The Making
of the Legend, 1936–1939
By the end of 1935, Bing was one of the top ten box office
film stars and his screen persona was further cemented by films such as Pennies from Heaven and Sing You Sinners as he revealed greater
depth in his acting performances. He continued to have regular number one
record hits and after having earlier changed radio sponsors a couple of times,
he took over the prestigious Kraft Music
Hall from Paul Whiteman. For ten years, the Kraft show became one of the
top rated radio programs under Bing’s leadership. As the decade closed, Bing
was far and away the most successful recording star, as his voice deepened into
an easier and richer style after the powerful, more aggressive approach of the
early thirties. He was carefully guided by Jack Kapp
into singing a wide variety of material for Decca Records and this policy also
helped to increase his appeal.
Bing’s family life appeared to be happy
and he and Dixie had four sons. His father and several of his brothers had come
to California to work for him and the image of the carefree and relaxed family
man who enjoyed his sports activities began to develop. Bing invested heavily
in the Del Mar racetrack and also set up his own horse breeding farm. The Bing
Crosby National Pro-Am Golf Tournament began in 1937 and this was to raise a
fortune for youth charities over the years.
Bing seemed to enjoy his show business
life and he participated frequently in the Hollywood social scene. This period
may well have been the happiest and most artistically satisfying period of his
life and he was building himself into a legend. In 1939, he and Bob Hope made a
film called Road to Singapore and
history was in the making.
In 1939, $100 was equivalent to $1,237
in the year 2000.
January 2,
Thursday. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) Begins the Kraft Music Hall
under his own contract for NBC. The guests include Ruggiero Ricci, Bobby Grayson, Paddy Patterson, Kay Weber, Eleanore
Whitney, and Cecil B. DeMille. Bing earns $5,500 per show jointly with Jimmy
Dorsey and broadcasts every Thursday until June 11. The announcer is Don
Wilson. Bob Burns is a regular on the show which at the outset comes from NBC’s
Studio B, a big barn-like building on the back lot of the RKO Studios at
Melrose and Gower. The show’s director is Cal Kuhl.
The opening program receives a poor review in Variety magazine.
The rating for the season is 14.8
which puts the show in 17th. position for evening
programs. The top program with a rating of 45.2 is the Major Bowes Amateur Hour
which is broadcast every Sunday evening. Rudy Vallee’s
show has a rating of 28.2. The ratings are now collected by C. E. Hooper.
Hooper’s methodology was similar to the previous system operated by Crossley except that respondents were asked what programs
they were listening to at the time of the call.
About the only
thing missing from the conglomeration of entertainment that served to debut
Bing Crosby as the master of this Thursday evening spot was a pair of
Australian woodchoppers. (The) program was not only, badly routined and paced but talked itself into a state of
painful boredom. Even allowing for the fact that the producers
equipped him with a lollapalooza of a script, Crosby must have been largely to
blame for the fog he walked himself into. There may be many moments in the
session when hosts of listeners must have wished that the guy would quit
blabbering and go into one of his songs. Introductory stanza as fashioned and
run-off did little to bring Jimmy Dorsey’s outfit into favorable relief. Sparse
were the passages permitted this aggregation, while the selections, with one
exception, that which gave Dorsey free swing of his clarinet, made this up and
coming outfit seem pretty thin. (The) bill mixed boy violin prodigy,
Ruggiero Ricci with the innocuous patter of the gridiron berserkers, Bobby
Wilson and Bobby Grayson, the swift and finely clipped tap-dancing of Kay Weber with Cecil B. De Mille’s reminiscences of is struggles and early
success as a producer. Crosby had to talk it over, at length, with each act
before they could go into their routine but the top piece of awkwardly
contrived self-characterization came when the
baritone assumed the pose of a little schoolboy, asking questions of the Dean
of Hollywood producers. It was a self-effacing attempt that had phoniness
written all over it. Nevertheless, Crosby did a version of ‘Boots and
Saddle’ that was cooked to the queen’s taste.
(Variety, January 8, 1936)
The
new Kraft cheese show continues in the vein similar to the one over which Paul
Whiteman presided. A guest star program, with Bing Crosby now as the star. In
addition to Crosby the steady acts will be the Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra and Bobby
Burns. Hillbilly humourist. These three insure a good show by themselves, and
with a heavy budget for guest stars, as the sponsor affords, it’s difficult to
see how the show can go wrong. Agency on the show is the J. Walter Thompson Company
and the style is similar to its pet formula, as evidenced in the Fleischmann
Yeast and Shell Oil programs.
Principal
trouble with the first program was that there was a plethora of talent. It
seemed like a benefit—the acts came with seemingly no cessation. This caused too
slow a pace. The acts exclusive at the three named, included Ruggierio Ricci,
15-year-old concert violinist; Cecil B. DeMille; Bobby Wilson and Bobby Grayson,
football stars: Eleanor Whitney, Paddy Patterson, the Four Blackbirds, the
Dorsey Trio and Kay Weber. Last two are integral parts of the Dorsey outfit. Ricci’s
playing was the program high spot. While DeMille spoke entertainingly on the
early days of pictures. Patterson gave a pip of a banjo solo and Miss Whitney
did some tap dancing. She’s a good dancer, but tapping still remains rather
meaningless over the air.
Crosby,
as expected, did his usual crooning. He remains radio’s stylist in his line,
which he created and of which he is the best exponent. Burns could have done
more than his one shot. His humor is productive of steady laughs. Dorsey’s
Orchestra plays in the style previously used by the Dorsey Brothers’ outfit.
Commercials
plugged the English cheddar product of the sponsor. They were handled by Don
Wilson, a headliner in his field.
(Billboard, January 11, 1936)
January 8, Wednesday.
Starting at 8:52 a.m., Bing plays in the qualifying round for The Los
Angeles Open at the Sunset Fields club. Later, Bing and Dixie are
thought to have attended Jimmy Dorsey's opening night at the Palomar.
January 9,
Thursday. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) Bing hosts the Kraft
Music Hall show. Guests include Joe Venuti, Mischa Levitzki, Kay Weber, and
the Radio Rogues.
Radio’s finest purveyor of
popular violin music, heard nightly with his band on coast networks for the
past eight weeks, winds up his stay in Southern California with a featured
appearance as guest of the Bing Crosby program. He is Joe Venuti,
leader of American jazz violinists for many years, and still tops. On the same
program, a world renowned pianist, in person of Mischa
Levitzki, will play in his delightful fashion.
In direct contract, the
mimicking Radio Rogues make fun at the expense of famed people, sing popular
and droll songs. The Rogues have had a long run locally, but the programmers here
evidently think them still capable of new stuff. Rupert Hughes, the author,
supplies the serious moments of the program when he is not being witty. Music
is by Jimmy Dorsey’s band.
Crosby again will be master of ceremonies in gruff manner. Alas
for him, he apparently will have to run out his contract in this role so
unfitted to him. Everybody makes mistakes and
(Kenneth Frogley.
Los Angeles Illustrated Daily News.
January 9, 1936)
In his program report for the first
show, Kuhl complained about Bing’s stubborn hugging
of the mike and worried, “Show may need a bit of working over to find correct
formula to the Crosby style and personality. Improvement was immediate.
Following the second installment, Kuhl
exulted, “Crosby in fine fettle. Show changed from opening program and now is
more in the Crosby style, which is distinctive and different.” He
found it well engineered and fast moving, especially praising contributions by
classical pianist Mischa Levitski
and commentator Rupert Hughes. Bing even held back on the mike. The jazz and humor quotient were raised by old friend Joe Venuti, whose impertinent, monosyllabic wit invariably made
Bing laugh and who, in the argot of musicians, could swing you into bad
health. On the next few shows, guests
included John Barrymore (who arrived in his cups yet, steadied by Bing,
flawlessly rendered Hamlet’s soliloquy), Percy Grainger, Joe E. Brown, Leopold Stokowski, and Marina Schubert, a minor actress whose
singing made her an early KMH favorite.
(Gary Giddins, Bing Crosby, A Pocketful of Dreams, The
Early Years, 1903-1940, pages 399-400)
January 15, Wednesday. Attends Joe Breen's stag dinner party with Pat O'Brien and James Gleason and others.
January 16, Thursday. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) Bing hosts the Kraft Music Hall show. Guests include John Barrymore and Nina Koshetz.
In January, Bing
Crosby began his tenure of the Kraft Music Hall with the help of Jimmy Dorsey
and his band. In the same month, the band played the Los Angeles Palomar, the
most important ballroom spot for bands on the west coast. And, in the same
month, Cork O‘Keefe returned east to see if his New York office was still
there. For Jimmy and the band, Hollywood was home base for the next year and a
half. Landing the band spot in the Kraft Music Hall with Bing Crosby was a good
break for Jimmy. With that Thursday night exposure on the network, nobody had
to wonder what had happened to him. Most variety shows used a studio orchestra.
Jimmy gave them a swing band, but a versatile swing band, adaptable and
musically tasteful. It was right for Bing, and it worked well with the guests.
Jimmy and the band enjoyed the show, with its wide-ranging variety of guests.
Yehudi Menuhin, then a child prodigy on the violin, made his first radio
appearance with Bing. Jim Crowley, the Fordham coach, was in town on a scouting
trip when he was invited to drop in for a visit on the show. His conversation
with Bing on the air made an entertaining spot, with a script tailored for
Bing’s delivery. Some who were in the band at that time still remember the
night John Barrymore was scheduled for the “Hamlet” Soliloquy. The problem that
night was that Barrymore had reached for the bottle too many times. It didn't
appear that he would deliver the Soliloquy in the usual Barrymore manner. But
when the moment came, he straightened up and delivered it flawlessly. This was
a feat for Barrymore and a credit to Bing for his expert handling of the
preceding talk. When he finished the Soliloquy, Barrymore retreated to the
comfort of his previous state.
(Herb
Sanford, writing in Tommy and Jimmy: The Dorsey Years)
January 18, Saturday. Bing and Dixie host a dinner party for Alfred G. Vanderbilt at the Trocadero. Others present are the Lindsay Howards, Charles Howard, Raoul Walsh, Dave Butler, Edmund Lowe and Sue Carol.
January 23,
Thursday. Bing’s film Anything Goes
is released.
Crosby has an effective light
comedy manner and sings better than usual.
(Hollywood Citizen News, January 24, 1936)
Paramount uncorked its
pent-up version of Anything Goes at
the Paramount Theatre yesterday and instead of an exuberant pop and a merry
fizz, there was merely a gentle sigh...Bing Crosby is an acceptable substitute
for the show’s William Gaxton in almost every
subdivision except that in which he joins Miss Merman in “You’re The Top”. It
doesn’t seem possible but Mr. Crosby croons it.
(The New York Times, February 6, 1936)
Cole Porter’s lyrics, which
were the original essence and chief asset of the original
stage ‘Anything Goes,’ have been sacrificed for and replaced by plot motion in
this Paramount film adaptation…Ethel Merman comes from the original cast and
her job in the picture equals her job in the stage version, which means aces.
Crosby in the Billy Gaxton juve
lead makes it more important than the latter did, because of the extra
territory taken in by his singing…
Miss Merman starts the musical section off on the correct gam with ‘Kick,’ and from then on it’s a
crossfire of solo and double singing by Miss Merman and Crosby. Even
though they haven’t as bright a set of lyrics to play with, and despite that
the novelty number is no longer quite novel, they do
a bang-up job with their ‘You’re the Top’ duet. Crosby is fine singing “Sailor
Beware” alone and working in with the three ship’s crew members (The Pug-Uglies) who sing as a trio, and he’s also there as usual
when it comes to getting his quota of laughs. And there’s
also a few sotto voce cracks in his vocal swingin’
for the special benefit of the boys at the Famous Door. . .
As directed by Lewis Milestone everything moves along swiftly.
On the whole, as screen entertainment and as musical adaptation, Par’s ‘Goes’
will do.
(Variety, February 12, 1936)
(7:00–8:00 p.m.) Bing hosts the Kraft Music Hall show. Guests include
Percy Grainger, Bee Ho Gray. Sons of the Pioneers and Joe E. Brown.
Joe E. Brown, screen
comedian, and Percy Grainger, pianist and composer, have the guest spots on
this evening’s Music Hall (
(Ray De O’Fan,
Los Angeles Examiner, January 23,
1936)
January 24,
Friday. Press comment states that Bing has been on the Hauser diet for a week
and lost twelve pounds.
January 25,
Saturday. Bing and Dixie are said to have been at the Mayfair Club’s formal
ball “The White Mayfair” at Victor Hugo’s in Beverly Hills.
Johnny and Ginger fell into a
hard-drinking crowd that centered on the Crosbys.
Because Ginger had dated Bing before she met Johnny, they became friends with
him and his wife, Dixie, who as a southerner enjoyed being with Johnny “It was
my good fortune to know him when he was married to Dixie and his boys were
small,” Mercer wrote. “They often rode on my back and I enjoyed the happy days
around the track and poolside with this most attractive couple. She was very
kind to me, as I was in such awe of him and she knew it.” What Mercer loved
most about Crosby, even more than his singing, was his hipster talk - “his
slang, his ad libs.” Mercer’s awe at Crosby’s stardom
must have deepened now that he saw how elusive such success was in Hollywood.
(Skylark: the Life and Times of Johnny Mercer, p84)
January 29, Wednesday.
Bing is photographed showing Eleanore Whitney and Marsha Hunt his racing
stables.
January 30,
Thursday. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) Bing hosts the Kraft
Music Hall show. Guests include Leopold Stokowski. Nina Koshetz and Dixie Dunbar.
Leopold Stokowski steps
down from the podium to chat informally with Bing Crosby on tonight’s Music
Hall programme. The world famous conductor will take part in one of
the interviews, which have become a regular feature of the Crosby air show. From
the sublime to the ridiculous, Bob Burns will toot an accompaniment for a new
supply of his Ozark anecdotes on the bazooka.
(San
Francisco Chronicle, 30th January 1936)
February 3,
Monday. Bing goes on salary at Paramount to make the film Rhythm on the Range even though the script is not ready.
February 6,
Thursday. (1:00-3:30 pm.). Rehearses for his Kraft Music Hall broadcast. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) Bing’s Kraft
Music Hall show. Guests include Walter Huston, Marina Schubert, Josef Lhevinne, Cleo Brown and Kay
Weber. Ken Carpenter makes his debut as announcer. After the show, Bing attends
a party given by Nina Koshetz for her daughter Marina
Schubert. Accompanied by the Chmaras Brothers and
their guitars, Bing sings “Dinah” and later, in the early hours when the
lingering guests gather in the breakfast room for a late supper, Bing and
Taylor Holmes lead a Russian chorus in singing “Sweet Adeline” and “Down by the
Old Mill Stream.”
The February 6 show was memorable.
Walter Huston’s dramatic reading fell flat, but he enchanted listeners by
reminiscing about his years in vaudeville and movingly croaking a song—in
effect, a prelude to his triumph in the 1938 musical Knickerbocker
Holiday and his
renowned recording of the score’s only hit, “September Song .” Elusive Russian
pianist Josef Lhevinne, however, showed a slackening
in his fabled technique; “the mike is cruel,” Kuhl
wrote. Most important, that night marked the KMH debut of Bing’s new announcer, Ken Carpenter.
Don Wilson was well known as Jack
Benny’s corpulent foil, and KMH wanted a fresh personality to serve as
Bing’s man. Ken Carpenter was made to order. Mildly stentorian and quick on his
feet, he was a sincere, gentle, and never unctuous pitchman. Like Benny’s Wilson,
Carpenter became an essential part of the show, an agile straight man who
relished every opportunity for clowning. Bing called him “a genuine
professional radioman. He made me look good every time. He could do a lot of
things with that big voice of his. He’d kinda
surprise you. He could break you up putting on some kind of character - a rube
or something like that.”
(Gary Giddins, Bing Crosby, A Pocketful of Dreams, The
Early Years, 1903-1940, pages 399-400)
February 13, Thursday. (11:00 a.m. - 6:30 p.m) Rehearses for his Kraft Music Hall broadcast.(7:00–8:00 p.m.) The Kraft Music Hall broadcast on NBC. Bing acts as host and his guests include Andres Segovia, Alice Faye, Marina Schubert and Spencer Tracy.
Spencer Tracy and Alice
Faye are Bing Crosby’s guests in the Music Hall, tonight. Crosby and
Tracy will reminisce a bit while Alice Faye is slated to sing a
bit. Andres Segovia, guitar virtuoso, will perform difficult feats
on his guitar. Bob Burns, homely philosopher from Van Buren,
Arkansas, Jimmy Dorsey and his Orchestra, songs by Kay Weber and swinging
tempos in the Crosby rhythm will complete the broadcast over KPO tonight.
(San
Francisco Chronicle, 13th February 1936)
February 18, Tuesday. Bing and Dixie attend a party given by Mr. and Mrs. Edward S. Moore at the Huntington.
February 20,
Thursday. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) Bing’s Kraft
Music Hall show. Guests include Leonard Pennario, Alfred G. Vanderbilt Jr and Charles Ruggles.
The
‘Sport of Kings’ will be the main topic of conversation on Bing Crosby’s show,
tonight. Crosby, who freely mentions that he has one of the finest
stables, will have as his guests on the broadcast, none other than the
millionaire turf man, Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt. With Vanderbilt will be
his jockey, Bejsbak and trainer, J.R. Budstoller who will indulge in the four way conversation to
be broadcast on a coast to coast NBC network. Charles Ruggles,
screen comedian, will be featured in an original sketch written especially for
the program. Musical highlights will be reflected by two prodigies,
Leonard Pennario, 11 year-old pianist and Dorothy
Wade, 10 year-old violinist who will offer solos. Comedy by the Arkansas
humorist, Bob Burns and popular music by Jimmy Dorsey’s Orchestra with Kay
Weber, vocalist will round out the evening’s entertainment from the Music Hall.
(San Francisco Chronicle, 20th February 1936)
Bing Crosby is
more at ease as master-of-ceremonies than he was at first. He made a serious mistake
last Thursday in asking young Leonard Pennario to play and sing a jazz number
as he himself must have realized before its conclusion.
(Zuma Palmer, Los Angeles Evening Citizen News,
February 25, 1936)
February 22, Saturday. Bing
and Dixie are at the Los Angeles Turf Club Handicap Ball at the Fiesta
Ballroom at the Ambassador Hotel. They have as their guests the Lindsay
Howards, the Charles Howards and Mr. and Mrs. Ken Walsh.
February 25, Tuesday. Bing attends a party at Michael
Bartlett’s Bel-Air home in honor of Mrs. Joan Whitney
Payson. Others present include Lord and
Lady Cavendish, Errol Flynn, Charles Boyer, Grantland
Rice, David Selznick, Elsa Maxwell, Merle Oberon,
Billie Burke, Miriam Hopkins, Carole Lombard, David Niven,
Humphrey Bogart and Clifton Webb.
February 27, Thursday. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) The Kraft Music Hall broadcast on NBC. Bing acts as host and his guests include William A. Brady, Ann Sothern, Lotte Lehmann, and Kay Weber.
…Mme. Lehmann, on her birthday, will sing a
number written especially for her by her accompanist, Erno Balogh. It is called
“Do Not Chide Me” and was a birthday present two years ago. She also sings
“Ungeduid” (sic) by Schumann and “Can di Primovera” by Cimara (sic). Bing
Crosby will introduce her for a short interview of the human interest type
which he has popularized on the Music Hall.
(Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, February 27, 1936)
February 28, Friday. Bing has sponsored a competition for the best jockey of the season at Santa Anita and he presents the $500 prize to 18-year old Danny Brammer at Santa Anita. Crosby celebrates his first win of the season as his horse "Aunt Kitty" wins the race for 2-year olds.
March 1, Sunday.
Bing is thought to have been at a reception at the Ambassador Hotel for Leopold
Stokowski.
March 3,
Tuesday. Robert Colwell arrives from New York to take over temporarily
from Sam Moore as script writer for the Kraft Music Hall. It is
announced that Carroll Carroll is being transferred from the New York office of J. Walter Thompson to head up their script staff on the West Coast.
The trend of his last years of
broadcasting on CBS for Woodbury and Chesterfield, during which some inkling of
the Crosby personality had been allowed to ooze out between songs, was
continued more forcibly in the Kraft Music Hall programs. A writer with
the curious name of Carroll Carroll displayed even
more curious talent. He actually caught Bing’s personality, giving him back his
own lines; they sprang right out of his mouth onto Carroll’s typewriter. The
continuity was also so loosely woven that it was always possible for Bing to
ad-lib more than a few occasional “ands,” “ifs,” and “buts” and to give added
life to one of the most lively radio programs ever organized.
From the very beginning, the show
had astonishing balance and remarkable maturity for American radio. The comedy
for its first few years was in the long hands and bilious bazooka barks of Bob
Burns. Burns, an Arkansas hillbilly comedian, traded slow lines of a pseudomoronic character with Bing’s fast, polysyllabic
speech and semiprofessorial, semiham-actor
delivery. The music was supplied by Jimmy Dorsey’s band, a pert little
combination consisting of most of the men Jimmy and his brother Tommy had led
in New York before a fight over rehearsal time on a song had broken up their
dually led organization. There was even a mite of jazz from time to time,
hastened to the microphone by Freddie Slack’s piano and Jimmy’s clarinet and
alto, but the general tenor of the program’s music was set by Bing’s baritone.
And Bing’s baritone, through never Asleep in the Deep or On the Road to
Mandalay, was confined more and more to the straight and narrow path of
the No. 1 plug popular song and the standard classics of American musical
comedy and film composers.
Carroll Carroll
(the first name was always his; the second was originally Weinshenk)
had to overcome some timidity on Bing’s part when he first took over from Paul
Whiteman on the Music Hall.
“I’m a singer and a pretty bad
actor,” Bing explained. “I don’t think I’ll do so well with a lot of lines.”
“Let me try,” Carroll suggested.
Carroll, a very small man (just five
feet tall), followed Bing around closely during the first six months of the
program, listening carefully to the singer’s speech, making some notes,
remembering other lines. He was small enough not to be noticed when Bing was
busy with a song or a visitor. Not until the six months were up did Bing call
him by his name. After that opening period, the Crosby-Carroll relationship
warmed up. A working routine was established. Each Thursday, the day of the
program, he and Bing lunched at the Brown Derby on Vine Street, a block away
from the NBC studio where the program was aired.
“We’ll make it in the side room.”
Bing had made the first appointment. He wanted to avoid the main dining room of
the Derby, crowded as it was with show-business people, many out to impress the
others by having their names called for telephone messages during lunch. Bing
felt it was ostentatious to make “a grand entrance through the center door into the main room.”
Bing seldom changed Carroll’s
scripts. He would occasionally suggest a substitute line, a new ending, a
different twist for a gag. He ad-libbed changes, but rarely by subtracting,
almost always by adding. He and Carroll both liked polysyllabic words, florid
diction, particularly the juxtaposition of slang and a choice, precise, proper
vocabulary. They worked well together.
There were some unwritten rules.
Bing’s jokes had to be plausible. “No falling out of windows,” Carroll once
explained, “or one lung talking to another.” It was program policy to present
opera singers like Feodor Chaliapin,
Lauritz Melchior, Grete Stueckgold, and Rose Bampton, concert artists like Alexander Brailowsky,
Harold Bauer, and Jose Iturbi, along with Connee Boswell and Mary Martin, Duke Ellington and Art
Tatum, any and all movie stars and radio comedians. The longhairs were
shortened; the crew-cuts were lengthened. Men and women from the opera and
concert stage were humanized; jazz musicians and rowdy comics were treated with
dignity, presented as artists in their own right. The result was a humanization
all around that did well both for the program and for its guests…
Carroll explained some of his method
after it had been developed by a few years of work with Bing. “Give him something
he can see himself in. Bing plays Bing on the air, and certain things are
appropriate. Every person has a cadence, and when I talk to a person I try to
capture that cadence.” He explained further how that treatment worked with
several of the singers who had appeared for regular periods opposite Bing on
the Kraft show. “When Mary Martin was Bing’s air partner, she played the wife -
a wife a little bit sharper than her husband, because Mary is a sophisticated
young woman. Trudy Erwin was made the mousy type, not meaning that Trudy is
actually mousy, but that she’s a soft personality.” When, in 1944, Marilyn Maxwell took over, “we
scripted her as Bing’s sweetheart because one imagines her better that way than
as his wife. She is a ready and willing girl, but Bing was cast more in the
role of a diffident wolf.”
(Barry Ulanov,
The Incredible Crosby, pages120-123)
Comes now a mention of my employment by the Kraft Music Hall, beginning in December,
1935. I had been broadcasting for Woodbury Soap and Chesterfields, but when I went with Kraft I was with them for a long, fat decade.
Once more, as with Jack Kapp, I fell into the hands of a man who took a personal
interest in developing me. He was the writer of the show, Carroll Carroll. Its producer was
Cal Cuhl.
In addition to doing radio work,
Carroll had written for a number of publications. He seemed to have an ear for the way I talked, and he encouraged me to
incorporate as many of my own words as possible into
the script. He’d send a script around to my home and I’d try to rewrite the
speeches he’d written for me so as to make them sound even more like me. And I’d try to put in little jokes if I could think of
any. Most of them were clumsy and pointless, but once in a while I hit
something mildly amusing and Carroll wouldn’t delete it if he thought it had a
chance of getting a laugh. The way we worked together
resulted in the next thing to ad libbing.
The names of those who appeared with me on the Kraft show are a Blue Book of the
loftiest talent in show business, but I had
fun with them just the same. Those longhairs
go for humanizing in a big way. They love it and the audience loves it, too. I never had any trouble with them about song material, the
dialogue we were going to do together, or what we were going to talk about.
We were careful never to make my
guests seem tawdry or cheap, or trick them into buffoonery. They got a kick out of yaketing about baseball or horse racing with
me, and I’d sing an aria with them (although it was difficult to find an
aria I could handle) and they’d sing a scat
song with me.
I imagine over the ten-year span,
at one time or another we had every important opera or concert name
on the
show, some of them many times, like Rose Bampton, Rise Stevens, Lotte Lehmann, Piatigorsky,
Grainger, and
others.
(Call
Me Lucky, page 150)
March 5, Thursday. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) The Kraft Music Hall broadcast on NBC. Bing acts as host and his guests include Marina Schubert, Jack Oakie and Wini Shaw.
Bing Crosby has
hired a heckler to make his life miserable on today’s variety show over KFI at
7 p.m. The King of Krooners is to bandy words with Jack Oakie, screen actor by
profession; Crosby heckler by hobby. Serious contributions to the program will
be offered by Alexander Brailowsky, Russian concert pianist who is making his
first American tour in four years; Wini Shaw, singing actress of the screen,
and Marina Schubert, soprano.
(Los Angeles Times, March 5, 1936)
March 11, Wednesday. Bing is a member of the Bel-Air golf team which beats the Los Angeles Country Club at Riviera.
March 12,
Thursday. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) Another Kraft
Music Hall broadcast. Bing’s guests include Marina Schubert, Patsy Kelly and Owen Davis.
Owen Davis, playwright and
Patsy Kelly of the Hal Roach Studios will appear on Bing Crosby’s program from
(Zuma
Palmer, Hollywood Citizen News, March
12, 1936)
March 14, Saturday. Bing and Dixie watch the annual midwinter polo tournament at Santa Barbara.
March 19,
Thursday. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) Bing’s Kraft
Music Hall broadcast on NBC. Guests include Lyda Roberti, Fred Stone, Dorothy Stone, and Emanuel Feuermann.
Fred, Dorothy and Paula Stone, representing two generations of the
American musical comedy stage’s most famous family, will be Bing Crosby’s
guests on the Kraft Music Hall tonight. Bing will interview all three on their
careers and adventures in the theatre. Other guest stars heard in the show will
include Lyda Roberti, vivacious stage and screen comedienne, and Emmanuel
Feuermann, famous cellist. Comedy will be provided by Miss Roberti, and the
concert part of the program by Herr Feuermann, who in his early 30s, is
regarded as one of the world’s greatest cellists.
(The
Miami News, March 19, 1936)
March 24, Tuesday. Records four songs, including “The Touch of Your Lips” and “Twilight on the Trail,” with Victor Young and his Orchestra in Hollywood.
The most impressive of his new cowboy songs (including "We’ll Rest at the End of the Trail," "A Roundup Lullaby," "Empty Saddles") was "Twilight on the Trail," a lament introduced that year by Fuzzy Knight in The Trail of the Lonesome Pine and sung by Bing as though it were an old western hymn. That’s how it may have sounded to President Roosevelt, who declared it his favorite song after "Home on the Range"; Mrs. Roosevelt requested Bing’s record for the Roosevelt Library.
(Gary Giddins, A Pocketful of Deams, page 473)
March 26,
Thursday. (
A
behind-the-scenes story of the Dionne quintuplets as motion-picture stars is to
be presented to dialers today on the Bing Crosby show over KFI at 7 p.m. by
Jean Hersholt, who played the title role in “The Country Doctor.” Other guest
artists on the bill are Grete Stueckgold, opera and concert soprano, and Virginia
Bruce, motion-picture actress.
(Los Angeles Times, March 26, 1936)
March 29, Sunday.
Records four more songs (including “Would You” and songs from Porgy & Bess)
with Victor Young and his Orchestra in Los Angeles. Later, Bing sings “Thanks a
Million” on an NBC broadcast in the early hours of Monday celebrating Paul Whiteman’s 46th birthday the
previous day.
Bing Crosby’s filmusicals not having kept pace with his Decca
requirements, Crosby must again have recourse to stock catalogue stuff and not
adhere to a preconceived preference of waxing only the tunes he introduces on
the air or screen. Two from Gershwin’s ‘Porgy & Bess’ serve as Crosby’s
latest on Decca ‘It Ain’t Necessarily So’ and ‘I Got
Plenty of Nuttin’’ and they’re among Crosby’s tops in
the waxworks. Victor Young, his fave maestro, batons
a distinguished orchestral accompaniment.
(Variety, June 24, 1936)
April (undated). Bing’s parents sell their house in Spokane to the Higgins family for $3500.
The Higgins family had rented it for a year or two.
April 2,
Thursday. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) The Kraft
Music Hall broadcast on NBC. Bing’s guests include Albert Spalding, Edward
Everett Horton, and Binnie Barnes. Bing
goes on with Bob Burns to the first annual Radio Ball of the radio industry at
the Palomar where they share emceeing duties. There are said to be 7500 people
there.
Albert Spalding, renowned violinist, Edward
Everett Horton, screen comedian and Binnie Barnes, cinemactress are headliners
on Bing Crosby’s current Music Hall broadcast over KFI at 7 pm.
(Los Angeles Times, 2nd April 1936)
First annual Radio
Ball was held at Palomar Ballroom here last week with more than 50 top ether
acts in attendance. About 7,500 people turned out. Bob Burns, Bing Crosby and
Johnny Murray took turns as emsee and did neat job of handling introductions.
Mary Pickford brought out Beatrice Hagen, former Biltmore Bowl singer selected
short while back as Radio’s Baby star by local radio editors.
(Billboard, April 18, 1936)
April 4–May. Films Rhythm on the
Range for Paramount with Frances Farmer, Bob Burns, and Martha Raye. The film is directed by Norman Taurog
with musical direction by Boris Morros.
My work in Too Many Parents had created a
surprising amount of interest with the public. So I was to be cast as Bing
Crosby’s leading lady in Rhythm on the
Range.
Crosby,
one of Paramount’s main stars, was a calm, easygoing man who did much to keep
order on the set. Nothing seemed to disturb him. He would show up on time,
speak to everyone, and say to the director, “Well, where do I stand and what do
I say?” He was successful with this method, but it left me unsure and jittery.
There
were two other newcomers in the cast, Martha Raye and Bob Burns. She had a true
and delightful sense of humor and was marvelously light and outgoing. Cast
opposite her was Burns, “The Arkansas Traveler.” And there was I, Frances Farmer,
a serious Method actress surrounded by Bing Crosby and his “Ba-ba-ba-boo,”
Martha Raye and her famous “Ohhhhhhhh, boy,” and Bob Burns and his bazooka.
Art,
as it were, was simply flushed down the drain, but strangely enough, the only
movie I had fun making was Rhythm. The
role was simple and undemanding, and from a reserved distance I enjoyed the
people with whom I was working. But when the day was over, I fell back into my
sullen despondency, bored with Hollywood and my husband.
(Frances Farmer, Will There Really Be a Morning? pages
116-117)
When they returned to Hollywood,
Mercer had “I’m an Old Cowhand,” but, as he knew from his days on Tin Pan
Alley, a good song didn’t make it on its own; it needed a “plug” from a big
star. The best plug he could have hoped for came from Bing Crosby, who liked
the song and got it into his next movie, Rhythm
on the Range, where it became a hit in the fall of 1936. “I really think he
saved my Hollywood career,” Mercer said. “Because I began to get more offers
after that.” While Mercer was obviously grateful for Crosby’s help at this critical
time, it might also have gnawed at those inner demons he carried that he was
beholden to a man whose success he had recently hoped to emulate and perhaps
even surpass.
(Skylark: the Life and Times of Johnny Mercer, p88)
Johnny Burke first came out
from New York to write songs for Pennies
from Heaven and arrived at Paramount while Bing was making Rhythm on the Range. They briefly
exchanged greetings and Johnny went to work immediately writing the love song
with Arthur Johnston. The number was “And So Do I.”
“I’ll never forget the day that Arthur and I went out to the
set to play the song for Bing. He was wearing a cowboy outfit, and he followed
us over to the piano in the corner of the sound stage. Arthur played the piano
and I sang, scared half to death. When I finished, there was a moment of awful
silence, before Bing said, ‘Why, Johnny, that’s poetry.’ Then he turned and
walked away. He never did say whether he liked it or not, but those were the
sweetest words I’d ever heard.”
(From an article in Modern Screen magazine, April, 1951)
April 4,
Saturday. Bing and Dixie are said to have attended the Screen Dancers Guild
annual Easter Ball and Pageant in the Fiesta Room of the Ambassador Hotel.
April 5, Sunday. Bing plays in the Paramount Doubles Tennis Tournament at the Los Angeles Country Club. Partnered by Wally Westmore, they reach the semi-finals before being eliminated by Kent Taylor and Dick Love.
April 6, Monday. The
softball season opens at Loyola Stadium and Bing is there to sponsor his all
girls team which is called “The Croonerettes.”
April 7, Tuesday.
Bing is one of the hosts at a luncheon at the Paramount commissary when the
president of Paramount entertains several prominent New York bankers.
April 8,
Wednesday. (1:30 p.m.) Places his prints and name in cement at Grauman’s
Chinese Theater, Hollywood.
April 9,
Thursday. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) The Kraft
Music Hall broadcast on NBC. Bing acts as host and his guests include Joan
Crawford, Rudolph Ganz, and Florence Gill.
Celebrities in a variety of
fields will be presented on Bing Crosby’s show at 7 p.m. Joan Crawford, in an
interview with Bing, will tell about some of her experiences in pictures and
some behind-the-scenes stories of Hollywood. In keeping with the season Madame Schuman-Heinck will sing several, familiar Easter songs.
Rudolf Ganz, concert pianist, will play and Florence
Gill, “Queen of Cackle,” will offer animal imitations.
(Los Angeles Times, April 9, 1936) (NOTE: Madame Schuman-Heinck had to withdraw at the last moment because of ill-health)
April 16,
Thursday. (5:30-6:30 p.m.) Takes part, with many other stars, in a special NBC broadcast to South America by short wave.* (7:00–8:00 p.m.) Another Kraft
Music Hall broadcast with Bing as host. Guests include Maxine Lewis, Efrem
Zimbalist and ZaSu Pitts.
*...Bing Crosby, top crooner
of the world, interrupted rehearsals for his own air show to contribute “Love
in Bloom.”...
(Imperial Valley Press, April 19, 1936)
The inimitable comedienne, Zasu Pitts, Efrem
Zimbalist, outstanding concert violinist, and Maxine Lewis, popular singer,
will share guest star honors on the Music Hall program tonight…Miss Pitts, who
is well now for her comical characterizations in a score or more motion
pictures, will tell Bing the story of her career and how she got into the
movies. Among her most recent film successes are “The Affair of Susan,”
“Ruggles of Red Gap” and “Dames.”
(Fort
Worth Star-Telegram, April 16, 1936)
April 23,
Thursday. Bing is on the Paramount lot and just misses by 100 feet an
electrical accident that kills one man and leaves another seriously
injured. A crane swinging steel girders into position accidentally
touched a power line and the two men electrocuted were leaning against
the crane. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) Bing’s Kraft
Music Hall broadcast on NBC. Guests include Fred Keating, Fritz Leiber, and Grete Stueckgold.
April 26, Sunday. Bing is at the Seaside Park track in Ventura to inspect the eight race horses he has in training.
April 30,
Thursday. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) The Kraft
Music Hall broadcast on NBC. Bing acts as host and most of the program is
devoted to the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski. Una Merkel plus
Louis Prima and his Jam Band also appear.
Leopold Stokowski
dominated practically all of the Kraft program on Thursday night, with the
first half solid for the Philadelphia Orchestra together with certain stanzas
in the last portion, taken up by the guest conductor. Bing Crosby in top
singing and MC position, handled the crossfire banter but it was flat. Louis
Prima’s crew was in the last ten minutes and while a marked contrast to the
Wagner and Debussy fare by Stokowski’s contingent,
did not create any excitement - the regular Dorsey Band was better. Kraft has
been delivering some sock entertainment of late. This program seemed overboard
on guests but the J. Walter Thompson office, smoothed it out quite expertly.
(The) idea of allotting the Symphony first place was OK and a quartet of
classic examples was distinguished for ether listeners. Especially, the Debussy
composition which took up nearly 16 minutes - first commercial came at 10.35,
showing the free rein permitted the conductor for this appearance. Crosby
managed to bring the program around for the Prima flash while tracing certain
milestones in US musical and front page history. ‘Dinah’ was Prima’s offering
with typical variations running riot and most attention centered on extended
trumpet blasting. Bob Burns and program’s chorus were pushed into the
background for this broadcast. Singer’s chores were also clipped. Closing
conversation between Crosby and Stokowski took in the
currently RCA sponsored tour of the Philly Orchestra.
(Variety, May 6, 1936)
May 2, Saturday.
Paramount gives a surprise luncheon for Bing in honor of his birthday. There
are about 60 guests, including studio executives and stars. Martha Raye mounts a grand piano and sings a special song written
for the occasion by Sam Coslow. Bob Burns plays a
special bazooka solo inspired by the party. Norman Taurog
acts as a chairman of the festivities. An enormous birthday cake features one
lone candle. At night, Bing and the Westmores charter a bus for 20 for a
week-end fishing cruise off San Diego. A new Merrie Melodies film cartoon called Let It Be Me is released. The film was one of two Warner
Bros. cartoons (along with Bingo Crosbyana) on which Bing initiated lawsuits to suppress because they
portrayed him in what he considered a defamatory light. In this case, he
objected to his portrayal as being unfaithful to women and to the imitation of his
voice.
May 5, Tuesday.
Following on from the earlier approach to Bing, the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club
is incorporated.
May 6, Wednesday.
Bing organizes a gathering of potential investors for the Del Mar Thoroughbred
Club at Warner Brothers Studios in Burbank. Bing is elected president, brother
Everett is secretary-treasurer, with Pat O’Brien and Oliver Hardy as officers.
Also on the executive committee are Joe E. Brown, Gary Cooper, and other
Hollywood stars. Bing is said to have invested $45,000 for thirty-five per cent
of the stock. A ten year lease is granted by the Twenty-Second District but the
project, which is partly financed by the Federal Works Progress Administration,
soon runs out of cash. Bing and Pat O’Brien borrow against their life policies
and they lend $600,000 to the Twenty-Second District to complete the
construction of exhibition buildings and the grandstand. Racing begins on July
3, 1937.
May 7, Thursday.
A ten-minute film short called Screen
Snapshots No. 9 is released by Columbia in which Bing and many other stars are shown at Santa
Anita race track. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) The Kraft
Music Hall broadcast on NBC. Bing acts as host and his guests include Toscha Seidel, George Raft and Una Merkel.
May 8,
Friday.
Press review seen of a nine-minute Will Rogers trailer which has been
made for
use during the Will Rogers Memorial Fund Drive, May 22–28. Bing is
included
singing “Home on the Range” and his segment was filmed at
Paramount. The trailer is to be shown several times each day in
cinemas during the Drive. Others in the trailer are Lowell
Thomas, Shirley Temple, Irving Cobb and May Robson.
Collections are to be taken while the trailers are being shown.
May 9, Saturday. Bing and Dixie attend the opening of the Kit Club Cafe on Santa Monica Boulevard with many other film celebrities.
May 10, Sunday. On location filming Rhythm on the Range at Lone Pine, Alabama Hills, California
May 14, Thursday. Arrives back from Lone Pine with Bob Burns and Tom English. (6:00–7:00 p.m.) Bing’s Kraft Music Hall broadcast. Guests include Murdo MacKenzie and Tom English.
Bob Burns will have as
his guest on the Music Hall programme over NBC-WSMB at 8 pm, Mayor Tom English
of Van Buren, Arkansas, scene of the bazooka playing comedian’s fantastic
stories. Bing Crosby, as singing star and Master of Ceremonies will
be heard with Jimmy Dorsey’s Orchestra.
(New Orleans Times-Picayune,
14th May 1936)
Bing Crosby will introduce various members of
the group that assist in his broadcasts but are never heard at 6 p.m. today
over KHQ. Murdo McKenzie, sound technician; Tex McKinley and Pat McCarthy,
Jimmy Dorsey’s arrangers; Bonnie Lake, who wrote Dorsey’s theme, and Jean
Stoddard, telephone operator and hostess; are a few that will appear.
(Spokane
Chronicle, May 14, 1936)
May 17, Sunday. Location filming of Rhythm on the Range at Lone Pine, Alabama Hills, California is completed.
