BING: THE FINAL CHAPTER

Bing's recording output began diminishing dramatically in the late 1960s. From 1969 through 1974 he recorded only two albums. One was a Christmas album ("A Time to be Jolly") and the other was with Count Basie and his orchestra ("Bing 'n' Basie"). Moreover, by the end of 1973 Bing was not well. He suffered from chest pains and fever. On New Year's Eve he felt so ill that he consented to be hospitalized. Both Bing and Kathryn thought he had lung cancer. On Jan. 13 a tumor the size of a small orange was removed from Bing's left lung. But the tumor was not cancerous. It was the result of a rare fungal infection that Bing had probably picked up on an overseas safari the previous year.

Bing's recovery was slow, but when he did recover he returned with a renewed vigor. He recorded 10 albums the last three years of his life and began performing live concerts again, which he had not done since World War II. During one of these concerts, a nationally-televised celebration of his 50th anniversary in show business in March 1977, Bing fell backwards into an orchestra pit and ruptured a disc in his back. He was hospitalized for a month, but in August resumed a hectic schedule. He flew to Oslo, Norway, to do a concert, and then to England to tape his Christmas special, "Bing Crosby's Merry Olde Christmas," which included Twiggy and David Bowie as guests. On Sept. 12-14 he recorded his final album, "Seasons," with the Pete Moore Orchestra.

Bing's next stop was a two-week engagement at the London Palladium with his family, comedian Ted Rogers and Rosemary Clooney. Then he and his troup moved on to Brighton where they performed their final concert on Oct. 10 to a sold-out theatre. The next day he dropped by the BBC studios as a guest on the Alan Dell radio show. Here he sang 8 songs with the Gordon Rose Orchestra. His last song was the nostalgic "Once in a While." BBC Records later released these recordings on disc, "Bing: The Final Chapter" (BBC-22398). Later that day Bing posed for pictures for his "Seasons" album, including the photo shown here. The next day Bing flew to Spain to play golf...

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GRANDSON OF BING HELPS DRUG ADDICTS

When people of a certain age hear the name Bing Crosby, what comes to mind is the multi-talented singer and actor with the greasy slicked back blond hair and an uncanny ability to land roles in movies between 1930 and 1960, especially the so-called “road pictures” with comedian and lifelong foil Bob Hope.

Bing Crosby had two families which gave him countless grandchildren, including another Bing Crosby who was bestowed with his grandfather’s name but never fell to the perils of addiction. However, he is a Crosby who decided to tackle the issue that caused his family and millions of other families a tremendous amount of pain.

“Alcoholism has run in my family for as long as I can recall,” he says. “Being the grandson of Bing Crosby, I’ve heard stories of how Bing, in his earlier years, drank a lot, which led into his wife Dixie. I heard she became an alcoholic because of him which led to her ovarian cancer.”

The younger Bing Crosby also recalls having friendships that were affected by addiction and talks about how many people he grew up with had substance abuse problems. One friend became addicted to pills for 10 years and spent a lot of his life in and out of jail. Crosby says another friend shot himself.

Yet, it was someone else who has been sober for 30 years that ultimately drove Crosby to South County’s New Method Wellness Center.

“It was my wife,” he says. “It was her dream to always own a rehab center. I kind of just tagged along for the ride, but now that I’ve got into it, it’s one of the best jobs I’ve ever had. The feeling you get helping others; there’s no better feeling than hearing the story of someone who lost everything and is back on track, back with their kids, back with their wives. It’s an unbelievable feeling. Once you feel that, it gets you.”

Ed and Susie Hopsom-Blum opened the clinic in 2006, and Crosby’s wife Deanna became the clinical director there. After her hiring, an opportunity arose for Crosby to become a New Method Wellness Center business partner, and he says he couldn’t turn his back on it considering his family’s and friends’ histories as substance abusers.

