Celebrities Project: Bing Crosby

It has been fun thinking about Bing Crosby and listening to Bing Crosby music over the past several weeks, especially since I associate him so closely with the holiday season. I also liked learning about how he was from Spokane and I hope to visit the Crosby home the next time I drive out that way. This childhood home has a very different look and aesthetic to the mid-century home that Bing owned in the Coachella Valley area of California!

Today is also an interesting day to start writing this post, since January 4th marks the 74th anniversary of when the Bing Crosby home at Toluca Lake caught fire, due to a dry Christmas tree. I'm glad that I packed my Christmas decorations away yesterday!

In order to understand Bing's life and career beginnings better, I decided to read Bing Crosby: Pocket Full of Dreams, 1903-1940 by Gary Giddins. Like so many of the autobiographies that I have read this year, this one also meandered to discuss the lives of the people who interacted with Bing. Luckily, though, these tangents were a lot less lengthy than the ones that I've encountered in other biographies. This book helped me to understand more about the importance of technology in Bing Crosby's life: he really was born at the the right time for a mellow baritone voice to become famous, due to the invention of the radio (airwaves favors lower, resonant voices), the microphone, and the rise of sound recording technology. If Bing Crosby were born at a different time, without these inventions, he and his voice might not have made a great impact on popular culture.

Bing had a very prolific career, so I chose to focus on a few key points of his career in music, radio, and film. It was fun to listen to his voice, because his low tones and bright, controlled whistling remind me of my Grandpa T. One song that I particularly enjoyed discovering was "Whistling in the Wildwood." The subject matter reminds me of J's Grandpa P, and I learned from my mother-in-law that Grandpa P also was a whistler too. So it's fun to listen to this song and think of two different grandpas at the same time:



I also had my kids listen (and dance!) to Bing Crosby's Jingle Bells duet with the Andrews Sisters. I showed Lucy a clip of Sam dancing to this music when he was her age, and she was inspired to dance around too. I was surprised to learn that Bing never really formed a friendship with the Andrews Sisters. They had a strictly professional relationship and wouldn't really communicate outside of the studio. This is surprising to me, since their duets are some of the most well known and commercial recordings from Bing's career!

One of the ways in which Bing became extremely popular was through his work as the radio host for the Kraft Music Hall show. These radio shows were written out verbatim, but Bing's delivery is very natural and casual. I decided to listen to one excerpt of the show, in which eighteen-year-old Donald O'Connor is the guest (especially after learning that Bing worked with Donald O'Connor when he was twelve years old, during the 1938 film Sing You Sinners).



Over the past few several I've seen a few films with Bing Crosby (High Society, The Country Girl, and Robin and the Seven Hoods), simply due to the other actors that I've been studying.  There still were many films to choose from, though, so this month I watched these Bing Crosby films:

• Going My Way (1944): I've seen his movie before, but I could remember much about it. I decided to rewatch it, though, because Bing won an Oscar for Best Actor. To be honest, though, I felt like the film was slow-going (and Barry Fitzgerald's jittery character wore on my nerves).
• Holiday Inn (1942): This is a fun film that also has some great comedic moments between Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire. It's fun to see Bing Crosby sing "White Christmas" in this holiday film, too. I think I enjoyed this film the most, next to Road to Morocco.
• Road to Hollywood: This documentary is a "bonus feature" on one of the DVDs that I own, but I never watched it before. The 1947 film purports to discuss the rise of Bing Crosby to fame in Hollywood, using a string of short subject films that Bing created in 1931. This compilation seems rather haphazard, though. It's rather boring, and the audio is very poor in the early films. I don't think I'll watch this again!
• Road to Morocco (1942): I had a hard time deciding which "Road" movie to choose, but this blog post ranked the series and said that they thought Road to Morocco was the best. I've seen it before, but it had been a long time. It was quite funny and enjoyable, and I loved tons ee Bing's comedic timing. (The biography I read emphasized that people who personally knew Bing felt like the "Road" series best captured his true persona.)  J even watched this film with me and laughed several times. My favorite line is when Bing and Bob Hope are walking through the desert, and Bop Hope ad libs, "This must be the place where the empty all of the old hour glasses."

I also have been really saddened by the recent news of Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher's deaths, so I specifically sought out video clips of Say One For Me (1959), in which Bing Crosby and Debbie Reynolds perform together:

This song The Secret of Christmas is a little hokey with Debbie Reynolds singing next to the television screen projecting Bing's image, but it is still cute to see them singing "together":

I also was able to learn a little bit about Bing Crosby's connection to art history, which I covered on my art history blog, not only with his art collecting but also his Stagecoach portrait by Norman Rockwell. I feel more connected with him, knowing that he was interested not only in art, but also in reading. He was well spoken and intelligent. I also admire that he was a hard worker: he liked to fill his daily schedule and make sure that he was on time (if not early!) to his appointments. I can relate to having or desiring those traits!

Because I got behind on this project, I wasn't able to learn about Billie Holiday or Frank Sinatra before 2016 ended. I hope to learn about them sometime this year, but I don't think that I'll undertake a similar project for 2017. I'm ready to stop readying biographies and enjoy some fiction! My only goal for 2017 this far is to finish up my celebrities project at some point. I'm drowning in books that I've put aside for this project, and it will be nice to read some of them this coming year.

