Oh my goodness, Pantelis! Sir John of Scott Trotter. I might have known! Thank you.
Wasn't he just so incredibly consistent? I had no  idea when this was recorded (alright, I knew it wasn't from the 1920's or 1970's) but whenever I hear this, I just have to stand still and stop whatever I'm doing. It's beyond beautiful and makes me want to visit there. 

David, you have a real point when it comes to time restraints here. I previously viewed the Academy's 2025 "In Memoriam" tribute on YouTube weeks after the show. Admittedly, I never see the ceremony during transmission due to my pure and blameless lifestyle, where each night I'm put to bed before 5pm.

I must confess, Pantelis and Carmela- although lovely for it not to have been, I wasn't at all surprised with the omission of Mrs Crosby-Sullivan - when you remind us of those even higher billed names, subsequently gathered during the previous twelve months and also neglected. I was indeed quite taken aback with the exclusion of Mitzi Gaynor in particualr who was a blazingly talented, consistently headlining international popular film star and a considerable household name of her time. As Pantelis and Carmela have also articulately pointed out and with admirable passion (oh John Ford be praised!), a number of these omissions suffer from this seemingly morbid condition of "recency". Might there soon be a medical antidote for this - along with another for my ever rabid verbosity? 

I'm only guessing that along with David's comments, might it also be fair to guess that the Academy would also perhaps be associating our late and most lamented fair lady more with her first husband's big screen achievements than her own? Is there anyone out there in TV Land able to inform if "Oscar" was already similarly saluting many of its departed in the year of Bing's farewell - and how did he fare? 

Did Jim ever work with Bing on the radio? 

Great minds think alike, David! I just so wish they had made at least another film together. I keep meaning to see her performance opposite William Powell in their earlier version of "Our Man Godfrey". I saw and enjoyed the later David Niven and June Allyson version around forty years ago but suspect the original would be a more skilled, sophisticated and subtle improvement. 

David Lobosco wrote:

Wow, this is an old poll! Thanks for reviving it. I picked Caroe Lombard. I'm a big fan of hers. Second would be Mary Carlisle.

Thank you, Jason.

I really would recommend these online meetings to everyone on the forum. 
I appreciate timewise that in some countries it will be more difficult to participate but you really will all receive a most warm welcome. Jason/Jace is such a friendly, inclusive, subtly humorous and informed chairman who wears his learning lightly and delivers numerously informative talks, along with other members contributing their knowledge and presentations.

The other nice thing are the small, informal chats we have in between the presentations, where anything "Bing" goes!

Thank you, Carmela and Pantelis for your continued over kindnesses in your continued praise and agreements with me. I already struggled, today with moving my freshly swollen head through the door frame of my house, as I attempted to leave for my visit to the opticians and my bi-annual eye test.

I had no idea Kathryn's three books were also published in waterproof editions. 

My goodness me, Pantelis.
You make a very valid and wise point, here.
It instantly resonated the moment I read your response because there was in fact another (afore mentioned and Bing associated) male musical performer who after admittedly a previous nine films with a regular female co-star, never fully big-screen partnered himself more than twice with another. 

I suspect Fred Astaire's post RKO, Ginger Rogers career choices with this was deliberate.
Having previously been permanently teamed for twenty-seven years from the age of around five with his older sister, Adele in vaudeville, Broadway and London's West End, come 1932, Freddie was now desperately wanting new turf and co-stars who were as keen to work as he. Adele's proffesional enthusiasms for a good while had been waning and just now wished to retire to marry and begin a family.

Then after just one other stage show, sans sister, Astaire then signed on with Hollywood and only on in his second film appearance, joined Ginger Rogers and a legend was born - but one to which dear old Fred fought so much against from the beginning.

So once having then finally extricated himself from another protracted partnership, Mr Astaire never seriously movie screen danced with a partner more than twice - including Bing. I believe Fred was offered the Danny Kaye part in White Christmas but have read that either one view of the script or his wife's deteriorating health put paid to that. Admittedly, Fred did a very brief but inconsequential twirl with a semi-chorus cast Cyd Charisse in "Ziegfeld Follies" (1946), way before their two actual co-starring vehicles. 

As did Bing later with Kathryn on the small screen, Fred then performed on numerous productions and shows with the no-nonsense (and more than whispered, briefly off-screen coupled) Barrie Chase. 
In that partnership, Fred was more than prepared to be far stronger teamed - even if still, not quite to Laurel & Hardy proportions.

Incidentally,

 Although I have yet to see "Man on Fire", and so unable to judge Inger Stevens, I still feel my vote for Der Bingle's leading lady of the 'fifties would perhaps more than inch towards Jane Wyman. Fond as I am of Grace Kelly and Rosie (particularly her almost unrivalled female duetting with Bing), their naturally unforced chemistry for this decade makes her the soundest choice for me.

Their superb onscreen bond appears so strongly, it's really as if they're an established screen partnership of many films standing. Wyman's strong, twinkling, assertive, no nonsense, earthy and yet when required, not overly mannered, ladylike countenance (of which one could easily accuse a few of Bing's other leading ladies of not being able to carry off nearly as well) is the perfectly suited "yin" to the near permanently laid back "yang" of Bing's onscreen persona. 

Had they appeared more frequently, then would it have been too much of an exaggeration for them to have been promoted as one of the great male/female Hollywood screen teams such as Tracy and Hepburn, Powell and Dunne, Cary Grant and Myrna Loy, Astaire and Rogers, Rooney and Garland, Doris Day and Rock Hudson or for far older customers, Charlie Chaplin and Edna Purviance? 