The facility began operating in the big Chase building in Mission Viejo, where about eight patients a month were served, but it later relocated to San Juan Capistrano, where 40 to 50 patients a month are being treated. Various communal homes house patients in the rehab so that their environment maintains the same atmosphere and doesn’t waver from the goal that everyone has toward recovery. From the live-in homes, where patients are separated by gender, they are dropped off every morning at the Wellness Center, where they spend days doing activities, building relationships and learn to live sober lives.

Center activities revolve around therapy: not only traditional, one-on-one talk therapy but various forms of cognitive, emotional, psychological, holistic, art-based and environmental therapies.

New Method also provides physical therapy such as yoga or, in the great outdoors, surfing, horseback riding, which is referred to equine therapy, and wilderness therapy. These types of activities aim to produce natural endorphins that are vital to recovery because they bring the same joy that getting high brings, except in a natural and safe way.

The center is still expanding as another building adjacent to the one they’re using now was acquired. They plan on moving the clinical part of the center to the new building and keeping the administrative functions in the one being used now.

“We’re just going to keep rolling and see what comes next,” Crosby says. “Our next event we have is an alumni picnic in December. All of our alumni will come, we’ll get a taco truck, we’ll play games and have fun at the beach.”

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BING, SINATRA, AND JFK

This article was written by the great Bing Crosby historian Steve Lewis. It is much too good for something I would write. Please see the link to Steve's article and his website below...

In 1962 President Kennedy planned a weekend trip to Palm Springs, California, where he would stay at the residence of Frank Sinatra from March 24-26. As the weekend approached, Bobby Kennedy, the President's brother and attorney general, became concerned about Sinatra's extensive links to organized crime. He persuaded the President to cancel his stay with Sinatra, and Peter Lawford was given the assignment of informing Sinatra. Lawford  was both a member of Sinatra's Rat Pack and a Kennedy relative by marriage. When Bobby asked Lawford to inform Sinatra of the President's change in plans, Peter pleaded with Bobby to reconsider. The attorney general was adamant, however, that the President could not stay at the house of a man who also played host to hoodlums.

Lawford told Sinatra biographer Kitty Kelley: "It fell to me to break the news to Frank, and I was frankly scared. When I rang the President I said that Frank expected him to stay at the Sinatra compound, and anything less than his presence there was going to be tough to explain. It had been kind of a running joke with all of us in the family that Frank was building up his Palm Springs house for just such a trip by the President, adding cottages for Jack and the Secret Service, putting in 25 extra phone lines, installing enough cable to accommodate teletype facilities, plus a switchboard and building a heliport. He even erected a flagpole for the Presidential flag after he saw the one flying over the Kennedy compound in Hyannisport. No one asked Frank to do any of this, but he really expected his place to be the President's Western White House."

"When Jack called me, he said that as President he just couldn't stay at Frank's and sleep in the same bed that [Sam] Giancana or any other hood had slept in. 'You can handle it, Petah,' he said to me."

Lawford continued, "I made a few calls but in the end it was Chris Dumphy, a big Republican from Florida, who arranged everything at Bing Crosby's house for him. The Secret Service stayed next door at Jimmy Van Heusen's, and Frank didn't speak to him for weeks over that one, but I was the one who really took the brunt of it. He felt that I was responsible for setting Jack up to stay at Bing's -- Bing Crosby, of all people -- the other singer and a Republican to boot. Well, Frank never forgave me. He cut me off like that -- just like that."

Frank could not believe what Lawford told him: that the President was coming to Palm Springs but would stay at Bing Crosby's Rancho Mirage residence near Palm Springs because Bobby didn't want him to stay with Frank. Frank called the attorney general in Washington. Bob explained it was impossible for the President to stay at his house because of the disreputable people who had been his houseguests.

"Frank was livid," said Peter. "He called Bobby every name in the book, and then rang me up and reamed me out again. He was quite unreasonable, irrational, really. George Jacobs told me later that when he got off the phone, he went outside with a sledgehammer and started chopping up the concrete landing pad of his heliport. He was in a frenzy."

