise, perhaps because she refused to age gracefully.  Even with the skills of the Westmores and the make-up of Max Factor, no one can look 29 forever.  Her private life is well documented in her own autobiography as well as in two by her ex-husband Eddie Fisher. 

REYNOLDS, MARJORIE [Marjorie Goodspeed] (1921-1997) Actress.  In Holiday Inn (1942), we know that by the end of that film Marjorie Reynolds, playing the part of Linda Mason., is the only girl for Bing.  The following year, despite the competition from Dorothy Lamour, she became Jean Mason and again secured Bing for her future.  Her other Paramount films with Bing’s name in the cast were Star Spangled Rhythm (1942) and Duffy’s Tavern (1945) although the two did not share screen time.  Marjorie Reynolds spent the first thirty years of her life on screen.  She was in silent films from the age of two when she appeared in Scaramouche.  Her peak years were her years in Crosby films and when she was finding work hard to come by in the 1950s she resorted to lending her name to such as Mobs Inc. (1952) and Juke Box Rhythm (1959).  By then she had found that television provided a career revival of sorts when she was seen weekly as the wife of William Bendix in “The Life of Riley”.

RHYTHM BOYS, THE Vocal trio comprising Bing, Harry Barris and Al Rinker.  They were together in four films, starting with King of Jazz in 1930.  In that debut they were heard on “Music Hath Charms” and seen and heard on “Mississippi Mud”, “So the Bluebirds and the Blackbirds got Together”, “A Bench in the Park” and “Happy Feet” with minor contributions in conjunction with the rest of the orchestra to “How I’d Like to Own a Fish Store” and “Old Black Joe”.  On release around the same time was an RKO short, Two Plus Fours, which featured the Boys singing “The Stein Song”.  The following months found their recording of “Three Little Words” used in the RKO film Check and Double Check, with members of the band lip-synching to it and them taking what amounted to a guest spot in Confessions of a Co-ed, which featured “Ya Got Love”.  The Rhythm Boys were also featured in a one-reel RKO-Radio Humanette short that used their faces on Punch and Judy dolls.  A guest spot for the Universal production Many a Slip was deleted from the film before its release, although one of the songs they recorded - "There Must Be Somebody for Me" - was later used as background in the 1931 Universal picture Up for Murder.  That Bing was destined for solo fame can be detected around this time.  He was the only one of the trio given an opportunity to sing on his own in King of Jazz and Confessions of a Co-ed.  Bing continued an on- screen relationship with Harry Barris by arranging for him to have minor parts in Crosby features until the mid-1940s.

RHYTHM ON THE RANGE Film.  This 1936 Paramount release made “Variety’s” list of top grossing films of the year and saw the emergence of Bing as a performer whose name in the cast list could guarantee box office clout.  It is interesting now for its cast as it is for Bing’s magnetic performance.  When he is on screen his presence is riveting but he faces strong competition from Frances Farmer.  It was her first film part.  In later life, she battled with alcohol problems and spent several years in an insane asylum but in Rhythm on the Range she is loved by the camera.  After her death of cancer in 1970, Bing remembered her as not having quite mastered the technique of film acting, finding it hard to maintain a characterisation whilst filming in short unrelated sequences and being in a permanent state of nervousness.  That nervousness was more likely to be shyness.  It is unfortunate that the duet of “The House That Jack Built for Jill” by Crosby and Farmer was filmed but omitted from the release print.  Another performer at the birth of his film career in Rhythm on the Range was Roy Rogers, who, as Leonard Slye, was one of the Sons of the Pioneers.  They sing “Drink It Down” in the film.  Martha Raye was fourth billed in the picture even though it was her film debut.  Director Norman Taurog and studio heads Adolph Zukor and Darryl Zanuck had seen her nightclub act and wrote her into the film’s plot. Making an early appearance on film is Louis Prima whilst “I’m an Old Cowhand” is the first Johnny Mercer composition to be featured in a film by Bing.  And there is Bud Flanagan, who has a bit part of a heckler in the film.  He was an American who soon discovered that a similarly named member of Britain’s Crazy Gang was a famous on the other side of the Atlantic.  He changed his name to Dennis O’Keefe the following year and enjoyed the next thirty years as an actor specialising in action movies.  All of which is not to detract from the performance of Rhythm’s leading man.  Bing made the film as far as audiences were concerned.  An early edition of the “Radio Times Film and Video Guide” sums it up better than I can with the comment, “good clean thigh-slappin’ fun all round, and enough infectious tunes to keep you whistling for days to come.”

RHYTHM ON THE RANGE Song written for the film of the same name by Richard Whiting and Walter Bullock but not utilised.

RHYTHM ON THE RIVER Film. Although this 1940 film was directed by Victor Schertzinger, the story credit goes to fellow director Billy Wilder who co-authored the story with Jacques Thery. In an interview with Cameron Crowe shortly before Wilder’s death, he explained the genesis of Rhythm on the River several years before it was filmed:

“That was a screenplay, or rather a screen story treatment, that I wrote in Berlin before I came to America. It was a good story, and I sold it, but then they used just one little detail. And that was it. The third act was - which they did not use - about a great writer, an Irving Berlin type, who comes up to see them (the Crosby and Mary Martin characters). Destitute, the two of them, husband and wife, lyrics and music. And Berlin just takes off his coat and sits down, and he becomes the ghost writer for the two. That was the story”.

In fact, the film’s original title was “Ghost Music”. Bing first encountered leading lady Mary Martin in 1938 when she was singing in a Hollywood nightclub. Rhythm on the River began shooting in May 1940 and the following year Mary Martin was selected as a regular guest on Bing’s Kraft Music Hall. There were other KMH connections that spilled over into the film. John Scott Trotter played bandleader John Scott Trotter and Ken Carpenter played announcer Teddy Gardner. JST was also credited with orchestrating the songs used in the film. Other non-Hollywood pals of Bing appearing in RotR were ex-Rhythm Boy Harry Barris, who was given a saxophone to hold even if he couldn’t play it and Wingy Manone who showed what a good jazz trumpeter he was. The film’s press preview was set up to ensure maximum publicity. Reporters were transported by train to Del Mar, California, and they saw a few races being run before the film was projected onto a giant movie screen. NBC laid on live radio coverage from Del Mar Racetrack. The full John Scott Trotter orchestra was on hand to accompany Bing and Mary Martin on songs from the film. When the premiere proper took place just one week later at the New York Paramount, the Count Basie Orchestra was part of the accompanying stage show. Critical reaction to the film was very favourable. The New York Times called it “one of the most likeable musical pictures of the season” whilst over on the West Coast the Hollywood Citizen News recognised it as a “crackerjack good film.” Who’s to argue with either?

RHYTHM ON THE RIVER Song. It was one of six written by Johnny Burke and James V. Monaco for the film of the same name. It was sung by Bing in one of his best celluloid excursions both musically and visually. The scene is set in a pawnbroker’s shop, which Wingy Manone and his band visit in order to redeem the band’s instruments. In an impressively choreographed sequence (or was it brilliantly improvised?) Bing puts a set of drumsticks to use as he sings the song whilst making use of anything on hand to maintain rhythmic momentum.

RIDDLE, NELSON (1921-1985) Conductor, arranger, composer most often associated with Frank Sinatra. And it was no coincidence that the two films with Crosby connections also starred Sinatra. Riddle received joint credit with Conrad Salinger as orchestrator on High Society (1956) and sole credit for scoring and conducting the songs on Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964). It was also at Sinatra’s insistence that Riddle worked on other Sinatra films such as Pal Joey and The Joker Is Wild, both released the year after High Society. Riddle’s musical life began in the early 1940s as an arranger and trombonist; an instrument Riddle’s father had played. He joined Capitol Records in 1950 and divided his time between work in the recording studio and on the film sound stage. He announced retirement due to ill health in 1973 but the following year he was awarded an Academy Award for his musical contribution to The Great Gatsby. The music from that film has not stood the test of time, his best remembered work following his retirement comeback being a series of albums for Capitol, which featured vocals by Linda Ronstadt. Crosby fans remember him for the over-orchestrated Reprise album “Return to Paradise” issued in 1964.

RIDING HIGH Film. This 1949 Paramount Picture was a remake of the 1934 Broadway Bill. Frank Capra directed both versions. The plot originated as a short story by Mark Hellinger called “On the Nose”. For the Crosby update Robert Riskin, Melville Shavelson and Jack Rose customised it to suit the way Bing would handle it. Then Barney Dean and Bill Morrow worked on Bing’s dialogue, although they received no on-screen credit. Five writers working on a short story filmed fifteen years previously might seem excessive but Frank Capra then contended he had a significant input into the finished screenplay. He appealed to the Screen Writers Guild for part writer credit but the Guild declined to support him. Twenty years after the film went before the cameras Bing was asked to make comment on the film for a book about Capra. These were his memories:

“You know when I learned that Paramount had secured Frank Capra to direct a picture I was going to be in, I was highly elated, because not only did I have a great respect for Frank and for the great work he had done in the past, but I knew him personally from around the golf club and was very fond of him. Making the picture was a joy. He’s such a competent craftsman -       knows his work so thoroughly and seems to create an air of amiability on the set that very few directors are able to achieve. He’s the kind of director who instils confidence in an actor. You just put yourself in Frank’s hands and do what he tells you, and it has got to come out all right. Certainly the most gratifying factor in my career has been the fact that I’ve been associated with great men and Frank Capra comes very high indeed on this list.”

Barney Balaban was head of Paramount at the time of Riding High. He decreed that no film from that studio should cost more than $2 million. Capra was told that the film should be shot in black and white, which enabled the studio to do a deal with Columbia Pictures, the studio that owned the rights to Broadway Bill. They wanted the racecourse footage from that film. In return, Columbia wanted the rights to A Woman of Distinction which was a Paramount property. A straight swap resulted and footage of Broadway Bill was also made available. This could then be spliced into Riding High. As it happened, that was an economy measure that backfired. On July 7, 1949, within days of the completed film being readied for screening, a preview was arranged in the Huntington Park Theatre. The audience laughed at the marrying of old and new racecourse footage and Capra ordered retakes. A unit was despatched to Tanforan Race Course in San Francisco, where Broadway Bill was shot.

Bing chose Coleen Gray as his leading lady although Capra had wanted to cast Joan Leslie. Capra also wanted George Barnes as cinematographer whilst Bing requested Ernest Laszlo, who had photographed Road to Rio a couple of years earlier. Bing won that one initially but a clash of personalities ensued between the photographer and the director. Capra then succeeded in using Barnes, leading to the unusual credit of both Laszlo and Barnes on release prints of the film. The film’s musical highlight was the song “Sunshine Cake”, written along with other original compositions for the film by Johnny Burke and James Van Heusen. At Capra’s instigation, it was directly recorded on the sound stage. The usual technique was for the pre-recording of a song to be played with the actors miming to the playback. Compare the soundtrack version featuring Bing singing with Clarence Muse and Coleen Gray to the version he recorded for Decca three weeks later. That recording studio version had the benefit of Victor’s Young’s orchestra and trained vocalist Carole Richards duetting with Bing but lacked the immediateness of Bing accompanying himself with spoons and Clarence Muse playing guitar and using an empty box for a drum. Capra’s salary was $156,000 and Bing’s $150,000. The final costs of filming Riding High amounted to $1,921,000. Publicity and distribution costs need to be added to that total, which allowed the studio accountants to contend that the film made a loss on its initial release with North American rentals bringing in $2,350,000. Compared to Bing’s previous box office triumphs it was something of a flop, coming 28th in Variety’s list of box-office winners of 1949. Reviews were mixed, which could have made a marginal influence on ticket sales. Manny Farber might have been complimentary when he wrote his review for The Nation. He stated: “The movie drools democratic pride in Crosby’s sugary relationship with his coloured stable boy.” Interpret that any way you like.

RIPSTITCH THE TAILOR is included here to clarify the fact that it is not a separate Crosby/Rhythm Boys short. There was speculation that it was an unreleased short made around 1929 that was subsequently incorporated in Two Plus Fours (1930). No such film as Ripstitch the Tailor was shot, although the film Two Plus Fours is actually a story about a tailor called Ripstitch.

RISKIN, ROBERT (1897-1955) Screenwriter and playwright. Riskin had a hand, with others, in the screenplay of Riding High (1950) and the story basis, again with others, of Here Come the Groom, released the following year. Both films were produced and directed by Frank Capra, who had enjoyed a long association with Riskin beginning with the successful social comedies of the 1930s such as Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) and Lost Horizon (1937). It was the 1934 screenplay of the Capra directed Broadway Bill which formed the basis of the remake titled Riding High. Capra and Riskin remained collaborators beyond the grave as far as Riskin was concerned because Capra based his 1961 film Pocketful of Miracles on Riskin’s 1933 adaptation of Lady for a Day. In 1942, Robert Riskin married King Kong’s leading lady, Fay Wray.

RKO Film studio, which with a radio transmitter on top of the world as its logo, introduced itself to cinemagoers as RKO-Radio. It links Bing’s early on screen appearances with one of his greatest successes. It was the production company behind those 1930 releases Two Plus Fours and Check and Double Check and the releasing company for the Rainbow Production of The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945). RKO also had a distribution agreement with the Walt Disney company and handled the 1949 feature length cartoon The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad. The studio’s origins go back to 1921 with the joining together of The Radio Corporation of America with the Keith-Orpheum cinema circuit. Although the studio operated a cut above the Poverty Row outlets, it never sustained a policy of releasing quality ‘A’ pictures on a regular basis. The beginning of the end for the studio came in 1948 when a controlling interest was purchased by Howard Hughes. He ran it as a hobby and five years later sold it to cinema’s main competitor - television. It was controlled by Desilu, the production company of Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball.

ROAD PICTURES There were seven in the series: Singapore, Zanzibar, Morocco, Utopia, Rio, Bali and Hong Kong.  Paramount produced all but the last, which was made by Melnor films for release through United Artists.  The only one in colour was Bali.  Hong Kong was the only one with the definite article The in the registered title.  Bing was joined by Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour in all of them, although Lamour was left with just a cameo appearance in Hong Kong.  Plans were in place for The Road to the Fountain of Youth to be produced by Lew Grade with a script by Mel Shavelson at the time of Bing’s death.  Don Hartman was a Paramount contract writer who worked on the first four.  He said:

You take a piece of chewing gum and flip it at a map.  Wherever it sticks you can lay a Road picture, so long as the people there are jokers who cook and eat strangers.  If they’re nasty and menacing, it’ll be a good Road picture.  The key to the thing is menace off-setting the humour.

When James Robert Parish interviewed Dorothy Lamour about the series, she had this to say:

It was no mean feat to play cutesy while Crosby and Hope sallied wisecracks and slapstick back and forth.  As the series developed my skills as a comedienne sharpened.

I soon learned to put over my song numbers in mocking tones which gave them added zest.  After the first Road film, I never studied dialogue.  Never.  I’d wait to get on the set to see what they were planning.  I was the happiest and highest paid straight woman in the business.

The film’s other co-star, Bob Hope, more or less confirmed the above.  He wrote:

Dorothy is my nomination for one of the bravest gals in motion pictures.  She stands there before the camera and ad-libs with Crosby and me, knowing that the way the script is written she’ll come up second or third best in the end.  But she fears nothing. Sometimes she’ll do such things as add to the fun of the goings on by coming on the set with a couple of teeth blacked out, and she should be decorated for patience because when Bing and I are working on ours lines for the next take, Dottie just stands there and listens.

But Lamour did a little more than stand and listen when she was a guest at Paramount’s one-hundredth birthday party for Adolph Zukor.  She made her entrance with two chimpanzees, which she introduced as Bing and Bob.  Unfortunately, as time passed she became less enamoured of Bing and by the time she made Bali she was not always thoughtful when making her views known. Bing’s comments about the series were always enthusiastic.  This is what he said for a report in “Picture Show” magazine dated April 22, 1950:

Because “Going My Way” won an Academy Award for me, friends seem to think that this should have been the role I liked playing best.  Far be it for me to imply that I didn’t enjoy working with my old pal Leo McCarey.  There’s no greater guy in the community. But “Going My Way” was a pretty serious matter all the way through...Such was never the case on a Road film - and I have no preference among them.  Hope is always a great kidder, and you don’t have to act reverently around Dottie Lamour.  Then there were always plenty of script gags - and some were not in the script.  The Road shows were a romp from start to finish, with all of us chipping in new ideas and punch lines as we rolled along.  We knew we weren’t going to get any Oscars for Singapore or Utopia or Zanzibar so we didn’t worry.  We just whistled while we worked.  Those pictures were as much fun to make as to see - maybe ever more because lots of the gags never got on celluloid.

But Bing acknowledged that the Road films were of their time.  In a 1973 interview he went on record as saying:

I couldn’t possibly be encouraged to remake any of my old movies.  Especially those Road To..... films.  It’d be very difficult to believe that any of us could even pursue a girl, much less do anything with her if we caught her! 

Just about all writers who look back on Hollywood’s heyday heap praise on the Road series.  David Shipman in his book “The Story of Cinema” speaks for most film historians when he writes:

The forties would not have been the same without them.  Hope and Crosby take us into their idiot make-believe world, conning and cheating and chasing the girl and they do it with teamwork that is a high spot in film history; no other film comics ever approached their mutual understanding.

Up until the time the James Bond series came into being the Road films were the most successful series ever made.  They had grossed well in excess of $50 million before Dr. No was released.  The most financially successful was Utopia followed by Rio and Morocco.  Those three earned rentals exceeding $4.5 million on their initial North American release.  When Paramount sold the series to American television Rio and Bali were not part of the package because Hope and Crosby had two-thirds of the distributions right to them.  Television sales of those two remaining Paramount films followed in the 1960s.   And a final piece of trivia: the menu in Paramount’s commissary once included Turkey and Eggs a la Hope and Crosby.

ROAD TO BALI Film.  It was filmed in the summer of 1952 for release the following year.  Students of earlier Paramount product will be able to recognise footage lifted from Reap the Wild Wind (1942) [the squid sequence], Beyond the Blue Horizon (1942) [the tiger episode] and Crosswinds (1951) [the schooner footage].  But the most often seen frames were those of the erupting volcano first utilised in Her Jungle Love (1938).  Her Jungle Love featured Dorothy Lamour.  The stock shots of the volcano were subsequently incorporated into Aloma of the South Seas (1942) and Rainbow Island (1946).  Lamour was in those two as well, which meant that in Bali her life was being threatened for the fourth time by the same volcano.  The film makes full use of guest appearances.  Bing’s brother Bob is there to fire a rifle because he was promised “a shot in the picture.”  The previous year Bob had used a lifelike model of Bing puffing a pipe in the film Two Tickets to Broadway in a sequence where Bob sang “Let’s Make Comparisons”.  Humphrey Bogart is seen pulling the African Queen through a swamp in footage spliced in from that film.  Jane Russell is seen emerging from a basket when Bob Hope plays snake charmer, a sequence deleted from the film’s first showing on television in the U.K. on Christmas Day, 1965, because the BBC deemed it too risqué.  Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis pop up in a dream sequence in return for Bing and Bob making cameo appearances in Scared Stiff (1953), the Martin and Lewis remake of Ghost Breakers, a Bob Hope comedy of 1940.  As usual, Decca released songs from the film although Peggy Lee replaced Dorothy Lamour on disc as the female songstress.  Although Lamour’s limited success on record had been with Decca she was absent from the studio tie-in recordings because she was nursing a grudge against Hope and Crosby for their taking a percentage of the Road films profits starting with Rio.  She thought she should have been in on the deal and in an attempt to recoup her losses she demanded a bigger fee from Decca than they were willing to pay.  America’s most influential film critic of the time was Bosley Crowther.  His New York Times review of Road to Bali at the time of its release read: “Mr. Crosby, Mr. Hope and Miss Lamour may have looked lovelier but never better in their happy excursions down the ‘Roads’.  And now they’re back the outrage of their collective absence is just beginning to sink in.”  The film going public sided with Crowther.  The North American grosses exceeded $3 million with the film making Variety’s top twenty money making films list for 1953.  In the U.K., it was placed second at the box-office that year.  Nobody can name Britain’s number one ticket selling film of 1953.  It was A Queen is Crowned, a documentary about the coronation of Queen Elizabeth the second. 

ROAD TO BALI Song.  Not a memorable number. Johnny Burke and James Van Heusen composed it for a huge dream sequence scene in the film of the same name, but ultimately it was sung over the film’s credits by Bing and Bob Hope when the dream sequence was cut from the film.  Bing and Bob also made a studio recording of the song for Decca but it failed to make an impact on the listener.

ROAD TO HONG KONG, THE Film.  This seventh and final Road picture was made at Shepperton Studios, England.  It was the only Road film made outside the U.S.A.  It began life as a story called “The Bamboo Kid”.  Danny Kaye bought it as a possible film for himself to star in but then sold it to Bob Hope in 1959.  Hope’s stated intention was to reshape it for a Road picture.  Joan Collins was the female lead with Dorothy Lamour playing herself in a nightclub sequence where she is seen singing “Personality”, a song she had previously sung in Utopia (1946).  I detected a slight taste of sour grapes when I read her rationale for making a brief appearance in Hong Kong.  She said: “People expect me in it.  More than anything I owe it to my public.  They’re really loyal to me.”  In fact, by 1961, when the film was shot, she was looking after her public by touring with a nightclub act.  When she made a television appearance on a Bob Hope television special to promote Hong Kong, she told the press: “My role in the television trailer is bigger than the one I’ve got in the picture.”  She never let the matter drop.  When she was publicising her 1994 film Decadence she stated: “Oh Bob and Bing, yes.  Love him, hated him.  Bing was extremely reticent, almost to the point of monosyllabacy.”  It was eventually revealed that Bing was not in favour of her playing a major role in Hong Kong but the contractual deal with United Artists who released the film was that it should feature Hope, Crosby and Lamour.  Joan Collins didn’t take to Bing any more than the latter-day Miss Lamour did.  She called Hope the consummate comic.  Her take on Bing was bitter.  “He was off-hand, grumpy and vague.  He appeared to me as an old man acting very young, or a young man who looked old.  His face was like a crumpled tissue and I never felt his eyes when he looked at me.  They looked through me.  He did not endear himself to the crew and had the cute habit of spitting on the set, or wherever he happened to be.”  I don’t really believe that.  Joan Collins’s two autobiographies indicate a selective lack of recall.  Filming took three months, from August to November 1962, rather a long shooting time for a non-epic.  It fell behind schedule because of the golfing activities of the two male leads.  When Sheridan Morley asked his father about filming with Hope and Crosby, Robert Morley acknowledged that golf was more important than movie making to the Boys when he called them “two rather crotchety old men who couldn’t wait to get back to the golf course in California.”  Morley was 53 at the time (Bing and Bob were 58).  When the film was released in the U.S.A., reviews were cool.  The New York Times critic wrote: “All in all, you felt they enjoyed getting together again, and you wish them well.  The effect on screen is rather embarrassing, however.”  Archer Winston’s piece in the New York Post said: “Give them an ‘A’ for effort, then suit yourself about attending.”  That said, the film made the box-office top ten in the U.K.  That might have been down to the extra showmanship push provided by the managers of the Odeon circuit.  In January 2000, David Goodman, an ex-employee of the J. Arthur Rank controlled cinema chain recalled: “We were showing The Road to Hong Kong and we got a few theatres included to run on the road with a rickshaw from Streatham Common to Brighton.  We had a runner from Southgate Harriers - they were well known - and of course we won but the rickshaw fell to pieces long before they got to Brighton and they carried it and eventually met up at the Regent, Brighton with a do in the evening.”  All in all Road to Hong Kong is not revered in the way the other half dozen Paramount Roads are, so perhaps it is all for the best that it was the last in the line.

ROAD TO HONG KONG, THE Song.  Sammy Cahn and James Van Heusen had four songs in this final Road effort and Hope and Crosby sang the title song in a hotel room setting midway through proceedings.  The issue made available on the soundtrack album is an edit of the recording made for the film rather than a studio re-recording.

ROAD TO MOROCCO Film.  This was the third in the series, made in the summer of 1942.  It was also the third and final time that Frank Butler and Don Hartman provided the screenplay for a Road picture.  The first indications that Dorothy Lamour had something to be disenchanted about can be seen from the payments the three leads received from Paramount for their services.  Bing was rewarded with a salary of $175,000.  Bob Hope received $100,000.  Dottie was paid at a weekly rate of $5,000.  Even if she was on set throughout the film’s shooting schedule that would only net her around half of Hope’s take.  Most critics wrote favourable reviews of the film, but a somewhat sour note regarding Lamour was struck by William Whitebait in his write up for the 14th January 1943 issue of the “New Statesman”. He wrote: “Whenever Hope and Crosby get cracking funniness revives.  Miss Lamour keeps drifting in.  Oh, I know that many people can’t live from one day to the next without dreams of Miss Lamour, but I can.  She has for me the unsullied charm of putty.”  Morocco was the first of three Road films which had a title song, the others being Bali and Hong Kong.  Bing made two recordings of the Johnny Burke - James Van Heusen composition for Decca, one a solo, the other a duet with Hope.  Most Road film enthusiasts rate this one the best of the bunch.  However, had it been left to Howard Barnes of the New York Herald-Tribune, Morocco would have been the final Road picture.  His review ran: “Paramount has been teetering on the edge of vulgarity in several Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Dorothy Lamour Road pictures.  It takes a nosedive with Road to Morocco.  The fact remains that [it] represents the end of a dead street for this particular type of Hollywood nonsense.”  Dilys Powell saw things differently when she submitted her review to the Sunday Times in November of 1942.  She thought: “The two comedians, Crosby with his polished deliberateness, Hope with his wildfire speed, play beautifully together; a performance at once spontaneous and finished, a truly American performance.”  U.K. audiences agreed.  The film set a record for attendances during its one week run at the Carlton cinema in Stockport’s town centre.  That cinema went through three name changes to Essoldo, Classic and Cannon but the wartime record set by Morocco was never beaten.  There was satisfaction in the States as well when the film’s box-office performance grossed just over $4.5 million.

ROAD TO MOROCCO Song.  One of the wittiest of the many film songs composed by Johnny Burke and James Van Heusen.  It sets the tone of the film when it is sung by Hope and Crosby early on as the pair is riding a camel through the desert. 

ROAD TO RIO Film.  Number five in the series and the first one to find Hope and Crosby participating in its financing and profit.  Bing stated before the film went into production at the beginning of 1947 that: “Bob has a little money in it, I have a commensurate amount and Paramount is in for a large chunk.  He’s going to be driving me, I’ll be driving him and Paramount will be driving us both.  All this drive must produce something at least cataclysmic.  We shall see.”  Later on, when filming was underway, it would seem that Bing had a handle on the economics of filmmaking.  He wrote: “There’s been a lot of kidding about financial matters.  Even the crew in the studio has kept up running gags along that line.  But having my own dough in a film has made me more aware than ever before how many people actually are needed to make a picture and how expert each is in his specialised job.  An almost inevitable reaction, as co-producer, is to wonder why so many people are on the payroll, but believe me, every person working on the set knows his job and is a trained expert.  And that’s a valuable lesson for an actor to learn.”  Whether or not Hope and Crosby’s golf suffered as a result of concentrating on filming is not known but Bing did have time to pull one memorable gag.  In one scene Hope was on his knees clutching the hem of Crosby’s coat and dramatically pleading, ‘Don’t leave me!  Don’t leave me!’  When the first take of the scene was in the can Bing pulled his Going My Way Oscar statuette from under his coat and presented it to Bob to the amusement of a number of visitors to the set.  The finished product headed Variety’s list of top ten moneymaking films of 1948 with rentals of $4.5 million in North America.  That year Bing was enjoying his fifth year at the top of the Motion Picture Herald’s list of top ten box-office stars. Across the Atlantic, the Brits recognised the pulling power of Road pictures.  Rio was booked to re-open the Royal Cinema in Wallasey shortly before Christmas, 1948.  Then, in the mid-1950s, Eros Films secured the British distribution rights and re-released the film where it enjoyed a second lease of life when booked by several independent cinemas. 

