BING: AN IRISH HERO

Somebody just told me Bing Crosby was jailed for drunk driving in 1929. Right here in Hollywood even. I had no idea. 1929 was the middle of Prohibition. And Hollywood had been a dry town to begin with, before the movies came. So they hauled him in. They wouldn’t have dared a decade later, but this was 1929, and Bing was still a jazz singer then, and cops didn’t particularly like jazz singers. Or jazz trumpeters…the LAPD busted Louis Armstrong for marijuana possession a couple years later, in 1931. Vice cops were busy saving the city back then. They knew about Bing’s drinking back then. Who didn’t? But did they know that Bing and Louis would hang out smoking reefer in Chicago just a bit before? Probably not. That was a secret.

We didn’t know it, not in our family. Along with Jack Kennedy (or simply Jack), Bing Crosby (simply Bing) were icons in our house. Jesus and Jack on the wall, Bing on the Hi Fi. We didn’t know about the jailed for drunk driving, and we certainly know that he’d been a viper, getting high and cracking wise and singing with Satchmo…but we knew generally that he was quite the heller in his young days. That was a good thing, being quite the heller in your young days. It was expected. A drunk driving bust would have been perfectly understandable. Besides, the cops probably set him up anyway. That’s what we would have said. I don’t believe he was set up. I just think he was drunk. Bad luck. Somebody smacked into his car. Rear ended him. What can ya do? Looked it up–he was busted on Hollywood Blvd right there in front of the Roosevelt Hotel. No doubt I’ll think of that now every time I pass .Every time.

My mother called me the day he died. Bing died she said. It was like losing a grandfather’s brother, a relation you never saw in person, but knew all about. When my grandmother told my grandfather that Bing had died, my grandfather went pale. You aren’t gonna die on me too now, she asked. He recovered. No, No, I’m not going anywhere. But he did not long after.


There’s never been Irish Americans as important to American Irishmen since Jack and Bing. Jack’s story is too sad for words (and Bobby’s even sadder), but Bing’s ended just right. That was a great game, fellas. And it was.

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BING AND HIS SPECIAL CAUSES

A letter from Bing Crosby to Archbishop John Charles McQuaid appealing for nurses for his new US hospital is just one of the fascinating artefacts that will be on exhibition at the Archdiocese of Dublin as part of this year’s Culture Night.

The American singer and actor won an Oscar for his performance as Father Chuck O’Malley in 1944 but he was also a practising Catholic and active care-giver in real life. One of his projects involved the building of a hospital in Sacremento, California but his “efforts to find someone to staff the hospital have been futile”, he wrote. In the letter sent in 1961, he asked the Archbishop about the “possibility of getting some Sisters from Ireland to come and operate the hospital.” The document will be on display along with many other historical items as part of the annual Culture Night, Dublin Diocesan Archivist Noelle Dowling told Independent.ie. It is the first time that the Clonliffe-based seminary is participating in Culture Night celebrations, with rooms at the Holy Cross College hosting a presentation of 20th Century religious art and related manuscripts. Another manuscript on display at the Dublin Diocese – which is one of the largest archives in the country - is a parchment issued by the then Archbishop of Dublin, Hugh Curwen, in 1558. “Archbishop Curwen had expressed his approval of the marriage of Henry VIII to Ann Boleyn and then later declared himself a Protestant,” said Ms Dowling. Ms Dowling, who has been working with the Dublin diocesan archive for over eight years, has also done significant work in uncovering a large amount of documents chronicling the role of the Catholic Church in the 1913 Lockout dispute. “Some of the work that was being carried out quietly to help those families and children in need at the time may not already be known,” she said, adding she hoped this exhibition will give the public a more balanced perspective. One such document highlights the efforts of women during the strikes, their images likened to “pictures from the French Revolution”. And while the Church’s part in the dock strike has always been somewhat controversial, a letter from Archbishop Walsh, Archbishop of Dublin at the time, indicates his intention to stop a Dublin woman from raising money to deport children of poor Dublin families to the UK. Now in its eighth year, Culture Night aims to offer “a myriad of cultural possibilities” as more than 190 organisations across 34 towns and cities in Ireland take part to bring their hidden ‘treasures’ to the public. Most participating venues taking part will be open 5pm-11pm and all events as part of Culture Night are free of charge... SOURCE