They had four sons: Gary, twins Dennis and Phillip, and Lindsay. [121], Following his recovery from a life-threatening fungal infection in his right lung in January 1974, Crosby emerged from semi-retirement to start a new spate of albums and concerts. I think it all got a little out of hand. All the other artists signed to Decca after Bing did. * Live Theater * Concerts * Films * Events www.bingcrosbytheater.com Established in 1915. Today they wouldn't seem very off-color, but things were different on radio then. 15 Minutes with Bing Crosby, his nationwide solo radio debut, began broadcasting on September 2, 1931. [62] The single "White Christmas" sold over 50 million copies according to Guinness World Records. As a young man in 1925, Bing took his love for the stage to the Clemmer Theater in Spokane, where he worked providing musical entertainment during intermission. His great popularity throughout the continent led other African singers to emulate him, including Masuka, Dolly Rathebe, and Mriam Makeba, known locally as "The Bing Crosby of Africa. ", Smith, Anthony B. The following year, Crosby and Hope reunited for one more Road movie, The Road to Hong Kong, which teamed them up with the much younger Joan Collins and Peter Sellers. bing!, and I would let him have it again, and then as his friends came to his rescue, shooting as they came, I would shout bing! [104], After Crosby's death, his eldest son, Gary, wrote a highly critical memoir, Going My Own Way (1983), depicting his father as cruel, cold, remote, and physically and psychologically abusive. Thus the laugh-track was born. Keyword. The two Crosby families gave him countless grandchildren, including another Bing Crosby who was bestowed with his grandfather's name but never fell to the perils of addiction. "The Salt Lake City Office has developed information indicating that Moe Dalitz received an invitation to join a deer hunting party at Bing Crosby's Elko, Nevada, ranch, together with the crooner, his Las Vegas dentist and several business associates." Crosby was a fan of thoroughbred horse racing and bought his first racehorse in 1935. His efforts to cure her with the help of specialists failed. [64] His most popular film, White Christmas, grossed $30 million in 1954 ($303 million in current value). Mullin had not yet succeeded with videotape, so Crosby filmed the series of 26-minute shows at the Hal Roach Studios, and the "telefilms" were syndicated to individual television stations. "[45] "Nine out of ten singers and bandleaders listen to Crosby's broadcasts each Thursday night and follow his lead. Now the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, the tournament is a staple of the PGA Tour, having featured Hollywood stars and other celebrities. They've been living in their Holmby Hills home for ten years that's a lot of memories. As minor parts of The Syncopation Idea Crosby and Rinker started to develop as entertainers. She also appeared in the 1989 film adaptation of Stephen King's novel Pet Sematary. She, too, was in love with an older married man who was quite as famous as Gary [Cooper]. "My son, Nicholas, and daughter, Thea, sing and play White Christmas on the piano for everyone," says Harry, who lives in New York. I needed something to lift my spirits. 3 Beds. The series of 26-minute shows was filmed at Hal Roach Studios rather than performed live on the air. [78], With Frank Sinatra, Crosby was one of the principal backers for the United Western Recorders studio complex in Los Angeles.[79]. He made a fortune from the Minute Maid Orange Juice Corporation, in which he was a principal stockholder.[73]. They each earned $75 a week. On August 12, 1938, the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club hosted a $25,000 winner-take-all match race won by Charles S. Howard's Seabiscuit over Binglin's horse Ligaroti. Belmont, California: Wadsworth. We had our differences, but we were raised to respect our parents, to do what they said. White Christmas is a 1954 American musical film directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney, and Vera-Ellen. He matured as a performer and was in demand as a solo singer.[40]. During World War II, Crosby made live appearances before American troops who had been fighting in the European Theater. [3][4][5], His early career coincided with recording innovations that allowed him to develop an intimate singing style that influenced many male singers who followed, such as Frank Sinatra,[6] Perry Como, Dean Martin, Dick Haymes, Elvis Presley, and John Lennon. [75][76][77] He used his clout, both professionally and financially, for innovations in audio. Amateur in 1981 at age 19, becoming the youngest winner in the history of that event at the time. The Fireside Theater (1950) was his first television production. He added, "We were brought up that way. The Crosby Family home. A survey in 2000 found that with 1,077,900,000 movie tickets sold, Crosby was the third most popular actor of all time, behind Clark Gable (1,168,300,000) and John Wayne (1,114,000,000). Mullin continued to work for Crosby to develop