ROAD TO SINGAPORE Film.  This is the one that started the series, although at the time Paramount planned it as a one-off, which could be made fairly cheaply because they owned a story called “Beach of Dreams”.  They hired Frank Butler and Don Hartman to write an adaptation, changed the title to Road to Mandalay and deemed it suitable to star studio contract players Jack Oakie and Fred MacMurray.  Neither was available and so Bing, Dorothy Lamour and Burns and Allen were considered before that latter partnership was replaced by Bob Hope.  And so the course of film comedy was altered as “off the wall” type humour caught on in every country in which Road films were shown.  The inventors of the freewheeling, slightly surrealistic style introduced in Road to Singapore were Hope and Crosby working within the screenplay framework created by Butler and Hartman with uncredited assistance from gagman Barney Dean.  Victor Schertzinger was given directorial credit although he also acknowledged the Crosby-Hope influence when he said: “I’m not worrying about directing you boys.  All I have to do is start the camera.  You’ll take it from there.”  Filming of this first Road film began in the November of 1939 and less than six months later it was premiered at the New York Paramount, owned by the studio of course.  At that time it was customary for a stage show to accompany the main film and it can only be fate that resulted in that up-and-coming Crosby admirer Frank Sinatra singing several times a day with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra as part of the theatre’s added attraction.  Frank Nugent reviewed the film for the New York Times and he was the first critic to regard Dorothy Lamour as a dispensable Road film ingredient.  He wrote: “The comedy is going along swimmingly until the boys meet sarong.”  Word of mouth made the film a hit, turning it into Paramount’s top grossing film of 1940.  In the days before television, videos and DVDs shortened the cinematic life of a movie films were revived for as long as they could turn a profit.  In 1955, the Astoria Cinema in Finsbury Park wanted to celebrate its twenty-fifth birthday as a picture house.  At the time, it was acknowledged as the U.K.’s most atmospheric cinema due to its elaborate internal decor.  The management decided to show a classic film every day of that birthday week and selected Road to Singapore to conclude the festival on October 1st.  Over the next half century, the stature of that pioneering freewheeling first Road film has grown.  It remains influential to this day.

ROAD TO UTOPIA Film.  This fourth Road outing is not easy to place in Bing’s film chronology.  Filming began at Paramount in December, 1943.  The film was edited ready for release in the spring of 1944 yet it did not receive its premiere until early 1946.  Why the delay?  Well, these were heady days for the Hollywood studios.  Cinema audiences were at a peak.  The war had ended.  Television had not taken a hold.  Going to the movies at least once a week was just about everybody’s idea of escapism and the studios were working flat out to feed the appetites of a fairly uncritical public. This resulted in a backlog of product and the studios choose to drip feed their completed films in order to maximise revenue.  But there may be another reason why Utopia was on the shelf for two years.  Bing had registered as a successful straight actor with his Academy Award winning performance in Going My Way, which had been doing the rounds since the early summer of 1944.  Perhaps Paramount did not want to detract from the “new” Bing too soon after that success.  A couple of incidents during the filming of Utopia indicate that all was not fun and games.  Bing slipped whilst scaling a studio glacier.  He was holding a rope that broke.  He fell to the floor and the mattress that should have been in place to cushion his fall was not there.  To make matters worse Bob Hope landed on top of him.  That was the start of Bing’s back trouble, a problem which dogged him for the rest of his life.  The other cause of disharmony was Dorothy Lamour.  She was becoming tired of waiting for Hope and Crosby to return from the golf course before that day’s filming could commence.  One day she was made up for filming until 4.30 in the afternoon.  Gary Cooper was also filming on the Paramount lot that day and advised her to go home.  She took that advice.  Sometime later, the studio front office telephoned her to announce that Bing and Bob were ready for filming.  They had forgotten to tell her that they were playing in a charity golf match that day.  Ill feeling was unavoidable although the boys were more thoughtful for the rest of the shooting schedule.  Paramount once more used its New York Paramount Theatre to showcase its latest money maker.  With a seating capacity of 3,650, the studio seemed to be concerned about a Road picture filling that massive auditorium and on this occasion they booked the Benny Goodman Orchestra to supplement the film on its opening week.  The result was a box-office record take of $135,000.  It went on to earn $4.5 million on its North American release, resulting in a fourth place in the box-office successes of 1946.  That year Bing was competing with himself for the moviegoer’s spare change.  In first place was The Bells of St. Mary’s with Blue Skies placed third.  Road to Utopia enjoyed an extended life at the U.K. box-office.  In the early months of 1952 Rank booked it into its Odeon circuit cinemas for one day Sunday showings.  That bridged a gap for Road film enthusiasts who had to wait for five years between Rio (1948) and Bali (1953).

ROAD TO ZANZIBAR Film.  This 1941 movie came into being because Paramount writer Sy Bartlett felt the studio should build on the success of Singapore and make a follow-up comedy using the same trio of actors.  Further continuity was provided by using the same director (Victor Schertzinger), writers (Frank Butler and Don Hartman), musical director (Victor Young) and dance director (LeRoy Prinz).  Bartlett brought along the story of two men trekking through the jungles of Madagascar and earned himself a fee by fashioning the plot into a suitable vehicle for Crosby and Hope with the assistance of screenplay writer Don Hartman.  That was no simple task because Bartlett’s raw material was a serious epic called ‘Find Colonel Fawcett’.  What happened to turn Bartlett’s idea into a ninety-two minute comedy that achieved better business at the box-office than its predecessor is told by Melville Shavelson, who worked on the screenplay of Riding High.  “Frank Butler and Don Hartman went to see Buddy De Sylva, the ex-songwriter who was then head of Paramount studios, and told him the story of Road to Zanzibar...Hartman was having a lot of trouble telling it and hiding the fact that there was no third act and the second act didn’t go anyplace.  But right near the beginning, De Sylva started laughing, and roared all the way through it, and when Don finished telling the story, De Sylva gave them a fat deal to write the screenplay immediately.”  Bing was involved in singing three of the songs Johnny Burke and James Van Heusen wrote for Zanzibar and to me they are the weakest compositions those writers ever concocted for a Crosby picture: “It’s Always You”, “You Lucky People You” and “African Etude”.  In fact, Bing didn’t ever bother making a studio recording of that last number.  Obviously, audiences and critics judged the film on its comedy elements and it earned some good reviews.  Otis Ferguson wrote this one for the New Republic: “The funniest thing I have seen on the screen in years.  It still has the free and happy air of the spontaneous.”  Howard Barnes of the New York Herald-Tribune endorsed Ferguson’s view when he stated: “Road to Zanzibar is mostly nonsense, but it is nonsense of the most delightful sort.”  The National Board of Review named it one of the ten best American films of 1941, with Bing’s Birth of the Blues also making that same list.  As expected, it was on Variety’s list of top ten money making films of 1940/41.  Its box-office drawing power was noted on this side of the Atlantic.  The Carlton Cinema in Cosham had been the direct hit of a German bomb on 5th December 1940.  The cinema re-opened with Road to Zanzibar on Christmas Eve, 1941. 

ROBIN AND THE 7 HOODS Film. This is the film that Bing almost didn’t make. Although Sinatra thought Crosby ideal in the role of Allen A. Dale, he was going to go with buddy Peter Lawford in that part because Bing had planned to appear in The Devil’s Advocate. Then two things happened. Sinatra fell out with Lawford and The Devil’s Advocate was cancelled. Because the part had been tailored to suit Lawford it wasn’t possible for Bing to take on the role without a substantial re-write. As originally written, Allen A. Dale was a flashy, well-dressed mouthpiece. The adapted version suited Bing in all respects. The dialogue might have been written by Carroll Carroll from Kraft radio days so well did it match the public’s perception of the carefree Crosby. This casting switch brought about an unexpected delight.  Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen were inspired by this character change to write the song “Style”. The two other Cahn-Van Heusen songs which Crosby tackled were likewise well suited to his less serious vocal style.  Both “Mister Booze” and “Don’t Be a Do-badder” also nicely advanced the plot of the picture. Sinatra selected “My Kind of Town” for his own use and it received an Academy Award nomination. Sinatra’s influence on the film’s musical content extended to the conducting of the film’s score. The task was assigned to Sinatra’s long-time collaborator/arranger Nelson Riddle.  Another second choice associated with the film was director Gordon Douglas. Gene Kelly was originally selected as the producer and a meeting was called to discuss the film’s script and the general treatment of the film. Sinatra didn’t show at that meeting and the project was passed to Douglas. Knowing Sinatra’s impatient, undisciplined behaviour on film sets, it isn’t hard to guess why easy-going Douglas was given the assignment. It was so that Sinatra could direct the director. Bing’s son Phillip was given one line in the picture in the part of a hood who gives dad a chair and tells him to sit down. Filming took place between October and December of 1963, with breaks in production taking place because of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the kidnapping of Frank Sinatra Jr. It was not until the following April that the film’s vocal talents were assembled to record the “soundtrack” album for Reprise Records. The critics didn’t like the film. One reviewer commented: “If Warner Bros. Robin and the 7 Hoods had been as amusing an experience for audiences as it patently was for the cast, it would have broken box-office records.” It was an opinion shared by Halliwell’s Film Guide, which summed up the film with: “Too flabby by far to be as funny as it thinks it is, this farrago of cheerful jokes has effective moments and lively routines, but most of them are nearly swamped by flat treatment and the wide screen.” Bing’s own comments seemed to recognise where the critics were coming from. He said, “I just took the part for a lark. I thought this will be fun working with these guys - we’ll have a lot of laughs. It was a good part with some good songs.” At the time, he must have suspected that not only were the days of Hollywood musicals numbered but his personal contribution to the genre was nearing its end. As it turned out, Robin and the 7 Hoods was his musical swansong. 

ROBIN, LEO (1900-1984) Lyricist. He was responsible for writing the words to Ralph Rainger’s music on several early Crosby hit recordings. Robin and Rainger were contract writers for Paramount Pictures and their relationship with Bing began in 1932 with The Big Broadcast. In that one Bing sang “Please” and “Here Lies Love”. That former title was used for the 1933 short of the same name when Bing reprised it in order to convince Mary Kornman that he really was that well known radio crooner and then again in the same year as part of a medley in College Humor. The following year Robin and Rainger provided another Crosby hit that Jack Benny adopted as his signature tune. That was “Love in Bloom” for the film She Loves Me Not. The next year saw the placement of three Robin songs in Here Is My Heart. “June in January” and “With Every Breath I Take” had music by Rainger whilst Lewis Gensler wrote the tune to “Love Is Just Around the Corner”.  Robin then collaborated with Frederick Hollander on “My Heart and I” and with Richard Whiting on “Sailor Beware” for inclusion in the 1936 version of Anything Goes. Those same collaborators were on hand for Bing’s next Paramount picture: Rhythm on the Range. Hollander provided music for the excised “The House That Jack Built for Jill” and Whiting the melody for “I Can’t Escape From You”. Come 1937 Bing duetted a couple of Robin and Rainger songs with Shirley Ross for Waikiki Wedding. They were “Blue Hawaii” and “Sweet Is the Word for You”. When the pair won the Academy Award for Best Song in 1938 with “Thanks for the Memory”, the time finally arrived when Paramount decided they could entrust Robin and Rainger with a complete score. They assigned them to Paris Honeymoon (1939) and R and R provided Bing with a quartet of songs: “I Have Eyes”, “You’re a Sweet Little Headache”, “Funny Old Hills” and “Joobalai”. And then the Robin pen was more or less laid to rest for a decade as far as Crosby was concerned.  Bing sang a couple of his earlier Robin-Rainger hits in Duffy’s Tavern (“Please” and “Love in Bloom”) via a phonograph and the pair helped the war effort by writing “Buy, Buy Bonds” for Bing to sing in the short All Star Bond Rally (1945). It was only by chance that Robin worked on one more Crosby movie. Bing approached Harry Warren to write the score for the 1952 Paramount film Just for You. The plan had been to use Johnny Mercer to write the lyrics but when he proved unavailable, Leo Robin stepped into the breach and provided Bing with half a dozen compositions. They were “I’ll Si-si Ya in Bahia”, “Call Me Tonight”, “Zing a Little Zong”, “The Live Oak Tree”, “On the Ten-Ten from Ten-Ten-Tennessee” and “Just for You”. By then Robin had just about written himself out. He continued writing for films until 1955, his best remembered work post-Bing being with Jule Styne for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) and My Sister Eileen (1955) which was his last Hollywood assignment. 

ROBINSON, EDWARD G. [Emanuel Goldenberg] (1893-1973) Actor. He shared narration chores with Bing for The Heart of Show Business (1957), made a brief appearance in Pepe (1960) and played a pivotal role in Bing’s last musical - Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964) and yet the two never shared a frame of celluloid together. Robinson had a longer cinematic career than Bing. He was in silents from 1923 and made a memorable Hollywood farewell in Soylent Green (1973). There was a final big screen appearance in the same year as Soylent Green when he played in the Israeli produced Neither by Day or Night but he was always regarded as a Hollywood leading man. Even when he was under investigation during the communist witchhunts of the early 1950s, he was in constant demand as a freelancer. Prior to that, he was a mainstay of Warner Bros. gangster movies.  He came to the attention of audiences as a toughie when he played Rico Bandello in Little Caesar in 1931. The Brothers Warner used him in crime films for the rest of that decade. In the 1940s, he extended his repertoire to such an extent that he appeared in an R.A.F. propaganda film, Journey Together, in 1945. An expensive divorce settlement in 1956 caused him to sell his valuable art collection and for some time thereafter, he was not too fussy about the film roles he took on. He worked in Italy and Spain during the 1960s, all the time generating funds to rebuild his art collection. There were several cameo appearances similar to his Robin and the 7 Hoods bit where he was seen briefly as Chicago’s top gangster only to be gunned down in the film’s opening minutes. The Academy Award ceremony, which took place shortly after his death from cancer in 1973 saw him awarded a special Oscar commemorating his five decade contribution to films.

ROBINSON, GEORGE (1890-1958) Director of photography. He was behind the camera for the two films released through Universal that Bing made in 1939 and 1940: East Side of Heaven and If I Had My Way. That was the studio that offered him regular employment because of the style he brought to that company’s horror output. For instance, his assignments before East Side of Heaven were Son of Frankenstein and Tower of London followed in 1943 by Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman and Son of Dracula. When you examine his work outside the horror genre you find only long forgotten B pictures. 

RODGERS, RICHARD (1902-1979) Composer.  He wrote the music and Lorenz Hart or Oscar Hammerstein II provided the lyrics to dozens of popular songs composed in the peak years of American stage musicals. Bing sang just four Rodgers and Hart songs on film. For The Big Broadcast (1932) he was heard singing a snatch of “I’ve Got Five Dollars” and in Mississippi (1935), three of his best loved ballads of all time were included: “Soon”, “Down by the River” and “It’s Easy to Remember”. There may very well have been more Rodgers and Hart songs suitable for Bing to tackle if there had not been a falling out between Crosby and Hart. The inclusion, at Bing’s request, of the Stephen Foster song “Swanee River” in Mississippi did not sit well with Hart. The list of musicals associated with Richard Rodgers reads like the best of the American musical stage 1926 - 1959. It began with “The Girl Friend” with Hart and ended with “The Sound of Music” with Hammerstein. Hollywood picked most of the R & H output and turned them into lavish big screen productions. “Oklahoma!”, “Carousel”, “South Pacific” and “The King and I” made going to the pictures in the 1950s well worth the while.

ROGERS, ROY [Leonard Slye] (1911-1998) King of the cowboys. He was Leonard Slye, a Son of the Pioneers, when he had an early taste of life on the big screen in Rhythm on the Range. In 1938, he became a western star, singing and acting in Under Western Stars. And in the 1950s, he again shared a little screen time with Bing in Son Of Paleface (1952) and then in Alias Jesse James (1959) when they both had guest shots (literally) when they helped Bob Hope in the gun battle finale. By then the Saturday morning movie audience had deserted Roy, his wife Dale Evans and his faithful horse Trigger for Saturday morning television featuring Roy, Dale and Trigger in the “Roy Rogers Show” which ran for five years. During the 1940s Rogers was turning out a sixty minute western every two or three months but he would never have made it beyond the 1950s because he was too much of an on-screen good guy. As for his singing, he managed a very passable duet with Bing of a few lines of “San Fernando Valley” on the Kraft Music Hall broadcast of June 29, 1944. That performance was only surpassed by his yodelling of “Square Dance” on the same show. It leaves you breathless just listening to it.

ROSE, JACK (1911-1995) Screenwriter-producer.  Rose started as a writer for Bob Hope’s radio show and that relationship introduced him to motion pictures beginning with My Favourite Brunette (1947) in which Bing had made a gag appearance and continued with Road to Rio the following year.  In both of those, he shared writer credit with Edmund Beloin.  His other credit on a Crosby film came in 1950 when he wrote Riding High alongside Robert Riskin and Melville Shavelson.  Most of his subsequent work was with Shavelson. Rose wore his producer hat for a couple of Hope films from the 1950s - The Seven Little Foys (1955) and Beau James (1957). His film career came to an end in the early 1980s following his involvement in several comedy hits including A Touch of Class (1973), Lost and Found (1979) and The Great Muppet Caper (1981). 

ROSE, VINCENT (1880-1944) Bandleader and composer. In the 1931 film Billboard Girl, Bing sings “Were You Sincere” in a garden setting. The composers were Vincent Rose and Jack Meskill. Rose ran an orchestra for twenty years but found to time to compose several songs that found their way into the standard repertoire of balladeers forever after, such as “Whispering” (co-written with John Schonberger) and “Blueberry Hill”. 

ROSS, ARTHUR A. (1920-2008) Screenwriter.  If the name of Arthur Ross failed to register when the credits for Star Spangled Rhythm (1942) scrolled by it is hardly surprising considering the illustrious literary company he accompanied.  The sketches for that cinematic compendium were written by George Kaufman, Norman Panama and Melvin Frank.  Plus the unknown Arthur Ross.  It took him more than ten years to make a noticeable impact in Hollywood.  That’s when he co-scripted The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) with Harry Essex.  Between times, he had written serviceable work without attracting a lot of attention.  Port of New York (1949) and The Stand at Apache River (1953) are a couple of examples of his screenwriting assignments.  Nothing thereafter registered until The Great Race (1965).  By then he was earning most of his income from television work.  His career seemed to be winding down.  Then, out of the blue, in 1980 he shared an Academy Award nomination as writer with W.D. Richter for Brubaker, a film starring Robert Redford.  It was his last big screen credit.

ROSS, SHIRLEY [Bernice Gaunt] (1913-1975) Actress and singer. She did both in two of Bing’s Paramount pictures from the late 1930s. In Waikiki Wedding (1937) she was Georgia Smith, Bing’s leading lady. In Paris Honeymoon (1939), things were not quite so cut and dried when she played Barbara Wayne and had to share Bing with Franciska Gaal.  Her voice blended well with Bing’s for their on-screen duets in both films, standout performances being “Blue Hawaii” in Waikiki Wedding and “I Have Eyes” in Paris Honeymoon.  Better remembered duets from that era come from a couple of films she made with Bob Hope. She sang “Thanks for the Memory” in The Big Broadcast of 1938 (1938) and “Two Sleepy People” in Thanks for the Memory (1938), a confusion of titles which only Hollywood could perpetrate in order to cash in. Shirley Ross was initially a pianist and band singer and she allowed her Hollywood career to peter out, retiring from the silver screen with A Song for Miss Julie (1945).

ROUND-UP LULLABY Song. Bing sings this Gertrude Ross-Badger Clark song to Cuddles the bull in a boxcar setting in Rhythm on the Range (1936). He puts the same feeling in his vocal as he would if serenading his ladylove. 

RUBY, HARRY [Harry Rubinstein] (1895-1974) Composer and lyricist. Although Bing recorded a few of Ruby’s compositions, he only featured one in a film. That was “Three Little Words” which the Rhythm Boys recorded for use in Check and Double Check (1930). Musicians lip-synch to the Rhythm Boys recording in the film. The song became the title of a 1950 film about Ruby and Bert Kalmar, the co-writer of “Three Little Words”.  Another of Ruby’s claims to fame is his work on three Marx Brothers comedies in their early years at Paramount.

RUGGLES, CHARLES (1886-1970) Character actor usual cast as a timid, disarming type.  His role as the “Reverend” Dr. Moon in the 1936 version of Anything Goes was not a typical Charlie Ruggles part.  He was public enemy number one at the film’s commencement, only to be relegated to number 1313 as the picture closed.  He joined Bing in singing “You’re the Top” when the two shared a cell on board ship. Two other links with Crosby films are his brief appearances in The Big Broadcast of 1936 (1935) and the wartime short The Shining Future (1944). Ruggles was in films from 1915 (Peer Gynt). His appearances in Charley’s Aunt in 1930 and Ruggles of Red Gap five years later endeared him to picturegoers. Just about every film in which he appeared made use of his light comedy skills and it is fitting that in the 1960s he worked for Disney in several family movies. His brother was the director Wesley Ruggles.

RUGGLES, WESLEY (1889-1972) Director. He directed Bing in College Humor in 1933, and produced and directed Sing You Sinners some five years later. He entered films as a Keystone Kop in 1914 and three years later moved behind the camera as director. The subsequent thirty years resulted in his directing few memorable movies.  You could say that his two Crosby films were typical.  In 1946, he visited the U.K. to produce and direct London Town (aka My Heart Goes Crazy in the U.S.A).  He also provided the plot for that film.  There was speculation that Bing would appear in it.  Fortunately, nothing came of that. The film was a massive flop and Ruggles vowed never to work in pictures again. He took early retirement from show business. His brother was the actor Charles Ruggles. 

RUMAN, SIG [Siegfried Albon Rumann] (1884-1967) Character actor. Once you have seen Sig Ruman in a film you find it impossible to envisage anyone else playing the role. He spent just enough time on screen in three Crosby pictures to make an impression doing what he did best. That was portraying a flustered foreigner, pompous and excitable. In White Christmas (1954), he was a landlord and in Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964) he played Hammacher. But it is as Dr. Zweiback in Emperor Waltz (1948) that he made his first appearance in a Bing film.  That was at a time in his career when he seemed to move from one shooting stage to another with barely a pause. He was instantly recognisable by then for two memorable screen outings. He played a flustered Russian diplomat in Ninotchka (1939) and Concentration Camp Erhardt in To Be or Not to Be (1942). Both were comedy roles made all the funnier because Ruman played them as Sig Ruman rather than for laughs. His last comedy role was in The Fortune Cookie, released the year before he died.

RUSH, BARBARA (1927-2024) Actress. She played Marian, who confounded all earlier audience predictions in Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964) by ending the film as Bing’s (Allen A. Dale’s) companion.  By the time she made that film she was a seasoned performer, having made her first film in 1950. In 1954, she had won the Golden Globe Award for “Most Promising Newcomer – Female” for her performance in It Came from Outer Space. The fifties were her decade and she proved she could act when she was cast in serious dramas such as Bigger Than Life (1956) and The Young Lions (1958). When she made Robin she was finding it harder to land parts that used her acting talents.  Can’t Stop the Music (1980) was typical of the way her big screen career had dipped but by then she was well established as an actress in made-for-TV films and series. She may well be remembered for her 75 appearances as Marsha Russell in Peyton Place (1968-69) and as Nola Orsini in All My Children (1992-1994, 35 episodes recurring).

RUSSELL, BETTY A singer who frequently dubbed songs for non-singing actresses. She was the singing voice of Joan Caulfield in Blue Skies (1946) and in Monsieur Beaucaire (1946). Her voice is also heard on the soundtrack of Destination Tokyo (1944) singing "Till We Meet Again". She provided the singing voice of Virginia Mayo in The Kid from Brooklyn (1946) and vocal effects for the song “Will You Marry Me?” in Yolanda and the Thief (1945). In Out of This World (1945), she is the singing voice of Diana Lynn and her voice is heard in So Dear to My Heart (1948) in the main title.

RUSSELL, JANE [Ernestine Jane Geraldine Russell] (1921-2011) Actress. She was Bob Hope’s leading lady in Son of Paleface (1952) in which Bing made a brief appearance (via the use of footage from Just for You). Immediately after that film, it was her turn to make a brief appearance with the boys. That was for Road to Bali (1953) where Hope played a flute and made her appear from a basket. The picture then closed as she joined Dorothy Lamour and Bing walked off with both ladies.  She made her screen debut in The Outlaw (1943). It was not a great western but it did good business because of the publicity generated by producer Howard Hughes when he announced he had devised a bra for her to contain her ample bust. The film was much talked about but little seen for seven years. Then Hughes re-released it and schoolboys could finally find out what all the fuss was about. Groucho joked about it being A Sale of Two Titties. Jane Russell’s contract with Hughes meant she was little seen on screen until the 1950s. By then she was cast more for her figure than her acting talent with The French Line (1954) and Underwater! (1955) being typical glamour parts. Later on, when the glamour began to fade, she took on roles as a mature woman of the world. Born Losers (1967) and Darker Than Amber (1970) both showed off her acting ability.  Her autobiography and subsequent television interviews highlighted her sense of humour. 

RUSSIAN LULLABY Song. An Irving Berlin composition featured in Blue Skies (1946). It was part of a medley that Bing sang offscreen in a montage sequence, which illustrated the nightclub venues at which he had performed.  Bing did not make a studio recording of the song.

RUTTENBERG, JOSEPH (1899-1983) Director of photography. By the time he came to work on Man on Fire (1957), Ruttenberg had already made a name for himself on some of M-G-M’s major colour productions such as Brigadoon (1954) and Kismet (1955). This made it a surprise to find him working in black and white on his one film featuring Bing. In fact, the following year M-G-M assigned him to Gigi for which his cinematography earned him an Oscar. And his penultimate work was on The Oscar (1966). By then he had been in work as a photographer for over fifty years, having been a newsreel cameraman for Fox in 1915. He picked up three Academy Awards before his statuette for Gigi. Most of his work was at M-G-M and that studio must have been pleased when he received Oscars for The Great Waltz (1938), Mrs. Miniver (1942) and Somebody up There Likes Me (1956), all Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer productions. His final work was on Speedway (1968), one of those forgettable Elvis Presley pictures from the 1960s.

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SAILOR BEWARE Song. It was a number written especially for Bing to sing in Anything Goes (1936) by Leo Robin and Richard Whiting.  Bing sings it elegantly attired in top hat and tails.

ST. JAMES INFIRMARY Song. Bing sings a parody of this Joe Primrose composition in Birth of the Blues (1941). An early scene finds Bing in a poolroom. With Jack Teagarden accompanying him on trombone, he sings a few lines about going to jailhouse to the tune of “St. James Infirmary”. A longer version was filmed but cut from the final print.

ST. LOUIS BLUES Song. Also featured in Birth of the Blues. Bing commences singing “St. Louis Blues” before being overcome with emotion. The song is finished by soprano Ruby Elzy. Bing made a classic recording of the song with the Duke Ellington Orchestra in 1932.

SALKOW, SIDNEY (1909-2000) Director. For a few months before he directed his first film - Four Days’ Wonder (1937) - Sidney Salkow put his toe in the door of Hollywood by working as a writer. Thus, he worked on the screenplay of Rhythm on the Range (1936) with Walter DeLeon, Francis Martin and John C. Moffitt. Seeing the film now, it’s hard to envisage why Mervin J. Houser’s somewhat basic story required four writers to turn it into a screenplay.  However, it provided an intro to directorial work for Salkow, the job that earned him a living for the next thirty years. Little stands out in the dozens of mainly ‘B’ pictures that he churned out at the rate of five or six a year when he was working flat out. No doubt, such fare as Woman Doctor (1939), Sword of the Avenger (1948) and The Quick Gun (1964) could fill the bottom of a double bill in neighbourhood cinemas but most of his work isn’t even up to playing on television in the early hours of the morning.

SANDE, WALTER (1906-1971) Actor. In Anything Goes (1956) the character played by Phil Harris is placed under arrest by Walter Sande, playing officer of the law Alex Todd.  It was not a typical Sande role. He was usually cast as a heavy on the other side of the law, like in Bad Day at Black Rock, the film he made just before Anything Goes. He appeared in dozens of film from the late 1930s onward without making much of a screen impact.

SANDRICH, MARK (1900-1945) Producer and director. His contribution to Bing’s film career was brief but significant. He produced and directed Holiday Inn (1942) and Here Come the WAVES (1944). Had he lived he would have gone on to Blue Skies (1946). He entered films in his early twenties as a propman before graduating to comedy shorts, one of which won an Oscar in 1932. He proved adept at turning out moneymaking Astaire musicals for RKO. Paramount enticed him by allowing him to produce and direct. He had actually commenced working on Blue Skies when he died, leaving Stuart Heisler to finish the film and take directorial credit. 

SAN JUAN, OLGA (1927-2009) Actress equally well known as a singer and dancer.  Her major contribution to the four films on which she shared a screen credit with Bing was in Blue Skies (1945) when she duetted with him on “I’ll See You in Cuba”.  For her other Crosby associated film appearances they did not share screen time.  They were Duffy’s Tavern (1945), Variety Girl (1947) and the short Hollywood Victory Caravan (1945).  She never achieved lasting popularity because she skated around various aspects of show business without consolidating her skills.  She came to the notice of paying audiences when she performed with Tito Puente of mambo fame.  She did some radio work before entering films.  She sampled Broadway in 1951 when she starred in “Paint Your Wagon”.  She married Edmund O’Brien in 1948 and his influence resulted in her appearing in straight supporting roles in The Barefoot Contessa (1954) and The Third Voice (1960).  By then she had also dabbled in television.  It seemed a good idea to call it quits when her marriage to O’Brien resulted in three children.  That marriage resulted in divorce in 1976 by which time she was long forgotten as an entertainer. 