When the President arrived at the Crosby home, he called Sinatra to smooth things out and to invite him for a visit to Bing's place. Sinatra declined, saying he had to leave for Los Angeles. After the conversation, the President told Lawford, "He's pretty upset, but I told him not to blame you because you didn't have anything to do with it. It was simply a matter of security. The Secret Service thought Crosby's place afforded better security."

Lawford told Kelley: "That's the excuse we used -- security -- and we blamed it all on the Secret Service. We'd worked it out beforehand, but Frank didn't buy that for a minute, and, with a couple of exceptions, he never spoke to me again. He cut me out of all the movies we were set to make together -- Robin and the 7 Hoods, 4 for Texas -- and turned Dean [Martin] and Sammy [Davis] and Joey [Bishop] against me as well."

Not only did Sinatra cut Lawford from his upcoming Rat Pack movies, he rubbed salt in his wounds by persuading Bing Crosby to play the role of Alan A. Dale intended for Lawford in Robin and the 7 Hoods!

The President used his stay at Bing's home to party with Hollywood celebrities. Bing was not present. Mimi Alford, a White House "intern" and presidential playmate, recalled the events in her 2012 book:
"The next day, we headed out to Bing Crosby's house in Palm Springs, where a large festive crowd -- many from the entertainment industry -- had gathered to greet President Kennedy. I felt like I'd been admitted into some wonderful, secret club.

But then the evening turned into a nightmare.

Crosby's house was a modern, sprawling single-story ranch in the desert, and the party was raucous. Compared to what I'd seen in Washington, this was another planet. There was a large group of people, a fast Hollywood crowd, hovering around the President, who was, as always, the center of attention. I was sitting next to him in the living room when a handful of yellow capsules -- most likely amyl nitrite, commonly known then as poppers -- was offered up by one of the guests. The President asked me if I wanted to try the drug, which stimulated the heart but also purportedly enhanced sex. I said no, but he just went ahead and popped the capsule and held it under my nose. (The President, with all his ailments, was accustomed to taking many medications and was reported to rely on amphetamines for energy. But he didn't use the drug himself that evening: I was the guinea pig.) Within minutes of inhaling the powder, my heart started racing and my hands began to tremble. This was a new sensation, and it frightened me. I panicked and ran crying from the room, praying that it would end soon, that I wasn't about to have a heart attack. Dave Powers, bless him, ran after me and escorted me to a quiet corner in the back of the house, where he sat with me for more than an hour until the effects of the drug wore off.

I didn't spend that night with President Kennedy. He was staying in a suite, now known as the Kennedy Wing, with its own private entrance on one side of the Crosby property. Was he alone? I do not know. For the first and only time since I met him, I was relieved not to see him -- and fell asleep in one of the guest rooms." (Alford, pages 80-81)JFK did not use Alford to satisfy his sexual needs at the Crosby mansion because he had a bigger conquest in mind -- Marilyn Monroe, who was an overnight guest. According to Monroe's biographer Donald Spoto, Monroe called her personal masseur, the actor Ralph Roberts, from the same bedroom where JFK was staying at Crosby's house. Roberts, JFK and Monroe then had a brief conversation about the President's back problems. Spoto later interviewed the masseur, who said Monroe told him that weekend at the Crosby home was her only sexual contact with the president. (Spoto, pages 487-505)

President Kennedy stayed one more time, Sept. 28-29, 1963, at Bing's Palm Springs home, after which he phoned Bing to thank him for the use of his home. Less than 2 months later the President was murdered in Dallas, Texas...

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PHOTOS OF THE DAY: MORE BALD BING

My daughter is six, and I have her fascinated with Bing Crosby. Afterall, she is named after the Bing song "I Love You. Samantha" from 1956's High Society. For some reason though she loves to look at pictures of Bing without his toupee. I originally did a photo story on Bing's baldness in 2011, which is one of the most popular photo blog entries I've done. So I combed my photos and found some more pics of a bald Bing Crosby...