As an aside, the other lovely thing is that the more age appropriate Wyman could actually more than carry a tune. Although her voice was never going to win any prizes and neither did she hit those Rosie heights when warbling with Bing - but my goodness, she gave many more before her (and at least one after) a good run for their money. Her own singing was unforced, spirited and as completely compatible with Bing as her acting.

That she had the grounding of perhaps being the most gifted and versatile dramatic actress ever to appear as our man's leading lady did her no harm, either. 


PS: I'm now nervously waiting for someone far more expert than I to tell me that Marni Nixon dubbed all of Janie's vocals. I think Irving Berlin is now far too

Could most of the performers who loudly and publicly pontificate over their party politics, sometimes be in danger of losing around half their potential audience? I know it's a tricky one and one Bing seemingly played beautifully. It always amuses me both here and in the USA, how many of the highly outspoken artistes, on being questioned over specific policies, often fail to be able to respond in a well informed manner. 

dgmprod wrote:

I’d like to join this merry little group. I was 12 in 1976 and was a Bing fan but unfortunately London was too far away from our home in Sydney. He was scheduled to perform here in Australia in either late 1977 or early 1978. If only he could have hung on for a bit longer!

Oh please hop aboard, David. The more the merrier! There'll always be room for someone who has contributed enormously to Bing's memory with your beyond perfect programmes on his cinema legacy. Among many other things, what would be so interesting with our little bit of time travel would be to see the full extent of these shows (as opposed to the edited commercially released recordings) and as to how many more of Bing's earlier recordings (such as sampled at the beginning of this topic) he performed, away from his Crosby Medley.

Yes, wouldn't it have been wonderful if Bing had survived longer to have visited your country and to also have made that album of Noël Coward songs - and the other planned album with Hope. However, I've always had extreme grave misgivings over their ever approaching "Road to the Fountain of Youth" film, for a number of reasons - but that's for another posting on another thread.  

Good grief, Pantelis, how wrong could I have been? Thank you so much for all the information with regard to this. Clearly I had no idea old Bing was so politically active compared to my previous thoughts. He really was quietly involved to some fair extents, wasn't he? I've seen archive talk show footage of him being very passionate about environmental issues (including a beautiful UK BBC Radio 4 edition of their thirty minute, single guest "Sounds Natural" programme from 1976) but never party politics, which assisted in my uninformed view.

A little "off topic" (but related) is that perhaps also an aging, faltering memory, coupled with my yet having to read my two long previously purchased volumes of the Gary Giddens' books may have a lot to do with this. Quite understandably, there were some surprised and humorous "shock-horror" reactions and enquiries over this among those gathered at the previous ICC "in the flesh" meeting at Jason's home in June of last year.

However, as I explained, I need to know where I stand with volume three before I begin reading the others, despite my buying the first over twenty-two years ago. If, to my complete satisfaction, it becomes final that there will definitely not be a concluding volume, then I'll instantly begin reading. Otherwise I would just be so distracted and wouldn't be able to properly concentrate, as I'd be wondering all the time as to how Mr Giddens would deal with the "final chapter".

The only other party political related event I remember reading about Bing was in either a book authored by (I think) George Jacobs (Sinatra's valet during the singer's peak years) or Lauren Bacall where it was recalled that at a Hollywood party during the 'fifties, her husband, Humphrey Bogart (now a Democrat supporter) was indirectly and at length,  "needling" an also present Bing about the two sides in a forthcoming election. Apparently, Bing was never drawn and remained charming and seemingly u

Thank you David for those three songs. They are first rate choices for examples of Bing's voice in peak condition. I really think "Love You Funny Thing" is the perfect illustration of the intimacy, modulation, emotion and rhythm for which he was so renowned. Again, the orchestra complements him perfectly in all quarters. It's listening to even this understated example, where Bing doesn't completely open his throat for those powerful high notes, which makes me realise how correct Sinatra was in once observing that how so much more than just a crooner Bing was. Frank thought the term served some of Crosby's contemporaries far more accurately, such as Rudy Vallee and Gene Nelson who possessed lovely but smaller voices, far more typical of that early "crooning" period. Bing Crosby was such a one off and the vital trail blazer for everything else which was to follow. 

Of course you may ask, Michael - and hello by the way. Sorry it's been so long, again. 
It's actually because my late wife had placed on our laptop's taskbar an alternative search engine, just in case we had problems with Google. For about a year on there, Google has now been so slow in its searches (I'm sure it will have something to do with my own PC, I am barely computer literate, she was), that I've since switched to this far faster alternative which has coincidentally and delightfully turned out to be "Bing".

I wonder if Nancy Reagan, who survived and remained sharply alert well into the internet age, made use of digital technology? I've heard from Nancy Sinatra Jr that her father lamented towards the end of his life that home computers had come along too late for him.

Obviously, the internet wasn't anywhere near around when Bing left us but I have no idea what his general, everyday, domestic views were towards advancing technologies. I highlight the above word, knowing us Crosbyphiles are all more than aware of Der Bingle's forward thinking when it came to the professional founding and use of audio-visual technology. 

Isn't it wonderful though that these days, within just a digital click, courtesy of Dieter's comment and help, I could then instantly see for myslef, proof of a (previously unaware) public Republican activity of Mr Cros?