SANTA LUCIA Song. In a scene towards the end of The Emperor Waltz (1948), a couple of dogs cause Bing to punt across a lake with Joan Fontaine as passenger. No doubt with thoughts of gondoliers performing similar functions Bing sings a snatch of the Neapolitan classic “Santa Lucia”. Lanza or Pavarotti would do the song justice with a full concert version but Bing wisely limits himself to a couple of lines.

SAWYER, JOSEPH [Joseph Sauer] (1906-1982) Comedy actor. In College Humor (1933) one of the students of Professor Danvers (played by Bing), is ridiculed by fellow students. The ribbing is about football rather than academic skills. It is Jack Oakie who is on the receiving end of Joseph Sawyer’s jibes. College Humor was probably Sawyer’s film debut. He was seventh billed as Joseph Sauer. He went on to make a name for himself as the first character actor a casting director would try to enlist where a tough cop or bullying army sergeant was called for. See him in Sergeant York (1941) or About Face (1942) to learn how he keeps soldiers in line. His presence on the big screen diminished when he became a regular cast member in the television series “Rin Tin Tin” beginning in 1955.

SAY IT ISN’T SO Song. An Irving Berlin song deleted from the release print of Blue Skies (1946). The Crosby soundtrack recording was unofficially issued some thirty years later and Bing made a studio recording of the song in March 1968 for issue by the Longines Symphonette Society.

SAY IT WITH MUSIC Ill-fated project that could have been Bing’s Hollywood musical swansong. We can chart its course for most of the 1960s:

1963. The idea was born.  M-G-M producer Arthur Freed, best known for the musical Singin’ in the Rain, discussed the project with Irving Berlin and a budget of $9 million was considered appropriate for a large-scale musical. The scope had to be broad because Freed envisaged a musical biography of Berlin.  The only difficulty was finding an acceptable script, which would allow the interpolation of Berlin songs. On March 3rd, Berlin was present at an award dinner at which Frank Sinatra sang a medley of Berlin songs. Sinatra was being touted as the star of the film and M-G-M were confident enough to offer one million dollars for the rights to Berlin’s compositions to be used in the picture. Berlin agreed to write ten new songs and assign twenty-five of his existing hits. On April 30th, M-G-M initiated a press release. Vincent Minnelli would direct Sinatra and Judy Garland and a premiere sometime the following year was projected. Bing headed a roster of singers to help out the two leading players with the Berlin vocals. The guests tentatively committed to the film included Ethel Merman, Fred Astaire, Pat Boone, Bobby Darin, Johnny Mathis and Connie Francis. Not surprisingly, the budget was now upped to $15 million. To strengthen the story on which the songs would be hung, writer Arthur Laurents was engaged. In September, Berlin told the London press, “Say it with Music is still on.”  He did not know at that stage that Laurents’ script would not impress him. The finished screenplay was delivered to M-G-M in November. It was about an international minstrel and Berlin said “no” even though the international theme was matched to an appropriately extended cast. It included Sophia Loren (Italy), Julie Andrews (Britain), Brigitte Bardot (France) and Ann-Margret (Sweden).

1964. Not surprisingly, the story was farmed out to another writer. This was Leonard Gershe, who visualised Fred Astaire functioning “as a kind of Greek chorus.”  Producer Freed said “no” this time and brought along his long time collaborators Betty Comden and Adolph Green. They went back to basics and examined the Berlin phenomenon. They suggested three separate stories set in 1911, 1925 and 1965.

1966. Two years later that script was rejected, even though Comden and Green received $150,000 for their troubles.  Writer George Wells was brought in.

1967. M-G-M handed the role of producer-director to Blake Edwards. As he was married to Julie Andrews, it was easy to predict his choice of leading lady. Filming was set to commence in September of the following year.

1968. M-G-M changed hands and Kerk Kerkorian, its new owner, conferred with James Aubrey, its new president. They cancelled the film on the grounds that Berlin was a musical has-been and they were therefore unwilling to risk $15 million of studio money. But Irving got his million dollars.

SAY ONE FOR ME Film.  This 1959 release through 20th Century-Fox was not tailor made for Bing.  Fox offered the film to Crosby in the spring of 1958.  They owned the property and had already assigned the directorial chore to Frank Tashlin when the part of Tony Vincent, eventually portrayed by Robert Wagner, was to be played by Frank Sinatra.  No doubt, Sinatra had studied the script before he ducked out.  Even so, on the face of it Say One for Me had everything going for it as a Crosby picture.  It was in colour and CinemaScope and Bing was allowed the select the writers of the songs to be incorporated into the story.  It would be natural to assume that Johnny Burke and James Van Heusen would be called upon to provide Bing’s three vocal numbers.  However, Johnny Burke was in semi-retirement and so Sammy Cahn collaborated with Van Heusen and wrote the lyrics.  Cahn had a proven track record with several Sinatra hits to his credit.  As it turned out Bing’s numbers - “Say One for Me”, “I Couldn’t Care Less” and “The Secret of Christmas” - were decidedly a cut above the film’s other musical items.  “Chico’s Choo-choo” and “The Night Rock ‘n’ Roll Died (Almost)” were instantly forgettable.  The latter title proved beyond the vocal capabilities of Judy Harriet, who “sang” it in the film with her voice dubbed by Rosemary June.  The film’s other female vocalist was Debbie Reynolds.  She replaced Polly Bergen, who was originally cast in the part of Holly LaMaise, a nightclub singer.  Miss Bergen probably shared Sinatra’s thoughts in declining the offer of work on the film.  Because the Holly LaMaise part called for a singer who could dance, Barrie Chase was then considered before Debbie Reynolds was hired.  When Say One for Me was released it was not held in high regard by either critics or the public.  Leonard Maltin called it “terribly contrived; no memorable music,” five words which seemed to echo the lengthier reviews of the time.  But the most bizarre review of any Crosby film has to be attributed to the critic hiding behind the initials L.E.R. writing in June of 1959 for the Hollywood Citizen News.  This guy knew to get a message over.  He wrote: “For visual appeal, this new 20th Century-Fox film, in color and CinemaScope, is a world beater.  The costumes, sets, color-camera craftsmanship and backgrounds are a treat for sore eyes, as the adage goes.  A handsome production from start to finish, it misses only in the departments of story, direction and acting, three important categories, nonetheless.”  Where does the blame for Say One for Me lie?  The film’s opening credits offer a clue.  It announces ‘A Bing Crosby Production’.

SAY ONE FOR ME Song.  Near the start of the film, Debbie Reynolds, in the role of nightclub singer, rehearses the song whilst rehearsing her act.  She is assisted by Father Conroy (Bing).  Later on, in a sequence set in a church, Bing’s voice is heard singing the song off-screen.  It is a pleasant enough number, which Bing recorded several times in March of 1959.  An attempt with Percy Faith’s orchestra accompanying Bing was allotted a master number but was not released.  Two versions recorded for the film’s soundtrack with Lionel Newman’s orchestra in support appeared on the Columbia soundtrack album, one version being a duet with Debbie Reynolds.  The fourth and best version was recorded for release as a single with Frank De Vol and his orchestra providing backing.

SCARED STIFF Film.  Paramount regarded Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis as the studio’s successors to Hope and Crosby.  In the 1953 re-make of Bob Hope’s 1940 comedy The Ghost Breakers H & C make a gag appearance as skeletons at the close of Scared Stiff. 

SCHENCK, JOSEPH M. (1878-1961) One of Hollywood’s founding fathers.  It was as a producer, a role he relinquished after Reaching for the Moon (1931), that he must have agreed to Bing’s one song appearance in that film.  Schenck started in the movie business as an early exhibitor - he part owned a couple of nickelodeons.  He was involved with the company that eventually became Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, was appointed chairman of United Artists and founded 20th Century pictures.  When that studio merged with Fox he became board chairman of 20th Century-Fox.  In 1941, he was imprisoned on charges involving income tax and union payoffs.  In 1953, he went into partnership with Mike Todd to exploit Todd-AO, the widescreen system.  That c.v. would seem to touch on most aspects of Hollywood’s first half century.

SCHERTZINGER, VICTOR (1888-1941) Classical violinist turned film director.  He set the standard and style for the Hope and Crosby Road pictures when he directed the first two: Singapore (1940) and Zanzibar (1941).  His other Crosby films as director were Rhythm on the River (1940) and Birth of the Blues (1941). Schertzinger died between completion of filming the latter and its December premiere.  He also provided the music for a couple of songs in the first Road picture.  They were “Captain Custard”, a duet with Hope and “The Moon and the Willow Tree” which Dorothy Lamour sang in the film but which Bing recorded for Decca.  The lyrics to both were by Johnny Burke.  Schertzinger entered films in the silent era, his first directorial credits appearing in 1917.  Paramount used him in the 1930s to direct some of its successful musical comedies such as Let’s Live Tonight (1935) and The Music Goes ‘Round (1936).

SCHOOLDAYS Song.  One of several Gus Edwards songs from The Star Maker (1939).  In that thinly disguised biopic of Edwards, Bing duetted the song with Linda Ware in a scene when it was featured in a Broadway musical.  Bing did not make a studio recording of the song.  As with several songs composed by Edwards, Will D. Cobb wrote the lyrics.

SEARCH IS THROUGH, THE Song.  In The Country Girl (1954), there is a flashback sequence where the Crosby character is shown ten years earlier with his wife and young son.  This Ira Gershwin-Harold Arlen composition is heard on the soundtrack.

SEATON, GEORGE (1911-1979) [George Stenius] Producer, director, screenwriter. Seaton put those three skills to work on Bing’s entry into serious film drama in the first half of the 1950s. For Little Boy Lost (1953) and The Country Girl (1954) he was co-producer with William Perlberg. Seaton received an Oscar nomination as director and won the Oscar for his screenplay of the latter. He progressed steadily along the Hollywood career path. He moved to films from work on the stage as an actor. His first accepted screenplay was for the Marx Brothers film A Day at the Races in 1937 and he went on to win an Oscar for his screenplay for Miracle On 34th Street (1947). His first directorial job was for Diamond Horseshoe (1945) for which he also wrote the screenplay.  Rhubard (1951) saw his debut as producer. His most financially successful movie was undoubtedly Airport (1970) for which he wrote the screenplay (this was also nominated for an Oscar) and went on to direct. Then his career fizzled out with only the forgotten Showdown from 1973 following his biggest triumph.

SECOND TIME AROUND, THE Song.  Now an accepted entry in the Great American Songbook catalogue, Bing introduced this Sammy Cahn-James Van Heusen song in High Time (1960).  Bing is seen to be apparently accompanying himself on the piano as he sings the perfectly apt lyrics.  The plot concerned the romance between widower Crosby and widow Nicole Maurey.  The song received an Academy Award nomination but lost out to “Never on Sunday”.  Subsequent versions by Sinatra, Shirley Bassey and Andy Williams cemented its popularity.

SECOND-HAND TURBAN AND A CRYSTAL BALL, A Song.  I find it hard to credit the composers of the preceding song with this Cahn-Van Heusen entry for the 1956 remake of Anything Goes.  It is as awkward to perform as its title suggests.  Even so, Bing and Donald O’Connor do the best they can with it as part of their ship’s concert act.

SECRET OF CHRISTMAS, THE Song.  This third in a row song entry by Cahn and Van Heusen was written by them for Say One For Me (1960).  Ray Walston, the song’s fictional composer, sings it first in the film.  It then forms the film’s finale when Bing, joined by Walston and Debbie Reynolds, sings it during a television performance.  It never became an accepted Christmas standard although Bing did his best to help it along.  It was issued as a Christmas single in 1959 and then re-recorded for the Reprise album “Twelve Songs of Christmas” in 1964.

SELLERS, PETER (1925-1980) Comedian who became a serious actor.  In The Road to Hong Kong (1962), Sellers reprised his Indian doctor character from the 1961 success The Millionairess.  In a sequence in Hong Kong where Hope has lost his memory, Bing takes him to Sellers’ surgery only to be referred by the doctor to a Tibetan lama.  If you are interested in Sellers, your hardest task is to select the biography which gets closest to the truth.  I recommend “The Life and Death of Peter Sellers” by Roger Lewis, which formed the basis of Sellers’ film biography.  But it was Sellers who provided the finest summation of himself.  He said: “If you ask me to play myself, I will not know what to do.  I do not know who or what I am.”

SENNETT, MACK [Mikall Sinnott] (1880-1960) Producer who put slapstick on the map in movies.  Would Bing have achieved screen greatness later in his career without Sennett?  In the summer of 1931, Sennett took a chance on engaging Bing to make six shorts.  The Crosby voice was familiar to many North Americans but the face behind the voice was an unknown quantity until Mack Sennett starred Bing in half a dozen two-reel comedies.  They were I Surrender Dear, One More Chance, Dream House, Billboard Girl, Sing, Bing, Sing and Blue of the Night.  When talking pictures were introduced, the Sennett style of film comedy became redundant overnight.  The antics of the likes of Chester Conklin, Mack Swain and the Keystone Kops seemed unsophisticated to audiences turning to “all talking, all singing, all dancing” features or serious dramas.  In fact, by the mid-thirties Sennett’s contribution to Hollywood’s fame and fortunes was almost forgotten.  But for a special Academy Award in 1937 (for lasting contribution to the comedy technique of the screen) he would have remained in retirement in his native Canada.  As it was, he was appointed technical advisor on Cavalcade (1939) and then showed his face on screen ten years later when he was involved with Down Memory Lane, a feature film which stitched together excerpts from his shorts, including some he made with Bing.  In 1955, his ghost written autobiography “King of Comedy” was published but it was disappointing because of its lack of detail. 

SEYMOUR, ANNE (1909-1988) [Anne Eckert] Actress.  Until recent times any cinematic portrayal of a judge resulted in the casting of a male.  Anne Seymour must have been one of the first females to preside over an American court of law in Man on Fire (1957).  The plot concerned a custody battle involving the son of Earl Carleton (Bing).  Judge Randolph (Seymour) hears the case informally.  The early years of her acting career found her appearing in melodramatic offerings such as All the King’s Men (1949), Desire Under the Elms (1958) and Home from the Hill (1960).  After appearing in that last movie Disney cast her in Pollyanna and thereafter she was in less intense roles.  The films veered from the memorable How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1967) to the forgettable Stay Away Joe (1968).

SEYMOUR, DAN (1915-1993) Character actor.  One of the first parts he played in a film was in Road to Morocco (1942).  He was the Arab to whom Crosby sold Hope in payment for a meal.  Thereafter Seymour’s fate was sealed.  He was forever a menacing heavyweight.  From Casablanca (1943) through to The Return of the Fly (1959), you knew he was not the bringer of good tidings. 

SHALL WE GATHER AT THE RIVER Song. The opening sequence of Sing You Sinners (1938) finds the Crosby character attending church with his two brothers, his mother and the girlfriend of his eldest brother.  The five of them join the congregation in singing “Shall We Gather at the River”, composed by the Reverend Robert Lowry. 

SHAVELSON, MELVILLE (1917-2007) Screenwriter, director and producer.  Before he co-wrote the screenplay of Riding High (1950) with Robert Riskin and Jack Rose, Mel Shavelson had peripheral involvement with Bing on screen.  He co-wrote the Bob Hope comedy The Princess and the Pirate (1944) and the screenplay for Hollywood Victory Caravan (1945).  Bing made a gag appearance in the first and sang a song in the second, a short made for the War Activities Committee.  As his career as writer on Hope’s radio show blossomed he was given the opportunity to write screenplays for Hope’s films.  The two most successful were filmed in the 1950s.  They were The Seven Little Foys (1955) and Beau James (1957).  He also directed those two.  After The Five Pennies (1959) his writing/directing failed to result in much that is memorable and in the mid-seventies he turned his experiences into a humorous novel about Hollywood, “Lualda”.

SHAYNE, ROBERT [Robert Shaen Dawe] (1900-1992) Actor.  When Leslie Halliwell compiled his film guides, he sometimes found it difficult to pinpoint a performer’s merits.  And so he classified them as “general-purpose actors”.  Robert Shayne fits such a description.  In Welcome Stranger (1947), he played Roy Chesley, who was engaged to Trudy Mason (Joan Caulfield).  Of course, he was not serious competition when Bing appeared on the scene.  He secured a leading role just once.  That was in The Neanderthal Man (1953).  However, he went on to a successful TV career and is well remembered for his role as ‘Inspector Henderson’ in the 1950s series The Adventures of Superman.

SHE LOVES ME NOT Film.  “The hi-de-hi of higher education” was Paramount’s tag line to publicise this 1934 Crosby picture.  It was Bing’s fourth under his contract with Paramount, and his most financially successful to date.  His popularity was increasing by the day as filmgoers, radio listeners and record buyers took to America’s most popular entertainer of the 1930s.  The success of She Loves Me Not was enhanced by the healthy disc sales of “Love in Bloom”.  That song was the sole Leo Robin-Ralph Rainger composition in the film.  It received an Academy Award nomination as the year’s best song but lost out to “The Continental”.  Musically the film short changed audiences going to see and hear Bing sing.  He only had another two songs in the picture: “I’m Hummin’, I’m Whistlin’ I’m Singin’” and “Straight from the Shoulder”.  And he only sang solo on “I’m hummin’...”, sharing the vocals on the other two with Kitty Carlisle.  The part of Paul Newton who Bing played in the film was originally offered to Gary Cooper, who declined because he thought his performance would be overshadowed by that of Kitty Carlisle.  But it was Miriam Hopkins who had the stronger screen presence.  In a 1972 interview, she remembered her experience of working with Bing as follows:

“Bing Crosby was a doll.  I thought I was a dramatic actress, you see.  And I wanted to rehearse everything first.  And I said, ‘Bing, can’t we rehearse this show?’  He said: ‘Sweetie, no.  We’d get stale’” 

Interest in the film was revived when it was dramatised on Lux Radio Theatre on 8th November 1937.  Bing starred and sang the film’s three songs.  Paramount remade the film as “True to the Army” in 1942 and sold the rights to Twentieth-Century Fox ten years later who remade it as How to Be Very, Very Popular (1955).  Not bad mileage for a film, which was summarised as “a showgirl murder witness takes refuge in a men’s college.” 

SHE REMINDS ME OF YOU Song.  A screen first was achieved when the film’s leading man sang a love song to a bear whilst brushing its fur.  In We’re Not Dressing (1934), Bing wields the brush as Droopy is serenaded with this Mack Gordon-Harry Revel song especially composed for the film.

SHEEKMAN, ARTHUR (1901-1978) Screenwriter.  Sheekman was responsible for the screenplays of Blue Skies (1946), Welcome Stranger (1947) and Mr. Music (1950).  These were quite conventional submissions to Paramount compared to the work he had turned in to that studio in the early 1930s when he was providing dialogue for Marx Brothers pictures.  In the 1950s, he turned his hand to fashioning serious dramatic scripts, the last two films he worked on being Some Came Running (1958) and Ada (1961).  His parallel writing career involved assisting Groucho Marx on several of the comedian’s books.

SHELDON, SIDNEY (1917-2007) Screenwriter who tried producing and directing films before realising there was more money to be made by writing popular fiction.  His only work on a Crosby film was taking the original story of the 1936 version of Anything Goes, stripping it of its plotline apart from the shipboard setting and then writing the screenplay for the 1956 version.  He’d had success in writing screenplays for some musical box-office winners including Easter Parade (1948) and Annie Get Your Gun (1950).  Unfortunately, Anything Goes failed to capture the imagination to the same extent as those M-G-M triumphs.  That studio took him back in 1962 to write the script for Jumbo but by then musicals were no longer in vogue and he forsook motion picture studios for publishing houses.  A couple of his best sellers, “The Other Side of Midnight” and “Bloodline” were made into Hollywood films allowing Sheldon to receive two payments for one story.

SHE’S FROM MISSOURI Song.  Bing sang this Burke-Van Heusen composition in Dixie (1943) yet never got around to making a studio recording of it.  It forms part of Dan Emmett’s minstrel act and Bing sings it from the stage of the fictional Maxwell Theatre in New Orleans.

SHIELDS, ARTHUR (1896-1970) Actor.  How come he’s listed as Technical Adviser on Top O’ the Morning (1949)?  He’s the younger brother of Barry Fitzgerald, that’s how come.  Why he should be padding the payroll of this third film pairing of Crosby and Fitzgerald is a mystery.  He could hold his own against Barry any day of the week.  The fact that he was less hammy than his brother can only be a point in his favour.  Shields made his Hollywood debut in The Plough and the Stars (1937) and was on screen regularly until he bowed out with The Pigeon That Took Rome in 1962. 

SHINING FUTURE, THE Short film.  Made and distributed by Warner Bros. towards the end of World War II, this twenty-minute feature was shown in Canadian cinemas in order to coerce patrons into buying that country’s Sixth War Loan bonds.  By then it was known that victory was in sight for the allied forces.  Hence, Bing’s contribution, Frank Loesser’s “The Road to Victory”, was timely.  Crosby’s vocal was used as the title of an edited version of The Shining Future when it was shown in the U.S.A. to promote that country’s Fifth War Loan. 

SHOWDOWN AT ULCER GULCH Promotional short.  The “Saturday Evening Post” wanted to boost the magazine’s circulation and hired Bing, Bob Hope, a couple of the Marx Brothers and others to appear in this 1958 short.  Within ten years, the magazine had folded.  Thought by many to be a permanent mainstay of American culture the long running title just couldn’t compete for advertisers’ money with television and the growth of newspaper colour supplements.  Its most collectable editions for Crosby collectors were those serialising “Call Me Lucky” in the early 1950s and an issue in the mid-sixties, which featured drawings of the cast of Stagecoach (1966) by regular Post illustrator Norman Rockwell.  It included an excellent portrait of Bing playing the part of Doc Boone in the film.

SIDNEY, GEORGE (1916-2002) Director.  Two George Sidneys had minor involvements in Bing’s filmography.  By far the better known was the one born in 1916 who went on to produce and direct Pepe (1960) in which Bing made a guest appearance.  Although film musicals were almost a thing of the past by then, Sidney tackled a further three before the end of that decade: Bye Bye Birdie (1963), Viva Las Vegas (1964) and Half a Sixpence (1968).

The “other” George Sidney (1876-1945) was the stocky character actor featured in King of Jazz (1930).  Most of his films were made in the silent era.

SIDNEY, SYLVIA [Sophia Kosow] (1910-1999) Actress.  She was another Hollywood performer who had a tenuous link with Bing’s film career.  She was the leading lady in Confessions of a Co-ed (1931) which featured Bing and the Rhythm Boys.  Four years later, she headed the cast list of Accent on Youth which was subsequently adapted as a Crosby vehicle and filmed as Mr. Music (1950).  Her peak years were spent at Paramount.  The studio tended to cast her as a female in jeopardy.  She commented, “Paramount paid me by the tear.”

SIEGEL, SOL C. (1903-1982) Producer.  He produced two of Bing’s best musicals: Blue Skies in 1946 and High Society ten years later.  He immediately followed up those two productions by less popular Crosby box-office draws.  Welcome Stranger (1947) followed hot on the heels of Blue Skies whilst Man on Fire (1957) was a total contrast to High Society.  But then his career had been built on taking career chances.  He had been a reporter on the New York Herald Tribune.  He became a sales executive for a record company.  He helped form Republic Pictures, the most successful of the Poverty Row studios.  Whilst there, he produced several John Wayne and Gene Autry westerns.  He then spent the next twenty years working on big budget productions for three major studios: Paramount, 20th Century-Fox and M-G-M.  From his early westerns to his last production, No Way to Treat a Lady in 1968, all of his films resulted in profitable excursions for whichever studio had the benefit of his skills.

SILENT NIGHT, HOLY NIGHT Song.  This Franz Gruber composition found its way into Going My Way (1944) after Bing had already committed it to wax on three previous occasions.  This film opportunity to provide a reprise occurred in a choir practice scene where Bing had the benefit of accompaniment from the Bob Mitchell Boys’ Choir. The song became a regular feature of most of Bing’s Christmas radio and television shows.

SIMMONS, RICHARD (1913-2003) Actor.  Richard Simmons thought he had a strong case when Frank Sinatra was prosecuted for murder in 1964.  But Robin and the 7 Hoods was a light-hearted film so prosecutor Simmons lost out to Sinatra’s Robbo.  Simmons had always played on the right side of the law and was best-known in later years for starring as Sergeant Preston of the Yukon in that 1950s television series.  Before that, he set standards for kids to follow by appearing in serials like King of the Royal Mounted (1940) and King of the Texas Rangers (1941).  Sinatra first employed him when he was cast in Sergeants 3 the year before his Robin experience.  He never wanted to shake off his good-guy image and between those two Sinatra works, he played in Lassie’s Great Adventure (1963).  His later acting assignments were on television before ill health forced his reluctant retirement.

SINATRA, FRANK (1915-1998) Good singer and excellent actor when he put his mind to it.  He was Bing’s main rival for the voice of the (20th) century.  The two were on radio, television and film together but this entry will restrict itself to those occasions when they were cast in the same big screen movies.  The first time they appeared on film together in the same scenes was for High Society (1956) when the billing was Crosby, Grace Kelly then Frank Sinatra.  Prior to that they had contributed to a couple of wartime shorts which were fundraisers for war bonds.  The Shining Future (1944) was for Canada’s Sixth War Loan whilst All Star Bond Rally (1945) was for the U.S.A.’s Seventh War Bond issue.  Following High Society they both appeared briefly but separately in Pepe (1960) and then in The Road to Hong Kong (1961) where Sinatra was joined by Dean Martin for a gag at the end of that film.  1964 featured them both in meaty parts as Allen A. Dale (Bing) and Robbo (Sinatra) for Robin and the 7 Hoods.  Ten years later, they made individual contributions as narrators for That’s Entertainment.  The private and public life of Frank Sinatra has been covered by dozens of books but the world still awaits a definitive biography researched to the high standard Gary Giddins awarded Bing.

SING, BING, SING Short.  This was the penultimate release of the half dozen shorts Bing made for Mack Sennett.  In common with the other five Bing played Bing.  He was a radio crooner with plans to elope with Florine McKinney against the wishes of her father (Irving Bacon) and fiancé (Franklin Pangborn).  In the film’s nineteenth minute true love prevails.  Scenes from the film were incorporated in Down Memory Lane (1949)

SING WITH THE STARS Short film.  A one-reeler made to promote the U.S. Coast Guards as part of the Army-Navy Screen Magazine series.  Bing sang “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive” and “Don’t Fence Me In” with accompaniment by the 11th Naval District Coast Guard Band under the direction of Jimmie Grier.  Grier had accompanied Bing on several Brunswick and Decca sides in the early 1930s.  The short was included in a video compilation, which was made available in 1984.  In the short, the “Don’t Fence Me In” lyrics appeared on the bottom of the screen with a bouncing ball following the words to enable servicemen to sing along after Bing completed his solo version.  Porter was a stickler when it came to anyone altering his lyrics but he no doubt tolerated the minor inaccuracies perpetrated by the film’s sub-titler in view of the non-commercial nature of the short film.

SING YOU SINNERS Film.  Filmed in the middle months of 1938, Sing You Sinners saw Donald O’Connor making his film debut as one of the three Beebe Brothers.  Bing and Fred MacMurray were the other two.  Also making her film debut was Ellen Drew as MacMurray’s wife to be.  Or so Paramount’s publicity handouts would have us believe.  In fact, Ellen Drew had played in a Crosby film a couple of years earlier.  That was Rhythm on the Range when she was known as Terry Ray.  The name change came about so that there was no confusion regarding her gender.  Two of the songs composed for the film were associated with Bing forever after.  Johnny Burke and James V. Monaco penned “I’ve got a Pocketful of Dreams” whilst Frank Loesser and Hoagy Carmichael were responsible for “Small Fry”.  They were both performed on screen by Bing assisted by MacMurray and O’Connor.  There was no title song, although Paramount held the rights to a song written in 1930 by Sam Coslow and W. Franke Harling and titled “Sing You Sinners”.  That version was sung by Lillian Roth in the film Honey.  Two other personalities have tenuous associations with Sing You Sinners.  The dressing room adjoining Bing’s was occupied by Jack Benny, who had just signed with Paramount.  And Guy Mitchell tested for the role which eventually went to O’Connor.  By the time of the film’s release, Bing’s association with popular films of merit was being recognised and the National Board of Review voted it one of the ten best English language films of the year.  The public and the critics agreed.  Variety summed it up nicely with the words, “Homespun, down to earth, and as natural as eggs for breakfast.”

