49 Fun Facts About Bing Crosby

Bing Crosby grew up in Spokane, but in which Washington city was he born?

Tacoma was home for just three years: his father built the family's house there, then in 1906 moved everyone across the state to Spokane.

What was Bing Crosby's real first name?

Harry Lillis Crosby shared his first name with his father, but he barely used it: by about the age of seven a neighbour's nickname had replaced it for good.

The Bingville Bugle, usually credited as the source of Crosby's nickname, was what kind of boyhood favourite?

A newspaper comic feature: it ran in his local paper, and around 1910 a neighbour took to calling the boy 'Bingo from Bingville', which was soon cut down to Bing.

Which Washington college did Crosby leave without a degree to chase a career in music?

Gonzaga University displays his Oscar on campus; in 1972 a prankster swapped the statuette for a three-inch Mickey Mouse figurine, and it turned up unharmed a week later.

Which instrument did Crosby play in the Musicaladers, his Spokane dance band of the 1920s?

Drums were his job in the Musicaladers, the dance band led by pianist Al Rinker; when it folded after two years, the pair left Spokane for Los Angeles to try show business.

Which bandleader, billed as the 'King of Jazz', hired Crosby and Al Rinker in 1926?

Paul Whiteman put the two Spokane newcomers in front of America's best-known orchestra; Rinker's sister, the singer Mildred Bailey, had got them their first auditions in Los Angeles.

Crosby, Al Rinker and Harry Barris performed as which vocal trio?

The Rhythm Boys sang in the 1930 film King of Jazz, but Crosby lost his solo number in it: he was jailed after a drink-driving crash and the song went to John Boles.

In 1928 Crosby sang on a fast, jazzy hit version of which song from the new musical Show Boat?

Ol' Man River was written as a slow lament for a bass voice; the dance-band record Crosby sang on took it far faster than its writers intended, with Bix Beiderbecke on cornet.

Which record company did Crosby sign with in late 1934, backing its 35-cent singles?

Decca's new American arm was run by Jack Kapp, who had managed Crosby's old label, Brunswick; Kapp also coaxed him out of his jazzier mannerisms and into a clearer style.

Which weekly NBC radio show did Crosby host from 1936 for a decade?

Kraft Music Hall also made a star of comedian Bob Burns, whose home-made horn, the 'bazooka', later gave its name to the Army's wartime rocket launcher.

Which jazz trumpeter did Crosby insist be hired, and prominently billed, for the 1936 film Pennies from Heaven?

Louis Armstrong got both the part and his special billing only because Crosby insisted on them; twenty years later the two friends traded verses on 'Now You Has Jazz' in High Society.

Which invention let Crosby swap the stage shout for his soft crooning?

The microphone picked up every quiet inflection, so Crosby could sing as if to one listener; earlier stars had to belt their songs to reach the back rows unaided.

Crosby first sang 'White Christmas' on radio at Christmas 1941, weeks after which event?

The Pearl Harbor attack was under three weeks old when he sang it on NBC; the following May he recorded the song in a session that took just 18 minutes.

Who wrote 'White Christmas'?

Irving Berlin knew what he had: he is said to have hurried into his office and asked his secretary to take down 'the best song anybody ever wrote'.

Why did Crosby re-record 'White Christmas' in 1947?

A worn-out master: the 1942 original had been damaged by heavy use, so he remade the record with the same orchestra and chorus, and that 1947 take is the one usually heard today.

Which comedian co-starred with Crosby in the 1954 film White Christmas after Fred Astaire turned the part down?

Danny Kaye was the third choice: Fred Astaire declined, Donald O'Connor fell ill just before shooting began, and Kaye stepped in at short notice.

Which 1942 film, co-starring Fred Astaire, first put 'White Christmas' on screen?

Holiday Inn left a second legacy: in 1952 the architect drawing up Kemmons Wilson's first motel wrote the film's title on the plans as a joke, and the hotel chain kept it.

For which 1944 film did Crosby win the Academy Award for Best Actor?

Going My Way won Crosby an Oscar made of painted plaster: metal was short in wartime, and winners were invited to swap their statuettes for gold-plated ones once peace came.

Crosby's Oscar nod for The Bells of St. Mary's made him the first actor nominated twice for what?

Playing the same character, Father O'Malley, in a sequel brought the second nomination; this time he lost, to Ray Milland's alcoholic writer in The Lost Weekend.

Which Irish actor played the crusty old pastor opposite Crosby's young Father O'Malley?

Barry Fitzgerald played the old pastor Father Fitzgibbon and won Best Supporting Actor after being nominated as both lead and supporting actor for the one role, a quirk the Academy then outlawed.

Which Best Original Song winner did Crosby sing with a boys' choir as Father O'Malley?

Swinging on a Star grew out of a dinner at Crosby's house: when one of his children balked at going to school, Crosby warned he might grow up to be a mule, and Jimmy Van Heusen heard a song in it.

The first of the Crosby-Hope buddy pictures, in 1940, took them on the road to where?

Singapore was only the start: six more Road comedies followed over the next 22 years, and an eighth, Road to the Fountain of Youth, was being planned when Crosby died in 1977.

Who was the female lead in all but the last of the Road films?

Dorothy Lamour, Hollywood's 'Sarong Queen', was the woman both men chased through six Road films; in the seventh she was cut back to a cameo and a single song.

Crosby earned his third Oscar nomination playing an alcoholic has-been actor in which 1954 film?

The Country Girl cast both stars against type: Crosby as a washed-up drinker, and Grace Kelly, stripped of her glamour, as his dowdy wife, the part that won her the Best Actress Oscar.

High Society (1956), starring Crosby, Grace Kelly and Frank Sinatra, was a musical remake of which film?

