Crosby’s popularity never waned during the 50 years he was a performer. Christmas is a wonderful, cheerful holiday. Bing Crosby’s foyer The spacious foyer with its antique lowboys is used as an addition to the living room on the rare occasions when the Crosbys throw a party. as his favorite movie scene. At the same time that he reached jazz peaks in his flights on "Sweet Georgia Brown" and "Some of These Days," he transformed other songs into Depression anthems, including the vivid protest song "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" Legendary casting director Lynn Stalmaster dies at 93. Yet what a difference a year made. It was a universally applicable technique that deepened the interpretation of any song in any setting. He realized that the mike was an instrument. Crosby had begun his career just as the condenser microphone was perfected, replacing the silly looking megaphones he had used in his school band. Lynn Stalmaster became the first casting director to receive an honorary Oscar. “I can’t quit now.”. Yet in this new climate, his greatest strength was considered a liability. She said fans in England could send memorial contributions there and that American fans could contribute to the Bing Crosby Fund at Pebble Beach, which aids hospitals and provides student loans. “We soon found out there wasn’t a lot of money on hand for baseball bats or sodas. "It should have killed him," his daughter, Mary Crosby, revealed to American Masters: Bing Crosby Rediscovered. Western songs, including his hymnlike "Home on the Range," a favorite of Franklin Roosevelt. Also from Decca, a collection of all 26 Crosby million-sellers. They said an autopsy would be performed at the base. You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times. He once told an interviewer, “My favorite kind of picture would be one that opened with a shot of me sitting in a rocking chair on a front porch. Rupturing a disc, Crosby was unable to stand or walk for over a month. He had flown alone to Spain to play golf and hunt partridge. He could still croon with swinging élan, as demonstrated on his 1957 album, "Bing With a Beat," and he continued to enjoy other triumphs. The family moved to Spokane in 1910. As the most popular singer in the world, he recorded an unparalleled variety of songs: hymns, minstrel arias, singspiel, rhythm and blues — not even Sinatra, who would deepen the interpretation of lyrics, could handle such a spectrum. He understood instinctively the modernist paradox: electrical appliances made singing more human, more expressive, more personal. She succeeded in curbing Bing's alcohol consumption, but her own alcoholism worsened. Madrid - Bing Crosby, the crooner of beautiful songs who dominated show business for three generations of lovers around the world, died here yesterday of a heart attack … Their other son, Harry, 19, and Alan Fisher, the family’s former butler, were to fly from England to Spain to accompany the body to Los Angeles. In London Friday night, for example, Illtyd Harrington, a leading member of the Greater London Council, disclosed that Crosby gave all the money he earned in Britain last year to youth charities there. Mrs. Crosby said her husband’s recent performance in the London Palladium was a test of his recovery from a bad fall and back injury he incurred last March in Pasadena while filming a show commemorating his 50th year in show business. A whole generation had grown up knowing the name “Bing Crosby” — but having no strong idea of just who or what it meant. //2007-02-18: Christmas His great Depression waltzes ("Mexicali Rose," "The One Rose") recapture the dark side of that era as nothing else does. Miss Lee was then a rising star at Fox Studios. Ambassador to Madrid Wells Stabler, who informed her that her husband had died. google_ad_width = 468; is matched by its impatience with music that demands concentration. Burns also wrote the TV comedy-drama “Room 222,” the story of a fictional urban high school in L.A. David Vazquez, Aztec-language teacher who worked to save ancestors’ history, dies, Working out of a church basement in Santa Ana, he taught Nahuatl to a new generation, Eugenio Martínez, Watergate burglar whose bungled break-in led to Nixon’s fall, dies. The session took place on March 7, 1927, at Leiderkranz Hall in New York. Through it all, Crosby managed somehow to maintain the relaxed, breezy manner that was his public — and private — persona. She perfected and popularized an old style of melisma that had been described by the writer Jeannette Robinson Murphy in an 1899 issue of "Popular Science Monthly." Mrs. Crosby was at a recording studio in San Francisco Friday afternoon when she received a telephone call from U.S. That ended when he met actress Kathryn Grant (nee Olive Kathryn Grandstaff) a onetime beauty contest winner from Texas. But Crosby endured his share of bad fortune, too. (Enlisted men had little use for Sinatra, who was disparaged as a draft dodger and seducer.) Trying to instruct white singers in the art of "genuine Negro melodies," Murphy insisted it was necessary "that around every prominent note [the singer] place a variety of small notes, called `trimmings.' `BING CROSBY AND SOME JAZZ FRIENDS' (Decca/MCA GRD-603). During World War II, Crosby helped sell more than $14 million worth of war bonds and donated the proceeds from his record of “Silent Night” to brother Larry’s show troupe, enabling it to tour military installations in the United States. Crosby had hoped to hold a charity concert in