May 21, Thursday. (12:30-5:00 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft show. (6:00-7:00 pm.) The Kraft Music Hall broadcast and Bing’s guests include Frank
Morgan, Mischa Levitzki,
and The Avalon Boys.
May 26, Tuesday. Bing (handicap 5) is reported to have reached the semi-finals of the Lakeside Golf Championship.
May 28, Thursday. Press reports state that Bing has turned down a role for Dixie in a forthcoming Paramount film Lady Be Careful. (12:30-5:00 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft show (6:00–7:00 p.m.) The Kraft Music Hall broadcast on NBC. Bing acts as host and his guests include Bette Davis, Rose Bampton, and John Erskine.
The cinema
favorite, Bette Davis, was interviewed by Bing Crosby on his Music Hall program
last night. It sounded like one of those impromptu affairs and kept your interest.
Topping it off Harmon Nelson, Bette’s husband, sang a song. He was formerly a
member of the Jimmy Dorsey band which supplies the music for the program. It was
like a family reunion with the boys and Bette indulged in a lot of the kidding.
(Tim Marks, Brooklyn Times Union, May 29, 1936)
May 30, Saturday. A new Merrie Melodies film cartoon called Bingo Crosbyana is released. The film was one of two Warner
Bros. cartoons (along with Let It Be Me) on which Bing initiated lawsuits to suppress because they
portrayed him in what he considered a defamatory light. In this case, he
objected to his portrayal as a vainglorious coward and to the imitation of his
voice.
May 30–31,
Saturday–Sunday. Bing and Dixie entertain Frances Farmer and Leif Erickson at
their Rancho Santa Fe home.
June 1, Monday.
Bing and Dixie move into their new house at 10500 Camarillo Street at Toluca Lake. It has twenty rooms including seven bathrooms.
June 3, Wednesday. Bing, after shooting a 75, defeats Maury Luxford on the 20th hole to reach the final of the Lakeside golf championship.
June 4, Thursday.
(12:30-5:30 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft show. (6:00–7:00 p.m.) Bing’s Kraft Music Hall
show. The guests include George Jessel and his wife
Norma Talmadge, Feodor Chaliapin, Jackie Searl plus twelve-year-old Edith Fellows.
First time on the air for
Norma Talmadge and George Jessel
(Mr. & Mrs.), as a team, was an auspicious one. They
were presented with an ingratiating routine, indulging in three-way ribbing
that put them right with the listening audience. The stunt started as something
of an interview with Miss Talmadge by Crosby,
bringing out the fact that she’s retired from the screen and is now, just, Mrs.
Jessel, with plenty of work in just phoning Jessel’s relatives. Then Jessel
broke in and from thereon it was a ribbing session that even included Bob
Burns. One of the elements of their bit was the Crosby and the Choral Group singing,
‘The Last of My Past’, lyrics of which were written by Jessel,
title by Miss Talmadge and music by Paul Oakland. Jessel’s material was strong on the humorous side. His
take-off on himself, speaking to his relatives in Bob Burns’ Arkansas twang,
being especially neat. Coupled with his wife Madge as the ideal American pair, Jessel and his frau were a natural for the Kraft Phoenix
product and they fit perfectly into the underlying ‘June Bride’ theme of the
Crosby broadcast.
(Variety, June 10, 1936)
I’ll never forget
Chaliapin, the giant blond Russian with the steely blue eyes and lusty good
humor. I suppose he was greatest basso who ever lived. When he zeroed in on one
of those rich, low notes, the diapason he developed must have jiggled the
needle on the Pasadena seismograph. Merely being in the same room with this man
was a thrill.
(Call Me Lucky, page 151)
June 6, Saturday.
Bing and Dixie attend a dinner party at the home of George Burns and Gracie
Allen. Jack Benny, Eddie Cantor, George Jessel, and
their wives are also among the many guests.
June 11, Thursday. No Kraft Music Hall broadcast because of the Republican Convention although some newspapers stated that a show hosted by Bing with guests Ernest Hutcheson, Virginia Bruce, and Bert Wheeler was to take place.
It was a toss-up again last night as to which programs
would be forced from the air by the doings at Cleveland. The political show had
originally been scheduled for 8 but at the last minute was postponed to 9 o’clock.
This eliminated such features as the “Showboat” and the Bing Crosby period.
(Daily News (New
York), June 12, 1936)
June 14, Sunday.
Bing wins the thirty-six hole Lakeside Golf
Championship for the first time as he defeats Duke Hinnau
two and one, watched by a crowd of 200.
June 16, Tuesday. Plays in the Lakeside Invitational Golf Tournament qualifying round and has a 79.
June 17,
Wednesday. It is announced that Bing, George Raft, and William Frawley will back the Hollywood baseball club in the
Pacific Coast League if they can swing the franchise. Variety notes that Bing is receiving the top pay for a picture at
$150,000 plus a percentage (compared with Fredric March $150,000 and Gary
Cooper $125,000).
June 18, Thursday. (12:30-5:30 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft show. (6:00–7:00 p.m.) Bing hosts the Kraft Music Hall with guests Virginia Bruce, Pat O’Brien, and Josephine Tumminia. The broadcast of the Joe Louis versus Max Schmeling fight was due to have either replaced or curtailed the show but heavy rain forced the postponement of the fight until the next night.
…Crosby swapped wordage with Pat O’Brien, movie
favorite and introduced Virginia Bruce, another Hollywood personality who sang “What’s
the Name of That Song?” Bob Burns pleased as usual with his dry humor and Tommy
Dorsey’s (sic) band did right well with the swing business, Bing offered the
biggest kick, though, with his interpretation of “These Foolish Things,” one of
the better tunes and made to order for him.
(Tim Marks,
Brooklyn Times Union, June 19, 1936)
June 21, Sunday. Plays in a mixed foursome with Peggy Graham (State champion), Roger Kelly and Buff Abbott at Lakeside.
June 25,
Thursday. No Kraft Music Hall
broadcast takes place due to the Democratic Convention although it had been
planned that Bing would host a show with guests Bert Wheeler and Jean Arthur.
June (undated).
Bing and Dixie throw a party in their new home. Amongst the guests are Sue
Carol, Georgie Stoll, the Cal Kuhls,
the Jimmy Dorseys, and the Larry Crosbys.
Kitty Lang makes one of her spaghetti dinners for which she is so celebrated.
July 2, Thursday.
(12:00-5:00 p.m.) KMH rehearsal (6:00–7:00 p.m.) Bing hosts the Kraft
Music Hall show with guests Martha Raye, Frank
Morgan, Norman Taurog and Frances Farmer. Songs and scenes from Rhythm on the Range are featured.
Radio previews of motion
pictures are fast becoming the rule, rather than the exception. In fact,
Hollywood’s producers apparently believe a new show is not completely ready for
the market until it has been once-overed via the air and they aren’t
letting the fore-doomed mediocrity of twenty minute condensations daunt them
either. Each week ‘Hollywood Hotel’ does its little bit, along this
line and today, Bing Crosby’s Music Hall joins the parade. You’ll
hear Bing, Bob Burns, Frances Farmer and Martha Raye skip through
scenes from ‘Rhythm of (sic) The Range’, the forthcoming Crosby vehicle in
which Burns, the Van Buren bazooka player, makes his screen
debut. Also on the sixty-minute show are, Toscha Seidel,
famed violinist, Frank Morgan, hesitant character star and Jimmy Dorsey’s Band.
(San Francisco Chronicle, 2nd
July 1936)
At four o’clock on broadcast day,
we stood in line at the NBC studios in Hollywood. Then the usher told us to
take our seats silently, and my friend and I sat approximately in the fourth
row. The rehearsal was in progress and Bing was singing a song that turned out
to be “Empty Saddles”. Bing was surrounded by the Paul Taylor Choristers. We
noticed that two young women with bright red hair were also standing in the
back. They were the guests of the evening, Frances Farmer and Martha Raye. Their strange hair color, I understood, was designed
to be more photogenic for the film Rhythm
on the Range which they had just completed. In the middle of the stage sat
Jimmy Dorsey and his orchestra.
Just before air time, Bob Burns, known as the “Arkansas
Traveler”, addressed the audience and said, “My name is Bob Burns and this
musical instrument is a bazooka. And that fella back
there in the corner is Bing Crosby.” Bing tipped his cap, and continuing, Bob
Burns added “Our guests tonight are Frances Farmer and Martha Raye, who are starring in the new Bing Crosby movie Rhythm on the Range opening in Paramount
theaters around the country.” Bob Burns continued, “The Kraft people welcome
you all here and ask you not to applaud, but if you find something funny, feel
free to laugh. Now, when that green light turns to red, we will be on the air.
And then, when the red light goes off and the green light comes on again, if
you feel like applauding, please do.”
When the broadcast began, Bing opened with “I’m An Old Cowhand
(From the Rio Grande)”, and later he sang “Empty Saddles.” Bing interviewed
Frances Farmer, and Martha Raye sang “You’ll Have to
Swing It (Mr. Paganini)”. This was the first time
that Martha Raye was heard on national radio. Bing
seemed to always open the KMH with a peppy song in those days. Bob Eberly, the vocalist with the Jimmy Dorsey band, was not
allowed to sing on the KMH broadcast and just sat in a chair during the
program. This was because the Kraft people who paid good money believed this
was Bing’s show and Bob Eberly wasn’t needed. Helen
O’Connell had not yet joined Jimmy Dorsey at that time.
Upon leaving the Kraft Music Hall broadcast, we passed by the
Fred Astaire radio program. Fred was dancing on a small platform with the
microphone close to the floor. Outside, a large crowd was standing as Bing
drove away in a convertible with a driver, waving to them.
(George McCabe, writing in BING magazine, spring, 1999)
July 4, Saturday. (5:30-6:00 p.m.) Dixie Lee Crosby appears on the Shell Chateau radio program. In the Radio
Guide Star of Stars contest, Bing is named Radio’s Favorite Male Singer of
Popular Songs, just beating Lanny Ross.
July 6–August.
Films Pennies from Heaven with Madge
Evans, Donald Meek, Louis Armstrong, and Edith Fellows.
The film is directed by Norman Z. McLeod and the musical director is George
Stoll with John Scott Trotter handling the musical arrangements for Bing’s
songs. This is Bing’s first independent production jointly with Emanuel Cohen’s
Major Pictures and he has a share in the profits. The film is distributed by
Columbia Pictures.
“One day he [Johnny Burke]
said, ‘John, do you want to do the orchestration for Pennies from Heaven?’ Many didn’t realize it was one of the first
independent film productions. Bing was then under contract to Paramount but Pennies from Heaven was done at Columbia
as an independent and nobody was set to do the music. I told him I hadn’t come
out to work and that was that.
A week later, he asked, ‘Would you help Arthur
Johnston with the piano parts?’ Many great American song writers are melodic
geniuses but musical illiterates. I mean they can’t write a single note. This
isn’t denigrating their abilities; there was no reason for them to spend the
time necessary. So, after much persuasion, I helped Arthur with the piano parts
and fell in love with the score. I mean, there was “Pennies from Heaven,” “So
Do I,” and “One, Two, Button Your Shoe,” and also the “Skeleton in the Closet.”
By the time I’d taken down the melody and made the harmonization for Arthur,
made a sketch, more or less, I told Johnny I’d done half the work and would
complete the orchestrations if the offer was still open. Of course he said,
‘Yes,’ so I finished it up. Georgie Stoll was the
conductor. The day we recorded “Pennies from Heaven” the cameras were rolling
with the orchestra on stage; it was not prerecorded. Today everything’s lipsync. Bing was a past master of lip syncing but it
wasn’t done then. As Bing usually liked to record in the morning, we finished
shooting about noon and then I had lunch, said my goodbyes (my car was already
packed) and went back east.”
(John Scott Trotter, speaking in an exclusive interview with Gord Atkinson, subsequently broadcast in Gord Atkinson’s The Crosby Years, www.whenfm.com)
Those scenes I had with Bing in
that picture were Classics. Especially the scene where he wanted to open this Big Time Haunted
House Night Club. But he didn't have enough
loot to open this joint. And he liked our little seven
piece band. So ... He said Henry (that
was my name in the film), I would like to hire your band and I will
give you and your boys 'TEN' percent of the business, so you go
and talk it over with your
Musicians. Come back tomorrow and let me know as to what conclusion your boys
came to. The next day I was right on time. And -
Mr Poole (Bing's name) met me halfway in
the back yard, saying Henry, have your boys decided yet? And I
said, Mr Poole, I talked it over with my boys and told them you are willing to give them ten percent of the
business. And my boys said that they cannot figure out ten percent
as we're only seven men. So if you will be so kind as to give
us seven percent, we'll - Just then Mr Poole said, OK Henry, it's a deal. And
I smiled as I walked away saying Mr Poole, thank you very much. - I told those guys that you would do the right thing. - 'GASSUH' personified.
Oh, I could run my mouth
about my Man Crosby - those Broadcasts
moments, and Stuff - why you'd be reading for years. But I must say this. Here's paying
tribute to one of the finest Guys in
this musical and wonderful world.
With a heart as big.
(As the world) Carry on Papa Bing, Ol Boy!! You will still
be giving young singers food
for thoughts (Musically) for Generations to come.
(Louis
Armstrong, writing in a 1967 letter to an unknown recipient, as reproduced in A Pocketful of Dreams (Gary Giddins).)
July 8,
Wednesday. Makes a private recording in Hollywood with Jimmy Dorsey as a
greeting to Ted Lewis at Decca Records (UK) on the second anniversary of the
founding of the US arm of Decca. Bing sings part of “Take My Heart” and others
present include Elizabeth Allan and Jack Kapp.
July 9, Thursday.
(12:00-5:45 p.m.) Bing rehearses for his Kraft show.(6:00–7:00 p.m.) The Kraft Music Hall
broadcast on NBC. Bing is nursing a bad head cold as he acts as host. His guests include Jean Arthur, Henri Deering and Bert
Wheeler.
Many radioites are nursing grudges against politicos for hogging all that network time but not Bert Wheeler. Comic was cancelled twice on the Kraft show before he went on Thursday but drew triple pay.
(Variety, July 15, 1936)
July 12, Sunday. Bing
and Dixie attend the Arline Judge-Wesley Ruggles party at Wesley Ruggles’
home in Laurel Road, Beverly Hills, which starts at 2:00 p.m. and carries on
until the early hours of the next morning. Others present include Cary Grant, Louella O. Parsons, Virginia Bruce and Cesar Romero, Binnie Barnes, the Buster Colliers, the Skeets
Gallaghers, the Elliott Nugents,
Toby Wing, the Frank Albertsons, and the Wally Westmores.
The party is spread around the large property and “three groups of musicians
and songsters peddled their musical wares about the place without once
effecting discordant conflict.”
July 14, Tuesday.
Records "Empty Saddles" and "Roundup Lullaby" from the film Rhythm on
the Range in Hollywood with Victor Young and his Orchestra.
July 16,
Thursday. (12:00-5:55 p.m.) Rehearses for the Kraft Music Hall show. (6:00–7:00 p.m.) Bing’s Kraft
Music Hall show. Guests include Robert Taylor, Marjorie Gateson,
and Rose Bampton.
July 17, Friday.
Bing’s first recording session with Jimmy Dorsey and his Orchestra. He sings
songs from the film Rhythm on the Range
including “I’m an Old Cowhand” and "I Can't Escape from You".
Bing Crosby has four excerpts
from Rhythm on the Range - “Empty
Saddles” - “Roundup Lullaby” - “I Can’t Escape From
You” and “I’m An Old Cowhand”. Bing ba-ba-bees in
typical Crosby manner to sock disc results. Tunes are all there and Crosby
knows how to sell ‘em.
(Variety, August 12, 1936)
I have not seen Rhythm on the Range so cannot say how
Bing Crosby’s “Empty Saddles” and “I’m an Old Cowhand” on Brunswick 02270
compare with his film versions. Somehow this type of number does not seem to
suit Bing’s style nearly so well as such numbers as “Would You?” However if you
must have the authentic, then this is the record to get.
(The Gramophone, October 1936)
Empty Saddles
There is a short, melancholy introduction to Bing's grieving chorus in this lament for lost friends. He extracts every ounce of emotion from the words with a contrasting, sturdy middle passage in fine tones. His "if you'll only say "I'm lonely?" is particularly intense and the phrasing is impaired only by a break in the middle of the line "as you carry my old pal". His chorus is followed by four bars of the bridge being sung by the Guardsmen before Crosby re-enters to reprise the rest of the song with their vocal support. The Quartette's coda ("in the old corral") is rather theatrical and reminiscent of musical comedy and "Song of the Dawn". The orchestral arrangement and accompaniment is good throughout with excellent work from guitar...Both the composers had worked as cowboys. Billy Hill wrote many western songs and for this one he set a poem previously written by Brennan, grieving for lost companions. Bing sang it in the film astride a white horse, winning the rodeo song contest in a Madison Square Garden setting.
(Fred Reynolds, The Crosby Collection)
“I'm an Old Cowhand (From the Rio Grande)" had been used in the film “Rhythm on the Range” when it had been a musical high spot in a campfire scene which had the whole cast clapping and stomping. The commercial recording was the first recording by Crosby of a song by Johnny Mercer and it proved to be the right occasion, the right singer and the right orchestra for a hit of spectacular dimensions that eventually sold over a million. Forget that procession of long-homed cattle moving in a haze of dust hustled by lasso-waving cowboys in gritty frontier tradition. From the brief but boisterous introduction the listener knows that a special treat is in store. Bing sings the first verse happily indicating that he could hardly be considered a representative of the old west; in fact he "never saw a cow", doesn't know how to rope a steer and has no intention of ever doing so. That, however, doesn't deter him from "yippi-hiing" with all the bandsmen joining in. The band then takes over for two verses, first instrumentally, with trumpet lead, and then vocally to proclaim that they, too, are "old cowhands" who have come to town to hear the band. Bing sings the next verse and following the first line Fud Livingston, Charleston-born, calls out in a rich southern accent, "Oh yes sir, Mr Bing" to which Crosby half turning from the microphone (indicating that the interruption was spontaneous) banters "Too hot for you, Uncle Fud?" and continues the song without hesitation or pause. It is the essence of the joyous spirit of the recording. Jimmy Dorsey (clt) leads the band in a short, bright interlude, Bing sings a final stanza and the bandsmen exemplify the general abandon by singing a "yippi-hi" coda and everyone has joined in the fun of an exuberant performance. Crosby points the lyrics with all his considerable skill and some superb lines while his tempo and melody changes are charged with an inherent, simmering jazz feeling. The band, so obviously in buoyant mood, matches Bing all the way and the only verdict on this recording can be a triple-tie - Bing, the band and Johnny Mercer.
(Fred Reynolds, The Crosby Collection)
It was the era of the singing cowboy, and here was life
imitating art. In fifteen minutes, writing on the back of an envelope, he
worked the image into a song whose satiric underside vented some of Mercer's
own bitter frustration with Hollywood:
I'm an old cowhand from the Rio Grande,
But my legs ain't bowed and my cheeks ain't tanned.
I'm a cowboy who never saw a cow,
Never roped a steer 'cause I don't know how,
And I sho' ain't fixin' to start in now, Yippy I O Ki Ay
...
I'm a ridin' fool who is up to date,
I know ev'ry trail in the Lone Star State,
'Cause I ride the range in a Ford V-Eight. Yippy I O Ki
Ay.
Only Mercer's perfect ear for regional idioms would have
come up with a line like "I sho' ain't fixin' to start in now." Cole Porter, at about this same time,
would write his own cowboy song, "Don't Fence Me In," but his lyric
would employ such erudite phrases as "where the West commences." In
the fifteen minutes it took Mercer to write the lyric to "I'm an Old
Cowhand," he also wrote a rollicking melody, which sharpened the satire by
suggesting the clip-clop of horse hooves. Many people were amazed that someone
like Johnny Mercer, who could neither play the piano nor read music, could
write a melody for "I'm an Old Cowhand," as well as for
"Dream," "Something's Gotta Give," and other successful
songs.
(Philip Furia, Skylark: The Life and Times of Johnny Mercer)
July 23,
Thursday. Records his first Hawaiian songs “Song of the Islands” and “Aloha Oe” with Dick McIntyre and his Harmony Hawaiians. The Kraft Music Hall is not broadcast that night
due to a speech by Alfred Landon, the Republican nominee for president, taking
precedence.
July 24,
Friday. Records "Pennies from Heaven" and "So Do I" from the film Pennies from Heaven in Hollywood with Georgie
Stoll and his Orchestra.
July 29,
Wednesday. Records two more songs from the film Pennies from Heaven in Hollywood with Georgie
Stoll and his Orchestra. Bing’s film Rhythm on the
Range has its New York premiere.
Bing Crosby rides a broncho, milks a wild cow, croons a lullaby to a
2,200-pound Hereford bull and has a box-car romance with a runaway heiress in
his new picture at the Paramount. All of which may be interesting and
amusing—in fact, it is—but we prefer to think of Rhythm on the Range as our screen introduction to Martha Raye.
(Frank S. Nugent, The New York Times, July 30, 1936)
Despite the title, the
costumes and the characters, this is no western. There’s very little range, but
plenty of rhythm, and the latter makes it pleasant entertainment. Bing Crosby
shoots par on singing and light comedy but, because of story handicap, he might
have had some tough going minus the aid of a pair of new faces (Raye and Bob Burns), clicking on their first picture
attempt. . . There’s singing throughout the picture, though technically it’s
not a musical, and Crosby does most of it, which will satisfy most everybody.
He starts off with “Empty Saddles,” new cowboy dirge by Billy Hill, doing it
astride a white horse in the Garden sequence. Later on he sings “I Can’t Escape
from You,” by Leo Robin-Richard Whiting, and “The House That Jack Built for
Jill,” by Robin and Frederick Hollander (sic
– the latter song was cut from the film).
Best musical sequence, and
bringing the picture to a corking climax is a jam fest in the ranch house with
Crosby and Miss Raye singing and truckin’
to “If You Can’t Sing It, You’ll Have To Swing It” (Sam Coslow)
and “I’m An Old Cowhand” (Johnny Mercer). Miss Raye
gets in her hottest licks here. There’s also some heated trumpeting by Louis
Prima at this time.
No fancy production to speak
of, especially during the musical moments. Songs depend on delivery and
direction, and get value received in both departments. ‘Cowhand’ has already
been extensively plugged.
(Variety, August 5, 1936)
Given a good story at last
and the best support that has fallen his way in a long time, Bing Crosby hits
his stride again in Rhythm on the Range,
the new picture at the Paramount.
(Los Angeles Evening Herald Express, July 31, 1936)
Rhythm on the Range was much, much better. A clever musical Western that
featured Crosby as a rough-and-tumble cowboy, the film is remembered today as
the springboard for Martha Raye’s film career.
However, Rhythm on the Range is also
noteworthy among Crosby’s musicals of the thirties because it contained an
intelligent plotline that never got lost. In addition, the film allowed Crosby
to wrap his mellow tones around some flavorful Western songs. Crosby delivered
them all with equal finesse, but the highlight surely had to be Bing’s
beautiful, almost haunting rendition of Billy Hill’s superb tribute to the old
West, “Empty Saddles,” a thoughtful and often moving ballad that fit Crosby’s
smooth voice like a tailor-made glove. Bing’s dramatic, echoing interpretation,
sung from the middle of a rodeo stadium, gives it an unreal, almost ghostly
quality.
(The Films of Bing Crosby, page 24)
July 30, Thursday. (6:00 to 7:00 p.m.) Bing hosts the Kraft Music Hall on NBC. Guests include Dolores Costello Barrymore, Vera Van, and Albert Spalding.
For once nothing
interferes with Bing Crosby and his Music Hall program, unless some unforeseen
emergency bobs up at the last minute. Today, he presents as featured
soloist the eminent Albert Spalding, who does as many tricks with the violin as
Thurston does with cards. Crosby will also have blonde, Vera Van on
for this one show. Miss Van is a sister of Jimmy Grier’s, Dick
Webster and does some right smart torch singing, in her own
right. Bob ‘Movie Actor’ Burns contributes a solo or two on his
famed bazooka, father of all the little bazookas which are now making their
appearance.
(Los
Angeles Times, 30th July 1936)
August 1–16, Saturday–Sunday. The Olympic Games take place in Berlin. Jesse Owens picks
up four gold medals.
August 2, Sunday. Bob Burns' wife, Elizabeth, dies at the age of 32 after an operation.
August 4,
Tuesday. Bing records “Shoe Shine Boy” with Jimmy Dorsey and his Orchestra in
Hollywood. He stays on to record two Hawaiian songs with Dick McIntyre and his
Harmony Hawaiians.
August 6,
Thursday. (11:00 a.m. - 6:00 p. m) Rehearses for his Kraft show.(6:00–7:00 p.m.) Bing hosts the Kraft
Music Hall with guests Robert Young, Ann Sothern,
and Ernest Hutcheson.
When Bob Burns toots his
bazooka and tells funny stories tonight on Bing Crosby’s Music Hall feature (
(Gene Inge,
Los Angeles Evening Herald Express, August 6, 1936)
Ann Sothern,
RKO film player made a guest appearance on Bing Crosby’s Kraft Music Hall Hour
on Thursday evening the 6th, with a George Gershwin song. While being no
knockout in giving out with the number on the air-waves, Miss Sothern’s vocal efforts compensated greatly for the
meaningless chatter, she indulged in, ahead of it, with Crosby. The talk
intended to give the impression (that) Miss Sothern
was hungry. This opened the opportunity for a Kraft ‘plug’- J.L. Kraft, head of
the commercials sponsoring Crosby’s program was on the air that night and
offered to send Miss Sothern a basket of his
products. That’s apt to be a businessman’s idea of showmanship. Miss Sothern also said something about her tennis playing.
However, with adequate material, listening to her would be more of a pleasure.
If any complaints, at all, the film industry has a squawk coming against radio
for the dumb material afforded players - it makes them seem like amateurs.
(Variety, August 12, 1936)
August 9, Sunday. Bing, Gary Cooper, Pat
O’Brien, William LeBaron and a number of other picture names journey to Del Mar
for the opening gun on construction work on the new Del Mar race track.
August 10,
Monday. Records three songs (including “For Love Alone”) with Victor Young and
his Orchestra in Hollywood.
August 12,
Wednesday. Recording session with Ivan Ditmars and
the Three Cheers in Hollywood. The songs committed to wax are “Dear Old Girl”
and “Just One Word of Consolation.”
August 13, Thursday. (11:00 a.m. - 6:00 p. m) Rehearses for his Kraft show. (6:00–7:00 p.m.) The Kraft Music Hall broadcast on NBC. Bing acts as host and his guests include Louis Armstrong, Anita Louise, and Josephine Tumminia.
....there’s the Crosby
show with Anita Louise, Alison Skipworth, Josephine Tuminia and
Louis ‘Satchelmouth’ Armstrong, as guests. No introductions are
needed to the above, at least, none should be needed. Miss
Louise and Miss Skipworth will stage a short
skit. Miss Tuminia, San Francisco coloratura, featured so
successfully by Sigmund Romberg will sing a song or two and Armstrong will
demonstrate his distinctive ‘hot’ trumpet playing.
(San
Francisco Chronicle, 13th August 1936)
August 14, Friday. During the evening, Bing attends the opening of the Somerset House clubhouse and is persuaded to sing.
…This only whetted the
guests’ appetites for more entertainment, so Bing Crosby who is a charter
member was prevailed upon to warble a ditty. Marjorie and Gene Johnston played
a duo accompaniment at the ivories for Bing, but their hot licks didn’t always
coincide with Mr. Crosby’s million-dollar boo-boo-b’boo, so he wound up “Sweet
Georgia Brown” with an embarrassed invitation to buy a refresher for everyone.
It was a generous gesture, for Mr. Crosby to sing for the crowd with strange accompanists
and no microphone. He deserves a big hand.
(The Los Angeles Times, 17th August 1936)
August 16, Sunday. Golfs at Lakeside.
August 17,
Monday. Makes twelve-inch 78 rpm recordings of the songs from the film Pennies from Heaven with Frances
Langford, Louis Armstrong, and Jimmy Dorsey and his Orchestra.
Mollie Crosby, two-year-old niece of Bing Crosby, was seriously burned at her home yesterday when her
dress caught fire from a match which she playfully ignited. Before flames could
be extinguished by maid, the child had received second degree burns. New skin
may be grafted, according to girl’s father, Larry Crosby.
(Daily Variety, August 18, 1936)
August 19,
Wednesday. Bing and Dixie sing two duets with Victor Young and his Orchestra
for Decca, “The Way You Look Tonight” and “A Fine Romance.” They are Dixie’s
last recordings.
She cut a couple of records with
me, but no one will ever know the ordeal I went through persuading her to make
those records. Building the pyramids would have been easier. She thought of
scores of reasons why she didn’t want to do them—all of them sprang from her
shyness. She was an only daughter; she had been very close to her parents, and
they’d sheltered her as much as possible. As a result, she’d never been before
the public much prior to leaving home, and she never got over disliking it.
(Bing Crosby, Call Me Lucky, page 47)
August 20, Thursday. (6:00–7:00 p.m.) The last Kraft Music Hall broadcast by Bing prior to his vacation. Guests include Joan Bennett, Harold Bauer and Dorothy Lamour.
Bing Crosby will have as
his guests on the Kraft Music Hall program over the NBC-Red network at 6:00
p.m. today, two of Hollywood’s most glamorous personalities when blonde Joan
Bennett and brunette Dorothy Lamour, NBC songstress who has just completed her
first motion picture, come to the microphone to be interviewed by the famous
crooner.
(Santa Ana
Register, 20th August 1936)
August 22, Saturday.
Cornerstone laying exercises take place at the new County Fair plant at
Del Mar. This is to be the home of the Del Mar Turf Club and Bing, Gary
Cooper, George Raft, Joe E. Brown, Pat O'Brien and William LeBaron are
in attendance, Governor Frank Merriam makes the dedicatory address.
August 29, Saturday. (10:00 p.m.) Sails with Dixie and the Lindsay Howards on the S.S. Lurline from berth 156 at Wilmington, Los Angeles to the Hawaiian islands. It is announced that one of Bing's songs is to be published in braille.
CROSBY
SONG WILL BE FIRST BRAILLE MUSIC
HOLLYWOOD, Cal. Aug. 29 UP—For the first time in the
history of Braille printing, the theme song of a motion picture is to be published
soon in sheet music for the blind.
“Pennies From Heaven,” title number of Bing Crosby’s
latest film production, was prepared in a special arrangement for the blind today
by its composer, Arthur Johnston.
The printing—in raised letters and notes—is to be done
at the plant of the Braille Institute of America here.
Decision to engage on this musical project was made at
a recent studio conference of Crosby, Johnston and Mary Cook Cowerd, noted blind
soprano, after she heard the number and said blind musicians would welcome it.”
“Such a printing never has been done,” Miss Cowerd declared, “Just as no book of practical harmony for students in Braille has ever been published before. But there’s no reason why it should not.”
September 3, Thursday. Bing and Dixie arrive in Honolulu, Oahu. News photographers come on board the Lurline and watch Bing have his breakfast. Bing says that he will be staying in Eugene P. Shone’s house at Kaalawai with his friends from Burlingame, California, Mr. and Mrs. Lindsay Howard, Robert Howard, Maxine Fuller, and Manuela Hudson.
September 5,
Saturday. Bing motorglides, swims, and surfs. Local
photographers capture the scene and photos appear in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin that day.
September 6,
Sunday. Bing attends a meeting of Kamaaina
Beachcombers’ Hui (an organization of local sportsmen
interested in promoting swimming in the islands) at the home of Alfred L.
Castle at Kahuku, Oahu.
September 8, Tuesday.
Golfs at Waialae and has an 81. Thought to have been at the Civic
Auditorium in Honolulu to see his friend from Gonzaga days, stunt man
Joe Lynch, in action at the wrestling.
September 10, Thursday. Bing and Dixie give a greeting party for Loretta Young at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel.
September 12, Saturday. Watches the baseball game at the Honolulu Stadium between the Navy and the Army.
September 15,
Tuesday. During the afternoon, Bing travels on the sampan “Carrie T” from
Honolulu to Kaunakakai, Molokai, with Lindsay Howard, Chick Daniels, and Johnny
Gomez.
No wahines
clustered around Bing Crosby when he arrived unannounced by the sampan Carrie
T. from Honolulu with a party of three. The celebrated actor looked up and down
Kaunakakai’s main street, threw up his arms and said, “I’m disappointed.”
But his disappointment was short-lived. Someone breathed that
Bing was on the island and everything was all hustle and bustle. While the
visitor was busy viewing the settlement from the pali,
By the time Bing had returned from the pali an hour later, a crowd had gathered on
Kaunakakai’s main street. “Gee, he’s good looking,” said one wahine. “I wouldn’t miss meeting him for the world,” said
another.
Headed by magistrate Edward McCorriston,
acting as the “cockeyed” mayor of Kaunakakai, Bing and his party paraded
through the town.
Picture Bing parading through Kaunakakai, crooning all the way,
together with Magistrate McCorriston carrying a flag,
another a gallon, another some old town crab nets. Others carried pineapples,
coconuts, and other fruits. After the procession circled the town, it stopped
at the front steps of the Molokai market. There Bing was crowned with
pineapples, coconuts, sweet potatoes, eggplant, and flowers. Armed with his
presents, Bing sang “Hawaiian Paradise,” then he tried to sing “Na Lei O
Hawaii” but he didn’t know the words.
(Honolulu Star-Bulletin, September 16, 1936)
The warmth of the welcome is so great
that Bing is persuaded to stay overnight on the island so that he can go deer
hunting there the next day.
September 16,
Wednesday. Burns and Allen join Bing and Dixie in Honolulu.
September 19, Saturday. Hosts a party for 12 at the Royal Hawaiian hotel.
September 21,
Monday. Bing golfs in the Honolulu Sports Writers
Tournament at the Moanalua course and has an 86.
September 22, Tuesday.
Bing and Dixie togeher with the Lindsay Howards attend a cocktail party
at the Kahala home of Mr. & Mrs. F. Trapnell followed by dancing at
the Waialae.
September 23, Wednesday. In the morning, plays tennis with Lindsay Howard.
September 25, Friday. Thought to have attended the Balboa Day ball at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel.
September 26, Saturday.
Bing and Dixie travel to the island of Maui and attend a dinner-dance
at the Maui Country Club. They are guests of Edward H. K. Baldwin.
September 29, Tuesday. Bing and Dixie travel back from Maui to Honolulu.
September 30, Wednesday. Bing and Lindsay Howard spend 12 hours fishing in a friend's sampan and
come back with two and a half tons of tuna!
October 1, Thursday. Bing makes two recordings at the HTP studios in Honolulu.
Crosby Makes Record Here Of Anderson’s Big
Hits
Bing Crosby, sojourning singer-actor, forgot he was on an
Hawaiian vacation long enough Thursday to make a recording at the HTP studios,
in fact, two recordings.
His face bronzed by a sincere Hawaiian sun, Bing sang about
“Our Last Hawaiian Moon,” newest composition by Honolulu’s own R. Alex
Anderson. “Andy,” who accompanied Bing to the HTP studios, also helped arrange
the song for recording purposes.
It all came about when Crosby voiced a desire to send a
phonograph records of the song, and another of “Honolulu by the Sea,” also by
Anderson, to the Paramount Hollywood studios. Four newly found Hawaiian buddies
of Bing’s filled in characteristic native background. Charley Amalu. Eddie Kinilau,
Renny Brooks, and Splash Lyons wielded two guitars, one ukulele, and one slap
bass in typical style.
Thus it came about that the Inimitable Crosby croon found expression
at last in Hawaiian-recorded Hawaiian music by a Honolulu composer.
(The Honolulu Advertiser, October 4, 1936)
October 2, Friday. Bing is photographed with 12 hula girls who are being tested for his forthcoming Waikiki Wedding
film. At night, the Crosbys and the Lin Howards entertain a party of 26
for dining and dancing at Waialae. This is their farewell party.
October 3,
Saturday. (Noon). Bing and Dixie leave Honolulu on the S.S. Lurline. During his extended
vacation, Bing is said to have appeared in a rathskeller
in the native district of Honolulu and acted as master of ceremonies besides
singing. Also, he has discovered Harry Owens’ song “Sweet Leilani”
which he later sings in the film Waikiki
Wedding. After hearing the song, Bing asked Harry Owens if he could use it
but Owens did not want to let it go as it was dedicated to his daughter, Leilani. Bing finally convinced him to agree on the basis
that a trust fund could be established into which all the royalties from the
song could be put for the benefit of
Harry’s daughter Leilani and any additional children
that might come along. The next morning after reaching this agreement, Bing and
Harry met in a recording studio:
“We’ll knock out a rough
recording,” said Bing. “Something to take back to Hollywood with me. But first
Harry, just hum me the melody from the top all the way through. I want to be
sure of every note. I don’t read music, you know.
I hummed. Then Bing took over
and tried it just once with the little group. How fast he learned! Once through
and he knew it perfectly. Turning to Sakamoto, he said, “Okay, Joe, put on a
pie.”
We made a rough recording and
called it a day.
(Harry Owens writing in his
book, Sweet Leilani:
the story behind the song, an autobiography)
October 8, Thursday. Bing and Dixie arrive back in San Francisco on the S.S. Lurline and go to the races at Tanforan.
They stay with the Lindsay Howards at 1200 Jackling Drive, Burlingame.
(Bing buys this house in 1964.) Larry Crosby completes the purchase of the contract of Georgie Turner, a
promising young heavyweight boxer, on behalf of Bing.
October 10, Saturday. Again at the races at Tanforan.
October 11,
Sunday. Bing finishes 1-up and ties for second in Lakeside's match play
vs par event. (2:15 p.m.) Later Bing is at the Loyola Lions vs. St.
Mary's Galloping Gaels game at the Los Angeles Coliseum. St. Mary's win
19-7.
October 14, Wednesday. Bing and Dixie, together with studio officials, are at the Fox Pomona Theatre to see an unfinished preview of Pennies from Heaven.
October 15,
Thursday. (11:30a.m.-4:15 p.m.) (5:15-6:50 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft broadcast. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) Returns to the Kraft Music Hall and performs weekly until July 1,
1937. The rating for the season is 22.4 which puts the show in 6th. place overall. The top show is the Eddie Cantor program with
29.1. Jimmy Dorsey and his Orchestra continue to provide the musical
accompaniment. In the opening show, Bing sings four songs from the film Pennies from Heaven and the guests are
Ruth Chatterton, Slip Madigan, and Elisabeth Rethberg.
Having had his fill of Tanforan (racetrack) and its steeds of
assorted size, shape and speed, Bing Crosby picks up where he left off, on the
Music Hall show. This means Bob Burns is promoted back to his
original high level of comedian which is a ‘break’. We hear the
Master of Ceremonies stigma weighed, heavily, upon him. Guests in
the Music Hall will be prima donna, Elisabeth Rethberg - she of
the near perfect voice, cinemactress Ruth Chatterton and
St. Marys’ coach, Slip Madigan.
(San Francisco
Chronicle, 15th October 1936)
It
was Crosby’s return to the Music Hall after a vacation in Honolulu. The general
songster and master of ceremonies bubbled over with witticisms and ad-libbed with
Bob Burns causing much merriment and a near breaking up of the show.
Crosby
is perhaps the most pleasant air host on the studio lists today. His guests,
from the most temperamental of artists to the sillies of comedians, have found
themselves at home one second after Bing says hello. He has the knack of
putting the performer and the listeners at ease—an accomplishment that is rare.
Of
course, his baritoning is too well known to need comment except to add that his
voice sounded as good as ever after his micro phonic lay-off.
Ruth
Chatterton and Elisabeth Rethberg were guests, with the former giving the
answers in an interview and the latter singing classical numbers. It was a nice
welcome home party for Bing.
(Tim Marks, Brooklyn Times Union, October 16, 1936)
I have been credited with
giving Bing Crosby a style of talking. . . . The reason early Crosby/Kraft radio
shows sounded stilted was that Bing simply resisted talking. He didn’t want to
be bothered with scripts and rehearsals. He just wanted to sing. Finally, we
conceived the idea of putting lines in the guests’ scripts that were not in
Bing’s script. No performer wants to wind up with egg on his face, and Bing
rose to the bait. Always quick enough with a quip in the locker room at
Lakeside, he fell back on this natural resource. Between this, and the language
I wrote for him which he enjoyed speaking, the public image known as Bing
Crosby evolved.
(Carroll Carroll from The Old Time Radio Book by Ted Sennett, pages 68–69)
Now Jimmy
[Dorsey]]—Jimmy was a different type fella. Something of a dandy, very modish,
soft-spoken. He had good taste in the things life afforded, as well as in
music. He was an inveterate punster. He collected them. I can still hear him at
rehearsals, cracking some particularly odious pun, and then beaming at the
derisive howls it evoked. He was especially proud if the bandsmen pelted him
with mutes, drumsticks, and other impedimenta of the tour. About most things,
other than music, Jimmy was rather shy and self-effacing. Sometimes on the
Kraft Music Hall, he’d have some announcements to make—introductions of a
guest, and such like. This was a chore which literally terrorized him, and led
to some amusing malaprops. Like the evening one of our guests was a famous
baritone from the Metropolitan Opera. Jimmy presented him as follows: “And now,
ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce a famous opera steer.” This was a
particularly appropriate description.
(Bing
Crosby, writing the introduction to the book
Tommy and Jimmy: The Dorsey Years)
Construction of the new $40,000 Bing Crosby building at 9028 Sunset Boulevard
commences. Bing’s organization ultimately occupies the top floor of the
three-story building. G. Arnold Stevens, a graduate of the Mayo Clinic in
Minnesota, takes space on the second floor in 1938 and becomes Bing’s doctor as
well as a close friend.
October 16/17, Friday/Saturday. Thought to have attended the San Diego County Fair at Del Mar.
