Very disappointed to read the obituary in the Daily Telegraph today. Here's an extract.
"​She began in uncredited roles in such films as Grand Hotel (1932, starring Greta Garbo), before making her big break with Bing Crosby in College Humor (1933). She went on to co-star with him in Double or Nothing (1937) and Doctor Rhythm (1938).
But she never warmed to Crosby, whom she described in an interview in 2002 as “paranoid”: “He was not only terribly self-conscious about his height – he wore lifts in his shoes – but he had those giant ears of his pinned back, his teeth whitened constantly, and what is more, he drank like a fish.”
She often took him to task over his treatment of his then wife, the actress Dixie Lee: “He was so ghastly and mean to her. There were the rumours that he often beat her. On one occasion I offered her $50 to get out of town, but she couldn’t live with or without Bing.”"

​Mary was an honorary member of the ICC and had only good words to say about Bing. Gary Giddins interviewed her in depth and did not pick up anything like this. Wonder if they are confused with Kitty Carlisle.
 

Last edited by Malcolm Macfarlane (03/8/2018 5:57 pm)

I interviewed Mary Carlisle in the mid 1990s for an article in Club Crosby and she only had good things to say about Bing. I'll have to dig it out. 

I have written to the Telegraph asking for details of their source. I have suggested that they are disseminating fake news.

Another example of poor journalism, of journalists going for the scandalous whether it were true or not, and without quoting sources. Very unprofessional and completely unacceptable.

Bing only had good things to say about Mary Carlisle as well. For instance, this is what he says in his Musical Autobiography before launching into "Learn to Croon" accompanied by Buddy Cole: "I made a movie called College Humor. The score was by Arthur Johnston and Sam Coslow. Jack Oakie and Dick Arlen pleyed in the backfield, and I was a professor of music. I never did know what the story was all about. Mary Carlisle sat in the front row in all my classes, and I guess that sort of threw me off. I flunked Oakie and Arlen, but a couple of great tunes graduated."

Thanks, Richard, for trawling the web in an attempt to turn up the source of the 2002 interview...

Again, I am not in the business of defending lazy journalism, but I’m fairly sure that any obituary of Mary Carlisle will not have been a newly compiled and written article, but a topped-and-tailed, cut-and-paste job based on a framework which will have been held on file for years - if not decades.

We can only hope that Malcolm’s request for the source of the quotes yields some answers.

Thanks for posting Malcolm.
At least you did receive a response.
Interviews always receive an answer but it depends how the question is put to them and tone.
Same question from different people receive a different attitude response.
If there was a 'bad' feeling would Bing have had her in three films? After all Bing had a lot of input that the studio took notice of.
Perhaps the bloke talking to Mary didn't care much for Bing.