Bing Crosby

Harry Lillis Crosby Jr., known professionally as Bing Crosby, was born on May 3, 1903, in Tacoma, Washington, in a house his father built at 1112 North J Street. Three years after his birth, the family relocated to Spokane in Eastern Washington, where Crosby was raised. He was the fourth of seven children born to Harry Lillis Crosby Sr., a bookkeeper of Scottish and English descent, and Catherine Helen Crosby, a second-generation Irish-American. His siblings included brothers Larry, Everett, Ted, and Bob, and sisters Catherine Cordelia and Mary Rose. Among his ancestors, Simon Crosby emigrated from England to New England in the 1630s, and on another paternal line, Crosby descended from Mayflower passenger William Brewster.

Crosby graduated from Gonzaga High School in 1920 and enrolled at Gonzaga University, where he played on the baseball team as a freshman, though he left after three years without earning a degree. The university awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1937 and today houses a museum at 508 E. Sharp Avenue containing more than 200 artifacts from his life and career, including his Academy Award. His nickname originated around 1910 when a neighbor, Valentine Hobart, called him "Bingo from Bingville," a reference to a comic feature called The Bingville Bugle that the young Harry enjoyed. The name was eventually shortened to Bing, as confirmed by Crosby himself and his biographer Charles Thompson.

His early professional life began in Spokane, where in 1923 he joined a band of younger musicians called the Musicaladers, which performed at dances and on radio station KHQ before disbanding after two years. Crosby and bandmate Al Rinker subsequently found work at the Clemmer Theatre in Spokane, performing alongside the weekly film program for twelve successful weeks. In October 1925, the two traveled to Los Angeles to pursue broader opportunities, where singer Mildred Bailey, Rinker's sister, introduced them to her industry contacts.

Crosby became one of the most commercially dominant entertainers of the twentieth century, leading in record sales, network radio ratings, and motion picture grosses from 1926 through 1977. He recorded more than 1,600 songs and appeared in over 70 feature films. His intimate vocal style, made possible in part by recording innovations of his early career, influenced singers including Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Dean Martin, Dick Haymes, Elvis Presley, and John Lennon. In 1948, Music Digest estimated that Crosby's recordings accounted for more than half of the 80,000 weekly hours of recorded radio music broadcast across North America.

His film career reached its commercial peak between 1944 and 1948, during which he was the number one box office attraction for five consecutive years. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Going My Way in 1944 and received a nomination for its sequel, The Bells of St. Mary's, in 1945, opposite Ingrid Bergman, making him the first of six actors to receive two nominations for portraying the same character. In 1946 alone, Crosby starred in three of the year's five highest-grossing films: The Bells of St. Mary's, Blue Skies, and Road to Utopia. He also collaborated extensively with Bob Hope on the Road to series of films, which ran from 1940 to 1962. His association with the Christmas season stems from his starring role in the musical film Holiday Inn and his recording of "White Christmas" in the film of the same name.

American polls in 1948 named Crosby the most admired man alive, placing him ahead of Jackie Robinson and Pope Pius XII. Yank magazine credited him as the person who had done the most for the morale of overseas servicemen during World War II. In 1963, he received the first Grammy Global Achievement Award, and he holds three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, in the categories of motion pictures, radio, and audio recording.

Crosby played a significant role in shaping the postwar recording industry. After observing a demonstration of a German reel-to-reel tape recorder brought to the United States by John T. Mullin, he invested $50,000 in the California electronics company Ampex to manufacture copies of the device. He then persuaded ABC to permit him to prerecord his radio programs, becoming the first performer to do so, and to master his commercial recordings onto magnetic tape. The production methods he applied to his radio work, including editing, retaking, rehearsal, and time shifting, became standard practice across the industry. Beyond audio recording, Crosby helped finance the development of videotape, purchased television stations, bred racehorses, and co-owned the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team, during whose co-ownership the team won the World Series in both 1960 and 1971.

In 1976, Crosby appeared on Broadway in Bing Crosby on Broadway, adding a stage credit to a career that had already spanned radio, recordings, and film. He died on October 14, 1977.