Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/742011
S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S • 43 O n Christmas Day in 1941, millions tuned their radios to Kraft Music Hall, NBC's hit variety program hosted by Bing Crosby, one of Hollywood's brightest stars and the best-selling recording artist of the 20th century. Bing was in the middle of filming Holiday Inn with Fred Astaire. Irving Berlin had composed the film's music and was keen to include a song he'd originally written for Astaire to sing to Ginger Rogers in the 1935 musical, Top Hat. "I don't think we have any problems with that one, Irving," Bing said after Berlin played it for him. It was an unlikely song for a Russian Jewish immigrant to compose: wistful, with none of the merriment of the season. But when Crosby decided to sing "White Christmas" for the very first time on that Christmas Day broadcast, it couldn't have been more "right"—or so desperately needed. The Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor 18 days before, catapulting America into World War II. May your days be merry and bright, and may all your Christmases be white gave hope and comfort to an emotionally shattered nation. "A cleft palate could have sung it successfully," Bing remarked. Crosby singing "White Christmas" remains the best-selling record of all time and how he is best remembered—just one of many unparalleled achievements this modest, affable, outwardly easy- going man realized in his lifetime (see sidebar). To temper the intensity of his professional—and an oftentimes conflicted personal—life, Bing frequently headed for the woods and water. Hunting and fishing were lifelong passions for Crosby, with the crooner shouldering a gun and casting a line as he grew up. His father was Harry Lincoln Crosby, a descendant of Mayflower passenger William Brewster, the religious elder of the Mayflower Colony in America. His mother was Catherine Helene Harrigan, a second- generation Irish-American. The fourth of seven children, Bing Crosby was born in Tacoma, Washington, on May 3, 1903, but grew up in Spokane, where his family moved into a house his father built when Bing was 3. His nickname was bestowed on him in grade school by classmate Valentine The SporTing Life by Laurie bogarT WiLeS A MAn for All SeASonS – Hunting And fiSHing were lifelong pASSionS for Bing CroSBy. Hobart, who said he looked like "Bingo," a character with pear-shaped, protruding ears in the comic strip "Bingville Bugle," published in the Sunday edition of the Spokane Spokesman Review. Bing's skill with a gun and rod, good sportsmanship, and deep-seated respect for wild things and their environment is well-chronicled in the many shows he filmed (always gratis) for The American Sportsman and the memories treasured by those he spent time with afield. Maybe the love and passion he poured into his work equaled, or even exceeded, his love of the great outdoors. But one thing's for sure: No public figure since Theodore Roosevelt has done more to promote wildlife conservation and responsible hunting and fishing practices in America—and around the world—than Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby, Jr. A lifelong hunter and fisherman "You know," Bing said in one of several Ducks Unlimited campaigns he appeared in during the late '60s and '70s, "the first pioneers wrote the folks back home that, out here, the flocks of ducks and geese were so phoTo by huLTon archive/geTTy imageS