Author Topic: Family Christmas Specials  (Read 2189 times)

Offline brokeplex

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Family Christmas Specials
« on: March 02, 2009, 11:52:21 pm »


Does anyone here remember the "family christmas specials" that featured the second Bing Crosby family back in the 60's?

Offline brokeplex

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Re: Family Christmas Specials
« Reply #1 on: March 04, 2009, 12:11:22 am »
What a handsome family! Are those his kids from the marriage to Katherine? They sure don't have Dads looks...much better looking!

Funny, the only memory I have of recent times of Katherine is that she was the ad spokes lady for a drapery cleaners. What a come down!  :(

correct, this is the family that resulted from his second marriage to Katherine Grant (nee - Grandstaff)




"Crosby was married twice. He was married to actress/nightclub singer Dixie Lee from 1930 until her death from ovarian cancer in 1952. They had four sons (Gary, Dennis, Phillip and Lindsay). Dixie was an alcoholic, and the 1947 film Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman is indirectly based on her life. After Dixie's death, Bing married the much-younger actress Kathryn Grant in 1957 and they had three children together, including Harry, Mary, (best known as being the woman who shot J.R. Ewing on Dallas) and Nathaniel.

After Bing's death from a heart attack at age 74 while golfing in Madrid, Spain, his eldest son from his first marriage, Gary Crosby, wrote a highly critical memoir (Going My Own Way) depicting him as an autocratic and abusive father. However, Phillip Crosby has frequently spoken against Gary's claims about their father. In an interview conducted in 1999 by the Globe, Phillip is quoted as saying, "My dad was not the monster my lying brother said he was, He was strict, but my father never beat us black and blue and my brother Gary was a vicious, no-good liar for saying so. I have nothing but fond memories of dad, going to studios with him, family vacations at our cabin in Idaho, boating and fishing with him. To my dying day, I'll hate Gary for dragging dad's name through the mud. He wrote it (Going My Own Way) out of greed. He wanted to make money and knew that humiliating our father and blackening his name was the only way he could do it. He knew it would generate a lot of publicity and that was the only way he could get his ugly, no-talent face on television and in the newspapers. My dad was my hero. I loved him very much. And he loved all of us too, including Gary. He was a great father." Phillip passed away in 2004.

Two of Bing's children, Lindsay and Dennis, committed suicide. Denise Crosby, Dennis' daughter, is also an actress and best known for her role as Tasha Yar on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Nathaniel Crosby, his youngest son from his second marriage, was a high-level golfer who won the U.S. Amateur at age 19 in 1981, becoming the youngest-ever winner of that event (a record later broken by Tiger Woods).

At his death, he was worth over $150 million USD due to his shrewed investments in oil, real estate, and other commodities, making him one of Hollywood's then wealthiest residents along with Fred MacMurray and best friend Bob Hope. He left a clause in his will stating that his sons from his first marriage could not collect their inheritance money until they were in their 80s. Bing felt that they had already been amply taken care of by a trust fund set up by their mother, Dixie Lee. All four sons continued to collect monies from that fund until their deaths. However, none lived long enough to collect any of their inheritance from their father."

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~smason/html/crosby.htm




Oldest Son Harry in Friday the 13th