a videotape recorder (VTR). [83] Charles' son, Lindsay C. Howard, became one of Crosby's closest friends; Crosby named his son Lindsay after him, and would purchase his 40-room Hillsborough, California estate from Lindsay in 1965. [52] Paul Whiteman's hiring of Crosby, with phrasing that echoed jazz, particularly his bandmate Bix Beiderbecke's trumpet, helped bring the genre to a wider audience. Amateur championships, was a five-time club champion at Lakeside Golf Club in Hollywood, and once made a hole-in-one on the 16th hole at Cypress Point. Crosby won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in Going My Way (1944) and was nominated for its sequel, The Bells of St. Mary's (1945), opposite Ingrid Bergman, becoming the first of six actors to be nominated twice for playing the same character. Robert Trachtenberg, a documentary expert, claimed they might have suffered fetal alcohol syndrome. Bing's second and third children were twin boys, Dennis and Phillip Crosby. Amateur Championship", "Bing Crosby:Day by Day by Malcolm Macfarlane", "Call Me Lucky, autobiography by Bing Crosby", "Gary Giddins, Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams; The Early Years, 1903-1940", "The Bay Area Connection / Crosby and his family kept a low but friendly profile while living in Hillsborough", "Bing Crosby's Onetime Bay Area Home Hits the Market for $13.75 Million", "The Sad Ballad of Bing and His Boys Child Abuse, Kids & Family Life, Bing Crosby", Son of Crooner Apparently Kills Self, Just Learned He Was Broke, "Steven Crosby interviewed for "Bing: Going My Way"(2003)", "Lindsay Crosby Suicide Laid to End of Inheritance Income", "Bing Crosby, 73, Dies in Madrid At Golf Course", "From the Archives: Bing Crosby Dies at 73 on Golf Course", "Memorial Rites Held for city favorite, Bing Crosby", "RIAA Searchable Database Crosby, Bing", Bing Crosby Sings with Al Jolson, Bob Hope, Dick Haymes and the Andrews Sisters, Bing Crosby Sings with Judy Garland, Mary Martin, Johnny Mercer, Bing Crosby Sings with Lionel Hampton, Eddie Heywood, Louis Jordan, Bing Crosby Sings the Song Hits from Broadway Shows, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Bing Crosby Sings Songs by George Gershwin, Selections from the Paramount Picture "Just for You", A Christmas Sing with Bing Around the World, Songs I Wish I Had Sung the First Time Around, Bing Crosby's Treasury The Songs I Love, Bing Crosby and The Columbus Boychoir Sing Family Christmas Favorites, Bing Crosby's Treasury - The Songs I Love (1968 version), Songs Bing Crosby recorded multiple times, National Board of Review Award for Best Actor, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bing_Crosby&oldid=1141959407, Burials at Holy Cross Cemetery, Culver City, Cecil B. DeMille Award Golden Globe winners, Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners, United Service Organizations entertainers, Wikipedia articles needing page number citations from September 2013, All Wikipedia articles written in American English, Short description is different from Wikidata, Wikipedia articles needing clarification from February 2022, TCMDb name template using non-numeric ID from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, "From Monday On" (1928), with Harry Barris and recorded with the, "What Price Lyrics?" Hear all surviving members of Crosby's immediate family his wife Kathryn, daughter. Age, Biography and Wiki. Eventually, Crosby became accomplished at the sport, at his best reaching a two handicap. He could do four shows a week, if he chose, and then take a month off. Records which he made ten years ago are selling better than ever before. At the end of the 20th century, TV Guide listed the Crosby-Bowie duet one of the 25 most memorable musical moments of 20th-century television. However, while Crosby can be called a jazz singer, he was not strictly only a jazz singer as he modeled the style and techniques to a broad scope of music that he performed, ranging from Jazz to Country to even such material as operetta arias. Without him, Jack Kapp wouldn't have had a chance in hell of making Decca work and the Great Depression would have wiped out phonograph records for good."[43]. [23][3] His father was of Scottish and English descent; an ancestor, Simon Crosby, emigrated from England to New England in the 1630s during the Puritan migration to New England. [68], Crosby's popularity around the world was such that Dorothy Masuka, the best-selling African recording artist, stated that, "Only Bing Crosby the famous American crooner sold more records than me in Africa." Bing Crosby was born Harry Lillis Crosby in Tacoma, Washington, on May 3, 1903. She was the first wife of singer Bing Crosby . Throughout his career, Crosby often credited Bailey for getting him his first important job in the entertainment business. "[69], Presenter Mike Douglas commented in a 1975 interview, "During my days in the Navy in World War II, I remember walking the streets of Calcutta, India, on the coast; it was a lonely night, so far from my home and from my new wife, Gen. It was one of the magnetic