Bing Crosby

Bing Crosby
[[Image:Bing Crosby Paramount Pictures.jpg|220px| ]] Crosby, 1934
Background information
Born as:	Harry Lillis Crosby Jr.
Born	May 3, 1903 Tacoma, Washington, U.S.
Died	Oct 14, 1977 - age  73 Alcobendas, Spain
Alma Mater:	Gonzaga University
Spouse(s):	Dixie Lee (1930 - 1952) died Kathryn Crosby (1957-death - )
Children:	(with Dixie) Gary, Dennis, Phillip, Lindsay (with Kathryn) Harry III, Mary, Nathaniel
Relatives:	Larry Crosby]] (brother), Bob Crosby (brother), Denise Crosby (granddaughter), Chris (nephew)
Occupation:	Singer, actor
Label{s}	Decca, Columbia Records, RCA Victor, Brunswick], Reprise, Capitol, Verve & United Artists
Years active	1922–1977
Website:	https://bingcrosby.com/
Genre(s):	Traditional pop, jazz & easy listening

Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby Jr. (✦May 3, 1903 – †October 14, 1977) was an American singer and actor. The first multimedia star, he was one of the most popular and influential musical artists of the 20th century worldwide. He was a leader in record sales, radio ratings, and motion picture grosses from 1926 to 1977. He made over 70 feature films and recorded more than 1,600 songs.

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 Perry Como, Dean Martin, Dick Haymes, Elvis Presley, and John Lennon.

Yank magazine said that he was "the person who had done the most for the morale of overseas servicemen" during World War II. In 1948, American polls declared him the "most admired man alive," ahead of Jackie Robinson and Pope Pius XII.: 6  In 1948, Music Digest estimated that his recordings filled more than half of the 80,000 weekly hours allocated to recorded radio music in America.

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. In 1963, Crosby received the first Grammy Global Achievement Award. He is one of 33 people to have three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in the categories of motion pictures, radio, and audio recording. He was also known for his collaborations with his friend Bob Hope, starring in the Road to... films from 1940 to 1962.

Crosby influenced the development of the post-World War II recording industry. After seeing a demonstration of a German broadcast quality reel-to-reel tape recorder brought to the United States by John T. Mullin, he invested $50,000 in the California electronics company Ampex to build copies. He then persuaded ABC to allow him to tape his shows. He became the first performer to prerecord their radio shows and master his commercial recordings onto magnetic tape.

Life and career

Crosby was born on May 3, 1903 in Tacoma, Washington, in a house his father built at 1112 North J Street. In 1906, his family moved to Spokane in Eastern Washington state, where he was raised. In 1913, his father built a house at 508 E. Sharp Avenue. The house sits on the campus of his alma mater, Gonzaga University. It functions today as a museum housing over 200 artifacts from his life and career, including his Oscar.

He was the fourth of seven children: brothers Laurence Earl "Larry" (1895–1975), Everett Nathaniel (1896–1966), Edward John "Ted" (1900–1973), and George Robert "Bob" (1913–1993); and two sisters, Catherine Cordelia (1904–1974) and Mary Rose (1906–1990). His parents were Harry Lowe Crosby (1870–1950), a bookkeeper, and Catherine Helen "Kate" (née Harrigan; 1873–1964). His mother was a second-generation Irish-American. 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. Through another line, also on his father's side, Crosby is descended from Mayflower passenger William Brewster (c. 1567 – 1644).: 24  On November 8, 1937, after Lux Radio Theatre's adaptation of She Loves Me Not, Joan Blondell asked Crosby how he got his nickname:

Crosby: "Well, I'll tell you, back in the knee-britches day, when I was a wee little tyke, a mere broth of a lad, as we say in Spokane, I used to totter around the streets with a gun on each hip, my favorite after school pastime was a game known as "Cops and Robbers", I didn't care which side I was on, when a cop or robber came into view, I would haul out my trusty six-shooters, made of wood, and loudly exclaim bing! bing!, as my luckless victim fell clutching his side, I would shout bing! 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! bing! bing! bing! bing! bing! bing! bing!"

Blondell: "I'm surprised they didn't call you "Killer" Crosby! Now tell me another story, Grandpa! Crosby: "No, so help me, it's the truth, ask Mister De Mille." De Mille: "I'll vouch for it, Bing."