Bing with Judy Garland

Bing with Grace Kelly

Bing with wife Dixie Lee

One of Bing's last photos on the day he died

You can see the original post here: PHOTOS OF THE DAY: A BALD BING

BING AND HIS GOLDEN GLOBE

Beginning in 1952 when the Cecil B. deMille Award was presented to its namesake visionary director, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association has awarded its most prestigious prize 66 times. From Walt Disney to Bette Davis, Elizabeth Taylor to Steven Spielberg and 62 others, the deMille has gone to luminaries – actors, directors, producers – who have left an indelible mark on Hollywood. Sometimes mistaken with a career achievement award, per HFPA statute, the deMille is more precisely bestowed for “outstanding contributions to the world of entertainment”. In this series, HFPA cognoscente and former president Phil Berk profilesdeMille laureates through the years.

He was the personification of the laidback, the unflappable, Mr. Cool.

For twenty years Bing Crosby was the world’s most popular actor, even during World War II, when he was affectionately known as Der Bingle by the Germans, a name that caught on in the States once the war ended.

But long before he received his Cecil B deMille award in 1960 Crosby had proved himself as both a crooner and an actor without peer.

He started out as part of a singing trio but eventually went solo with big bands: Paul Whiteman and Jimmy Dorsey. For decades he was the biggest name in music and in one year commanded 60% of all record sales. In fact, his “White Christmas” remains the biggest selling single of all time.

He soon became a fixture in radio and had the top-rated shows on the airways for decades. He even conquered television in later years.

But it was his film career that earned him cultural immortality. His first feature-film role, after having done a number of short subjects, was The Big Broadcast for which he was given top billing. He continued to get top billing at Paramount for 30 years. (The one exception was playing opposite William Randolph Hearst’s mistress Marion Davies in his second feature Going Hollywood.)

Among actresses acquiescing to second billing in those early movies were Joan Bennett, Carole Lombard, Miriam Hopkins, Merle Oberon, Ethel Merman, and Frances Farmer. During his first decade between 1933 to 1939, he starred in twenty movies, all box office successes. The ’40s, however, were his greatest years. In 1940 he made the first of his now-classic road movies, The Road to Morocco, with Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour. It was so successful the second, Road to Zanzibar, followed the next year. Even today these road movies are considered worthy successors to the Marx Brothers classics.

By 1943 he was the world’s most popular actor and in fact held that title for five years as Hollywood’s top box office draw. During that period he experienced his first blockbuster and first collaboration with Irving Berlin: Holiday Inn. This time his second-billed costar was Fred Astaire.

But it was Going My Way, in 1944, which established him as a Hollywood icon, winning him a Best Actor Academy Award. After that, his reputation was sealed.

The following year, in a rare loan out to RKO. he reprised his role of Father O’Malley in The Bells of St Mary’s opposite Ingrid Bergman. The two became the world’s most popular actors, and the film the year’s biggest box office hit. Unfortunately Paramount didn’t know what to do with him. He was assigned top directors (Billy Wilder, Frank Capra) but nothing really clicked, although Capra’s Riding High is a fun ride. His last commercial success for Paramount was Irving Berlin’s White Christmas which was 1954’s biggest moneymaker.

But then he was given the dramatic role of his career playing the alcoholic husband in The Country Girl. Grace Kelly, playing his long-suffering wife, got all the plaudits but it was Crosby who gives the film’s great performance. She won the Best Actress in a Motion Picture Golden Globe, Crosby wasn’t nominated.

Six years later he received his first Hollywood Foreign Press honor, the Cecil B. deMille Award for lifetime achievement. He was 57 at the time.

Country Girl was Crosby’s swansong at Paramount and from then on he freelanced. The highlight of this period was Cole Porter’s High Society for MGM, teaming him for the first time with fellow crooner Frank Sinatra. Grace Kelly was again his costar. During the filming, he pursued her ardently, but she ran off and married Prince Rainier ending her Hollywood career.

Which segues into the only blot on his hallowed career, his conduct as a husband and father. He was married to singer Dixie Lee for over 20 years before her death. She was an alcoholic and the mother of his four sons. For much of that time, they were estranged but as a good Catholic, he stayed by her side. Their eldest son Gary wrote an autobiography detailing the cruel punishments inflicted upon him by his father. Despite his high expectations, none of his kids amounted to much, although Gary had a short career as a juvenile in teenage movies.