The Philadelphia Story gained Cole Porter songs and moved to Newport; it was Grace Kelly's last film, released three months after she married Prince Rainier and gave up acting at 26.

Which star ended Crosby's five-year run as top box-office draw in 1949?

Bob Hope, his sparring partner in the Road comedies, was voted the top draw of 1949 by America's cinema owners, who had put Crosby first every year since 1944.

Which company did Crosby back with $50,000 to build tape recorders based on a captured German machine?

Ampex put Crosby's money into production of its recorders; in 1949 he left one at the house of guitarist Les Paul, who added an extra head and used it to pioneer sound-on-sound recording.

Bing Crosby Enterprises gave the first demonstration of what technology in November 1951?

Videotape recording was Crosby's next goal after taping his radio shows, but the pictures his engineers showed in 1951 were blurred, and the first practical machine came from another firm in 1956.

Crosby held stock in which juice company and plugged it on a weekday radio show from 1948?

Minute Maid had lost money for two years with little cash to advertise; then Crosby began spinning records and pitching its frozen orange juice on the radio five mornings a week.

Crosby was a part-owner of which baseball team from 1946 until his death?

Pittsburgh Pirates: he could not bear to watch Game 7 of the 1960 World Series, so he had the telecast filmed; found in his wine cellar in 2009, it is the only complete copy.

Crosby was a founding partner of which California racetrack's thoroughbred club?

Crosby helped found the Del Mar Turf Club, which opened in 1937 with him greeting patrons at the gate; his Binglin Stable's Ligaroti lost a famous 1938 match race there to Seabiscuit.

Crosby's 'Clambake' pro-am, founded in 1937, moved in 1947 to which California course?

Pebble Beach has kept the event ever since; Crosby's family hosted it for eight years after his death, until his name came off in 1985 and AT&T became the sponsor.

Which actress did the widowed Crosby marry in 1957?

Kathryn Grant, a Texan thirty years his junior, married him five years after his first wife died; she later hosted her own talk show, on which he sometimes appeared.

Crosby's daughter Mary played Kristin Shepard in Dallas, revealed in 1980 to have done what?

Shot J.R. Ewing: viewers waited eight months to learn it was his scheming sister-in-law, and the reveal became the highest-rated broadcast American television had yet seen.

Which sister trio joined Crosby on million-selling hits such as 'Don't Fence Me In' and 'Pistol Packin' Mama'?

The Andrews Sisters cut 47 songs with Crosby; they recorded 'Don't Fence Me In' in 1944 without having seen it before, finished inside half an hour, and it topped the charts for eight weeks.

With which rock star did Bing Crosby record 'Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy' in September 1977?

David Bowie balked at 'Little Drummer Boy', so three of the show's staff found a piano and wrote the 'Peace on Earth' counter-melody in about an hour; released in 1982, it reached No. 3 in Britain.

Where did Bing Crosby die on 14 October 1977?

On a golf course near Madrid: he had just won an 18-hole match at La Moraleja and was walking back to the clubhouse when a heart attack killed him, aged 74.

What German-flavoured nickname stuck to Crosby after his 1944 broadcasts to Germany?

Der Bingle caught on after Crosby learned German lines by sound from written scripts and recorded programmes aimed at German troops; a reporter in London is credited with coining it.

Which of Bing Crosby's brothers became a well-known swing-era bandleader in his own right?

Bob Crosby, ten years Bing's junior, was voted in as leader by the musicians of Ben Pollack's broken-up band in 1935; its small Dixieland group became the Bob-Cats.

Which long-running 1960s military sitcom was made by Bing Crosby Productions?

Hogan's Heroes gave its bumbling camp commandant to Werner Klemperer, whose family, Jewish on his father's side, had left Germany for Los Angeles in 1933.

Who played the nun in The Bells of St. Mary's?

Ingrid Bergman had collected her Best Actress Oscar for Gaslight on the very night Crosby won his; in the film her Sister Benedict and his priest spar over how to save a run-down school.

Road to Utopia sent Crosby north to which frozen territory?

Alaska at the turn of the century: humorist Robert Benchley keeps popping into the frame to explain the plot, though he had died by the time the film reached cinemas in 1946.

Which entertainer, seen ad-libbing at a hometown theatre in 1917, did the teenage Crosby call 'electric'?

Al Jolson played Spokane's Auditorium while the 14-year-old Crosby had a summer job there as property boy; watching his idol work a crowd, he decided he wanted to be a professional himself.

Which actress was the leading lady in The Road to Hong Kong (1962)?

Joan Collins took the part that had always gone to the same actress, who this time got only a cameo; it was the last Road film, and the only one made in Britain without Paramount.

Which weekly ABC programme did Crosby begin recording on tape in 1947, a network first?

Philco Radio Time began on big lacquer discs, which were clumsy to edit; in its second season it moved to tape, using German Magnetophon recorders an Army engineer had shipped home.

Crosby's short-lived early-1930s rivalry with which singer was billed as the 'Battle of the Baritones'?

Russ Columbo sang in the same soft style and had sung with the same Los Angeles dance band shortly before Crosby joined it; he died at 26, shot while he and a friend examined the friend's gun collection.

Crosby's son Nathaniel won which golf title in 1981 at age 19?

The U.S. Amateur went to a teenager whose swing, one golf writer said, made observers think a thousand American amateurs were better; he won it four years after his father's death.

Which 1980 slasher film cast one of Crosby's sons as Bill, who ends up pinned to a door by arrows?

Friday the 13th made him one of the counsellors picked off at Camp Crystal Lake; he later gave up acting for finance and became an investment banker.

Which singer joined Crosby and his family on his final concert tour of Britain in September 1977?

Rosemary Clooney owed him her comeback: her career had stalled until Crosby, her White Christmas co-star, invited her onto his 50th anniversary tour in 1976.