As it happens, that story was pure whimsy for dramatic effect; the Associated Press had reported as early as February 1932—as would later be confirmed by both Bing himself and his biographer Charles Thompson—that it was in fact a neighbor—Valentine Hobart, circa 1910—who had named him "Bingo from Bingville" after a comic feature in the local paper called The Bingville Bugle which the young Harry liked. In time, Bingo got shortened to Bing.

In 1917, Crosby took a summer job as property boy at Spokane's Auditorium, where he witnessed some of the acts of the day, including Al Jolson, who held him spellbound with ad-libbing and parodies of Hawaiian songs. He later described Jolson's delivery as "electric".

Crosby graduated from Gonzaga High School (today's Gonzaga Preparatory School) in 1920 and enrolled at Gonzaga University. He attended Gonzaga for three years but did not earn a degree. As a freshman, he played on the university's baseball team. The university granted him an honorary doctorate in 1937. Today, Gonzaga University houses a large collection of photographs, correspondence, and other material related to Crosby.[ Entrepreneurship According to Shoshana Klebanoff, Crosby became one of the richest men in the history of show business. He had investments in real estate, mines, oil wells, cattle ranches, race horses, music publishing, baseball teams, and television. He made a fortune from the Minute Maid Orange Juice Corporation, where he was a principal stockholder.

Role in early tape recording

During the Golden Age of Radio, performers had to create their shows live, sometimes even redoing the program a second time for the West Coast time zone. Crosby had to do two live radio shows on the same day, three hours apart, for the East and West Coasts. Crosby's radio career took a significant turn in 1945, when he clashed with NBC over his insistence that he be allowed to pre-record his radio shows. (The live production of radio shows was also reinforced by the musicians' union and ASCAP, which wanted to ensure continued work for their members.) In "On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio", John Dunning wrote about German engineers having developed a tape recorder with a near-professional broadcast quality standard:

[Crosby saw] an enormous advantage in prerecording his radio shows. The scheduling could now be done at the star's convenience. He could do four shows a week, if he chose, and then take a month off. But the networks and sponsors were adamantly opposed. The public wouldn't stand for 'canned' radio, the networks argued. There was something magical for listeners because what they were hearing was being performed and heard live everywhere, at that precise instant. Some of the best moments in comedy came when a line was blown, and the star had to rely on wit to rescue a bad situation. Fred Allen, Jack Benny, Phil Harris, and also Crosby were masters at this, and the networks weren't about to give it up easily.

Crosby's insistence eventually factored into the further development of magnetic tape sound recording and the radio industry's widespread adoption of it. He used his clout, both professionally and financially, for innovations in audio. But NBC and CBS refused to broadcast prerecorded radio programs. Crosby left the network and remained off the air for seven months, creating a legal battle with his sponsor Kraft that was settled out of court. He returned to broadcasting for the last 13 weeks of the 1945–1946 season.

The Mutual Network, on the other hand, pre-recorded some of its programs as early as 1938 for The Shadow with Orson Welles. ABC was formed from the sale of the NBC Blue Network in 1943 after a federal antitrust suit and was willing to join Mutual in breaking the tradition. ABC offered Crosby $30,000 per week to produce a recorded show every Wednesday that would be sponsored by Philco. He would get an additional $40,000 from 400 independent stations for the rights to broadcast the 30-minute show, which was sent to them every Monday on three 16-inch (40-cm) lacquer discs that played ten minutes per side at 33 1/3 rpm

Murdo MacKenzie of Bing Crosby Enterprises had seen a demonstration of the German Magnetophon in June 1947—the same device that Jack Mullin had brought back from Radio Frankfurt with 50 reels of tape at the end of the war. It was one of the magnetic tape recorders that BASF and AEG had built in Germany starting in 1935. The 6.5mm ferric-oxide-coated tape could record 20 minutes per reel of high-quality sound. Alexander M. Poniatoff ordered Ampex, which he founded in 1944, to manufacture an improved version of the Magnetophone.