Debbie Reynolds as a Football

My little sister C sent me a link with a clip of a "football dance" from I Love Melvin (1953), which stars Debby Reynolds and Donald O'Connor. In this musical number, Debby Reynolds is dressed like a football, and she is tossed between the male football dancers players. I think this is such an interesting take on football: the men are crowding around the ball, like they are vying for a moment with a lady on the dance floor. Is it really that dissimilar to the actual sport?



I don't think I have ever seen I Love Melvin, but I know that it was made the year after Singing in the Rain. From what I read, though, it seems like Donald O'Connor ends up being the love interest in I Love Melvin, which is a role reversal from Singin' in the Rain (in which he played Gene Kelly's sidekick and funnyman). I remember reading that Gene Kelly wasn't that kind to Reynolds during the filming of Singin' in the Rain, who felt like she was an inferior starlet in comparison to him. It seems like Reynolds and O'Connor got along well off-screen.

This online biography for Donald O'Connor says that I Love Melvin was pretty much a dud of a film, but there is this really great scene (in addition to the football scene, naturally) in which O'Connor tap dances in roller skates:



I kind of wish I had chosen Donald O'Connor for one of the celebrities that I am studying this year. I guess I'll leave him for next year...

Singin' in the Rain: Fun Facts

Since I read Unsinkable: A Memoir by Debbie Reynolds earlier this year, I have wanted to rewatch "Singin' in the Rain." I waited several months to get a copy from the library, but I finally had the chance to see the movie again a few night ago. It was a good movie to watch, because it has been raining a lot this week. My friend Rachael came over to watch it with me. She pulled up the trivia section about the film on IMDB, and I pulled out my copy of Unsinkable to reference during the movie. We chatted and spouted random facts during the whole show, which was fun. Here are some interesting things about this film:

• Debbie Reynolds was nineteen when she was cast for this role. Gene Kelly had just turned forty. Kelly was upset that Reynolds, a "nobody," was given this part to play against himself, a famous actor.
• Reynolds was not a formal dancer when she was given this role. She wrote that she "had three months to learn what Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor had been doing for years" (Unsinkable, p. 205). She was dancing for eight hours a day and suffered from exhaustion. Once, in a moment of frustration, Debbie crumpled under a rehearsal piano and cried. Fred Astaire saw her crying and gave her encouragement. He told her, "You're not going to die. That's what it's like to learn to dance. If you're not sweating, you're not doing it right" (Unsinkable, p. 206).
• Reynolds remarked that making this movie and childbirth are the two hardest things that she's had to do in life.
• I think it is really ironic that Debbie Reynolds' voice was dubbed over for two songs: "Would You" and "You Are My Lucky Star." Betty Noyes is the singer for these songs. This is ironic, because Reynolds character is supposed to be dubbing the voice for Lena Lamont's character. Reynolds did sing her character's other songs in the show. She wrote in Unsinkable that she "hates [her] voice in the movie," but doesn't mention anything about Noyes (p. 208).
• The famous scene with Gene Kelly was done in one take. Kelly was very ill (some report that he had a fever of 101) and the director was ready to send him home. Kelly insisted on doing the number (which had been set up with rudimentary blocking). He ad-libbed and improvised during the scene, but it was accepted and included as the famous scene in the film. This information is most impressive to me - what a clear example of Kelly's talent and acting abilities!

Birthday Pals: Debbie Reynolds and Jane Powell

I just found out that Debbie Reynolds and Jane Powell were born on the same day (April 1st), although Jane was born three years before Debbie. Jane was born in 1929, and Debbie was born in 1932. These two stars were in three films together.

• Two Weeks with Love (1950)
• Athena (1954)
• Hit the Deck (1955)

I have seen all of these films, except for Athena. Two Weeks with Love was one of Reynolds' earliest films. She plays Powell's little sister. It turns out that the two actresses celebrated their birthday while they were on the set together:

Debbie Reynolds on "What's My Line?"

J has always liked Rothko, but a few years ago he had a particularly intensive year when he read a lot about Rothko. That year even culminated in our trip to Houston to see the Rothko Chapel. I thought it would be fun to do a similar thing and follow the work of one person, but I'm interested in learning more about the actors and actresses from the "Golden Age" of Hollywood.

I haven't decided on who I want to study in depth, but it might be Debbie Reynolds. I just finished reading her new biography, Unsinkable: A Memoir. I also have been watching a few of her movies lately, like Two Weeks with Love (1950, with June Powell), Hit the Deck (1955, with Jane Powell and Russ Tamblyn), and The Pleasure of His Company (1961, with Fred Astaire).

Tonight I happened to come across a clip from when Reynolds was on the game show "What's My Line?" Her cute personality really comes through as she answers the questions posed by the blindfolded contestants. This episode aired in August 1954, the year before Reynolds got married to Eddie Fisher. They seem like such a happy and cute couple at the end of this clip. How sad that things didn't last. (Eddie Fisher left Reynolds and their two young children for Elizabeth Taylor. Reynolds and Fisher divorced in 1959.)



And, speaking of "What's My Line?", you should check out the episode with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis and another episode with Salvador Dali.