After Dixie died Crosby married actress Kathryn Grant, 30 years his junior. They had three children.

Sadly, Crosby died suddenly on a golf course in Spain at age 74.

As a Hollywood icon, he has few equals...

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BING'S TEN FAVORITE PERFORMERS - PART TWO

Here are the rest of Bing Crosby's choices for his favorite performers that he picked in 1977...

6. LOUIS ARMSTRONG (1901-1971)
Bing once said “I’m proud to acknowledge my debt to the ‘Reverend Satchelmouth’ … He is the beginning and the end of music in America”

It is impossible to overstate the influence and importance of Louis Armstrong to the development of jazz and popular music. Indeed, it is the subject of books and documentaries, not of blog entries. Such was Armstrong’s fame and incredible impact as a performer and musician, that I did find a surfeit of quotes by people much more qualified than I to add something meaningful to the dialogue about Armstrong’s legacy.

“(Armstrong was) the key creator of the mature working language of jazz. Three decades after his death and more than three-quarters of a century since his influence first began to spread, not a single musician who has mastered that language fails to make daily use, knowingly or unknowingly, of something that was invented by Louis Armstrong.” – Dan Morgenstern, Oxford Companion to Jazz

7. NAT “KING” COLE (1919-1965)
Nat “King” Cole remains one of the most beloved entertainers and recording artists of the 20th-century. He rose to fame as a jazz pianist in the 194os as the leader of the Nat “King” Cole Trio, before becoming one of the most successful singers of the 1950s and early-1960s and a cornerstone of Capitol Records roster. He died tragically from cancer at the age of 45 in 1965, but not before becoming the first black man to host a TV show and introducing a stunning string of hit songs, including “Straighten Up and Fly Right,” “When I Fall in Love,” “Too Young,” “Nature Boy,” “Route 66,” “L-O-V-E,” and “Unforgettable.”

8. MEL TORMÉ (1925-1999)
Mel Tormé was a jack of many trades but a master of them all: preeminent vocalist of standards (known as “The Velvet Fog”), composer (“The Christmas Song,” a.k.a. “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire”), musical arranger, actor, and author of five very well-written books.

9. JUDY GARLAND (1922-1969)
Judy Garland was a child prodigy who was performing from the time she could walk. So much has been written about Judy Garland that it is hard to separate fact from fiction. No matter what your feelings about the entertainer, one thing is certain: she meant (and to some extent, continues to mean) a great deal to many people. Though she never had the hip factor of a Sinatra, or the mystery of a Peggy Lee, Garland’s gifts were undeniable and. In terms of raw talent, Judy Garland was inarguably in the most elite group of all-time greats, an opinion shared by most all of her peers, including Mr. Crosby.

10. VICTOR BORGE (1909-2000)
Victor Borge is not well-remembered today, but the Danish comic, conductor, and pianist was a major star of radio and television. He lived a very long life and died in his 90s, after 75 years of entertaining. In addition to his musical accomplishments, he wrote several books and was a shrewd businessman. He was apparently responsible for popularizing rock Cornish game hens, a business in which he invested. Who knew?

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NEW CD: BING CROSBY - IMMERSED IN MR. MERCER'S VERSE

It is so nice that we are starting to see a few more new Bing CDs out there. Here is one where Bing sings Johnny Mercer.

You can purchase the CD through Amazon, and here are the track details. Some of the recordings are from radio, but I do not know which ones yet...

Track Listing

1. Mr. Gallagher and Mr. Shean
2.  I’m an Old Cowhand
3.  Too Marvellous for Words

4  .Bob White (Whatcha Gonna Swing Tonight?)