Crosby hired Mullin to start recording his Philco Radio Time show on his German-made machine in August 1947 using the same 50 reels of I.G. Farben magnetic tape that Mullin had found at a radio station at Bad Nauheim near Frankfurt while working for the U.S. Army Signal Corps. The advantage was editing. As Crosby wrote in his autobiography:

By using tape, I could do a thirty-five or forty-minute show, then edit it down to the twenty-six or twenty-seven minutes the program ran. In that way, we could take out jokes, gags, or situations that didn't play well and finish with only the prime meat of the show; the solid stuff that played big. We could also take out the songs that didn't sound good. It gave us a chance first to try a recording of the songs in the afternoon without an audience, then another one in front of a studio audience. We'd dub the one that came off best into the final transcription. It gave us a chance to ad-lib as much as we wanted, knowing that excess ad-libbing could be sliced from the final product. If I made a mistake in singing a song or in the script, I could have some fun with it, then retain any of the fun that sounded amusing.

Mullin's 1976 memoir of these early days of experimental recording agrees with Crosby's account:

In the evening, Crosby did the whole show before an audience. If he muffed a song then, the audience loved it—thought it was very funny—but we would have to take out the show version and put in one of the rehearsal takes. Sometimes, if Crosby was having fun with a song and not really working at it, we had to make it up out of two or three parts. This ad-lib way of working is commonplace in recording studios today, but it was all new to us.

Crosby invested US$50,000 in Ampex with the intent to produce more machines. In 1948, the second season of Philco shows was recorded with the Ampex Model 200A and Scotch 111 tape from 3M. Mullin explained how one new broadcasting technique was invented on the Crosby show with these machines:

One time Bob Burns, the hillbilly comic, was on the show, and he threw in a few of his folksy farm stories, which of course were not in Bill Morrow's script. Today they wouldn't seem very off-color, but things were different on radio then. They got enormous laughs, which just went on and on. We couldn't use the jokes, but Bill asked us to save the laughs. A couple of weeks later he had a show that wasn't very funny, and he insisted that we put in the salvaged laughs. Thus the laugh-track was born.

Crosby started the tape recorder revolution in America. In his 1950 film Mr. Music, he is seen singing into an Ampex tape recorder that reproduced his voice better than anything else. Also quick to adopt tape recording was his friend Bob Hope. He gave one of the first Ampex Model 300 recorders to his friend, guitarist Les Paul, which led to Paul's invention of multitrack recording. His organization, the Crosby Research Foundation, held tape recording patents and developed equipment and recording techniques such as the laugh track that are still in use today.

With Frank Sinatra, Crosby was one of the principal backers for the United Western Recorders studio complex in Los Angeles.

Thoroughbred horse racing

Crosby was a fan of thoroughbred horse racing and bought his first racehorse in 1935. In 1937, he became a founding partner of the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club and a member of its board of directors. Operating from the Del Mar Racetrack at Del Mar, California, the group included millionaire businessman Charles S. Howard, who owned a successful racing stable that included Seabiscuit. Charles' son, Lindsay C. Howard, became one of Crosby's closest friends; Crosby named his son Lindsay after him and purchased his 40-room Hillsborough, California estate from Lindsay in 1965.

Crosby and Lindsay Howard formed Binglin Stable to race and breed thoroughbred horses at a ranch in Moorpark in Ventura County, California. They also established the Binglin Stock Farm in Argentina, where they raced horses at Hipódromo de Palermo in Palermo, Buenos Aires. Several Argentine-bred horses were purchased and shipped to race in the United States. 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. In 1943, Binglin's horse Don Bingo won the Suburban Handicap at Belmont Park in Elmont, New York.

The Binglin Stable partnership came to an end in 1953 as a result of a liquidation of assets by Crosby, who needed to raise enough funds to pay the hefty federal and state inheritance taxes on his deceased wife's estate. The Bing Crosby Breeders' Cup Handicap at Del Mar Racetrack is named in his honor.

Personal life

Crosby was married twice. His first wife was actress and nightclub singer Dixie Lee, to whom he was married from 1930 until her death from ovarian cancer in 1952. They had four sons: Gary, twins Dennis and Phillip, and Lindsay. Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman (1947) is based on Lee's life. The Crosby family lived at 10500 Camarillo Street in North Hollywood for more than five years. After his wife died, Crosby had relationships with model Pat Sheehan (who married his son Dennis in 1958) and actresses Inger Stevens and Grace Kelly before marrying actress Kathryn Grant, who converted to Catholicism in 1957. They had three children: Harry Lillis III (who played Bill in Friday the 13th), Mary (best known for portraying Kristin Shepard on TV's "Dallas"), and Nathaniel (the 1981 U.S. Amateur champion in golf).