October 22,
Thursday. (11:30a.m.-4:15 p.m.) (5:00-6:30 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft broadcast. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) The Kraft
Music Hall broadcast on NBC. Bing acts as host and his guests include Adolphe Menjou and Anne Shirley.
Bing is thought to have gone on to attend the annual Dove Dinner given by J. Lamarr Butler at the Hotel Huntington in Pasadena. The
guest of honor is Joe E. Brown.
Movieland’s Anne Shirley and Adolphe Menjou and
the Met’s, Josephine Antoine are guests of Bing Crosby on KPO at
7 pm. It seems fitting that Bing Crosby and Rudy Vallee, two
crooners who went places should stage their radio shows on the same day, the
same network and, very nearly, the same hour. But whereas Crosby is
a comparative novice at ceremony mastering, Vallee is a real
veteran. Today on KPO at 5 pm he celebrates his seventh radio
birthday.
(San Francisco Chronicle, 22nd October 1936)
Bing Crosby is my
idea of radio’s perfect master of ceremonies. He sings, has a sense of humor
and can handle his lines with ease. He proved that last night when he interviewed
Adolph Menjou and sang “Tavern in the Town” with Anne Shirley. Of course, Bob
Burns was on hand with more of his confed chatter and a bit of the bazooka.
(Tim Marks, Brooklyn Times Union, October 23, 1936)
October 25, Sunday.
As Lakeside champion, Bing competes in the first annual tournament of
Southern California golf club champions at the Lakeside club but his
score of 77-77-154 leaves him in sixth place. After the golf, Bing
hosts a dinner-dance at the club and presents the prizes.
October 28, Wednesday. Bing's horse "Khayyam" wins at Tanforan. This is only the second time that one of his horses has won.
October 29, Thursday. (11:00a.m.-4:30 p.m.) (5:00-7:00 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft broadcast. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) Another Kraft Music Hall broadcast on NBC. Bing
acts as host and his guests include Cary Grant and Elissa
Landi. Joe Venuti’s
Orchestra replaces Jimmy Dorsey for this show.
Bing Crosby’s Music Hall which manages to maintain a respectably
high, guest star standing, goes KPO-ing at 7 tonight, with three
visitors. You’ll hear screen favourites, Elissa Landi and
Cary Grant and cellist, Emanuel Feuermann, rated tops in the world,
today. Miss Landi and Grant will be interviewed or had you
already guessed?
(San Francisco Chronicle, 29th October 1936)
October 30,
Friday. (4:45 p.m.) Sue Carol weds Howard Wilson at the First
Congregational Church of Hollywood. Dixie Lee is maid of honor and Bing is there
too. The newlyweds spend the first part of their honeymoon at Bing’s home at
Rancho Santa Fe. Elsewhere, Bing's horse "Maybeth" wins the second race of the day at Tanforan.
November 2,
Monday. (9:30–10:30 p.m.) Bing is booked to make a guest appearance on California’s Hour (a chain store
sponsored program) over station KHJ but this is cancelled as a result
of a concerted protest by independent grocers.
November 3, Tuesday. Franklin D. Roosevelt is reelected as president of the United
States.
November 4, Wednesday. Bing plays in the first round of the Alphonzo Bell tournament at Bel-Air and beats Russ Turner 5 and 4.
November 5,
Thursday. (11:00a.m.-5:00 p.m.) (5:30-7:00 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft broadcast. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) The Kraft
Music Hall broadcast on NBC. Bing acts as host and his guests include
Gladys George and Warren William.
If there weren’t much pretty money and lovely publicity involved,
Hollywood’s throbbing thespians would probably fight to the last ditch to keep
off the air. After all, there isn’t much pleasure in working before
a camera all day and rehearsing in a studio all night and furthermore you’d be
surprised how many veteran stars suffer severe attacks of ‘mike fright’ when
the cue signal is flashed. Bing Crosby is probably the one radio ace
who realises this, that’s why the Hollywooders who appear
on his show, do anything and everything, except act. In fact, they
are forbidden to emote.
‘Be yourselves’ is Bing’s standing order and
that’s why on last week’s Music Hall, you heard Cary Grant singing cockney
songs and Elissa Landi reciting poetry she’d written herself and
they don’t have time to worry about ‘mike fright’. Tonight, on KPO,
Gladys George, star of, ‘Valiant Is The Word For Carrie’ and Warren
William head the guest list and even Crosby doesn’t know what they’re going to
do - That’s his story, anyway. The only predictable guest tonight
is, Bruna Castagna, currently appearing with the San Francisco Opera
Company. You can rest assured that she will sing and in her usual,
spotless style.
(San Francisco Chronicle, 5th November 1936)
Refreshing amidst the deluge of punny programs, “Music Hall”
consistently maintains a laudably obvious policy of appealing to a general but discriminating,
audience. Provocative of food tapping was Bing Crosby’s opening number on
Thursday. Gladys George brought to the Hall a few bright moments from her famous
stage success, “Personal Appearance.” Hilarious was Bob Burns’ address to the
women of the nation climaxed by his explicit request that they take a good look
at their husbands. “Go on,” urged Burns, “take a look at him.” Then he paused.
Inquired Burns after a brief silence: “Now lady, surely you could have done
better than that!” Warren William and Bing
Crosby essayed a skit involving the
suave William's adventures as a yachtsman, high point of their exchange involving
the somewhat extraneous subject of picking winning horses. To William's request
that Bing pick a good horse for him, Crosby replied “I will when I find one.”
Studio audience in Hollywood thought his very funny since Bing is a notoriously
poor judge of horseflesh. Once purchased an entire stable of broken down plugs
when his wife Dixie wasn’t vigilant. Bruna Castagna’s excellent singing
somewhat out of place on this show in so far as it seemed to slow tempo.
Altogether the kind of show that causes station identification to seem a nuisance,
so smooth is the performance,
(San Francisco Examiner, November 7, 1936)
Novmber 6, Friday. Bing's horse "Lady Lakeside" wins the second race at Tanforan with odds of 34 to 1.
November 10, Tuesday.
Bing's fighter, George Turner (weighing in at 191 lbs) stops Jack Scott
in the seventh round in a bout at the Olympic Auditorium.
November 11,
Wednesday. Playing in the third round of the Alphonzo Bell tournament
at Bel-Air, Bing beats the reigning club champion, Arkell Burnap, at
the 21st hole.
November 12,
Thursday. (12:15-4:30 p.m.) (5:30-6:50 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft broadcast. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) Another Kraft
Music Hall broadcast by Bing. The guests include Grete
Stueckgold and Edmund Lowe. Goes on with Dixie to a cocktail soiree at the Ambassador Hotel sponsored by Adolph Zukor.
November 14/15,Saturday/Sunday. Bing is in San Francisco. On Saturday, he is at the Bay Meadows track for the opening of their turf season and he and Dixie lunch with the Lindsay Howards. On Sunday, he watches the Santa Clara Broncos beat St. Mary's College 19-0 at Kezar Stadium.
November 19,
Thursday. (12:00-5:00 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft broadcast. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) The Kraft
Music Hall broadcast on NBC. Bing acts as host and his guests include Patsy
Kelly and Robert Armstrong.
Bing Crosby who did San Francisco in regal style last week and weekend,
stages his usual ‘carbon copy’ program. We mean all of Bing’s
programs, read like the one preceding, so, we always adjust our spectacles and
look twice to make sure we aren’t printing last week’s. Patsy Kelly
and Robert Armstrong of the films share top billing with concert pianist,
Harold Bauer and it’s all on KPO at 7 pm.
(San Francisco Chronicle, 19th November 1936)
November 26,
Thursday. (10:00a.m.-2:00 p.m.) (5:00-7:00 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft broadcast. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) Bing’s Kraft
Music Hall broadcast. Guests include Lotte Lehmann and Ricardo Cortez.
November 28,
Saturday. Bing in San Diego with Lindsay Howard, gets into a fracas with some
sailors during the early hours of the morning as he leaves the College Inn
nightspot and news of it appears in the newspapers. Meanwhile Bing’s recording
of “Pennies from Heaven” reaches number one in the charts and remains there for
ten weeks.
November 29,
Sunday. Sees the University of San Francisco beat Loyola 17-14 in their college
football match in Los Angeles. A crowd of 10,000 is in attendance.
December 3,
Thursday. (11:45 a.m.-7:00 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft broadcast. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) The Kraft
Music Hall broadcast on NBC. Bing acts as host and his guests include Alice
Faye and Gene Raymond.
The Hollywood Studios of NBC will be draped in gay colors. The occasion
being Bing Crosby’s celebration of his first year in the Kraft Music
Hall. And just to show you that he can still pull some pretty good entertainers
out of the bag, the Groaner will have Gene Raymond and Alice Faye, of movieland,
and Gregor Piatigorsky, cellist, do their tricks.
(Wilmington Daily Press Journal, December 3, 1936)
December 6,
Sunday. Bing and Dixie make what is described by the press as one of their very
rare night spot appearances when they visit the Century Club with Joe Venuti and Eddie Sutherland. Bing and Dixie both sing with
the band and Bing joins the club’s MC and comedian in a comedy spot.
Fortunate were the Century
Club customers who selected last Sunday night in which to do their
night-clubbing, for they were rewarded with a million-dollar impromptu show,
when Bing Crosby sang “Dinah” and “I Kiss Your Hand, Madame,” Dixie Lee sang
“Lucky Star.”. . .
(Los Angeles Examiner, December 12, 1936)
December 9,
Wednesday. The New York premiere of Pennies
from Heaven.
Pennies from Heaven may qualify as a fair grosser because of Crosby’s
name, but basically it’s a weak picture with a story that has little movement
and only a scattered few mild giggles. It’s spread
pretty thin over 80 minutes, despite a good tuneful score which should be no
handicap… Film won’t advance Crosby although Crosby may overcome its faults to
some extent. Best individual impression is by Louis Armstrong, Negro cornetist and hi-de-ho expert. Not as an eccentric
musician, but as a Negro comedian he suggests possibilities. He toots his solo
horn to a nice individual score, plus his band chores. Crosby has a couple of
songs that will be reprised into fair popularity…
(Variety, December 16, 1936)
After a sultry and inexplicably prolonged session of Mae West, the Paramount opened its ventilators yesterday, admitted the fresh air and completed the cleansing process by presenting the new Bing Crosby film, “Pennies from Heaven.” A wholesome, lightly sentimental and genial comedy, it is all the more ingratiating by contrast to its predecessor. Although the Bing’s voice is not unanimously acclaimed by the nation’s music-lovers—we even noted a faint cheer in the balcony when he admitted he was the last of the troubadours—still he does not swing his hips when he walks and he does not read his lines as though they had been selected from an underlined copy of Uncle Billy’s Whiz Bang.
In his new venture, Mr. Crosby invests his familiar crooning with a certain philosophic romanticism, doing his troubadouring for pennies in back yards and waiting for the day when he can take ship for Venice to become a lute-strumming gondolier. During an inadvertent stay in a prison death house, for reasons as illogical as his place of confinement, he promises to deliver a letter from a condemned murderer to the family of his victim. The family, it develops, is small but troublesome, there being a 10-year-old gamine, Edith Fellows, and an improvident grandfather, Donald Meek, who is resting, pending passage of the Townsend Plan.
Like an old man of the sea, the problem family clings to the neck of the wandering minstrel and, beset by them and by a persistent social worker, Madge Evans, the troubadour is reduced to home-steading in a haunted house, to a brief career as operator of a night club, to a hospital bed and, ultimately, to the adoption of them all. It makes for a light and briskly paced comedy and, naturally, it provides Mr. Crosby with several lyric opportunities. The score by Arthur Johnston and John Burke should be—probably already is— quite popular. It includes “Let’s Call a Heart a Heart,” “Pennies from Heaven,” “One, Two, Button Your Shoe,” “So Do I” and “Skeleton in Your Closet,” the last being played by Louis Armstrong and his band.
Conceding that Mr. Crosby is as good-natured as ever and that Miss Evans is so attractive a social worker that we are tempted to apply for relief and be investigated, the chief honors properly belong to little Miss Fellows. Hers really is an exceptional performance for a youngster, skirting the perils of bathos in her tender scenes and playing her rebellious ones with comic impertinence. Mr. Meek as the grandfather, Nana Bryant as the harried superintendent of an orphanage and William Stack as a welfare commissioner are excellent in the supporting rôles. In sum, “Pennies from Heaven” is one of Mr. Crosby’s best.
(Frank S. Nugent, New York Times, December 10, 1936)
Pennies from Heaven ought to silence the Crosby doubters for quite a
while. It is a thoroughly enjoyable picture.
(Los Angeles Evening Herald Express, December 19, 1936)
As the singing vagabond, Bing
Crosby labors hard in a valiant attempt to establish a believable
characterization. In spite of the limitations of the film’s ridiculous script,
Crosby is successful in presenting his character as a delightfully unorthodox
man who scorns the dreary workaday world and is more than content to make his
modest living by singing for his supper. However, Bing’s first-rate performance
is sadly wasted on a totally ineffectual motion picture.
(The Films of Bing Crosby, page 81)
December (undated). Bing has been playing in the ongoing Alphonzo Bell tournament at Bel-Air in recent weeks and he has beaten Kenneth Macgowan 2 and 1 to reach the last eight. However he is beaten by George Folsey, losing 1-down.
December 10,
Thursday. (11:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m.) (5:00-7:00 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft broadcast. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) The Kraft
Music Hall broadcast on NBC. Bing acts as host and his guests include Bruce
Cabot and Anita Louise.
December 11,
Friday. King Edward VIII of Great Britain
abdicates from the throne in order to marry Mrs. Wallis Simpson. Meanwhile,
press comment states that “Bing Crosby is on a liquid diet to lose weight for
his new epic, Waikiki Wedding.” During the afternoon, Bing is at a reception at Lakeside to honor Barbara McCartney who is shortly to be married. At
night, Bing sings at the Shrine Auditorium for the Los Angeles Examiner benefit.
December 15, Tuesday. Starting at 11:10 a.m., Bing golfs in an amateur-pro competition with Eddie Loos at Oakmont.
December 17,
Thursday. Bing files an injunction to prevent station KGFJ broadcasting his
records. It seems that the station is playing his records in such a way as to
convey the impression that Bing is actually there singing songs in person.
Judgment is given in Bing’s favor on January 4, 1937. (11:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m.) (5:00-7:00 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft broadcast.(7:00–8:00 p.m.) The Kraft Music Hall broadcast on NBC. Bing
acts as host and his guests include Jack Oakie,
Nadine Conner, and Mary Astor. (10:15 p.m.) Bing and Dixie are at the opening of the new Cinnabar restaurant in Hollywood Plaza with many other celebrities.
Bing Crosby’s program for
Kraft is one of the season’s slickest examples of touching up a program with
small details, snatches of saucy dialogue and other tricks and trappings—none
of them remarkable but in the assembled show, producing a mood and a tempo that
makes for popularity. Lines assigned to Bing Crosby have certain finessing with
the type of stuff Ben Bernie does. This is not to suggest any imitative quality
or any close resemblance but surely that the leisurely sort of whimsy, Crosby
is doing, has a precedent of success on the air. Last Thursday, the 17th, was neither the best or the least of the recent
(Variety, December 23, 1936)
December 19–February 1937. Bing films Waikiki
Wedding with Shirley Ross, Bob Burns, Martha Raye,
and Anthony Quinn. The film is directed by Frank Tuttle with musical direction
by Boris Morros and orchestrations by Victor Young.
It was originally planned to make the film in Hawaii in color but this idea had
to be shelved because of Bing’s radio commitments.
Surely no
mainlander, and very few islanders, honestly have had such a lengthy love
affair with the Hawaiian Islands as Harry Owens. It’s a love affair that’s been
productive of a whole clutch of fine songs - many of which have done a great
deal for me. In a more practical way he has demonstrated his affection in the
shape of the many salutary things he’s done for Hawaiian music and for Hawaiian
musicians in the Islands, on the Mainland, and all over the world. When I think
of all the songs I sang of Harry’s, one song in particular comes to mind. I had
spent about a month in Hawaii, and while there, I heard, among others, a lovely
song called “Sweet Leilani”. I was to start a picture
called “Waikiki Wedding” on my return home, and I brought the song home with
me, intent on using it in the picture, but the score for the film had already
been written, and the producer was adamant in his refusal to try and squeeze in
another one.
He had a point
there, too, because the score, written for the picture by Ralph Rainger and Leo Robin contained some lovely material. Such
songs as ‘Blue Hawaii’. I fought manfully for the inclusion of “Sweet Leilani”, even to the point of walking off the picture for
a day, and brooding at the golf course. The song was already a hit in Honolulu,
and it didn’t take any musical clairvoyant to discern that it would have
similar success in the States. I finally won my point, and the song was
included in the picture, in a simple scene with a little Hawaiian child.
“Sweet Leilani” won the Oscar that year in the “Best Song”
category. Later, I made a record of it, and it was a golden record, too. That
was just one of the good things that happened to me through Harry Owens, his
music, and his songs. I can’t think of anybody more knowledgeable, or more
qualified, to write about Hawaii and what it means to him than Harry Owens. I
know it will prove absorbing reading for anyone who has ever been to Hawaii,
and for those who haven’t, it’s a certainty to entertain and amuse.
(Bing Crosby, writing in the
foreword to Sweet Leilani:
the story behind the song, an autobiography)
December 22, Tuesday.
Plays with Bunny Torpey in the Southern California pro-amateur golf
tournament at Oakmont, They have a 68 but are unplaced.
December 24,
Thursday. (12:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m.) (6:00-7:00 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft broadcast. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) Bing hosts the Kraft
Music Hall and sings “Adeste Fideles”
and “Silent Night.” The guests include Jose Iturbi
and James Gleason.
December 26, Saturday. Bing is at Santa Anita for the opening of its turf season.
December (undated). Everett Crosby and his wife Naomi separate.
December 31, Thursday. (12:00 p.m.-7:00 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft broadcast. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) The Kraft Music Hall broadcast on NBC. Bing acts as host and his guests include Pat O’Brien and Art Tatum.
Crosby, at 7 on KFI, offers Pat O’Brien, the actor; the Foursome
quartet and the blind colored pianist Art Tatum, along with Bob Burns, good humoured
gent from Van Buren, Ark.
(Daily News, December 31, 1936)
During the year, Bing has had ten
records that became chart hits.
January 1, Friday. Bing and Dixie entertain family members at their Rancho Santa Fe home over the New Year period.
January 6, Wednesday. Figures released by the Security
Exchange Commission on salaries (not necessarily total income) show that Bing
has received $318.907.
January 7, Thursday. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) The Kraft Music Hall broadcast on NBC. Bing’s guests include Grete Stueckgold and Lawson Little. (9:15–10:15 p.m.) Bing takes part in the “Adolph Zukor Silver Jubilee Dinner” which is broadcast nationwide on NBC. Other participants include Leopold Stokowski with the 103-piece Paramount orchestra; Cecil B. DeMille and Jack Benny as joint master of ceremonies; Dorothy Lamour, Shirley Ross, Eleanore Whitney, Gladys Swarthout, Bob Burns and Martha Raye. The show is written by Bill Morrow and Eddie Beloin.
Grete Steuckgold (she’s very proud of having sung a duet with Bing
Crosby) like Bergen, on the Variety Hour, does a fourth guest appearance this
night at the Music Hall. And the blonde Swedish star of the Metropolitan and
the crooner are planning to some more singing together. Lawson Little’s the
other big name for the 60 minutes, he being the only golfer besides Bobby Jones
to win the British amateur open and the United States amateur and open
championships in one year.
(Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, January
7, 1937)
January 13, Wednesday. Bing's horse "Fight On" wins at Santa Anita. It was a long shot at 80 to 1 and Bing did not have a bet on it!
January 14,
Thursday. (12 noon- 4:00 p.m., 5:00-7:00 p.m.). Rehearses for his Kraft show. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) The Kraft
Music Hall broadcast on NBC. Bing acts as host and his guests include Guiomar Novaes,
Edward Everett Horton and Patricia Ellis.
Bing Crosby has scheduled an unusual “guestar” lineup for his NBC
“Music Hall” broadcast at 10 o’clock tonight, via WRVA. In addition to Bob
Burns’ comic chatter and the music of Jimmy Dorsey’s orchestra, plus his own
effortless vocalizing, he will parade before the “mike” Patricia Ellis of the
movies with Edward Everett Horton, screen and radio comedian, and Guiomar
Novaes, 20-year old (sic- she was 41 at the time) Brazilian concert pianist. Crosby’s unusual informality in
interviewing his guests, assisted and interrupted by the “Ozark’s Traveler,”
Bob Burns, usually make for good listening. The program is one of tonight’s
“best bets.”
(Richmond Times-Dispatch, January
14, 1937)
January 15, Friday.
Bing writes to David O. Selznick, of Selznick International Pictures.
Being loath to
go down in cinema history as the only citizen not on record for sticking my
nose into the casting for Gone with the
Wind, I would like to suggest a Mammy. The little lady I have in mind
played opposite Robeson in Showboat,
and to my mind would be a cinch. I don’t know her name, but your hirelings in
the casting office could dig it up. Hoping you will pardon my guts.
The little lady was Hattie McDaniel
who went on to win the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for 1939 for her role in Gone with the Wind. Selznick replied to Bing on January 19 saying, “Thanks for
the suggestion, and also for not wanting to play Scarlett.”
January 17, Sunday. Bing and Dixie attend a large party at Hal Roach’s new home in Beverly Hills. Bing sings “Pennies from Heaven” to the accompaniment of a hillbilly orchestra.
..Speaking of the Roach party, Bing Crosby furnished the high spot of
the evening for those who stayed late by singing “Pennies from Heaven” to the accompaniment
of a hill-billy orchestra. Waiters forgot to serve, the guests stopped dancing
and Bing got a hand that has seldom been equalled. Then when Bing finished
Dixie Lee Crosby gave her version of the same song and she was so cute and put
so much zip into Bing’s popular number that she too was applauded to the echo.
(Louella O. Parsons, The San Francisco Examiner, January 24, 1937)
January 21,
Thursday. (11:30 a.m- 4:30 p.m., 5:00-7:00 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft show. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) Bing hosts the Kraft
Music Hall broadcast on NBC and the guests include Rose Bampton
and Lee Tracy.
Sonny Workman, one of the country’ leading jockeys, will be interviewed
by Bing Crosby on KPO at 7p.m. Bob Burns will contribute his bit about Arkansas
horses. Rose Bampton, from the Metropolitan Opera Company and Lee Tracy of the
movies will round out the program.
(The Sacramento Bee, January 21, 1937)
January 22, Friday. Another of the short films in the Screen Snapshots series is released. This is Series 16, No. 5 and includes footage of the dedication of the Del Mar racetrack.
January 27, Wednesday. Bing defeats John De Paolo 5 and 4 in the Winter Sweeps competition at Lakeside.
January 28,
Thursday. (12 noon-4:00 p.m., 5:00-7:00 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft show. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) Another Kraft
Music Hall broadcast on NBC and Bing’s guests include Victor McLaglen and Josephine Tumminia.
Victor McLaglen, the burly motion-picture star, who reached dramatic peaks
with his work in “The Informer,” will square off in an interview with Bing
Crosby in the “Kraft Music Hall” program from Hollywood at 9 p.m. over
WFAA-NBC. Josephine Tumminia, soprano, and Rosalind Marquis, screen star, also
will be guests on the program with
Crosby and Bob Burns. McLaglen is expected to spin some yarns from his
long and colourful experiences.
(Tyler Morning Telegraph, January
28, 1937)
February 1,
Monday. Bing pays $3600 for a 2-year old horse named "High Strike" at
an auction at Santa Anita. (7:00–9:00 p.m.) Bing is one of many stars
taking part in a Red Cross
Relief Program on the Blue Network. The show is designed to raise funds
to help
with the serious flooding in Tennessee, West Virginia, Ohio, and
Kentucky. He
sings “One, Two, Button Your Shoe.” Al Jolson, John McCormack, and
Clark Gable
are also on the show.
February 3, Wednesday. Bing is one of many stars appearing at the Shrine Auditorium in a benefit for the Red Cross Flood Relief Fund.
February 4,
Thursday. (12 noon-4:00 p.m., 5:00-7:00 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft show. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) Bing’s Kraft
Music Hall show. Guests include Basil Rathbone, Marion Claire
and William Frawley.
Marion Claire, prima donna of the Chicago Opera and star of
many light opera successes will be interviewed by Bing Crosby, during the Music
Hall program over NBC-WSMB at 9 pm. Miss Claire’s latest stage
musical was ‘The Great Waltz’.”
(New Orleans Times-Picayune, 4th February 1937)
February 6,
Saturday. Bing asks the Board of Tax Appeals to redetermine
an income tax deficiency of $128,524 assessed for 1933 and 1934. Meanwhile Bing
begins his pro-am golf tournament at Rancho Santa Fe. It is meant to be a
two-day event, but the first day is washed out by heavy rain and some of the
contestants go duck shooting when a flock of mallard ducks lands on the
eighteenth green. Radio station KHJ broadcasts a special program from the
locker room at 8:45 p.m. Celebrities playing include Richard Arlen, Zeppo Marx, Guy Kibbee, Edgar Kennedy, Bill Frawley, Fred Astaire, Andy Clyde and Jimmy McLarnin.
...About a dozen foursomes splashed down the fairways today, with Squire
Crosby in the van. But before the first group had reached the ninth green it was
decided to call it all off.
(The Los Angeles Times, 7th
February 1937)
February 7,
Sunday. The second day of Bing’s pro-am tournament. Sam Snead
is the first
winner with a sixty-eight. Bing cards an eighty-seven! He hosts a
massive barbecue at his ranch as a grand climax to the
tournament.
February (undated). Bing and Dixie visit the Club Casanova and Bing sings “Everybody’s Truckin.’”
February 10, Wednesday. Takes
part in a 4-ball match for the Red Cross Flood Relief Fund at Lakeside
watched by 1500 people. On the first nine holes, Bing drives off for George Von Elm with other movie stars driving off for the other professional golfers. Later, Bing is thought to have attended the
all-Gershwin concert by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra at the
Philharmonic Auditorium, with Alexander Smallens
conducting. George Gershwin himself conducted some of the numbers and played
the piano in others.
February 11, Thursday. (12:30-4:45 p.m., 6:00-7:00 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft show. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) The Kraft Music Hall broadcast on NBC. Bing acts as host and his guests include Dorothy McNulty, Edward Everett Horton and Toscha Seidel.
Edward Everett Horton, famous movie comedian will
celebrate his first assignment to a starring role in Bing Crosby’s Music Hall
program to be heard over NBC-WSMB at 9 pm. Toscha Seidel,
celebrated violinist and Dorothy McNulty, young singer in motion pictures will
also be Bing’s guests.
(New Orleans Times-Picayune, 11th February 1937)
February 16,
Tuesday. Bing is at Santa Anita for the racing. At night, he attends the Masquers Club dinner for W. C. Fields. Harold Lloyd is MC
and other guests include Eddie Cantor, Edgar Bergen, Jack Benny, Ken Murray,
and Groucho Marx.
February 18,
Thursday. (12:05-4:30 p.m., 6:00-7:00 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft show. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) The Kraft
Music Hall broadcast on NBC. Bing’s guests include Sophie Tucker and Marion
Claire.
February 20,
Saturday. Bing is again at Santa Anita for the horse racing.
February 23,
Tuesday. Records songs from the film Waikiki
Wedding (including “Sweet Leilani”) in Hollywood
with Lani McIntyre and his Hawaiians.
The male list is headed once
again by the inimitable Bing Crosby with “Sweet Leilani”
from his film Waikiki Wedding. This
is one of Crosby’s best recordings since “May I.”
(The Gramophone, June 1937)
“Sweet Leilani” did not fare as well in the long run. But it was a
phenomenon in its day, commercially one of the most significant, and musically
one of the most unusual, releases, in the history of American popular music.
What did listeners
think, in the spring of 1937, hearing “Sweet Leilani”
on the radio? A plush glissando sets the stage for a high Hawaiian tenor - Lani McIntyre - singing a chorus backed by humming ensemble
and a contralto’s obbligato. If forewarned by an
announcer that this was the new Crosby record, did people wonder he had joined
the castrati? And if not forewarned, how surprised must they have been when,
seventy-seven seconds into a three-minute side, the exotic vocalist is suddenly
supplanted by the reassuring virility of Bing’s dulcet baritone? It was a nervy
arrangement, to say the least. Yet the switch from McIntyre to Bing underscored
the latter’s homey familiarity in a new and categorical way. It was like
wandering through a strange city and suddenly meeting an old friend. Bing’s
reading is felt and faultless, from the ascending glide of the title phrase to
the comely embellishment on the repeat of “heavenly flower” to the drawn-out
closing “dream.”
“Sweet Leilani” dominated sales charts for an astonishing six
months, more than a third of that period in the number one spot (it was pushed
aside briefly by another Bing Crosby record, “Too Marvelous
for Words”). As the best-selling American disc in eight years, since the stock
market crash, it was acclaimed as a turning point for the recording industry
and a good sign for the national economy. That the record also boosted movie
queues gave Hollywood reason to cheer as well.
(Gary Giddins, Bing Crosby, A Pocketful of Dreams, The
Early Years, 1903-1940, page 480)
February 25,
Thursday. (12:00-6:00 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft show. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) Bing hosts the Kraft
Music Hall broadcast on NBC and his guests include James Cagney, Josephine Tumminia and Sidney Skolsky. Mary Garden was scheduled to appear but had to withdraw at the last moment and was replaced by Josephine Tumminia.
James Cagney
grooved pretty nicely into a guesting shot on Bing
Crosby’s hour over NBC last week. Could have been better if a better script had
been handed to him. As it was, his mike appearances were split up into four briefies; two of them drooping pretty badly before
termination, Also there was no semblance of any farewells and up to the end of
the program, probably many expected the cocky character, screen player would
return. He would have been pressed more firmly, had he had his mike turn
compressed into one whirl. Bad judgment was it also to build suspense with
heaps of talk from Crosby about Cagney’s warbling
then have Cagney beg off. Sidney Skolsky,
syndicated Hollywood columnist was used on the program in the Cagney interludes. His voice registered much better that it
did, recently, when guesting on a Lux
shot over CBS. However, his script could have made him out to be a much more
humble person. The treatment of making the writer out to be at once, the H.L.
Mencken and the Samuel Pepys of the pic biz, doesn’t register well with listeners, many of whom
are, doubtless, Skolsky readers.
(Variety, March 3, 1937)
February 27,Saturday.
Bing and Dixie are at the races at Santa Anita and see Rosemont win the
Santa Anita Handicap. Later, starting at 10:00 p.m., they attend the
Santa Anita Ball in the Fiesta Room of the
Ambassador Hotel and are hosted by the Charles Howards. Bing
sings “There Was Blood on the
Saddle” with Andy Devine.
February 28,
Sunday. Records “In a Little Hula Heaven” and “Never in a Million Years” with
Jimmy Dorsey and his Orchestra in Hollywood.
March 3,
Wednesday. Bing records three songs (including “Too Marvelous for Words”) with
Jimmy Dorsey and his Orchestra in Hollywood.
I was rather disappointed
with Bing Crosby’s choice of songs this month. “Too Marvellous
for Words” and “Sentimental and Melancholy” (Brunswick 02452) are a shade
better than “What Is Love” and “Never in a Million Years” on Bruns. 02453. Mark you, only the songs are indifferent; his
voice and method of singing them are still tops with me.
(The Gramophone, September 1937)
March 4,
Thursday. (12:00-5:00 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft show. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) Bing’s Kraft
Music Hall show. Guests include Grantland Rice, Mischa Auer,
Mary Garden, Freddie Bartholomew, and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Later, the Academy Awards are
presented at the Biltmore Hotel in Hollywood. “Pennies from Heaven” has been
nominated as best song of 1936 but the winner is “The Way You Look Tonight”
from Swing Time starring Fred Astaire
and Ginger Rogers.
Freddie
Bartholomew has played dramatic roles on the radio before but Bing Crosby brings
him to the air tonight to just “be himself.” Other guest stars in the Kraft Music
Hall for this broadcast at 7:00 p.m. (PST) are Mary Garden, famous opera personality;
and Mischa Auer, comedy star of Universal Pictures. Freddie became a Hollywood
star overnight after his performance in “David Copperfield” and has been in
demand for radio ever since, although he has appeared just a few times. In the
Crosby show he tells about himself for the first time in one of Bing’s human
interest interviews.
(Wilmington Daily Press Journal, March 4, 1937)
March 5, Friday.
Records three songs (including “The One Rose”) with Victor Young and his
Orchestra in Hollywood.
March 6, Saturday. Bing and Dixie attend the huge "All Skates Day" party given by Ginger Rogers and Al Vanderbilt at the Rollerdrome.
March 8, Monday.
Another recording session in Hollywood with Victor Young when three songs are
recorded. One of them is “My Little Buckaroo.”
March 9, Tuesday, Bing's boxing hopeful. George Turner, loses on points to Ralph Carpenter at the Olympic Auditorium.
March 11,
Thursday. (12:00-4:00, 5:00-7:00 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft show. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) The Kraft
Music Hall broadcast on NBC. Bing acts as host and his guests include
Andres Segovia, Lee Tracy and Mary Brian. The All-American Red Heads, the all-star women's basketball team also make an appearance,
Bing Crosby will present Lee Tracy and Mary Brian of the films, and
Andres Segovia, said to be the world’s greatest guitar player, on his NBC
“Music Hall” broadcast at 10 o’clock tonight. Some years ago, Segovia started a
one-man campaign to put the guitar back in the rank of the “serious” musical
instruments. Since then, he has played hundreds of concerts in this country and
abroad.
(Richmond Times-Dispatch, March
11, 1937)
Horses and dogs
play important roles in the lives of Hollywood stars. Bing Crosby’s beautiful black
Newfoundland, registered “Waseeka’s Black Prince,” but known to the children as
“Blackie,” has just won high honors at the Ambassador Dog Show. Until this year
he was just a family pet whose chief purpose in life was to romp with the twins
and young Gary. Entered at his first show, he walked off with the two first
places — the best dog of the show and the best American bred dog. From there he
went to Palm Springs and again won first honors. And is that family proud!
(The Motion Picture and the Family, March
15, 1937)
March 12, Friday. Golfs wth Grantland Rice, Ty Cobb and John Montague at Pebble Beach.
March 18, Thursday. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) Bing’s Kraft Music Hall broadcast and his guests include Basil Rathbone, Harriet Hilliard and Vronsky & Babin.
Harriet Hilliard, charming songstress and wife of orchestra leader
Ozzie Nelson, Basil Rathbone, English actor, and the Russian piano team of
Witya Vronsky and Victor Babin are scheduled to appear on the Bing Crosby – Bob
Burns broadcast over KFI at 7 p.m.
(The San Bernardino County Sun, March
18, 1937)
Meanwhile, frank and direct correspondence of this date
from Bing’s accountant, Todd Johnson of Johnson and Johnson, to Bing summarizes
his projected income for 1937 as $500,000. From this, he will have to pay 10
percent to Everett and taxes will take about $236,000. This will leave Bing
approximately $150,000 to cover his personal expenses. Bing has apparently lost
$13,431 on horse races in the previous two months and in addition has paid
$9,575 to Dixie for household and other uses. The letter continues:
From the above tabulation,
you will see that you would have available for personal use or for investment
$150,000, or $12,500 per month. I want to call your attention to the fact that
during the months of January and February you have had personal expenditures of
approximately 100 percent of your total income. Furthermore, if you spend 100
percent of your expected income, this leaves no money for the payment of your
$85,000 note at the Citizens Bank or for the purchase of additional
investments, additional racehorses, or any other capital expenditures. . . .
Let me say here, Bing, that I am fully aware of the fact that
the size of your personal expenditures is not directly any of my business. I
also know that I am taking a chance of incurring your ill will in calling the
same to your attention. However, I feel that I am your friend as well as your
tax counsel and, regardless of consequences, I feel I must call this matter to
your attention. My sole purpose in doing so is the hope that you will restrict
your personal expenditures largely to the end that your untiring efforts and
long days and hours of work will result in your accumulating a considerable
future, instead of having nothing left when your career is ended.
(As reproduced in BINGANG magazine, December, 2000)
March 19, Friday. Bing and Dixie travel to Del Monte for a short break before going to Tanforan for the race meeting.
![waikikiweddinglobbies[4]](Chapter_5_files/image003.jpg)
March 24,
Wednesday. Bing’s film Waikiki Wedding
has its New York premiere and goes on to become the third highest grossing
picture of the year.
Regretting that he has but one
voice to give, Bing Crosby is surrendering it cheerfully at the Paramount to
the uses of the Hawaiian Board of Trade, the pineapple industry and sundry
tourist agencies. His “Waikiki Wedding” places him in a welter of grass skirts,
tropical sunsets, Martha Raye and a razorback pig
called Walford. Undismayed he sings on-things like “Okolehao” and “Sweet Leilani.”...It
is, at least, a workable idea for a musical comedy, even though the fabric has
been stretched so far that it has burst in places...Mr. Crosby is still the
pleasantest of our crooners and Miss Ross was all right, too.
(Frank S. Nugent, The New York Times, March 25, 1937)
A romantic picture, pure and
simple, Waikiki Wedding should have
no difficulty getting by anywhere. It’s saccharine
celluloid, sugar coated by Bing Crosby’s and Shirley Ross’ crooning in a
surefire palmetto setting. The prime possible box office deterrent with this pic is that it comes so soon after the release of Crosby’s Pennies from Heaven for Columbia, but
this damper should not be drastic.
While none of the songs here will hit the top performance
brackets, they fit the picture’s theme and the voices of Crosby, Shirley Ross
and Martha Raye. They should get at least a minor
play on the air. . . (Crosby) also makes the best of his songs, a couple of
them spotted in night sailboat scenes that are very well photographed and
directed.
(Variety, March 31, 1937)
March 25, Thursday. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) The Kraft Music Hall broadcast on NBC. Bing acts as host and his guests include Betty Jaynes, Gale Sondergaard and Walter Brennan.
Two
motion picture Academy Award winners will be guests of Bing Crosby tonight at 9
o’clock over WBAP when Gale Sondergaard, Warner Bros. actress who won the best supporting
actress award for her work in “Anthony Adverse,” and Walter Brennan, whose characterization
in “Come and Get It” won the award for him. Another visitor on this program
will be 16-year-old songstress, Betty Jaynes, who has been heard on several NBC
programs in the East before going to Hollywood.
Bob
Burns will reveal more funny antics of his kindfolk in Van Buren and Jimmy
Dorsey and his orchestra will swing into the latest tunes. As usual, the Paul
Taylor Choristers will accompany Crosby in his songs.
(Fort Worth Star-Telegram, March 25,
1937)
March 26, Friday.
Bing attends Basil Rathbone’s party. Variety mentions a new book about Bing
by his brothers.
Brothers Ted,
Larry Do
Ted and Larry Crosby are authors of ‘Bing,’ just off the presses of the
Bolton Printing Co., Inc. Brothers of the crooner have dramatized his life.
(Daily Variety, March 26, 1937)
March 27,
Saturday. Dixie Lee discards her blonde locks and becomes a brunette.
March 28, Sunday. Bing and Dixie join in an Easter egg roll on the lawns of the Lakeside Golf Club.
April 1, Thursday. (1:00 p.m.-4:15 p.m.) (5:45-7:00 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft broadcast. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) Bing’s Kraft Music Hall shows. Guests include Amelia Earhart, June Travis, John Barrymore and Charlie Grimm.
Amelia Earhart is
to make her first radio appearance since her Honolulu flight today on Bing
Crosby’s Music Hall broadcast over KFI at 7 p.m. Miss Earhart, her husband,
George Palmer Putnam, and her technical adviser, Paul Mantz, will discuss some
aspects of the hop and outline plans for a forthcoming ‘round the world flight.
And take a look at the rest of the guest list: John Barrymore, June Travis and
Charles Grimm, manager of the Chicago Clubs! Paul Taylor’s Choristers will
offer “When the Blue of the Night” for the third time on the series, by popular
request.
(Los Angeles Times, April, 1, 1937)
April 3, Saturday.
Bing and Dixie attend Harry Owens and his orchestra's opening night at
the Beverly Wilshire ballroom. Bing sings some of his songs from Waikiki Wedding.
April 8,
Thursday. (12:00 p.m.-4:00 p.m.) (5:00-6:40 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft broadcast. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) The Kraft
Music Hall broadcast on NBC. Bing’s guests include Victor McLaglen, Kathryn Meisle and Florence Lake.
Victor
McLaglen of the movies will pay Bing Crosby a return visit on the Music Hall
broadcast tonight. He will chat with Florence Lake, recently featured in “Quality
Street”. The classical touch will be given by Kathryn Meisle, operatic soprano.
(Omaha World-Herald, April 8, 1937)
We don’t like to harp on a
subject any better that you like to have a subject harped upon (harp, harp, the
larp), but we’re confronted today with another angle
of this studio applause business and there’s really no side-stepping it.
We refer to the Bing Crosby
angle, than which we can find no more intriguing example to present in behalf
of the anti-studio applause faction.
Since first taking to the
ether, Mr. Crosby has steadfastly refused to admit spectators to his program.
It’s not because he doesn’t like strangers around. But he concedes readily that
they do more harm than good, even if they’re real nice about it and just sit in
a corner without emitting a peep.
And has this steadfast
abstinence from the rich diet of hand claps and laughter harmed our Mr.
Crosby’s radio standing? It has not, definitely, irrevocably, and — well, you
get the idea.
Mr. Crosby also has a
comedian on his program. His name is Robin Burns. Even without a background of
chirps, cackles, screams and other outward displays of enthusiasm, Mr. Burns
manages to be one of the very funniest.