the Westminster Roman Catholic Cathedral in the near future, Harrington said. He had starred in the top-grossing picture of the year, "White Christmas," and scored his third Oscar nomination for his stunning portrayal of an alcoholic has-been in "The Country Girl." Anderson. Crosby and Pinero had been matched against Barrios and De Zulueta. “We thought he had just slipped. He cast some 400 films and TV shows and helped launch many stars. But Crosby was king of the mountain — the national voice, America's troubadour. and "Home on the Range," a little known saddle song that he turned into the most renowned of western ballads. Hill artificial Christmas trees. Bing Crosby, who began life as a penny-grubbing grammar school truant and sang and acted his way to riches and into the hearts of millions all over the world, died of a heart attack … Legendary singer David Crosby helped fellow singer Melissa Etheridge's son Beckett Cypher be conceived and now Crosby is speaking out about his death. `BING CROSBY KRAFT SHOWS' (Lost Gold Records LGR 7598). He graduate… Crosby kept working right up to the end. Its infinite longing for rote repetition and screwy novelties ("Three Little Fishies," anyone?) When his eldest son, Gary Crosby, published a bitter memoir describing the unflappable Bing administering vigorous corporal punishment, his halo tilted and crashed. He is the ideal figure for tracking the rise of American popular culture. `BING WITH A BEAT' (RCA Victor LTM-1473). Dennis Crosby is the second of four sons born to Bing Crosby and his first wife, Dixie Lee Wyatt Crosby, to commit suicide. The two never missed a chance to trade insults. But a little while later, trying hard to control her emotions, she came outside and talked to reporters on a patio. Still favorites today! A physician listed the cause of death as a heart attack on the death certificate. Crosby's early collaborations with Bix Beiderbecke and Ellington and later ones with Armstrong, Eddie Condon, Connie Boswell, Johnny Mercer, Woody Herman, Bob Crosby (his kid brother), Eddie Heywood, Bob Scobey, Rosemary Clooney and many others retain their ingenuity and rhythmic zest. He liked to joke about impecunious days as a youngster in Tacoma and Spokane, Wash., when he used to skip school to sell papers, collect soft drink bottles for the deposit and even work in a pickle factory. The star — who was already in his early 70s — fell off the stage at the end of his performance, grabbing onto a piece of scenery and breaking his fall. As he was walking to the clubhouse about 6:30 he collapsed from a massive heart attack. To the mix as developed by Smith, Waters and Armstrong, Crosby added three elements that were crucial to the fulfillment of pop singing: his expansive repertory, expressive intimacy and spotless timbre. “I’d like that to be said.”, She said her husband apparently suffered a massive heart attack and “was in only a moment’s distress, if any.”. Crosby's reputation faltered along with his music after his death, in 1977. After hearing him, Duke Ellington vowed not to hire a male vocalist until he found one who sounded like Crosby. A Psalter – A Book of the Psalms Arranged by Luther's Categories, Betbüchlein: A Personal Prayer Book, a In 1948, he was selected, for the fifth consecutive time, as top money-making star of motion pictures in the annual poll of exhibitors conducted by the Motion Picture Herald, a trade paper. With his combination of intelligence and rhythmic acuity, Crosby could transfigure trite songs tritely arranged ("I Found a Million Dollar Baby"), but also underscore the banality of June/moon bromides, hymns to a mother's tears and "dark town" caricatures. Harry Lillis became “Bing” about the time of the move to Spokane. Ethel Waters, born in Chester, Pa., in 1896, was another story. Crosby had never studied music formally, but during his first year of college he got a set of drums for Christmas and soon joined his friend, Al Rinker, in a band called the Musicaladers. Larry Flynt, the founder of Hustler magazine, repackaged himself again and again — an unlikely 1st Amendment champion, a self-appointed arbitrator of political hypocrisy and a born-again Christian. The new Mrs. Crosby already had a fine arts degree from the University of Texas. But jazz lovers are by nature classicists, and Crosby had spent most of his life on the other side of the divide: the pop world, where success is measured in numbers — a world remade by rock, in which even the oldest of oldies postdate "Heartbreak Hotel.". And that was the big breakthrough for Bing. A new generation of lyricists — Larry Hart, Cole Porter, Leo Robin, Al Dubin, Mitchell Parish, Yip Harburg and the self-renewing Irving Berlin — found in Crosby an interpreter who brought their subtlest verbal conceits to life. Whether we spend it by a She was married to Bing Crosby. Bing Crosby was, without doubt, the most popular and influential media star of the first half of the 20th century. The modern style of American popular singing, as distinct from the theatrical emoting of the minstrel and vaudeville eras, was originated by four performers, each to some degree rooted in jazz and blues. His television appearances had been infrequent, but he controlled a production company, formed under his own name, which continues to rank among the most successful in the field. Elderly twins of Bing Crosby fame found dead March 6, 2012 / 10:10 PM / AP (AP) When they were young, Patricia and Joan Miller sang and danced for Bing Crosby, troops and their friends.