Particularly during the late 1930s and through the 1940s Bing Crosby's domestic life was tragically dominated by his wife's excessive drinking. His efforts to cure her with the help of specialists failed. Tired of Dixie's drinking, he even asked her for a divorce in January 1941. During the 1940s, Crosby consistently had difficulties trying to stay away from home while also trying to be there as much as possible for his children.

Crosby had one confirmed extramarital affair between 1945 and the late 1940s, while married to his first wife Dixie. Actress Patricia Neal (who herself at the time was having an affair with the married Gary Cooper) wrote in her 1988 autobiography "As I Am" about a trip on a cruise ship to England with actress Joan Caulfield in 1948:

She [Joan Caulfield] was a lovely girl and we had some good talks. She, too, was in love with an older married man who was quite as famous as Gary [Cooper]. She confided to me that she desperately wanted to marry Bing Crosby. We were in the same boat in more ways than one, but I could not tell her so.

In the most recent Crosby biography, "Bing Crosby: Swinging on a Star; the War Years, 1940-1946", Gary Giddins published excerpts from an original diary of two sisters, Violet and Mary Barsa, who, as young women, used to stalk Crosby in New York City during December 1945 and January 1946 and who detailed their observations in the diary. The document reveals that during that time, Crosby was indeed taking Joan Caulfield out to dinner, visiting theaters and opera houses with her and that Caulfield and a person in her company entered the Waldorf Hotel where Crosby was staying. However, the document also clearly indicates that at their meetings, a third person, on most instances, Caulfield's mother, was present. In 1954, Joan Caulfield admitted to a relationship with a "top film star" who was a married man with children who in the end, chose his wife and children over her. Joan's sister Betty Caulfield confirmed the romantic relationship between Joan and Bing Crosby. Despite being a Catholic, Crosby was seriously considering divorce in order to marry Caulfield. Either in December 1945 or January 1946 Crosby approached Cardinal Francis Spellman with his difficulties with dealing with his wife's alcoholism and his love for Caulfield and his plan to file for divorce. According to Betty Caulfield, Spellman told Crosby: "Bing, you are Father O'Malley, and under no circumstances can Father O'Malley get a divorce." Around the same time, Crosby talked to his mother about his intentions, and she protested. Ultimately, Crosby chose to end the relationship and stay with his wife. Bing and Dixie reconciled and he continued trying to help her overcome her alcohol issues.

Crosby reportedly had an alcohol problem between the late 1920s and early 1930s, but he got a handle on his drinking in 1931.

Crosby told Barbara Walters in a 1977 televised interview that he thought marijuana should be legalized because he figured it would make it much easier for the authorities to have proper legal control over the market.

In December 1999, the New York Post published an article by Bill Hoffmann and Murray Weiss called Bing Crosby's "Single Life" which claimed that "recently published" FBI files revealed connections with figures in the Mafia "since his youth." However, Crosby's FBI files had already been published in 1992 and did not indicate 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". In the over 280 pages of Crosby's FBI files all but one reference to organized crime or gambling dens are content of a few of the many threats that Bing Crosby received throughout his life. The comments made by FBI investigators in the memos discredited the claims made in the letters. In all the files, there is only one single reference to a person associated with the Mafia. In a memorandum dated January 16, 1959, it is said: "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." However, Crosby had already sold his Elko ranch a year earlier, in 1958, and it is doubtful how much he was really involved in that meeting.

Crosby and his family lived in the San Francisco area for many years. In 1963, he and his wife Kathryn moved with their 3 young children from Los Angeles to a $175,000 10-bedroom Tudor estate in Hillsborough because they did not want to raise their children in Hollywood, according to his son Nathaniel. This house went up for sale by its current owners in 2021 for $13.75 million. In 1965, the Crosbys moved to a larger, 40-room French-chateau style house on nearby Jackling Drive, where Kathryn Crosby continued to reside after Bing's death. This house served as a setting for some of the family's Minute Maid orange juice television commercials.

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.

We had to keep a close watch on our actions ... When one of us left a sneaker or pair of underpants lying around, he had to tie the offending object on a string and wear it around his neck until he went off to bed that night. Dad called it "the Crosby lavalier". At the time the humor of the name escaped me ...