tape recorders that BASF and AEG had built in Germany starting in 1935. His exceptional career took up most of his time and focus. However, he. The boys were born on July 13, 1934, in Los Angeles. "[109], The author of the most recent biography on Bing Crosby, Gary Giddins, claims that Gary Crosby's memoir is not reliable on many instances and cannot be trusted on the abuse stories. [78] In 1948, the second season of Philco shows was recorded with the Ampex Model 200A and Scotch 111 tape from 3M. After the war, the event resumed play in 1947 on golf courses in Pebble Beach, where it has been played ever since. He got his name from a comic strip in The Spokesman-Review: Born Harry Lillis Crosby in Tacoma, Bing moved with his family to . All that matters to him is the words, and that's the only thing that ought to for you, too. "[45][46], The biggest hit song of Crosby's career was his recording of Irving Berlin's "White Christmas", which he introduced on a Christmas Day radio broadcast in 1941. [111] However, after the book was published, Lindsay addressed the abuse claims and what the media had made out of them: He was a good father. A landmark piece of Peninsula property is on the sales block with the listing of Bing Crosby's family home in Hillsborough for $13.75 million. From the mid-1950s, Bing was more comfortable in a bass range while maintaining a baritone quality, with the best octave being G to G, or even F to F. In a recording he made of 'Dardanella' with Louis Armstrong in 1960, he attacks lightly and easily on a low E flat. (The live production of radio shows was also reinforced by the musicians' union and ASCAP, which wanted to ensure continued work for their members.) [109] "Lindsay Crosby supported his brother (Gary) at the time of its publication but had a tempered view of its revelations. Image Credit: Nbc Tv/Kobal/Shutterstock. However, the addition of pianist and aspiring songwriter Harry Barris made the difference, and The Rhythm Boys were born. Mary. Cohn gave in; Armstrong's musical scenes and comic dialogue extended his influence to the silver screen, creating more opportunities for him and other African Americans to appear in future films. Nathaniel Crosby, Crosby's younger son from his second marriage, is a former high-level golfer who won the U.S. [59] In 1960 Crosby was honored as "First Citizen of Record Industry" based on having sold 200 million discs. The nation's appetite for Crosby's voice and personality appears insatiable. [106] This house served as a setting for some of the family's Minute Maid orange juice television commercials. Above, Crosby appears in Los Angeles on September . He did make up for it at the end of the week by catching a number of sea trout. Crosby asked Harry Cohn, but Cohn had no desire to pay for the flight or to meet Armstrong's "crude, mob-linked but devoted manager, Joe Glaser". In 1923, Crosby was invited to join a new band composed of high-school students a few years younger than himself. [3] However, Crosby's FBI files had already been published in 1992 and provide no indication that Crosby had ties to the Mafia except for one major, but accidental encounter in Chicago in 1929 which is not mentioned in the files, but is told by Crosby himself in his as-told-to autobiography Call Me Lucky. We couldn't use the jokes, but Bill asked us to save the laughs. Dave Crosby Popularity Most Popular #18311 In this exclusive clip, Bing Crosby's family reflects on his life as a performer and family man. He was already spending much time on the golf course while touring the country in a vaudeville act or with Paul Whiteman's orchestra in the mid to late 1920s. If we didn't, we got punished. ABC offered Crosby $30,000 per week to produce a recorded show every Wednesday that would be sponsored by Philco. [2] He made over 70 feature films and recorded more than 1,600 songs. Bob Hope memorably devoted one of his monthly NBC specials to his long intermittent partnership with Crosby titled "On the Road With Bing". [91], Crosby was married twice. Harry Lillis Crosby (Der Bingle, The old groaner) was born on 2 May, 1903 in Tacoma, Washington, USA, is a Soundtrack, Actor, Producer. In his heyday, Crosby attributed his unique nickname of. Harry Crosby was 19 when his father, Bing, died in 1977. . Crosby also ensured behind the scenes that Armstrong received equal billing with his white co-stars. While in the UK, Crosby recorded his final album, Seasons, and his final TV Christmas special with guest David Bowie on September 11 (which aired a little over a month after Crosby's death). [89] In 1978, he and Bob Hope were voted the Bob Jones Award, the highest honor given by the United States Golf Association in recognition of distinguished sportsmanship. And his star is still in the ascendant. . But his chart success remains impressive: 396 chart singles, including roughly 41 number 1 hits. Crosby's vocal style helped take popular singing beyond the "belting" associated with Al Jolson and Billy Murray, who had been obligated to reach the back seats in New York theaters without the aid of a microphone.