or open his car door or fuss over him at all. 37
“He had a vocabulary like a senator’s,” Bing’s father once said, “and we used to call him Travis McGutney.” 38 His way with words, not just his singing and whistling, helped define Bing’s personality for his friends. He rolled large
words on his tongue, trilled rs, fiddled with malapropisms and spoonerisms, and mimicked the lower, upper, and outcast classes,
exemplified in minstrel badinage or highfalutin rhetoric. This talent gave him distinction within his gang. Interviewed in
the 1940s, childhood friends and neighbors said they thought him more likely to become a comedian than a singer. One pal said
he hardly recognized the Bing he knew in the movies until he began making the
Road
pictures with Bob Hope. All that easy banter with Hope, the double takes and primed reactions, the fast wit and easy superiority
— that was the way he was in school. His romantic pictures of the 1930s, on the other hand, weren’t Bing at all, a friend
said; he had never showed that much interest in girls.
The only early crush he spoke of was inspired by one Gladys Lemmon, who survived in the Crosby mythology less for her curly-haired
charms than her pun-inspiring name. Upon hearing that Bing carried her books and took her sledding, Larry taunted him at the
dinner table as a lemon-squeezer, prompting Bing to hurl a slice of buttered bread that in later accounts metamorphosed into
a leg of lamb. The courtship allegedly ended when Bing was forced to wear a starched priestlike collar that made his neck
chafe to Gladys’s birthday party. It was not his only social faux pas. Margaret Nixon would not invite him to her birthdays
because he once stole the party ice cream from her back porch. He was that kind of boy, she said. And Vera Lemley complained
that after she broke a date with him, Bing would not talk to her for two years.
If his glib lingo failed to serve Bing as a gallant, it did enhance his standing at Gonzaga High. In his sophomore year he
was cited as Next in Merit in elocution (Frank Corkery, who put no less faith in language, won the gold medal) and took first
honors in English. Bing’s popularity and sportsmanship were affirmed early in the semester: he was elected class consultor
and captained the victorious Dreadnoughts in the Junior Yard Association Midget Football League. He also made the JYA baseball
team. Posing in his striped red-and-white uniform, he was small, chubby, beaming. Those endeavors proved less meaningful than
his admission to the Junior Debating Society, which increased his presence in public-speaking events, though he proved better
at elocution than debate. The university magazine,
Gonzaga,
reviewed a recital of Poe’s “The Bells” by Bing, Corkery, and two others as “striking and novel,” the high point of a contest
in public speaking. 39 Bing recited “Romancin’” to a packed house at St. Aloysius Hall and took the adverse position in a debate about limiting
the American presidency to a single term of six years.
In 1919, through the efforts of Father Kennelly, football was restored as a major activity at Gonzaga. Its triumphant team
produced two players inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. One was Ray Flaherty (“big and powerful — watch out for
Flaherty,”
Gonzaga
prophesied), with whom Bing remained friendly all his life. Flaherty led the NFL in pass receptions in 1932, helped the New
York Giants to the NFL championship in 1934, and retired as coach with the highest winning percentage (.735) in the annals
of the Washington Redskins. Ray and Bing were on the Midget team together, and Ray admired his moxie, though he did not think
much of him as a footballer. 40 Still, Bing’s fortitude was noted after he trimmed down to 135 pounds and learned to handle himself adequately as center.
Of a JYA game against Hillyard High (a tie: 19-19),
Gonzaga
reported, “B. Crosby was a
“He had a vocabulary like a senator’s,” Bing’s father once said, “and we used to call him Travis McGutney.” 38 His way with words, not just his singing and whistling, helped define Bing’s personality for his friends. He rolled large
words on his tongue, trilled rs, fiddled with malapropisms and spoonerisms, and mimicked the lower, upper, and outcast classes,
exemplified in minstrel badinage or highfalutin rhetoric. This talent gave him distinction within his gang. Interviewed in
the 1940s, childhood friends and neighbors said they thought him more likely to become a comedian than a singer. One pal said
he hardly recognized the Bing he knew in the movies until he began making the
Road
pictures with Bob Hope. All that easy banter with Hope, the double takes and primed reactions, the fast wit and easy superiority
— that was the way he was in school. His romantic pictures of the 1930s, on the other hand, weren’t Bing at all, a friend
said; he had never showed that much interest in girls.
The only early crush he spoke of was inspired by one Gladys Lemmon, who survived in the Crosby mythology less for her curly-haired
charms than her pun-inspiring name. Upon hearing that Bing carried her books and took her sledding, Larry taunted him at the
dinner table as a lemon-squeezer, prompting Bing to hurl a slice of buttered bread that in later accounts metamorphosed into
a leg of lamb. The courtship allegedly ended when Bing was forced to wear a starched priestlike collar that made his neck
chafe to Gladys’s birthday party. It was not his only social faux pas. Margaret Nixon would not invite him to her birthdays
because he once stole the party ice cream from her back porch. He was that kind of boy, she said. And Vera Lemley complained
that after she broke a date with him, Bing would not talk to her for two years.
If his glib lingo failed to serve Bing as a gallant, it did enhance his standing at Gonzaga High. In his sophomore year he
was cited as Next in Merit in elocution (Frank Corkery, who put no less faith in language, won the gold medal) and took first
honors in English. Bing’s popularity and sportsmanship were affirmed early in the semester: he was elected class consultor
and captained the victorious Dreadnoughts in the Junior Yard Association Midget Football League. He also made the JYA baseball
team. Posing in his striped red-and-white uniform, he was small, chubby, beaming. Those endeavors proved less meaningful than
his admission to the Junior Debating Society, which increased his presence in public-speaking events, though he proved better
at elocution than debate. The university magazine,
Gonzaga,
reviewed a recital of Poe’s “The Bells” by Bing, Corkery, and two others as “striking and novel,” the high point of a contest
in public speaking. 39 Bing recited “Romancin’” to a packed house at St. Aloysius Hall and took the adverse position in a debate about limiting
the American presidency to a single term of six years.
In 1919, through the efforts of Father Kennelly, football was restored as a major activity at Gonzaga. Its triumphant team
produced two players inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. One was Ray Flaherty (“big and powerful — watch out for
Flaherty,”
Gonzaga
prophesied), with whom Bing remained friendly all his life. Flaherty led the NFL in pass receptions in 1932, helped the New
York Giants to the NFL championship in 1934, and retired as coach with the highest winning percentage (.735) in the annals
of the Washington Redskins. Ray and Bing were on the Midget team together, and Ray admired his moxie, though he did not think
much of him as a footballer. 40 Still, Bing’s fortitude was noted after he trimmed down to 135 pounds and learned to handle himself adequately as center.
Of a JYA game against Hillyard High (a tie: 19-19),
Gonzaga
reported, “B. Crosby was a
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