Word: binging
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...surely lacked demonstrable dreamboat features. His slight shoulders led down to a slight paunch. His hair was already receding. In his first solo film, "I Surrender, Dear," there is a brief shot, as he runs from a house, of Bing without his toupee; not a pretty sight. Often he was too lazy to apply a hairpiece, so in movies he'd wear hats or caps with little plot justification. Most noticeable were his Babar ears; they made him look, one studio exec complained, "like a taxi with both doors open." (Crosby, who refused the mogul's demand that he have...
...Gary Giddins amply demonstrates in his biography "Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams, The Early Years, 1903-1940," Bing was an instant hit on records and radio, and in the movies. He starred in Paramount's "The Big Broadcast" of 1932 and would stay at the studio for 24 years, through 60 or so features, including six "Road" movies, three films with "Rhythm" in the title, two versions of "Anything Goes" and "Going My Way," which won him an Oscar as Best Actor. His career could have won him a lifetime award as Biggest Star. Or very nearly...
...What was Crosby's secret? The seamlessness, the integrity of the package: His smooth, pleasant face perfectly suited his smooth, pleasant voice and the casual wit of his professional personality. One would call the Crosby style debonair, if the word didn't suggest class. Bing was of every class and none; his trick was to elevate the Joe Average attitude to a kind of masculine chic. It was an attitude, of a man at ease with himself and his success, that would help him dominate entertainment until the '50s. In pop-cultural history - Jolson to Crosby to Elvis - Bing...
...Crosby style full-born in "I Surrender, Dear" (1931), the first of nine short films he would make for producer Mack Sennett. Already he is cast as himself, sort of: "Bing Crosby." Already he is the famous singer all the girls adore. Already he plays pranks on the unwary and has a comedy abettor, an ur-Hope wise guy played by Arthur Stone. Somehow, though, he made the prankishness look like the inevitable spillover of a frat-house exuberance...
...Most significant, he also exudes that insouciance that made his dialogue sound like an ad lib. When a large angry man shoots a gun at his feet, Bing simply nonchalants, "Whatta hubba." And at the end of his one big speech, telling off a pretty girl's disapproving mom with a final "Nerts!", he turns to storm out the door but instead accidentally walks into a dresser. Quickly he murmurs, "My sense of direction is a little askew," and exits. Maybe Sennett couldn't afford a Take Two, but he had to love Crosby's aplomb in the face...