"Satchel Ass" or "Bucket Butt" or "My Fat-assed Kid". That's how he introduced me to his cronies when he dragged me along to the studio or racetrack ... By the time I was ten or eleven, he had stepped up his campaign by adding lickings to the regimen. Each Tuesday afternoon, he weighed me in, and if the scale read more than it should have, he ordered me into his office and had me drop my trousers ... I dropped my pants, pulled down my undershorts, and bent over. Then he went at it with the belt dotted with metal studs he kept reserved for the occasion. Quite dispassionately, without the least display of emotion or loss of self-control, he whacked away until he drew the first drop of blood, and then he stopped. It normally took between twelve and fifteen strokes. As they came down, I counted them off one by one and hoped I would bleed early ...

When I saw Going My Way I was as moved as they were by the character he played. Father O'Malley handled that gang of young hooligans in his parish with such kindness and wisdom that I thought he was wonderful too. Instead of coming down hard on the kids and withdrawing his affection, he forgave them for their misdeeds, took them to the ball game and picture show, and taught them how to sing. By the last reel, the sheer persistence of his goodness had transformed even the worst of them into solid citizens. Then the lights came on, and the movie was over. All the way back to the house, I thought about the difference between the person up there on the screen and the one I knew at home.

All of Gary's immediate siblings disputed the abuse claims. Crosby's younger son Phillip vociferously disputed his brother Gary's claims about their father. Around the time Gary published his claims, Phillip told the press that "Gary is a whining, bitching crybaby, walking around with a two-by-four on his shoulder and just daring people to nudge it off." Nevertheless, Phillip did not deny that Crosby believed in corporal punishment. In an interview with People magazine, Phillip stated that "we never got an extra whack or a cuff we didn't deserve". During an interview in 1999 by the Globe, Phillip said:

My dad was not the monster my lying brother said he was; he was strict, but my father never beat us black and blue, and my brother Gary was a vicious, no-good liar for saying so. I have nothing but fond memories of Dad, going to studios with him, family vacations at our cabin in Idaho, and boating and fishing with him. To my dying day, I'll hate Gary for dragging Dad's name through the mud. He wrote Going My Own Way out of greed. He wanted to make money and knew that humiliating our father and blackening his name was the only way he could do it. He knew it would generate a lot of publicity. That was the only way he could get his ugly, no-talent face on television and in the newspapers. My dad was my hero. I loved him very much. He loved all of us, too, including Gary. He was a great father.

Shortly before Gary's book was actually published, Lindsay said, "I'm glad [Gary] did it. I hope it clears up many old lies and rumors." Unlike Gary, Lindsay stated that he preferred to remember "all the good things I did with my dad and forget the times that were rough." "Lindsay Crosby supported his brother (Gary) at the time of its publication but had a tempered view of its revelations. 'I never expected affection from my father so it didn’t bother me,' he once told an interviewer.'"

However, after the book (which, aside from the abuse claims, was largely a self-critique) was published, Lindsay addressed the abuse claims and what the media had made out of them:

He was a good father. It was a happy childhood. We had our differences, but we were raised to respect our parents, to do what they said. If we didn't, we got punished. As far as I know [Gary] wrote it because it was about himself and what he felt his life was about. I don't think it had anything to do with Daddy Dearest. I understand what he's trying to prove. I don't think he did anything wrong.

Dennis Crosby reportedly "said his older brother (Gary) was the most severely treated of the four boys. 'He got the first licking, and we got the second.'" Nevertheless, Dennis also distanced himself from the claims of abuse by saying:

[I had a] good childhood. It was strict, but I didn't see any of that (violent beatings) around me. Gary might have had it tougher because he was the oldest and got the brunt of everything. [The book is] Gary's business. If people want to read it and believe it, it's their own prerogative. I don't hold grudges. I think Gary is fine, except he has one heck of a temper. If he could control that, he'd be fine.

Gary's first wife of 19 years, Barbara Cosentino, of whom Gary wrote in his book, "I could confide in her about Mom and Dad and my childhood," and with whom Gary stayed friendly after the divorce, stated:

I do not know if what's in the book is true, but he never said anything to me about whippings. I think it all got a little out of hand. I certainly never witnessed anything between him and his father. I couldn't believe it when I read the book because it just didn't sound like Gary. I can't pinpoint it. Gary said to me before I read it, "It's not the same book I wrote."

