Harry Lillis “Bing” (Der Bingle) Crosby (1903-1977)

We mark the death on October 14, 1977 – 42 years ago today – of the American singer and actor Harry Lillis “Bing” Crosby of a so-called “widow maker”: a massive, dead-before-he-hit-the-ground heart attack. We sense that he went out the way he would have chosen to go out. An avid golfer and member of the World Golf Hall of Fame, he flew to Spain on October 13, 1977 to hunt partridge and play golf. The next day, on October 14, having finished an 18-hole round at the La Moraleja Golf Course near Madrid, Crosby and his golfing partners were walking back the clubhouse. Crosby then uttered his last works, “That was a great game of golf, fellas. Let’s get a Coke.” Moments later, at about 6:30 pm, about 20 yards from the clubhouse, Crosby dropped dead.

(As last words go, well, had Crosby the opportunity, he probably would have taken a Mulligan on “let’s get a Coke.” We would recall the last words of his friend, performing partner, and golfing chum Bob Hope, who when asked where he wanted to be buried, replied “surprise me.”)

Anyway, Crosby went out with his cleats on.

Rarely would it seem that someone’s public persona was so different from his private persona. On stage, Crosby’s chocolaty bass-baritone voice virtually defined the sobriquet “crooner”. His on-screen persona was that of a pipe-smoking, smooth-as-a-peeled-onion gentleman: preternaturally calm, wise, and loving: everyone’s favorite uncle or priest (that would be Father O’Malley in the movie Going My Way of 1944). 

In reality, Crosby was a sharp, calculating, entrepreneurial, sometimes ruthless perfectionist and businessman with a propensity for drink. He was also a harsh disciplinarian whose four sons from his first marriage (he was to have three more children from his second marriage) not-infrequently felt the bite of a special, metal-studded belt with which Crosby beat them. 

(After Crosby died, his son Gary – the eldest – wrote a tell-all memoir called Going My Own Way, in which he depicted his father as “cruel, cold, remote, and physically and psychologically abusive.” Gary Crosby wrote:

Crosby as Father O’Malley in Going My Way (1944), NOT beating two recalcitrant teenagers

“When I saw Going My Way I was as moved as they [the audience] were by the character he played. Then the lights came on and the movie was over. All the way back to the house I thought about the difference between the person up there on the screen and the one I knew at home.”

Bing Crosby’s son Phillip took his brother Gary to task for his description of their father, claiming that:

“Gary is a whining, bitching crybaby, walking around with a two-by-four on his shoulder and just daring people to nudge it off. . . My dad was not the monster my lying brother said he was.”

However, Bing’s other two sons by his first marriage – Dennis and Lindsay Crosby – confirmed that Crosby was indeed abusive. In reference to his brother Gary’s tell-all, Lindsay Crosby said:

“I’m glad [Gary] did it. I hope it clears up a lot of old lies and rumors.”

Crosby’s treatment of his first-born sons after his death cannot be disputed. His will created a blind trust that stipulated his sons only receive their inheritance when they reached the age of 65. Only one of the four boys lived so long. Lindsay Crosby died in 1989 at the age of 51 of a self-inflicted gunshot. Dennis Crosby died in 1991 at the age of 56 of a self-inflicted gunshot. Gary Crosby died in 1995 at 62 of lung cancer. Only Phillip Crosby lived to see his inheritance; he died in 2004 at the age of 69 of a heart attack.