PHOTOS OF THE DAY: BING AND HIS LOVES

Bing Crosby had a hard time showing affection. Even in his movies, he rarely passionately kissed his leading ladies. In honor of Valentine's Day, here is Bing with some of the loves in his life.

with 1st wife Dixie Lee (1911-1952)

with mistress and co-star Joan Caulfield (1922-1991)

with girlfriend and co-star Grace Kelly (1929-1982)

with girlfriend Mona Freeman (1926-2014)

with girlfriend and co-star Ingrid Stevens (1934-1970)

with 2nd wife Kathryn Grant

GUEST REVIEWER: MAN ON FIRE

Bing Crosby guru Bruce Kogan is back with another review. This time it's the overlooked 1957 drama Man On Fire...

The movie opens with Bing Crosby singing the Sammy Fain-Paul Francis Webster title song over the opening credits. But that's all you hear from Crosby the singer. For the first time Bing starred in a film without any singing at all.

The story involves a pair of divorced parents who have fallen out of love and are contesting the custody of their son. Crosby the father has the kid and wife Mary Fickett and her new husband Richard Eastham want him.

It's a well acted film and Crosby proves he doesn't need to sing to carry a film. His Earl Carleton is a troubled man, a loving father wounded terribly by the divorce. Mary Fickett is a loving mother who's been denied custody of her son by a hastily signed agreement at the time of her's and Bing's divorce. Her new husband Richard Eastham wants a share of custody for his wife's sake.

The point is that this is a film without villains. These are just good people caught in a bad situation trying to do the right thing as they conceive it. And in probably the best performance of her long career, Judge Anne Seymour has to decide it. The custody hearing scene in her chambers is the best acted scene in the film.

This situation may have inspired some of the situations portrayed in the current series Judging Amy. The film has an honored place in the films of Bing Crosby. A must see.

BRUCE RATING: 8 OUT OF 10

MY REVIEW: 9 OUT OF 10

BING AND INGER STEVENS

Inger Stevens was born Oct. 18, 1933, in Stockholm, Sweden. Her parents separated and she came to the United States to live with her father when she was 13. Inger ran away from home while in high school and ended up in a Kansas City burlesque show where she danced as a "popcorn girl." At 18 she moved to New York and enrolled in the Actors Studio. Soon she had her first acting job and began appearing regularly in television dramas.

Her big break came in 1956, when she auditioned for the role of Bing Crosby's new love interest in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's Man on Fire. The movie is a realistic study of a child custody battle between Crosby and his ex-wife, played by Mary Fickett.

"I never thought in a million years that I would get the role in Man on Fire. But I went in there and just sort of did it. It scared the daylights out of me. I had never done a movie before -- and to work on a film with Bing Crosby!"

When Inger was carried off the set with an appendicitis attack, Crosby visited the hospital with flowers every day. They soon became fodder for gossip columnists -- the young bedimpled Swedish beauty and the millionaire widower. Bing's wife of 22 years, Dixie Lee, had died in 1952. Crosby was previously linked with Joan Caulfield, Mona Freeman, Kathryn Grant, Grace Kelly, and Paramount dancer Betty Hannon.

"I thought Bing loved me," Inger told a friend. Her hope to marry Bing apparently continued until the very day Crosby wed Kathryn Grant in October, 1957. Inger was devastated. She had thought Bing's relationship with Grant had ended.

Inger took Bing's rejection hard and, based on Kathryn's biography of Bing, may have threatened both suicide and litigation. Inger later said the reason Bing didn't marry her was because she was not Catholic. (The new Mrs. Crosby, Kathryn, converted to Catholicism before her marriage to Bing.)

"One day he called me up and told me to go buy new drapes and curtains for the Palm Springs house," she said afterwards. "He wanted me to decorate it to my taste. He even told me that it was going to be my house so I had better fix it up the way I liked it. It may not have been a proposal but I sure took it as one. Believe it or not, I was down in the house, supervising some workmen in putting up the new drapes when I heard the news announcement over the radio that Bing had married another girl. I went into a state of shock. It took me months to recover. I actually became physically sick from all the distress."

