Bing Crosby biography
"White Christmas"
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The biggest hit song of Crosby's career was his recording of Irving Berlin's "White Christmas", which he first introduced on a Christmas Day radio broadcast in 1941 (of which no extant copy is known), and soon thereafter in his 1942 movie
Holiday Inn. Crosby's recording hit the charts on October 3, 1942, and rose to No. 1 on October 31, where it stayed for 11 weeks. A holiday perennial, the song was repeatedly re-released by Decca, charting another 16 times. It topped the charts again in 1945, and for a third time in January 1947. The song remains the best-selling single of all time. Crosby's recording was so popular that he was obliged to re-record it in 1947 using the same musicians and backup singers; the original 1942 master had become damaged due to its frequent use in pressing additional singles. Though the two versions are very similar, it is the 1947 recording which is most familiar today. Crosby was dismissive of his role in the song's success, saying later that "a jackdaw with a cleft palate could have sung it successfully."
Motion pictures
See Bing Crosby filmography
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With 1,077,900,000 movie tickets sold, Crosby is by that measure the third most popular actor of all time, behind Clark Gable and John Wayne. The Quigley Publishing Company's
International Motion Picture Almanac lists Crosby in a tie for second on the "All Time Number One Stars List" with Clint Eastwood, Tom Hanks, and Burt Reynolds. Crosby's most popular film,
White Christmas, grossed $30 million in 1954 ($ million in current value). Crosby won an Academy Award for Best Actor for
Going My Way in 1944, and was nominated for the 1945 sequel,
The Bells of Saint Mary's. He received critical acclaim for his performance as an alcoholic entertainer in
The Country Girl, and received his third Academy Award nomination.
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Crosby starred with Bob Hope in seven Road to musical comedies between 1940 and 1962, cementing the two entertainers as an on-and-off duo, despite never officially declaring themselves a "team" in the sense that Laurel and Hardy or Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis were teams. The series consists of Road to Singapore (1940), Road to Zanzibar (1941), Road to Morocco (1942), Road to Utopia (1946), Road to Rio (1947), Road to Bali (1952), and The Road to Hong Kong (1962), and Crosby and Hope were planning another entry called The Road to the Fountain of Youth in 1977, which was dropped upon Crosby's death. Appearing solo, Crosby and Hope frequently made note of the other during their various appearances, typically in a comically insulting fashion, and they appeared together countless times on stage, radio, and television over the decades as well as cameos in several additional films.
By the late 1950s, Crosby's singing career had evolved into that of an avuncular elder statesman, and his albums Bing Sings Whilst Bregman Swings and Bing With A Beat sold reasonably well, even in the rock 'n roll era. In 1960, Crosby starred in High Time, a collegiate comedy with Fabian and Tuesday Weld that foretold the emerging gap between older Crosby fans and a new generation of films and music.
Biography from 
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