Bing is back! PBS celebrates Crosby

Almost four decades after his death, Bing Crosby — if he's remembered at all by anyone under 40 — is remembered as part of Christmas.

He was a huge recording star with nearly 400 hits and more No. 1 hits than Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley or the Beatles. Fifty million people tuned in to hear his radio show every week.

He made more than five dozen movies, winning an Oscar for "Going My Way" in 1944, but the two that are remembered best in the 21st century turn up on TV every December — "Holiday Inn" (1942) and, of course, "White Christmas" (1954).

Crosby's 1942 recording of Irving Berlin's "White Christmas" has sold more than 50 million copies and remains the best-selling song of all time.

That film remains the favorite of Bing's widow, Kathryn, for a very good reason.

"Well, I like several of them," she said, "but I met him on the set of 'White Christmas.' So that might give him an edge there."

By the 1970s, Crosby had brought his annual Christmas specials to television — featuring the couple and their children, Harry, Mary and Nathaniel.

"Dad represents … the spirit of the holidays," Mary Crosby said. "That's so much a part of his legacy.

"He really was sort of the American guy — a simple guy, quiet, modest, hunting, fishing, outdoors. All of those things. So his legacy is the spirit of Christmas and then the kind of an everyman that could sing a song. That's how he used to describe himself. He said, 'I just sing songs.' "

For fans who remember Bing Crosby — and even more for the younger generations who don't — PBS' "American Masters" presents "Bing Crosby Rediscovered," an excellent 90-minute documentary that's loaded with movie and TV clips, interviews and comments from those who knew him best.

The biography addresses his rise to fame and later success. And it doesn't shy away from the troubles in his first family. First wife Dixie Lee was an alcoholic who died of cancer in 1952. Their four sons — who may have suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome — led troubled lives.

The documentary addresses son Gary's book, published after Bing's death, that alleged that his father physically abused his first four sons. This made big headlines and has clung to Bing Crosby's memory ever since.

"Corporal punishment, spanking your kids was the norm," said "Rediscovered" filmmaker Robert Trachtenberg. "Bing says it in his autobiography. Bing says it in interviews throughout the '50s. 'I disciplined the kids. Maybe I was too hard on them.' He's completely transparent about it, so it's interesting what the public chooses to remember."

Mary Crosby said she had lunch with Gary, who died in 1995, and he "said to me, 'It wasn't really the way it went down, but they told me that if I made a bigger deal out of it, I would sell a bunch of books.' And I remember sitting there going, 'How can you do that?' "

Harry Crosby said his father "was a great dad." Nathaniel Crosby called him "an unbelievable father."

The allegations do not dominate "Bing Crosby Rediscovered." It's a fond remembrance of a regular guy who became an unbelievably big star.

And 38 years after the last Crosby Christmas special, which aired a few weeks after Bing's death in 1977, Mary — best known for playing the woman who shot J.R. on "Dallas" — still has warm memories of those days.

"I used to say that everybody got one Christmas or one Hanukkah, but we got two because we got to get out of school," she said. "They would take off our braces, which was a really big deal, so we got to play as a family for a couple of weeks in November as well as have Christmas with the rest of the world."

"We got three weeks out of school. It was great," said Harry Crosby.

Well, not for all the kids. At least not all the time.

"Nathaniel was always horrified having to sing," Mary Crosby said, "and there was a period of time where he didn't have his two front teeth … so it was always in the script."

Nathaniel still laments having to wear "leotards and green sequins and all sorts of different strange outfits."

"I had a jock image at school, and the Christmas show was not a good thing for me," he said, recalling showing up to school the day after the show aired and being greeted by "40 or 50 kids … singing 'White Christmas' off of the junior-high-school balcony to me."

"And 13 or 14 fistfights later, I resolved this crisis. But definitely it wasn't a good thing for my jock image at school. I was very upset about the whole thing."

He got over it, of course, and tells that story with obvious fondness for his father. And the Crosby kids — who now range in age from 53 to 56 — look back fondly. Although as Mary recalls in the documentary, "I think if you look in retrospect and you go, 'Oh my God, this is not great art. This isn't even decent music. This is just someone who is fantastic who wants to share his family.' "

And 50 million people would tune in — a number that only the Super Bowl exceeds today.

Today, Bing Crosby is a holiday staple and "White Christmas" — the song and the movie — are holiday traditions.

"It makes you feel good about the human spirit and feel good about doing the right thing for the old general," Nathaniel Crosby said.

It's a tradition with Crosby's children and grandchildren.

"My children didn't get to meet Dad, and so that's definitely part of how they know their grandfather," Mary Crosby said.

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On TV

The "American Masters" documentary "Bing Crosby Rediscovered" airs Sunday, Dec. 7, at 3 p.m. on KUED-Ch. 7. It repeats Friday, Dec. 26, at 8 p.m.; Monday, Dec. 29, at 1:30 a.m.; and Wednesday, Dec. 31, at 11 p.m.

The 1954 film "White Christmas" airs Friday, Dec. 12, 7 and 9:45 p.m.; Saturday, Dec. 13, 3 a.m.; Wednesday, Dec. 17, 9 and 11:45 p.m.; Tuesday, Dec. 23, 10:15 a.m.; Wednesday, Dec. 24, 3:30 a.m. and 2:45 p.m., on AMC.