CROSBY AND SINATRA

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 372, 9 August 1946, Page 5

CROSBY AND SINATRA

Sir,-One of your Viewsreel commentators, writing recently, says he cannot distinguish between thé personalities of Crosby and Sinatra. I realise that even commentators cannot have universal knowledge, but Crosby’s career can be divided easily into four parts: (1) His time with Whiteman’s Rhythm Boys. (2) On first breaking into movies and radio. (3) His development as a comedian. (4) His entry into the church. (1) and (3) gave him scope for his natural talent as ‘a relaxed, ad libbing musi-comedian. Even your commentator

could not doubt the existence of this talent if he had heard an unrehearsed broadcast a few years back, when players were interviewed coming into the clubhouse after a golf match for patriotic funds. Crosby and Bob Hope had been round together. Hope was rather subdued, but Crosby was quite at home, cracking away in his best surrealist style for nearly five minutes. It was during this third period that the "Road to... ." pictures were made, and it was during this period that he recorded with Connie Boswell and

Johnny Mercer. This was the most encouraging stage of his career, and may be contrasted with (2) when he was nothing but the professional heart throb, and (4) when he entered the church in Going My Way, and has followed this up with what is apparently an even more shockingly vulgar film, The Bells of St. Mary. In these two periods he hit his all time recording low with "Adeste Fideles," "Beautiful Girl," and "Just a Prayer Away." Let us remember him as the gifted comedian rather than the spreader of sweetness and technicolour light. » Sinatra, on the other hand, was never a comedian. If your commentator offered himself in the cause of science, as I have done, by listening to the Sinatra Radio Show, he would soon find that out. Sinatra is strictly a business man. He is catering for a fairly limited market, and he must exploit it for all it is worth while he can. He works very hard, and occasionally one can hear the machinery grinding; this could never happen with Crosby. Of Miss Shore and Miss Lynn, also mentioned by your commentator, it can be said that Miss Shore is a nice girl from Tennessee who could sing a pretty fair blues before Hollywood got her. (Hear her work with the Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street). Of Miss Lynn, I cannot say anything which would not be libellous.

G. le F

YOUNG

(Cashmere).