SINGER, A DANCER, A / CROONER, A COMIC, A Song(s).  Irving Berlin never liked to discard a song once he had laboured over words and music.  When he was commissioned to write the score for White Christmas (1954), Fred Astaire was intended as Bing’s co-star.  “A Singer, a Dancer” reflected their respective skills, although Astaire was admired as a vocalist more than Bing was as a dancer.  When Astaire’s role went to Danny Kaye, Berlin took out his eraser and his composition became “A Crooner, a Comic”.  Despite all that hard work the song did not make the film’s final cut.

SITTIN’ IN THE SUN (COUNTIN’ MY MONEY) Song. This Berlin composition for White Christmas (1954) suffered the same fate as the previous entry.  It was written with Bing in mind and somehow the title seems to impart the same philosophy as Berlin’s “Lazy” which was so suited to Crosby when it was included in Holiday Inn (1942).  But there was a two year delay between Berlin completing his score for White Christmas and that film going before the cameras and the song was not used. 

SKINNER, FRANK (1897-1968) Composer.  Frank Skinner was joint orchestrator on East Side of Heaven (1939) but scored If I Had My Way in its entirety the following year.  As both films were made for Universal outside Bing’s Paramount contract, it was only to be expected that production staff on Universal’s payroll would be employed and Skinner worked exclusively for that studio.  Although he was nominated for five Oscars, it’s only in recent times that Skinner’s work has been rediscovered and is appearing on CDs celebrating Hollywood’s golden years of film music.  He made his initial impact working on horror films, which were a Universal speciality at the time the two Crosby pictures were shot.  Between the two Crosby’s he wrote the score for Son of Frankenstein (1939).  In the 1950s, he composed the music for Universal’s glossy weepies like Imitation of Life (1958).  He remained with Universal throughout his career, his last two assignments being Shenandoah (1965) and Madame X (1966).

SKIPWORTH, ALISON (1863-1952) Actress.  London born Alison Skipworth played Countess Rostova in Here Is My Heart (1934).  She was one of the attendants to Princess Alexandra, played by Kitty Carlisle and Bing’s leading lady in the picture.  You knew what to expect of Alison Skipworth when her name appeared on cinema posters.  She specialised in playing haughty grand dames.  Her performance in Here Is My Heart was typical.  She entered films in 1921 after almost twenty years on Broadway and spent most of her film career at Paramount in the 1930s.  As in her solo Crosby film appearance she was never top billed but always had a character role of substance.

SMALL FRY Song.  Frank Loesser and Hoagy Carmichael wrote it for Sing You Sinners (1938).  It summed up the big brother-little brother attitudes of Joe Beebe (Bing) and Mike Beebe (Donald O’Connor), with interjections by David Beebe (Fred MacMurray), when it was performed in a nightclub sequence.  Decca’s studio recording substituted Johnny Mercer for Donald O’Connor in a cheeky duet with Bing and it continued to earn composer royalties when Bing featured it with appropriate guests on his radio and television shows.

SMARTY Song.  “Smarty” opened the 1937 film Double or Nothing.  It was the only Ralph Freed-Burton Lane composition used in that film, the main musical items being provided by Johnny Burke and Arthur Johnston.  Bing’s excellent version is marred by Ludovico Tomarchio singing Italian melodies over the final chorus.

SMILE RIGHT BACK AT THE SUN Song.  The title tells us right away that the lyrics are the work of Johnny Burke.  It was the philosophical, optimistic song, which Bing managed to sing during a train journey whilst shaving in Welcome Stranger.  That was when Bing was on his way to a small town in Maine to cover as doctor whilst the regular G.P., Barry Fitzgerald, took a holiday.  When Bing was departing from the town, the two doctors performed the song together en route to the bus station.

SMITH, ALEXIS [Gladys Smith] (1921-!993) Actress.  As Winifred Stanley in Here Comes the Groom (1951) Alexis Smith played the second female lead and was romantically paired with Franchot Tone whilst Bing won Jane Wyman.  The film ended with the four of them singing “In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening”.  During the previous ten years Smith had been under contract with Warner Bros., where she was frequently cast as “the other woman”, so her graduation to Paramount did little to alter that.  She said, “There are so many more interesting things to think about than whether Ida Lupino or Jane Wyman got the roles I should have gotten.”  She had the looks to be top-billed yet it rarely happened.  She was still attractive when she was cast in the television series “Dallas” in 1984.

SMITH, SIR C[HARLES] AUBREY (1863-1948) Bing gets on the wrong side of C. Aubrey Smith near the start of East Side of Heaven (1939) when he serenades him with “Happy Birthday to You”.  By the end of the film, all is well and Bing is offered a job by that same gentleman.  Smith’s knighthood was bestowed in 1944 for services to Anglo-American amity, by which time he was seen as the senior British resident in Hollywood where he was perhaps best known as team captain of the Hollywood Cricket Club. He had played in Test cricket for England in 1889. In films, he was invariably cast as a benevolent sort, which is why we knew at the beginning of East Side of Heaven that all would end well as far as his relationship with Bing was concerned. With dozens of memorable performances from which to select as examples of his work I’ll settle for two favourites, Kidnapped (1938), when he played the Duke of Wellington, and Little Women (1949), his last film, when he played Mr. Lawrence.   

SNUGGLED ON YOUR SHOULDER Song.  A parody of this Joe Young-Carmen Lombardo was sung by Bing in the Sennett short Sing, Bing, Sing (1932).  It ended the film as Bing flew off into the wild blue yonder with Florine McKinney.  Between filming the short and its subsequent release, Bing visited the recording studio to make a straight version.

SNYDER, WILLIAM (1901-1984) Cinematographer.  Colour photography was still in its infancy when Snyder photographed Blue Skies in 1945.  Most films were shot in monochrome during the 1940s.  Snyder was recognised by his peers for his skills with colour when he was nominated on three occasions for an Academy Award.  Those shortlisted films were Aloma of the South Seas (1941), The Loves of Carmen (1948) and Jolson Sings Again (1949).  The Technicolor richness of the latter will be well known to most.  Disney appreciated Snyder’s work and hired him for his live action features in the 1960s.  As well as Blue Skies, Snyder shot the Technicolor Bob Hope film The Princess and the Pirate a year earlier.  Bing made a gag appearance at the end of that one.

SO DO I Song.  This was one of the quartet of songs that Johnny Burke and Arthur Johnston wrote for Bing to sing in Pennies from Heaven (1936).  Bing recorded two versions for Decca to tie in with the film’s release.  The first version was recorded in July 1936 when Georgie Stoll and his orchestra accompanied Bing.  The following month Jimmy Dorsey’s orchestra backed Bing when the song formed part of a “Pennies from Heaven” medley.   Frances Langford duetted with Bing on this less frequently heard version, which was issued as a 12 inch 78.  

SO THE BLUEBIRDS AND THE BLACKBIRDS GOT TOGETHER Song.  Featured by the Rhythm Boys in King of Jazz (1930), where it formed part of a medley with “Mississippi Mud”.  Rhythm Boy Harris Barris co-wrote the song with Billy Moll.  It provided the world with the first ever opportunity to see Bing singing on screen and the film’s two-colour Technicolor process made it a memorable introduction. 

SOMEPLACE ON ANYWHERE ROAD Song.  In Riding High (1950) Bing’s prospective father-in-law tells our hero to dispose of the racehorse Broadway Bill.  Rather than comply Bing quits his job and takes to the road with the horse and its stable lad Whitey, played by Clarence Muse.  As they travel, the two men sing the Burke-Van Heusen composition “Someplace on Anywhere Road”.

SON OF PALEFACE Film.  This was the follow up to Paleface, a 1948 box-office success for Bob Hope.  In the 1952 sequel there is a prologue which features Bing.  It bears no relationship to the old west comedy that follows. Bing is shown driving a car in a short scene which was lifted from Bing’s film Just For You and Hope assures the audience that the old Paramount character actor will not feature in his picture.  Maybe Bing agreed to the scene being used as a thank you to Hope for singing a few lines of “In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening” in Son of Paleface. That Bob Hope plug for the previous year’s release Here Comes the Groom in which Bing sang the song was typical of the way in which the Hope-Crosby careers interacted about this time.  Hope’s version of “In the Cool...” occurs when his car breaks down so maybe he was having a dig at Bing.

SONDERGAARD, GALE [Edith Sondergaard] (1899-1985) Actress.  As Catherine Vail in Road to Rio (1948), she played Dorothy Lamour’s guardian.  She was also the villainess of the piece.  She had featured in the earlier Bob Hope comedy My Favourite Blonde (1942), in which Bing made a gag appearance.  She was a sinister lady in that one as well.  In fact, it could be said that sinister was her speciality, particularly when she smiled.  At the time of filming Rio she was probably unaware that her acting career was about to be curtailed because of her left wing allegiances.  Married at the time to director Herbert Biberman, one of the ‘Hollywood Ten’, she was regarded as being tarred by the same brush.  She was off-screen for twenty years, returning in 1969 to appear in Slaves.  Her career never recovered.  An additional claim to fame is that she was the first actress to win an Oscar for “Best Actress in a Supporting Role” for Anthony Adverse (1936).

SONG OF FREEDOM Song.  From the film Holiday Inn (1942), this Irving Berlin composition celebrated Independence Day.  Bing performed it before a couple of Hollywood producers who have attended the Holiday Inn in order to decide whether or not to make a film about the venue.

SOON Song.  Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers wrote this one for the film Mississippi (1935) and it has remained a Crosby favourite ever since.  It was performed twice in the film and allowed Bing to demonstrate both his musical ability and his love of two women.  Gail Patrick was the recipient of the first romantic overture, when Bing accompanied himself on piano.  Later in the film, Bing took his guitar onto the porch and let Joan Bennett know how he felt about her.

SOUTH OF THE BORDER Song.  In Bing’s brief appearance in Pepe (1960), he asks Pepe, played by Cantinflas, where he is from.  Before Pepe can properly answer, Bing breaks into “South of the Border” and the Mexican actor joins him in a chorus of the Jimmy Kennedy-Michael Carr song.  It was another five years before Bing made his first studio recording of the song when it  was included on his set for the Longines Symphonette Society.

SPARKS, NED [Edward A. Sparkman] (1883-1957) Vaudevillian who turned to acting in films.  The rasping voiced sad faced comedian played in three Crosby pictures from the 1930s.  He was way down the cast list as Lem Spawn in Too Much Harmony (1933) but later in the same year, he was fourth billed as Jack Conroy in Going Hollywood.  That substantial role cast him as the director of the film within a film.  But it was necessary to wait until 1939 to see Sparks in a typical role in a Bing film.  That was in The Star Maker when, as ‘Speed’ King, he played the children hating publicity officer of the singing newsboy troupe.  His melancholy face said it all.  He entered films in the silent era and more or less retired some ten years before his death, his last big screen appearance being in Magic Town (1947).

SPARKUHL, THEODOR (1891-1946) Director of photography.  Sparkuhl arrived in Hollywood from Germany in 1933 and he was immediately offered employment by Paramount Pictures.  He had been a director of photography since 1918 and Paramount knew of his talent.  His name was on the credits of countless black and white features for that studio until the time of his death.  Too Much Harmony (1933) and Star Spangled Rhythm (1942) were his only assignments that had a Crosby involvement. 

SPRING FEVER Song.  Leo Robin and Harry Warren wrote this song for Bing to sing in Just for You (1952).  The film was edited down to what was then a lengthy one and three quarter hours and the song was not used.  The music can be heard in the background on the film’s soundtrack but you had to wait until 1987 to buy the CD Bing Sings Again to hear Bing’s commercial recording to listen to Robin’s lyric.

STACK, ROBERT [Robert Mondini] (1919-2003) Actor.  By the time he made Mr. Music with Bing in 1950, Robert Stack was well on the way to becoming a leading man in movies.  As an athletic suitor vying for the affections of Nancy Olson with Bing, he provides credible competition.  He was in films from 1939 when he made his debut in First Love and gave Deanna Durbin her first screen kiss. His decade as a film star was the 1950s.  He then moved into television where his starring role in “The Untouchables” brought him international fame.  He continued appearing in cinema and television films through to the twenty-first century.

STAGECOACH Film.  This 1966 CinemaScope release by 20th Century-Fox can be regarded as Bing’s last ‘proper’ film.  Bing didn’t believe this to be the case at the time.  In a 1966 interview, he said:

“In all the years I’ve made films I think the public has never thought of me as an actor. I don’t believe the public has even thought of me as a singer.  I’m Bing Crosby.  I’m a personality...a citizen.  That’s fine, but now that I’m a little past getting the girl in the movie - we can’t all be Cary Grant, you know - it’s a little frustrating.  If I’m not thought of as an actor I won’t get character parts.  That’s why I’m so delighted with Stagecoach.I hope it will open a few doors for me.  After all these years it’s pretty hard to stop.  When I’m away fishing I look at the papers and see where they’re casting a picture and say, ‘Why can’t I get in that?’  Besides, if you work a little it makes the other stuff - the fishing, hunting and so on - more fun”

Well, Bing didn’t get character parts in Hollywood movies and Cary Grant decided to retire at the same time as Bing was filming Stagecoach.  Perhaps Bing was too pernickety in what offers he would accept.  Between Stagecoach and his death, well over a dozen films were linked to his name.  When he declined to play the part of Columbo on television because the schedule would interfere with his golf, it signified his retirement from Hollywood movies.  He just forgot to make the decision public.  The only mistake he made was to turn down Paramount’s offer of casting him in the 1968 release of Paint Your Wagon.  The part went to Lee Marvin.  Stagecoach was not a comfortable shoot for Bing.  During the two summer months of 1965 when he was on location in Colorado, his bursitis was playing him up.  The resultant discomfort might have assisted the pained look which was part of his Doc Boone characterisation in the film.  Critics disliked the remake of Stagecoach because they felt compelled to compare it to the original John Ford directed version, which starred John Wayne.  In that one Doc Boone was portrayed by Thomas Mitchell.  Leslie Halliwell described the Gordon Douglas directed remake as an absolutely awful remake, but then Halliwell had little time for many films made after the end of the 1940s.  There was a second remake in 1986.  Bing’s daughter, Mary Frances, appeared in that television version which cast country music performers in the main roles.  Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, Waylon Jennings and John Schneider gave the small screen version novelty appeal if nothing else. 

STAR MAKER, THE Film.  Bing’s role as Larry Earl in The Star Maker was inspired by the career of Gus Edwards, who was living in retirement when this Paramount picture went before the cameras in 1939.  Edwards died at the age of 66 in 1945 and there are no documented comments of his views of the highly dramatised screenplay fashioned by Frank Butler, Don Hartman and Arthur Caesar.  What cannot be contested is the contribution Edwards made to show business by bringing Eddie Cantor, Ray Bolger and others to the attention of vaudeville audiences.  He also co-wrote dozens of songs, which once heard are hard to forget.  The Edwards’ songs which Bing sang in The Star Maker were “Jimmy Valentine”, “If I Was a Millionaire”, “In My Merry Oldsmobile” and “Schooldays”.  The film’s new songs were composed by Bing’s regular movie songsmiths of the time: Johnny Burke and James V. Monaco.  From the four songs they wrote for Bing the standout was “An Apple for the Teacher”, which had the feel of an early twentieth century ballad ideal for the Edwards/Earl stage act.  Bing’s task in The Star Maker was that of organising vaudevillian acts featuring his Newsboys - a troupe of child entertainers.  Seven pre-teenagers were cast, with only one finding a lasting career in the movies.  That was Darryl Hickman who was spotted by John Ford and immediately cast as one of the Joad children in The Grapes of Wrath (1940).  Despite that promising start to his career, Hickman never made it big-time although he kept fairly busy.  The Star Maker is a little seen Crosby picture.  It deserves fuller exposure as the review ‘Variety’ gave it in 1939 confirms: “A rollicking filmusical, first-class entertainment”.

STAR NIGHT AT THE COCOANUT GROVE Short.  This 18-minute Colortone musical shot and released in 1935 has several points of interest.

· It provides footage of the Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles, where the Coconut Grove night club was situated.  The Coconut Grove had played an important part in Bing’s developing career.

· Despite the Colortone tag, the film was shot in sumptuous Technicolor with Natalie Kalmus supervising the comparatively new process.

· It was produced by Louis Lewyn, who had provided Paramount with candid shots of Hollywood stars off duty for his Hollywood on Parade series.  Mary Pickford, who introduces Bing in Star Night, was a regular feature of those shorts.

· Bing sang “With Every Breath I Take” in the film, with piano accompaniment by Ted Fio Rito.  M-G-M distributed the short and if the recommendation to renters from the reviewer of ‘Film Daily’ was heeded it should have padded out several ‘full supporting programmes’.  The critic wrote: “This musical review is a grand buy for any showman.  Gorgeously produced, with smartness, class and snap.”

STAR SPANGLED RHYTHM Film.  Bing’s guest appearance in this “all-star” Paramount production from 1942 was a spliced in rendition of “Old Glory”.  That was a Johnny Mercer-Harold Arlen composition, which never benefited from a Crosby studio recording.  The film was the first of several Paramount attempts to cram as many as its contract players into a feature with a slender plot and hope that the fans would shell out to see their favourite stars.  They did and Star Spangled Rhythm made the box-office top ten for 1943.  One boost at the box-office was provided by Frank Sinatra who spent the first month of 1943 on stage at the New York Paramount theatre as featured singer with the Benny Goodman Orchestra.  It was probably the Sinatra fans who brought traffic to a standstill rather than the on screen feature Star Spangled Rhythm.  Readers of James Agee’s review in ‘Time’ magazine knew exactly what to expect when you bought tickets at their neighbourhood cinemas.  He summed the film up as “A variety show including everyone at Paramount who was not overseas, in hiding or out to lunch.”

STEIN SONG, THE Song.  Stop an old man in the street - preferably someone over the age of, say, seventy - and ask him who he associates with “The Stein Song”.  He’ll tell you Rudy Vallee. Vallee made his hit recording four months before Two Plus Fours was filmed.  That was the short film, which featured The Rhythm Boys plus two.  The couple of extra vocalists were Ed Deering and Spec O’Donnell, the quintet being billed as The College Boys.  They sang “The Stein Song” three times in less than twenty minutes of screen time.  A couple of their versions of this University of Maine college song were parodies of the Lincoln Colcord-E. A. Fenstad original.  Bing never recorded a solo version of “The Stein Song”, possibly because to do the song justice it was necessary to hold a megaphone in one hand and a tankard of ale in the other. 

STEPHENSON, HENRY [Henry S. Garroway] (1871-1956) Actor.  Wouldn’t you know it?  In She Loves Me Not (1934), Princeton student Bing falls for Kitty Carlisle, the daughter of the Dean.  And Bing knocks the Dean unconscious.  Henry Stephenson was the Dean.  Always the gentleman, Stephenson usually found himself cast in dramatic roles where a touch of class was called for.  Parts in Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936), The Prince and the Pauper (1937) and Marie Antoinette (1938) were appropriate for someone educated at Rugby who went on to make his mark on the London and Broadway stage before entering films in the silent era.  Stephenson retired after making Challenge to Lassie in 1949.

STEVENS, INGER [Inger Stensland] (1934-1970). Actress.  In ‘The International Film Encyclopedia’ Ephraim Katz writes: “Her fractured romances with Bing Crosby (just before his last marriage) and a famous married star contributed to the depression that led her to attempted suicide in 1959, after which she remained blind for two weeks.”  True or false?  We’ll probably never know because she died of an overdose of barbiturates at the age of 36.  Certainly, Bing approved her casting as his leading lady in her film debut in Man on Fire (1957).  Before that, she’d had little acting success.  She ran away from home at the age of 16 and made her show business debut in burlesque in Kansas City.  By then burlesque was dying on its feet and so she went to New York and worked as a chorus girl.  Television gave her an opportunity to play to a wider audience, albeit that was mainly appearing in commercials.  The year before making Man on Fire, she made her Broadway debut in the appropriately titled “Debut”.  It was a flop.  At sometime during her attempts to make a living in show business she came to the attention of Bing.  After her only Crosby film, she got some fine parts in Cry Terror, The Buccaneer and The World, the Flesh and the Devil, all made before 1960.  In 1961, she secretly married Ike Jones, a black musician. Throughout the 1960s, she continued to be cast in popular films.  In 1968, she had substantial parts in four box-office winners: Firecreek, Madigan, 5 Card Stud and Hang ‘Em High.  Then two years later, it was all over.

STEVENS, RISE (1913-2013) Opera singer who made the occasional film.  As Genevieve Linden in Going My Way (1944), she played in a touching scene with Bing when she met him backstage at the opera.  She had been appearing in Carmen at the theatre and realised why their friendship had ceased on seeing his clerical garb when he removed his overcoat.  It was rare for a baritone and a contralto to share vocals but Bing and Rise managed it with “Ave Maria” in Going My Way.  Rise Stevens appeared on screen in two other films - The Chocolate Soldier (1941) and Carnegie Hall (1947) - and contributed her voice only to the cartoon Journey Back to Oz in 1971.

STEVENS, STELLA (1938-2023) Actress.  If you look out for her you can spot Stella Stevens making her film debut as a chorus girl in Say One for Me (1959).  It was a small part but it led immediately to semi-stardom as Appassionata von Climax in L’il Abner, released later that same year.  Her decade as a box-office name was the 1960s.  She was with Bobby Darin in Too Late Blues in 1962, with Jerry Lewis in The Nutty Professor the following year and with Dean Martin in The Silencers in 1966.  Before movies, she had been a ‘Playboy’ centrefold but she proved she had more to offer than glamour when she went on to produce and direct a documentary film in 1979. Her acting career continued via television.

STEVENS, TRUDY (1924-2003), Singer who dubbed the voice of Vera-Ellen in White Christmas (1954). Born Gertrude Ewan, she adopted the stage name of Trudy Ewan before changing it to Trudy Stevens when she married bandleader Dick Stabile in 1947. She also ghosted for Lizabeth Scott in three films. After her marriage to Stabile broke up, she became a busy nightclub singer under the name of Trudy Stabile in the Las Vegas, Lake Tahoe and Palm Springs areas. She later married Dick Painton and they spent their final years in San Juan Capistrano, California.

STEWART, DONALD OGDEN (1894-1980).  Screenwriter, playwright, actor and novelist.  He was responsible for the screenplay of Going Hollywood (1934), Bing’s most successful film to date.  It was his sophisticated dialogue for The Philadelphia Story (1939) that won him an Oscar.  That film formed the basis of High Society (1956).  Stewart’s films were invariably good box-office as well as receiving critical acclaim.  He either wrote or collaborated on such screenplays as The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934), The Prisoner of Zenda (1937), Life with Father (1947) and Edward My Son (1949).  After that last film, his career came to a sudden halt for the same reason as that of several other Hollywood talents.  He was blacklisted because he had been a member of the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League and was regarded as a communist sympathiser.  Stewart simply packed his bags, moved to London, wrote a couple of screenplays (one using the alias Gilbert Holland) and published a revealing autobiography in 1970. 

STILL THE BLUEBIRD SINGS Song.  The final number featured in The Star Maker (1939).  Bing is joined by a troupe of children for the song Johnny Burke and Jimmy Monaco composed specifically for the film.

STOLL, GEORGE (1905-1985) Musical director and conductor.  For the two 1930s films that Bing made outside his Paramount contract for Major Pictures, Stoll was billed as musical director.  However, both Pennies from Heaven (1936) and Doctor Rhythm (1938) used John Scott Trotter for Bing’s musical arrangements.  Both of those films were early assignments for Stoll.  He had worked mainly in radio up until that point.  Bing had worked with him in the recording studio where his billing on 78 releases named him Georgie Stoll.  His last work on Crosby recordings as orchestra leader was for the Decca sessions of the songs from Pennies from Heaven, which were issued to tie in with the release of the film.  As soon as he had completed his two Major films with Bing, he was signed up by M-G-M and it was with that studio that he did his best work.  Strike up the Band (1940), Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) and The Student Prince (1954) are some of his successes.  He deserved the Oscar he won for his musical direction on Anchors Aweigh (1945). Stoll was also nominated for an Oscar on seven other occasions.

STONE, GEORGE E. [George Stein] (1903-1967) 5’ 3” small and usually cast as a gangster type he appeared as Shorty in his one Bing picture, Rhythm on the Range (1936).  By then he had been in films for twenty years having graduated from vaudeville to movies when a teenager.  He made well over two hundred films and had regular roles as The Runt in the Boston Blackie series.  Because he made Runyonesque characters his speciality, it was only right that he bowed out of big screen performances with Pocketful of Miracles in 1961. 

STORMY WEATHER Song.  We are only treated to a snatch of this Ted Koehler-Harold Arlen composition in We’re Not Dressing (1934).  That’s hardly surprising considering it formed part of Bing’s “I Positively Refuse to Sing” medley.  And Bing positively refused to record it until over thirty years later when it was included on the set of standards issued by the Longines Symphonette Society.

STRAIGHT FROM THE SHOULDER Song.  One of two Mack Gordon-Harry Revel songs performed by Bing in She Loves Me Not (1934).  In that film Bing was cast in the role of the song’s composer and Kitty Carlisle “played” the piano whilst duetting it with Bing.

STRAUSS, JOHANN (1804-1849) Austrian composer, conductor and violinist.  Johnny Burke’s “collaborator” on the song “The Emperor Waltz” from the 1948 film of the same name.  Bing shows off his versatility by singing it to Joan Fontaine at the same time as dancing with her at the film’s conclusion.

STRUSS, KARL (1886-1981) Director of photography.  Struss was behind the camera on nine Bing pictures made between 1934 and 1939.  They were Here Is My Heart (1934), Two for Tonight (1935), Anything Goes (1936), Rhythm on the Range (1936), Waikiki Wedding (1937), Double or Nothing (1937), Sing You Sinners (1938), Paris Honeymoon (1939) and The Star Maker (1939).  Struss was hired by Cecil B. DeMille in 1919 after DeMille had been impressed by his portrait and magazine advertising work.  He shot his first film the following year.  He joined Paramount in 1931 and remained with that studio until the end of the 1940s.  One of his first assignments for that studio was Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932) where the transformation of Fredric March from man to monster was brilliantly conceived.  He retired in 1959 after shooting The Rebel Set, leaving behind him an impressive body of work to testify to his innovative technical inspirations. Struss won an Oscar for Best Cinematography for Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927) which he shared with Charles Rosher. He was also nominated on three other occasions including for the aforementioned Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

STYLE Song.  Sammy Cahn and James Van Heusen wrote songs for Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964) which made excellent set pieces in that film and which also stood up well out of context.  “Style” was one such number.  Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra are bemused by Bing’s appearance as Allen A. Dale and the three sing the song whilst Bing tries various outfits.

SUNDAY, MONDAY OR ALWAYS Song.  Cinemagoers in the mid-1940s had two opportunities to hear this Johnny Burke-James Van Heusen composition in a Crosby picture.  Or three if you count the reprise featured in Dixie in 1943.  That film opened with Bing serenading Marjorie Reynolds in a garden setting and included a scene towards the end when Bing and his theatrical company performed it on stage.  It was again used as a song opener for Road to Utopia (1946) when Bing was heard singing it off screen before making his debut with a couple of girls. 

SUNSHINE CAKE Song.  And yet again Burke and Van Heusen came up trumps when they wrote this one to be featured in Riding High (1950).  This was the one that the audience whistled when they left the cinema.  It is a sheer delight to watch the sequence where Bing, Coleen Gray and Clarence Muse sing it in a sequence where the accompaniment consists of whatever kitchen utensils are to hand.

SURE THING, A Song.  That same picture (Riding High) opened with Burke and Van Heusen’s “A Sure Thing”.  Bing sang it whilst dressing for dinner.  By no means the best of B and Van H, but pleasant enough.

SUTHERLAND, A. EDWARD (1895-1973) Eddie Sutherland directed three Crosby films.  They were Too Much Harmony (1933), Mississippi (1935) and Dixie (1943).  Mississippi was the most typical assignment of the three because Sutherland brought out the best of W. C. Fields’ variable film performances.  Sutherland entered movies from vaudeville and was a stuntman before turning director in the mid-1920s.  He rarely tackled major screen dramas but was regarded as reliable and efficient.  Those qualities no doubt impressed Bing who hired him to direct the ‘Bing Crosby Production’ of Abie’s Irish Rose in 1946.  By then Sutherland must have realised that at the age of fifty he was unlikely to be offered prestige assignments.  He only directed one more film - Bermuda Affair in 1957 - and spent the rest of his working life directing and producing for television.