And yet Mr. Burns’ rival
funny men claim they couldn’t give their all, do their best, ring the bell,
etc., if they couldn’t look beyond the microphone, and find row upon row of
happy, upturned faces, ready to giggle and guffaw at any slight provocation.
Maybe we’re wrong, but if Mr.
Crosby and Mr. Burns can stay among the first five in national rating without
insisting on visible, voluble support, couldn’t a few others?
Incidentally, guesting in the Music Hall tonight will be Victor McLaglen and Florence Lake of the films and Kathryn Meisle of the concert stage. Mr. Crosby will refer to all
merely as “Vic,” “Flo,” and “Kathryn”.
(Herb Caen,
San Francisco Chronicle, April 8,
1937)
April 10,
Saturday. Bing has traveled by train from Los Angeles to see the horse races at
Tanforan in San Bruno on the San Francisco Peninsula.
April 12, Monday.
Bing’s secretaries are churning out replies to fans and a typical letter is
sent to British fan Tom Evans, apparently bearing Bing’s signature but probably
signed by a member of his staff.
Glad to hear from you. I appreciate
knowing how my efforts are received and welcome any suggestions. I sincerely
hope you will like my last picture, “Waikiki Wedding”. It is a little different
from anything I’ve done so far. I have started work at Paramount on a new
picture, “Double or Nothing”. I am fortunate in having Mary Carlisle with me
again for the first time since we played together in “College Humor”.
I am glad you like my
broadcast on the Kraft Music Hall every Thursday evening and hope you enjoy the
guest stars I have each time. The picture is being sent under separate cover.
Best wishes, and many thanks
for your interest.
Sincerely yours, Bing
April 13, Tuesday. Bing is one of many stars who attend the Nestell-Ramage fight at the Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles. Bob Nestell defeats Lee Ramage when the referee stops the fight at the end of the 10th. round.
April 14, Wednesday.
Bing is a member of the Lakeside team which is defeated by the
California Country Club over the neutral Riviera links. The match was
part of the team match championship run by the Southern California Golf
Association.
April 15,
Thursday. (1:00 p.m.-4:00 p.m.) (6:00-7:00 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft broadcast. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) Another Kraft
Music Hall broadcast on NBC. Bing acts as host and his guests include Percy
Grainger, Lionel Stander, Frances Farmer, and Harry Barris.
There will occur tonight,
along about 7 o’clock or shortly after, through
(Los Angeles Examiner, April 15, 1937)
April 17,
Saturday. Bing’s song “Sweet Leilani” is the number
one record and is quickly followed at the top of the charts by “Too Marvelous
for Words.”
April 22,
Thursday. Six of Bing's racehorses are sent across the border for the
Agua Caliente season starting on May 8. (1:00 p.m.-4:30 p.m.) (6:00-7:00 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft broadcast. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) The Kraft
Music Hall broadcast on NBC. Bing acts as host and his guests include Rose Bampton, Ernest Schelling and Walter Connolly. Bing duets with Rose Bampton on the sextet from Lucia di Lammermoor.
Bing
Crosby breaks a precedent during his NBC “Music Hall” broadcast at 10 o’clock
tonight by bringing two famous names of the concert world to his program. Rose
Bampton, Metropolitan Opera Mezzo Soprano, Ernest Schelling, concert pianist,
will appear on the same “guestar” line-up with Walter Connolly of the stage and
screen and the Foursome Quartet of the network. Tonight will mark Miss Bampton’s
second appearance in recent months on Crosby’s program. In her first appearance,
the Metropolitan Opera star surprised a studio and radio audience with a tricky
interpretation of a modern hit tune; even Crosby admits he doesn’t know what
she will do tonight. Schelling is slated to play a few of his favorite piano
selections. Other music will be supplied by Crosby, in his pleasing but
effortless manner, the Foursome, the Paul Taylor Choristers and Jimmy Dorsey’s
swingsters.
(Richmond Times-Dispatch, April 22, 1937)
...If one were hunting for bad
points, I think his only one would be that perhaps he is too self-effacing. I
can recall the occasion of one broadcast which demanded that Bing learn an
arrangement of the sextette of “Lucia.” Bing insisted
that he didn’t read music, that he wasn’t a good musician, yet in spite of all
this, inside of fifteen minutes he was singing as nonchalantly as any opera
singer a most difficult arrangement which had been allotted to him.
By this little criticism I do not mean to say that one must be
arrogant, but surely Bing should be cognizant a little more of his own quite
unique ability and standing.
But then,
perhaps that is just one of the reasons why every artist who is on his program
comes away with a feeling of having made a very sincere new friend, and is just
another Crosby fan for ever after.
(Rose Bampton,
in a letter to journalist Marie Manovill dated April
4, 1938)
April 23, Friday.
It is announced that Bing has signed with Kraft for another two seasons for
$3,500 per week. The contract allows Bing thirteen weeks off each year.
April (undated). Bing and Dixie dine at the Cafe LaMaze to hear Vi Bradley.
April (undated).
Bing and Dixie attend the twenty-first birthday party for Robert S. Howard (son
of Charles S. Howard) at the Beverly-Wilshire Hotel. Bing sings “Sweet Leilani” with the Harry Owens orchestra. Others present
include the Dick Arlens, the Andy Devines,
the Hal Tuttles, and Paula Stone.
April 26–June 15,
Monday–Tuesday. Films Double or Nothing
with Mary Carlisle, Martha Raye, Andy Devine, and
William Frawley. Harry Barris also has a small part.
The film is directed by Theodore Reed with musical direction by Boris Morros.
April 29,
Thursday. (12:30 p.m.-5:30 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft broadcast. (6:00–7:00 p.m.) Bing’s Kraft
Music Hall broadcast on NBC. The guests include Connie Boswell, Mischa Auer, and Madeleine Carroll.
Grete Steuckgold has to withdraw at the last moment because of the
death of her husband and Connie Boswell is brought in to replace her.
Connie is appearing at the Los Angeles Paramount and rehearsals and her
appearance on the Kraft show have to be fitted in between her scheduled
stage performances.
Bing Crosby’s show, which started out as a
pain in the ears to a goodly share of dialers, has definitely settled down to
become a Thursday “must.” At least I’d hate to miss it. Especially the unique
manner the crooner has of calling upon Ken Carpenter to ring out the NBC chimes
at the half-way mark. If you’re one who has been missing out on this choice bit
of fun, all we can say is DON’T.
The guest list has revolved into “repeat”
performers of late. Which sort of lends a friendly, homey air to the place.
Mischa Auer, the guy who did the screamingly funny monkey business in “My Man
Godfrey,” and Grete Steuckgold operatic soprano, are certainly no strangers to
the portals of ye Music Hall.
Madeleine Carroll, screen actress, will also
be among those present. Right at the moment, I can’t remember whether or not
she’s been on the show before, but it’s more than likely.
(Homer
Canfield, Santa Ana Daily Register, April
29, 1937)
April 30, Friday.
Bing writes to
At your suggestion, I am
enclosing prospectus containing information relative to the Del Mar Turf Club.
I think you will find all the information necessary contained therein, and it
is my earnest desire to have some representative in this venture from your
Studio, and I would consider it a great favor if you would call it to the
attention of Hunt Stromberg, Bob Leonard, or some of the other race-minded
members of your organization. If any of them are interested have them call me
or write me at Paramount Studio and I will see that someone is sent out to
discuss the thing more in detail with them.
Your sincere friend,
Bing Crosby.
The prospectus elaborates on:
v
Capitalization
at $250,000 consisting of 2500 shares of the par value at $100.00 per share.
v
San
Diego is constructing a fairgrounds and race track
v
The
turf club will have exclusive 10 year franchise rights, costing $100,000
v
Stable
space for 550 horses
v
Applications
already received to date for stall space for 400 horses.
v
Track
easily accessible from all points via auto, train, plane or yacht. Santa Fe
railroad to run special trains from L.A. at a fare of $2.00 round trip!
May 1, Saturday. A strike begins at the various Hollywood film studios. Bing is one of several stars who cross the picket lines.
May 6, Thursday. The Hindenburg airship explodes over New
Jersey. Thirty-six die.
(11:00 a.m.-3:45 p.m.) (5:00-6:00 p.m.) Bing rehearses for his Kraft broadcast. (6:00–7:00 p.m.) Bing’s Kraft Music Hall
show. Guests include Basil Rathbone and Mary Garden. The broadcast is interrupted by a three minute newsflash about the Hindenburg disaster and cuts have to be made.
More and more the conviction
grows that Bing Crosby’s Music Hall is variety radio entertainment at its best.
Mr. Crosby is, without doubt, the most “relaxed” emcee on the air.
(San Francisco Chronicle, May 5, 1937)
Mary Garden, Basil Rathbone, Connie Boswell
and Janice Porter make up Bing Crosby’s guest list. Mary Garden, who has been
scheduled on two previous occasions, will be interviewed by Bing but will not
be able to sing. Connie Boswell did a grand job of entertaining on this show
last week. She can sing a ballad as well as any one on the air and we can’t understand
why some sponsor hasn’t placed the right kind of contract before her.
(Omaha World-Herald, May 6, 1937)
May 8/9, Saturday / Sunday.
Bing, accompanied by Dixie, is at Agua Caliente
to see his stable have three winners in the two days. His two-year-old Rocco came on to nose out Pasadena
Stable’s Halstead in the four-and-a-half furlong third on May 9.
May 12, Wednesday.
Bing wins his first match in defense of his title as club champion at Lakeside
by defeating George Marshall.
May 13, Thursday.
(12:00-4:00 p.m.) (5:00-6:00 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft broadcast. (6:00–7:00 p.m.) The Kraft Music Hall
broadcast on NBC. Bing acts as host and his guests include Elissa
Landi, Josephine Tumminia,
and John McCormack.
John
McCormack, that hearty Irishman who chose Buffalo as the spot in which to
conclude his concert career, will be among the visitors at Bing Crosby’s
get-together tonight at 10 o’clock on WBEN. He’s going to sing two songs never
before heard on radio. They are “Shannon River” and “So Do I Love You.” They
are numbers recently sent him from the ould country by his son.
Other
guests will be Lionel Stander, the movie man with a voice like a coffee
grinder; Josephine Tumminia, swing coloratura who made the ride record of “Blue
Danube” and “The Wren”; and Elissa Landi, best beloved film star of one of the
local Smith boys.
Bob
Burns, one of my fellow columnists here on The Buffalo Evening News, is taking a
two weeks vacation from radio and will not be present tonight, but a jolly
exchange of brogue and slang between Mr. McCormack, the Eire tenor, and Mr. Crosby,
the glissando baritone, should help to compensate.
(Rod Reed, The Buffalo News, May 13, 1937)
John McCormack having retired
and given up singing forever and a day, duly appeared on the Bing Crosby Kraft Music
Hall hour and sang a couple of numbers. Numbers weren’t important nor, for that
matter, the fact that he’d come out of retirement at his very first moment
after commencing it. What counted was that the Irishman was in rare good humor
and had himself a royal good time all through the program, clowning with
Crosby, Bob Burns (sic) and Lionel Stander in no amateur manner. It was good fun throughout and if
McCormack really means it about quitting the concert stage but wants to shift
to some other branch of the biz he might consider being an MC. He could get
away with it.
(Variety, May 19, 1937)
May 14, Friday. Bing's horse San Dieguto wins the feature race at Agua Caliente.
May 16, Sunday.
Bing and Dixie and their children attend a birthday party for Pat O’Brien’s
daughter, Mavourneen. At
Agua Caliente, Bing’s
stable makes it five wins and one second out of six starts when Lady Lakeside
takes the first, a
six-furlong affair, to reward machine players at even money. Elsewhere,
a frog-jumping contest publicised by Bing and Bob Burns takes place in
Stockton, California. Bing's frog, "Double or Nothing" beats
Burns' frog "Mountain Music" at the ninth annual Jumping Frog
Jubilee. Burns is required to cook Bing an Arkansas dinner to settle
the bet.
May 19,
Wednesday. Fire in the Melrose Grotto at 5511 Melrose Avenue, forces Bing and
many others to flee from the adjoining recording studio. No one is hurt.
May 20, Thursday. (12:00-6:00 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft broadcast. (6:00–7:00 p.m.) The Kraft Music Hall broadcast on NBC. Bing acts as host and his guests include Lee Tracy, Connie Boswell, and William Gargan.
Connie
Boswell, another of those courageous souls who refuse to let her great physical
handicap get her down, will be one of Bing Crosby’s guests tonight at 10 on
WBEN. Miss Boswell may have to sing from a wheel chair, but her voice will be
as fine as ever. As you read at the time Buddy Rogers saved her from a fire in
her bed she recently suffered a stroke. Before that she had been slightly crippled,
always helped on the stage by her sisters when they made personal appearances
as a trio. But she can sing with the healthy ones any day.
Lee
Tracy, William Gargan and Lionel Stander are the other Crosby guests. Bob Burns
is still vacationing.
(Rod Reed, The Buffalo News, May 20, 1937)
Extract from article
in BING magazine, spring, 2003 by Malcolm Macfarlane about New York Public
Library collection
Kraft Music Hall -
May 20, 1937.
This 78 rpm aluminium-based
12” acetate was part of the Lee Tracy collection and we know that Mr. Tracy was
a guest on the show that night. Whilst we knew what songs Bing sang, no-one had
heard them for years and again it was with eager anticipation that I sat there
in my headphones sending a message for playback to commence. It soon became
apparent that the only parts of the show which had been preserved were those
featuring Lee Tracy. First we hear Bing and Lee talking about Lee’s latest
film Behind The Headlines (also known as Tomorrow’s
Headlines) then there is dialogue between Bing, Lee and Lionel Stander
about Bing’s slang talk (“stationhouse”, “zingy” “long haircut” etc.) which
brings laughter from the audience. The next cut has a WW1 sketch involving
Bing, Lee, Lionel Stander and William Gargan. “Colonel” Stander whispers
to “Major” Crosby that they are going to advance and whispers pass down the
line to first “Captain” Tracy and then “Lieutenant” Gargan. The whispers
go back and forth among the personnel until eventually someone says that the
front line is 15 miles away and “Why are we whispering.” The payoff comes when
“Colonel” Stander says that he has laryngitis! Unfortunately there are no songs
from Bing on the recording which was obviously done specifically for Lee Tracy.
May 21, Friday. (8:30-9:00 p.m.) Thought to have guested on the Al Jarvis ‘Jam Session’ show on KFWB.
May 22, Saturday. Bing beats Ray Plaisted on the 21st hole of their semi-final match in the Lakeside Club Championship.
May 23, Sunday. (Starting at 2:15 p.m.) Bing organizes and appears in a five-hour benefit for pianist Joe Sullivan at the Pan-Pacific Auditorium in front of an audience of six thousand. (Joe suffered from TB and was convalescing at a sanitarium in Monrovia.) The show is broadcast over two different radio stations and Bing is praised for his master of ceremonies performance by Herb Caen of the San Francisco Chronicle. Fourteen bands attend (including those led by Woody Herman, Ray Noble, Jimmy Dorsey, Jimmie Grier, Louis Prima, Harry Owens, and Victor Young) and other performers include Connie Boswell, Johnny Mercer, Red Norvo, and Ella Logan. Approximately $3,000 is raised for Joe Sullivan.
The big swing concert given at the
Pan-Pacific auditorium in honor of Joe Sullivan bringing out practically all of
Hollywood with the exception of Martha Raye. The crowd plenty peeved when Martha,
who had been widely advertised, failed to show. Jean Harlow, in dark glasses,
arriving at the concert with a thin man (not Bill Powell); Bing Crosby singing
all his sentimental songs directly to Dixie Lee Crosby; Ella Logan scoring a
terrific ovation…
(Louella O. Parsons, syndicated column,
May 25, 1937)
May 25, Tuesday. It is revealed that Dixie Crosby is expecting her fourth child during the Christmas holidays.
May 27, Thursday.
(6:00–7:00 p.m.) Bing’s Kraft Music Hall
broadcast on NBC and his guests include ZaSu Pitts,
Gail Patrick, and Rudolph Ganz.
Bob Burns returned last week
to the Kraft Phoenix program, after a fortnight’s absence to fish the trout
streams in the High Sierras. He has been sorely missed during his siesta, so he
stepped right in, sounding fresh and helped lift the period to its old level.
Bing Crosby seemed exuberant with Burns’ return and displayed more pep than he
had done on the two previous editions. Zasu Pitts was
the guest in the show and not too impressive. Her singing of ‘Melancholy Baby’
was choppy and not bravely ventured. Interruptions by Burns’ mild kidding
detracted further. An announcement that Miss Pitts would carol in the
forthcoming Wanger production, “52nd Street” for
United Artists, wasn’t too good a ballyhoo in view of the performance. Boys and
comedienne wound it up with a skit on Christopher Columbus putting the touch on
Queen Isabella for his voyage of discovery. Burns was seaman and Crosby, King
Ferdinand - Bit was quite funny.
(Variety, June 2, 1937)
May 28, Friday.
Bing and Dixie attend the boxing matches at Wrigley Field with many other
Hollywood stars including Al Jolson, Ruby Keeler, Clark Gable, and Fred
Astaire.
May 29, Saturday.
Bing and Dixie attend a party at Carole Lombard’s house and they sing on homemade records.
The highest priced aggregation of talent ever assembled to warble for a
home-made record was the crowd that gathered at Carole Lombard’s house Saturday
night. The whole party,
arranged on the spur of the moment after Barbara Stanwyck had put Robert Taylor
on a boat for Honolulu, included Barbara, Carole and Clark Gable, Bing Crosby
and Dixie Lee, Jack Benny and Mary Livingstone, Fieldsie and Walter Lang, Mr.
and Mrs. Andy Devine and the Zeppo Marxes. Carole, whose collection of
home-made recordings is a-growing and a-growing, played these for me a few
nights later and you would be surprised how marvelous Bing’s voice sounds, even
in the foolish lyrics he composed himself
(Louella O Parsons, syndicated column, June 6, 1937)
May 31, Monday. Bing's horse "Rocco" wins at Agua Caliente. This is Bing's seventh winner in ten starts since Agua Caliente reopened.
June (undated).
Bing puts on an impromptu show at the LaMaze night club.
June 3, Thursday. (11:45 a.m.-4:45 p.m.) (5:15-6:00 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft broadcast. (6:00–7:00 p.m.) Bing’s Kraft Music Hall show. Guests include Charles Ruggles, Natalie Bodanya and McLelland Barclay.
Charles Ruggles, screen comedian, will join up with
Bing Crosby and Bob Burns in a familiar Music Hall ribbing match at 8 p.m. over
station WBAP. It will be Ruggles’ first appearance on the Crosby opus. Natalie
Bodanya. Metropolitan opera soprano, and McClelland Barclay, illustrator, also
will be guests.
(Fort Worth
Star-Telegram, June 3, 1937)
June 4, Friday. Bing's horse 'Lady Lakeside' wins at Agua Calienta making eight wins for him at the meet.
June 7, Monday. Hollywood star Jean Harlow dies of a kidney disease at the age of
twenty-six.
June 10, Thursday. (12:00-4:45 p.m.) (5:00-6:00 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft broadcast. (12:00-6:00 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft broadcast.(6:00–7:00 p.m.) The Kraft Music Hall broadcast on NBC. Bing acts as host and his guests include Harriet Hilliard, William Frawley, and Douglas Fairbanks Jr.
Harriet Hilliard, lovely songstress of radio and the screen and wife of
baton-wielding Ozzie Nelson, who will drop in at the Music Hall over WBAP-NBC
at 8 tonight for a chat and song with Bing Crosby and Bob Burns. Douglas
Fairbanks Jr. and William Frawley also will guest on the Crosby show.
(Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 10th June 1937)
Swinging over to the Old Kraft Music Hall, which to
our mind is the smoothest of all the air varieties, mainly because of that
Krafty Crosby gent. That velvet patter of Bing’s which is so swell and such a
part of his top etherating comes from the pen of one Carroll Carroll, in case
you'd like to know. Bing can handle the ten-syllable words, but when it comes
to a bit of a British accent, he has trouble. The night Doug Fairbanks, Jr.,
showed up in the Hall, Bing and Bob Burns cooked up a jolly English skit. Well,
of course, that was a pushover for Doug, what with his recent London sojourning,
and Robin shoved the hill talk aside easily enough. But Bing had a terrible
time. “After ten words,” he griped, “I swing right back to Spokane, Washington!”
(Photoplay, September 1937)
For more than a year now, rumours have been floating around
that Jimmy Dorsey and his band will be leaving the Crosby
show. Well, they’re finally coming true. Next month, the
Dorsey swingsters move into Chicago’s Congress Hotel and chances are
they’ll be replaced by a studio orchestra, although Joe Venuti or Artie Shaw are
supposed to be in the running.
(San Francisco Chronicle, 10th June 1937)
June 13, Sunday. Bing
(handicap five) wins the thirty-six holes
Playing in a white cap and an
old gray sweat shirt, Bing was carefree at all times while the gallery seemed
to bother Beekman, his game being far below his usual
form.
(Los Angeles Times, June 14, 1937)
BIG
We witnessed our first golf
match when the justly celebrated Bing “Crooner” Crosby, screen and radio star,
added the coveted Lakeside championship to his big treasure chest. We were told
on all sides that he was “shooting” a game of which any professional would be
proud. Not only did Bing win, but he now holds the honor of being the only man
to win the Lakeside championship twice. He won last year.
Knowing little about this
game of golf, which appears to hold its addicts tightly in its clutches, we
sought enlightenment from our old friend, William Frawley.
In case you have forgotten, the inimitable Bill Frawley,
who has become one of the most popular character actors ever to work under the
Paramount banner, was America’s first crooner....and one of the best. Old Man
Cinemania will attest that Bill can still warble “Carolina in the Morning” with
more feeling than any other singer we know.
As one crooner to another,
Bill was all for Bing. Although Bing’s opponent, one Robert Beekman,
a prominent business man, was Lakeside’s first golf champion back in
1927....and had previously defeated three of the best players in this
tournament, Bill had no fears.
“Bing is a champion,” Bill
confided to us as we watched Bing coolly hitting his shots (with the old pipe
in mouth), “and a real champion always rises to the occasion.
“The other fellow is a fine
sportsman and a gentleman....and I like to see him win....but not from Crosby.
There’s only one Bing.” As we strolled around the
beautiful green golf course....we felt the same warmth and friendliness of
feeling for Bing....despite the fact that he was playing one of the most
popular of club members....not only from his motion picture and radio
colleagues, but from the laymen, with whom he is very popular.
“Plain as an old shoe and a
swell fellow,” seems to be the general feeling about Bing Crosby.
That enjoyable afternoon we
bumped into such celebrities as Oliver “Babe” Hardy, Adolphe
Menjou, Guy Kibbee and
William Seiter.....husky Barton MacLane
and the distinguished Henry O’Neil....three cronies, Ralph Morgan, Frank Morgan
and Fran Craven....Norman McLeod and Scoop Conlon...."Slow-Burn” Edgar
Kennedy and George Von Elm....little Jimmy McLarnin....Edward
Sutherland....Bert and Sally Wheeler, who have just purchased a new home right
on the golf course....Harry Joe Brown and Sally Eilers....handsome
Randolph Scott....Jimmy Dorsey, the band leader....Johnny Mercer and Johnny
Burke, the song writers....Johnny Gallaudet, C. Henry
Gordon, Clyde Cook and big George Bancroft, who tells me he has taken up golf
again....the one and only Willie Collier, dean of farceurs, with Charlie Hill,
who is Bert Wheeler’s Partner in Palm Springs’ popular Lone Palm....Jobyna Arlen....without Dick, who had to go out on their
new boat....and with Dorothy and Andy Devine....the Charlie Bartons
and Alfred Werkers...Claude Binyon....Huntley
Gordon....Andy Clyde and Bob McGowan, the Scotch inseparables....and many, many
others. We missed the hearty laugh of Alan Hale....but he was somewhere in the
mountains....fishing and vacationing.
That evening, the
championship was really celebrated at Lakeside....with a dinner dance....and
such impromptu entertainment as one could only find at the Lambs in New York or
the Masquers here in Hollywood. Bing sang a few
numbers....and accepted his hard-won honors very modestly....Babe Hardy
officiated, giving away the prizes to the winners....Johnny Mercer
sang....George Bancroft, Huntley Gordon and Henry O’Neil spoke briefly....Bert
Wheeler warbled a very funny song....Dixie Lee Crosby was introduced, but
refused to sing....big Andy Devine brought down the house with his
gravel-throat rendition of “Blood on the Saddle.”....and Bill Frawley refused to “follow” the greatest crooner with a
song.... instead telling the Lakesiders what a fine
fellow they have for a champion.
(Edwin Martin, Hollywood
Citizen News, June 25, 1937)
In the evening, Bing is presented with
his prize at a dinner dance at the club and he also sings several songs. During
the day, his horse “Rocco” wins the fourth race at Agua
Caliente.
June 15, Tuesday. Plays in the qualifying round for the Lakeside Invitational Golf Tournament.
June 16, Wednesday. Bing is at Del Mar to inspect the facilities prior to the opening of the racing season there on July 3.
June 17,
Thursday. (12:00-4:00 p.m.) (5:00-6:00 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft broadcast. (6:00–7:00 p.m.) The Kraft
Music Hall broadcast on NBC. Bing acts as host and his guests include Humphrey Bogart, Jose Iturbi, Katherine DeMille with pole vaulters Bill Sefton and Earle Meadows.
Pat O’Brien, Katherine DeMille of the movies, and Jose Iturbi, famous
pianist, will be Bing Crosby’s guests in the “Kraft Music Hall” broadcast.
O’Brien and Iturbi have been guests of Crosby before, but Miss DeMille,
daughter of the famous movie director, Cecil B. DeMille, is a newcomer to the
program. O’Brien and Miss DeMille will be interviewed by Crosby. Iturbi will
take over the “serious-music department” for the evening, playing a group of
his favorite selections.
(Tyler Morning Telegram (Texas), June 17, 1937) (Note: O'Brien had to withdraw and was replaced by Humphrey Bogart)
Radio is his game and he’s so
deaf you almost have to shout to make him hear. He’s small and of nondescript
appearance. You’d never pick him out in a crowd and the chances are you’ve
never heard his rather odd name. Carroll Carroll is
the brains behind the success of Bing Crosby’s air show. He studies Bing
constantly - not an affectation or colloquialism used by the crooning idol of
radio escapes his sharp eyes which are trained to read the Crosby lips. He
writes Bing’s scripts. Yes, Bing’s informed chatter on the air is all written
and the reason you’d swear it was ad-libbed is because Carroll Carroll writes right down Bing’s alley and be it known to
Bing’s credit that he appreciates Carroll’s talent. He takes one look at the
script and says, ‘It’s swell.’ When Crosby reads that script, he can’t help
falling into a natural groove, thereby giving his hour the inimitable style and
all the time Carroll Carroll watches him from the
control booth, studying, studying. He has absorbed so much of Bing’s
personality that he, consistently and successfully, transcribes it to
typewritten paper, each week. The Crosby cast never assembles for rehearsals
until Thursday morning. They work all day, cutting and changing and building up
that ‘spark’ that accounts for its present Crossley
Report rating. The show is seldom timed at the start of a broadcast. The crew
have been working so hard all day that they have on hand a wealth of material,
discarded during rehearsal, to fill with should the program run short. So when
you tune in tonight (KPO 6 to 7) and hear Bing winding out, in his own style,
just realize that a little semi-deaf guy by the name of Carroll Carroll is doing his bit to preserve that personality in
consistency.
(San Francisco Chronicle, June 17, 1937)
June 19, Saturday. (5:30-6:30 p.m.) Jack Dempsey is a guest on Joe Cook's Shell Show on NBC and Bing is one of those seeking Dempsey's opinion on the forthcoming Joe Louis fight.
June 21, Monday.
Clyde Tolson of the FBI writes to his director, J.
Edgar Hoover, stating that Hollywood is “overrun at the present time with all
types and kinds of racketeers.” He gives an instance of Bing being induced to
part with $10,000 to someone who had preyed on Bing’s sympathy saying that he
was afflicted with a disease and was unable to work.
June 22, Tuesday. Boxer Joe Louis becomes World Heavyweight Champion after
defeating James J. Braddock.
June 24,
Thursday. (12:00-4:30 p.m.) (5:00-6:00 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft broadcast. (6:00–7:00 p.m.) Bing’s Kraft
Music Hall broadcast on NBC and his guests include Constance Bennett and
Reginald Denny.
Bing Crosby gags around with Constance Bennett, Reginald Denny and
Florence George, radio soprano and quite the good looker. Speaking
of ‘La Bennett’, she causes something of a sensation every time she rolls up to
NBC’s Hollywood studios for a guest appearance. In the first place,
she flounces out of a Rolls Royce that’s longer than the Golden Gate
Bridge. In the second place she carries a ‘booful’ spaniel dog whose
hair, mind you, is marcelled and in the third place she sits,
nonchalantly, on the studio stage during the broadcast and casts supercilious
glances out over the audience. This causes the audience to giggle
gleefully and just have the time. If there is anything a Hollywood
audience loves, it’s to be glanced at superciliously.
(San Francisco Chronicle, 24th June 1937)
Bing Crosby - Bob Burns
Thursday night session over NBC Red for Kraft Phoenix Miracle Whip was not the
only commercial plugging inserted. Two guests, Constance Bennett and Reginald
Denny also slipped in some blurbing for their
extra-film business ventures. It seems Miss Bennett peddles cosmetics and Denny
is interested in a firm manufacturing model airplanes although the trade labels
of neither were mentioned. All the chatter on their two separate sessions with
Mr. C and Mr. B circled around their businesses. Usually, on the Kraft Show,
guests get ribbed. The pair, last week, escaped completely and both bits, in consequence
were much duller than customarily encountered on this sturdy show.
(Variety, June 30, 1937)
June 25, Friday.
Bing is thought to have attended the Friday night boxing at the Legion Stadium
in Hollywood.
June 27, Sunday. Bing is at Agua Caliente to see his horse Rocco win his fourth straight race in as many starts.
June 28-30, Monday-Wednesday.
Bing is at Del Mar peparing for the opening of the racecourse. He hosts
a press preview dinner on the Monday night.
July 1, Thursday.
(11:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft broadcast. (6:00–7:00 p.m.) The last Kraft Music
Hall broadcast by Bing until October. His guests are Toby Wing, Roland
Young, and Mischa Levitzki.
It is Jimmy Dorsey’s final appearance as resident orchestra leader. Bing sings four songs from Double or Nothing.
Roland Young, the stage and
screen comic, lived up to his best traditions as a sly humorist on his guest
appearance on Bing Crosby’s Kraft Music Hall program, last Thursday. Tops was
the reference to Young’s ability to talk without seeming to open his mouth,
with a suggestion that he’d do a Bergen/McCarthy act being carried out as he
went through a ventriloquial routine with Burns. The
pair were introduced as ‘Roland Bergen’ and ‘Bob McBurns’,
the latter doing snappy dummy and crossfire banter. Mischa
Levitzki, on same show, introduced as being on the
broadcast for the fourth time, readily showed his capability, in three distinct
types of selections - brilliant work on ivories. Levitzki
indicated his versatility by joining in some of the gagging.
(Variety, July 7, 1937)
Another fine
pianist, Mischa Levitski,
told Bing one Thursday that he thought he played the piano better when he was a
guest on The Kraft Music Hall than at any other of his public performances
because, he said, he could dress informally and be comfortable.
Bing said, “I’m
delighted to hear it, and may I say that all day long I’ve been admiring your
splendid red suspenders.”
“A great many
pianists wear suspenders exactly like these,” Mischa
answered.
“Any particular
reason?” Bing asked.
“Yes. To hold
up their pants.”
This old joke,
coming from a man of Levitski’s stature, was such a
surprise it was one of the biggest laughs ever heard on the broadcast, and Bing
laughed louder than the rest because on the script where Mischa
said, “To hold up their pants,” Bing’s script read, “Because the flannel is
soft and doesn’t cut into the shoulders the way elastic suspenders do.”
(Carroll Carroll, My Life With…)
“Larry Crosby, Bing’s brother
and public relations director, sent me a wire, ‘Can you be in Hollywood on the
28th of June and take over the orchestra of the Kraft Music Hall on July 8,
1937?’ Actually that is what you might call, as my good friend George Gobel says, starting rather ‘high line,’ because although
I’d rehearsed and directed orchestras, I had never had an orchestra of my own,
with my own name. That was sort of beginning at the top. The first time I
appeared under my own name ‘John Scott Trotter and his Orchestra’ was on the
Kraft Music Hall with Bing. The Kraft Music Hall went fifty weeks a year. I did
one hundred and forty consecutive Thursdays without missing one; some sort of
record.”
(John Scott Trotter, speaking
in an exclusive interview with Gord Atkinson,
subsequently broadcast in Gord Atkinson’s The
Crosby Years.)
John Scott Trotter joined my musical
family at the beginning of my Kraft Music Hall series in the 1930’s. He’s been
with me ever since. I’d known John in New York when he
played piano and made arrangements for the Hal Kemp band. Both Hal and Johnny were products of the University of North Carolina. John
—as everybody who’s listened to our radio
program knows—goes about two hundred and ninety-five pounds. For a band leader he has remarkable self-control. Never have I heard him resort to
profanity during the long, tiresome rehearsals. Things can go wrong
with an arrangement. Musicians are late or maybe hung a little. After five or six hours, they often get
fidgety and restless, or their attention wanders. But I’ve never heard John raise his voice or upbraid his musicians.
Once, when
they really
got out
of line, he rapped with his baton and said, in
cool, crisp tones, “Gentlemen!” The bandsmen were so shocked that he’d
said anything at all that
they calmed down and he had no more trouble
with them.
(Call Me Lucky, page 262-3)
July 3, Saturday. The Del Mar Turf Club opens with an attendance of fifteen thousand including many celebrities. The first race at 2:24 p.m. is won by Bing’s horse “High Strike.” Dixie Lee presents the prize to the winner of the inaugural handicap. The directors of the track are Bing, Pat O’Brien, Kent Allen, Charles Howard, and William Quigley. There is radio coverage on NBC from 3:45 pm. until 4:30 p.m.. Bing hosts a huge dinner dance in the clubhouse following the races, with Jimmy Dorsey and his Orchestra playing for the dancing. This starts a pattern of regular Saturday night stage shows involving celebrities at Del Mar. A crowd of 18,000 shows up on the second day but attendances then drop off drastically with an average of only 5,000 attending each day due to the difficulties of traveling from Los Angeles. Saturday morning radio shows begin and continue through July and August on NBC.
One feature of the Del Mar Turf Club is the nightly dinner held in the
beautiful Jockey Club room. Saturday night there was a million dollars’ worth
of entertainment on parade. Imaging sitting in on a show which presented the
incomparable Connie Boswell, Ethel Shutta, gravel-throated Andy Devine, subtle
Bill Frawley, engaging Pat O’Brien, roly poly Romo Vincent and Crosby himself,
singing at least ten songs during the evening. No place else in the world could
you hobnob with such stellar entertainers. The show ran two hours and there
were twice as many notables who didn’t even get a chance to do their stuff.
Crosby not only crooned over the loud speaker, while over 300 guests disposed
of their dinners, but would up the program by singing four numbers,
(The Los Angeles Times, July 5, 1937)
Bing’s big
interest was his racetrack at Delmar, near San Diego. It had been a farm, an
ideal spot for a track. Bing and some partners acquired the property and
developed the Delmar Racetrack. The opening in 1936 (sic) was a big day. Everybody
was there. Jimmy and the band were appointed to launch the ceremonies with the
playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” It was decided to use the brass choir.
Camarata arranged it for the two trumpets and three trombones. He elected to
play first trumpet himself, with George Thow on second, and Bobby Byrne, Joe
Yukl, and Don Matteson on trombones. Bobby remembers marching through the crowd
to the appointed place. The moment for The Star Spangled Banner arrived. There
was silence. All eyes were on the brass choir. Then it happened: Camarata
forgot the melody. The others improvised roving parts. The melody passed from
one to another. When they all met toward the last eight bars (“ . . .OH SAY
DOES THAT . . .”), they played the melody in unison, maestoso. A favorite
number with the crowd was “Parade of the Milk Bottle Caps”, which was a showcase
for Ray McKinley at the drums. This was recorded that first summer and was a
standard Jimmy Dorsey item. Another one that summer was the twelve-inch
recording of the songs from “Pennies from Heaven,” which Jimmy did with Bing
and Louis Armstrong, Louis doing “Skeleton in the Closet”.
(Herb Sanford, writing in Tommy and Jimmy: The Dorsey Years)
There was
quite a treat for radio listeners in NBC-Red’s broadcast of the opening of the
Del Mar racetrack in San Diego last Saturday. The 45-minute airing was packed
with stars, from Bing Crosby, head man of the track, and Bob Burns to George
Jessel, Robert Taylor, Barbara Stanwyck, Bert Wheeler, Jack L. Warner, Una
Merkel, Mary Carlisle and many others. Hedda Hopper was mistress of ceremonies
on styles, while Clem McCarthy described the races and Don Wilson and Buddy
Twiss helped in rounding up the celebs and some fans who engaged in some
amusing informality with Crosby, Burns et al.
(Radio Daily, July 7, 1937)
July 7, Wednesday. Bing sends a cablegram via Western Union to the Duke and Duchess of Windsor at Wasserleonburg Castle, Austria. The Windsors are on their honeymoon there.
Had hoped for your
presence at Del Mar Turf Club’s race track Del Mar California on occasion of presentation
to me of famous English stallion Major Somers which once was member of your Royal
stable in Alberta STOP Albert McLennan of Vancouver British Columbia to whom
you sold Major Somers several years ago has sent his son to Del Mar to deliver
horse to me as token of our friendship STOP Horse will be formally presented to
me by McLennan’s son Alastair on Friday this week appreciate message from you
on this occasion
Regards Bing Crosby
July 8, Thursday. John Scott Trotter and his orchestra take over from the Jimmy Dorsey aggregation on the Kraft Music Hall which is hosted by Bob Burns during Bing's absence,
July 9, Friday.
(5:00-5:20 p.m.) Bing gives the racing commentary from Del Mar on the Motion
Picture Handicap for NBC. NBC give him a check for $100 for “any charity cause
of your choice.” Meanwhile, Bing’s occasional golfing partner at Lakeside, John Montague, is arrested for a
robbery committed seven years earlier. Bing had recently played in a one-hole
match at Lakeside with Montague when Montague played with a garden rake, a
baseball bat, and a shovel to beat Bing who was using orthodox clubs. The
newspaper reports of this incredible match were seen by police in New York
State searching for Laverne Moore (alias John Montague).
There was a
golfer playing Lakeside in those days named John (“Mysterious”) Montague, who
was a shadowy figure. Grantland Rice, who was a
Lakeside member, used to write about him. Montague was reluctant to be
photographed. Whenever he was in position to break the course record at
Lakeside he picked up on the 18th tee. Apparently at one time he had some
alleged connections with the underworld, and the word was that he was wanted by
the police in Buffalo. He was strong enough to pick up Babe Hardy and hold him
upside down. Montague was an excellent golfer, relentless under pressure. We
played him for a $5.00
Montague took a bat on the tee and hit a
lovely shot. Then he used the same weapon and hit another one, but it veered
off into a trap. Bing was on the green in two, about thirty feet from the pin.
Montague took his shovel and got the ball on the green. Bing hit his first putt
three feet past the hole and Monty said, “That’s good, pal,” and knocked Bing’s
ball away. With Bing watching in astonishment, Monty used the rake like a pool
cue and knocked the ball right into the cup. Bing shook his head in wonderment,
and walked back in.
July 11, Sunday. George Gershwin dies in Hollywood from a brain tumor at the age of
thirty-eight.
July 12, Monday.
Bing has his first recording session with John Scott Trotter and his Orchestra
with Spike Jones playing the drums in the Trotter ensemble. In Hollywood, they
record four songs from the film Double or
Nothing including “The Moon Got in My Eyes.” (5:00-6:00 p.m.) Bing takes part in a
star-studded radio tribute to George Gershwin on the Mutual Broadcasting System.
The star disc of a trio by
Bing Crosby is undoubtedly
(The Gramophone, January 1938)
July 14,
Wednesday. Bing is on crutches at Del Mar following a tennis injury.
July 16, Friday.
(1:45-2:00 p.m.) Broadcasts a “man at the race track” type program from Del Mar
on the NBC Blue Network.
July 17, Saturday. Sees his horse 'High Strike' win the Chula Vista Handicap at Del Mar setting a new track record. Later in the day another Crosby horse - 'Double Trouble' - wins a $1200 claiming race. (A 'claiming race' is one in which the horses can be bought for a specific price.)
One of the favorite topics Ginger and I talked
about when we met had been Bing Crosby. I thought him far away the best singer
around and years ahead of others his age. She had dated him, it turned out, and
this circumstance coupled with the fact that both Dixie Crosby and I were
Southern; proved to be one of the nicest things that happened to us in
Hollywood, when we met them again.
The friendship of Dixie, and the unspoken
sponsorship of Bing in those days played no little part, I’m sure, in getting
us off on the right foot. As another Whiteman alumnus, no doubt he felt kindly
disposed towards me, and I’m glad I got to know them when their children were
young and they had that beautiful place at Rancho Santa Fe. One of the times we
were there the guests included the actor Eddie Lowe, who was a Gilbert and
Sullivan fan and kept singing so many couplets that we nicknamed him “Nankipoo.”
One night at dinner Gary was describing a
birthday party he had attended and particularly a game of “Pin-the-Tail-on-the-Donkey”
that they had played, and, in that deep voice all the boys had, he excitedly
told us that when his turn came, blindfold and all, he had unerringly taken the
tail and pinned it “right on the donkey’s
keester”! I can remember Bing’s and Dixie’s laughter to this day at his use of
the proper vaudeville term!