Later, the Swedish beauty would say, "After you go out with Bing, you're spoiled for young men of say 25 or 26. Being with an older man is a secure feeling for me. There was a big age difference, too. Also I was guilt-ridden because I was dating a man and I wasn't yet divorced."

Inger moved on to star in several more movies as well as the 1960s TV show The Farmer's Daughter. Throughout her career she suffered from frequent bouts of depression and attempted suicides. She eventually succumbed to a drug overdose on the morning of April 30, 1970, at age 36...

SOURCE

SPOTLIGHT ON INGER STEVENS

Watching an episode of "The Twilight Zone" this weekend, I was reminded of what a wonderful actress Inger Stevens was. She died way too young in 1970 at the age of 36.Inger Stevens was born Inger Stensland in Stockholm, Sweden. She was an insecure child and often ill.

When she was nine, her parents divorced and she moved with her father to New York City. At age 13, she and her father moved to Manhattan, Kansas, where she attended Manhattan High School. At 16, she worked in burlesque shows in Kansas City. At 18, she left Kansas for New York City. She worked as a chorus girl and in the Garment District while taking classes at the Actors Studio.

Stevens appeared on television series, commercials and in plays, until she got her big break in the movie Man on Fire starring Bing Crosby. Although it did not create a sensation, it led to a romance between the baritone crooner and the young Swedish-born actress. Throughout her career, Stevens displayed a propensity for falling in love with her co-stars and Bing Crosby, 31 years her senior, was no exception. The affair began after Inger suffered an appendicitis attack on the set in December of 1956. The two grew close during Crosby’s visits with her at the hospital.

Inger had hopes of marrying Crosby although she refused to convert to Catholicism for him. Soon after the release of Man on Fire, Bing invited her to supervise the renovation of his Palm Springs home. Stevens was under the mistaken impression that this was to be their matrimonial home. Unbeknownst to her, Bing was also seriously involved with another young actress named Kathryn Grant. It was while working on the house that Inger learned about Bing’s marriage to Kathryn.

Roles in major films followed, but she achieved her greatest success in the ABC television series The Farmer's Daughter, with William Windom. Previously, Stevens appeared in episodes of Bonanza, Route 66, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, The Eleventh Hour, Sam Benedict and The Twilight Zone.

Following the cancellation of The Farmer's Daughter in 1966, Stevens appeared in such movies as A Guide for the Married Man (1967), with Walter Matthau, Hang 'Em High, with Clint Eastwood, 5 Card Stud, with Dean Martin, and Madigan, with Henry Fonda and Richard Widmark, all in 1968. Stevens was attempting to make a comeback on television with the detective drama series The Most Deadly Game when she died.

Her first husband was her agent, Anthony Soglio, to whom she was married from 1955 to 1957. From 1961 until her death, she was secretly married to Ike Jones, an African-American actor. She was also romantically linked with Bing Crosby, Anthony Quinn, Dean Martin, Clint Eastwood, Harry Belafonte, Mario Lanza, and Burt Reynolds.

On the morning of April 30, 1970, a house guest found Stevens lying face down on her kitchen floor, having overdosed on Tedral (a combination drug of theophylline, ephedrine and phenobarbital, commonly prescribed in the treatment of breathing disorders such as asthma, emphysema, and bronchitis), washed down with alcohol. After an autopsy, her body was cremated and her ashes were scattered over the Pacific Ocean...

PHOTOS OF THE DAY: MAN ON FIRE

I have always had a soft spot in my heart for the forgotten Bing film MAN ON FIRE(1957). The film was Bing's second of two films he made at MGM (HIGH SOCIETY was the first in 1956). The dramatic film about how a divorce is pulling a child's life apart was not well received, but I still enjoy the movie. The cast also included great supporting work from Inger Stevens and E.G. Marshall...