Sexy Beast, I Mean Bing
Bing Crosby’s birthday is May 2, or 3. He was born in 1903, although his tombstone says 1904 because of a mix-up. This confusion about the simplest of a man’s details is the least of the problems with his legacy.
Like the Olympian gods, he is largely forgotten and unloved today. Gary Giddins made a valiant attempt to focus attention on this Mozart of the popular song with his very ample 2001 biography Pocketful of Dreams. And for a brief moment, pop culture glanced at “the first white hip guy born in America†(Artie Shaw). References to him occasionally pop up: two recent are in Ken Levine’s post of Mariah Carey’s topping Elvis for number 1 hits: “If everyone in the United States buys copies of “Rubberneckin’â€Â, “Kiss Me Quickâ€Â, and “Old Shep†Elvis Presley can reclaim his rightful crown (of being number three behind the Beatles and Bing Crosby) and order can once again be restored to the universe”; and Kim Morgan did a post on Crosby, citing one of his lesser known films, Sing You Sinners.
But those are the extreme exceptions.
Steed is always teasing that I don’t speak up for Crosby, one of my lifelong passions. And so for his birthday this year, I will.
And I’ll start with the sexy guy, Bing in the 1930s.
This Bing is unrecognizable to those who only know the smiling face in the santa hat on the all-time classic Christmas CD, or worse, the guy in the Minute Maid commercials in the 1970s warbling “there’s nooooo doubt about it.â€Â
But in the beginning, Crosby was young and compelling. He had a distinct, astonishing voice and a way of singing that was unlike any other on the landscape.
He was a heartthrob, best seen in a movie that is almost impossible to get, the original Big Broadcast (1931, but before they started assigning years to them). Crosby plays himself, and the scenes of the women stampeding him are funny but entirely believable. Women fell in love with his voice on the radio, and the early shorts and movies use that as a story line.
Here he is, in The Big Broadcast, singing “Please†accompanied by the legendary Eddie Lang, and a bit of “Dinah,†looking like a male model for Banana Republic. Lang met Crosby when they were both in Paul Whiteman’s Orchestra, and Eddie followed when Bing left the band. They were very close, and Giddins writes how devastated Crosby was when Lang died, hemorrhaging after a tonsillectomy. It was Crosby who had recommended that Lang have his tonsils out to help with chronic laryngitis.
In 1932 Marion Davies insisted on Crosby as her leading man in Going Hollywood, a wild pastiche of a musical. It’s maybe best known for the Grand Central extravaganza number, while the “Make Hay While the Sunshine†is almost too hard to watch.
But there is one scene that deserves a place in film history: a drunk, disheveled Crosby singing “Temptation†intercut with close-ups of the smoldering Fifi D’Orsay. It’s dark and evocative, with other cuts to blurry, tightly-packed bodies, swaying to the pulsating rhythms of the song. The comments on YouTube tell it all: “how young he is†and “how sexy he is†and “Crosby has more talent in his little finger than Sinatra has in his whole body†[okay, that one is just a nice swipe at the other guy].
Yeah. That’s what propelled Crosby into the hearts and imagination of an entire generation, three quarters of a century ago. He does gain new fans amongst the young, but it’s one by one as people stumble upon him.
One more (audio) clip: Crosby in 1931 singing “Star Dust.†It’s nothing like the standard Nat King Cole. He sings it with a wild abandon. Pure passion. Pure despair. Pure, natural talent.
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