The next day in swimming, Barney Dean, who was
rather short, was walking by the pool and trying to make conversation with the
boys who were swimming there.
“How is it in there,” he said, “pretty deep”?
“You couldn’t stand up in it,” Gary replied.
“That kid’ll make a great writer some day,”
Barney chuckled,
That summer was fun. The Crosbys had just come
back from Hawaii and the two of them would sing a duet on Kuiipo which was a
joy to listen to. In the mornings Bing would be up with his partner Lindsay
Howard to watch the horses breeze and later we’d all go to the jockey club at
Del Mar to watch them race. Sometimes on Saturday nights, there’d be dinner and
a party where everyone would do a little something.
(Johnny Mercer, unpublished memoir from 1973)
July 19, Monday. Bing
is named “Hollywood’s Most Typical Father” in a contest among male
members of the film colony. Pat O'Brien is second, Edward G. Robinson is
in third place.
July 23, Friday.
(1:45-2:00 p.m.) Broadcasts another “man at the race track” type program from Del Mar
on the NBC Blue Network. Later, his horse "Double Trouble" wins the mile feature event at Del Mar,
July 24, Saturday. Bing hosts a special show to
entertain the guests at the Del Mar club.
July 25, Sunday. Is appointed to the advisory board of the American League of Professional Football Clubs.
July 28, Wednesday.
After attending the races at Del Mar, Bing acts as a judge of the
models appearing in the second annual Artists' and Models' Ball at the
Beach Club in La Jolla.
July 30, Friday. (1:45-2:00 p.m.) Ken Carpenter
talks with Bing at the Del Mar Jockey Club in a program broadcast by the NBC
Blue Network. This is part of a farewell broadcast at the end of the Del Mar season
July 31, Saturday. The last day of the Del Mar meeting and Bing has another success with "High Strike" winning the third race. The "take" for the 22-day inaugural meeting was $177,946. The total handle (the total amount bet) was $2,224,325 with 75,000 patrons attending in all.
August 3, Tuesday. Gary Crosby has his tonsils removed in Mercy Hospital, Los Angeles.
August 5, Thursday. Bing is advertised as
entertaining at a dinner and dance at the Fiesta Room of the Ambassador Hotel
for the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League for the Defense of American Democracy. Other
stars that are said to be attending include Robert Benchley,
Eddie Cantor, Charles Butterworth, Fred MacMurray,
Ray Bolger, Don Ameche, Fanny Brice, Sigmund Romberg,
George Jessel, Benny Goodman, Edgar Bergen and
Charlie McCarthy, Gordon and Revel, Frances Langford and Johnny Green and his
orchestra. Bing and Charles Butterworth are thought to have performed their
Boswell Sisters impersonation.
August 12, Thursday. Bing and Dixie are thought to have attended the premiere of the film High, Wide and Handsome at Carthay Circle.
August 15, Sunday. Is
one of thirty-five stars who accept membership in a National Board of Directors
for the newly formed American Federation of Radio Artists.
During the day, Bing travels out on the Union Pacific streamliner to the East
coast for the racing at Saratoga.
August 17, Tuesday. Bing is at the races in Chicago. He golfs with Wayne King while he is in Chicago.
August 19, Thursday. Arrives in Saratoga Springs in New York State to attend the races and the yearling
auctions. He buys four yearlings through his friend Charles S. Howard. He stays at the Gideon Putnam during his visit.
August 20, Friday. Bing’s friend John Montague waives extradition and agrees to leave
California voluntarily for New York State to face charges.
August 24, Tuesday. John Montague is returned by police to
Elizabethtown in New York to face trial. En route, his train stops at Saratoga
Springs and he and Bing talk on the railway station platform for ten minutes.
Bing later follows Montague to Elizabethtown to support Montague’s application
for bail and arrives there in the early afternoon.
August 26,
Thursday. After two days in jail, Montague is released on bail of $25,000. Bing
is not present at the hearing. Montague eventually goes to trial on October 19.
August (undated). At Saratoga, Bing dines at the Arrowhead Inn where Xavier Cugat and his Orchestra are performing. Desi
Arnaz is a singer with the orchestra and Bing is
persuaded to join him on stage and sing a duet with him.
From Cleveland
we went to Saratoga to play at Arrowhead Inn, one of the finest gambling
casinos in New York State at that time. It was a great thrill for me when Cugat decided that I should open the show with “Para Vigo
Me Voy” before Veloz and
Yolanda, who were the most famous dancing act in the world then, and of course
the stars of the show, came on to do their act.
Saratoga, during
the racing season, is always, up to its ass with Vanderbilts,
Whitneys and Du Ponts, plus an assortment of the top breeders, owners,
trainers and jockeys of thoroughbred horses in America, and also stage, radio,
and movie stars by the dozen.
One night, the
headwaiter came over to the bandstand a couple of times with a request for me
to sing “Quiero Mucho” (In English the song was
called “Yours”) The third time he came over I heard him ask Cugat
if it would be all right for me to sit with one of the guests. Cugat told him “You know the rules.” (Members of the band
were not supposed to mingle with the guests, then.) The headwaiter said that it
would be okay. “It’s Mr. Crosby.”
As I approached
the table and saw him I told the headwaiter, “What do you mean, Mr. Crosby?
That’s Bing Crosby!”
Bing stood up
and greeted me with “Mucho gusto, Senor.”
I answered, “El
gusto es todo mio, Senor Crosby.”
He then said,
“Como se llama usted?”
“Desi Amaz, Senor.”
“Sientese, por favor.” He
indicated a chair. “Quiere un Scotch o quiere rum?”
“Rum. Bacardi, por favor,” I answered.
“Si Como no.”
A bottle of good
old Anejo Bacardi was brought to the table. Mr.
Crosby told me how much he loved Cuban music and that to celebrate meeting a
native he would join me in the rum. After a couple he asked me, “’How much is
this Spaniard paying you?”
“Thirty a week,”
I told him.
‘"That
cheap crook,” he said. “Come on, let’s talk to him.”
“Hello, Bing,” Cugat greeted him.
“Listen, you
cheap Spaniard, what do you mean paying this fine Cuban singer thirty a week?”
“He’s just
starting. Bingo.”
“Never mind the
Bingo stuff. Give him a raise. One of these days you are going to be asking him
for a job.”
“Okay, okay. How
about singing a song with the band, Bing?”
Bing said, “Will
you give him a raise?”
“Of course.”
Bing sang and
the audience went wild. It was quite a feather in Cugat’s
cap to have Bing Crosby sing with his orchestra. He sang many songs, some of
them with me. “Quiereme Mucho,” his favorite, he sang
in Spanish, which was pretty good, and then I sang it in English, which was
pretty bad. The Anejo Bacardi helped a lot.
The next time I
saw Bing was when I was a guest on his Kraft
Music Hall radio show. It was the very first time I appeared on a national
radio show.
The first thing
he asked was “Did you ever get that raise?”
(Desi
Arnaz, from his autobiography, A Book by Desi Arnaz,
page 54)
August 28,Saturday.
On his way back to the West Coast, Bing is in Chicago at the races. He
has bought four horses at Saratoga through Charles Howard.
.
September 1,
Wednesday. The New York premiere of Bing’s film Double or Nothing takes place.
The Bing Crosby-Martha Raye followers turned out en masse yesterday morning at the
Paramount (Manager Bob Weitman had counted 3,000 by
10 a.m.) to greet the troubadour and the lady of the cavernous mouth in Double Or Nothing, their new
conglomeration of songs, dances, variety acts, romance and comedy. It is a
tuneful show with three numbers better than average—"It’s The Natural Thing To
Do”, “It’s On, It’s Off” and “The Moon Got In My Eyes”—but a show which lacks buoyance and sparkle, perhaps because of unimaginative
direction....Although Bing delivers five songs in his customary agreeable voice
and makes a pleasant enough suitor for the fair Mary Carlisle, it is really the
explosive Miss Raye, the madcap adagio dance team of
Ames and Arno and the Calgary Brothers (specialists
in inebriation) who provide the brighter moments.
(The New York Times, September 2, 1937)
Bing Crosby and Martha Raye are teamed again in Double or Nothing which should give the film big first run
sendoffs, as their names are potent on marquees. . . This is not the first time
that Crosby has carried a heavy load on his broad shoulders. Point is, can he
keep on doing it indefinitely? He is strictly a personality, just passing fair
as an actor, but his croon is unique and the wide radio exploitation he has
keeps him a valuable asset for theaters. He needs carefully selected vehicles
in which his share of the entertainment obligations is limited to his
particular talents. . . Value of the Crosby warble is dimmed because he sings
in nearly every episode in which he appears. Some of it is so casual that his
major effort near the end of the picture falls rather flat.
(Variety, August 18, 1937)
That gorgeous rowdy-dow, Martha Raye, divides honors
evenly with Bing Crosby, now undisputed king of the musicals, his mere crooner
days forgotten...Bing Crosby was never better and this critic thinks never so
good, as in Double or Nothing. This
is praise with a vengeance. But when you see Monsieur Crosby dancing with Mary
Carlisle and warbling such numbers as “Smarty”, “It’s
The Natural Thing To Do”, “All You Want To Do Is Dance” and “After You”—well,
we’ll wager a plugged nickel against a double eagle that you’ll agree. Bing is
one of the few Hollywoodites who ripens mellowly.
(The Washington Post, September 18, 1937)
In Bing Crosby’s excellently
entertaining Double or Nothing, music
does not accompany action all the time. What would happen if, on the
legitimate, an orchestra were to play uninterruptedly during an operetta? Why
on the screen, or rather during a merry screen play of unequivocal nature?
What Bing Crosby himself calls in the dialogue his “tired
baritone,” sounds more and more like a beautiful voice.
His singing has improved steadily for at least a year, especially since there
is less and less of what in the past often suggested a sublimation of a gastric
portamento. It appeared to me that Martha Raye, too, has turned over a new vocal leaf, singing more
resonantly quite often than in her former raucous style. In Beatonian
terms, there is more music to be found in the new Crosby-Raye
vocalism.
Double or Nothing
will find a place in the history of film music because of Max Terr’s “sing band” and really gorgeous effects of “vocalistrations” as well as combinations of choir and
orchestra, the latter under Victor Young and Arthur Franklin.
(Bruno David Ussher, Hollywood Spectator Music And Screen,
September 11, 1937)
September 5,
Sunday. Bing attends the State Fair race meeting in Detroit, Michigan.
September 8,
Wednesday. (9:30 a.m.) Bing arrives back in Los Angeles aboard the Union Pacific’s streamliner
“City of Los Angeles.” He goes on to play in the “Champion of Champions” tournament at
Lakeside but has disappointing rounds of 83 and 79. (9:30-10:00 p.m.) He emcees the
broadcast over station KHJ when awards to the “Champion of Champions” winners
are presented. (8:30-11:00 p.m.) Bing is also thought to have participated in a tribute to the
late George Gershwin at the Hollywood Bowl with Al Jolson and Fred Astaire
later in the evening which is broadcast over the CBS network.
September (undated). Bing writes out a list of his employees and their weekly wages.
House:
housekeeper (Alice Ross, 100), nurse (Eve Waldorf, 100), chauffeur, maid, cook
(all 75), watchman (120), gardener (80). Ross, nurse, maid, cook live in house.
Ranch: caretaker
(125) and two laborers (100 each) for horses, caretaking, etc.
Stable: trainer
(Albert Johnson, 200), and five labor (100, 80x3, 40). Equal 6900.
Office: Everett Crosby manager, Larry Crosby publicity (200), HL Crosby secty (200), Ruth Clark asst (120), clerk (100), bookkeeper (Clay Johnson) 100, EE Wyatt, clerk (100), Mary R Crosby clerk (25)
September 11,
Saturday. Cuts four tracks with Lani McIntyre and his
Hawaiians in Hollywood.
Seprember (undated). At some stage, Bing is fishing at Santa Catalina Island and lands a 115-pound marlin.
September 20,
Monday. Another recording session in Hollywood with John Scott Trotter and his
Orchestra. Bing’s songs include “The Folks Who Live on the Hill” and “Remember
Me?”
September 25,
Saturday. Bing’s song “The Moon Got in My Eyes” is number one record in the
charts. Bing records “Basin Street Blues” and “Bob White” with Connie Boswell
in Hollywood. John Scott Trotter and his Orchestra provide the musical backing.
Bing Crosby liked “Bob White”
and recorded it as a duet with Connie Boswell. The swinging recording was a
landmark for Boswell as well as for Crosby, who, after the success of his
saccharine “Sweet Leilani” and “Blue Hawaii,” was
undergoing a transformation from the bad boy of jazz to the bard of middle-class
America (Decca even had him record Stephen Foster songs). Mercer and Hanighen’s “Bob White” provided Crosby with a song he could
deliver “in one of his most playful performances, indulging the staccato and
vibrato called for in the lyric.” For the sultry-voiced Boswell, who had been
part of the Boswell Sisters until Martha and Vet Boswell found husbands and
quit the act in 1935, “Bob White” was an opportunity to bolster her individual
career and escape Decca’s vigilant efforts to “tone down her jazziness.”
Boswell had suffered polio as a child and performed in a wheelchair that was
concealed by costuming and lighting, but her skill as a pianist, cellist, and
saxophonist bolstered her interpretative range as a singer and made her the
idol of such younger singers as Ella Fitzgerald. “The compound of her molasses
drawl and Bing’s brisk virility” made “Bob White” a jazzy success at a time
when popular music was increasingly receding into “middlebrow blandness.” As
Mercer’s singing career developed, he would take Crosby’s place as the hip jazz
singer of the airwaves. He might not have achieved Crosby’s stardom, but he
kept faith with the early Crosby singing style he had loved as a boy.
(Skylark: the Life and Times of Johnny Mercer, p98)
Watching Bing Crosby and
Connie Boswell make a record is an experience in “swing” at its best. They
record at a tiny studio next to the NBC building on Melrose. Crosby was smoking
a pipe, a panama atop his head, a white silk shirt that hung over his trousers.
“It’s my pajama jacket,” he told the hecklers in Johnny Trotter’s band. The
trombone player in the band, so help me, is named Abe Lincoln. Connie Boswell,
in a yellow sweater, her reddish blond hair encircled by a green ribbon, sat on
a high chair next to the microphone as she and Bingo collabbed
on a new version of “Basin Street Blues”.
“Come on cats,”
said Bing. In musical lingo, cats are the hottest of the hot musicians. The
song ended, and the master record made, one of the bandsmen said: “The
alligators will go nuts over that one, Mr. Crosby.”
I turned to
Crosby and songwriter Johnny Mercer in some bewilderment.
“An alligator,”
explained The Great Groaner, “is the musician’s description of collegiate
youngsters who stand near a bandstand and listen to a tune, with their mouths
open, like an alligator.”
(Ed Sullivan in Hollywood, Hollywood Citizen News, September 27,
1937)
September 26, Sunday. Bing and Edmund Lowe are spectators at the Pacific Southwest Tennis Tournament
at the Los Angeles Tennis Club, and are photographed with Donald Budge and Rubye De Remer.
September 28, Tuesday. Bing sings at Hal Roach’s party for Vittorio Mussolini on the Italian dictator’s son’s 21st
birthday. It was also Marguerite and Hal Roach’s 21st wedding anniversary.
October 2, Saturday.
The Gonzaga football team lose 13-8 to Loyola Marymount
at Gilmore Stadium and Bing may well have been there.
October 3, Sunday. Bing and Dixie hold a swimming and tennis party at their home for many of their friends followed by a buffet supper.
October 5,
Tuesday. (9:00 p.m.) Bing fires the gun to start the international six-day bicycle race at
the Pan-Pacific Auditorium.
October 7,
Thursday. (11:00 a.m.-5:30 p.m., 6:00-7:00 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft broadcast. (7:00 to 8:00 p.m.) Returns to the Kraft Music Hall broadcast and performs weekly until
July 21, 1938. Bob Burns and the Paul Taylor Choristers continue as regulars on
the show. John Scott Trotter and his Orchestra provide the musical
accompaniment. The audience share for the season is 23.1 and again the show is
in sixth place overall in the ratings for evening programs. Edgar Bergen’s show
takes top place with 39.4.
The guests on the opening show are
Beatrice Lillie, Mischa Levitzki,
and William Gargan. John Scott Trotter furnishes the
orchestral support and continues to do so for Bing’s radio shows until 1954.
Ken Carpenter is the announcer.
Bing Crosby lifts the
Master of Ceremonies burden off Bazooka Burns’ shoulders tonight and indulges
in some airy persiflage with Bea Lillie, titled British, funny
woman. Bill Gargan is also heard. Odd thing about this
actor, he’s never been able to find another part like the one in “Animal
Kingdom” and as a consequence, never has returned to the popular peak he
attained in that excellent show. Nevertheless, he’s a good
actor. The cultural part of the programme is in the hands of
pianist, Mischa Levitzki. Crosby’s ease of manner, his mellifluous
voice and mike poise will make the show easy to the ear, though it may be hoped
that he will allow the pianist to perform on the piano and not require him to
indulge in other antics. This seeming lack of respect for
concertists is the only sour note of importance that the show has ever struck.
(“Los Angeles Times” 7th October 1937)
Bing Crosby
returned to the Kraft Music Hall Thursday night on the NBC-Red network after an
absence of 3 months, during which time Bob Burns held down the bag as emcee.
Naturally the voice of Bing is a welcome one and he appears to be in finer fettle
than ever. Somehow it takes a Crosby to bring out Burns to better advantage
also, and the lines that can be written for Crosby in his banter with guests
cannot always be written for Burns. Beatrice Lillie was also in fine form, both
on her satirical singing and gags. Mischa Levitsky outdid himself at the
concert grand piano and the program as a whole was smooth and entertaining.
Velveeta Cheese received the credits.
(Radio Daily, October 11, 1937)
“It was wonderful to work
under those circumstances. You couldn’t be under pressure. You had to be
relaxed to make it work. This style was picked up by many others and it made
sense. High pressure wham wham didn’t work well on
radio. Fred Allen, the comedian, was one of the first who started the relaxed
way of doing things. We maintained that attitude successfully. We had trouble
sometimes with those, perhaps opera singers, or stage people, who had never
done anything like that before. But usually they were good-natured about it. It
was simply Bing’s attitude opposite the microphone. We didn’t just stand and
read scripts. We threw things back and forth. You had to be able to take a
line, glance at it and throw one back. Bing was the type of person who could do
this and make others feel at ease. He wouldn’t do anything under pressure. It
was so natural for him.”
(Ken Carpenter, speaking in
an exclusive interview with Gord Atkinson,
subsequently broadcast in Gord Atkinson’s The
Crosby Years, www.whenfm.com)
October 13–December. Films Doctor Rhythm with Mary Carlisle, Beatrice Lillie, and Andy Devine.
The film’s working title is “The Badge of Policeman O’Roon”.
Directed by Frank Tuttle, it is a Major Films production released through
Paramount. Musical direction is by George Stoll with orchestration by John
Scott Trotter. After completion, a financial dispute arises between the
producer, Emanuel Cohen, and Paramount who are to release the film. Paramount
asks Herb Polesie to edit the film and he cuts out a
scene featuring Louis Armstrong.
October 14,
Thursday. (11:30 a.m.-5:00 p.m., 6:00-7:00 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft broadcast. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) Bing’s Kraft
Music Hall show with guests Betty Furness, Walter Huston, and Hope Manning.
Walter Huston, stage and
screen lead of ‘Dodsworth’ and Betty Furness, youthful star of the talkies will
appear as guests of Bing Crosby on the Music Hall, tonight. Miss
Furness and Huston will be interviewed by Bing, if Bob Burns, the Arkansas
philosopher, doesn’t interfere.
(New
Orleans Times-Picayune, 14th October 1937)
October 19, Tuesday. Bing's horse "High Strike" wins the Alameda Handicap at Bay Meadows. The trial of Bing’s friend John Montague commences and lasts for eight days. A controversial verdict by the jury results in Montague being acquitted and Bing thinks of using him in his film Dr. Rhythm. However, Paramount subsequently cancels the arrangements for this made between Emanuel Cohen’s Major Pictures and Everett Crosby, who has become Montague’s manager. Also, Bing and his Kraft troupe leave for Spokane to broadcast the KMH show from Bing's home town on Thursday. Those traveling include Larry Crosby, Mr. and Mrs. Crosby Sr., Bob Burns, Edmund Lowe, Connie Boswell, Mary Carlisle, The Foursome, John Scott Trotter and his orchestra, Josephine Tumminia, opera singer, Jerry Bergen and Johnny Burke, song writer.
One of the
singer's and writer's longest trips was to Spokane, when Crosby received his
doctor of music degree from Gonzaga. Carroll seems to have understood Crosby
when he got out at station stops, and instead of playing a star role, walked
around to the back of the train and talked to the brakeman.
(re Carroll
Carroll, “He Made Bing talk”, Radio Life,
May 21, 1944, page 26)
October 21,
Thursday. Bing arrives in Spokane at 7:00 a.m. by train and goes straight to
Gonzaga for mass at 7:30. This is apparently his first return visit since 1926
and he is accompanied by his parents and brothers Larry and Everett. His
brother Ted is still living in Spokane. Later at 9 a.m. Bing accepts the
honorary degree of Doctor of Philosophy from Gonzaga University. At 11:30 a.m.,
he is at City Hall to receive the key to the city and is made honorary mayor
for the day. During the afternoon, Bing rehearses at the Masonic Temple for his radio show. That night at 7:00 p.m., the Kraft
Music Hall show is broadcast from the Masonic Temple, Spokane, with guests
Connie Boswell, Mary Carlisle, The Foursome and Edmund Lowe. A banquet for Bing and his
costars is held at the Civic Auditorium at 8:00 p.m. Bing and Bob Burns leave
the banquet briefly to make an appearance at the Fox Theater where the Bing
Crosby Talent Competition is underway. They return with the winners, Janet Marie Waldo and Howard Rhines. Some
months later, Bing’s mother is asked about his honorary degree.
“He was really proud of
that,” his mother said. “He told me he had a hard time to keep from crying a
couple of times when they were giving him the degree. And he was awfully
pleased with the football blanket. That was the first time they’d ever given
one to anybody who wasn’t on the team.”
It is not generally known in Hollywood, though the Spokane
papers carried the story, that Bing footed the bill for his hometown
celebration. He spent about $5,000 to bring all his entertainers with him, to
show the home folks a big time, and went to great trouble arranging for the
radio program to be broadcast from Gonzaga.
The $20,000 that he collected in admissions to the broadcast
were given immediately to the university.
(Lucie Neville, San Francisco Chronicle, February 6,
1938)
“It’s
this zip in the air that I like,” crooned Bing Crosby during rehearsals at the Masonic
temple yesterday into which he plunged immediately after he commencement
ceremonies at Gonzaga university which made him Dr. Harry Lillis Crosby. For
Hollywood’s famous crooner now holds the degree of doctor of philosophy in
music.
“It’s
great to be back in the old home town,” he mused. And then Bing, the
light-hearted care-free star of the screen, admitted that only by extreme self-control
had he maintained his composure during those moments when the Rev. Father Leo
J. Robinson, S. J. president of Gonzaga university, had conferred the honorary
degree upon him. “I almost broke down,” he confessed.
(The Spokesman-Review, October 22, 1937)
October 22, Friday.
Has a game of golf during the morning at the Manito course, carding a
78 over the par 72 layout. Bing plays with Bob Burns against Ted Crosby
and local pro Norm Smith. (8:00 p.m.) Bing presides over a
two-and-a half-hour amateur show at the Armory, Spokane, in front of a
crowd of
3,500. Bing and Connie Boswell sing
“Basin Street Blues.” During the day, Bing explains the involvement of his family in his career.
“We have the Crosby building, which cost us about $60,000,
and houses general office and stores besides our own business,” related Bing. “You
see the building regulations there wouldn’t permit us to build more than a
four-story building.”
Between bites, Bing continued:
“Well, we’ll start with Dad. He is the master of the fan
mail, and that’s quite a job as it runs into thousands of letters from all parts
of United States, Britain and Australia. It costs us about $3000 a month, which
covers requests for pictures, autographs, stamps, stationery and many other items.”
Fan mail is a very important part of business success to
Hollywood stars, as Bing explained that there are over 300 fan clubs in existence,
all with presidents and other officers, and demanding plenty of attention.
"Larry has charge of publicity, public relations
work, our music department, and also sponsors some actors of his own,” Bing continued,
“We also have an interest in the Select Music company, a New York firm, and Larry
looks after that.”
“Larry also takes over the people who come to me and
want to get in pictures or on the radio,” added Bing. “There are lots of them, and
each must be investigated and consideration must he given each. You know that
you never can tell what you might find.”
Everett is “more or less the contact man” for Bing.
“He handles all negotiations for me, and also handles the
business of some other Hollywood actors. You see my business wouldn’t keep him
busy all of the time. He has a lot of people that he handles in pictures, and
he also handles the work of brother Bob, and is secretary of the Crosby race track.”
(Spokane Chronicle, October 22, 1937)
Lovers of
entertainment have reveled
in the home-coming of Bing Crosby and have enjoyed the numerous programs provided
by him and the troupe he brought up from Hollywood.
Tonight Spokane dance fans will dance to the music of
Johnny Trotter’s famous band at Natatorium park. The dance, sponsored by the Athletic
Round Table, will start at 8 o’clock. Bing and members of his troupe will be present
and join in the fun.
At the armory Friday
evening, Bing put across a real show before a large and enthusiastic audience.
Naturally, Bing was the big hit as master of ceremonies
and with his songs. But he fought against the spotlight by pushing forward others
in his party to share in the continuous rounds of applause.
Connie Boswell sang herself into the hearts of the audience
with “Serenade in the Night” and “Basin Street Blues.” Ken Carpenter, noted radio
announcer, made the setting for the show with his early remarks, demonstrative
of his strong personality.
Bob Burns told stories about his relatives. Edmund Lowe
worked with Bing in a skit, before rushing from the armory to catch his train back
to Hollywood.
Josephine Tummini of San Francisco gave the high class
operatic touch to the program with her three numbers.
The audience had not anticipated a local surprise, but
there was a thrill when Lyle Moore, director of music at Gonzaga university, led
his male chorus to the platform. It was agreed at the conclusion of their numbers,
the chorus is outstanding.
(Spokane Chronicle, October 23, 1937)
October 23, Saturday.
Bing attends breakfast at 8:10 a.m. with the Athletic Round
Table at
the Desert Hotel in Spokane. He goes on to tour the House of the Good
Shepherd and the Shrine Childrens' Hospital. In the late afternoon,
Bing, Mary Carlisle and Connie Boswell are guests at an informal party
at the home of Mr. and Mrs, James M. Brown, At night, he and his
costars from the Kraft Music Hall attend a dance at
Natatorium Park. It is estimated that the various events involving Bing have
raised $10,000 for Gonzaga.
Joy unconfined was brought yesterday by Bing Crosby,
Spokane’s radio and cinema star here for Gonzaga’s home-coming, to many unable
to attend his shows in the city. The Spokane youth, who has reached world fame,
escorted by Athletic Round Table members, toured the House of the Good Shepherd
and the Shrine Children’s Hospital and staged an impromptu performance for the
student priests at Mount St. Michael’s.
At the House of the Good Shepherd, home for unfortunate
girls, he dedicated new tennis courts provided by Round Table funds, tried to
play tennis with one of the girls and, surrounded by an adoring horde of the
inmates, crooned a song or two, and signed autographs with abandon. He also
danced a buck and wing on the Round Table tablet embedded in the court.
With the aid of Ted Burgan of his staff, he sang and
performed in the Mount St. Michael’s auditorium and gave a college yell or two,
but it was perhaps at the Shrine Hospital that he made his greatest hit.
With his ingratiating smile, his ready laugh and complete
unsullied style, he strolled among the beds of the little uncomplaining
patients and talked and sang. To Jimmy, the smallest boy in the ward, he sang “Little
Buckaroo,” and then to a little girl inclosed from head to foot in a cast, who
is able to move nothing but her eyes, he sang “Sweet Leilani,” smiling at the
foot of her bed, and to top it all gave every one an autograph.
(The Spokesman-Review, October 24, 1937)
…Despite
the defeat it was a great afternoon for the Gonzagans. Only one section of the
big stands failed to fill up with the crowd, more than 12,000 people being on
hand to get a glimpse of Bing Crosby, Connie Boswell and the other movie people
who have been running the Bulldog ragged for four days.
Before
the game began Bing presented the team, through Captain Russ Habermann, with its
new water wagon and during the intermission the Gonzaga G club made Bing an honorary
three-year letterman, giving him a blanket to mark his distinction. They also
made Connie Boswell an honorary member, presenting here with a block “G,” the
only woman ever to be so honored.
And
then, as a grand climax to the extra-curricular activities of the afternoon
Bing led the glee club in singing the new Gonzaga fight song written by John Burke. To repay him for
the courtesy – he sang it first as a solo – he was made an honorary member of
the club.
(The Spokesman-Review, October 25, 1937)
That Home-coming Week was a big week for me in
more ways than one. I gave the football team a gadget they nicknamed Bing’s
Bucket. It was a sort of portable fountain brought out onto the field during
times out to give the players a drink. It was painted blue and white and it had rubber wheels. It moved faster than the
old-fashioned bucket and water didn’t slosh from it. And it had a hose attached
to it so the team could drink out of the hose.
During that week there were a number of festivities
to raise money for the athletic fund. All the old grads I’d gone to school with
when we were kids were there. One of them had grown up to become a Spokane
judge. He presided and made a speech. I made a speech too and sang a song.
The undergraduates were all on hand and the glee
club sang. Then someone, inspired by a burst of local pride, decided to confer
a degree on me. They gave me a Ph.D., but after I’d gone back to Los Angeles,
they found that nothing I’d ever done entitled me to such a degree, so I was
sent a substitute certificate. The wording was changed to Doctor of Music.
October 25,
Monday. Bing’s train going back to Los Angeles pulls in to Klamath Falls,
Oregon, in the evening for a 15-minute stop and is greeted by two thousand people at the Southern
Pacific Station.
TRAFFIC JAM AT DEPOT WELCOMES CROONER CROSBY
About 2000 Klamath people turned out Monday night to give
Bing Crosby, radio and movie crooner, a bang-up reception.
They jammed the Southern Pacific depot platform and gave
Frank Hamm’s bluecoats a busy time of it. A rope that was strung across the platform
proved of little avail, and some or the Crosby fans appeared determined to be run
over by the train in which he rode into town from the north.
Bing and his party, including lovely Connie Boswell,
of the singing sisters, were here about 15 minutes. Ex-Mayor Willis Mahoney, who attended Gonzaga
university with Crosby, arranged the greeting. A pheasant and a couple of slabs
of venison were presented to the crooner, and Miss Boswell received a handsome
bouquet of roses.
Crosby posed for pictures, said a few words over the radio,
and gave autographs to a few kids who crowded around him. He then got back on
the train and took off for Los Angeles. The Crosby enthusiasts of Klamath Falls
extricated themselves from a traffic jam
and went home.
(The Klamath News, October 26, 1937)
October 26,
Tuesday. Bing leaves the train at Oakland and goes to the Bay Meadows racetrack
at San Mateo to see his horse “High Strike” win the $5000 Laddie Stakes.
October 28,
Thursday. (11:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m., 5:15-6:00 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft broadcast. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) Bing’s Kraft
Music Hall show. Guests include Robert Young, Vina Bovy and Marian Marsh.
Robert Young and Marian
Marsh of the films join with the Belgian soprano, Vina Bovy, on Dr. Harry
Lillis Crosby’s Music Hall (KPO at 7 pm). This marks the first
Hollywood appearance of Miss Bovy who is starring with the San Francisco Opera
Company this season.
(San Francisco Chronicle, 28th October 1937)
Later, Bing
goes on to appear with Bob Crosby and his Orchestra at the Palomar Ballroom,
Vermont at Third Street in Los Angeles. The floor shows are at 9:45 p.m. and
12:15 a.m. with some of the proceedings being broadcast by KNX starting at 11:00 p.m.
When Bob was booked into the
old Palomar in Los Angeles, he and Bing met again for the first time since Bob
had begun fronting a band. Nobody knew better than Bing that his home territory
was tough booking for his younger brother. When they flew into
(Part of an article “The
Fabulous Crosbys” in TV and Radio Magazine, c.1955)
October 30,
Saturday. Bing’s recording of “Remember Me?” is a hit and becomes yet another
number one in the charts.
November (undated) With Lindsay Howard, Bing founds Binglin Breeding
Stables. Their first purchases are made by Lindsay Howard in Argentina and the
horses arrive in New York during November. Lin and Bing tell Lin’s father,
Charles S. Howard, that he can buy one of them and after considering both ‘Ligaroti’ and ‘Kayak’, Howard senior chooses the latter.
Howard senior conveys them to California on the same train as his famous horse
‘Seabiscuit’.
November 3, Wednesday.
It is proposed by Paramount that Bing’s film “The Badge of Policeman O’Roon” be renamed Doctor Rhythm “to exploit the reams of publicity printed about
Crosby’s doctorate from Gonzaga.” Knowing Gonzaga might not be happy about
this, Larry Crosby writes to Gonzaga. He is asked to ensure the degree is “not
referred to in any light manner.” A skit in the Fred Allen Town Hall Tonight program had in effect mocked the degree. Bing
writes to Father Robinson, the president of Gonzaga as follows:
Larry has just shown me your
letter of recent date and I am sorry that the undignified reference to the
presentation of the degree was made on the Town
Hall Tonight radio program. This is the type of thing that they generally do
on their show…I don’t think there will be anything more of this nature,
however. At least I hope not, as the ceremony and the honor the degree stands
for is much too important to me to be either caricatured or referred to in the
spirit of levity on the radio or in the newspapers.
November 4,
Thursday.(12:30-6:55 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft broadcast. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) Bing’s Kraft
Music Hall show. Guests include Jerry Colonna (billed as Giovanni Colonna), Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Fay Bainter.
Last Thursday
night’s “Kraft Music Hall,” with Bing Crosby as major domo, brought forth the
first real and unique comedy find of this radio season. He is Jerry Colonna,
member of John Trotter’s orchestra, and already discovered by the films. Giovanni
Colonna, as he was billed for last week’s airing, is a singer of parts – the parts
being largely in the channels of travesty, satire and a touch of burlesque. As
a crooner his inflections, pronunciations and dialectic interpolations are a
scream. And when he drops melody for patter, there are few trick and gag
talkers who sound funnier. Other parts of the last Kraft show were uniformly
excellent. Fay Bainter, star actress, and Douglas Fairbanks Jr., another
stellar thespian, exchanged cross-fire with Crosby and Bob Burns in highly
entertaining fashion. All troupers from head to toe, they kicked up a very
lively evening.
(Radio Daily, November 8, 1937)
Bing Crosby, on
the other hand, believes in treating his studio audience after the fashion of
children, who may be seen and not heard. If you’re one of the favored few who
get in to watch Mr. Crosby entertain, be quiet as a mouse. If you must laugh, do
so with gentility and circumspection; and if you can’t resist the urge to applaud
something spectacular (as was the case last Thursday when Giovanni Coloma (sic) nearly stopped show,) do it with
fear and trembling because Bing doesn’t like it. He feels that his shows stand
or fall by what he and his company do for the radio listener, and any hypo-ing
of their efforts by ticket-holders is neither needed nor wanted.
(Los Angeles Times, November 7, 1937)
November 6, Friday. Attends a reception at the home of Ena Gregory following her marriage to Dr. Frank Nolan.
November 7,
Sunday. Defeats Bob Hope in an eighteen hole
golf
match at Lakeside. The loser was supposed to act as a stand-in in the
other’s film. Mary Carlisle and Shirley Ross acts as caddies for some
of the round.
All joking aside, the golf
party at Lakeside, Sunday, given by Bing Crosby to the scribes who were
covering his “stand-in” match with Bob Hope, of New York, was a funny one. Bing
and Hope started their match at 10:30 am, the luncheon was set at 1 p.m., the
newspapermen had to leave to see the pro football game at 1:45 p.m. Crosby
finished at 2 p.m., and a good time was had by all. Bing’s match finished after
the press had gone and he and his group then had lunch at the table deserted by
the fast eating scribes some time before. Bing shooting a 73, had all the best
of the going and now Hope must act as Crosby’s stand-in for one day, without
pay, in the filming of The Badge of Policeman O’Roon.
(Los Angeles Evening Herald Express, November 9, 1937)
November 8,
Monday. Spends most of the day rehearsing for the evening Lux
Radio Theater broadcast. (6:00–7:00 p.m.) Stars in a Lux
Radio Theater version of She Loves Me Not
with Joan Blondell, Nan Grey, Sterling Holloway, and
William Frawley on CBS. Louis Silvers leads the orchestra. The Lux Radio Theater was probably the most
important dramatic show in radio, running from 1934 to 1955.
This one
represented a dangerous slackening off from the zip and snap of last season,
when Lux climbed up to the top of the popularity pyramid.
Perhaps what has happened is similar to what occurs in long-run hit shows where
it is necessary from time to time to call incentive rehearsals and shake loose
from a too comfortable sinking in a rut. Lux
production technique in ‘She Loves Me Not’ reveals fraying at the edges. Any
defense of a mediocre radio performance merely based on the smug fact of C.A.B.
success must butt itself against this rock: in super-expensive shows anything
that threatens maximum audience realization means that the money isn’t buying
as much circulation as it might.
Moreover, a dwindling in entertainment is
especially dangerous at a time when Hollywood programs are no longer a novelty,
and Lux itself has many imitators, some of them real
challengers. “She Loves Me Not” as a stage play and later as a film had, above
all, pace. Cut down to radio dimensions the contrast in tempo was deplorable.
Questions of comparison, however, might be shrugged off as captious if the
result were still diverting. Looseness of plot construction absence of the
element of surprise plot twist or excitement might be itemized and called
secondary. But the crowing fault can’t be laughed off — it was dull. It threw
everything on the personalities. It demanded everything of palpitating,
uncritical, tolerant fandom. Safety probably lies in that margin. The grooves
by now are well lubricated. But —again— is it peak circulation? Not with such
listless, punchless story-telling.
Bing Crosby sang several times within the
story, so that was guaranteed pleasure for the thousands. Yet the throwing away
of the gilt-edge situations let the job, in toto,
down.
(Variety, 10 November 1937)
November 10,
Wednesday (starting at 11:00 a.m.). Bing and Ed Sullivan play in a golf match
against Bob Hope and Chris Dunphy at Lakeside. Mary
Carlisle and Shirley Ross act as caddies for the first hole. Bing has a
seventy-three. A gallery of several hundred follow the game.
November 11,
Thursday. (11:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m., 5:00-6:00 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft broadcast. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) Bing hosts the Kraft
Music Hall broadcast on NBC and his guests include Ray Milland, Rosa Tentoni
and Olympe Bradna.
Bing Crosby, Bob Burns and
company didn’t have lustrously shining guests on Kraft Phoenix, last Thursday
but the regulars on the show were definitely “up to snuff” and snuff from a
jewel-decked box. Ray Milland and Olympe
Bradna from films were up for two-way quizzing from
Bing and Bobby. The continuity carvers for the show took fine care of the
Messrs. B but overlooked the one-shotters. There was
a faulty note too, when after Crosby repeatedly referred to Miss Bradna by her first name, in advance build up, she marched
up to the mike and announced he’d mispronounced her name—An overwhelmingly
large slice of the public does too! Later, Bing’s pronunciation faltered again
during the last few times he addressed her. Third guest was Rosa Tentoni, San Francisco opera oriole who was on near the
conclusion and did OK with several selections. Crosby’s patter and Burns’
bumbling were particularly bright when the twain were twitting each other and
one schoolroom farce that the boys did was as aces as anything the Kraft show
has offered in a long time, if not ever before.
(Variety, November 17, 1937)
Later, Bing attends the Armistice Ball
of the British United Services Club at the Ambassador Hotel and his ordinary
business suit clashes with the white tie and tails worn by the other male
guests, leading to some press coverage. Bing also joins in a radio show at
11:00 p.m. with Alice Faye, Beatrice Lillie, Fanny Brice, and Gladys Swarthout
which is beamed to the UK and the rest of the
British Empire by short wave, and broadcast locally on KECA. Alan
Mowbray is the m.c. and Ray Noble and his orchestra provide the music.
In
spite of gossip to the contrary, that little fracas between Bing Crosby and
Alan Mowbray at the British Colony’s Armistice celebration was all in good
clean fun. Bing was invited to attend the big party and, when he arrived he was
wearing, as usual, just a business suit and a red tie. Then the “trouble” was supposed to have started
when Mowbray said something to the effect that it was too bad he couldn’t have honoured
the occasion with “white tie and tails”–which the other men were wearing.
“Yeah,”
Bing is quoted as replying, “but remember–my suit is paid for.”
(Louella O. Parsons,
Los Angeles Examiner, November 22,
1937)
November 12,
Friday. Recording session in Hollywood with Eddie Dunstedter
providing accompaniment on a Wurlitzer pipe organ. Bing sings “There’s a
Goldmine in the Sky” and “When the Organ Played ‘O Promise Me’.”
November 13, Saturday.
Watches the football game between Fairfax and Marshall High School with Georgie Stoll at Gilmore Stadium. Marshall win 12-6,
November 14,
Sunday. Thought to have golfed with Ed Sullivan, Chris Dunphy
and Bob Hope again, this time at Bel-Air.
November 15,
Monday. Further recording session with Eddie Dunstedter,
who on this occasion uses a Hammond electric organ to accompany Bing.
November 18,
Thursday. (12:00.-4:00 p.m., 5:00-7:00 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft broadcast. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) The Kraft
Music Hall broadcast on NBC. Bing acts as host and his guests include The Foursome, Fay
Wray and Alan Mowbray.
Fay Wray and Alan Mowbray, of the movies, and The Foursome vocalists,
are Bing Crosby’s guests of the evening. The last time Miss Wray appeared on
this program she surprised everyone by singing and using bigger words than Bing.