Gary Crosby's adopted son, Steven Crosby, said in a 2003 interview:

In the early years, I think, like any family you are going to butt heads with your mom, your dad, and your brothers and sisters. I think there was some father-son stuff that everyone has. The book was, I think, an attempt by my dad to come to grips with some things in his life.

Bing's younger brother, singer and jazz bandleader Bob Crosby, recalled at the time of Gary's revelations that Bing was a "disciplinarian", as their mother and father had been. He added, "We were brought up that way." In an interview for the same article, Gary clarified that Bing "was like many fathers of that time. He was not out to be vicious, to beat children for his kicks."

Bing Crosby's daughter Mary Crosby said in a 2014 interview that Gary Crosby told her the publishers had encouraged him to exaggerate his claims, and he had written the book just for money.

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.

Crosby's will established a blind trust in which none of the sons received an inheritance until they reached the age of 65, intended by Crosby to keep them out of trouble. They were instead receiving several thousand dollars per month from a trust left in 1952 by their mother, Dixie Lee. The trust, tied to high-performing oil stocks, folded in December 1989 following the 1980s oil glut.

Lindsay Crosby died in 1989 at age 51, and Dennis Crosby died in 1991 at age 56, both by suicide from self-inflicted gunshot wounds. Gary Crosby died of lung cancer in 1995 at age 62, and Phillip Crosby died of a heart attack in 2004 at age 69.

Widow Kathryn Crosby dabbled in local theater productions intermittently and appeared in television tributes to her late husband.

Nathaniel Crosby, Crosby's younger son from his second marriage, is a former high-level golfer. He won the U.S. Amateur in 1981 at age 19, becoming the youngest winner in the history of that event at the time. Harry Crosby is an investment banker who occasionally makes singing appearances.

Denise Crosby, Dennis Crosby's daughter, is also an actress and is known for her role as Tasha Yar on Star Trek: The Next Generation and for the recurring role of the Romulan Sela after her withdrawal from the series as a regular cast member. She also appeared in the film adaptation of Stephen King's novel Pet Sematary.

In 2006, Crosby's niece through his sister Mary Rose, Carolyn Schneider, published the laudatory book Me and Uncle Bing.

There have been disputes between Crosby's two families since the late 1990s. When Dixie died in 1952, her will provided that her share of the community property be distributed in trust to her sons. After Crosby died in 1977, he left the residue of his estate to a marital trust for the benefit of his widow, Kathryn, and HLC Properties, Ltd., was formed to manage his interests, including his right to publicity. In 1996, Dixie's trust sued HLC and Kathryn for declaratory relief as to the trust's entitlement to interest, dividends, royalties, and other income derived from the community property of Crosby and Dixie. In 1999, the parties settled for approximately $1.5 million. Relying on a retroactive amendment to the California Civil Code, Dixie's trust brought suit again in 2010, alleging that Crosby's right of publicity was community property and that Dixie's trust was entitled to a share of the revenue it produced. The trial court granted Dixie's trust's claim. The California Court of Appeal reversed, however, holding that the 1999 settlement barred the claim. In light of the court's ruling, the court didn't have to decide whether a right of publicity could be characterized as community property under California law.

Legacy

Crosby is a member of the National Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame in the radio division.

The family created an official website on October 14, 2007, the 30th anniversary of Crosby's death.

In his autobiography Don't Shoot, It's Only Me! (1990), Bob Hope wrote, "Dear old Bing, as we called him, the Economy-sized Sinatra. And what a voice. God I miss that voice. I can't even turn on the radio around Christmas time without crying anymore."

Calypso musician Roaring Lion wrote a tribute song in 1939 titled "Bing Crosby", in which he wrote: "Bing has a way of singing with his very heart and soul / Which captivates the world / His millions of listeners never fail to rejoice / At his golden voice...."

Bing Crosby Stadium in Front Royal, Virginia, was named after Crosby in honor of his fundraising and cash contributions for its construction from 1948 to 1950.

In 2006, the former Metropolitan Theater of Performing Arts ('The Met') in Spokane, Washington, was renamed to The Bing Crosby Theater.

Filmography

Wikipedia article: Bing Crosby Performance career

External links

• https://bingcrosby.com/ Official website
• Bing Crosby at the Internet Movie Database
• Bing Crosby at the Turner Classic Movie Database

Wikipedia article: Bing Crosby

Note:   Bing Crosby was a volunteer at the Hollywood Canteen

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