SUTTON, GRADY (1906-1995) Character actor who mainly played comedy roles.  In 1933, he could just about pass as a freshman in College Humor (1933).  Four years later, he had graduated and played the son of J. P. Todhunter, the pineapple company head.  Finally, in 1954, he was the guest of Major General Tom Waverly in White Christmas.  In that triple bill of Crosby pictures, it is doubtful if he uttered more than a dozen lines.  Although he had top billing in a series of early thirties comedy shorts, he never made it beyond playing slow witted yokels in a film career that ended with Rock ‘n’ Roll High School in 1979.  His biggest breaks occurred when he was the butt of W. C. Fields humour from The Pharmacist (1932) through to The Bank Dick (1940).

SWANEE RIVER (aka “The Old Folks at Home”) Song.  This Stephen Foster composition created a rift between Bing and Lorenz Hart.  Hart and Richard Rodgers were contracted by Paramount to write the songs for Mississippi (1935).  Hart didn’t like it when Bing insisted that “Swanee River” was used in a sequence when Bing and a chorus of children perform it for General Rumford (Claude Gillingwater).  After recording the songs from Mississippi, Bing avoided recording any song with Hart lyrics until 1942.  That was the year before Hart died and it was a patriotic war time song (“The Bombardier Song”) which resulted in Bing’s change of h(e)art.  “Swanee River” was used again in Road to Rio (1948) when it was interpolated into “Apalachicola, FLA” as part of a comedy song routine performed by Hope and Crosby. 

SWEET IS THE WORD FOR YOU Song.  In Waikiki Wedding (1937), audiences had the opportunity of hearing this Leo Robin-Ralph Rainger song performed by the film’s two leads.  Bing sang it whilst on board a boat and Shirley Ross performed it in a sequence taking place the following morning.

But the most famous “sweet” song from that film was the Academy Award winning.....

SWEET LEILANI It was only at Bing’s insistence that it was included in the film.  Bing had heard it whilst taking a holiday with Dixie.  They were in Hawaii and met Harry Owens who fronted the orchestra at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel.  Owens used it as his signature tune, having composed it in 1934 when his daughter Leilani was born.  At first, Owens didn’t want the song to go out of his control.  He must have been pleased when the composer royalties started to arrive after it became Bing’s first million selling disc.  In the film, the song fulfilled its original purpose because Bing sang it to a little Hawaiian girl. 

SWEET POTATO PIPER Song.  A fun song written by Johnny Burke and James V. Monaco for Road to Singapore (1940).  Hope and Crosby resort to selling spot remover to natives and Bing sings “Sweet Potato Piper” to draw attention to their product.  In case you wondered, an ocarina is referred to as a sweet potato because of its shape.

SWERLING, JO(SEPH) (1893-1964) Screenwriter and playwright.  When Bing made his two Major Pictures Productions outside his Paramount contract, Jo Swerling worked on the screenplays of both.  He was assisted by William Rankin for Pennies from Heaven (1936) and by Richard Connell on Doctor Rhythm (1938).  Although he had worked on films since Ladies of Leisure (1930), Swerling’s best work came post-Crosby.  Alfred Hitchcock used him for the script of Lifeboat (1944) and Frank Capra hired him for It’s a Wonderful Life (1946).  Outside his work for Hollywood, Swerling co-wrote “Guys and Dolls” for the Broadway stage.

SWING LOW, SWEET CHARIOT Song.  Bing, playing Dan Emmett in Dixie (1943), is on a riverboat bound for New Orleans when he sings this traditional spiritual.  He had made a studio recording of the song for Decca in 1938.

SWING WITH BING It was Bing’s idea to make this golfing short.  John Scott Trotter accompanied Bing for the sole musical number in the film: “The Little White Pill on the Little Green Hill”.  The one-reeler was shot in January 1940 and distributed by Universal Pictures later that same year.

SWINGING ON A STAR Song.  Written by Bing’s regular movie songwriters Johnny Burke and James Van Heusen for the film Going My Way (1944), it has appeared on just about every “Best of Bing” compilation album since the demise of the 78.  To comply with the film’s plot requirements Burke and Van Heusen were asked to provide a song for Bing, which would be the equivalent of teaching the Ten Commandments in a rhythmic, amusing manner.  “It was a problem,” Van Heusen recalled.  “We struggled with it for days.  In the end, it was Bing who supplied the inspiration.  We were at his house for dinner and one of the boys was acting up.  Bing chastised him by saying, ‘What do you want to be - a mule?’  That sparked us off.”  The song’s placement in Going My Way comes after Rise Stevens, accompanied by the Robert Mitchell Boys’ Choir and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, sings “Going My Way” to four music publishers.  It is a Father O’Malley (Bing) composition.  The publishers don’t regard “Going My Way” as having a commercial future.  Then they hear “Swinging on a Star” and a deal is done.  The music publishers who recognise a hit when they hear one are named Burke, Van Heusen, Dolan (the film’s musical director) and Lilley (the film’s vocal arranger). 

SWITZER, CARL “ALFALFA” (1927-1959) Child actor who never managed the transition from a member of the Our Gang series to adult roles.  By the time Switzer began appearing in Crosby films his peak was passed.  He will always be remembered as a key member of the Our Gang comedy shorts.  He was a member of that kids series from 1935 until 1942 when his freckled face and squeaky off-key voice had a certain charm, which would never transfer to adulthood.  And so in 1943 he took on a minor role in Dixie.  The following year he made another brief appearance in a Bing picture when he played Herman Langerhanke in Going My Way.  By 1951, his role as a messenger in Here Comes the Groom was an indicator that he was all but forgotten.  He made a comeback of sorts in 1953 when he secured slightly more substantial work on The High and the Mighty and on Track of the Cat.  When no offers of further work came his way, he supplemented his income as a hunting and fishing guide in northern California.  A job as a bartender followed.  Washed up in his early thirties, he was shot at the beginning of 1959 following a drinking brawl over a $50 debt involving his partner from his hunting venture days.

SWOONER CROONER Cartoon.  In 1944, Frank Tashlin directed this 7-minute Academy Award nominated animated short. It depicted Bing and Frank Sinatra as roosters and humorously showed how singers could speed up production on the assembly line when American industry was geared up to boost output during wartime. 

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TAKES TWO TO MAKE A BARGAIN Song.  One of five songs written for Bing by Mack Gordon and Harry Revel to feature in Two for Tonight (1935), although the film’s plot would have us believe that the song was the work of the Crosby character.  Bing played a composer in the film.  The song was placed at the start of the film when Bing sang it as bailiffs were removing furniture from his domicile.

TAMIROFF, AKIM (1899-1972).  Character actor who was often given meaty parts.  He was in two Crosby pictures from the 1930s.  [Three if you count The Big Broadcast of 1936 (1935)]  They were Here Is My Heart (1934) when he played the manager of the upmarket Monte Carlo Hotel and Paris Honeymoon (1939) in the more substantial role of the mayor of the mythical town of Pushtalnick.  Born in Russia, but of Armenian extraction, Tamiroff’s heavy accent was incapable of eradication and he was usually seen playing slightly mysterious foreigners.  This did not prevent him from being nominated twice for Oscars as a support player.  The films were The General Died at Dawn (1936) and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943).  Unfortunately, Tamiroff took on just about every assignment he was offered and towards the end of his life he could be found popping up in obscure European dross.

TASHLIN, FRANK (1913-1972) Director and screenwriter.  It took Tashlin fifteen years of toying with Bing’s film career before he got serious.  Then most people wished he hadn’t bothered.  In 1944, Tashlin directed the cartoon short Swooner Crooner.  In 1947, he was one of four writers contributing to the screenplay of the all-star Variety Girl.  In 1952, he directed and co-wrote the screenplay of the Bob Hope comedy Son of Paleface, in which Bing made a gag appearance.  Finally, he produced and directed Say One for Me (1959) for Bing’s own production company.  He had successes as well as failures.  If you enjoy rock and roll music you will forgive him his flops because he produced and directed The Girl Can’t Help It (1956), the best rock ‘n’ roll film ever made.

TASHMAN, LILYAN (1899-1934) Actress.  She played Bing’s fiancée in Too Much Harmony (1933).   She took the part of a gold-digger and left Bing for Jack Oakie.  Tashman had made a successful transition from silents to talkies and was much in demand playing sophisticated or sarcastic blondes. She made just two more films after Too Much Harmony, both in 1934.  They were Wine Women and Song and Riptide.  She died after an operation to remove a tumour. 

TAUROG, NORMAN (1899-1981) Actor who turned to direction.  His acting career began in Hollywood in 1913 and his directorial work in 1928. His work with Bing was as director on We’re Not Dressing (1934), The Big Broadcast of 1936 (1935) and Rhythm on the Range (1936).  Two of those are held in high regard by Bing film watchers.  He had received an Academy Award for directing Jackie Cooper in Skippy (1931) and was in demand for lightweight comedies.  However some of his best work is untypical Taurog.  Boys Town (1938) and Young Tom Edison (1940) showed him capable of tackling drama.  Taurog was prolific, which is probably why his films were so variable in quality.  He was also seen as easygoing and Paramount made the most of his seemingly pliable nature by letting him work on several Martin and Lewis comedies in the 1950s and nine of Elvis Presley’s less memorable efforts in the decade following. 

TEAGARDEN, JACK [Weldon Leo Teagarden] (1905-1964). Trombonist, bandleader and vocalist.  He was all of those, plus actor in Birth of the Blues (1941).  As Pepper, he helped Bing fulfil an ambition to form a white jazz band.  In the film, he played a few jazz standards such as “Tiger Rag” and “Shine”.  His distinctive vocals worked well on “The Waiter and the Porter and the Upstairs Maid” when he joined Bing and Mary Martin.  Bing enjoyed working with Jack Teagarden, hence Teagarden’s regular guest appearances on Bing’s radio shows.  Before Teagarden formed his own band in 1939, he’d been in the employ of Ben Pollack and Paul Whiteman.  When he “disbanded” in 1946, it was to join Louis Armstrong’s All-Stars.  His alcoholism did not prevent him from returning to leading his own band in 1951, which he held together for the rest of his life. 

TEAMWORK Song.  Sammy Cahn and James Van Heusen wrote this for The Road to Hong Kong (1961).  The fact that it sounded like typical duet material for a Crosby-Hope routine from a 1940s Road picture meant it served its purpose.  The film opened with Bing and Bob performing the song on the stage of the London Palladium and more or less closed with Joan Collins joining the two for its reprise.

TED WILLIAMS AND FRIEND Film. In 1957, Bing joined forces with baseball legend Ted Williams to film an appeal on behalf of the Jimmy Fund, which raises funds to help the fight against children’s cancer. Every summer since the Jimmy Fund’s theatre programme started in 1949, participating movie theatres had shown a short film of the work being done at the Children’s Cancer Research Foundation (now known as the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute) in Boston. Then, an announcement was made asking if anyone would like to donate to the Jimmy Fund and this was followed by volunteers going around the theatre with canisters collecting from the audience money for cancer research and patient care. It may well be that Bing’s appeal was shown in conjunction with Man on Fire.

TEMPTATION Song.  Of all the songs featured in Going Hollywood (1933) “Temptation” was the one that had a certain future as a standard.  In 1976, when M-G-M compiled That’s Entertainment II following the success of its first musical compilation it was “Temptation” that was used as part of a Crosby sequence.  Composers Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown must have been pleased by the number of versions recorded over the years.  It cemented Perry Como’s claim as a class balladeer in the mid-1940s when it became a massive hit for him and the song was sufficiently robust to withstand a parody by Red Ingle and His Unnatural Seven a couple of years later.

TETZLAFF, TED [Theodore Tetzlaff] (1903-1995) Director of photography who became a fully-fledged director.  Tetzlaff was still a cameraman when he filmed two consecutive Bing pictures.  They were Rhythm on the River (1940) and Road to Zanzibar (1941).  Paramount had used him on its prestigious productions throughout the 1930s and immediately after Zanzibar allowed him to test the directorial waters by assigning him to World Premiere.  Unfortunately, before he could get into stride with his new career he was called to serve in the armed forces and had to start again as a cameraman in 1945 before directing Riffraff in 1947.  Prior to his retirement as a director at the end of the 1950s he made a further dozen pictures, the best remembered being The Window (1949).

THANKS Song.  Duetted by Bing and Judith Allen in Too Much Harmony (1933), Bing regarded “Thanks” as a musical career cornerstone and re-recorded it for his musical autobiography in 1954.  Written by Sam Coslow and Arthur Johnston it retained its Crosby link into the 1960s when son Phillip recorded it and used Bing to interject a few lines.  Dad’s involvement might have been to create publicity but the venture would have benefited by being kept secret.

THAT OLD BLACK MAGIC Song.  Now a Johnny Mercer-Harold Arlen standard but almost a missed opportunity for Bing.  It reached the screen in 1942 when it was featured in Star Spangled Rhythm.  Bing sang “Old Glory” in that all-star film and Johnnie Johnston bagged “That Old Black Magic”.  Two years later, it resurfaced in Here Comes the WAVES when Bing sang it in a stage show sequence.  However, record buyers had to wait a further thirty-two years before Bing made a studio recording of it.

THAT SLY OLD GENTLEMAN Song.  Johnny Burke and Jimmy Monaco had to provide a lullaby to fit into the plot of East Side of Heaven (1939).  “That Sly Old Gentleman” worked well on two counts.  Bing used it to sing Baby Sandy to sleep and it provided an appealing Decca side.  It was tailor made for Bing’s singing style, which probably accounts for the fact that I cannot trace any cover versions other than that by Val Doonican on his “Val Sings Bing” album.  When East Side of Heaven was represented in Bing’s musical autobiography “That Sly Old Gentleman” was the song he chose to re-record with Buddy Cole’s accompaniment.

THAT’S AN IRISH LULLABY Song.  Known to you and me as “Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral”.  It made audiences reach for their handkerchiefs in Going My Way (1944) when, to a simple music box accompaniment, Bing sang it and confirmed it was indeed a lullaby as it sent Barry Fitzgerald to sleep.  The words and music were by James Royce Shannon.  Director Leo McCarey selected the 1913 song for its sentimental qualities.  Audiences were eventually able to select from two versions of the song recorded by Bing for Decca.  The matrix from the 7th July 1944 session developed a fault and a new recording had to be made for subsequent issues.  A session on 18th April 1945 failed to provide an acceptable version but a return visit to Decca’s L.A. studio on 17th July resulted in a replacement with an identical arrangement.  Amalgamated sales of the two releases earned Bing a gold disc for one million sales.

THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT Film.  In 1974 Jack Haley Jr. strung together musical sequences from M-G-M films to celebrate and promote the 50th anniversary of the formation of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.  Bing was engaged as one of the narrators and he introduced the song “Going Hollywood” from his 1933 movie together with “Well, Did You Evah” and “True Love” from High Society (1956).  Or at least that was the case in the U.K.  In the U.S.A. “True Love” was omitted. 

THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT II (or TOO on some publicity material) Film.  The first That’s Entertainment made money.  After all production costs were minimal.  New material, which consisted in the main of narration or basic dance sequences, was filmed on the studio backlot with a minimum of production costs.  Naturally, a follow up was called for.  Haley once more selected the musical set pieces for inclusion.  This 1976 sequel contained no new Bing footage but did include two further song sequences from the films seen in the earlier compilation.  They were “Temptation” from Going Hollywood (1933) and “Now You Has Jazz” from High Society (1956). 

THAT’S FOR ME A Johnny Burke-James V. Monaco song.  The Basil Rathbone character’s song compositions were ghost written for him in Rhythm on the River (1940).  Mary Martin arrives at Rathbone’s apartment and she is asked to write lyrics for Bing’s new untitled composition, which she wrongly assumes has been written by Rathbone. She quickly dashes off the lyrics and sings “That’s For Me” for Rathbone.” Later when Bing and Mary are getting along well, he sings, “That’s For Me” to her claiming that he has written it. Miss Martin is disgusted by what she feels is a deception by Bing and storms off.  Before long, the misunderstanding is cleared up and Bing and Mary enter into a song-writing partnership together.

THERE’LL ALWAYS BE A LADY FAIR Song.  Bing never recorded this Cole Porter composition featured in the first Crosby Anything Goes (1936).  Had he made a studio recording for Decca it is unlikely it would have bettered the soundtrack version.  In the film, Bing is joined by the Avalon Boys Quartet and the prominent voice of Chill Wills within the quartet plus Bing’s interpolating vocals make it a joy to watch and hear.

THERE’S A FELLA WAITING IN POUGHKEEPSIE Song.  As you would expect from the lyrics, this Johnny Mercer-Harold Arlen composition from Here Come the WAVES (1944) is really Betty Hutton’s song in the film.  She sings it as part of a stage show with Bing and Sonny Tufts joining in at the song’s conclusion.  Bing’s Decca recording featured the Andrews Sisters.

THIS IS MY NIGHT TO DREAM Song.  This Johnny Burke-Jimmy Monaco song is the most romantic of the ballads featured in Doctor Rhythm (1938).  In a sequence set on the Honeymoon Ride at an amusement park, Bing expresses his feelings to Mary Carlisle in song.  The vocal chorus provided by other Honeymoon Riders make it a less than intimate experience.

THIS IS THE ARMY, MR. JONES Song.  In Blue Skies (1946), Bing sings an Irving Berlin medley to both entertain the troops and sell War Bonds.  “This is the Army, Mr. Jones” was sandwiched between “Any Bonds Today” and “White Christmas”. 

THREE BLIND MICE Traditional nursery rhyme.  Choir practice at St. Dominic’s did not limit itself to hymns.  When the Robert Mitchell Boys Choir was harmonising with Bing in Going My Way (1944) this ditty preceded “Silent Night” on practice night.

THREE LITTLE WORDS Song.  The Rhythm Boys sang this on the soundtrack of the Amos ‘n’ Andy feature Check and Double Check (1930).  On film however, the song is lip-synched by members of the Duke Ellington band and the Rhythm Boys are not seen.  The song’s oh so simple words and music earned a fortune for composers Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby.

TO SEE YOU IS TO LOVE YOU Song.  The love ballad from Road to Bali (1953).  Johnny Burke knew how to let Bing sing, “I love you” without using those three little words.  Music to Burke’s lyric came from partner James Van Heusen.  In the film, the song receives a Crosby reprise when Bing uses it to calm a gorilla.

TOBACCOLAND ON PARADE. Film. A 27-minute 1950 tobacco industry film in colour, which attempts to show why the tobacco industry is good for everybody in the United States of America! It makes sports more fun, it shows how important to commerce smoking is and it shows how tobacco is processed. The film finishes with a carton of Chesterfields being shown with the caption “Chesterfield Cigarettes – They Satisfy.” It would be very hard to stay awake all through it! Arthur Godfrey and Bob Hope are seen, Perry Como sings “Because” and at the very end, Bing is seen singing a short version of “Swinging on a Star” in front of a CBS microphone. The film was made by Louis de Rochemont (1899-1978) who was known for creating, along with Roy E. Larsen from Time, Inc., the monthly theatrically shown newsreels The March of Time. Bing appeared in a similar film for Chesterfield in 1951 called The Fifth Freedom.

TOBIAS, HARRY (1895-1994) Lyric writer.  Harry often worked with his brother, the better-known Charles, but the one Bing film song in which he had a hand was “At Your Command”, co-written by Rhythm Boys Barris and Crosby.  The evergreen for which Tobias is best-remembered is “Sweet and Lovely”, which had music by Gus Arnheim and Jules Lemare, and which Bing first recorded in 1931, the same year as he waxed “At Your Command”.

TODD, THELMA (1905-1935) Actress.  Thelma Todd’s penultimate film was Two for Tonight (1935).  That same year she made The Bohemian Girl.  Before that film was released, she was found in a parked car - dead of carbon monoxide poisoning.  No satisfactory explanation has been forthcoming regarding the circumstances surrounding the discovery of her body.  To see her films from the first half of the 1930s would reveal the characters she portrayed were wisecracking types without a care in the world.  In her only Crosby film, she played Lily Bianco.  Bing’s real love in Two for Tonight was Joan Bennett but due to a misunderstanding, common to light hearted musicals of the day, Miss Bennett thought that Bing had fallen for Miss Todd when he is seen rehearsing a love scene for a play with her.

TOMORROW’S MY LUCKY DAY Song.  When the Bing single “Straight Down the Middle” was released in 1958 it was coupled with a song written for a golfing short Bing made several years earlier.  Don’t Hook Now was produced in 1942 by Herbert Polesie and brother Everett. Bing’s regular songsmiths Burke and Van Heusen were commissioned to write the only song included in that one-reeler.  Bing sang it outside the Rancho Santa Fe clubhouse before teeing off. He also lip synched to the 1942 version of the song in the 1949 short Honor Caddie.

TONE, FRANCHOT (1905-1968) Actor.  Tone was second billed to Bing for Here Comes the Groom (1951).  He played the millionaire Wilbur Stanley who looked destined to marry Jane Wyman until Bing reappeared on the scene and proved that charm prevailed over wealth.  Tone and Crosby had received billing in 1942 for Star Spangled Rhythm although they did not share screen time together.  By 1951, Tone’s film career was winding down.  He had peaked in the late 1930s.  In 1937, he was placed 7th in the list of Hollywood’s top box-office stars.  Between making movies, Tone was busy sharing the marriage bed with actresses Joan Crawford (1935-1939), Jean Wallace (1941-1948), Barbara Payton (1951-1952) and Dolores Dorn-Heft (1956-1959).  Rather than end his acting days by lending his name to whatever exploitation pictures wanted his services he chose to appear in quality productions.  Hence he only made five films in the 1960s, the best one being Advise and Consent (1962), in which he played the American president.  He died of lung cancer.

TOO MUCH HARMONY Film.  The review in Variety called it “a backstage story without even the suggestion of a new idea.”  Bing played a Broadway performer who spotted Judith Allen when she was part of a small-time vaudeville act.  They fell for each other.  Complications arose because they were already involved - Judith Allen with Jack Oakie and Bing with Lilyan Tashman.  Joseph L. Mankiewicz was responsible for story and script.  He was a self-confessed Crosby fan and one of his after dinner party pieces was to give a passable impersonation of Bing.  He’d worked for Paramount since the silent days and in 1929 his name was attached to the film Close Harmony.  The plot of that film bears a passing resemblance to Too Much Harmony.  In an interview published in the New York Times dated 24 May, 1950, Mankiewicz revealed that he did not get his own way as far as the finer detail of the plot was concerned.  He had been summoned to the office of Paramount production chief Emanuel Cohen on the morning of July 3, 1933.  Shooting was to commence that day when he was informed that Cohen objected to Mank’s original plot, which depicted Bing initially falling for Lilyan Tashman.  Bing was already seen as having an audience out there, which expected him to behave in a certain way.  Tradition required leading men to be wooed by the girl.  Cohen wanted Bing to conform to the highest standards of American manhood.  Mankiewicz obliged and carried out a hurried re-write that allowed Miss Tashman to make the first romantic advances.  Despite Variety’s thumbs down the public loved the film when it opened in New York at the Paramount and broke the theatre’s box office record.  That record had been set three months earlier in the June of 1933 by College Humor, Bing’s first Paramount picture under a three-year contract with the studio.  By July, Too Much Harmony had begun a six week shoot.  With its release, Bing was being increasingly sought out for press interviews.  In September of 1933, he told a Los Angeles newspaper, “I don’t want stardom.  At least not in Too Much Harmony.  If a picture flops, they always want to blame it on the star and I haven’t enough to do in that picture to justify me taking the responsibility.  No, I don’t want to be starred and have everyone ridiculing me.”  The studio heads were unconcerned about Bing’s reservations.  By then he was already Going Hollywood, which had commenced production on August 30th.

TOO ROMANTIC Song.  Bing’s main romantic ballad from Road to Singapore (1940) by Johnny Burke and James V. Monaco was duetted with Dorothy Lamour and then performed solo. That latter version was particularly effective with Bing shown on board ship pining for Dottie.  Lamour made her own studio recording of the song as did the then Crosby wannabe Frank Sinatra. 

TOP O’ THE MORNING Film.  The law of diminishing returns had set in when Bing and Barry Fitzgerald were paired on film for the third time.  The thin plot concerned the stealing of the Blarney Stone.  The two people interested in its recovery are local police sergeant Fitzgerald and American insurance company investigator Bing.  Ann Blyth played Fitzgerald’s daughter and provided the obligatory love interest.  It was nothing like as successful as the Crosby-Fitzgerald team’s triumphs in Going My Way (1944) or Welcome Stranger (1946). The ‘Radio Times Film and Video Guide’ described it thus: “Slim musical heavily reliant on the charm and charisma of its diametrically opposed stars.  Rather tired and formulaic.”  One of the exhibitors in the U.S.A. who submitted his own review following the film’s rental was the manager of the Majestic Theatre in Clear Lake. He commented: “He (Bing) will be an also-ran if they don’t come up with a good one for him soon.”  The film clearly failed to do the expected business out in the sticks, where audiences were thought to be less discriminating.  It played for two midweek days in late February, 1950 at the Vacaville Theatre in Vacaville, California.  The manager there called it “another Crosby dud.  Bing had better come up with a good one pretty soon or even his old standby customers are going to look somewhere else for entertainment.”  Bing’s last film of the 1940s, his most successful decade, came at a time when his personal show business tide was turning.  Record sales would taper off.  Listeners to his radio shows would increasingly turn to television, the same medium that would siphon off cinemagoers.  Since 1944 Bing had topped the ‘Motion Picture Herald’s’ list of top ten box office stars.  In 1949, when Top o’ the Morning was a late summer release, Bing was displaced at the top of that list by Bob Hope.  And ‘Harvard Lampoon’ placed two recent Crosby films in their list of the worst films of 1949.  They were A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court and Top o’ the Morning.  Who should take the blame for this Crosby misfire?  Well, Bing personally selected David Miller as director of Top o’ the Morning.  Groucho Marx recommended him to Bing.  Miller had just completed what turned out to be the final Marx Brothers’ film.  It was Love Happy, the least revered of all the Brothers’ films.  When ‘Film Daily’ reviewed Top o’ the Morning at the time of its release, they mysteriously rated Miller’s direction as “suitable.”  The general opinion regarding Top o’ the Morning seems to be not one of Bing’s better lightweight musicals. 

TOP O’ THE MORNING Song.  Not the catchiest Johnny Burke-James Van Heusen film title song but worthy of study because of the Irish accent adopted by Bing.  During pre-production, the film was known as Diamond in the Haystack which would have required some ingenious rhyming couplets from Johnny Burke when he came to fashion a title song.  We first hear “Top o’ the Morning” sung by Bing during the film’s opening credits.  Bing later whistles and sings the song when he has a lead regarding the whereabouts of the stolen Blarney Stone.  Finally, the film reaches its happy conclusion with Bing, Ann Blyth and Barry Fitzgerald singing it before “The End” hits the screen.  There was a fair chance that moviegoers found the song going around in their heads when they departed the auditorium.

TOPS IS THE LIMIT was the title given to the 1936 version of Anything Goes to avoid it being confused with the 1956 remake when the former received screenings on television.

TOVER, LEO (1902-1964) Director of photography.  He was the man behind the camera for four Crosby films.  They were College Humor (1933), The Big Broadcast of 1936 (1935), Star Spangled Rhythm (1942) and Say One for Me (1959).  His career spanned silents (Fascinating Youth in 1926) to widescreen and colour.  His final film was A Very Special Favour released the year following his death.  Tover’s whole life was spent working in films, mainly at Paramount or 20th Century-Fox.  He began as a clapperboy when he was sixteen and remained in constant demand thereafter being nominated twice unsuccessfully for an Oscar for Hold Back the Dawn (1941) and The Heiress (1949).

TOYLAND BROADCAST Musical cartoon. In 1934, the aptly named duo of animators Harman-Ising (Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising) put Bing in a musical cartoon picture.  They were contracted by M-G-M to make a series of shorts called “Happy Harmonies” which were aimed at younger viewers.  One seven-minute cartoon was called Toyland Broadcast.  It depicts a toyshop coming to life with a toy soldier acting as compere for the performances by the toys of radio station ABC.  Bing appears as Jack-in-the box with the Boswell Sisters as the Doll Sisters in a performance of “Boop-oop-a-doo”.  They are accompanied by Paul Whiteman as Humpty Dumpty conducting the clockwork Sambo Jazz Band.

TOYLAND PREMIER Cartoon. This was the only Universal animated short that depicts Bing.  Universal were attempting to emulate the success of Walt Disney’s “Silly Symphonies” series by engaging Walter Lantz to produce a number of “Cartune Classics”.  Because Disney had exclusive rights to use the recently perfected three-colour Technicolor process for cartoons, Universal made the best they could of the two colour process that they used for King of Jazz (1930).  Lantz provided six titles in the “Cartune Classics” series and the one which concerns us here is Toyland Premier, released in the U.S.A. in time for Christmas, 1934.  The story has Santa in tears because he has no traditional red suit to wear, a situation soon remedied by elves.  To celebrate he throws a party and invites Bing, Shirley Temple, Laurel and Hardy and others.  The guests have to perform a party piece.  Bing “boo-boo-boos” and later serenades Santa with a snippet about Christmas gift lists.