(Monrovia News-Post, November 18, 1937)
A seemingly weary Bing appeared to drag himself through this week’s
music hall with only subtle Alan Mowbray and Bob Burns pulling the high-rating
show through to a fair conclusion. The volume of Crosby’s usually robust voice declined
to the point where dialers were boosting in instances where studio technicians
failed to monitor the singer to an acceptable level. Possibly the seventy-five
or so escaped monkeys who fled the Crosby movie set this week, crushed the
customarily ebullient Bing.
(San Francisco Examiner, November 20,
1937)
November 20,
Saturday. “Bob White” is the next recording by Bing to enter the charts on the
way to becoming a number one hit.
November 21,
Sunday.
Football
fever, as interpreted by Bing Crosby, Connie Boswell, Bob Crosby’s orchestra
and other entertainers, went on the air last night when the Spokane Gonzaga
Club of Southern California staged a radio rally in The Times roof garden
auditorium.
Bing,
who is president of the club and who holds an honorary Ph.D, degree from
Gonzaga University, won applause from the 400 in the auditorium when he
dedicated one song, “Can’t We Be Friends?” to the Loyola University football
squad.
The
half-hour program over Station KFAC was to heighten interest in the
Gonzaga-Loyola game, which will be played in the Gilmore Stadium on December 5. Bill Henry, sports editor of The Times,
sparred verbally with Bing Crosby on merits of the two squads. Henry was unanimously elected a member of the
Spokane-Gonzaga Club.
Mrs
Clyde Burr, president of the Social Service Auxiliary, explained how profits
from the game will be used for charity work.
Both
the Crosby brothers are Gonzaga alumni.
Miss Boswell is an honorary member of the G Club, Gonzaga lettermen’s
organization.
Elaine Dahl and the Tune-smiths, Jerry Bergen, film
comedian and the Three Sweethearts also entertained. After the broadcast the rally continued with
Gonzaga alumni leaders speaking.
(Los Angeles Times, November 22, 1937)
November 23, Tuesday. It emerges that Bing has
recently paid $1,500 to purchase a German Boxer dog of championship strain
called “Gunda of Barmere.”
He nicknames her “Venus.” Bing plans to establish a kennel and raise the breed
commercially. It is intended to show the dog at the Santa Barbara dog show on
December 4.
November 24, Wednesday. It is announced that Bing and the agents Rockwell-O’Keefe have severed their business relationship.
Bing Crosby and Rockwell O’Keefe, Inc., have
severed business relations and a series of suits and counter-suits are in the
offing. Rockwell-O’Keefe proposes to
bring an action to recover $33,000 in commissions from the singer, while the
latter’s brother, Everett, a Hollywood agent, is expected to retort with a
number of money claims, running from split commissions to advances made
jointly-managed artists. Squabble, because of its family ramifications, is
without precedent in the radio business, and ends the close comradeship, that
has existed for eight years between Tom Rockwell and Bing Crosby.
(Variety, November 24, 1937)
November 25, Thursday. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) The Kraft Music Hall broadcast on NBC. Bing acts as host and his guests include Chester Morris, Margaret Matzenauer and Isabel Jewell.
Bing Crosby has two film stars and an opera singer booked for the Kraft
Music Hall to be broadcast over the NBC network at 10 p.m. today. The guests
are Isabel Jewel and Chester Morris, of the movies, and Margaret Matzenauer,
well known for 20 years as a contralto star of the Metropolitan Opera company.
Assisting Bing in bringing out the hidden talents of the famous guests is Bob
Burns, the bazooka virtuoso of Van Buren and teller of tales from the hills.
Unusual fact about this edition of the Music Hall is that none of the three
guests have visited the “Hall” before, something that doesn’t happen often
because practically all the big names of Hollywood have found their way to the
Crosby roster. Songs by Bing and orchestra numbers by Johnny Scott Trotter’s
band complete the show.
(The Greenville News (South Carolina), November 25, 1937)
...This, of course,
being the Bing Crosby program for Kraft Cheese. Writtten by Carroll the
double pseudonym for one of the best scriveners in the radio business, Crosby's
show has set an example that a lot of others have tried to follow, none with
any too great a degree of success. Written and played in a light, bantering
style, with practically every radio cliche neatly tossed out the studio window,
the program is indubitably the most enjoyable on the air today, surpassing even
the vaunted Chase & Sanborn Hour. Crosby has developed from being a
crooner—the best in his line—into a deft, light comedian capable of taking two
for one, which has always been a successful comedy principle.
(Billboard, December 4, 1937)
November 26, Friday. Bing and Bob Burns arrive by train at Live Oak, Sutter County, California where they travel by car and then boat to the Field and Tule Gun Club.
November 27, Saturday.
Bing and Bob Burns are members of a nine-man duck shooting party hosted
by Ben Myers visiting at the Field and Tule Gun Club, west of Live Oak.
November 28,
Sunday. (2:0 p.m.) Bing is at the Santa Clara versus Gonzaga football game at Sacramento and
sees Gonzaga lose 27-0.
The big crowd got a real thrill at the half time intermission, when
Ernie Smith, sports announcer, introduced Bing Crosby, Andy Devine and Edmund
Lowe. Through an unusual hookup, their talks were broadcast simultaneously over
the field public address system, and the radio network as well, and Crosby
responded with an informal chat in which he predicted that his alma mater would
make a comeback to win by a 14-13 score. In answer to the roar of friendly
derision that arose immediately, he answered: “Well, a guy can hope, can’t he?”
(Appeal Democrat, November 29, 1937)
November 29,
Monday. (8:15-8:30 p.m.) Bing appears on the "Sports Camera" radio show from station KFWB to discuss
sports with Jack Holmes.
Bing Crosby, whose
sports interests extend from horses to frog-jumping, is guest of Jack Holmes on
the Hollywood Sports Camera tonight at 8:15 over KFWB. He’ll explain why he
favors Gonzaga in its big meeting with Loyola next week.
(Daily News,
November 29, 1937)
November 30,
Tuesday. Bing acts as MC at the “Gigantic Gonzaga—Loyola Football Rally” at the
Palomar Ballroom. Farewell festivities for Bob Crosby and his Orchestra take
place. (10:45-11:00 p.m.) A 15-minute show from the event is broadcast on KNX.
Bing Crosby will
make a special appearance tonight in joining with Connie Boswell for a gala farewell
tribute to Bob Crosby and his orchestra
(The Sacramento Bee, November 30, 1937)
December 1, Wednesday. Bing entertains the Gonzaga football team at a lunch at Paramount studios. Later, they watch a scene in Doctor Rhythm being filmed,
December 2, Thursday.
Goes to Santa Anita to inspect his new horses which have just arrived
from Argentina. Meanwhile, the horse "Sabueso" owned jointly by Bing
and Lindsay Howard wins the featured race at Tanforan in a record
equalling time. (11:45 a.m.-4:30 p.m., 5:00-7:00 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft broadcast. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) Bing’s Kraft
Music Hall show. Guests include Barbara Weeks, Joseph Knitzer and Edward Arnold.
Continuing the
Music Hall’s policy of introducing film stars as they are in real life and not
as the type of character they portray, Bing Crosby, tonight, chats with Edward
Arnold and Barbara Weeks. Bing also presents a newcomer to the Hall, in Joseph Knitzer,
young American violinist.
(The Sacramento Bee, December 2, 1937)
Cal
Kuhl, J. Walter Thompson Program Director, commented: "Entertainment: Very
good - script tops - Burns monologue below par (only three or four stories -
long build-ups and no laughs in build-ups). General remarks: For second week in
row, Burns ran long, show spread exceptionally, cut in Knitzer dialogue
necessary just as he went on. First three rows filled with Gonzaga or Loyola
football team (forget which, but they gave whole show a terrific ensemble send
off.)
The Crosby show improves
with age. It apparently is setting some sort of minor trend, for a number of
programs are attempting the same light touch, succeeding moderately. Latest
twist on the Crosby-Kraft stanza, burlesquing the now-too-numerous radio
picture previews as done on last Thursday’s show, is more than welcome and the
burlesque itself was a gem. Too bad Carroll Carroll, the writer, isn’t billed.
(Jerry Franken, Billboard, December 11, 1937)
December 5, Sunday. (Starting at 2p.m) The Loyola Lions defeat Gonzaga 13-8 at Gilmore Stadium. Bing later entertains the entire
Gonzaga football team at Victor Hugo's.
December 9, Thursday. The dispute with Rockwell-O'Keefe is amicably settled.
Differences between
Bing Crosby and Rockwell-O’Keefe on the matter of commissions for
the latter’s Kraft program assignment are being amicably settled. ROK claimed
$33,000 due in accumulated commissions, while the singer’s brother, Everett, Hollywood
agent, had entered a counter-claim of several thousand dollars.
(Variety, December 9, 1937)
(11:45 a.m.-4:30 p.m., 5:30-6:55 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft broadcast. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) The Kraft Music Hall broadcast on NBC. Bing acts as host and his guests include Josephine Tumminia, Verree Teasdale, and Adolphe Menjou.
Bing Crosby’s
Music Hall (KFI-7 p.m.) which I like so much because of poise, ease, informal
charm and absence of meaningless applause, presents Mr. and Mrs. A. Menjou as
honor guests. Sartorially resplendent Adolph and his wife (Veree Teasdale) are
natives of Washington and will reminisce about Pacific Northwest with Dr. Crosby. Josephine
Tumminia, operatic soprano, makes another Music Hall appearance, as does
Bazooka Burns, the excellent Paul Taylor Chorus, John Trotter’s Orchestra and
the piece d’resistance of the program, Ken Carpenter, announcer and Chamberlain
of the Chimes.
(Dale Armstrong, Los Angeles Times, December 9, 1937)
December 16,
Thursday. (11:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m., 5:00-6:30 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft broadcast. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) Bing’s Kraft
Music Hall broadcast on NBC and his guests include Ralph Bellamy, Simon Barere and Anne
Shirley.
HOLLYWOOD-Yesterday
we left off with Producer Calvin Kuhl inviting us to witness the rest of
rehearsal, and to catch the Music Hall broadcast from the control booth. And
it’s not like your Uncle Canfield to pass by an invitation like that.
Kuhl
led the way upstairs to studio B with Carroll Carroll, the show’s diminutive
writer, and myself tagging along. The studio presented a far different site
than I had seen earlier in the afternoon. Much activity was now taking place.
Bing
Crosby and John Scott Trotter were on the stage indulging in a bit of
horseplay. You couldn’t have missed Bing. Not with that red and white contraption
he calls a shirt. And it’s altogether impossible to overlook John. Why, with
the poundage he’s carrying, on a clear day you can see him ten miles away.
Paul
Taylor, stubby and stout, and his Choristers are straggling into the studio.
Anne Shirley, one of the guest stars, is comfortably tucked away on a folding
chair, and looks delightfully youthful and deliciously beautiful what with her
fur coat, red hair and intelligent eyes. But things are much, too much matter
of fact for my money. No one seems in the least disturbed that it’s now five
minutes to six and Ralph Bellamy, a guest star, hasn’t as yet put in an
appearance. Of course, he hasn’t promised to be there until six, but there‘s no
time like the present to worry, that’s the Canfield motto.
Bing
runs over a number with the orchestra, nonchalantly crooning into the
microphone while he studies the expression of the engineer in the control booth.
Bing makes no effort to save his voice for the broadcast. The pipe he‘s usually
puffing on dangles out of his shirt pocket. Did I say shirt?
Anyway,
if he wasn’t rehearsing a song he’d be off in some corner whistling or singing.
It’s natural for Bing to sing. I firmly believe he was born burping and boop-boop-ba-booing.
It’s just a very happy accident he gets paid for it. Ask Bing, he’ll tell you the
same.
Across
the stage and back to the dressing room, I take myself. I’m looking for Bob
Burns. The tall Arkansan is an old favorite friend of mine. Bob is in the
dressing room with his gagman, Duke Atterbury, concocting one of his fanciful
tales to amaze the populace. Bob’s been pretty busy, so he’s had to wait until
the last minute to fashion this one. Burns is not any too happy about it
because he’s not patterned for this last-minute stuff. Out of desperation, a
long winded yarn about Ralph Bellamy is given a verb and a predicate. It’ll
have to do. And it does, as I found out later during the broadcast.
Then
back to the studio. It’s five minutes past six. Bellamy comes breezing in the
door. I shot a hasty look at Kuhl and Carroll. Not a change of expression. They’re
hardened to this last minute thing. At 20 minutes to seven the audience is
ushered into the studio. That means by the time Bellamy settles down, they’ve
got just to 25 minutes to rehearse his lines. Which include two scenes, and to
rehearse him in a song with Bob Burns playing a bazooka obligato. Not a great
deal of time, you must admit for a show as important as the Music Hall.
Bob
comes bounding out of his dressing room like an old fire horse smelling a
flickering ember. Bing is on the job and the three give their lines a try, so as
veteran troupers a reading seems to suffice. Kuhl holds a stop which on it, notes
the result and makes same hasty tabulations on the script. He’s worried about
time. Are the scenes too long? Apparently not. He looks over at Carroll and
gives a nod of satisfaction.
Now
comes the Bellamy vocal rendition. “Home on the Range” is the song. Bob blows blast
after blast of bazooka obligato about as delicate as a hurricane.
With
Bellamy’s part rehearsed, the show is ready to be sprayed over the nation
through the thin wires of the network. And it’s just about airtime, too. The audience
has filed into the small auditorium which seats a little over 200.
Bing
strolls around the stage like one of the hired help. He looks less like a big
time radio and movie star than anyone in the business. Even Charlie McCarthy sports
a top hat and white tie. But not Bing: He’ll stick to the Hawaiian shirt and he
walks around with his two arms hanging to his sides like he was expecting any
minute to grab on to the working end of a wheelbarrow. He eyes the audience:
makes cracks at Burns: thoroughly enjoys himself.
Producer
Kuhl stays on the stage and writer Carroll takes me into the holy of all holies,
the control booth.
The
engineer, partly surrounded by a panel of dials and gadgets, is clearing lines
and waiting for the network’s signal. Ken Carpenter is at the mike watching the
control booth. A red light flashes on. Ken takes the cue and says: “The Music
Hall, starring Bing Crosby with John Scott Trotter and his orchestra, the Paul
Taylor Choristers, and Bob Burns.”
A
nation is listening.
(Homer Canfield, Redwood City Tribune, December 24, 1937)
Ralph Bellamy was in the
groove on the Bing Crosby/Bob Burns’ show last Thursday and benefited from a
good script and careful handling. Latest Bellamy labor before the camera was in
the comedy, “The Awful Truth,” in which he played an oil-rich, loam lovin’ Oklahoman. Matching up this character with that
Apple of Arkansas, Bob Burns, was a good stunt and produced some rich strikes
of comedy. Crosby paced the boys well and kept them from exchanging blows over
the merits of the two states. Born and reared in the heart of Chicago, Bellamy
did a good Oklahoman. The windup was swell with Bellamy mooing “Home on the
Range” as he did in the picture, accompanied by Burns’ bazooka. It was real
corn and real comedy.
(Variety, December 22, 1937)
December 23, Thursday. (12:00-3:00 p.m., 5:00-6:30 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft broadcast. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) The Kraft Music Hall broadcast on NBC. Bing acts as host and the guests include Basil Rathbone, Madge Evans and the Kraft Choral Society. As has become customary in his Christmas broadcast, he sings “Adeste Fideles” and “Silent Night.” The cast go on to a Mexican themed party at the home of Madge Evans.
Big doin’s in the Music
Hall, tonight with Doctor Bing Crosby and his guests, Madge Evans and Basil
Rathbone of the films and a ninety voice choir, as highlights of what is
always, to these ears, a swell show. Paul Taylor Chorus and John
Trotter Orchestra make the music from this end with large choir of sponsor’s
employees appearing from Chicago. Amusing to note on this show is that the
striking of hammer on metal, is raising Ken Carpenter to fame.
(Los
Angeles Times, 23rd December 1937)
December 25,
Saturday. Bing is at Santa Anita racetrack for the opening of the racing season
there and sees his horse, the 2-year-old ‘High Strike’, win the first race of
the day in front of a crowd of 50,000. Later at 4:00 p.m. Bing takes part in a
radio broadcast with W. C. Fields, Hedda Hopper,
George Jessel, and others over NBC of the “Christmas
Handicap” race which is won by ‘He Did’. He manages to plug his Del Mar track
on several occasions.
December 29, Wednesday.
Bing is at Santa Anita for the races. Later he attends the Los Angeles
Times Sports Headliner's dinner in the roof garden auditorium of The
Times building. (6:00-6:30 p.m.) From the event, Bing is heard in the
radio program Sports Preview of 1938 with Bob Burns, Johnny Mack Brown and several others. Bing predicts that tennis player Ellsworth Vines would become the 1938 national amateur golf champion. (That did not happen but Vines did win important golf tournaments in the 1940s and '50s)
December 30,
Thursday. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) The Kraft
Music Hall broadcast on NBC. Bing acts as host and his guests include Jose Iturbi, Louis Armstrong, and Connie Boswell.
...As usual, though, it was
Mr. Bing Crosby, he of the tremendous adjectives and questionable use thereof,
who provided the coup de grace, as he is wont to say. His 60-minute cheese
seller was as smooth a bit of entertainment as we’ve ever heard. Even the once
stand-offish Jose Iturbi rallied ‘round, called Mr.
Crosby “Bing,” Bob Burns, “Bob,” and demonstrated that he’s just another guy
despite his awesome reputation. His two piano selections, while poorly suited
to radio, were masterfully inserted between the “good fellowship” routines.
But the payoff punch comes when Bing’s other guests, Connie
Boswell and Louis Armstrong, teamed with their host and John Scott Trotter’s
orchestra for a “jam session” which might not have been as informal as it
sounded–but as long as it sounded that way, we’re convinced. And we still think
that weekly gag built around announcer Ken Carpenter’s playing of the NBC
chimes is the cleverest radio stunt extant.
(Herb Caen,
San Francisco Chronicle, January 3,
1938)
Once in a
lifetime things happened on Thursday evenings in the old Kraft Music Hall that
could never happen again. For example, Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto was played
as a duet with Jose Iturbi on piano and Bob Burns on
bazooka.
In case you’ve
forgotten, or never knew, what a bazooka was before it became a weapon of
offensive warfare (as if all warfare wasn’t thoroughly offensive), it was
simply two pieces of one-and-a-half or two-inch pipe. One slid into the other
the way a trombone works. At one end was a large funnel. At the other was
Burns. It was a very limited bass instrument, one cut above a jug, and Bob
played it as base as it could be played.
Iturbi made a special trip to the
(Carroll Carroll,
My Life With…)
December 31, Friday. (5:30–6:00 p.m. & 8:30–9:00 p.m.) Bing guests on the premiere broadcast of Paul Whiteman’s new radio show for Chesterfield on CBS. The show comes from Wilshire Ebell Theatre in Los Angeles. Bing sings “This Is My Night to Dream” and then duets with Jack Teagarden on “Basin Street Blues”. Later Bing and Dixie entertain a few friends including the Andy Devines.
…Bing Crosby as
the first guest star recalled the early days with the band and otherwise held a
gabfest with P. W. in the style well known to the Kraft Music Hall audience.
(Radio Daily, January 4, 1938)
Paul Whiteman’s new
series with Oliver Wakefield, English comic, and Bing Crosby as guest star,
bowed in on WABC at 8:30…the last new program of the year. Not so long ago,
such a broadcast might have been regarded as sensational. But no longer. The
Whiteman music, of course was as good as ever…Wakefield was silly in a pleasant
kind of way, and Bing was Bing, which is just what the listeners wanted. All in
all a pleasing show…but there is one defect…too much Broadway slang in the
continuity. Okay for the boys at Dave’s and Lindy’s but do the listeners out of
town know what it’s all about?
(Ben Gross,
Listening In, Daily News (New York),
January 1, 1938)
Bing is placed fourth in the USA box
office stars list for 1937. Shirley Temple comes first.
During the year, Bing has had sixteen
songs that became chart hits.
January 1, Saturday.
Bing goes to the races at Santa Anita.
January 4, Tuesday. Golfs at Lakeside. He and Ellsworth Vines take on Harry Cooper and Henry McLemore and lose on the 18th hole.
January 5,
Wednesday. Bing and Dixie’s fourth son, Lindsay Harry is born at 4:35 a.m. at
Cedars of Lebanon Hospital, weighing in at six pounds five ounces. He is named
after Lindsay Howard, Bing’s racing partner.
New
HOLLYWOOD, Jan. 14
(AP)
The Bing Crosby’s are
having trouble naming their fourth son.
Dixie Lee Crosby wants to call her week old son David. Bing likes
Lindsay Harry. Bing’s brothers and some of Dixie’s relatives want the parents
to compromise on William. Meanwhile the Crosby nursery is being redecorated in
blue. They were so certain they were going to have a girl that they painted the
nursery pink.
(The Daily Iowan, January 15, 1938)
January 6,
Thursday. (11:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m.) (5:00-7:00 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft broadcast. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) Bing’s Kraft
Music Hall show on NBC. Guests include Toscha
Seidel, Sterling Holloway, and Constance Bennett.
Constance
Bennett and Sterling Holloway of motion picture fame and Toscha Seidel, equally
noted on the concert stage, will be the first guest stars of the new year on
the Bing Crosby Music Hall hour heard tonight at 7’oclock over KFI.
Miss
Bennett will be presented in an informal chat with Crosby and Bob Burns, regular
program comedian. Seidel, famous violin virtuoso, will be heard in two
selections.
Crosby’s
presentation of song hits of the present and past, with the assistance of the Trotter
orchestra and the Paul Taylor chorus will complete the musical program.
(The San Bernardino County Sun, January
6, 1938)
Constance Bennett, movie personality, will swap
badinage with Bing Crosby and Bob Burns on the “Music Hall Program” over the
NBC-Red network tonight. Burns has prepared a special questionnaire with which
he hopes to embarrass Connie into playing a duet on the bazooka. The program
will be heard at 9 o’clock.
(The Daily Iowan,
January 6, 1938)
January 8,
Saturday. Bing goes to the races at Santa Anita. In May, a 10-minute short
directed by Buster Keaton and called Hollywood Handicap is released featuring
appearances by many Hollywood personalities, including Bing, at the Santa Anita
track.
January 13,
Thursday. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) The Kraft
Music Hall show is broadcast on NBC. Bing acts as host and his guests
include Ida Lupino, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and Joe Venuti.
Assuming you are still
tuned in to KFI, Bing Crosby and his Music Hall will greet your ears at 7
pm. If you could get a dime for every con-Crosby imitator, I’d give
you a hundred dollars for everyone who can sing like this great American
voice. He’ll give out solo and with the Paul Taylor Choristers and
Johnny Trotter’s music men, some very fancy vocalising. Bob Burns as
usual and three visiting firemen, Ida Lupino and Douglas Fairbanks Jr from the
pictures and fiddlist, Giuseppe Venutski known in less select circles as, Joe
Venuti. Some show, I’d say and praise Allah there’ll be none of that
offensive finger-flogging on Mr. Crosby’s ether effort.
(Los
Angeles Times, 13th January 1938)
January 14, Friday. Walt Disney’s first feature-length cartoon Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is released.
January 15/16,Saturday/Sunday.
Bing’s second golf pro-am at Rancho Santa Fe. Sam Snead wins
again with an aggregate 139. Bing plays with Harold Sampson and on the
first day they start at 11:07
a.m. and have a best ball score of seventy-one. Rain again affects the
tournament. Other celebrities playing include Johnny Weissmuller,
Richard
Arlen, Bob Burns and Leon Errol. Bing hosts a "stag" barbecue for 500
at his home on the Sunday evening. Elsewhere, Bing's horse "Fight On"
wins at Agua Caliente.
January 18, Tuesday.
Bing plays with Neil Christian in the Lakeside Golf Club Invitational and they
come in with a 67 leaving them in joint fourth place
January 19, Wednesday. Dixie Lee comes home from
hospital.
January 20, Thursday. (11:30 a.m.-4:00 p.m.) (5:00-7:00 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft broadcast. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) Bing’s Kraft Music Hall show is broadcast on NBC and the guests include Rose Bampton, Chester Morris, and Joan Fontaine.
Bing Crosby will bandy words with Rose Bampton, noted opera singer
known by Crosby’s audience as “Battlin’ Bamp of the Met” during his broadcast
with Bon Burns on NBC-KTBS at 9 p.m. Thursday. Other guests will be Chester
Morris and Joan Fontaine of the film colony, while regular duties of the
program will be attended to by Bing, Bob Burns, Ken Carpenter, John Scott
Trotter’s orchestra and the Paul Taylor chorus.
(The Shreveport Journal (Louisiana), 20th January, 1938)
January 21, Friday. Starting at 9:30 a.m., Bing plays in the Pasadena Open on the Pasadena Municipal Course and has an 83. (7:00–10:00 p.m.) Bing records three songs from the film Doctor Rhythm and also “The Moon of Manakoora” with John Scott Trotter and his Orchestra.
Decca’s 1648A
features Bing Crosby with John Scott Trotter’s crew, singing and playing “On
the Sentimental Side.” The tune is from Bing’s latest picture and is made to order
for the crooner. It’s “singable, danceable and delectable” music. Backed with “My
Heart Is Taking Lessons,” also from the picture, this tune gives Crosby a
chance to boo-boo-boo in between every phrase – and don’t think that his doing
so makes us unhappy.
(Radio Daily, March 21, 1938)
January 22, Saturday. Starting at 9:10 a.m., Bing plays in the second round of the Pasadena Open with Byron Nelson and Emery Zimmerman. It would seem that Bing does not qualify for the third round.
January 26, Wednesday. Bing, Connie Boswell, Jimmy Dorsey, and Victor Young and his Orchestra make special records (including “Alexander’s Ragtime Band”) to aid the fight against infantile paralysis. The records contain a greeting from Eddie Cantor. Also Bing is thought to have attended the formal dinner dance organized by the Motion Picture Committee for the National Infantile Paralysis Foundation at the Clover Club.
Crosby combines with CONNIE BOSWELL on Alexander's Ragtime Band (Dec), but gallantly lets the lady stand
out to the point where his name on the label seems to be a misprint. Platter is
billed as a vocal, but actually is more in the dance groove, with Victor Young
having several choruses to himself to the Crosby - Boswell one. Vocal
arrangement is tricky, and the whole side makes great listening. Companion
piece is Home on the Range by Crosby
and True Confession by Boswell, not
worth the effort of turning the record over.
(Billboard, July 23, 1938)
January 27,
Thursday. (11:30 a.m.-7:00 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft broadcast. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) The Kraft
Music Hall show is broadcast on NBC. Bing acts as host and his guests
include Madeleine Carroll, Gregory La Cava and Jan Smeterlin.
Gregory La Cava, one of
the movie directors who have long been bossing Bing Crosby and Bob Burns about
the movie lots of Hollywood, has been invited to the Music Hall, where Crosby
and Burns do most of the talking. La Cava will share honors with Madeleine
Carroll, British actress, and Jan Smeterlin, Polish pianist. Johnny Scott
Trotter’s orchestra will supply music to offset Burns bazooka renditions.
(Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 27th January, 1938)
Proof that applause isn’t
necessary on a musical or variety program is provided by the very popular Bing
Crosby Music Hall, which does not prohibit sincere, honest laughter and
therefore the laughter is restrained and an asset to the show. Applause is
prohibited, and the result is fast-moving entertainment, which the listener
feels is just for him. Listeners want good entertainment and they appreciate
sincerity.
(Radio Guide, for week ending February 5, 1938)
January 29,
Saturday. Bing’s radio show wins the Hearst Radio Editors’ Poll for the best
variety program. He is also named most popular male vocalist. Bing is at the races at Santa Anita and later attends a welcome
home stag party for James Cagney at the San Fernando
home of Hugh Herbert. He is also thought to have appeared briefly at the
Birthday Ball for the President at the Palomar. This is a benefit to raise
funds for the President’s Infantile Paralysis Fund. Connie Boswell is the
resident attraction accompanied by the Phil Harris Orchestra.
January 30, Sunday. Bing hosts a party for Red Nichols at Topsy’s. Other guests are Lennie Hayton, John Scott Trotter, Bob Burns and Everett Crosby.
February 2, Wednesday. Further information is given about the Crosby dispute with Rockwell-O'Keefe.
Bing Crosby and Rockwell-O'Keefe,
Inc., last week came to a financial settlement of their contract differences,
with the singer getting a complete release. Management outfit claimed $33,000:
due it on back and future commissions in connection with Crosby's Kraft Music
Hall assignment. Curious angle of the adjustment is that it was effected
by a single lawyer representing both sides. He is John O’Melveny, of the
Hollywood firm Melveny, Tuller and Myers, who is on regular retainer to both
Crosby and R-O’K.
(Variety, February
2, 1938)
February 3,
Thursday. (11:00 a.m.-6:30 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft broadcast. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) Bing’s Kraft
Music Hall show and the guests include Spring Byington, Ethel Bartlett & Rae Robertson, and Wayne Morris.
Through a subtle, if lengthy,
process, Mr. Bing Crosby’s Music Hall has changed its complexion until at this
moment it stands as one of the premiere comedy shows of radio. Nobody can say
accurately whether this was the original plan of the producers or whether,
being uncommonly fortunate souls, they merely stumbled over the realization
that the Crosby contingent can juggle gags with the greatest of ease. It seems
fairly obvious, though, that within some three years, the Music Hall has turned
resolutely from a routine variety show formula to one of refreshing sparkle and
humor, topped not even by the facile Jack Benny troupe.
Nobody will deny the wisdom of this move. Formal variety
programs, which run their guests on and off in the familiar vaudeville manner,
have their place, admittedly. So have the looser clambakes, with their
artificial camaraderie, their trite jovialities, their
brittle pace. But never before the late blossoming forth of Mr. Crosby’s stunt,
had dialers been let in a 60-minute funfest which not only sounded legitimately
informal, but provided, as well, wholly original humor of a relaxed nature.
The Music Hall’s original and avowed purpose,
that of presenting guest stars, has of course been lost in the shuffle,
but nobody seems to care a whole lot. Guests of Mr. Crosby aren’t treated as
sacred cows. If you want to look at the setup from the angle of a Vallee program, the visitors do, in fact, get a slight
working over. It becomes pretty apparent to the listener that the guests are
merely there to play stooge roles in a Crosby comedy routine.
Last Thursday’s Crosby concoction illustrated its new
full-blown wittiness pretty well. Its most serious line, if we remember, came
during Mr. Crosby’s introduction of duo-pianists Ethel Bartlett and Rae
Robertson. Their selection, Beethoven’s “Ruins of Athens” was described by Mr.
C. as “one of the juicier morsels turned out by the great and good Loodveeg von B——” The rest of the program was much less
pontifical, we assure you.
(Herb Caen,
San Francisco Chronicle, February 7,
1938)
February 7,
Monday. Press reports indicate that Bing has banned newspaper and publicity
cameramen from his radio broadcasts as he can’t give his best when “bulb
pressers” are around. Meanwhile, Bing attends the racing at Santa Anita with
Spencer Tracy and Pat O’Brien.
February (undated). Bing takes Dixie to the House of Murphy for her first outing since the
birth of Lindsay. They dine with the Edmund Lowes.
February (undated). Bing and Dixie throw a supper buffet to honor Evelyn Kinder of the play
“The Women” prior to the company’s departure. Other guests include the Edmund Lowes, the Johnny Mercers, the Joe Venutis,
and Lindsay Howard.
February 10,
Thursday. (11:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m.) (5:30:-6:15 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft broadcast. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) The Kraft
Music Hall show is broadcast on NBC. Bing acts as host and his guests
include Brian Aherne, Beverly Roberts and Gertrude Wettergren.
Bing Crosby Music
Hall (KFI 7 pm) Brian Aherne and Beverly Roberts of the films,
Swedish contralto Gertrude Wettergren, the pleasant patter and singing of Bing
and the amusing Bob Burns.
(Los
Angeles Times, 10th February 1938)
February 12, Saturday. Bing and Dixie attend
Kathryn and Joe E. Brown’s huge dinner party at the Victor Hugo to honor Major
Austin C. Taylor and his wife of Vancouver who annually sojourn in Hollywood during the Santa
Anita season.
February 17,
Thursday. (11:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m.) (5:15-6:30 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft broadcast. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) Bing hosts the Kraft
Music Hall show broadcast on NBC. The guests include Randolph Scott and
Heather Angel.
Bing Crosby/Bob Burns’
cheese-hawking chapter for Kraft last Thursday had to wrestle for favor with
some average guest help. Heather Angel rambled rather vaguely about her British
legit background. It wasn’t funny nor very interesting. Both Crosby and Burns
seemed unable to draw her out. Grischa Gulahoff, fourteen year old, young classic fiddler,
gut–grated a piece by Brahms and a high noted Spanish shortie
at the program’s end—Pretty limp! Randolph Scott came closest to scoring when
he chatted with his two hosts on the show about the foxhunting, in Virginia, in
describing how Jock Whitney and his neighbors dress up to chase that rascal
Reynard with hound and horn. The sallies of Burns and
(Variety, February 23, 1938)
February 22,
Tuesday. Bing attends the Santa Anita Derby with many other Hollywood stars and
sees “Stagehand” win. At 4:30 p.m., just before the race commences, Bing is
interviewed by Clem McCarthy over the NBC network.
February 24, Thursday. (11:00 a.m.-4:30p.m.) (6:15-7:00 p.m.) Rehearses for his Kraft broadcast.(7:00–8:00 p.m.) The Kraft Music Hall show is broadcast on NBC. Bing acts as host and his guests include C. Aubrey Smith, Margot Grahame and Lotte Lehmann.
A return engagement by
the Metropolitan Opera’s famous Lotte Lehmann, is the feature attraction of the
Bing Crosby Music Hall in the program to be heard over WBD at 9 o’clock
tonight. Besides the distinguished soprano, Bing Crosby and Bob Burns also have
Margot Grahame, film actress, as their guest. Stories by Bob Burns, songs by Bing
and current tunes by John Scott Trotter and his band complete the hour-long
show.
(The Atlanta Constitution, February
24, 1938)
March 2, Wednesday.
(2:00 p.m.) Bing and Dorothy Lamour are present when Jiggs, the
nine-year-old movie star chimpanzee, is buried at the Hollywood pet
cemetery.
March 3,
Thursday. Bing's horse Rocco wins at Santa Anita. There are
severe floods in some parts of California. (12:00-4:00 p.m.) Bing
rehearses for his Kraft broadcast.(7:00–8:00 p.m.) The Kraft
Music Hall show. Guests include Maureen O’Sullivan and Mischa
Auer. Robert J.
Brewster, J. Walter Thompson Program Director, in his report comments: "Entertainment:
Good. General remarks: This was the week of the flood. We went on the air
with lanterns standing by in the studio and emergency battery equipment in the
control room - all of which gave the show a certain stiffness at the start, but
this soon loosened up."
....following comes Bing
and his galaxy of entertainers. Included are Mischa Auer, Russian born
film comedian, Maureen O’Sullivan, one of Hollywood’s Irish importations,
(very lovely to look at) and The Foursome, a group of boys who play
ocarinas. Of course, there is the cast of regulars, including Bob
Burns, John Scott Trotter’s music and Paul Taylor’s Chorus together with
bell-ringing announcer, Ken Carpenter - enough names and entertainment to last
a month.
(Los Angeles Times, 3rd
March 1938)
March 4, Friday.
(5:00-7:00 p.m.) Bing is thought to have attended a reception given by the Metropolitan Artists
Club of California in honor of Mme. Lotte Lehmann at the home of Count and Countess John McCormack.
March 5,
Saturday. (4:00–4:30 p.m.) Bing "helps" with the commentary on the Santa Anita
Handicap over station KNX and again "Stagehand" is the winner.
Pardon me
while I catch my breath after the most exciting $100,000 Santa Anita Handicap
of them all; what a thrill when Stagehand romped home to victory. . . Bing
Crosby, in his familiar pancake hat, had a smile that wouldn’t come off up to
the six race. He was sure his Ligaroti would come in
the money but Bing is a good scout and dashed up to shake the hand of Earl Sande the trainer of Stagehand, saying he’d wait another
year to bring his horse in.
(Louella O. Parsons, Los
Angeles Examiner, March 6, 1938)
...Mrs.
Howard had been invited to the rooftop, where Clem McCarthy was broadcasting
tidings to a listening world. Broadcasting over a national hookup in an
exacting chore, and the man at the “mike” has a right to demand more or less
respectful silence from bystanders. With Mrs. Howard, as added entry guest of
the management, was Mr. Bing Crosby, the singing gent. Mr. Crosby also had a
horse in the race–a thing called Ligaroti. (If memory
serves, the said Ligaroti finished dead last. But
then, he wanted mud!)
But back
to Mrs. Howard, up there on that roof. She wanted to root for Seabiscuit. As who wouldn’t, in her place? In fact, she
insisted upon rooting for Seabiscuit, particularly
when the gallant son of Hard Tack decided to make his move up there just short
of the backstretch, and started running over horses. Mr. Crosby also wanted to
put in a word for his Ligaroti. At all events, he
wanted to watch him do or die through the binoculars. So Mr. Crosby moved over,
in the excitement of the moment, to interfere with the broadcaster’s view of
proceedings.
Broadcasters,
it seems, sensing that a critical junction had arrived, went immediately into
action. He hit Mr. Crosby a left hook in the midriff, and Mr. Crosby obligingly
moved over out of range. Then he waved at Mrs. Howard, who by this time was
really moving into contention in the rooting line and gave her a persistent and
heartfelt “shush-shush.” By this time, Seabiscuit was
leading into the stretch, but this tough kid Stagehand was also doing some
moving. He was running around horse, out to collar none other than the great
‘Biscuit’. Naturally, Mrs. Howard–who probably rates Seabiscuit
as second only to her husband–wanted to tell her pet to do something about
this. So, completely disregarding the microphone, the “shush-shush” of the
“Torpedo” and all other unimportant details, she “went to the whip” and really
gave that horse of hers a root down that stretch.
They say that
there was never a better bit of vocal support, regardless of gender or
circumstance. It really should have gone out over the air, properly identified
as to source. Probably would have made that broadcast a standout for all time.
(Los Angeles Examiner, March 6, 1938)
Later, Bing and Dixie are at Kendall and Lewis
Milestone’s Beverly Hills home for cocktails with many other stars before going
on to the Los Angeles Turf Club Ball at the Ambassador Hotel.
Bing and Bob Hope take part in the entertainment as does Dorothy Lamour. Harry
Owens pays a public tribute to Bing.
Despite
all that had gone on before–the big Handicap races and preluding
cocktail parties galore–the festive whirl reached its height at the Santa Anita
ball. Most impressive, perhaps, was the parade of arriving guests, which
included the world’s most celebrated beauties, gorgeously gowned and handsomely
cavaliered by escorts whose names make news from New York to Hollywood.
The
forecourt of the Fiesta Room was simply made for “entrances.” Antherium–calla lilies gone flamboyant–peach and cherry
blossoms, rose-red camelias, tulips, hyacinths, rare
ferns, bowers of oak and hedges of bright green made a breathtaking setting for
the luxuriant processional. Trackside closeups of the
gala affair, that only ended in the rosy dawn of Sunday
morning, revealed sumptuous swank merging with blithesome mirth and
laughter. The orchestras of Harry Owens, Georgie
Stoll, and Eddie Duchin, no less, played for the
dancing.
Stagehand
may be the horse of the hour, but his jockey, Earl Sande,
is definitely the man of the hour. Introduced by Bing Crosby, he was ovationally applauded. And when he burst into song, “When I
Grow Too Old to Dream,” he revealed a remarkable voice. The winsome Billie
Burke, who “hath such a pretty wit,” thought that Stagehand should have been
brought to the party. “After all, he’s what this party is all about,” she
opined.
Bob Hope
again turned in a masterful performance as m.c. Said he: “Santa Anita has proved to be such a
mint that President Roosevelt is going to install horses in Congress instead of
Congressmen.”
Bing sang “Sweet Leilani,”
and others who gave of their priceless artistry were the Albertina
Rasch dancers, the Raymond Scott Quintet, Buddy Ebsen, Tony Martin, the Bryan Sisters, Romo
Vincent, Dorothy Lamour, the Yacht Club Boys, Ben Blue, Connie Boswell, Vincent
Song and Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy–all ending with Bob, Bing, Romo and the Yacht Club Boys, attired in trampish garb, singing a titillating ditty, “But We Do Know
About Horses.”
(Jack
James, Los Angeles Examiner, March 6, 1938)
March 8, Tuesday.
Bing is at the races at Santa Anita.
March 9,
Wednesday. Bing is thought to have been at a party for Rudy Vallee
at the Masquers Club.
March 10,
Thursday. (12:00-4:00, 5:00-6:15 p.m.) Rehearses for the Kraft broadcast. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) The Kraft
Music Hall show is broadcast on NBC. Bing acts as host and his guests
include Moriz Rosenthal, David Niven and Miriam Hopkins.
Miriam Hopkins and
David Niven of the screen will visit the Music Hall to banter words with Bing Crosby
and Bob Burns at 9 over WBAP-NBC. Another guest will be Moriz Rosenthal, famous
75-year-old pianist.
(Fort Worth Star-Telegram, March 10, 1938)
Now I thought I was a
dramatic actress, you see, and I want to rehearse everything first. I was on his
radio show all the time, and I said, “Bing can’t we rehearse this show?” He ran
through it once and we went out and sat in his car and had a cigarette. And I
said, “Can’t we do it again?” And he said: “Sweetie, no! We’d get stale. Let’s
just do it, you know, we’ve got the line. I’ll say something and [you] ad-lib
back and forth with me.”
