The 78th Tony Awards, honoring excellence in Broadway theatre, paid tribute to our late ICC president Kathryn Crosby in this year’s In Memoriam segment—honoring her lifetime contributions to the stage.

 
While Kathryn is primarily remembered for her years of Hollywood stardom starring in both critically acclaimed films like Anatomy of a Murder and The Phenix City Story, as well as box office hits like The 7th Voyage of Sinbad and Operation Mad Ball or her marriage to Bing she also had a prolific theatrical career.

Kathryn’s love for acting began in her school in West Columbia and after some plays during her university years she made her professional debut as Cordelia in Shakespeare’s King Lear at Immaculate Heart College in 1960. Her early-stage work included Norman Krasna’s romantic comedy Sunday in New York (1963), followed by the title role in Sabrina in Pygmalion in 1964, and a musical version of Peter Pan in 1965.
Kathryn was offered the leading role on a company tour of My Fair Lady, but she turned it down upon Bing’s request.
 
She drew sold-out crowds in 1966 for Arms and the Man at the Drury Lane Theater in Chicago, and starred in Mary, Mary (Canada and U.S. tour), The Guardsman (1967–68), and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969–70). Kathryn’s long association with the American Conservatory Theater began in 1973 with Cyrano de Bergerac, with Broadway (1974) and with Indian Ink (1999). She appeared in Scotland in The Heiress in 1976 and in 1977 in The Latest Mrs. Adams.

She made her first Broadway appearance in 1976 with Bing Crosby and Friends at Uris Theater. In 1978 she also headlined the Broadway production national tour of the Same Time Next Year receiving very good reviews.

In 1996 the 62-year-old Kathryn starred (receiving top billing with John Davidson) in the ORIGINAL Broadway introduction of the classic Rogers and Hammersmith musical State Fair-her most famous Broadway play.

Throughout the late ’70s and ’80s, Kathryn starred in productions of Ladyhouse Blues (1979), Guys and Dolls, and Charley’s Aunt (1992). She turned down several offers from the American Conservatory Theater in the ’80s to focus on founding the Crosby Scholars and the Bing Crosby National Golf Tournament in North Carolina. In 1999 and 2000, she starred in the Marin Theater Company production of the stage musical Pal Joey as Vera Simpson.
In late 1990s she toured in Russia starring Hello Dolly and in playing in The Seagull entirely in Russian, a language that she was also fluent.
 
Unlike films or TV, most of these performances were never recorded. Her many theatricals plays are now exist only in the memory of the thousands of people around the globe that experienced her artistry live.

As her son Harry Crosby shared in the 2014 PBS American Masters interview, The theater was the real love of his mother.
The Tony Award in memoriam recognition was a befitted curtain call for a life devoted to the Stage.

Last edited by Pantelis Kavouras (24/6/2025 5:30 pm)