The Tragic Real-Life Story Of Bing Crosby

Bing Crosby has gone down in history as one of America's most beloved entertainers. Dominating the silver screen, music charts, and infiltrating radios across the country from the 1930s to 1960s, Crosby remains a pop culture icon. As Robert Trachtenberg, director of American Masters: Bing Crosby Rediscovered, declared in 2016, "It's an unprecedented career in the history of show business," adding, "He really was the first multimedia star of the 20th century" (via Fox News).

Born in Tacoma, Washington, in 1903, Bing Crosby was the fourth of his family's seven children. According to Biography, the future crooner's love for music became apparent at age six — with the purchase of his first phonograph. Leading a normal, middle-class life, by the time he was in university, Crosby "abandoned his aspirations to become a lawyer for his dreams of musical stardom." By 1930, he scored his first film role in King of Jazz and shortly after launched his own radio show — one which attracted "as many as 50 million listeners during its peak."

Yet despite all his success that followed, Crosby's personal life was filled with hardship. The public saw him as the A-list golden boy who topped the musical charts with "nearly 300 hit singles" throughout his career, yet the notoriously private celeb's life was, at times, in shambles. Let's discover the tragic real-life story of Bing Crosby.

The early years of Bing Crosby's career were filled with success — and love. According to the Los Angeles Times, the singer met his biggest flame, Dixie Lee, in 1929, with the starlet already a rising actress in her own right at Fox Studios. The pair tied the knot on September 29, 1930, with Lee resigning from her career as a silver screen icon in order to start a family with Crosby. They settled in Toluca Lake, Los Angeles, in 1936, snagging a beautiful estate which sprawled across four acres.

Unfortunately for the Crosbys and their four sons, tragedy struck in 1943, when a fire destroyed their home and "most of the personal possessions the couple had collected of 13 years of marriage went with it." As The New York Times published after the disaster, the $250,000 fire occurred in early January, after Lee and the kids "were taking down Christmas tree decorations," resulting in a short circuit that ignited the tree. Damages were catastrophic, destroying Crosby's "horse racing and golf trophies ... [and] his prized collection of musical recordings."

Thankfully for the star, there was one small silver lining: he managed to salvage "a charred sports shoe from the remains of his dressing room," which miraculously still contained an unharmed $2,000 of "cash race earnings" (via Los Angeles Times).

Sadly, Dixie Lee's alcohol abuse didn't only have lasting impacts on herself. Along with the psychological hardships she most likely gave her children and Bing Crosby himself, it also had physical consequences for the couple's two twin sons, Dennis and Phillip Crosby.

As American Masters: Bing Crosby Rediscovered revealed, the twin Crosby brothers "were victims of fetal alcohol syndrome." Heartbreakingly enough, because the issue wasn't discussed at the time, neither Lee or Bing knew how to help their children. "The twins, they didn't look quite right," the documentary's director, Robert Trachtenberg, told People, adding that he took photos of Dennis and Phillip to experts at USC. "[I]t affects their skull and their nose, and it manifests itself physically as well. The specialists looked at them and said 'Yeah, this is like a textbook case of fetal alcohol syndrome.'"

Eventually, all of Bing's sons from his marriage to Lee became alcoholics, and by the time Dennis was 56, he had committed suicide from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. "When my mother died, I saw the light go out of his eyes," recalled his brother, Gary Crosby, at Dennis' memorial service (via Washington Post). "As far as I'm concerned, he's been trying to get back to her ever since."

If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline​ at​ 1-800-273-TALK (8255)​.

Throughout his career, Bing Crosby presented an idyllic image of himself to the masses. "Everyone in the world was in love with Bing Crosby," mused the singer's second wife, Kathryn Crosby, in an interview for American Masters: Bing Crosby Rediscovered. If you weren't obsessed with Bing at the time, the other perception was that he was an "ultra-square pop crooner" (via The Baltimore Sun). Regardless of which side you were on, one thing was for certain: Bing Crosby was harmless.

After Bing's death in 1977, his public persona was dealt a massive blow after his eldest son, Gary Crosby, published a memoir in 1983, Going My Own Way, detailing his father's abusive tendencies. As American Masters revealed, it would "forever tarnish the public's perception of Crosby." While Gary's brother, Phillip, denied the intensity of such claims, Gary would stick to his narrative for years to come, even revealing in 1987, "As far back as I can remember in my lifetime, the earliest childhood memory that I have, I don't remember a time when terror, bewilderment, and anxiety and despair weren't on my shoulders constantly."

The Baltimore Sun notes that, while some stars, such as Elvis (who passed away the same year as Bing Crosby), "evolved into [a] posthumous life," Bing, instead, was buried in pop culture history, with his son's claims "sort of [cutting] him off at the knees."

After years of loneliness coupled with decades of alcohol abuse, Bing Crosby's wife, Dixie Lee, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in June of 1952 — at the age of 40. Even more tragic was Bing's absence when his wife passed that same year. As American Masters: Bing Crosby Rediscovered revealed, Lee's doctors decided not to let her know the cancer was terminal, and her husband jet off to Paris for a scheduled movie shoot — so as to not raise suspicion anything was wrong.

Considering Bing Crosby was such a star, the singer didn't even have peace on the day of his wife's funeral. "It was a freaking circus," Gary Crosby said in an archival interview (via American Masters), detailing the overwhelming number of photographers. "Through it all ... it was like he was alone."

In an ironic twist of fate, Dixie Lee's passing brought the family closer together — if only for a brief period of time. Per People's feature on Gary's memoir, Going My Own Way, her death "resulted in a rare moment of togetherness." As for Bing, the crooner has been quoted as saying: "I will never talk about my grief at losing her. I believe grief is the most private emotion a human being can have, and I'm going to keep mine that way" (via Bing Crosby: Crooner of the Century).

Gary Crosby wrote his scathing memoir in 1983, detailing the allegedly horrific household the Crosby brothers grew up in. While some family members — such as Bing Crosby's brother, Bob, and Gary's younger brother, Phillip — denied the claims, one thing was for sure: the iconic singer had trouble expressing his emotions. This fact is something Barbara Walters touched upon, too, during her 1977 interview with Bing, revealing that the public sometimes saw "this picture of a man who finds it very hard to give or receive emotion."

Bing shrugged off these allegations, calling himself a "surface fella," yet his second wife, Kathryn, can attest to her late husband's stoic nature. "He started shaking hands with Harry [Crosby] when Harry was four," she recalled to American Masters: Bing Crosby Rediscovered. "I said, 'What are you doing ... you hug him.'"

It looks like Kathryn's words didn't change Bing's personality –even on the day he died on a golf course in October 1977. Speaking with The Express, his youngest son, Nathaniel, recalled being with his father during his final moments after he suffered a heart attack. "His last words weren't particularly memorable," said Nathaniel, adding that even then, his father didn't tell him he loved him. "He said, 'That was a great game of golf, fellas.'"