TRAVERS, HENRY (1874-1965) Actor.  Third billed in The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945), Travers played Horace Bogardus, the villain of the piece.  If he got his hands on St. Mary’s he would demolish it.  Travers reached Hollywood via the British stage and then Broadway.  Studios knew casting him would add dignity to their productions.  He was nominated for an Oscar as best supporting actor for his performance in Mrs. Miniver (1942) losing out to Van Heflin in Johnny Eager. After his Crosby picture, he made the film which guaranteed he would be seen year after year.  That was It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) in which he played ‘Clarence’ and which seemingly will continue to have a wonderful life ever after on the big screen, the small screen and DVD.

TREACHER, ARTHUR (1894-1975) English-born actor who specialised in portraying butlers.  In Anything Goes (1935), Arthur Treacher fell for Ethel Merman.  Playing the part of Sir Evelyn Oakleigh, Treacher was, for once, taking on a part of master rather than servant.  He played Jeeves in two mid-thirties films and lent his meticulously mannered characterisations to films for the next thirty years.  He quit movies after Mary Poppins (1964).  He then lent his name to a fast food fish and chip chain in the USA.  I was once in Detroit when hunger got the better of me whilst I was browsing in an out-of-town shopping mall.  All the usual outlets like McDonalds, Subway and so on were to hand but I decided that I’d go for a touch of class.  If Arthur Treacher put his name to fish and chips then a treat was bound to be in store.  I was wrong.

TREMAYNE, LES (1913-2003) Actor.  In a part that might have been lifted from a melodrama staged by an early touring company, Les Tremayne played Harry LaMaise in Say One for Me (1959).  In that film, he was the father of Holly (Debbie Reynolds).  He made sacrifices to put his daughter through college.  She let him believe that she was a secretary when she was, in fact, a nightclub singer and dancer.  And of course father was in declining health when he was subjected to deceit.  English born Tremayne never really made it in films.  For every recognisable title in his filmography, such as The Fortune Cookie (1966), you encounter such obscure releases as Strawberries Need Rain (1970) and Snakes (1974).

TROTTER, JOHN SCOTT (1908-1975) Bandleader.  John Scott Trotter was in his late twenties when he began an association with Bing that lasted throughout Bing’s peak years as a recording artiste and actor.  JST had proved his skills as a pianist and arranger when he worked for Hal Kemp.  When he decided to go it alone he formed an association with American Decca and provided definitive arrangements to hundreds of Bing’s studio and radio recordings.  He had links with five Crosby pictures during the early years of his association with Bing.  They were:

· Pennies from Heaven (1936) - musical arrangements for Bing’s songs

· Doctor Rhythm (1938) - musical arrangements for Bing’s songs

· East Side of Heaven (1939) - orchestrations jointly with Frank Skinner

· Swing with Bing (1940) - music by John Scott Trotter and his Divot Diggers

· Rhythm on the River (1940) - orchestrations and playing himself in the film.

 John Scott Trotter’s musical partnership with Bing benefitted both immeasurably.

TRUE LOVE Song.  This was Bing’s last million selling single, released in 1956 to tie in with the film High Society (1956).  Grace Kelly, who joined Bing on vocals, was also the recipient of a gold disc.  The song’s romantic staging on board the yacht ‘True Love’ was ideal for presenting Cole Porter’s last hit composition.  Its reprise in the film is less romantic when rendered by an inebriated Grace Kelly.

TUFTS, SONNY [Bowen Charlton Tufts III] (1911-1970), It’s obvious that Tufts had to change his forenames if only so that they would fit on a cinema marquee.  His real name sounded as though he belonged to a prominent banking family.  As indeed he did.  He trained as an opera singer and appeared in two Broadway musicals at the end of the 1930s.  In 1939, he made his film debut in Ambush and by 1944 he was sufficiently established as an actor to be third billed as Windy Smith in Here Come the WAVES.  In the film, Bing and Sonny are buddies who share an interest in the same girl - Betty Hutton.  Both are satisfied with the film’s outcome when the pair of them manage to win the favours of Miss Hutton because she played a dual role in the movie.  Paramount used Tufts in their next film to feature Crosby, Duffy’s Tavern (1944), when he had the opportunity to join Bing and several cast members in a parody of “Swinging on a Star”.  Tufts was never taken seriously as an actor.  He received a number of parts in the 1940s playing easygoing leading men.  He played the Swell Guy in the 1947 film of the same name but his off-screen reputation tagged him as a somewhat different person.  He was sued by two showgirls for allegedly biting their thighs and he developed a drink problem.  He tried to make a film comeback several times but his final photoplay confirms his lack of success.  It was called Cotton-pickin’ Chickenpickers (1967).

TUGEND, HARRY (1897-1989) Screenwriter.  The stories or screenplays he wrote for films, which involved Bing showed that Harry Tugend could vary his approach according to Paramount’s need.  He wrote the story of Birth of the Blues (1941) and then fashioned it into a screenplay with the assistance of Walter DeLeon.  The following year he was responsible for the screenplay of Star Spangled Rhythm with four other writers penning the film’s sketches.  His last Crosby associated work was to provide the story of Road to Bali (1953) in collaboration with Frank Butler.  He also produced that last Paramount Road picture.  He had a parallel career during his Hollywood years.  For radio, he wrote and directed many of Fred Allen’s shows.  When television became a major entertainment force, he switched his allegiance from the big to the small screen.  His lightweight writing style was ideal for the variety and situation comedy shows which mushroomed during the 1950s.  His last two films as screenwriter were Pocketful of Miracles (1961) and Who’s Minding the Store (1963).

TUNBERG, KARL (1909-1992) Screenwriter.  Like Harry Tugend, Karl Tunberg turned out lightweight screenplays and ventured into film production.  Tunberg, who was born in Spokane, entered films in 1937.  He co-wrote the screenplay of Dixie (1943) with Darrell Ware.  He wrote the screenplay for two films released in 1959, which were untypical of his earlier, lighter work.  They were Libel, a British film, and Ben Hur, a major biblical epic.  He retired after his work on How Do I Love Thee (1970).

TUTTLE, FRANK (1892-1963) Director.  Frank Tuttle directed half a dozen Bing films beginning with The Big Broadcast (1932).  That was followed in quick succession by Here Is My Heart (1934), Two for Tonight (1935), Waikiki Wedding (1937), Doctor Rhythm (1938) and Paris Honeymoon (1939).  That working relationship with Bing in the 1930s must have had an influence on the Crosby acting style.  In 1945, Bing employed him as director on the Crosby produced The Great John L.  At that time, Tuttle would have been unaware that the demand for his directorial services was set to diminish because of his communist party membership.  He made one film in France in 1950 with only four more pictures following in the 1950s before his career expired.

TWENTIETH CENTURY-FOX Hollywood film studio.  Fox released two ‘Bing Crosby Productions’ towards the end of Bing’s acting career: Say One for Me (1959) and High Time (1960), and whilst they had him on the lot they gave him a celebrity bit in Let’s Make Love (1960).  That studio also employed him for his acting swansong, Stagecoach, released in 1966.  Fox had distributed some short films in which Bing appeared when he was under contract to Paramount for his feature film appearances, but when Paramount lost his services in the mid-1950s it was Twentieth Century-Fox that realised there was still box-office clout in the Crosby name.  The studio came into being in 1935 as the result of a merger between the long established Fox company and the recently formed Twentieth Century.  During the war years, they released some glorious Technicolor musicals whilst the other studios stuck to monochrome.  In the 1950s, they tried to combat the threat of television by releasing their films in CinemaScope, a format which television was incapable of matching.  When Rupert Murdoch acquired the studio as part of the News International group, he saw a working relationship with television as a means of ensuring the ongoing profitability of Twentieth Century-Fox.  Although the studio avoided a name change, it is very much a part of the 21st century’s entertainment scene.

TWO FOR TONIGHT Film.  Paramount acquired the rights to an unproduced play by Max Lief involving an impoverished family with one of three half-brothers having ambitions to be a songwriter.  George Marion, Jr. and Jane Storm worked it up as a Crosby vehicle with Harry Ruskin providing additional dialogue.  It was Ruskin who provided most of the dialogue for Universal’s King of Jazz a few years earlier.  Two for Tonight was shot during June and July of 1935 and received its New York premiere at the end of August.  Of course, Bing was cast as the ambitious composer.  In the film, he discovers that he is making overtures to a deaf song publisher.  Salvation comes from the sky when a plane piloted by leading lady Joan Bennett lands in a tree occupied by a vocalising Crosby.  By way of recompense, Miss Bennett arranges for Bing to write a play to be staged by her producer.  The unimaginative Crosby writes about his encounter with Bennett and the play (and film) achieves a happy ending because it includes a romance with the lady.  Mack Gordon and Harry Revel wrote five songs for the film: “Two for Tonight”, “Takes Two to Make a Bargain”, “From the Top of Your Head”, “I Wish I Were Aladdin” and “Without a Word of Warning”.  All this in a major feature film with a running time of one hour and one minute.  Frank Tuttle directed after Lewis Milestone and Leo McCarey both declined - possibly after they read the script.  ‘Variety’, the show business bible, didn’t think much of the end product.  That paper’s review read: “No wow...the songs, the fetching title, the competent cast and mostly Crosby will have to offset the other deficiencies.”  The film took a year to travel from North America to the British Isles.  The journey must have done it good because the usually caustic Graham Greene liked what he had seen and told the readers of ‘The Spectator’, “a very well written and amusing entertainment.” Sandwiched between Mississippi and Anything Goes, Two for Tonight did the business for Paramount, which was no surprise to the studio whose books showed Bing had been their biggest box-office draw since the previous year.

TWO FOR TONIGHT Song.  The Mack Gordon-Harry Revel title song from the 1935 movie.  Bing sings it over the film’s credit titles and it becomes the title of the musical play he writes. 

TWO PLUS FOURS Short film.  This one-reeler released by RKO-Pathe in 1930 provided an opportunity to glimpse Bing and the Rhythm Boys in a programme filler “starring” Nat Carr and Thelma Hill.  The Rhythm Boys are augmented by other members of the cast for the song “The Stein Song”, which tops and tails the film.  A Crosby film that can only appeal to completist viewers.

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UNITED ARTISTS Production, releasing and distribution company.  U-A was not a studio, more a facilitator for movie talent.  It was the company selected to release the Bing Crosby Production’s The Great John L. and Abie’s Irish Rose in the mid-1940s.  The company was founded in 1919 by Charles Chaplin, D.W. Griffith, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks.  It was logical that Fairbanks released Reaching for the Moon (1930) through U-A.  Other United Artists distributed films with a Crosby connection are the 1942 short Don’t Hook Now, the Bob Hope comedy Alias Jesse James (1959) and the last Hope and Crosby Road picture, Hong Kong, in 1962.  The company had its fair share of financial difficulties.  Its main advantage was that it did not carry the burden of studio overheads but when location shooting became the trend this apparent benefit was eroded.  United Artists also attracted product, which could be termed difficult in entertainment terms.  Its biggest setback was the $40 million catastrophe Heaven's Gate (1980).  Only the distribution of the James Bond and Rocky series of films allowed its continued survival. 

UNIVERSAL Film studio.  Universal was the company that gave the world the first glimpse of Bing Crosby when it produced and distributed King of Jazz (1930).  Ten years later the company distributed two Crosby features made outside Bing’s Paramount contract: East Side of Heaven (1939) and If I Had My Way (1940).  Sandwiched between those two films was the golfing short Swing with Bing (1940), made for Universal.  The studio was founded in 1912.  In 1946, there was a merger with International Pictures, resulting in Universal International.  The company became a subsidiary of MCA (Music Corporation of America) in 1962.  MCA also controlled Decca records.  U-I was the first Hollywood studio that realised that television was the future and from the mid-1950s began to turn out programming intended for home consumption.

URECAL, MINERVA (1894-1966) Character actress.  In The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945) it is Minerva Urecal, playing the part of a housekeeper, who greets Bing on his arrival at the run down parish of St. Mary’s.  For most of her career on film, she was given a few lines in subsidiary roles.  It was only when she was cast in the television series “Tugboat Annie” that she gained a part that ran to more than one page of dialogue.

VAGABOND KING, THE When I saw Bing Presents Oreste in 1957 I regarded it as a rather long trailer.  The Vagabond King (1956) was playing at the local village cinema the following week and Bing was doing his best to persuade us to see Oreste Kirkop attempting to be the next Mario Lanza.  He was billed simply as Oreste and played the part of French medieval poet and rebel Francois Villon.  It was obvious that Paramount had severe doubts about the appeal of Oreste and asked Bing to do them a favour by plugging the singer in an extended “coming shortly” screen filler.  Even Bing’s support could not prevent Oreste’s early retirement after The Vagabond King bombed.

VAN HEUSEN, JAMES [Edward Chester Babcock] (1913-1990) Composer.  Jimmy Van Heusen was part of Bing’s Hollywood musical career from 1941 until 1964.  Or, if you prefer, from “It’s Always You” in Road to Zanzibar to “Don’t Be a Do-badder” in Robin and the 7 Hoods.  He collaborated with Johnny Burke until the latter retired and then wrote music for an equally gifted wordsmith in Sammy Cahn.  The full Crosby related work is as follows:

· Road to Zanzibar (1941) It’s Always You; You Lucky People You; African Etude

· Don’t Hook Now (1942 short film) Tomorrow’s My Lucky Day

· Road to Morocco (1942) Road to Morocco; Ain’t Got a Dime to My Name; Moonlight Becomes You

· Dixie (1943) Sunday, Monday or Always; She’s from Missouri; A Horse That Knows the Way Back Home; If You Please

· Going My Way (1944) The Day After Forever; Going My Way; Swinging on a Star

· Here Come the WAVES (1944) Moonlight Becomes You

· Duffy’s Tavern (1945) Swinging on a Star [parody]

· Road to Utopia (1946) Sunday, Monday or Always; Goodtime Charlie; It’s Anybody’s Spring; Welcome to My Dreams; Put It There Pal

· The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945) Aren’t You Glad You’re You

· Welcome Stranger (1947) Smile Right Back at the Sun; Country Style; My Heart Is a Hobo; As Long As I’m Dreaming

· Variety Girl (1947) Harmony

· Road to Rio (1948) Apalachicola, FLA; But Beautiful; You Don’t Have to Know the Language

· A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1949) If You Stub Your Toe on the Moon; Once and for Always; Busy Doin’ Nothing

· Top o’ the Morning (1949) Top o’ the Morning; You’re in Love with Someone

· Riding High (1950) Sure Thing; Someplace on Anywhere Road; Sunshine Cake; The Horse Told Me

· Mr. Music (1950) And You’ll Be Home; High on the List; Wouldn’t It Be Funny; Accidents Will Happen; Wasn’t I There; Life Is So Peculiar

· You Can Change The World (1951 short film) Early American

· Road to Bali (1953) Chicago Style; Hoot Mon; To See You Is to Love You; The Merry-go-run-around

· Little Boy Lost (1953) A Propos de Rien; Cela M’est Egal; The Magic Window

All the foregoing with lyrics by Johnny Burke.  From hereon, Sammy Cahn is Van Heusen’s collaborator.

· Anything Goes (1956) Ya Gotta Give the People Hoke; A Second-hand Turban and a Crystal Ball

· Say One for Me (1959) Say One for Me; I Couldn’t Care Less; The Secret of Christmas

· High Time (1960) The Second Time Around

· Let’s Make Love (1960) Incurably Romantic

· The Road to Hong Kong (1962) Teamwork; The Road to Hong Kong; Let’s Not Be Sensible

· Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964) Style; Mister Booze; Don’t Be a Do-badder

When Van Heusen teamed with Cahn, he produced more hit material for Frank Sinatra than he did for Bing Crosby.  “Love and Marriage”, “The Tender Trap”, “High Hopes” and “My Kind of Town” became Sinatra standards.  After 1964, the kind of films for which Van Heusen had been hired were no longer being made and his career in Hollywood ended around the time Bing called it quits with the movies.

VARIETY GIRL Film.  This turned out to be the last of Paramount’s portmanteau films.  Made in the winter of 1946, it sat on the shelf until the late summer of 1947.  It was made as a tribute to the Variety Club of America, a charity formed for the purpose of helping underprivileged children.  The film’s flimsy plot has leading lady Mary Hatcher seeking a career in Hollywood and coming into contact with dozens of stars.  Not surprisingly, they all seem to be contracted to Paramount including the studio’s top money spinners, Crosby and Hope.  They appear in a golfing scene and sing “Harmony” but by the time the film reached the U.K. that song had been edited from the release print.

VERA-ELLEN [Vera-Ellen Westmeier Rohe] (1921-1981) Dancer who acted.  Vera-Ellen had been in Hollywood films for ten years when she was fourth billed as Judy Haynes in White Christmas (1954).  She was part of the musical quartet comprising Crosby, Clooney and Kaye and was the only one of the four unable to carry a tune.  Her musical contributions were supplied by Trudy Stevens.  She rose to fame in two of White Christmas co-star’s Danny Kaye films, making her debut in Wonder Man (1945) and following it with The Kid from Brooklyn (1946).  Her dancing skills were recognised by Hollywood’s two leading male dancers and she found herself partnering Gene Kelly in On the Town (1949) and Fred Astaire in The Belle of New York (1952).  She knew when to quit the movies and retired from the screen whilst she was still at the top of her craft after making Let’s Be Happy in the U.K. in 1957.

VERMILYEA, HAROLD (1889-1958) Character actor. When cast as the Chamberlain of the European country, which formed the setting for The Emperor Waltz (1948), Harold Vermilyea did not have to struggle to find an appropriate foreign accent as he was of Russian descent.  In fact, casting directors probably used him solely because he spoke in a “not from these parts” accent.  Vermilyea had been an operatic singer before he took up acting in films.

VOGEL, PAUL C. (1899-1975) Director of photography.  Vogel was the man behind the camera for High Society (1956).  His brother was president of MGM, which possibly accounted for Paul C’s long association with that studio.  He photographed the MGM picture Angels in the Outfield in 1951 in which Bing had a short scene.  He won an Academy Award for his black and white photography for Battleground (1949).  He made the transition to colour around about 1953 and subsequent credits included The Student Prince (1954), The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962) and Return of the Seven (1966).

VON TILZER, HARRY VON (1872-1946) Composer.  One of his most famous compositions was “Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie”, which Bing duetted with Mary Martin in Birth of the Blues (1941).  After quitting the circus Harry Von Tilzer decided to write popular songs and he was one of the first residents of New York’s Tin Pan Alley.  He wrote dozens of songs, few of which are still sung today.  His biggest hit in Great Britain was “Under the Anheuser Bush” which he wrote in 1903 and which was retitled “Down at the Old Bull and Bush” for pub sing-songs.  His brother was Albert Von Tilzer (1878-1956), composer of “I’ll Be with You in Apple Blossom Time”.

VYE, MURVYN (1913-1976) Actor.  Vye played Merlin in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1949) and Prince Ken Arok in Road to Bali (1953).  In the latter film, he was the reason Bing and Bob travelled to Bali in response to the Prince’s advertisement for deep sea divers.  Vye came to Hollywood via Broadway, his first film being Golden Earrings (1947).  Often cast as a heavy in pictures he showed his lighter side when he became a regular on television’s “The Bob Cummings Show” in 1961.

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WAGNER, ROBERT (1930-    ) Actor.  He played the “juvenile” lead in Say One for Me (1959).  As Tony Vincent, he was depicted as a man of dubious morals when the film began.  A man with such a reputation could never win the heart of leading lady Debbie Reynolds so when the film ended with them as husband and wife we knew he had reformed.  Wagner’s career in films began in 1950 when 20th Century-Fox made full use of his handsome good looks and easygoing manner by casting him in The Happy Years.  He matured into an assured leading man with acting talent.  By 1954, he was playing the title role in Prince Valiant.  His Crosby picture came at a time when his contract with Fox was about to end and in the early 1960s he made films in Italy and the U.K. in order to maintain his reputation as a male lead whose name above the title could attract audiences.  By the 1970s, his return to the Hollywood mainstream found him taking main supporting roles in films such as The Towering Inferno (1974) and Airport ‘79 Concorde (1979).  By then he had figured out that he could extend his career indefinitely by switching to television.  Series such as “It Takes a Thief”, “Colditz” - made in the U.K. - and “Hart to Hart” kept him in the public eye.  So too did his offscreen romances.  He married Natalie Wood twice and, following Wood’s death by drowning, the actress Jill St. John.

WAIKIKI WEDDING Film.  This 1937 Crosby picture resulted in Bing’s first million selling record - “Sweet Leilani”.  The Harry Owens composition also won the Academy Award for the best film song of that year.  The film’s running time was one minute short of an hour and a half.  Bing sang four songs interwoven into a plot that cast him as the publicity man for the Imperial Pineapple Company.  That firm ran a Miss Pineapple contest and Bing fell for the winner, Shirley Ross.  The film provided Kraft Music Hall listeners with the opportunity to see Bing’s radio show comic relief, Bob Burns.  And the twenty-one year old Martha Raye also provided comic relief at a time when her film career was taking off.  Another performer to look out for was Anthony Quinn in a minor role. He would have made his mark eventually, but having Cecil B. DeMille as a father-in-law must have made Paramount more kindly disposed to finding parts for him.  For some reason the critics liked Waikiki Wedding but were afraid to say so outright.  Variety said: “Shouldn’t have any trouble getting by...it’s saccharine celluloid, sugar-coated.”  Leslie Halliwell grudgingly conceded, “light-hearted, empty-headed musical very typical of this studio...except that this one is quite good.”  By now, there was strong evidence that film exhibitors in the British Isles were regarding Bing as possessing strong box-office drawing power. In Liverpool, when the Majestic cinema opened its doors for the first time on October 2, 1937, Waikiki Wedding was selected for the cinema’s launch programme.

WAIT TILL THE SUN SHINES, NELLIE Song.  Written by Andrew Sterling and Harry Von Tilzer, it received two performances in Birth of the Blues (1941).  Mary Martin sang it as a solo and then to an enthusiastic audience when she was accompanied by Bing and a jazz band.  “Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie” is one of those songs that has always seemed part of an earlier era and yet which sounds fresh each time it is revived either on screen or disc.  Even Buddy Holly recorded it because it was his mother’s favourite song.  In 1952, 20th Century-Fox made a family film about a small town barber and titled it after the song. 

WAITER AND THE PORTER AND THE UPSTAIRS MAID, THE Song.  Also from Birth of the Blues (1941).  This time Bing and Mary Martin were joined by Jack Teagarden in a scene staged at the Lafayette Cafe.  It was a typical Johnny Mercer composition with both words and music holding the attention from start to finish.  Unlike “Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie”, “The Waiter...” is forever associated with the trio that introduced it in Birth of the Blues.  Anyone else tackling it would be bound to be compared unfavourably with Crosby, Martin and Teagarden.

WALBURN, RAYMOND (1887-1969) Actor.  He played two substantial roles in Crosby films.  He was J. Hastings Cook, the father of Dorothy Lamour, in Dixie (1943) and “Professor” Pettigrew, a down on his luck racetrack punter in Riding High (1950).  He entered films in 1929 and by the mid-1930s he was much in demand for his ability to play either pompous characters or amiable rascals.  When the studio production lines began to wind down, Walburn left Hollywood, his last film being The Spoilers (1955).

WALKER, HAL (1896-1972) Director.  Hal Walker made only nine films, four of which involved Bing, and he is more or less forgotten today because after directing Road to Bali in 1953 he left feature films to direct the “I Married Joan” television series and never returned to big screen Hollywood.  His other Crosby associated credits are for Duffy’s Tavern (1945), Out of This World (1945) and Road to Utopia (1946).  Paramount employed him as an assistant director before assigning him to his first two Bing related films.  That studio saw him as a specialist in light, undemanding work and the only films he made between his two Road pictures were four Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis comedies.

WALKER, VERNON L. (1894-1948) RKO studio’s special effects expert.  I can’t say I really noticed any special photography effects in The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945) (perhaps it was the scene with the kitten?) and yet that was the on-screen credit given to Vernon Walker for the film.  He’d been with RKO since 1933 and his first three pictures for that studio undoubtedly made use of his special effects skills.  They were Flying Down to Rio (1933), Son of Kong (1934) and The Last Days of Pompeii (1935).  He rounded off his career at RKO with Sinbad the Sailor, made the year before his death.

WALSH, RAOUL (1887-1980) Director.  He directed just one Crosby film, Going Hollywood (1933).  Bing enjoyed the experience of working with Walsh.  The fun on the set can be detected in the parody “Rollicking, Rockaway Raoul” which Bing privately recorded as a tribute/memento.  Studio head Jack L. Warner summed up the director’s approach to movies when he said: “To Raoul Walsh, a tender love scene is burning down a whorehouse.”  Walsh entered Hollywood movies in 1912 as an assistant to D. W. Griffith.  He soon made his mark as an action director and before working on Going Hollywood he’d directed over sixty films, quite often providing a screenplay and acting as producer as well.  Walsh retired from filming after directing A Distant Trumpet in 1964.

WALSTON, RAY (1914-2001) Actor.  As Phil Stanley, Ray Walston played the alcoholic pianist accompanying Robert Wagner’s Tony Vincent in Say One for Me (1959).  It was a typical Walston performance where he breezed through the role with the apparent minimum of effort and yet gave a convincing portrayal of his character.   He even sang “The Secret of Christmas” solo and later ‘accompanied’ the Bing, Robert Wagner and Debbie Reynolds version.  He could never be described as a vocalist and yet it was his performance in two Hollywood musicals of 1958 that first brought him to the attention of moviegoers: South Pacific and Damn Yankees.  He came to films following his stage and TV work and made his screen debut in Kiss Them for Me (1957).  By the time he made Paint Your Wagon (1969) he was better known for his television series “My Favourite Martian” which ran from 1963 to 1966.  A feature film based on the series and featuring Walston was made in 1999.

WALTERS, CHARLES (1911-1982) Director who specialised in musicals.  Up until the time he directed his only Crosby movie Walters couldn’t put a foot wrong.  Preceding High Society in 1956 was Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) [dance director], Easter Parade (1948), Lili (1953) [for which he received an Academy Award nomination] and The Tender Trap (1955).  But by the time work on High Society was finished so was the Hollywood musical.  When the genre was attempting a revival in the early 1960s Walters was given both Jumbo (1962) and The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964) to direct.  They were O.K. but failed to sell many tickets.  He retired from films at the same time as Cary Grant, their final film together being Walk, Don’t Run (1966).

WANGER, WALTER [Walter Feuchtwanger] (1894-1968) Producer.  He produced Going Hollywood in 1933.  He seemed to turn out one high profile film every decade.  There was the Marx Brothers comedy The Cocoanuts in 1929, the John Wayne western Stagecoach in 1939, the drama loosely based on the marriage of Bing and Dixie Lee, Smash-Up, in 1947, the intelligent science fiction thriller Invasion of the Body Snatchers in 1956 and the financially disastrous Cleopatra in 1963.  He was sacked as producer of that final epic and then withdrew from filmmaking.  His own life story would make a good film.  He was with American Army Intelligence during World War 1.  He was production chief at Paramount, Columbia and M-G-M before going independent.  He married actress Joan Bennett in 1940 and served a prison sentence for shooting her lover in a jealous rage some ten years later. 

WARNER BROTHERS PICTURES INC. Film studio.  Bing was in one film released by Warner Bros.  That was Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964).  There was the Warner Bros. short The Shining Future, which was released in 1944 but this was not so much entertainment as an enticement to buy war bonds.  Four Warner brothers formed the studio in 1923 and established the right to control a major studio when they gambled on introducing sound with The Jazz Singer in 1927.  In the 1930s, Warners were noted for their gangster pictures which featured James Cagney, George Raft, Humphrey Bogart and Edward G. Robinson.  Edward G. returned to Warners for a surprise bit part in Robin and the 7 Hoods.  But by the time Robin was made several of the Hollywood studios had lost their pioneering founders and were controlled by conglomerates.  Warner Bros. merged with Seven Arts and in 1989, a merger with the publishing group Time Inc. saw the formation of Time-Warner.  At the dawn of the 21st century, the internet service America Online merged with the film studio and AOL Time-Warner was the result. AOL and Time Warner formally split in 2009 after almost 10 years as one company.

