(A follow-up to this column was added Dec. 3 — see below)I bring to your attention a documentary on American entertainer Bing Crosby airing tonight on PBS television.Several years ago this reporter had the opportunity to pal around for a weekend with one of Bing’s relatives, who shall remain anonymous here; that person told me that while Bing was entertaining American troops during World War II he became briefly lost behind enemy lines. Not to worry, German soldiers, among whom he was known as “Der Bingle,” liked him almost as much as his American compatriots, so if they had captured him not much more would have befallen him than a request for an impromptu concert.Harry Lillis “Bing" Crosby was an admirer of German technology, and in particular in the recording field. The Germans were recording on audio tape when the rest of the world was stuck with vinyl. In 1945, Bing had the German equipment taken apart and imported to America where, with his financing, state of the art audio and video tape based on German technology, was improved and put to use in the American recording industry.Bing was a decent man whose biography has been unjustly overshadowed by his son Gary’s mendacious book on Bing’s parenting, which Gary wrote when, as he later confessed, he was “drunk much of the time.”I asked the Crosby relative how Bing, a cradle Catholic, experienced the changes that occurred in the Mass, which entailed the suppression of the centuries-old Tridentine rite in favor of an English language version contrived in the pontificate of Paul VI. The relative said he took it very hard and was deeply dismayed.Though it’s largely forgotten now, Bing Crosby was the voice of the American century. He was number one in record sales in America (400 hit singles, with more number one recordings than Sinatra, Elvis or the Beatles). He was number one on radio, and from 1945 to 1950, number one at the movie box office with an Oscar to his credit; he was also a star (and pioneer) in television. No entertainer in modern western history comes close to Crosby’s achievement.Despite a mistaken appearance, in his dotage, with rocker David Bowie in an uninspired Christmas duet, Bing maintained high standards of professionalism, charity to the downtrodden, and the kindness and decency for which the American people were justly renowned in the not too distant past.The only pop singer with a classical education (he could speak, write and quote Latin), he epitomized what used to be known as “good clean fun.” He was a big kidder. While rehearsing a show with Broadway actress Mary Martin, her little son, the future television star Larry Hagman, was on the set making noise and horsing around. With his usual droll humor, Bing turned to the stagehands and pleaded, “Won’t somebody shoot that kid?” Decades later when “that kid” starred as J.R. Ewing in the TV series “Dallas,” it was Crosby’s daughter Mary (“Kristin Shepard”) who “shot” J.R.To lift his spirits, your editor listens to Bing’s music often, and not only the holiday songs. If you have leisure time this evening and PBS keeps its promise, the reputation of a paradigmatic representative of American popular culture will be renewed and restored to its proper place of esteem. May the culture which nurtured Der Bingle experience a similar renewal and restoration.American Masters: Bing Crosby Rediscovered, premiers nationwide tonight, December 2, on PBS (check local listings). A holiday encore presentation airs Friday, December 26 on PBS.Follow-up on “Der Bingle”By Michael HoffmanLast night’s Bing Crosby documentary on PBS television, which we promoted in this column, was adequate in most respects. Unfortunately, there were some politically correct pseudo-factoids that marred the film. Jazz writer Gary Giddins, who has penned a serviceable Crosby biography, alleged that Irving Berlin’s hit song “White Christmas” was devised by Berlin — who, as Giddins puts it, “was a Jew”— in order to “secularize Christmas.”What is lost on post-modernists like Giddins is the basic insight that every song sung in the Christmas season need not specifically refer to Our Lord. The Christian Faith is not a tyranny. For instance, the Wassail songs of the deeply religious Middle Ages reflected the joy of the Savior’s incarnation by exuding happiness and good cheer, which is what “White Christmas” represents. Bing's fame as the “White Christmas” crooner lighted the way to the many reverential Christmas hymns he sang and popularized.As for Berlin, he was married to a Catholic lady and nearly converted himself. He was a Conservative and his songs were not calculated to subvert the season of Christ Mass. The PBS special is guilty of the conceit of many contemporary historians — attempting to impose 21st century standards on artists of yesteryear who held views radically at variance with “multi-cultural” dogma and religious indifferentism.There is also a remark in the film that Crosby’s early music was so “erotic” that a Catholic archbishop had a conniption over it. Everyone who is admired in contemporary America must be shown to be persecuted by churchmen and gleefully subverting sacred values. In truth, Crosby was the toast of America’s Roman Catholic hierarchy and a major donor to Catholic causes, including the construction of the Crosby Library building which he financed at his Jesuit alma mater, Gonzaga University, about which all mention is excluded.His daughter Mary claimed, egregiously, that sexuality was not an issue with him; knowing full well that he had informed the media that if she shacked up with a guy he would disown her. Moreover, widower Crosby would not wed his second wife, Texas actress Kathryn Grant, until she converted to Catholicism, which she did willingly (and remains a Catholic today).Crosby’s recordings and appearances with the Andrews Sisters, among his most dynamic and joyful, were not shown or mentioned. The breadth and essence of his musicality, from his early jazz chops in seminal recordings from the late 1920s and early 30s, to his collaboration in 1957 with Dixieland “Bob Scobey and his Frisco Jazz Band” on the album “Bing with a Beat” (RCA), are passed over in favor of tedious excursions into personal family dramas, and clips from saccharine TV specials.I don’t mean to make Bing out to be more than he was. He wouldn’t tolerate canonization or take his fame as confirmation of his worth as a human being. Crosby had traditional values which are as foreign to our era’s pop culture as they were standard-bearers in his. He was a representative American in a better time now denounced as “racist, sexist and homophobic.” He reminds us of a simpler and more innocent age, and of the message that many of us endeavor to impart to our children in America's pop culture-saturated society, that ethics and high standards need not be divorced from joy and happiness.***
Source