(Miriam Hopkins, as quoted in
the book People Will Talk, page 361)
Later, Harry Owens’ song “Sweet Leilani” wins the Oscar for the “Original Song” of 1937 at
the ceremonies at the Biltmore Hotel. Other nominated songs include “Remember
Me,” “That Old Feeling,” “They Can’t Take That Away from Me,” and “Whispers in
the Dark.” Bob Burns is the MC having had to hurry over to the Biltmore
following his appearance on the Kraft show. Harry Owens pays a fulsome tribute
to Bing (who is not there) as he accepts the Oscar.
March 12, Saturday. Bing is at the Los Angeles Turf Club during the evening.
March (undated).
Bing and Dixie seen with Claire Dodd and Lindsay Howard at Cafe La Maze.
March 17,
Thursday. (1:00-6:30 p.m.) Rehearses for the Kraft broadcast. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) Bing’s Kraft
Music Hall show and his guests include Pat O’Brien, Gaspar Cassado and Franciska
Gaal. Later, Bing and Dixie go to the
Beverly-Wilshire Hotel to see Harry Owens.
Bing Crosby presents Pat
O’Brien, cute Dutch (sic) cinema actress, Francisca Gaal, Cellist Gaspar
Cassedo and the redoubtable Bob Burns - This show hasn’t a great deal of
opposition!
(Los
Angeles Times, 17th March 1938)
Harry Owens, the Los Angeles
lad who left here to achieve international fame at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in
Honolulu, and who made the entire nation grass skirt conscious with his lovely
song, “Sweet Leilani,” will find himself the guest of
honor at several parties simultaneously this evening when he and his Royal
Hawaiian Orchestra take their bows for a return engagement in the Florentine
Room of the Beverly-Wilshire Hotel. Entertaining at ringside, there will be
Bing and Dixie Crosby, Dr. Francis Griffin and Irene Dunne, Everett Crosby,
Dorothy Lamour, Ken Murray, the Stroud Twins, Russell Patterson, the Bob Hopes,
the Stu Erwins, the Danny Dankers, Ben Blue and Martha Raye.
(Los Angeles Examiner, March 17, 1938)
March 24, Thursday. (12:45-6:45 p.m.) Rehearses for the Kraft broadcast. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) The Kraft Music Hall show is broadcast on NBC. Bing acts as host and his guests include Dorothy MacKaill, Mischa Levitzki and George Brent.
Piquant Dorothy
Mackaill, whose infrequent appearance on the screen of late is to be deplored,
will be the guest artist on the Bing Crosby program, KPO at 7 p.m. today. Miss
Mackaill will run the typical hazards of the Hall “buildup” with Bing, Bob and
John Scott Trotter as her foils. Mischa Levitski, brilliant concert pianist,
appears with Dorothy MacKaill, Bing Crosby and the Music Hall cast on tonight’s
program.
(The San Francisco Examiner, 24th March, 1938)
March 25, Friday. Everett Crosby files for divorce from Naomi alleging cruelty.
March 26,
Saturday. Bing’s horse “Ligaroti” wins the $5,000
added handicap at Bay Meadows, San Mateo.
March 27, Sunday.
Bing is at the racing at Agua Caliente,
Mexico, where he presents a trophy to Charles S. Howard after his horse “Seabiscuit” has won the Agua Caliente Gold Cup handicap.
March 28, Monday.
Bing visits Randolph Scott and Joan Bennett on the set of The Texans at Paramount.
March 31,
Thursday. (12:30-6:45 p.m.) Rehearses for the Kraft broadcast. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) The Kraft
Music Hall show is broadcast on NBC. Bing acts as host and his guests
include Warren William. Marion Claire and Anna May Wong.
Will Ken Carpenter be in
better form when it comes to bell ringing time? That’s the question up before
good old K. M. H. Bing Crosby is doubtful, Bob Burns is hopeful and John Scott
Trotter is too busy with the band to worry much about it. Guest stars Anna May
Wong, Warren William and Marion Claire say they wouldn’t miss this
put-to-the-test performance of Ken’s for anything.
(Homer Caulfield, Monrovia Daily News-Post, 31st March,
1938)
April–May. Films Sing You Sinners with Fred MacMurray, Donald O’Connor, Elizabeth Patterson, and Ellen
Drew. Harry Barris also has a small part. The film is produced and directed by
Wesley Ruggles. Musical direction is by Boris Morros. Twenty-four of Bing’s horses are used in the racing
scenes. Location scenes are filmed at the Pomona Fairgrounds. The film’s original title was “Harmony for Three”
and this becomes “The Unholy Beebes” until it is
changed just before release. Bing is reported not to be pleased with the final
title.
April 6,
Wednesday. Bing and Dixie attend a charity concert by Helen Gahagan
at the Biltmore Hotel.
April 7,
Thursday. (12:00-6:00 p.m.) Rehearses for the Kraft broadcast. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) Bing’s Kraft
Music Hall show on NBC. Guests include Rudolph Ganz,
Gail Patrick, and Edmund Lowe.
Bing Crosby’s show over WEAF
last Thursday night had Gail Patrick and Edmund Lowe as guesters
but they weren’t at the mike together. Part of the appeal of the Crosby show is
its informality with the star and Bob Burns apt to uncork some pretty funny
stuff, on short notice. Nevertheless, that very informality sometimes dampens
the powder which is just what it did for Miss Patrick and Lowe. The session
sounded as though neither one of them knew exactly what was expected. Lowe and
Crosby exchanged a flock of insults against each other’s tennis ability and
kept referring to the recent Spokane trip but the bit was never quite tied up
and the loose ends tangled up the kilocycles. Miss Patrick’s stint was,
apparently supposed to reveal her passion for collecting copper and uncovered
some wacky gags- again, it didn’t quite jell. In the case of Rudolph Ganz, guest pianist, his ivory-massaging was skillful and
to the point. So, the clowning served to set it off a trifle but for the two
star visitors - not so good. There is always a danger
that informality will lapse into a suggestion of slovenly programming.
(Variety, April 13, 1938)
April 9, Saturday.
Bing takes part in the presentation of a “crooner’s diploma” to Bob Hope on
behalf of the Professional Music Men of America in the Florentine Room of the
Beverly-Wilshire.
April 10, Sunday. Song pluggers vote Bing “Number One Crooner of the United States” at a meeting at the Beverly-Wilshire Hotel in Hollywood.
April 13,
Wednesday. Recording session with Harry Owens and his Royal Hawaiian Hotel Orchestra
in Hollywood. Bing sings “Sweet Hawaiian Chimes” and “Little Angel.”
April 14,
Thursday. (3.45-6:30 p.m.) Rehearses for the Kraft broadcast. (7:00–7:30 p.m.) The Kraft
Music Hall show is broadcast on NBC. Bing acts as host and his guests
include the Kraft Choral Society. The show is cut to thirty minutes because of
a speech by President Roosevelt on “relief and other important matters.”
April 16,
Saturday. A loose association of Bing’s friends known as the Westwood Marching
and Chowder Club presents a show called “The Midgie
Minstrels” for their own amusement. Bing is featured together with many of his
friends.
This turn in his career came,
thanks again, to Bing Crosby. Johnny and Ginger participated in a series of
informal minstrel shows put on by the “Westwood Marching and Chowder Club” that
were initially staged at Crosby’s house. The first show was held on April 16,
1938, and Mercer put on blackface to be one of the end men as Pat O’Brien,
Jerry Colonna, and Crosby himself performed comic routines and sang old songs
such as “Waiting for the Robert E. Lee.” The show was an informal production
for themselves and their friends, but, since most of the performers were
professionals they were slickly staged affairs, with elaborate costumes, such
as Bessie Burke’s cowboy chaps with “cutouts to display her buttocks.” For
white show business people raised on minstrel show traditions and accustomed to
black-face performances throughout the 1930s, the racist caricatures in these
shows would not have seemed offensive.
(Skylark: The Life and Times of Johnny Mercer, p104)
April 17, Easter
Sunday. Bing has donated a $1,600 organ to St. Charles Church, North Hollywood,
which he is to dedicate by singing at a sacred concert.
April 18, Monday.
Everett Crosby obtains a divorce from his wife Naomi because of her drinking.
He is given custody of their daughter, Mary Sue.
April 21,
Thursday. (12:00-6:30 p.m.) Rehearses for the Kraft broadcast. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) The Kraft
Music Hall show is broadcast on NBC. Bing acts as host and his guests
include Sally Eilers, Percy Grainger and Ralph Bellamy.
Ralph Bellamy and Sally
Eilers who were scheduled to appear with Bing Crosby on his Music Hall program
of April 14th but who had to postpone their visit because of President
Roosevelt’s ‘fireside chat’ will be joined by Percy Grainger, internationally
famous pianist and composer during the Music Hall broadcast at 9 pm over
NBC-WSMB.
(New Orleans Times-Picayune, 21st April 1938)
Later, Bing is thought to have
appeared at the Tri-Guild Ball at the Cocoanut Grove. Press reports state that
Jack Benny, George Burns, and Bing were to present a specialty act.
April 22, Friday.
(7:30–10:30 p.m.) Bing records “Let Me Whisper I Love You” and “Don’t Be That
Way” with John Scott Trotter and his Orchestra in Hollywood.
Still, those songs were
preferable to newer creations like the non-descript “Let Me Whisper I Love
You,” with a Trotter arrangement that combines classical borrowings and a
habanera beat, or the stupefying “When Mother Nature Sings Her Lullaby,” for
which Bing backed by pipe organ—a throwback to his days at the Paramount
Theater and Jesse Crawford, and no more enchanting. Yet the same session that
produced “Let Me Whisper I Love You” generated a memorable version of the Edgar
Sampson swing anthem “Don’t Be That Way,” three months after Benny Goodman
opened his fabled Carnegie Hall concert with it. In place of Benny’s thumping
four-four, Trotter’s arrangement bounces not unpleasantly over a two-beat
rhythm. Bing, slow and sinuous, glides through the melody, smoothly mining the
lyric for nuance: the low way, the drawn-out sky, the mordent on me,
the jazzily enhanced “don’t break my heart.” Trotter provides a bona fide
swing interlude, with Spike Jones’s splashing cymbals setting up Secrest’s solo, until Bing ends the party with a decisive
“Stop it!”
(Gary Giddins, Bing Crosby, A Pocketful of Dreams, The
Early Years, 1903-1940, page 518)
April (undated). Bing
and Pat O’Brien host a private show at Lucey’s which
features Connie Boswell, Joe Venuti, Johnny Burke and
many others.
April 25, Monday.
Bing records “Little Lady Make-Believe” and “When Mother Nature Sings Her
Lullaby” with Eddie Dunstedter for Decca at Warner’s
studio, Sunset Boulevard, where a production model cinema organ has been
installed. He also makes two records with the Paul Taylor Choristers at the
same session.
Exponents of popular songs
some and go, but like the Brook, Bing Crosby will seemingly go on forever.
“Little Lady Make-Believe” and “Don’t Be That Way” are his effortless offerings
this month.
(The Gramophone, October 1938)
Sweet Low, Sweet
Chariot; Let Me Whisper (Decca— DLA1290). Bing Crosby. Rhythm's crowned head
reveals a new side of his art with this tender revival of a beautiful negro
spiritual. Crosby collectors should “buy now.” The Paul Taylor Choristers from
Bing’s radio show make this record sound like a tabloid version of the Kraft
Music Hall show. Only Burns’ bazooka and Carpenter’s chimes are missing.
(Radio Mirror, September, 1938)
In the Paramount’s Doctor Rhythm, Bing Crosby, Bea Lillie
& Co. are wooing the comic muse as though they had a $5 bet on its
surrender. Maybe a $3 bet. Nothing quite so grim as their pursuing of the elfin
guffaw has been seen in these parts since Martha Raye
fell down the incinerator chute....An advantage—we might say the only
advantage—is the complete informality of the show, an attitude for which Miss
Lillie is largely and blessedly responsible....This puts her one up on Mr.
Crosby, whose crooning is almost too liquid this time. “On the Sentimental
Side”, “This Is My Night to Dream” and “My Heart Is Taking Lessons” were not so
much sung as wrung out. Too bad, too, for they’re good numbers.
(Frank S. Nugent, New York Times, May 19, 1938)
…There is good marquee
display in the title and top names, and customers will spread favorable comment
after leaving theatres. This film should do nice business…'On the Sentimental Side,’ one of five songs by John Burke and
James V. Monaco, looms the likeliest along with ‘My Heart Is Taking Lessons.’ Frank Tuttle, who directed
Waikiki Wedding with Crosby starred, seems to have the right combination on
the crooner’s films...Dr. Rhythm will
keep Crosby at his present high box-office rating.
(Variety, April 27, 1938)
It is an agreeable hodgepodge
of a musical film replete with comedy, and blessed with a couple of pleasant
song numbers which Crosby delivers in a manner which proved highly ingratiating
to last night’s preview patrons, even to the inclusion of this reporter, who
was once “the groaner’s” diligent detractor.
(James Francis Crow, Hollywood Citizen News, April 29, 1938)
(11:15-5:30 p.m.) Rehearses for the Kraft broadcast.
(6:00–7:00 p.m.) The Kraft Music Hall show is broadcast on NBC. Bing acts as host and
his guests include Georges Barrere, Roland Young and Binnie Barnes.
Bing Crosby and Roland
Young, his actor guest, will spring another stunt when Young appears in the
Kraft Music Hall broadcast of today at 9 p.m. over the NBC-WFBC network, just
as they did when Young last visited the Hall in July, 1937. On that occasion,
Bob Burns and Young did an imitation of Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy
because Bing wondered how Young talked without moving his lips. Another guest
on the Kraft Cheese program will be Georges Barriere, one of the world’s
leading flutists, who will be heard in a group of flute solos.
(The Greenville News (South Carolina), 28th April, 1938)
May 2, Monday.
Bing and Stanton Griffis (chairman of the Paramount
executive committee) celebrate their birthdays in the Paramount commissary with
Fred MacMurray acting as MC. An audience of 350 join in the singing of "Happy Birthday."
May 5, Thursday.
(10:45-5:30 p.m.) Rehearses for the Kraft broadcast. (6:00–7:00 p.m.) Bing’s Kraft Music Hall
show on NBC. Guests include Walter Huston, Beulah Bondi,
and Alec Templeton.
Guests on Bing
Crosby’s Kraft Music Hall program over NBC-WSMB at 8 pm will be
Walter Huston, noted actor, Alec Templeton, blind pianist and Beulah Bondi,
motion picture actress. Bing will try some new hit tunes and Bob
Burns will drawl out an interview with Huston.
(New
Orleans Times-Picayune, 5th May 1938)
May 8, Sunday. Bing hosts a family dinner for 11 at his Rancho Santa Fe home.
May 9, Monday. Filming of Sing You Sinners moves to the Santa Anita racetrack where 700 extras are employed for the crowd scenes,
May 12, Thursday.
(10:45-5:45 p.m.) Rehearses for the Kraft broadcast. (6:00–7:00 p.m.) Bing hosts the Kraft
Music Hall show and his guests are Basil Rathbone, Isabel Jewell
and Toscha Seidel.
Three old friends will
join Bing Crosby on his Music Hall broadcast with Bob Burns, Ken Carpenter,
John Scott Trotter’s orchestra and the Paul Taylor chorus tonight. Basil
Rathbone, whose villainies are notable in The Adventures of Robin Hood, Isabel
Jewell, one of Hollywood’s young actresses, and Toscha Seidel, violin virtuoso,
are the guests who will chat with Crooner Crosby.
(The
Sacramento Bee, 12th May 1938)
May 15, Sunday.
Defends his Lakeside Golf Club championship title in the first round against Duke Hinnau and wins 2-up.
May 19, Thursday. (10:45-5:45 p.m.) Rehearses for the Kraft broadcast. (6:00–7:00 p.m.) Bing’s Kraft Music Hall show on NBC with guests Rose Bampton, Adrienne Ames and Humphrey Bogart.
The chimes that signal to the close of each NBC
broadcast will have the biggest inning in their history on the Music Hall tonight,
when a set tinkling forth the three airy grace notes will be presented to each
of the stars who has made them famous, Bing Crosby, Bob Burns and Ken
Carpenter. Guest artists on this broadcast will be Adrienne Ames and Henry
Fonda of the screen and Rose Bampton, Metropolitan opera star.
(The Sacramento Bee, 19th May, 1938)
(NOTE: it looks like Mr. Fonda didn't make it)
May 23–July. Films Paris Honeymoon for Paramount with Franciska
Gaal, Shirley Ross, Edward Everett Horton, and Akim Tamiroff. The film is
directed by Frank Tuttle with musical direction by Boris Morros.
May 23, Monday.
(8:30–11:45 a.m.) At a recording session with John Scott Trotter and his
Orchestra in Hollywood, Bing has a cold and while he records four songs, only
two—“Now It Can Be Told” and “It’s the Dreamer in Me”—are released.
BING CROSBY,
backed by John Scott Trotter's Ork, comes to bat on behalf of Now It Can Be Told (Dec) with a
peculiarly un - Crosby - like rendition. Sung absolutely straight, without any
of the characteristics that have made Bing a national institution, this is going
to be an awful disappointment to the Crosby addicts. It's the Dreamer in Me, on the reverse, is more like it, and as a
result, it's crooning of the first water. The Trotter backing is unexciting in
both instances.
(Billboard, July 23, 1938)
It is doubtful whether a more
satisfying vocal record of “Now It Can Be Told” will be heard than Brunswick
02646. One Bing Crosby is responsible for it. Yes, the same fellow who never fails
to intrigue us month after month. The coupling ‘When You Dream About Hawaii’ is
almost of the ‘Sweet Leilani’ standard and that is
praise enough.
(The Gramophone, November 1938)
May 26, Thursday. (10:45-5:45 p.m.) Rehearses for the Kraft broadcast. (6:00–7:00 p.m.) The Kraft Music Hall show on NBC. Bing’s guests include Miriam Hopkins, Alec Templeton, and Edward Everett Horton.
Screen stars Miriam Hopkins and Edward Everett Horton, and blind
pianist Alec Templeton won’t be hearing any sound effects when they guest-star
on the Bing Crosby Music Hall, WCAL at 10, inasmuch as it’s said to be the only
60 minute show which has never used a sound effects man. Seems Bing believes
the Burns’ bazooka is sound effect enough for any program.
(Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, 26th May, 1938)
On Thursday (26th May),
Bing Crosby announced over the air that Bob Burns, absent from
the Kraft Music Hall, was “away fishing” but Buffalo knew
better. He was in a suite at the Statler Hotel with Mrs. Burns,
listening to the sacred hour - the Kraft program on NBC Red. Burns
said that he had planned to stay several days in New York but was so
beset by people that he decided to slip quietly away. He flew here
to show his wife Niagara Falls which she had never
seen. ‘Sounds kinda corny to say people bother you’, said Burns, ‘if
they didn’t you’d know you were slipping but I am supposed to be resting up, so
I can take over the Hall when Bing goes away and I’ve got to find a hole I can
crawl into’.
(Variety, 1st June 1938)
May 28, Saturday. Bing and Dixie are at Johnny's Rendezvous in San Francisco with their friends including Alice Faye and Edmund Lowe.
June 2, Thursday. Bob Crosby obtains a divorce from Marie Grounitz on the the grounds that she deserted him in New York in August 1936. He makes an out of court settlement for the support of their 4-year old daughter Elizabeth Anne. (10:45-5:45 p.m.) Rehearses for the Kraft broadcast. (6:00–7:00 p.m.) Bing’s Kraft Music Hall show with guests Mary Astor, Joel McCrea, and Grete Stueckgold.
Grete Stueckgold, of the Metropolitan Opera, joins Joel McCrea and Mary
Astor, of the movies, on Bing Crosby’s guest roster in the Kraft Musk hall
today. The Paul Taylor chorus and Johnny Scott Trotter’s orchestra are other
features of the broadcast over the NBC-WFBC network at 9 p.m. It was Miss
Stueckgold who broke a precedent for opera stars by singing a duet with Bing
Crosby when she appeared on the Kraft Music hall two years ago. Since then she
has retuned several times and is a favorite with the hall’s clientele. She was
scheduled to appear three weeks ago but the engagement was postponed. Joel
McCrea and Mary Astor will be heard in a pair of those informal interviews
which Bing made famous for Kraft Cheese.
(The Greenville News (South Carolina), 2nd June, 1938)
June (undated). Bing
and Dixie are at a dinner party at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Ford
Palmer. Others present are the Johnny Mercers and the Lloyd Bacons.
June 9, Thursday.
(10:45-5:45 p.m.) Rehearses for the Kraft broadcast. (6:00–7:00 p.m.) Bing hosts the Kraft
Music Hall show on NBC. Guests include Claude Rains, Gladys George, and Efrem Zimbalist.
Bob Burns comes back to
the Kraft Music Hall after a two weeks’ vacation today and Bing Crosby will
have Claude Rains, Gladys George and Efrem Zimbalist on hand as guest stars to
form a welcoming committee for the first citizen of Van Buren… Claude Rains
and Gladys George will be heard in Bing Crosby’s very special style of
“interview” which may turn into anything from a harmonica solo to a hog-calling
contest. Efrem Zimbalist, the distinguished violinist, has played in the Music
Hall before and is a great favorite with its listeners.
(The
Greenville News, (South Carolina), 9th June, 1938)
June 10, Friday. The opening day of the Hollywood Park race track at Inglewood. Bing is one of the original 600 shareholders in the Hollywood Turf Club but he could not be at the opening day because of filming work.
June 11, Saturday. Bing sees his horse 'Ligaroti' win the Inglewood Mile Handicap at Hollywood Park.
June 12,
Sunday. Bing plays in the Lakeside Motion Picture golf tournament which is restricted
to players in the film business. He wins with a 72. Richard Arlen is
runner-up with a 73.
June (undated).
Bing attends the Roller Derby at the Pan-Pacific Auditorium on several occasions.
June 15, Wednesday.
Bing's horse 'High Strike' wins a $1000 6-furlong race at Hollywood
Park. Bing loses 3 and 2 to Guy Hanson in the semi-finals of the
Lakeside Golf Club championship.
June 16,
Thursday.
(10:45-5:45 p.m.) Rehearses for the Kraft broadcast. (6:00–7:00 p.m.) Bing’s Kraft
Music Hall show and his guests include Akim Tamiroff, Wesley Ruggles, and
Edna May Oliver.
Edna May Oliver and Akin
Tamiroff, film stars; Wesley Ruggles, director, and Clemence Gifford,
contralto, will visit Bing Crosby and Bob Burns tonight. (KGO at 6 o’clock).
Ruggles directed Crosby in the picture, “Sing You Sinners,” and tonight’s
program will give Bing the chance to turn the tables and make him stand around.
Clemence Gifford, though not widely known, is an NBC artist who has appeared successfully
with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Hollywood Bowl orchestras.
(Stockton
Evening and Sunday Record, 16th June, 1938)
June 19, Sunday. Bing and Dixie attend the birthday party given by Lloyd Bacon for his wife Nadine’s birthday. Among the other guests are Pat O’Brien, Frank McHugh, Dick Powell, James Cagney, Johnny Mercer, and Richard Arlen.
June 22, Wednesday. Bing's horse "Scapose" wins the first race at Hollywood Park.
June 23,
Thursday.
(10:45-5:45 p.m.) Rehearses for the Kraft broadcast. (6:00–7:00 p.m.) Bing hosts the Kraft
Music Hall show on NBC. Guests include Simone Simon, Roscoe Karns
and Alec Templeton.
Simone Simon, one of
Hollywood’s French stars; Roscoe Karns of the stage and screen, and Alec Templeton,
famous blind pianist, will be guests tonight on Bing Crosby’s Music Hall.(KPO
at 6 o’clock). Templeton, a good friend of Bing’s, has been a frequent visitor
to the program this season…Bob Burns will be playing the new bazooka we told
you about the other day—the one with the smooth action and the mellow tone.
(Stockton
Evening and Sunday Record, 23rd June 1938)
Roscoe Karns
guested on the Kraft show last Thursday night and
teamed with Bing Crosby in a skit about a frantic poppa-to-be, hogging a
drugstore phone booth. It was a characterization which was right up the screen
comic’s alley and he whammed it over. However, the very persuasion the actor
put into the bit, merely emphasized the negative taste of the material. Rather
inexplicable that such subjects as tooth-extraction, gout and the agony of
prospective fatherhood and the like are considered never-failing sources of
fun. Laughter at the pain of another is not evidence of a sense of humor,
rather it indicates a lack of imagination and imagination is the essence of
humor. Or is “Variety” too rough-fined?
(Variety, June 29, 1938)
June 25,
Saturday. Bing enters three dogs in the Long Beach dog show. Later, starting at 7:00 p.m., he takes part in another meeting of the
Westwood Marching and Chowder Club, North Hollywood branch at his home which goes on until dawn. Other
guests include Bette Davis, Shirley Ross, Wesley Ruggles,
Edmund Lowe, and Skeets Gallagher. Bing sings
“Nobody” and duets “Mr. Gallagher and Mr. Shean” with
Johnny Mercer. A tent is erected over the tennis court for the event which goes
on until dawn. All guests are asked to come in costume.
Bing
Crosby took time off from work on his new film “Paris Honeymoon” to play host
to Hollywood’s latest exclusive group, Westwood Marching and Chowder Club, last
Saturday night at his home.
Spirit of
the Gay Nineties was carried out to perfection from the interior of the huge
tent over the two tennis courts to the authentic scenery and the minstrel show
given by guests.
And what
a show! Each guest came in costume and prepared to put on an act. Among the
most amusing presented was the Floradors sextette with Edmund Lowe, Wesley
Ruggles, Skeets Gallagher, Herb Polesie, Lynn Howard, Eddie Sutherland, Bette Davis,
Shirley Ross, Mrs. Gallagher, Mrs. Lowe and Mrs. David Butler participating.
Bing, Joe
Venuti, Jerry Colonna and Johnny Mercer were a quartet. Andy Devine gave a
heart rending rendition of “Blood on the Saddle.” Wesley Ruggles offered the
song “A Face on the Barroom Floor.” Fred MacMurray, Bill Foley, Pat O’Brien,
Edwina Marshall and others performed, as did the majority of the 150 persons
who attended.
The
Westwood Marching and Chowder Club meets and presents a show every two months
at various homes of the members.
(Daily News, July 2, 1938)
The first performance aroused
so much interest around Hollywood that a second show was scheduled for June 25,
and along with most of the original performers, the cast included Andy Devine,
Fred MacMurray, and Bill Frawley
(who would go on to play Fred Mertz on television’s I Love Lucy). A small band was also brought in that included Tommy Dorsey and Spike Jones. Mercer later fondly recalled these early Westwood Marching and
Chowder Club shows. . . “It was all very spontaneous,” Ginger recalled, “and as
usual those are much more fun than when they get too well rehearsed.” But one
wonders if she was expressing Johnny’s feeling, more than her own. She seems to
have loved sitting quietly to the side and taking in all the glitz and glamour.
. . The Westwood minstrels printed up programs and had large glossy photographs
taken of themselves performing and watching one another perform, drinks in
hand. These shows brought Bob Hope and Crosby together, and there was even talk
at one point of filming one of them for Paramount. For Savannah-bred Mercer,
that was going too far in mixing one’s private and public lives.
The highlight of this second show, however, was a duet between
Crosby and Mercer that Mercer had written as a blackface parody of the old
ethnic vaudeville act “Mr Gallagher and Mr. Shean.”
As “Lasses Mercer” and “Chitlins Crosby,” he and Bing
provided an “erudite analyseration of swing.” Crosby
had recently been given an honorary degree by Gonzaga University in his
hometown of Spokane, Washington, and Mercer addresses him with mock deference
as Crosby hums and scats:
Oh, Mr. Crosby, Dear Dr.
Crosby,
Is it true that swing’s
another name for jazz?
And the first place
it was played
Was a New Orleans parade
And the Southern Negro gave
it all it has?
To which Crosby replies:
Oh, Mr. Mercer, Mr. Mercer,
Mr. Mercer, Mr. Mercer,
I believe that its foundation
came from them.
When Mercer
asks, “Are you positive?” Crosby continues:
Yeesss. They just slowed the tempo
down
And then they really went to
town.
The verse ends with this
folksy exchange:
Allegretto, Mr. Crosby?
Alligators, Mr. M.
While other numbers in the
show were merely in-circle fun, this duet “dazzled the audience” with its
“smooth-running wit.” Within a week, Crosby and Mercer made a recording, and it
became one of the big hits of 1938, with Time
magazine calling “Mr. Crosby and Mr. Mercer” the “summer’s most amusing ditty.”
The recording rekindled Mercer’s singing career, which had languished since
he’d left Paul Whiteman.
(Skylark: The Life and Times of Johnny Mercer,
p106)
June 27, Monday.
Press comment suggests that Bing owes $400,000 in back taxes.
June 29,
Wednesday. Lindsay is christened. Bing and Dixie are thought to have attended
the Red and White Sports Ball at the Biltmore Bowl.
June 30, Thursday. Bing's horse Rocco wins at Hollywood Park.
(10:45-5:45 p.m.) Rehearses for the Kraft broadcast. (6:00–7:00 p.m.) Bing’s Kraft Music Hall
show on NBC. Guests include Jack Oakie, Florence George and Gloria
Stuart.
The suave Bing Crosby
will not have an easy time tonight, because he has invited Jack Oakie, master
of the art of heckling, to be his guest (KPO at 6 o’clock). Oakie and Bob Burns
are friends from the days of vaudeville, and Oakie and Crosby are old friends,
too; so unless the script writer feels vicious, the ribbing will probably be
too friendly to draw blood. Gloria Stuart of the movies and Florence George,
whom you may recall as the prima donna soprano of Walter O’Keefe’s long lost
Hollywood Mardi Gras. complete the guest list.
(Stockton
Evening and Sunday Record, 30th June 1938)
Bing Crosby’s Kraft show was
in bright gait, last Thursday, with Jack Oakie the
particular target via his weight loss of 50 lbs. Oakie,
a not bad mike stealer on his own, when he has the material, did much to
bolster the triple cross-talk with Bob Burns and Crosby. The latter, his usual
suave host but Bob Burns blew a couple of lines and got himself over the
hurdles by ad-libbing on the level. Gloria Stuart’s forthcoming 20th Century
Fox film was the basic structure for further gab but the idea petered out fast.
(Variety, July 6, 1938)
July 1, Friday.
(6:30 to 9:30 p.m.) Records “Small Fry” and “Mr. Gallagher
and Mr. Shean” with Johnny Mercer and Victor Young’s
Small Fryers.
“Mr. Gallagher and Mr. Shean,” as sung by Mr. Crosby and Mr. Mercer, is the
highlight waxing of the week, Decca, 1960, as Bing Crosby and Johnny Mercer
vocalize the latter’s special lyrics discoursing on swing. It’s coupled with
“Small Fry,” Hoagy Carmichael’s sequel to his memorable “Lazy Bones,” and part
of Crosby’s forthcoming “Sing You Sinners” (Par) filmusical
score. Victor Young’s Small Fryer, as the band is quaintly billed, does the acomp to both and manifests anew the Crosby-Decca
showmanship on wax which has made both best-sellers.
(Abel Green, Variety, August 17, 1938)
July 4, Monday. Bing
is thought to have been at Hollywood Park to see his horse ‘Ligaroti’
win the American Handicap and break the track record.
July 5, Tuesday. Bing is at Hollywood Park to see his horse "Sweet Leilani" win in the opening race.
July 7, Thursday.
(10:45-5:30 p.m.) Rehearses for the Kraft broadcast. (6:00–7:00 p.m.) The Kraft Music Hall
show on NBC. Bing’s guests include Dalies Frantz, Mary Carlisle and Henry Fonda.
We have two more visits
with Bing Crosby and then the crooner will sign off for a thirteen-week rest
from the microphones. During King Croon’s absence, as exclusively reported here
ages ago, Bob Burns will take charge starting with the edition of July 21. Bing’s
new movie, “Sing You Sinners,” will come in for a health plug tonight with the
leading lady, Mary Carlisle, (sic) on hand for an interview, and Crosby
scheduled to sing two of its tunes—“I’ve Got a Pocketful of Dreams” and “Laugh
and Call It Love.” In addition, Henry Fonda, film actor, and Dalies Frantz,
pianist, will be heard.
(Ventura County Star-Free Press, 7th July, 1938)
July 8, Friday.
Bing records “Summertime” and “A Blues Serenade” with Matty Malneck and his Orchestra
in
July 11, Monday.
(5:30 to 8:30 p.m.) Another recording session in
John Scott Trotter accomps Crosby on Decca
1934 in “Don’t Let That Moon Get Away” and “Laugh and Call It Love,”
another couplet out of “Sinners”; and still another excerpt is “Pocketful of
Dreams” (Decca 1933), also with Trotter, although the companion piece, “A Blues
Serenade,” has Matty Malneck
doing the batoning.
(Abel Green, Variety, August 17, 1938)
Bing sang "Mexicali Rose" for four months on the air before making a record that infused it with the vivid and wistful melancholy he had used to transform so many commonplace and even trite songs ("Home on the Range," "Black Moonlight"). He made the song resonate as a quasi-western hymn for the last days of the Depression. Autry reclaimed it a year later in a movie of the same name, but in his or anyone else's hands, it was merely a sentimental love song. Bing's interpretation produced a frisson, an eerily palpable suggestion of what the times sounded and felt like. We tend to recall 1938 with the images of swing - stomping feet and flying skirts. "Mexicali Rose" renders the flip side, far from the ballrooms, where the night is black, inert, and full of longing. The force of his reading transcends the lyric and its southwestern setting.
(Gary Giddins, A Pocketful of Dreams, page 519)
July 14, Thursday.
(10:45-5:50 p.m.) Rehearses for the Kraft broadcast. (6:00–7:00 p.m.) Bob Hope is Bing’s radio guest on the Kraft Music Hall for the first time. Helen Jepson is another guest.
Helen Jepson,
Metropolitan Opera star and Bob Hope, popular radio comedian will help Bing
Crosby entertain Music Hall listeners during the broadcast over NBC-WSNB at 8
pm. Miss Jepson, who is adept at repartee, as well as singing, will
join Hope in matching Crosby and Bob Burns in an informal conversation.
(New Orleans Times-Picayune,
14th July 1938)
Then Bing put me on his Kraft
radio show, and when I got my own Pepsodent show on
radio, I invited him. Radio was the big thing in those days. The audience was
tremendous. Bing had a remarkable ability to double as a straight man or a
comedian. He had a marvelous touch, with exquisite timing. In show business,
there’s a sharp delineation between a comedian and a comic. A comic does broad
comedy, with pratfalls and all. A comedian is a line comic—doing lines and
stanza and talking straight to people. Jack Benny, for example, was the
consummate comedian. He could take anyone on the stage and make them funny, by
his subtle reactions to the audience from a line. Timing, it’s all timing. Bing
had the same faculty. He could feed a line, and respond to it, and like I say,
the chemistry between us was perfect.
And what a golfer! He was always a little better than I was.
For a long time his handicap wavered between a two and a four. He worked hard
at it. Misery Hill, the practice range at Lakeside, never had a more diligent
customer. . . . Bing actually lived a very quiet existence. He’d go home at
night and have a little dinner and be in bed by nine-thirty or ten. Then he’d
get up at six and hit balls, or maybe play a few holes with the caddies at
Wilshire or Lakeside. Bing was a man who took his golf very seriously.
(Bob Hope, Confessions of a Hooker, page 130)
July 16, Saturday.
Bing is at Hollywood Park to see his horse ‘Ligaroti’
run in the Hollywood Gold Cup. ‘Ligaroti’ finishes
fourth to ‘Seabiscuit’.
One night shortly after the
Hollywood Gold Cup, Lin was sitting at a restaurant table across from his
father and Bing Crosby. They were apparently talking about the Gold Cup, and
Lin was sitting there looking at his father and doing a slow burn. Bing wasn’t
too happy either; his misadventures as a horse owner were becoming an
embarrassment. An idea was kicking around in Lin’s head, and it seemed as good
a time as any to toss it out there. Why not have a match race between Seabiscuit and Ligaroti?
Charles snorted.
Crosby lit up.
The year before, he had invested $600,000 in the building of a new track, Del
Mar, a magnificent seaside racing palace near San Diego. Del Mar was a Bing
paradise, featuring good racing by day and dinner, dancing, and crooning by
night. But in its second year Del Mar needed a boost; daily attendance averaged
just six thousand. A match race featuring Seabiscuit
was just what the track needed. Crosby knew he could talk the board of
directors into footing a big purse for the event. Crosby and Lin worked on
Howard for the rest of the meal.
Howard began to see the merits of the race. For one, a sizable
purse could get Seabiscuit that much closer to Sun
Beau’s money-winning mark; he was still $85,000 short. In addition, Smith might
enjoy pitting his horse against one trained by his son, Jimmy, just as Howard
would enjoy facing off against Lin. And Lin wouldn’t let up on the needling.
Howard gave in.
Lin wanted to make it interesting. He dared his father to make
a side bet with him. Howard shook him off. He told him he couldn’t bear to take
any more money from his own son.
Crosby hustled off to make the arrangements. He returned with a
fair deal. Del Mar would put up a winner-take-all purse of $25,000, 14 percent
of the entire purse budget for the track’s meeting.
(Seabiscuit, page 262)
July 20,
Wednesday. (5:30–6:00 p.m.) Bing appears on the Tommy Dorsey radio show on NBC
and plays drums as part of a Westwood Marching and Chowder Club performance
with Jack Benny, Dick Powell, Ken Murray, and Shirley Ross.
We felt that the Amateur Swing Contest had run its course. It had done a good job, functioning best when we hit a different city each week. We would be in Hollywood for most of the summer, and there would be better ways of renewing and maintaining audience interest. “But,” I said, “Let’s have one final fling. Let’s get four picture stars who play instruments and have them be the amateur contestants. We’ll treat them exactly the way we treat the kids - pretend we don’t know they are stars.”
“I like the idea,” Tommy said, “but how can we do it? We don’t have the budget.”
He was right. We didn’t. But there might be a way.
“You’re a pal of Bing Crosby,” I reminded Tommy. “I’ll bet that, if you ask him to play drums, he’ll do it. And if he says yes, I know we can get the others.”
Tommy’s eyes lit up and glowed. “Okay,” he said with just the right inflection.
Tommy had planned to call Bing anyway, naturally.
We got together at Bing’s house. Tommy greeting Bing as “the Groaner,” a bit of nomenclature from the Whiteman days. Tommy asked Bing if he would join us and play drums in this special edition of the Amateur Swing Contest. Without hesitation, Bing said, “Sure, it sounds like a fun idea.” A Crosby film was in production at Paramount, and the lot was right next to the NBC studios, then located on Melrose Avenue.
We recalled that Dick Powell, whose current picture was Cowboy from Brooklyn, had played trumpet when he was a singing master-of-ceremonies. A Warner Brothers talent scout discovered him in a neighborhood theatre near Pittsburgh. And we had heard that he still had an affectionate spot in his heart for the horn.
We arranged to meet Dick at his home in Beverly Hills. Neither Tommy nor I had met him before. We had nothing to go on except the idea itself and the fact that Bing was playing drums. Dick seemed amused at the idea. He thought for a moment, then said, “You say Crosby is going to do this? Count me in.”
We were getting on fine. We had drums and trumpet.
Next we remembered that Ken Murray did a vaudeville routine in which he played clarinet. Next day we called on him at his Sunset Towers apartment. He was not hard to convince. By all means yes, he would be there.
We needed a fourth. How about a girl? True, there was no television, but it would be a nice touch. Shirley Ross had recently completed The Big Broadcast with Bob Hope and Jack Benny, and Thanks for the Memory, in which she and Bob Hope had introduced “Two Sleepy People.” We learned that Shirley had played piano when she was at UCLA, and we were told she was better than ever. Shirley was invited, and she said she would love it.
That gave us our complement of four. There were no business arrangements. We were in no position to ask for advance meetings or rehearsals. But they all agreed to show up for dress rehearsal on broadcast day. Tunes were selected. There would be no script to worry about. We would plot the questions; answers would be up to them. The date was set for two weeks ahead.
One day, during a rehearsal break, Tommy and I were having a hamburger at the Melrose Grotto, next to the NBC studios, when Jack Benny strolled in and sat down with us. “I hear you’re having some kind of swing contest. You’re not going to leave me out, are you?”
We
were transfixed. This was incredible. He was asking us?
If Tommy and I were not entirely coherent in our reply, there could be no doubt that we extended a welcome.
Now we were five. And a violin, too. It happened because Bing had met up with Jack Benny bicycling on the Paramount lot. He stopped Jack and told him what was going on the next Wednesday. Jack’s next stop was our cubicle at the Melrose Grotto.
As
it must to all shows, broadcast day arrived. July 20, 1938. Rehearsal was in
progress - “Honeysuckle Rose” for Bing, “Ida” for Dick, “
Jack Benny did not arrive for dress rehearsal. We slipped in an extra number for the band, to be used only if he didn’t make the show. About two minutes before air time, Jack sauntered in, smiling under his snap-brim hat, smoking a cigar, holding violin and bow at the ready. There was only time to make sure of the key for his number, and we were on the air.
At the top of the show, Tommy introduced a representative of Metronome magazine who presented him with the magazine’s award for best all-around band. Then came the “amateurs.” As each of our “amateurs” came to the mike, he was asked the usual questions - name, occupation, and so on. Dealing with the stars exactly as he had dealt with the actual amateurs gave us a natural, built-in comedy situation.
Jack Benny was asked what his name was. After a pause of just the right length, he answered, “My name’s Jack Benny.”
“What is your line of work?”
“I work in pictures.”
“You mean you’re a movie actor?”
(Deadpan.) “Yeah.” (Pause - deadpan.) “I’m a lover.” (Big laugh)
There is nothing inherently funny in that line. But Benny’s timing and delivery, aided by the situation, made it very funny indeed.
