# New biography chronicles Bing Crosby’s most beloved years: Video

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2018/12/06/new-biography-chronicles-bing-crosbys-most-beloved-years-video/
- Published: 2018-12-06T21:05:36+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**Bing Crosby was one of the most popular figures of the 20th century. His record
sales were in the hundreds of millions, his movies were blockbusters, his weekly
radio show topped the ratings. **

The way Crosby sang paved the way for Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Dean Martin and
many others. A new biography called Swinging on a Star: The War Years 1940 -1946,
out now, focuses on Crosby’s life and career in the 1940s when the crooner’s star
shone the brightest. Written by jazz and film critic Gary Giddins, the book is the
second in a multi-volume project chronicling Harry Lillis “Bing” Crosby Jr.
 Crosby
was a singer first and foremost; his appeal started with his voice. “He had wonderful
high notes. He had amazing low notes. He was like a cello when he was really in 
good voice,” Giddins says.

Early in the decade, Crosby created the template for the multimedia entertainment
superstar. He was seemingly everywhere, but despite the singer’s enormous fame, 
he was humble and self-effacing, which made audiences embrace Crosby as one of their
own.

“He really did come across as somebody — even though he’s smarter than you are, 
and more talented than you are — as somebody that you really might know. As somebody
who might live down the block,” Giddins says. “That was one of the things he did
on radio. He really gave the vernacular American voice back to Americans at a time
when the networks wanted these mid-Atlantic ‘How Now Brown Cow’ kind of speakers.”

In 1972, Crosby told a British television interviewer that when he began acting 
in movies, producers tried to improve his looks. They said that Crosby’s ears stuck
out too far, and got the makeup artist to pin them back with glue. Nevertheless,
Crosby became a matinee idol. He won an Oscar for best actor in the 1944 filmGoing
My Way. In the film, Crosby plays a parish priest in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood
who works miracles with the human heart, transforming a gang of street toughs into
a boys’ choir.

In his 1942 film Holiday Inn, Crosby sings an Irving Berlin song that would solidify
his fame for years to come. “White Christmas,” which remains the best-selling single
of all time, struck a nerve with millions of Americans whose husbands, sons and 
lovers were fighting on a distant continent and dreaming of spending the holidays
at home. Three years later, Crosby made a song, “It’s Been A Long, Long Time,” about
the end of World War II, without explicitly mentioning war.

Crosby recorded between 50 and 70 singles per year in the 1940’s. During World War
II, he hosted golf tournaments and gave benefit concerts to sell war bonds and recorded
special programs for the Armed Forces Radio Network. Just months after the D-Day
invasion, Crosby traveled to France to entertain the troops wherever they were. 
Giddins says the singer’s devotion to those fighting was tireless, and the public
loved him for it. In a 1948 poll, Americans declared Bing Crosby the “most admired
man alive.”

“Nothing moved me more than when I was sitting in the Crosby house, going through
his letters, and seeing how many parents, wives, siblings of dead soldiers felt 
they had to write to Crosby,” Giddens says. “‘How much my son or brother or husband
loved you. How happy you made him when you went over there. I just want to say God
Bless you.’ Crosby was beloved.”

![<em>Swinging on a Star</em>, written by jazz and film critic Gary Giddins, is 
out now.](https://i0.wp.com/mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/shared/npr/styles/placed_wide/
nprshared/201812/673035501.jpg?w=640)

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