WARREN, HARRY [Salvatore Guaragna] (1893-1981) Composer.  Twenty years separated the Bing Crosby films to which Harry Warren made a contribution.  Please (1933) included “You’re Getting to Be a Habit with Me”, for which Al Dubin provided the lyrics and Just For You (1952) on which Leo Robin put words to the full song score.  The Bing vocals from Just for You were “I’ll Si-Si Ya in Bahia”, “Call Me Tonight”, “Zing a Little Zong” (duetted with Jane Wyman), “The Live Oak Tree”, “Just for You” and “On the Ten-Ten from Ten-Ten-Tennessee” (duetted with Ben Lessy).  By the time he worked on Just for You Warren had a major body of work on his c.v.  There were the Warner Bros. musicals from the 1930s like 42nd Street (1933) and Dames (1934).  Then he worked on the Glenn Miller films for 20th Century-Fox in the early 1940s: Sun Valley Serenade (1941) and Orchestra Wives (1942).  His Paramount work following Just for You found him an ideal writer of melodies for Dean Martin on the Martin and Lewis comedies The Caddy (1953) and Artists and Models (1955).  The 1975 biography of Warren, “Harry Warren and the Hollywood Musical”, written by Tony Thomas, prevents any under-estimation of Warren’s contribution to popular music.

WASHINGTON, NED (1901-1976) Lyricist.  The prolific Washington has only one entry in the Bing Crosby film song discography.  That is “I Don’t Stand a Ghost of a Chance” featured in the short Please (1933).  It is a significant composition because the melody was a collaboration between Bing and Victor Young.  It was to be 1940 before Ned Washington made an unforgettable impact on listeners.  He co-wrote the songs for the Disney cartoon feature Pinocchio with Leigh Harline.  Disney used him again the following year on Dumbo.  His ballad for the film High Noon guaranteed the film’s success when the title song, with music by Dimitri Tiomkin, received frequent airplay throughout the summer of 1952.  Tex Ritter and Frankie Laine had the hit recordings.

WASN’T I THERE Song.  A forgotten (and forgettable) Burke and Van Heusen song written for Mr. Music (1950).  Bing, as composer Paul Merrick, wrote it for himself to sing in the film.  Celebrating finishing the score for a new show, Bing sang a few lines of the song before being joined by Peggy Lee in a rendition of “Life is So Peculiar”. 

WATKIN, PIERRE (1887-1960). Character actor who was one of a stable of tall, distinguished-looking and sophisticated character actors whom Hollywood kept steadily employed playing political leaders, army officers, lawyers, wealthy businessmen and the like.  Pierre Watkin had bit parts in three Bing films; Waikiki Wedding (1937), Road to Singapore (1940) and Rhythm on the River (1940) where he played Uncle John and is seen early on in the film at a party.  He was in films for twenty years without anyone paying much attention to him.  He is probably most memorable as Mr. Skinner, the banker, in the W. C. Fields comedy The Bank Dick (1940), wherein he uttered the now-classic line “Allow me to give you a hearty handclasp.” He retired from the big screen in the mid-1950s.

WATSON, LUCILE (1879-1962) Actress.  The Emperor Waltz (1948) concludes with Bing winning Joan Fontaine and Roland Culver having to settle for Lucile Watson.  Culver was Count Von Stolzenberg-Stolzenberg and Watson plays Princess Bitotska.  It was no happy ending for Culver because Lucile Watson was usually given film parts due to her haughty presence and plain looks.  She cropped up playing matronly types in pictures from 1934 (What Every Woman Wants) through to 1951 (My Forbidden Past).  Her career highlight occurred in 1943 when she received an Academy Award nomination playing Bette Davis’ mother in Watch on the Rhine.

WEBSTER, PAUL FRANCIS (1907-1984) Lyric writer.  He put the words to Sammy Fain’s melody for the title song from the 1957 drama Man on Fire.  Bing is heard singing the song over the opening credits.  Not exactly the sort of tune that goes around and around in your head after leaving the cinema, even when the Ames Brothers provide a reprise over the closing credits. Frankie Vaughan made a U.K. cover version.  Webster wrote lyrics to order.  Those orders usually came from film producers who hoped for extra publicity if a title song made the hit parade.  It was not always a simple task.  “Love is a Many Splendored Thing” was not a catchy in-your-face sentiment.  But he managed to turn “Friendly Persuasion” into a less than obvious statement of love and “April Love” was a traditional romantic ballad.   Webster’s Hollywood career began in 1936 with songs for the Bobby Breen musical Rainbow on the River.  His main successes were in the 1950s.  He helped the singing career of Doris Day with the songs for Calamity Jane (1953) and Mario Lanza when Lanza provided the singing voice of Edmund Purdom for The Student Prince (1954).  His song “The Shadow of Your Smile” from The Sandpiper (1965) won him an Oscar and found itself a place in the Great American Songbook.

WELCOME STRANGER Film.  This Paramount picture was filmed during the spring of 1946 and received its premiere the following summer.  The director was Elliot Nugent who was an actor in the silent era.  To prove he could still emote, he cast himself as a doctor in the film.  He had a scene where he was called upon to examine Barry Fitzgerald and he used Billy Wilder to direct him in that brief sequence.  The film paired Crosby and Fitzgerald for the second time, no doubt in the hope that audiences would support it as well as they had the 1944 Going My Way.  That must be the reason it generated rentals in excess of $6 million in North America, because it fell short of the standard of the earlier film in both story and song content.  Bing approved Joan Caulfield as his leading lady and the second female lead, Wanda Hendrix, seemed destined for a successful career in films.  Unfortunately, things did not pan out for her.  It was only her third film part, having recently been signed by Paramount.  Her 1949 marriage to Audie Murphy blighted her career.  Thereafter she appeared in the sort of action film in which Murphy excelled but which made little use of acting talent.  When I looked up the reviews garnered by Welcome Stranger, I was pleased to see the critics were fairly satisfied with a routine Crosby picture.  The ‘Radio Times Film and Video Guide’ said, “all very welcome entertainment, with the male stars bringing a little edge to the easy-going, sometimes soppy proceedings.”  ‘Speed’s Film Review’, published shortly after the film was released, stated, “Pleasing, warm-hearted, sentimental little comedy with Bing Crosby acting with all his usual easy charm.”  And those two reviews are indicators as to why the film disappoints me.  The references to “easy-going” and “easy charm” show Bing coasting along instead of adding something extra to the proceedings.  However, the pre-sold popularity of the Bing-Barry team worked for the accountants.  Welcome Stranger ranked seventh in Variety’s list of box-office champions of 1947.

WELCOME TO MY DREAM Song.  Dorothy Lamour is serenaded by Bing with “Welcome to My Dream” in the film Road to Utopia (1946).  Whilst Bing gives his all vocally, Dottie takes the opportunity to steal half of a map identifying a gold mine.  The song is the sort of romantic ballad that Burke and Van Heusen could write to order for Crosby pictures.

WELD, TUESDAY [Susan Ker Weld] (1943-    ) Actress.  Sexy young thing who never seemed to realise her potential as she entered middle age.  She was 16 when she was cast as Joy Elder in High Time (1960).  Third billed as the girlfriend of the character played by Fabian, the two were intended to appeal to teenage ticket buyers who couldn’t quite relate to the film’s Crosby-Maurey romance.  By then Tuesday Weld had been in films for two years, her best role to date being in The Five Pennies (1959).  Some good starring parts followed including The Cincinnati Kid (1965), Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977) - for which she received an Academy Award nomination - and Who’ll Stop the Rain (1978).  She was married to Dudley Moore from 1975 to 1980 and following her divorce, she never managed to re-establish her prominence as a versatile and capable actress. 

WELL, DID YOU EVAH! Song.  It was one of several musical highlights in High Society (1956).  Crosby and Sinatra sang the Cole Porter composition when both acted slightly inebriated.  The song was given a looser interpretation than was the case when it was first performed in the 1939 Broadway hit “Du Barry was a Lady”.  Porter amended the lyrics for High Society by removing out of date references and providing light banter between the two vocalists (e.g. “you are called the forgotten man”).  When I bought the Capitol 78 release, I was disappointed to find that the end of the song had been removed to fit the limited running time of the shellac single.

WE’LL MAKE HAY WHILE THE SUN SHINES Song.  Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown wrote it for Going Hollywood (1933) and it featured, appropriately enough, in a sequence taking place on a Hollywood soundstage.  Bing and Marion Davies sang it on film and Bing made a studio recording for Columbia whilst the film was still in the editing stage. 

WE’RE NOT DRESSING Film.  This was the third production under Bing’s contract with Paramount Pictures.  It was shot over a seven-week period during the early part of 1934.  The shooting schedule included two weeks location filming. Several scenes were photographed on Catalina Island.  This was a generous time scale at the time considering it was more of a domestic drama than an epic with a cast of hundreds, but Paramount set the project up to succeed in a big way.  The studio made sure that the film would have a wide appeal by casting Carole Lombard, Ethel Merman, Leon Errol, Burns and Allen and Ray Milland in support.  They dusted off the script of a previous hit, “Male and Female”, which Cecil B. DeMille had filmed in 1919.  That production was based on J.M. Barrie’s “The Admirable Crichton”, a strong story that would stand frequent revival.  Norman Taurog, one of Paramount’s respected directors of lightweight movies, was assigned to the film and Mack Gordon and Harry Revel were commissioned to write half a dozen songs suitable for Bing.  Finally, the film was edited to a 77 minute running time.  With all that talent and a timeless plot the film could not miss for either the studio or Bing.  Which is why Bing made his debut on the list of top ten box office stars for 1934 in seventh place.  When We’re Not Dressing was given a release in the U.K. in the winter of 1934 it was supported by Success at Any Price, a drama starring Douglas Fairbanks Jnr. and Genevieve Tobin.  That film was by no means a ‘B’ picture.  Those were value for money days as far as moviegoing was concerned.  If you saw the film when it received its Liverpool premiere at the Paramount cinema during the week commencing 12th November 1934, you would have seen the two feature films, a newsreel and a stage show comprising Peggy Cochrane and the 16 Halliwell Girls performing rhythmic dances.  Plus a playlet featuring Karino with Vadeo and Herbs called “An Episode of the East”.  And if you went early in the day you could probably get in for a tanner!

WE’RE ON OUR WAY TO BENSONHURST Song.  Bing and Dick Stewart duetted this in the Sennett short Billboard Girl (1931).  The two were on their way to college in a car at the time.  The song was sung to the tune of the nursery rhythm “Pop Goes the Weasel”.  Forty years on Bing included the nursery rhyme in one of his medley albums for Warner Bros. Records.

WERE YOU SINCERE? Song.  Also featured in Billboard Girl, Jack Meskill and Vincent Rose composed it as a love ballad for Bing.  But because it was used in a Mack Sennett short it turned up in a comedy sequence.  That involved Bing singing it to the person he believed to be his girl when it happened to be her brother dressed in his sister’s clothes.  Bing’s 1931 studio recording for Brunswick treated it with reverence.

WESTMORE, BUD (1918-1973) Make-up artist.  Bud Westmore received credit for make-up on Bing’s 1936 film Rhythm on the Range, but the next entry shows that this was more of an apprenticeship exercise for the eighteen year old.

WESTMORE, WALLY (1906-1973) Make-up artist.  Wally Westmore became Bing’s regular make-up man from 1942 onwards.  The Crosby films on which he worked to powder our man’s nose and straighten his hairpiece were:

· Holiday Inn (1942)

· Road to Morocco (1942)

· Star Spangled Rhythm (1942)

· Dixie (1943)

· Going My Way (1944)

· Here Come the WAVES (1944)

· Blue Skies (1945)

· Road to Utopia (1946)

· Welcome Stranger (1947)

· The Emperor Waltz (1948)

· Road to Rio (1948)

· A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1948)

· Top o’ the Morning (1949)

· Riding High (1950)

· Mr. Music (1950)

· Here Comes the Groom (1951)

· Just for You (1952)

· Road to Bali (1953)

· Little Boy Lost (1953)

· White Christmas (1954)

· The Country Girl (1954)

· Anything Goes (1956)

The Westmore family had representation in Hollywood’s major studios during the production line years.  Father George emigrated from England to California and worked on Rudolph Valentino.  With the advent of the sound era, George used his personal success to obtain make-up jobs for his six sons.  (The other four were Mont, Perc, Em and Frank.)  It is said that hairstylists and make-up personnel were privy to more first-hand Hollywood scandal and gossip than the partners of the stars they beautified.  However, only one Westmore, Frank, wrote an autobiography and he did not work on the Paramount lot.

WESTON, PAUL (né Wetstein; 1912-1996) Pianist, arranger, composer, and conductor who worked in music and television from the 1930s to the 1970s. He was working freelance for the Bob Crosby Orchestra in the early 40s. When Bob Crosby’s band was hired for his brother Bing’s film, Holiday Inn, this took Weston to Hollywood and into film work. For Holiday Inn, he was an orchestrator and for Road to Morocco he was an uncredited music arranger. He married Jo Stafford in 1952 and worked with Bing on The Christmas Sing with Bing radio shows.

WE’VE GOT ANOTHER BOND TO BUY Song.  Jimmy McHugh and Harold Adamson wrote this fund-raising ditty for Bing to sing in the World War II short Hollywood Victory Caravan (1945). Bing did not make a studio recording of the song.

WHAT CAN YOU DO WITH A GENERAL? Song.  Bing posed this question via a television sequence towards the end of White Christmas (1954).  The General in question was Major General Tom Waverly (Dean Jagger), who had been commanding troops on Christmas Eve, 1944, the setting for the film’s opening.  Like all songs from the film, “What Can You Do with a General” was composed by Irving Berlin.

WHAT WOULD SHAKESPEARE HAVE SAID? Song.  Oscar Levant accompanied Bing on the piano when the latter sang it as a demo in Rhythm on the River (1940).  It is then performed at a party by Lillian Cornell to demonstrate that Oliver Courtney (Basil Rathbone) had not lost his composing talent.  The “real” composer was Bing.  The real, real composers were Johnny Burke and James V. Monaco.  It was not selected by Jack Kapp for Bing to record when a studio session of the film’s songs was scheduled but a good quality soundtrack recording has been issued.

WHAT’LL I DO Song.  Recorded by Bing for the film soundtrack of Blue Skies (1946), this was one of the Irving Berlin compositions, which did not make it to the film’s final print.  Once again, a soundtrack version has been made available.  Bing finally got around to making studio recordings of the song in the 1960s.

WHAT’S COOKIN’, DOC? Cartoon.  Made by Warner Bros. in 1942, this Bugs Bunny cartoon has a sequence set at an Academy Awards ceremony.  Bugs, voiced by Mel Blanc, impersonates Bing. It cleverly blended live action with animation. Bugs Bunny is convinced he’ll be honoured as best actor and does imitations of Bing, Bette Davis and Edward G.  But the winner is James Cagney, a Warner Bros. star.

WHAT’S UP, DOC? A Looney Tunes cartoon by Warner Bros. Pictures in 1950 to celebrate Bugs Bunny’s 10th birthday that year, in which he recounts his life story to a reporter from “Disassociated Press”. As usual, Mel Blanc voices Bugs in this short, and based on other cartoons, it appears most likely that Dick Bickenbach voiced Bing. Bing is seen alongside Eddie Cantor, Jack Benny and Al Jolson as out-of-work actors on a bench in Central Park. 

WHEELER, LYLE R. (1905-1990) Art director.  Wheeler received co-credit with Leland Fuller for his work on Say One for Me (1959).  At the time, Wheeler was at the pinnacle of a career which saw him win five Oscars in all starting with Gone with the Wind (1939).  He was also Art Director on Let’s Make Love (1960) in which Bing made a cameo appearance. More remarkably, during the 1950s he had been nominated for an Academy Award every year but one - 1957.  His final Academy Award nomination for that decade came the year of Say One for Me for the film Journey to the Centre of the Earth.  The next year he retired from heading the art department of 20th Century-Fox, a post he had held since 1944.

WHEN IRISH EYES ARE SMILING Song. Bing recorded this sentimental ballad by Ernest Ball, Chauncey Olcott and George Graff jr. in 1946.  Three years later, it was featured in Top o’ the Morning (1949), when Bing sang it to a five year old moppet before setting out for Cork to trace the missing Blarney Stone. 

WHEN I TAKE MY SUGAR TO TEA Song.  Bing sang this Irving Kahal, Pierre Norman and Sammy Fain song on film during the year it was composed.  We hear it at the start of the Mack Sennett short Dream House (1931) when Bing sings it whilst preparing to meet his date. The same sequence was incorporated into the compilation film Road to Hollywood in 1946.  Bing waited until the 1950s to feature it regularly on radio with accompaniment from the Buddy Cole Trio. 

WHEN THE FOLKS HIGH-UP DO THE MEAN LOW DOWN Song.  Irving Berlin didn’t always turn out masterworks.  At least Bing couldn’t take all the blame when he was joined by Bebe Daniels and June McCloy to perform the song in the lounge of an ocean liner for the film Reaching for the Moon (1931).

WHEN THE MOON COMES OVER MADISON SQUARE Song.  Supposedly composed by Bing and Mary Martin according to the plot of Rhythm on the River (1940).  When Bing sings it for a song publisher the song is dismissed as being too like the work of songwriter Oliver Courtney (Basil Rathbone) for whom Bing fronts as a ghost writer.  In reality it was written by Johnny Burke and James V. Monaco.

WHERE IS CENTRAL PARK Song.  Johnny Burke and James V. Monaco wrote this for Bing to sing in Sing You Sinners (1938).  Bing made a recording and it must have looked a certainty to be featured in the picture because the song was assigned a matrix number (79398-1).  Then it was dropped.  It was not the strongest song written for the film and Bing never made a studio recording of the song for Decca.

WHERE THE BLUE OF THE NIGHT MEETS THE GOLD OF THE DAY Bing’s signature tune.  It made its celluloid debut in 1932 when it was the main song in the Sennett short Blue of the Night.  It was already popular and acknowledged as being the property of Bing Crosby.  As such, it neatly tied up the film’s plot with Bing convincing a policeman that he was who he said he was by singing the song, which he co-wrote with Roy Turk and Fred E. Alhert.  The sequence was included in the 1949 compilation film Down Memory Lane.  When Bing’s film career was being built by Paramount Pictures they cast him in the 1932 feature The Big Broadcast where he sang his signature tune at the film’s commencement.  Bing recorded the song four times for Decca, the 23rd November, 1931 version being the one that should be your desert island selection.

WHIFFENPOOF SONG, THE Song.  Bing recorded this George S. Pomeroy, Ted Galloway and Meade Minnigerode composition in 1947 and featured it on screen in 1950 in Riding High and three years later in Road to Bali.  On both filmic outings, it was used to amuse.  In the first film Bing, Raymond Walburn and William Demarest sing it in the hope of being thrown out of a restaurant before it is revealed that they cannot pay for their food.  In Bali, Bing and Bob are in Australia and sing a few lines of “The Whiffenpoof Song” in a gag sequence where a field of sheep provide the “baa-baa-baas”.

WHISTLER AND HIS DOG, THE Song.  Bing whistled this Arthur Pryor song with confidence as he entered the Schonbrunn Palace together with his dog in an early sequence in The Emperor Waltz (1948). Later in the film, he whistles it again as he leaves the Emperor’s presence.

WHITE CHRISTMAS Film.  At the time of its release in 1954, this was Paramount’s most expensive film musical and Bing’s highest grossing movie.  It was Paramount’s most ambitious project of 1953, being budgeted at $4million.  Full use was made of four of Paramount’s soundstages.  The film’s advance publicity was taken care of by Irving Berlin’s title song, which had become the best-selling recording of all time as recorded by Bing.  The film’s appeal was strengthened by movie buffs wanting to take a look at the VistaVision process developed by Paramount.  And Danny Kaye was still riding high in the popularity stakes when he took on the role of Bing’s buddy after Fred Astaire and then Donald O’Connor became unavailable.  In a shrewd business deal Kaye joined Bing and Irving Berlin in a profit sharing arrangement which gave them 70% of net takings.  In addition, Berlin received a fee of $300,000 for the use of his music.  Michael Curtiz could have also taken a cut but opted for a flat $175,000 as director.  Rosemary Clooney was paid $5,000 per week.  The film’s other seasonal song apart from the title song was “Snow”, which was sung on screen by the film’s four stars, Crosby, Kaye, Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen, although Vera-Ellen was dubbed by Trudy Stevens.  Berlin realised that the film would benefit by having a new winter-type song and raided his bottom drawer for a discarded manuscript from his 1950 Broadway hit “Call Me Madam”. Originally titled “Free” that song was dropped from “Call Me Madam” when audiences failed to respond to it.  Berlin substituted “You’re Just in Love”, which turned out to be the show’s hit song.  In the U.S.A, White Christmas received its New York premiere at Radio City Music Hall on October 14, 1954.  Its opening day receipts set a record for the time of $25,000.  In the U.K., it was a 1955 hit, finishing number two at the box-office for that year, the number one film being The Dambusters.  It had a major re-release in the USA in 1961 and in December 2008, it was shown at selected cinemas in the UK to sell-out audiences. Once the primary life of White Christmas as a cinema attraction was exhausted it began new lives on television, video, DVD and now Blu-ray.  An excerpt from the book “The A-Z of Television” by Willis Hall and Bob Monkhouse, which was published in 1971 deserves the last word:

Christmas is a three day television festival dedicated to the birth of Bing Crosby. In order to celebrate and commemorate the event, old Bing Crosby movies are screened on television without cessation for three solid days.  Appropriately enough, the most popular old Bing Crosby movie on television is called “White Christmas”.

WHITE CHRISTMAS Song.  Introduced by Bing in the 1942 film Holiday Inn it became the title of a Paramount Picture twelve years later.  In between times Bing performed it as part of a medley in the 1945 film Blue Skies.  The song content of all three films had words and music written by Irving Berlin.  For Holiday Inn, it was showcased in a cosy scene where Marjorie Reynolds shared vocals.  For the 1954 film, Bing provided a solo performance before it was reprised by the film’s four principal actors.  Apart from “Amazing Grace” by Steve Turner, “White Christmas” would seem to be the only other popular song, which has been the subject of a book.  That was “White Christmas - The Story of a Song” by Jody Rosen (2002).

WHITEMAN, PAUL (1890-1967) Bandleader, composer, arranger and violinist.  He starred in the film, which introduced moviegoers to Bing: King of Jazz (1930).  By then he had already provided the listening public with the opportunity to hear the Crosby voice via phonograph recordings and radio.  King of Jazz was a Whiteman showcase.  His subsequent appearances were limited to guest shots in Thanks a Million (1935), Strike up the Band (1940), Lady, Let’s Dance (1944), Atlantic City (1944), Rhapsody in Blue (1945) and The Fabulous Dorseys (1947).  This is not the place to debate whether or not Whiteman was the king of anything, least of all jazz. 

WHITING, RICHARD A. (1891-1938) Composer.  It was towards the end of his life that Richard Whiting had two of his songs featured in Crosby movies.  Both had lyrics by Leo Robin.  The first, “Sailor Beware”, came from Anything Goes (1936).  It was followed the same year by “I Can’t Escape from You”, which Bing sang in Rhythm on the Range.  Whiting arrived in Hollywood in 1928, when talking pictures were creating an instant demand for new vocal material.  Some of his most memorable songs were written in collaboration with Johnny Mercer like “Too Marvellous for Words” and “Ride, Tenderfoot, Ride”.  One of the finest interpreters of his songs was his daughter, Margaret.

WHOLLY SMOKE Cartoon. Frank Tashlin was behind this Warner Bros. cartoon of 1938.  Its theme was tobacco smoking and “starred” Porky Pig, who came into contact with caricatures of Bing as well as the Mills Brothers, Cab Calloway, Rudy Vallee and the Three Stooges. 

WHO’S AFRAID OF THE BIG BAD WOLF Song.  We hear just a snatch of this Ronnell-Frank Churchill composition when Bing includes it in a medley known as “I Positively Refuse to Sing” which was featured in We’re Not Dressing (1934).  The song became popular during the American Depression after its inclusion in the Walt Disney animated short Three Little Pigs (1933).

WICKES, MARY [Mary Isabelle Wickenhauser] (1910-1995) Actress. She played the switchboard operator in White Christmas (1954) who gave Rosemary Clooney the wrong impression regarding Bing’s motive for appearing on television.  She was usually a wisecracking busybody in productions as varied as The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942) and The Music Man (1962).  The Disney studio was always on the lookout for slightly eccentric, recognisable character actors and they used her to their advantage in the likes of Napoleon and Samantha and Snowball Express, both released in 1972.

WILCOXON, HENRY [Harry Wilcoxon] (1905-1984) Actor.  He played Sir Lancelot in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1949).  It was a typical role for Wilcoxon, who moved to Hollywood after seven years on the London stage.  His early film parts will give you an idea as to how casting directors saw him.  He played Marc Anthony in Cleopatra (1934), Richard the Lionhearted in The Crusades (1935) and Major Duncan Heyward in The Last of the Mohicans (1936).  He was married for a time to Joan Woodbury, who had a small role in Blue Skies (1946).  He was a close friend of Cecil B. DeMille and in the 1950s was involved in the production of The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), The Ten Commandments (1956) and The Buccaneer (1959) as well as appearing in the first two.  Rather than quit show business he took on parts that were not worthy of him, his last two film appearances being in Caddyshack (1980) and Sweet Sixteen (1981).

WILDER, BILLY [Samuel Wilder] (1906-2002) Writer and director.  It was as a writer that Billy Wilder first played a part in advancing Bing’s film career when he provided a story written in collaboration with Jacques Thery that became the basic plot of Rhythm on the River (1940).  He first directed Bing without credit in a scene for Welcome Stranger (1947).  That came about because the film’s assigned director, Elliot Nugent, wanted to act in a sequence when he played the part of a doctor examining Barry Fitzgerald.  And so an obliging Wilder took charge for half an hour or so.  Three months later Wilder was in total charge for The Emperor Waltz (1948).  Wilder did not feel that the Crosby feature played a significant part in his directorial career even though he was also responsible for the film’s screenplay in tandem with his long-time collaborator Charles Brackett.  Certainly coming immediately after his Academy Award winning The Lost Weekend (1945) and immediately before A Foreign Affair (1948) for which he received an Academy Award nomination as co-writer, The Emperor Waltz seems a somewhat lacklustre affair.  But even Wilder on a bad day turned out films which are watchable half a century later.  His artistic and popularity peak was at the end of the 1950s when Some Like It Hot (1959) was followed by The Apartment (1960).  His last film was Buddy Buddy (1981) but the next twenty years found him readily available for making acerbic quips about latter day Hollywood.  There are half a dozen biographies detailing his career.  Most are peppered with Wilder anecdotes.  The best book to date is “Conversations with Wilder” by Cameron Crowe, published in 1999.

WILLIAMS, RHYS (1897-1969) Character actor.  It was Rhys Williams, in the role of Dr. McKay in The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945) that told Father O’Malley (Bing) that Sister Benedict (Ingrid Bergman) was suffering from tuberculosis.  Because he came to Hollywood from Wales, director John Ford took advantage of his accent by casting him in How Green Was My Valley (1940).  Yet it was western films that kept Rhys Williams in irregular employment.  He can be seen in The Kentuckian (1955), The Fastest Gun Alive (1956) and The Sons of Katie Elder (1965).

WILLIAMS, SPENCER (1889-1965) Composer who was actually born on Basin Street in New Orleans.  He wrote the music to Roger Graham’s words for “I Ain’t Got Nobody” in 1915 and Bing sang it on screen in Paris Honeymoon (1939).  Williams was a much-travelled man.  He moved from New York to Paris in 1925 when he was Josephine Baker’s piano accompanist.  He spent time in Sunbury, Middlesex, where he formed a music publishing company.  Before returning to Paris in 1932 to work with Fats Waller he lived for a while in Stockholm.  He settled in Paris for twenty-five years before returning to the U.S.A. in 1957.  Almost all of Spencer Williams’ hit songs predate his wanderings.  Those still remembered in the twenty-first century include “I Found a New Baby” (1919), “Everybody Loves My Baby” (1924) and “Basin Street Blues” (1928).

WILLIAMS, TED (1918-2002) was an American professional baseball player, and manager. Williams played his entire 19-year Major League Baseball career as the left fielder for the Boston Red Sox and was regarded as one of the greatest hitters in baseball history. In 1957, he made a short film with Bing called Ted Williams and Friend to raise money for The Jimmy Fund to help the fight against children’s cancer.

