Bing Crosby: Swinging on a Star

Starred review from July 9, 2018
The legendary crooner segues from edgy jazz singer to national paterfamilias in the second volume of Giddins’s scintillating biography. Jazz journalist and scholar Giddins (Satchmo) revisits the WWII era, when Bing Crosby was at the height of his popularity with a radio show, chart-topping records like “White Christmas” (still the world’s all-time bestselling single), a string of hit movies from the cutup comedy Road to Morocco to his classic turn as Father O’Malley in Going My Way. He also performed at innumerable USO gigs for the troops, including a show on the frontline during which his audience was called away to repel a German attack. He became, Giddins argues, a new paradigm of American masculinity: manly, down-to-earth, easygoing, unflappable, and a comfortably reassuring pillar of faith and family in chaotic times. (Crosby hid the dysfunctions in his own family, including his wife’s alcoholism and depression and his own harsh parenting style, which featured occasional beatings of his sons with a metal-studded leather belt.) Giddins packs exhaustive research and detail into his sprawling narrative while keeping the prose relaxed and vivid, and sprinkles in shrewd critical assessments of Crosby’s music and films. Crosby emerges as an aloof, cool cat, and Giddins’s engrossing show-biz bio richly recreates the popular culture he helped define.

September 1, 2018
The second volume of a multipart biography of Bing Crosby (1903-1977), concentrating on his remarkable achievements during the war years.In a long career, the years 1940-1946 represent the most lucrative period for Crosby as a pre-eminent multimedia talent. Having already established fame as a top-selling recording artist, his work on film would reach unprecedented box office success and critical heights. At the same time, he continued as a leading radio star on the popular Kraft Music Hall. Noted jazz critic Giddins (Celebrating Bird: The Triumph of Charlie Parker, 2013, etc.), a winner of a Peabody and National Book Critics Circle Award, among others, focuses much of the narrative on Crosby's notable career accomplishments, recounting a tireless work and travel schedule to rival any artist. In addition to chronicling Crosby's generous efforts on behalf of the enlisted men during the war that included several USO tours, the author provides extensive details on the production of each of Crosby's films, radio broadcasts, and recording sessions, including his contributions as a businessman and entrepreneur in the further expansion of these industries. The author doesn't shy away from his subject's personal limitations and his often remote behavior within his family, exploring his long and often troubled first marriage to former actress and nightclub singer, Dixie Lee. Giddins also examines Crosby's harsh disciplinary approach to raising his four sons from his marriage to Lee. Later to be recounted in Going My Own Way, son Gary's memoir, this aspect of the artist's life would somewhat tarnish his reputation among contemporary audiences. Throughout the book, the author impressively maintains a balanced view of Crosby's complex character: an affable, hardworking performer admired by his peers and audience but also a man with values and ideas representative of his generation and piously Catholic upbringing. Ultimately, the author establishes Crosby's relevancy as an indisputable talent worth fair consideration from future generations.A deeply researched and thoroughly engrossing biography that confirms Crosby's essential role in the history of American music and film during a crucial period of the 20th century.

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September 15, 2018

In this second installment of a projected three-volume biography, author and former Village Voice columnist Giddins begins right where he left off 17 years ago with Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of DreamsThe Early Years, 1903-1940), with Crosby (1903-77) entering the greatest period of his career. It's likely, and unfortunate, that for many people, Crosby's legacy could be encapsulated into a mere handful of songs and films, so the attention Giddins brings not only to his tremendous career but also to the typically unheralded advances in recording technology, of which Crosby played a vital role, is long overdue. Crosby's extensive work with the United Service Organization during World War II and, most important, his seemingly countless radio broadcasts increased his popularity across the globe and strengthened the resolve of the Allied cause at home.VERDICT As this could be considered the first proper biography of Crosby, general readers might have been better served with a single volume. However, its merits and the skill of Giddins's writing are unassailable, and all libraries and fans of Crosby should add this to their collection.--Peter Thornell, Hingham P.L., MA

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from October 15, 2018
A sadly shrinking coterie of fans who recognize Bing Crosby's significant role in the history of American popular culture has been waiting 17 years for the second volume of Giddins' definitive biography of the iconic entertainer (following Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams, 2001). In that first volume, Giddins explored how Crosby, in the late 1920s and Depression-era '30s, remade our notion of a pop-music vocalist, and here he shows how the singer became the movie star, adapting his signature vocal style based on intimacy and naturalness into a film persona that defined the WWII years. The book focuses on three aspects of Crosby's life and career during the period: his chart-topping movies from 1940 through '46 (the Road films with Bob Hope; Holiday Inn, which launched "White Christmas"; Going My Way, which won Crosby a best actor Oscar; and its sequel, the even-more-popular The Bells of St. Mary's); his personal life (the troubled relationship with his alcoholic first wife, Dixie, and the equally troubled parenting of his four sons; an under-the-radar affair with actress Joan Caulfield); and, most compellingly, Crosby's wartime work (hundreds of benefit concerts, both in the U.S. and on the battlefields of Europe). For a twenty-first-century audience, the idea of Bing Crosby as both a swoonworthy movie idol and an inspiration to battle-hardened soldiers may seem difficult to comprehend, but that is the brilliance of Giddins' work: he makes us see how, in a very different time, Crosby's easygoing, waggish style was just what the country craved, on records and radio, at the movies, and in person. Tony Bennett may have said it best: "Bing taught everyone to relax."(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)