Kathryn Crosby, who starred in such films as Operation Mad Ball, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad and Anatomy of a Murder before she curtailed her acting career as the wife of Hollywood legend Bing Crosby, has died. She was 90.
Crosby died Friday night surrounded by her family at her home in Hillsborough, California, a family spokesperson said.
Billed under her stage name, Kathryn Grant, the Houston native made five features for famed film noir director Phil Karlson, including Tight Spot (1955), The Phenix City Story (1955) and The Brothers Rico (1957).
She also played the younger sister of Martha Hyer’s character in another film noir, the Blake Edwards-directed Mister Cory (1957), starring Tony Curtis, and portrayed a budding trapeze artist in The Big Circus (1959), starring Victor Mature.
Soon after wrapping production in Spain with her turn as the damsel in distress Princess Parisa in the Ray Harryhausen fantasy The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), she became Bing’s second wife when they wed in a Las Vegas church on Oct. 24, 1957. She was 23, he was 54.
“I’m glad I married an older man,” she said in Richard Grudens’ 2003 book, Bing Crosby: Crooner of the Century. “When I married Bing, he was already formed, his character was set. In other words, I knew what I was getting. With a younger man, you can’t tell how he will develop with the years.”
Kathryn pretty much put acting on the back burner as she had three children with the famed singer and Oscar-winning actor: Harry (born in 1958), Mary (born in 1959) and Nathaniel (born in 1961). All survive her.
Still, she appeared often with her husband and the kids on Christmas specials, on the ABC variety show The Hollywood Palace and in Minute Maid orange juice commercials, the picture of the all-American family. (Bing was a longtime Minute Maid pitchman and stockholder.)
After his death at age 74 on Oct. 14, 1977, from a heart attack after a round of golf in Spain, Kathryn appeared onstage in such productions as Same Time, Next Year and Charley’s Aunt and worked alongside John Davidson and Andrea McArdle in the 1996 Broadway revival of State Fair.
She was born Olive Kathryn Grandstaff in Houston on Nov. 25, 1933, and raised in West Columbia, Texas.
Soon after finishing runner-up in a Miss Texas beauty pageant, Kathryn left the University of Texas in 1952 to come to Hollywood with the help of Roy Rogers’ agent, Art Rush. Paramount quickly signed her to a contract after she screen-tested with William Holden.
She was writing a weekly column called Texas Girl for newspapers back home and working in a temporary job in the Paramount wardrobe department when she first met Bing in 1953 as he was finishing up work on Little Boy Lost.
They bumped into each other again a few months later as she was escorting visitors to the set of White Christmas, and she interviewed him for her column.
(Bing had been married to actress-dancer Dixie Lee from 1930 until her death from ovarian cancer at age 42 in 1952. He and Dixie had four sons: Gary, Dennis, Phillip and Lindsay.)
Bing and Kathryn had set several wedding dates over a three-year period before they would actually exchange vows, but he kept postponing as he was romantically involved with two of his co-stars, Grace Kelly and Inger Stevens.
The Crosby family in the early 1970s, clockwise from top left: Kathryn, Bing, Harry, Mary and Nathaniel.
Courtesy of Everett
Kathryn had begun her acting career with uncredited roles in such films as So This Is Love (1953), Casanova’s Big Night (1954) and Rear Window (1954) before Paramount released her from her contract in 1954.
Undaunted, she appeared in seven movies released in 1955 and on an episode of NBC’s Father Knows Best while going back to Texas that year to complete her fine arts degree. (In 1963, she graduated from nursing school.)
She played a nurse and Jack Lemmon’s love interest in Richard Quine’s Operation Mad Ball (1957), the wife of James Darren‘s mobster in The Brothers Rico and the daughter of the slain innkeeper in Otto Preminger’s Anatomy of a Murder (1959), starring James Stewart.
In one of her rare onscreen acting gigs while she was married to Bing, she guest-starred on a 1966 episode of ABC’s — and Bing Crosby Productions’ — Ben Casey. In the ’70s, she stayed close to their home outside San Francisco by hosting a morning talk show on KPIX-TV and moonlighting with the American Conservatory Theater.
Bing “was a pretty cute kid when it came to convincing a girl that what she really wanted was to stay home and to scrub floors,” Kathryn said in an interview soon after his death. “He didn’t know that he was a male chauvinist pig, but he was!” she added with a laugh.
She wrote three sets of memoirs about her life with him: 1967’s Bing and Other Things, 1983’s My Life With Bing and 2002’s My Last Years With Bing.
In 2000, she married longtime companion Maurice William Sullivan, an educator whom she and Bing had hired to tutor their kids. He later became trustee of the Crosby estate.
In November 2010, Sullivan, 85, was killed and Kathryn was seriously injured in a car accident in the Sierra Nevada. He was at the wheel when their vehicle went off the road, rolled over and struck a boulder.
As for her kids, Harry became an investment banker; Mary is an actress known for her turn as J.R. Ewing shooter Kristin Shepard on Dallas; and Nathaniel was an excellent amateur golfer. She also is survived by several grandchildren.