5.  You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby
6.  On Behalf of the Visiting Firemen
7.  Mister Meadowlark

8.  The Waiter and the Porter and the Upstairs Maid
9.  Dearly Beloved
10. Blues in the Night
11. Skylark
12. On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe

13. Accentuate the Positive
14. There’s a Fella Waiting in Poughkeepsie
15. The Yodel Blues
16. The Big Movie Show in the Sky
17. Autumn Leaves
18. Lazy Bones
19. In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening
20. The Glow Worm
21. P.S. I Love You
22. Jeepers Creepers
23. That Old Black Magic

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DIXIE LEE TO GET HISTORICAL MARKER

PRESS RELEASE - HARRIMAN NATIVE AND ACTRESS DIXIE LEE TO RECEIVE STATE HISTORICAL MARKER...

Harriman, Tennessee – The Tennessee Historical Commission recently approved an application to honor Harriman native and Actress of the Golden Age of Hollywood, Dixie Lee. Dixie was born in the Walnut Hill neighborhood in Harriman near the intersection of Oak and Maple Streets, where the marker will be installed later this year. Unfortunately, the modest wooden frame house that was located on the property was destroyed by fire in 1959. Dixie Lee was born on Nov. 4, 1909 as Wilma Winifred Wyatt, although she later claimed to have been born in 1911. Wilma was the youngest of three daughters born to East Tennessee natives, Evan Wyatt and Nora Scarborough Wyatt.

Throughout her youth her family moved several times due to her father’s career as an insurance agent, eventually ending up in Chicago, Illinois where Wilma entered and won an amateur singing contest at the Sherman Hotel in 1928. This led to her being offered a part in a Broadway play and ultimately to her being discovered by Fox Film Corporation. Her name was changed to “Dixie Lee” to avoid confusion with another actress with a similar name. She made her big screen debut in Fox’s Movietone Follies of 1929. She went on to have major and minor roles in at least 17 known films. In 1930, she met and married a little known up-and-coming crooner by the name of Harry Lillis Crosby, Jr., or “Bing Crosby” as he would later become known. She retired from acting in 1935, and helped Bing raise their 4 boys. She died on Nov. 1, 1952, from ovarian cancer. Over the years, she has been largely forgotten and become a footnote in her famous husband’s story.

However, this talented Harriman native will now be remembered for who she was and the talent she possessed. Details for a public dedication will be released later this year.

The City would like to thank Dixie Lee’s granddaughter in California and Chris Hammond from Powell, Tennessee without whom this application would not have been successful...

BING'S TEN FAVORITE PERFORMERS - PART ONE

Bing Crosby is often considered one of the greatest singers of all time. It is interesting as to who was some of his favorite performers.  Mr. Crosby contributed this list of his 10 favorite all-time performers to the first edition of The Book of Lists in 1977. As the years go by and some of these great artists fade from the collective consciousness, I think it important and well worth the time to use Mr. Crosby’s list as a reason to revisit their work. After all, these entertainers were the Jay Z and Katy Perry of their own time.

Crosby states: “These are not listed in order of preference, and include no actors, only performers. I could, of course, list hundreds more.”

1. AL JOLSON (1886-1950)
The cantor’s son was considered one of the greatest performers of the 20th-century. He was beloved by millions and a great influence on later performers like Judy Garland and Bing Crosby. In fact, in the 1930s he was the highest paid performer in the United States.

2. ETHEL WATERS (1896-1977)
Ethel Waters was one of the best-loved performers of the last century. A blues, jazz, and gospel vocalist who is associated with many standards, including “Am I Blue?,” “Dinah,” and “Stormy Weather” (a song later associated with Lena Horne). As an actress, she starred in many films including Cabin in the Sky (1942) and Pinky (1949), for which she became only the second African American woman nominated for an Oscar.

3. JAMES BARTON (1890-1962)
Barton is, perhaps, the most obscure performer on Mr. Crosby’s list. He was a lauded vaudevillian and star of film and television. He began in minstrel shows and, according to Wiki, his years working with black performers led him to becoming one of the first white jazz dancers in the country. He played the Palace Theater, the apex of vaudeville, eight times. He later became recognized as serious actor, performing on Broadway in Tobacco Road (1934) and The Iceman Cometh (1946).