After each one had performed, it was time to ascertain the winner and award the seventy-five dollar prize. We pretended that the applause meter was so overwhelmed by the swinging performances that it ceased to function. We declared a five-way tie. Then the five of them launched into an animated discussion of just how they would handle the seventy-five dollars, including such matters as Social Security and agents’ commissions.
We closed with a jam session, all five playing “When You and I Were Young, Maggie” with Tommy and the band. It was terrible. The audience howled with delight. Over the applause, Bing was heard to holler, “Hey, Tommy, you better tell that man from Metronome to take back the award.”
One thing for sure. Tommy and I never forgot what Bing did for us.
(Herb Sanford, writing in Tommy and Jimmy—The Dorsey Years)
July 21, Thursday. (11:15-5:45 p.m.) Rehearses for the Kraft broadcast. (6:00–7:00 p.m.) Last Kraft Music Hall appearance by Bing prior to his vacation. The Foursome, Donald O’Connor, Fay Bainter, and Grete Stueckgold are the guests.
Four men will replace Bing Crosby
when radio’s No. 1 crooner goes on his three-month vacation following his
NBC-WBMG show at 9 p.m. when he will introduce The Foursome, a novelty and
harmony combination specializing in “sweet potato” or ocarina tricks. Also, on
tonight’s airing, Crosby will introduce Fay Bainter of the films and Grete
Stueckgold of the Metropolitan opera who is slated to play a harmonica in a
duet with Bob Burns’ bazooka. Donald O’Connor, child actor, will join Crosby in
presenting songs from their latest film, “Sing You Sinners.”
(Richmond Times-Dispatch, 21st July, 1938)
July 23, Saturday. 'Ligaroti' wins the $5000 Handicap at Hollywood Park.
July 24, Sunday. Bing and Dixie are at Del Mar. The Bob Hopes stay with the Crosbys at the Rancho Santa Fe house.
July 28, Thursday. Bing
and Pat O’Brien host a dinner and
preview opening at Del Mar for the press. Bing introduces the song
"Where the Turf Meets the Surf" to the gathering, which continues until
the early hours.
July 29,
Friday. Opening
day of the Del Mar season. Bing makes a brief and simple address of
welcome over the public address system. The proceedings are covered in
a 30-minute program
on the NBC-Blue network. Saturday morning radio shows from Del Mar are
aired on
NBC with Bing usually participating. The 1938 meet draws 161,485
bettors
through the gates and the pari-mutuel handle rises to $3,920,251.
ULTRA SOCIAL EVENTS INSPIRED
BY RACES
Without benefit of any
feminine advice or counsel, President Bing Crosby and such other stalwart Del
Mar Turf Club officials as Vice President Pat O’Brien, Harry Cohn, Walter
Connolly, Oliver Hardy, Howard Hawks, Eddie Lowe, Ted Reed, Bogart Rogers,
Wesley Ruggles, Sidney Sutherland, William Quigley
and B.K. Beckwith met over the dinner table at William LeBaron’s
home and decided to underscore the coming racing classics with a whirl of
ultra-social events.
Substantiating the fact that you simply can’t divorce social
Hollywood from its industrial life, Friday nights will be known as “Preview
Night,” featuring the showing of a major film on the Jockey Club’s terrace.
Saturday nights, of course, will be gala occasions, with Bing officiating as
M.C. and chief entertainer for the regular weekly dinner dances that were so
popular last season. Jimmy Monaco and Johnny Burke have written “Where the Turf
Meets the Surf,” a new song which Bing will introduce as the club’s theme song
at the initial event July 29.
The committee also selected Carole Lombard to present the
trophy to the winning owner whose horse gallops to victory in the $3,000 Motion
Picture Handicap Race, scheduled for August 5 and reserved exclusively for the
“Big name” thoroughbreds owned by notable Hollywoodites.
Incidentally, the only race of its kind in America. So, with Hollywood Park
closing next Saturday and Del Mar opening on the following Friday, race-conscious
Hollywood will soon be wending its way southward.
(Ella Wickersham, Los Angeles Examiner, July 17, 1938)
August 5, Friday. (5:15-5:45 p.m.) Bing and Pat O’Brien collaborate at the microphone for the running of the Motion Picture Handicap at Del Mar which is broadcast on the NBC-Blue network. After the completion of the day’s racing, the film Sing You Sinners is premiered on the race track. The party afterwards goes on until the early hours with some revelers missing the special train back to Los Angeles at 2:00 a.m. on August 6.
It was a thrill
to sit in the Jockey Club at the Del Mar track and watch Bing Crosby’s picture, Sing, You Sinners, unfold upon an outdoor screen.
In the distant background were the lighted homes of the Del Mar film colony. Once during the picture an
airplane, flying very high, passed northward over the track. You could just see its lights and hear the muffled throb of
its motors. Twice, while we sat there, a train flashed by. It was the balmiest
of nights, no fog, only a few fleecy clouds in the sky. A perfect outdoor
setting for Hollywood’s most novel preview.
The picture is
one of Crosby’s best and assumes a double importance because the characters are
ideal for a series of pictures. Crosby is the shiftless but lovable son of a
family of three, headed by the peppery Elizabeth Patterson. Fred MacMurray is
the steady, hardworking son and Donald O’Connor is the very natural kid of the
family.
Romance is
touched but lightly. MacMurray marries pretty Ellen Drew, but Crosby has no
girl at all.
There’s a
bang-up fight and the best horse race ever screened. There isn’t a stock shot
in this race either. Paramount filmed it at Santa Anita. Two
jockeys went to the hospital securing the thrills.
For some of us
the evening had a weird finale.
Paramount was
taking 400 correspondents back to Los Angeles in a special train and, at 9:40,
someone passed the word around that the train was waiting on the siding. The Fred MacMurrays, the Claude Binyons, Fred’s mother and
the Carrolls piled into an ancient taxi and got under way. But there was no
train. We stood out in the moonlight beside a hay barn and waited for more than
an hour. And don’t ever let anybody tell you that the early bird gets the worm. For, after all this, we guessed wrong at where the parlor car
was going to stop and got outdistanced in the rush.
Jim Tully, learning about it, smiled for the first time in weeks.
(Harrison Carroll, Los Angeles Evening Herald News, August 8, 1938)
August 6,Saturday. Bing's horse "High Strike" wins the Laguna Beach Handicap at Del Mar. Bob Hope joins Bing on stage in the Saturday night shows at Del Mar, reviving their patter from the Capitol Theater in 1932.
On
Saturday night, August 6, 1938, Bing was master of ceremonies for a special
Hollywood night at Del Mar when he called Bob to join him onstage. The two
horsed around together, rehashing some of the bits they had done at the Capitol
Theatre six years before. Their chemistry so impressed William LeBaron,
Paramount's production chief, who was in the audience, that he suggested
putting the two of them together in a movie. The idea took more than a
year to come to fruition.
(Richard
Zoglin writing in Hope, pages 150-151)
August 12,
Friday. (4:00-4:30 p.m.) Bing watches a special race at Del Mar between his horse Ligaroti and the famous horse, Seabiscuit,
with the latter narrowly winning after a photo finish. Dixie Lee presents the
$25,000 prize. Seabiscuit is owned by Charles S.
Howard, father of Bing’s friend, Lindsay Howard. The proceedings are broadcast over NBC. A record crowd of 22,000 is in
attendance.
Meanwhile, Lin and Crosby
worked hard at putting on a horse race Hollywood-style. Crosby arranged to have
a large section of the clubhouse roped off and patrolled by guards, with
admission restricted to Ligaroti rooters - the “I’m
for Ligaroti” section. He went out on a promotional
tour to gather a cast of thousands, contacting four hundred friends, mostly
movie people, and talking them into coming to the track to cheer his horse on.
He appointed Dave Butler, director of Shirley Temple films, head cheerleader,
fitting him with a turtleneck emblazoned with the initials BL, for Binglin. He had four hundred Ligaroti
pennants printed up in Ligaroti’s colours,
cerise and white polka dots, and attached to canes for waving.
. . . On the sweltering race day, special trains and buses
poured in from San Diego and Los Angeles, filling the track with well over
20,000 people, many more than the official capacity. Scores of Crosby’s
friends, including Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, Spencer Tracy and Ray Milland, took up their cerise and white pennants and filed
in. “Is there anyone left in Hollywood?” wondered a spectator. . .
Crosby perched on the roof with Oscar Otis, who would call the
race for a national radio broadcast. . . . Seabiscuit
flew under the wire first. Lugging 130 pounds, .
. . Seabiscuit
had broken the track record by four seconds, the equivalent of some twenty-five
lengths.
(Seabiscuit, pages 263-266)
The crowd began to yell the
moment the horses broke and they never stopped yelling all the way around. . .
They turned for home head and head, and they finished that way with both
jockeys batting at each other with their whips and grabbing at each other’s
saddle cloths. At the wire the picture showed Seabiscuit
a winner by a whisker. Although there has always been a dispute as to whether
that picture was read properly.
Be that as it may, they broke every track record en route. They
broke the record for the half mile, the three-quarter mile, the mile, and the
mile and an eighth. . . . There was an awful stew about the jockeys’ deportment
and track manners. The judges claimed that our jockey was at fault. They ruled
him off for thirty days and gave him a fine, which we paid. But they didn’t
know that I had a movie of the race made and I ran it off for Mr. Howard. In
the film it was clear that Richardson was no more to blame than Georgie Woolf. Nothing will be
gained by post morteming about which Jock hit the
other horse across the nose with his whip, thus starting the fracas. But once
it started, they both grabbed clothing and saddle blankets, and from the
sixteenth pole home, it was a melee, a pier sixer on
horseback.
We lost the race and lost the money. But to see two fine horses
put on performances like that was worth the money. It is certainly one of my
most treasured performances of Del Mar.
(Bing Crosby, Call Me Lucky, page 240)
August 16,
Tuesday. The New York premiere of Bing’s film Sing You Sinners.
The happily accidental conjunction
of Bing Crosby and horse racing (which is Bing’s other love, besides crooning,
as you may have read somewhere) has turned out to be the funniest comedy on
Broadway, including all the side streets. The only noteworthy difference
between reality and Sing You Sinners
at the Paramount, is that in the movies Crosby’s horse wins—an unprecedented
thing which may be explained by the fact that Bing undoubtedly must have had a
hand in the script....Claude Binyon’s story and
Wesley Ruggles’ direction are swell, and the two
principal songs, “I’ve Got a Pocketful of Dreams” and “Don’t Let That Moon Get
Away” are already being whistled about town. Incidentally, that’s another thing
we like about Sing You Sinners: not
too much singing.
(Bosley
Crowther, New
York Times, August 18, 1938)
A new and interesting Bing
Crosby emerges in Sing You Sinners, a
likeable ne’er-do-well who believes that the secret of success lies in taking
gambles. He is less the crooner, and, for added relief of tiring Crosby fans,
if any, less of a delight for fluttering maidenly hearts. Instead, he’s
something of a pain in the neck to a forgiving mother and two brothers. Crosby
and a small but good cast combine with an excellent story and good direction
for surefire box office. . . . Being less the crooner in this effort than
previously, Crosby does only one number solo, though there are
four in the footage. Othere are molded for the trio.
Crosby’s solo song is ‘Don’t Let That Moon Get Away,’ a good song. …Crosby
plays his part strongly but with restraint. He doesn’t hog anything from MacMurray nor moppet O’Connor.
(Variety, August 17, 1938)
Dino (Dean Martin) would later
sing at the Half Moon as well. But it was at the downtown joints, the
ball-and-beer boites, where he really spread his wings. His repertoire grew around
the old standards and the Italian songs and the succession of hits from Crosby
pictures. “June in January” from Here Is
My Heart, in 1934; “It’s Easy to Remember” from Mississippi, in 1935; “Pennies from Heaven” from the Crosby picture
of the same name, in 1936; “Sweet Leilani”, Crosby’s first million selling
record, from Waikiki Wedding, in
1937; “I’ve Got a Pocketful of Dreams”, from Sing, You Sinners, in 1938. Dino saw Sing, You Sinners at the Paramount in on North Fifth Street that
autumn. It struck an ironic chord of recognition. Crosby, in his first substantial
dramatic role, portrayed an irresponsible young gambler adrift amidst his loving
family’s concern for him.
(Nick Tosches, Dino – Living High in the Dirty Business of
Dreams, pages 78-79)
August 24, Wednesday. Bing golfs with Ralph Guldahl at the Rancho Santa Fe course against Charley Lacey and Glenn Gibbon. Crosby and Guldahl win 3 and 1.
August 27, Saturday.
Bing is at the races at Del Mar and sees "Ligaroti" win the Del Mar Handicap. He is interviewed on NBC radio about his
horses and his return to the Kraft Music
Hall later in the year.
August 30, Tuesday. One of the Binglin stable's horses "Comet ll" wins at Del Mar.
September 3, Saturday. Bing's horse "High Strike" wins the Long Beach Handicap at Del Mar.
September 5, Monday. The final day of the Del Mar meeting.
September 6, Tuesday.
Bing, Andy Devine and a number of friends depart on the local tuna boat
"Golden Gate" on a 6-day fishing trip from San Diego. They aim to fish
in the vicinity of Guadalupe Island. They eventually return with three tons of fish which they donate to local hospitals.
September 15,
Thursday. Bing, Dixie and son Gary arrive in Chicago on the Super Chief
en route for New York. They meet up with Bob Crosby who is working at
the Blackhawk restaurant there.
September 17,
Saturday. After staying at the Essex House, Bing and Dixie plus son Gary, and
Larry and Elaine Crosby board the “S. S. Queen of Bermuda” in New York for a
three-week vacation in Bermuda. The ship sails from the West 57th. Street dock
at 3 p.m.
September 19,
Monday. The Crosby party arrives in Bermuda and checks in at “Windsor Cottage”
in Tucker’s Town.
September 22, Thursday. Bob Crosby marries June Kuhn (age 19 – a fashion model) in
Spokane, having divorced Marie Grounitz.
September 23,
Friday. Although still in Bermuda, Bing is named as a defendant in a $28,441
personal injury damage suit arising from a traffic accident in July. Albert Johnson,
the trainer of Bing’s race horses, was allegedly driving a car owned by Bing
which crashed into another vehicle. The case is subsequently dismissed on April
28, 1939.
September 30, Friday. The Bermuda newspaper gives details of
a recent fishing trip undertaken by Bing and Larry with a Mr. and Mrs. Terry Mowbray of Bermuda. In all the party catches eight game
fish off the south east of Bermuda’s coastline. The paper comments that Bing
has acquired a wonderful sun tan on the beach, golf course, and tennis courts.
The Mid-Ocean Golf Course has been his favorite. During his stay, Bing writes to Johnny Mercer as follows:
. . . This is sort of between
seasons here now, so we are getting plenty peace and quiet. Live way out on a
point with fine beach, surf etc. I spoke to the boys about your going on the
Kraft show, and hope something definite has been done about it. Present plans
indicate I will be in Hollywood on the 17th. of
October. Best regards to
Ginger. Saw Bernie in N. Y. He was reeling slightly - Jack White a mot (?
illegible)
Regards,
Bing
(As reproduced in Johnny Mercer: The life, times and song
lyrics of our Huckleberry Friend, page 55)
October 1,
Saturday. Bing’s recording of “I’ve Got a Pocketful of Dreams” becomes the
number one record in the charts for four weeks.
October 7,
Friday. Bing and his party arrive back in New York from Bermuda and check in at the Waldorf Astoria.
October 10, Saturday.
The Crosby party leaves New York by train.
October 14,
Friday. (Starting at 9:00 a.m.) En route from his vacation in Bermuda, Bing has stopped over in Chicago
to make his first recordings with his brother Bob, including “You Must Have
Been a Beautiful Baby” in the Civic Opera building. Bob and his Bob Cats had been appearing at Chicago’s
Blackhawk restaurant.
…But the blockbuster of the
session was a new song by Mercer and Harry Warren, written for a Dick Powell
movie (Hard to Get). “You Must Have
Been a Beautiful Baby” is quintessential Bing, a rejoinder to those who thought
jazz was something he relegated to his past, the kind of performance that
inspired pianist Ralph Sutton to marvel: “He’s right there, right on the
button, man. You know—a musician. And so loose. Jesus Christ, it’s
unbelievable.”
Here he is: swinging with such poise
that he lifts the whole band, but with that choirboy voice that speaks right to
you even as it suggests a sleepy-eyed nonchalance. This is not a singer to
commune self-consciously with his muse or to emote for the hipster musicians.
His approach is disarmingly, almost nakedly, artless, yet so artful that he
never shows his hand, never shows off his phrasing or his easy way of rushing
or retarding a phrase, never does any of the things singers do to show you how
hard they are working. He is so smooth,
you may not notice the flawless diction of the rhymes startin’
and kindergarten in a phrase that ends with a model mordent on the
last word (wild); the impeccably
timed cadences of the phrase “I can see the judges eyes as they handed you the
prize”; and the neat embellishment on the reprise of “judges’ eyes.” Haggart’s excellent arrangement puts the verse in the
middle for a change of pace and shows off the ensemble and tenor saxophonist
Eddie Miller in an interlude that begins with a hint of “Muskrat Ramble.” The
sustained chords at Bing’s return have the effect of suspending the rhythm. A
number one hit, “You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby” was reckoned as one of
the top sellers in a year dominated by big bands. Bing won the Down Beat poll
as best jazz singer of 1938.
(Gary Giddins, Bing Crosby, A Pocketful of Dreams, The
Early Years, 1903-1940, pages 511-512)
October 15, Saturday.
Bing takes his son Gary to Dyche Stadium, Evanston,
Illinois to watch the Ohio State Buckeyes Football team tie 0-0 with
Northwestern Wildcats.
October 18,
Tuesday.
Bing, Dixie, and Gary arrive back in Hollywood on the Santa Fe Super
Chief. Elsewhere, Bing's horse "Nisquali" wins at Bay
Meadows.
October 20,
Thursday. (7:00 to 8:00 p.m.) Bing returns to the Kraft Music Hall show and appears each week until
June 15, 1939. The audience share for the season is 24.5 which puts the show in
fourth place in the overall Hooper ratings for evening programs. Edgar Bergen’s
show is again in top place with a rating of 35.1.
The
guests on the opening show are
Johnny Mercer, Joan Bennett, and Walter Connolly. The show comes from
the new
NBC Memorial Rally Room in the newly completed Hollywood Radio City.
Bob Burns
then goes off on a 4-week vacation but apart from this, he and the Paul
Taylor Choristers are regulars during the season with John Scott
Trotter continuing as musical director. Ken Carpenter remains as
announcer.
With the return of Bing
Crosby, last Thursday, this choice radio dish again became complete but only
for one installment. Crosby has taken twelve weeks out and Bob Burns stayed
long enough for a reconciliation before ducking for a four-week vacation. The
Kraft Music Hall remains one of the few air packages that abound in suavity and
good taste as well as entertainment.
The combination of Crosby and Burns has a distinct and happy
blend of personalities and there has been no letdown in the successful illusion
of informality, camaraderie and surprise interpolation. The banter continues to
lean towards the refreshing side and is run off with a subdued leisureliness
that makes it a welcome contrast to the over eager shows.
In guest formula, the show of last Thursday night, had but one
difference—there was no representative from the concert field. Instead of a
masseur of the high C’s or an ivory digiteer, the
program produced Johnny Mercer and a finely, diverting paraphrase of one of his
latest tunes, “There’s [sic] Mutiny in the Nursery.” Everybody in the cast but
Walter Connolly participated and the upshot was as healthy a “plug” as any film
release would want. The number is in Warner Brothers Going Places. Mercer and Crosby preceded this item with a banter of
special material on the theme of “Small Fry” and a bit of lively minstrel
crossfire that had Burns as interlocutor and a soft spot for the specimen of
fine “needling” that accompanied the routine.
The script’s gift for mixing bright badinage worked nicely in
the case of the two screen guestees, Joan Bennett and
Walter Connolly. For the latter it finally got down to showing by example how
the spoken word, can be, by deft shading be given various meanings, while Miss
Bennett devoted most of her conversation to answering the critics who couldn’t
understand why her hair remained so firmly set in The Texans, despite her encounters with blizzards, dust storms,
floods and whatnot. She also joined Crosby in applying their tonsils to the
lyrics and melody of a current pop number.
About the only element in this Thursday event that seems to
show signs of sliding off key is the sustained gong-ringing gag. It used to be
funny. Carroll Carroll, the show’s writer should be
able to dig up a substitute before the current one becomes an irritant.
(Variety, October 26, 1938)
October 22, Saturday.
Bing and Dixie Lee have
travelled to Del Monte for golf and to see the Stanford-
October 27, Thursday.
(12:15-6:45 pm.). Rehearses for his Kraft Music Hall broadcast (7:00–8:00 p.m.) Bing’s Kraft Music Hall
show. Guests include Irene Jessner, Henry Fonda, Ogden Nash, and Ralph Bellamy.
Ogden Nash, whose unmetered lines have been a vogue for several years, made
one of his rare radio appearances, last Thursday, with Bing Crosby on the Kraft
program. It was a click session, not only for Nash’s ingenious satiric verses
and his ingratiating mike personality but also because of exceedingly able
scripting and production. Co-guests on the show, Fonda and Ralph Bellamy
together with Crosby and Ken Carpenter, joined in the lyrical fooling. If consistently presented so engagingly,
Nash would be a natural in a regular spot on one of the programs. After Fonda
and Bellamy had each offered his individual bit of clowning, Fonda played the
trumpet, Bellamy and John Scott Trotter on pianos, Crosby pounded the drums and
Carpenter sang, in a comically, terrible edition of “Melody in F”.
(Variety, November 2, 1938)
October 30, Sunday. (Starting at 1:30 p.m.). Bing
plays in an all-star exhibition match at the new Santa Anita Golf
Course with Johnny Weissmuller, Jimmy Thomson and local pro Roy Bearden. Thomson and Bing finish even against Weissmuller and Bearden. Over 1000 people watch the proceedings. (8:00–9:00 p.m.) Orson Welles’ CBS
broadcast of “War of the Worlds” starts a nationwide panic as listeners believe
that Martians really have landed.
November 1, Tuesday. Press coverage of a tax dispute involving Bing is seen.
Crosby Company Fights Tax Levy
Washington, Oct. 31. (AP) – The Crosby Investment Corp., Los Angeles, asked the Board of Tax Appeals today to reconsider a $128,524 tax assessment against the concern as transferee of the assets of Bing Crosby Limited, Inc. The Commissioner of Internal Revenue asserted Bing Crosby Limited, Inc., owed $23,002 income tax for 1933 and $105,522 for 1934. Crosby Investment Corp. contended Bing Crosby Limited had no taxable net income in the two years and said the latter concern was not formed “for the purpose of preventing the imposition of any internal revenue tax upon the shareholders.”
(Los Angeles Times, November 1, 1938)
November 3,
Thursday. The Binglin horse "Comet II" wins at Bay Meadows. (11:00 a.m.-6:45 pm.). Rehearses for his Kraft Music Hall broadcast (7:00–8:00 p.m.) The Kraft
Music Hall show on NBC. Guests include Dalies Frantz, Maureen O’Sullivan, Claude Rains,
and Chester Morris.
Bing Crosby will play host to four old
friends when Claude Rains, Maureen O’Sullivan, Dalies Frantz and
Herb Polesie appear as his guests during the Music Hall broadcast at
9 pm. All four will chat with their host and Frantz will play a
group of piano solos.
(New Orleans
Times-Picayune, 3rd November 1938)
November 4,
Friday. Records songs from the film Paris
Honeymoon in Hollywood with John Scott Trotter and his Orchestra. It's Dixie Lee's birthday and Bing gives her a fur coat.
November 5, Saturday.
Bing is at the Shrine Auditorium for the opening of the Opera season
and sees a performance of "Andrea Chenier" starring Elisabeth Rethberg.
November 8, Tuesday. "Comet II" a horse from the Binglin stable wins again at Bay Meadows.
November 10,
Thursday. (11:00 a.m.-6:45 pm.). Rehearses for his Kraft Music Hall broadcast (7:00–8:00 p.m.) Bing’s Kraft
Music Hall show on NBC. Guests include Mafalda Favero, Gene Krupa,
Ann Sheridan, and Brian Aherne.
Swing fans and
opera enthusiasts will both have their innings when Bing Crosby presents
Gene Krupa, master of the drums and Malfalda Fevero, brilliant
young opera star, in company with Ann Sheridan and Brian Aherne of the movies during his Music Hall broadcast
at 9 pm.
(New Orleans Times-Picayune, 10th November 1938)
November 11, Friday.
Bing and Dixie are at the races at Bay Meadows and see "Ligaroti" win the San Rafael Handicap.
November 15,
Tuesday. Back in Hollywood, Bing and Dixie attend the wedding of Jimmy Monaco
and his bride, Virginia Case, at Monaco's home in Beverly Hills.
November 17,
Thursday. (11:30 a.m.-6:45 pm.). Rehearses for his Kraft Music Hall broadcast. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) The Kraft
Music Hall broadcast. Bing’s guests include Rose Bampton,
Johnny Mercer, Roland Young, and Marie Wilson.
Bing Crosby has
assembled a galaxy of stars, including Roland Young, English actor; Rose Bampton,
Metropolitan Opera singer; Johnny Mercer, songwriter and Marie Wilson, film
actress for his Music Hall program at 9 pm over NBC-WSNB. John Scott
Trotter’s Orchestra and the Paul Taylor Chorus complete the cast.
(New Orleans Times-Picayune, 17th November 1938)
Bing Crosby
seems not to mind being kidded in public and that may account for his apparently
boundless popularity. Last night he stood a good deal of chaffing about his
increased round-aboutness as exhibited in his latest picture, “Sing Yu Sinners.”
We particularly liked the little parody “Small Fry, Cut Down on Your Dinners.”
Just as we think maybe Bing is getting into a rut and bogging down in a lot of
monotonous chatter, he comes through with a fresh, sparkling show, as last
night. Next week, as you probably know, brings Robin Burns back to the show,
with “some new jokes,” as Bing promised.
(Stockton Evening and Sunday Record, 18th November 1938)
November 19/20, Saturday / Sunday. Ted Crosby from Spokane brings his twin daughters to Los Angeles to meet Bing's twin boys.
November 21, Monday. Press reports indicate that Bing has injured himself in his
first ice-skating party since school days and now has three stitches in
his leg. He has to use crutches for a while.
November 24, Thursday.(9:00 am-12:30 pm., 5:00-7:00 p.m.). Rehearses for his Kraft Music Hall broadcast. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) Bing hosts the Kraft Music Hall show and the guests are Toscha Seidel, Chester Morris, Andrea Leeds, and the Gonzaga University Quartet. Miss Leeds is paid $1000 for her appearance.
The return of
Bob Burns from his four weeks in Hawaii, where he has picked up some tall
stories, should make tonight’s session of Bing Crosby’s Music Hall especially
lively. (KPO at 7 o’clock). Toscha Seidel, famous concert violinist, who will
give a recital in Stockton later in the season, and Joe Sullivan, swing
pianist, will be the musical guests. Andrea Leeds, who had to postpone her
scheduled visit a few weeks ago because of a broken bone in her foot and
Chester Morris will represent the movies.
(Stockton
Evening and Sunday Record, 24th November 1938) (Note: JoeSullivan had to postpone his visit).
November 27,
Sunday. Bing attends Gilmore Stadium to see the Gonzaga football team play
against Loyola. Gonzaga lose 20-19. At night, Bing hosts a party for the team
at the Roosevelt Hotel.
December 1,
Thursday. (11:30 am - 6:45 pm) Rehearses for his Kraft Music Hall broadcast. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) Bing’s Kraft
Music Hall show. Guests include David Niven, Joe
Sullivan, and Edward Arnold.
A character actor who can cook, a romantic lead and one of Hollywood’s
hottest pianists are the guest artists in the Music Hall program tonight, when
Bing Crosby and Bob Burns will present another of their informal receptions for
cinema celebrities. These guests are, in order, Edward Arnold and David Niven
of the screen and Joe Sullivan of the swing piano department. The program will
also include music by John Scott Trotter’s orchestra, the Paul Taylor Chorus and
of course the inimitable songs of Bing and the expert patter and bazooking by
Bob.
(Democrat and Chronicle, (Rochester, NY), December 1, 1938)
Reeves Espy spoke to me—poor
man, he hated to deliver bad news. “David, Mr. Goldwyn says that you have been
working on radio without his permission. Under the terms of the contract, he
has the right to everything you earn. However, he’ll let you keep half.”
The next radio show I did was with Bing Crosby; the sponsor was
Kraft. At the end of the show, as was often the custom, I was presented with a
large hamper filled with all the Kraft products—cheeses, spreads, and sardines.
When I got home, Coote helped me, and
I meticulously removed half the spread from the jars, cut every cheese in half,
every sardine in half; then with an envelope containing a check for half my
salary from the show, I sent the lot to Goldwyn inside half the basket.
It was ridiculous and childish, and I was behaving like a small
boy attacking a heavy tank with a water pistol but rather enjoying it.
(David Niven,
writing in his book, The Moon’s a Balloon.)
December 2,
Friday. Records four operetta songs composed by Victor Herbert including “Thine Alone.” Victor Young and his Orchestra in support. The songs are inserted into two Decca 78rpm albums.
Bing Crosby also sings
“Sweethearts” on Brunswick 02761. Here it is coupled with “Ah! Sweet Mystery of
Life.” These suit my temperament even better; what a depth and range the man
has. These you must not miss.
(The Gramophone, July, 1939)
December (undated). Bing and Dixie give a party for Johnny Mercer at Jim Otto's.
December 5, Monday. Following earlier talks between Bing,
Walt Disney and the most famous sports promoter in Los Angeles, a minor legend
named Zack Farmer, Everett Crosby makes an important announcement.
Starting on December 5, with
only a vague plan, a handshake deal with Hancock (Cpt. Allan Hancock, a wealthy oilman and
landowner), and a few pieces of concept art, Bing Crosby’s brother, Everett
(now acting as a project manager) held at least two press meetings—perhaps more—to
build support. He announced that Walt Disney and Bing Crosby would build a $1.5
million sports complex in the center of Los Angeles—an undertaking so large it
would make “Madison Square Garden look like a two-reel picture made in Poverty
Row.” Hollywood Sports Garden would host “virtually every type of sport—from
ice hockey to jai lai,” as well as present “rodeos,
circuses, expositions, [and] conventions.”
(Walt’s First Park, by Todd James Pierce & Paul F. Anderson)
December 8, Thursday. (11:30 am-6:30 pm) Rehearses for his Kraft Music Hall broadcast.
(7:00–8:00 p.m.) Bing’s Kraft Music Hall
show on NBC. Guests include Charles Farrell, Priscilla Lane and Florence George (soon to be
Everett Crosby’s new wife).
Bing Crosby initiates Priscilla Lane and Charles Farrell in the “Music
Hall.” Back for her second vocal appearance and an inevitable chat with Crosby,
is Florence George, blonde actress and singer…One of the most important movie discoveries
of the year, Priscilla Lane, is the youngest of the Lane Sisters. Her recent
pictures include “Cowboy from Brooklyn,” “Four Daughters” and “Brother Rat.”
Charles Farrell was one of the lading stars of the silent screen era.
(Wilmington Daily Press Journal, December 8, 1938)
December 9,
Friday. Bing records duets with Frances Langford of the Victor Herbert songs
“Gypsy Love Song” and “I’m Falling in Love with Someone” accompanied by Victor
Young and his Orchestra. The songs are released on a Decca album. Later, Bing acts as MC at the Shrine Auditorium in the
Los Angeles Examiner Christmas
benefit.
December 11, Sunday. Bing and Dixie attend the steeplechase races at Riviera Country Club.
December 12,
Monday. (9:00 a.m.–12:30 p.m.) Records four songs with John Scott Trotter and
his Orchestra in Hollywood.
Bing Crosby,
with his ever allied John Scott Trotter, likewise cuts up vocally on Decca 2257
with ‘Just a Kid Named Joe’ and ‘The Lonesome Road’ (Shilkret-Austin), now a
bit of a ballad classic, baritoned with distinction by Crosby.
(Variety, February 1, 1939)
December 14, Wednesday. Bing and Mrs. A. B. Chandler defeat the Hon. A. B. “Happy” Chandler
(Governor of Kentucky) and Bill Quigley in a golf match at Lakeside Country
Club. The “FORMAL WORLD PREVIEW” of 20th
Century-Fox’s Kentucky takes place at
the Carthay Circle Theater. A gala reception and
supper follows at the Trocadero. Director and Mrs.
David Butler entertain the Buddy DeSylvas, the Leo McCareys, Edmund Lowe, the William Conselmans,
Dixie and Bing Crosby and the Herbert Polesies.
December 15,
Thursday. (11:30 am - 6:45 pm) Rehearses for his Kraft Music Hall broadcast. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) Bing’s Kraft Music
Hall show on NBC. Guests include Leslie Howard, Jane Bryan, and Jan Smeterlin.
Leslie Howard, who
directed and starred in the screen adaptation of ‘Pygmalion’, in England,
Jan Smeterlin, Polish concert pianist and Jane Bryan of the screen will be
on the air with Bing Crosby at 7 pm over KFI. ‘Without You’- words and
music by Leslie Howard will be introduced by Crosby, along with several songs
from his new picture, ‘Paris Honeymoon’. They are, ‘The Funny Old
Hills’, ‘Joobalai’, ‘I Have Eyes’ and ‘You’re A Sweet Little Headache’.
(Hollywood Citizen News, 15th
December 1938)
Leslie Howard
had not worn make-up for many years, either on stage or in films, and this was
just one more black mark in his mind against appearing in “Gone with the Wind”.
Fortunately, he worked steadily on radio programmes and was enchanted when he
appeared on Bing Crosby’s show and Crosby sang a Howard composition called
‘Without You’, the music by Leslie and the words by Leslie and Doodie (his daughter). They were delighted with the song,
and, must I say, so was I. It sounded marvellous, played by the orchestra and
sung by Crosby.
(From A Quite
Remarkable Father by Leslie Ruth Howard)
December 17, Saturday. "Ligaroti" comes second in the San Francisco Handicap at Tanforan and Bing may well have been there.
December 19,
Monday. (9:05–11:50 a.m.) Records four more songs with John Scott Trotter and
his Orchestra in Hollywood.
“It’s a Lonely Trail” / “When
the Bloom Is on the Sage”
Bing Crosby with John Scott
Trotter Orchestra. Decca 2237. Tunes which stay—and Crosby sings in that warm
slow way which means all the more because he knows how to sing. “Lonely Trail”
is the better of the two tunes.
(Daily News [Los Angeles],
March 1, 1939)
December 22,
Thursday. (12:00-6:55 pm) Rehearses for his Kraft Music Hall broadcast. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) Bing hosts the Kraft
Music Hall again and the guests are The Kraft Choral Society, Basil Rathbone
and Benita Hume.
The Kraft Choral
Society makes one of its semi-annual appearances on the Bing Crosby – Bob Burns
program at 10 o’clock tonight via NBC and WMBG, and Basil Rathbone and Benita
Hume of the films will fill the guest spot. This is the Christmas program when
Bing sings “Adeste Fidelis” and “Silent Night.” It will be the third successive
year that he has sung these traditional melodies. Reservations for these
numbers are placed with the network music department a year ahead to insure that
they will be on the program. We might add that Crosby’s treatment of the carols
is the best on the air – by vote by listeners and radio editors from coast to
coast. The Choral Society, heard on this program each Easter and Christmas, is
a mixed chorus of 80 employees of the sponsor.
(The Times Dispatch, (Richmond, Virginia), December 22, 1938)
December 24, Saturday.
Golfs in the qualifying round of the Los Angeles Turf Club tournament
for those connected with the Santa Anita racetrack at the new county
course at Arcadia and has a 76.
December 25, Sunday
(8:15-8:30 a.m.). Live broadcast on NBC from Bing’s home as his children open
their presents. Ken Carpenter gives a commentary from behind the couch!
December 26,
Monday. Bing and Dixie are at the opening of Earl Carroll’s Theater-Restaurant,
a lavish new entertainment complex on Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood. Many
celebrities attend including Bob Hope, Jack Benny, Jimmy Durante,
and Errol Flynn.
December 29,
Thursday. (12:00-6:45 pm) Rehearses for his Kraft Music Hall broadcast. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) Bing’s Kraft
Music Hall show on NBC. Guests include Marie Wilson, Jack Carson, Louis Prima, and
Preston Foster.
Jack Carson and Marie
Wilson, of the film lots, and Louis Prima, torrid trumpeter, round out Crosby’s
guest list.
(Ventura County Star, 29th December 1938)
December 31,
Saturday. Opening of the season at Santa Anita Park. Bing and Dixie
attend as part of a crowd totalling 40,000. Bing and Bing and brother
Bob’s “You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby” becomes
the number one record in the charts.
During the year, Bing has had fifteen
songs that became chart hits.
Uncle Dick also taught me
that there are many rules to be followed in show business, but that sometimes
breaking those rules is just as important as keeping them to become a classic
performer. For every golden rule there is one waiting to be broken.
One day he sat me down and said in a very serious voice, “There
is one singer who has changed the face of this business, and you must watch
everything he does. His name is Bing Crosby, and he’s the boss.” From that day
on I studied Bing. I learned a lot watching him grow as a performer. He’s the
one who showed all of us how to do it. Bing’s early movies were overly
dramatic; he was almost too hot for the screen, but with experience, he started
relaxing. He’d just sit there on a stool and tell everybody to take it easy,
why not just go out fishing! He developed this real relaxed attitude that
appealed to everybody.
Bing was one of the first performers to effectively use the
microphone. Before the microphone, a singer had to sing very loudly in order
for his voice to hit the back of the hall or, as Rudy Vallee
is classically known for, he would use a cardboard megaphone to amplify the
sound. Because of the microphone, Bing was able to relax his voice. There was
no longer any need for operatics, and he was able to
pioneer the art of intimate singing, which we call crooning. He developed a
psychological style that got right under your skin. This was a revelation for
singers, and Bing was the most popular singer of all time, bigger than Elvis
and the Beatles combined.
(Tony Bennett, writing in his
book, The Good Life, page 37)
January 2, Monday. "Ligaroti" comes second in the $10,000 New Year Handicap at Santa Anita.
January 5,
Thursday. (11:15 am.-6:45 pm) Rehearses for his Kraft Music Hall broadcast. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) Bing’s Kraft
Music Hall show is broadcast from NBC Studio B in Hollywood. Guests include Alice Ehlers, Preston Foster and Roland Young.
Roland Young, one of the Music Hall’s favorite alumni, drops around to
the campus to visit Bing Crosby and Bob Burns, along with Preston Foster, of
the sound stages, Alice Ehlers, one of the country’s best known virtuosos on
one of its least known musical instruments – the harpsichord, during the “Music
Hall” broadcast to be heard over WSB at 9 o’clock tonight.
(The Atlanta Constitution, January 5, 1939)
January 7, Saturday. Bing and Dixie attend the races at Santa Anita and go on to the Cocoanut Grove with Lin Howard and Bobbie Mullineaux.
January 8,
Sunday. Starting at 12:50 p.m., Bing and Bob Hope play in a featured golf match during the Los Angeles Open Golf
Tournament at Griffith Park. Bing and Peggy Graham tie with Bob and Marjorie Ferrie
in a close game after 15 holes. Later, Bing acts as honorary referee at the box lacrosse games at the Olympic Auditorium.
January 12,
Thursday. (11:00 am-6:30 pm) Rehearses for his Kraft Music Hall broadcast. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) Bing hosts the Kraft
Music Hall show. Guests include Grete Stueckgold, Spring Byington, and
Wayne Morris.
Grete Stueckgold,
noted singer, Spring Byington, character actress and Wayne Morris, recent
bridegroom, will be on the air with Bing Crosby and Bob Burns at 7 over
KFI. Miss Byington is the mother in ‘The Jones Family’
series.
(Hollywood Citizen News, 12th
January 1939)
January 13–March 7. Films East Side of Heaven with
Joan Blondell, Mischa Auer,
Irene Hervey, and C. Aubrey Smith. The film is
directed by David Butler with Charles Previn as musical director. This is
another independent production in which Bing has a financial interest in 50
percent of the profits. The film is released through Universal Pictures.
East Side of Heaven was good fun under the expansive aegis of D. Wingate
Butler. Never engaged in a more pleasant and, I hope, profitable enterprise.
The budget was astonishingly low and, if John Public takes to the picture
favorably, we’re a cinch to make a meg or two.
(Bing Crosby, in a letter to
Johnny Mercer dated April 13, 1939)
Bing’s usual routine was in
no way hindered by the six days per week shooting schedule – a phenomenon no
less remarkable for being absolutely typical. Each week he produced an hour
program for Kraft Music Hall,
requiring his presence at two-hour rehearsals on Wednesdays at 3:30 and
seven-and-a-half-hour rehearsals on Thursdays at 11:30, followed at 7:00 by the
broadcast, after which he ate at the Universal commissary and worked all night,
reporting again on Friday morning.
(Gary Giddins, Bing Crosby, A Pocketful of Dreams, The
Early Years, 1903-1940, page 527)
January (undated). After the races at Santa Anita, Bing and Dixie go to the Club 17 with
Rita and Eddie Lowe and Lindsay Howard. Joe Frisco entertains.
January 19,
Thursday. (10:45 am-6:50 pm) Rehearses for his Kraft Music Hall broadcast. (7:00–8:00 p.m.) Bing’s Kraft
Music Hall show on NBC. Guests include Emanuel Feuermann, F. Chase Taylor and Anita Louise.
Bing
Crosby and Bob Burns will team up to confuse Colonel Lemuel Q. Stoopnagle when
that old hand at confusing turns up as a guest of the “Music Hall” program to
be heard over WSB at 9 o’clock tonight. Other guests to be heard on the full
hour show include Anita Louise, motion picture leading lady, and Emanuel
Feuermann, distinguished cellist.
(The Atlanta Constitution, January 19, 1939)