WILLS, CHILL (1903-1978) Singer turned character actor.  Once you have heard Bing and The Avalon Boys singing Cole Porter’s “There’ll Always Be a Lady Fair” in Anything Goes (1936) any other version pales by comparison.  In part, that is because of the group’s leader and bass vocalist, Chill Wills.  The quartette appeared in several westerns up to 1938 when Wills decided to concentrate on a career as character actor.  He worked almost exclusively in cowboy pictures and received a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his performance in The Alamo (1960).  Perhaps it was his frequent appearances in horse operas that won Wills the job of providing the voice of Francis, the Talking Mule, in that comedy film series.  Unfortunately, by the time a record company signed him to make his first singing album in 1975 his voice had lost the appeal it held when he worked with Bing forty years earlier.

WING, TOBY [Martha Virginia Wing] (1915-2001).  Actress.  Like Bing, she made a transition from Mack Sennett shorts to Paramount features.  She played the friend of Margie ‘Babe’ Kane (Bing’s girl) in the Sennett short Blue of the Night (1932).  Admittedly, the Crosby Paramount films featured her in bit parts.  For the record, they were College Humor (1933) and Too Much Harmony (1933).  The final Crosby-Wing link was the short Star Night at the Cocoanut Grove (1935) where she is introduced as a member of the audience.  Toby Wing’s problem seemed to be that she was tremendously photogenic but was unable to sustain her appeal when on screen.  She happened to be under contract to Paramount at the same time as Marlene Dietrich.  Dietrich’s daughter said: “Toby walked into a room and every man in the place would turn and stare.  Mother hated her for that reason.”  Eventually Toby Wing felt Hollywood had ignored her for too long and she went to New York to appear on Broadway in “You Never Know”.  It made no impact.  She decided to try the movies again but this time under the name Linda Dale.  She was cast in Marines Come Thru (1943).  No further offers followed and it was her final film.  For half a century, she was forgotten.  She was not listed in any film reference books or encyclopaedias and it was not until she was interviewed for the 1998 documentary Busby Berkeley - Going Through the Roof that film buffs recognised her as one of the chorus girls from several Warner Bros. musicals during 1933 and 1934. 

WINNINGER, CHARLES (1884-1969) Actor.  In If I Had My Way (1940), Charles Winninger played Joe Johnson, the ex-vaudevillian whose show business colleagues agreed to appear at the re-launch of the restaurant which Bing’s friend Axel (El Brendel) had acquired.  It was a kindly act, the sort of thing we expected of Winninger, the genial senior citizen who you could always trust whether that was in Showboat (1936), State Fair (1945) or The Sun Shines Bright (1953).  I never saw his final film, The Miracle of Santa’s White Reindeer (1963) but I just know that whatever he did to the animal will be all right by me.

WITH EVERY BREATH I TAKE Song.  Kitty Carlisle is on the receiving end of Bing’s musical declaration in Here Is My Heart (1934).  Leo Robin and Ralph Rainger wrote it to order for the film and Bing liked it sufficiently to make it his sole musical contribution to the short Star Night at the Cocoanut Grove released the following year.

WITHERSPOON, CORA (1890-1957) Character actress.  Cora Witherspoon did not play the part of likeable ladies in her twenty year film career.  Matronly and domineering, her characters never figured in popularity polls.  So in Just for You (1952) we are pleased that Jordan Blake (Bing) dismisses her from her job as governess to Babs Blake (Natalie Wood) when, as Miss Agevine, she takes part in a drunken brawl.  It proved to be her final appearance on film. 

WITHOUT A WORD OF WARNING Song.  The main love ballad from Two for Tonight (1935).  Bing sang it twice to Joan Bennett to let her know he cared.  He also sang it twice for Decca, in 1935 and again in 1951, so he must have found it appealing.  Like the other songs from Two for Tonight it was written by Mack Gordon and Harry Revel.

WOOD, NATALIE [Natasha Gurdin] (1938-1981) Actress. She played Bing’s daughter in Just for You (1952) by which time she was a veteran of half a dozen films, having made her screen debut in Happy Land (1943).  She first made an impact as a child star in Miracle on 34th Street (1947).  By her mid-teens she had made the successful transition to playing “grown-ups”, as evidenced by her role in Rebel Without a Cause (1955), for which she received an Academy Award nomination.  Two further nominations followed, the first in 1960 for Splendour in the Grass, the other four years later for Love with the Proper Stranger.  There are several biographies, which detail her marriages to Robert Wagner (twice) and Richard Gregson, plus her affairs with, amongst others, Frank Sinatra, Nicholas Ray and Raymond Burr.  None of them provide a satisfactory explanation of the circumstances surrounding her death by drowning after falling from a yacht.

WOODS ARE FULL OF CUCKOOS, THE Cartoon. Released by Warners on 4th December 1937, it was about a radio show called “Woodland Community Swing” and included caricatures of radio stars doing their turns.  Walter Finchell is commentator, Louella Possums the reporter and Fred McFurry, W. C. Fieldmouse and Bing Crowsby the performers. 

WOODS, DONALD [Ralph L. Zink] (1906-1998) Actor.  Canadian born Woods had played leading roles in Hollywood productions such as A Tale of Two Cities (1935) before he was relegated to supporting roles, two of which were in Crosby pictures.  The first was If I Had My Way (1940) when he played Bing’s work colleague and the father of Gloria Jean.  Ten years later the parts offered to him were shrinking when he appeared in Mr. Music.  In that one, he was Tippy Carpenter, the millionaire admirer of Ruth Hussey.  After Bing serenaded the Hussey character with “High on the List” it was Woods who sent a bottle of champagne to their table.  By then he was looking to television for regular employment and he was in three series, the last, and best known, being “Tammy” in 1965-1966. 

WOODS, HARRY [Harry MacGregor Woods] (1896-1970) Composer.  In the early thirties Harry Woods part wrote two Crosby film songs.  “Lovable”, with lyrics by Gus Kahn, was featured in the Sennett short Sing, Bing, Sing (1932), whilst “Just an Echo in the Valley”, written in collaboration with Jimmy Campbell and Reg Connolly, was sung by Bing in three films made a couple of years later.  It was first aired in the short Just an Echo (1933), formed part of a medley in College Humor (1933) and was the subject of a brief excerpt in Going Hollywood (1934).  Woods first major hit was “Paddlin’ Madeline Home” in 1925.  Thereafter the hits flowed.  Think of the royalties generated over the years with songs that enjoy a constant revival such as “When the Red, Red Robin Comes Bob, Bob, Bobbin’ Along”, “I’m Looking Over a Four Leaf Clover”, “Side by Side” and “River Stay ‘Way from My Door”, all written in collaboration with Mort Dixon in the years before he wrote the two Crosby film songs.  But the song-writing successes dwindled to nothing as the 1930s progressed.  His personal circumstances would make him a good candidate for the sort of musical bio-pic that Hollywood turned out once upon a time. Born with no fingers on his left hand his mother taught him to play piano.  Until 1926, he was a gentleman farmer in Cape Cod.  By the late 1930s he had become unreliable, sometimes disappearing for days on end. He died after being knocked down by a car.  

WOODS, HARRY (1889-1968) Character actor, specialising in playing heavies.  His brief role in a Crosby picture cast him as the ship’s purser in Road to Rio (1948).  His c.v. began with a part in the 1914 serial The Perils of Pauline and concluded with a bit in the TV series Lawman in 1961.

WOULD YOU Song.  Johnny Burke and James Van Heusen wrote it for Road to Utopia (1946).  It was a typical Crosby love ballad of the time yet it was assigned to Dorothy Lamour for its outing in that film.  A recording for Decca made it a Crosby keepsake.

WOULDN’T IT BE FUNNY Song.  Another Burke-Van Heusen effort, this time delivered by Bing in his role as composer Paul Merrick in Mr. Music (1950).  “Wouldn’t it be funny if I didn’t miss you” he muses and then writes the song in next to no time.  He goes on to sing it to his girlfriend (played by Ruth Hussey) after she tells him that she is leaving to marry someone else.
WRAP YOUR TROUBLES IN DREAMS Song.  Its unlikely staging on film was in the Sennett short One More Chance (1931), when Bing sang it to a gathering of American Indians.  That sequence was used in the 1946 compilation Road to Hollywood.  Ted Koehler provided lyrics to the music of Billy Moll and Harry Barris.  Bing recognised its importance as part of his early repertoire.  He first recorded it at the time he was working for Sennett, re-recorded it in 1939 and then included a new version for his 1954 musical autobiography.

WRIGHT, WILL (1894-1962) Character actor.  Will Wright played a brief but essential role in Road to Utopia (1946).  He was Latimer, the gold prospector who, in a flashback at the start of the film, was shot and robbed of the map, which showed the location of the Klondike gold mine.  He had what amounted to an anonymous presence in memorable films such as Adam’s Rib (1949) and The Wild One (1952).

WYMAN, JANE [born Sarah Jane Mayfield, later known as Sarah Jane Fulks] (1917-2007) Actress.  She was Bing’s leading lady in two consecutive Paramount features.  For Here Comes the Groom (1951) she played Emmadel Jones.  Bing and Jane marry in the end.  Director Frank Capra said of her, “Much to my delight I discovered that Jane Wyman - short nose, long legs, big heart, and all talent - had a rarely used flair for singing and dancing...I had to have a great song for Jane to do with Bing.”  That great song turned out to be “In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening.”  Then, in Just for You (1952), she was Carolina Hill.  Bing and Jane plan to marry in the end.  Although not primarily a vocalist, she sang in both films.  In fact, it was as a vocalist that she made her show business debut.  As Jane Durrell, her first career in the early 1930s was as a radio singer.  When she made her films with Bing, she had just divorced Ronald Reagan.  She said he talked too much.  Her first uncredited screen appearance as a teenager was in The Kid from Spain (1932) and she went on to have small parts in a number of films including Bing’s film Anything Goes which was made in 1935 when she played a chorus girl. The parts gradually grew more substantial and in 1936, she signed a contract with Warner Bros. Pictures, which led to another name change, the more familiar one of Jane Wyman. Under that name, she appeared in “A” and “B” pictures at Warners, including two with her future husband, Ronald Reagan: Brother Rat (1938) and its sequel, Baby Be Good (1940). Her best years were the ten between 1945, when she proved her acting talent in The Lost Weekend and 1954, when she received an Oscar nomination for her part in Magnificent Obsession.  During that time span, she portrayed an Academy Award winning deaf-mute in Johnny Belinda (1948) and received a further Academy Award nomination for her part in The Blue Veil in 1951.  Her final big screen appearance was in the 1969 film How to Commit Marriage. When Hollywood film roles failed to attract her, she embarked on phase three of her show business career on television and achieved new fame as Angela Channing in Falcon Crest.

WYNN, KEENAN [Francis Xavier Aloysius Wynn] (1916-1986) Actor.  His main Crosby film link was Stagecoach (1966) in which he played Luke Plummer.  Plummer was the reason the Ringo Kid was travelling on the stagecoach to Cheyenne: the Kid wanted to settle old scores and Plummer and his two sons were in Cheyenne.  Wynn was also in Angels in the Outfield (1951) and Cancel My Reservation (1972) in both of which Bing made fleeting appearances.  The Wynn show business dynasty seemingly started with his grandfather, silent film actor Frank Keenan.  Keenan’s father was actor Ed Wynn and his own son is screenwriter Tracy Keenan Wynn.  Lovers of screen musicals will remember Keenan Wynn for his performances in Annie Get Your Gun (1950), Kiss Me Kate (1953) and Finian’s Rainbow (1968).

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YA GOT LOVE Song.  Three people, Ed Nelson, Al Hoffman and Al Goodhart, wrote the song and three vocalists, The Rhythm Boys, sang it in Confessions of a Co-ed (1931).  No studio recording was made by Bing or the Boys.

YA GOTTA GIVE THE PEOPLE HOKE Song.  For the 1956 “remake” of Anything Goes Sammy Cahn and James Van Heusen supplemented the film’s Cole Porter compositions with decidedly inferior material.  “Ya Gotta Give the People Hoke” was one example of instantly forgettable versus Porter evergreen standard.  Bing and Donald O’Connor opened the film’s musical repertoire with a performance of the song.

YELLEN, JACK (1892-1991) Lyric writer.  Bing sang three Jack Yellen-Milton Ager songs in King of Jazz (1930).  “Music Hath Charms” was featured behind the film’s opening titles, “A Bench in the Park” had vocals shared amongst the Rhythm Boys, the Brox Sisters and others and “Happy Feet” was a Rhythm Boys number.  In addition, Bing was down to perform “The Song of the Dawn”, also written by Yellen and Ager for the film.  Bing was in a prison cell at the time the sequence was filmed and John Boles was assigned the song.  It is always interesting to note how lyric writers who came to the U.S.A. from non-English speaking countries soon mastered the American idioms.  Jack Yellen was born in Poland and was turning out hits like “Louisville Lou”, “I Wonder What’s Become of Sally” and “Ain’t She Sweet” before he reached the age of thirty.   

YOU CAN CHANGE THE WORLD Short film.  This was a one-reel short made for the Christophers’ Association in 1951.  The Christophers believed that if highly principled individuals were in positions of influence they could counter the ills perpetrated by the likes of Adolf Hitler.  The film is a strong propaganda piece intended to be shown to interested groups as an alternative to a lecture by the Christophers’ Association.  The action is set in the home of Jack Benny and Benny’s guests Paul Douglas, Loretta Young, Irene Dunne and Ann Blyth assemble to listen to a member of the Association extol its virtues.  Towards the end of the film Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, (Benny’s butler), introduces songwriters Johnny Burke and Jimmy Van Heusen, who are closely followed by Bing.  Crosby then proceeds to sing the song “Early American” to the assembled entertainers.   The film was directed by Leo McCarey and produced by William Perlberg.  Recommended for insomniacs.

YOU DON’T HAVE TO KNOW THE LANGUAGE Song.  In Road to Rio (1948), Bing is a member of a band on board ship when he sings this Burke-Van Heusen composition as part of the ship’s concert with The Andrews Sisters.

YOU KEEP COMING BACK LIKE A SONG Song. It seems appropriate that an Irving Berlin composition entitled “You Keep Coming Back Like a Song” should be the only song in Blue Skies (1946) film which receives a Crosby reprise.  We first hear Bing singing it at his new nightclub and he revisits it at the film’s end when he is re-united with Joan Caulfield. 

YOU LUCKY PEOPLE YOU Song. Bing’s vocal of this Johnny Burke-James Van Heusen song can be part heard over the opening credits to Road to Zanzibar (1941).  The film’s opening sequence is set in a carnival and an audience assembles as Bing lets them know how lucky they are prior to firing ‘Fearless’ Frazier - from a cannon. Of course, it is Bob Hope who happens to be the ‘live’ ammunition.  It was around this time that British comedian Tommy Trinder adopted “You lucky people” as his catch phrase and I often wonder if this song was the inspiration.

YOU TELL ME YOUR DREAM Song. This melodic song written by Gus Kahn and Neil Moret is heard in High Time (1960).  Introduced in an ideal setting on a hayride, Bing and Nicole Maurey are joined on vocals by a group of students.  A marriage proposal follows (by Miss Maurey to Mr. C!)

YOUNG, AUDREY (1922-2012) Actress and singer who is more likely to be remembered as the widow of director Billy Wilder. It was her donation of $5 million to the UCLA that resulted in the creation of the Billy Wilder Theatre. Here we are concerned with her career as far as it coincided with Bing’s film performances. She was signed by Paramount in 1944 and she is linked to three Crosby Paramount pictures from the mid-1940s albeit the cast lists of that trio of appearances omit any mention of her. The first one was Out of This World (1945) which utilised the Crosby voice off screen and the on screen performance of Audrey Young as one of the Glamourette Quartet. Next came the curio Duffy‘s Tavern (1945) where she is glimpsed as a telephone operator. Finally, in Blue Skies (1946) she featured as a chorine. You’d need good eyesight to pick her out from the other glamour girls in that one but no doubt Billy Wilder could spot her from a mile away by now as they had met on the set of his film The Lost Weekend in 1944. They were married in 1949 and she was quite content to serve as costume consultant in several her husband’s films.

YOUNG, JOE [Joseph]. (1889-1939) Lyric writer who also sang.  Joe Young contributed three times to Bing’s early film career.  A parody of “Snuggled on Your Shoulder”, written together with Carmen Lombardo, was featured in the concluding footage of the Mack Sennett short Sing, Bing, Sing (1932) as Bing literally took flight with his girl.  The same year, when Bing headed the cast list of The Big Broadcast, he sang a few lines of the Sam Lewis, Joe Young, Harry Akst composition “Dinah”.  Then, for the short Just an Echo (1933), Young and Lombardo teamed up once again for “You’re Beautiful Tonight, My Dear”, which Bing sang on film and recorded at about the same time.  A decade and a half on Bing sang “I Kiss Your Hand, Madame” in The Emperor Waltz (1948).  Young’s lyrics to that were written in 1929 with Ralph Irwin providing the music.  We all know the lyrics to several Joe Young songs.  How about these for starters?

· How You Gonna Keep ‘Em Down on the Farm?

· I’m Sitting on Top of the World

· Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue

· In a Shanty in Old Shanty Town

· I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter

YOUNG, VICTOR (1900-1956) Composer, violinist and conductor.  Bing knew Victor Young as a song-writing collaborator before the two were linked on the big screen.  It was Young’s music that did full justice to the Ned Washington-Bing Crosby words of “I Don’t Stand a Ghost of a Chance”.  Young’s first Crosby film credit was as orchestrator on Waikiki Wedding (1937).  This was followed later the same year with a shared credit with Max Terr as vocal arranger on Double or Nothing.  It wasn’t until Road to Singapore (1940) that he was shown as musical director, a credit he retained for  Rhythm on the River (1940), Road to Zanzibar (1941) and Road to Morocco (1942).  It was six years before the Crosby-Young musical contact was re-established on film.  That was for The Emperor Waltz (1948) when Young provided the background score for the Billy Wilder directed period piece.  He also composed the score for Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949) and Little Boy Lost (1953).  Between times he conducted the music for A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1949) and was musical director on Riding High (1950).  As far as Bing’s films were concerned he bowed out with The Country Girl (1954) for which he provided the music score.  This multiplicity of credits really boil down to Young composing, arranging and conducting background music on most of his film work with Bing, something he did with the many similar assignments that Paramount and other studios put his way.  His best remembered film composing was carried out in the five years before his death. The peak year was 1952 when he provided the scores for The Quiet Man and Shane.  One of his last successes was the music for Around the World in Eighty Days (1956).  That film provided Bing with one of his last chart successes: “Around the World”.  Of course, the Victor Young-Bing Crosby working relationship produced many fine studio (as opposed to sound stage) recordings.

YOUR OWN LITTLE HOUSE Song.  This seldom heard Bing song comes from Here Comes the Groom (1951).  In the film, Bing sings it to a group of children when he accompanies himself on piano.  It was written by Ray Evans and Jay Livingston. 

YOU’RE A GRAND OLD FLAG Song.  The title tells you we are in for a patriotic song, something the public had grown to expect of its composer, George M. Cohan.  It was used in the Technicolor short The Fifth Freedom (1951) and Bing’s attire of loud check jacket and straw hat when he sings the song would have been no more conspicuous had he dressed in the stars and stripes.

YOU’RE A SWEET LITTLE HEADACHE Song.  In Paris Honeymoon (1939), Bing sings this to himself when he and Franciska Gaal shelter in an old house. Ms Gaal hears it and encourages Bing to keep singing. Leo Robin and Ralph Rainger wrote it.

YOU’RE BEAUTIFUL TONIGHT, MY DEAR Song.  Joe Young and Carmen Lombardo collaborated on this.  Bing sang it in the 1933 short film Just an Echo.  Mary Kornman was the beauty in question.

YOU’RE EASY TO DANCE WITH Song.  One of the Irving Berlin compositions from Holiday Inn (1942).  No doubt, Berlin had Fred Astaire in mind when he wrote it and it is Fred who sang it in the film’s main musical sequence.  However, at the film’s end, Bing and Fred sing a few lines in a brief medley.  It was Astaire to whom Decca assigned it when they made studio recordings of the film’s songs.

YOU’RE GETTING TO BE A HABIT WITH ME Song. Bing sang this in the Paramount short Please (1933).  Please was the first of two short films Bing made back-to-back in 1933 for Arvid E. Gillstrom Productions and the “habit” was the delightful Mary Kornman, who was the leading lady in both of the Gillstrom shorts.  “You’re Getting to Be a Habit with Me” was written by Al Dubin (words) and Harry Warren (music).   Warren supplied the Hollywood hit parade with many numbers over the next twenty-odd years and it is unfortunate that his film relationship with Bing was not greater.

YOU’RE IN LOVE WITH SOMEONE Song.  Featured twice in the 1949 release Top o’ the Morning, it was the main Johnny Burke-James Van Heusen love ballad written specifically for the movie.  We hear it the first time when Bing sings and Ann Blyth sighs and the second time when the pair duet as they walk towards the village church.

YOU’RE THE TOP Song. Twenty years separated the two Crosby films in which this Cole Porter song was featured.  In the 1936 release Anything Goes, Bing duets with Ethel Merman and the two are joined by Charlie Ruggles for its reprise.  When that film was re-made the earlier version was re-titled Tops is the Limit for television showings, the new title bearing some slight reference to the Porter song.  The 1956 Anything Goes rendition of “You’re the Top” lacked Merman’s gusto.  The song was staged in a ship’s gymnasium with Bing and Mitzi Gaynor rehearsing it on one side of a partition and Donald O’Connor singing it with Zizi Jeanmaire on the other side.

YOU'VE BEEN LOOKING THRU MY DREAMS. Song written by Van Heusen and Burke for the film Road to Bali but not used. Bing’s pre-recording of it for the film surfaced on a CD in 2024.

ZING A LITTLE ZONG Song. An Academy Award nominated number by Leo Robin and Harry Warren from Just for You (1952).  It was catchy but not destined to become a standard.  However, it worked well in the film when it was performed on screen by Bing and Jane Wyman at a party held to celebrate the success of Bing’s latest show. 

ZUKOR, ADOLPH (1873-1976) Executive.  The last entrant in this A to Z catalogue of Bing’s Hollywood career is one of the most important in terms of the Crosby film career.  Without him, Paramount Pictures would not have existed.  When Bing signed that first contract with Paramount in the summer of 1932 it was Zukor who was the studio’s president.  Zukor had arrived in the U.S.A. from Hungary when he was aged fifteen.  He was in the entertainment business at the dawn of the twentieth century when he owned penny arcades.  Shortly thereafter, he became treasurer of a chain of movie theatres.  He formed the film production company Famous Players from the small fortune he made by distributing the European film Queen Elizabeth.  In 1916, he merged with Jesse Lasky’s Feature Play Company and the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation absorbed a small firm called Paramount.  The new company called itself Paramount and Zukor then built a chain of theatres to screen the studio’s product.  Paramount-Publix, as it later became, went bankrupt in 1933, and was reorganized as Paramount Pictures, Inc. He was forced out as part of the reorganization, but after Barney Balaban became Paramount president in 1936, he appointed Zukor as chairman of the board. And by then Bing’s career in films was fast gathering pace. Zukor remained Chairman emeritus of Paramount Pictures, until his death at age 103.

THE FILMS OF BING CROSBY

Feature films containing original footage

1930  King of Jazz (Universal)

1930  Check and Double Check (RKO)

1931  Reaching for the Moon (United Artists)

1931  Confessions of a Co-ed (Paramount) [U.K title ‘Her Dilemma’]

1932  The Big Broadcast (Paramount)

1933  College Humor (Paramount)

1933  Too Much Harmony (Paramount)

1933  Going Hollywood (M-G-M)

1934  We’re Not Dressing (Paramount)

1934  She Loves Me Not (Paramount)

1934  Here Is My Heart (Paramount)

1935  Mississippi (Paramount)

1935  Two for Tonight (Paramount)

1935  The Big Broadcast of 1936 (Paramount)

1936  Anything Goes (Paramount) [retitled “Tops is the Limit” for television showings]

1936  Rhythm on the Range (Paramount)

1936  Pennies from Heaven (Columbia)

1937  Waikiki Wedding (Paramount)

1937  Double or Nothing (Paramount)

1938  Doctor Rhythm (Paramount)

1938  Sing You Sinners (Paramount)

1939  Paris Honeymoon (Paramount)

1939  East Side of Heaven (Universal)

1939  The Star Maker (Paramount)

1940  Road to Singapore (Paramount)

1940  If I Had My Way (Universal)

1940  Rhythm on the River (Paramount)

1941  Road to Zanzibar (Paramount)

1941  Birth of the Blues (Paramount)

1942  Holiday Inn (Paramount)

1942  Road to Morocco (Paramount)

1942  Star Spangled Rhythm (Paramount)

1943  Dixie (Paramount)

1944  Going My Way (Paramount)

1944  Here Come the WAVES (Paramount)

1945  Duffy’s Tavern (Paramount)

1945  The Bells of St. Mary’s (RKO)

1945  Road to Utopia (Paramount)

1946  Blue Skies (Paramount)

1947  Welcome Stranger (Paramount)

1947  Road to Rio (Paramount)

1947  Variety Girl (Paramount)

1948  The Emperor Waltz (Paramount)

1949  Top o’ the Morning (Paramount)

1949  A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (Paramount)

1950  Riding High (Paramount)

1950  Mr. Music (Paramount)

1951  Here Comes the Groom (Paramount)

1952  Just for You (Paramount)

1952  Road to Bali (Paramount)

1953  Little Boy Lost (Paramount)

1954  White Christmas (Paramount)

1954  The Country Girl (Paramount)

1955  Anything Goes (Paramount)

1956  High Society (M-G-M)

1957  Man on Fire (M-G-M)

1959  Say One for Me (20th Century-Fox)

1960  High Time (20th Century-Fox)

1961 The Road to Hong Kong (United Artists)

1964  Robin and the 7 Hoods (Warner Bros.)

1966  Stagecoach (20th Century-Fox)

1974  That’s Entertainment (M-G-M)

Compilation Films utilising earlier footage

1935  Bring on Bing

1944  The Shining Future

1944  The Road to Glory

1945  Musical Movie Memories

1946  The Road to Hollywood

1949  Down Memory Lane

1949  Moments in Music

1967  The Sound of Laughter

1976  That’s Entertainment Part II

Television Feature Films

1956  High Tor

1967  The Demon Under the Bed

1970  Goldilocks

1971  Doctor Cook’s Garden

Miscellaneous involvement

1930  Two Plus Fours (short)

1931  I Surrender Dear (short)

1931  One More Chance (short)

1931  Dream House (short)

1931  Billboard Girl (short)

1932  Blue of the Night (short)

1932  Sing, Bing, Sing (short)

1932  Hollywood on Parade No 1 (short)

1932  Hollywood on Parade No 2 (short)

1932  Hollywood on Parade No 4 (short)

1932  Hollywood on Parade No 7 (short)

1933  Please (short)

1933  Just an Echo (short) 

1935  Star Night at the Cocoanut Grove (short)

1938  Hollywood Handicap (short)

1940  Swing with Bing (short)

1942  Don’t Hook Now (short)

1942  Angels of Mercy (short)

1942  My Favourite Blonde (guest appearance)

1944  The Road to Victory (short)

1944  The Princess and the Pirate (guest appearance)

1944  Sing with the Stars (short)

1945  All Star Bond Rally (short)

1945  Hollywood Victory Caravan (short)

1945  Out of this World (voice only)

1947  My Favourite Brunette (guest appearance)

1948  American Cancer Society trailer

1949  Honor Caddie (short)

1949  The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (voice only)

1949  The Road to Peace (short)

1950  American Red Cross appeal trailer

1950  Kyoto Saturday Afternoon (short - narrator)

1951  A Millionaire for Christy (short - narrator)

1951  You Can Change the World (short)

1951  The Fifth Freedom (short)

1951  Angels in the Outfield [U.K. title “Angels and the Pirates”] (guest appearance)

1952  The Greatest Show on Earth (guest appearance)

1952  Son of Paleface (guest appearance)

1952  Off Limits [U.K. title “Military Policeman”] (guest appearance)

1953  Faith Hope and Hogan (short)

1953  Scared Stiff (guest appearance)

1955  Hollywood Fathers (short)

1955  Bing Presents Oreste (short)

1957  The Heart of Show business (short - narrator)

1957  Children's Cancer Research Foundation trailer

1957  Ted Williams and Friend (short)

1958  Knock on Every Door (short made for The Christophers)

1958  Your Caddy, Sir (short)

1958  Showdown at Ulcer Gulch (short)

1959  Alias Jesse James (guest appearance)

1960  Let’s Make Love (guest appearance)

1960  Pepe (guest appearance)

1965  Cinerama’s Russian Adventure [a.k.a. “Bing Crosby in “Cinerama’s Russian Adventure”] (opening narration)

1968  Bing Crosby’s Washington State (short - narration)

1972  Cancel My Reservation (guest appearance)