Barton was featured as the emcee (and last dancer) in the 1929 Paramount short After Seven. The film also featured the Chick Webb Orchestra and Shorty George Snowden, whom I learned in my research was one of the most famous lindy hop dancers of the period.

4. FRANK SINATRA (1915-1998)
In his superb book Why Sinatra Matters (1998, Little, Brown and Company), Pete Hamill wrote:

“His finest accomplishment, of course, was the sound. The voice itself would evolve over the years form a violin to a viola to a cello, with a rich middle register and dark bottom tones. But it was a combination of voice, diction, attitude, and taste in music that produced the Sinatra sound. It remains unique. Sinatra created something that was not there before he arrived: an urban American voice.”

Of course Frank Sinatra remains one of the most admired, imitated, and absolutely essential performers of all-time. Even if he hadn’t presided over 20th-century popular culture so intensely and for so long—by the 1990s there were t-shirts that said, “It’s Sinatra’s World, We Just Live in It”—he would still have earned a place on this list by dint of his prolific body of work. From 1940s crooner to Oscar-winning actor, Sinatra was an entertainer par excellence and a uniquely American phenomena. His Capitol Records with arrangements by artists like Nelson Riddle, Billy May, and Gordon Jenkins, remain the high watermark of mid-century cool; a different kind of cool from the concurrent sound of rock ‘n roll, but in some ways more timeless.

5. LENA HORNE (1917-2010)
Lena Horne was many things: one of the biggest African American film stars of her generation, a sex symbol, a civil rights crusader, and one of the greatest singers of her time. Like Ethel Waters before her, she began as a Cotton Club dancer before transitioning to films. A victim of the intense racial politics of the mid-century, her studio MGM could not fully exploit her talent and she languished, primarily doing specialty numbers in all-star revues or the occasional all-black musical (Stormy Weather) before becoming one of the greatest nightclub performers of the 1950s and 1960s. (For more on her fascinating life, read my friend James Gavin’s riveting Horne biography Stormy Weather: The Life of Lena Horne, which was published in 2009 by Simon and Schuster.)


TO BE CONTINUED...

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BING AND DRINKING

Interesting Bing story from an unlikely source...

A popular young entertainer jeopardized a promising career with his out-of-control drinking. Sometimes he missed singing engagements while he went on binges lasting several days. One time when he did try to appear on stage when he was drunk, according to his biographers, “he stood pale and unsteady at the mike while the orchestra played the introduction to his song.” When he opened his mouth to sing, “he vomited—on his suit front, his shoes, and on several members of his socialite audience, who had gathered close to the bandstand to hear him sing.”

If this singer were performing today, he would be rushed immediately to the Betty Ford Center for treatment, after which we would read in People magazine of his gratitude to the treatment center and its twelve-step A.A. program for showing him he was a lifelong alcoholic who could never drink again. We might read later about his various relapses, but these could be handled by A.A. and the treatment center, which would always be there for him.

Actually, the singer’s name was Bing Crosby, nicknamed “Binge” Crosby early in his career. His hard-drinking days occurred more than half a century ago, when alcohol abuse was regarded as a problem in living rather than a lifelong disease. Life could still take its natural course; in this case, Crosby stopped drinking self-destructively when he began to socialize with the prominent people he previously had only entertained. As biographers Donald Shepherd and Robert Slatzer tell it, “It was during Bing’s Gatsby period that he stopped drinking himself into unconsciousness. He quit drinking entirely for a while, and when he resumed, he would drink occasionally, but never let the bottle get the best of him again.” Crosby simply found that public drunkenness was not in keeping with his emerging image as a superstar.

No alcoholism treatment center in America today would turn down someone like Crosby. If they accepted Betty Ford, they would hardly turn down a man who went on three-day benders and appeared in public falling-down drunk! But what would Crosby have gained from deciding he was an alcoholic for the rest of his life instead of mastering his destructive drinking habits as he matured?

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