<Archive Obituary> Dennis Crosby (May 4th 1991)
Bill Schenley
Roommate Discovered The 56-Year-Old
On The Couch In His Novato Home
FROM: The San Francisco Chronicle (May 7th 1991) ~
By Catherine Brown, Chronicle Correspondent
Dennis Michael Crosby, the troubled 56-year-old son of the
late crooner Bing Crosby, was found dead late Saturday night
at his home in Novato, apparently after shooting himself in
the head with a shotgun.
Marin County investigators said Crosby's body was found on a
couch in the living room of his residence at Murphy Lane in
the Black Point area about 11:15 p.m. by his roommate, who
had been away from the house since early that morning.
Sergeant Richard Keaton of the Marin County Sheriff's
Department said no suicide note was found, and there was no
evidence of foul play.
''When (the roommate) came in he found him on the couch,''
Keaton said. ''At first he thought he was watching
television. Then he came around and saw that he was
deceased.''
The roommate ran to a nearby residence to contact Crosby's
former girlfriend, and they called 911, said Keaton.
Sheriff's deputies recovered a 12-gauge shotgun, with a
spent shell in its chamber, lying at Crosby's feet beside
the couch.
The Marin County coroner's office issued a statement saying,
''Family and friends reported that Crosby had been
despondent over health problems and the death of his brother
in December, 1989.''
Lindsay Crosby, Dennis' younger brother, shot himself to
death 11 days after learning that the inheritance with which
he supported his family had run out.
Friends and acquaintances told investigators that Dennis
Crosby had been depressed over financial troubles and had a
drinking problem, which apparently contributed to the
breakup of his relationship with the ex-girlfriend three or
four months ago. He had lived in the Novato house for about
a year.
Dennis Crosby was one of Bing's four sons by his first
marriage to Dixie Lee (Wyatt) Crosby, who died of cancer in
1952. As young men, Lindsay and Dennis teamed up with
brothers Gary and Phillip for a lackluster show business
career during the late 1950s and early 1960s as a lounge
act.
''I guess I wasn't cut out to be an entertainer,'' Dennis
once said, reflecting on his short-lived entertainment
career. ''I was always painfully self conscious out there in
the spotlight with my brothers.''
In his 20s, he had drinking problems, but reportedly joined
Alcoholics Anonymous and embraced a sober lifestyle.
Later in life, he worked in the production end of Bing
Crosby Productions Inc. In most recent years, he worked at a
variety of projects, often in public relations, a family
member said. He resided in Pebble Beach before moving to
Marin.
In Gary Crosby's 1983 memoir, ''Going My Own Way,'' Bing's
first-born son debunked their father's image as an
easy-going folksy, humorous and almost priestly character,
depicting the singer as a mean-spirited and abusive tyrant
who beat his sons until they bled and otherwise mistreated
them.
Dennis Crosby is survived by his wife of 27 years, Arleen of
Pebble Beach; their three daughters, Cathy of Las Vegas,
Kelly of Walnut Creek and Erin of Chico; two sons by his
first marriage, Dennis Jr. and Patrick, as well as an
adopted son, Greg, all of Beverly Hills; twin brother
Phillip of Woodland Hills; brother Gary of Studio City;
half-sister Mary Francis; and half-brothers Nathaniel and
Harry.
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Photo (Crosby family) http://www.kcmetro.edu/~crosby/family1.jpg
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Follow-up story from the Washington Post
---
The Crosby Curse;
Suffering And Suicide: The Tragedies Of Bing's First Family
FROM: The Washington Post (July 8th 1991) ~
By Carla Hall, Staff Writer
Arleen Crosby talked to her ex-husband, Dennis, on the
telephone that Friday, May 3 -- as she had almost every day
for weeks. Sometimes they'd talk two or three times a day.
They had been living more or less separately for at least
five years. When he was on his raging bouts of drinking, he
could be gone for months, but Arleen always knew where he
was -- usually at the house of his longtime Army buddy,
Peter Murphy, in a small town north of San Francisco. Arleen
was still living in their Pebble Beach home.
They had been officially divorced only two weeks. She had
dawdled over signing the papers. "This is to protect you,"
he had told her once. After 27 years there was still a bond
between them that couldn't be severed.
She was the daughter of a successful movie music composer,
he was the son of Bing Crosby. She understood the
frustrations of growing up with famous parents who ran a
strict household where children were seen and not heard.
They had met in a studio production office. She was a
secretary. He was an assistant producer on "Ben Casey," a
product of the Crosby television production company. They
were both so fair and strawberry-blond-haired, they looked
like brother and sister. They had even been delivered in the
same Los Angeles hospital -- by the same doctor.
They had struggled through their problems together as much
as they could -- she confronting her difficult childhood, he
his alcoholism.
"We got through a lot of healing and telling the truth,"
Arleen recalls now. "There was just a lot of craziness we
couldn't live through -- but we were always good friends."
The day their divorce was final, they had lunch together.
"We talked about our kids and how wonderful they were in
spite of us," Arleen says. "They had said the reason they
were so sane was that in spite of our craziness, they knew
we loved them. And that was the greatest gift they could
have given us."
But on this Friday when Arleen talked to Dennis on the
phone, all he could do was ache. "He had a lot of pain," she
remembers. "He just said, 'I hurt. You don't understand.' I
said, 'I do understand.' " And there was something else. "He
said, 'Now I understand how Lindsay felt.' "
The next day Dennis Crosby, 56, sat on the sofa in Murphy's
house, aimed a 12-gauge shotgun at his forehead and pulled
the trigger.
It was barely 17 months since his younger brother, Lindsay,
had done the exact same thing.
They were the children of the man dubbed "Hollywood's Most
Typical Father for 1937."
Bing Crosby was an American icon -- a movie star admired by
men and adored by women, a symbol of casual sophistication
and wit. To complete his image, he wrapped his family round
him in photo spreads and glossies. There was the sunny-faced
onetime-actress wife, Dixie, and the four hardy young boys.
Gary was the oldest, Dennis and Phillip the middle twins,
and Lindsay the youngest -- dark-haired and brown-eyed
unlike his blue-eyed, blond brothers.
Growing up on their Holmby Hills estate, they posed
obediently in matching outfits, answered reporters'
questions good-naturedly, performed bit parts in their
father's movies and were the subjects of affectionate
tales -- completely fabricated -- that Crosby doled out to
the columnists.
"It didn't take long for his fatherhood to become as much a
part of the Crosby image as his passion for golf and the
racetrack," Gary would write later.
Five decades later, the cheerful children of Bing's
publicity machine have been ripped and ravaged by troubles
and tragedies. Raised by a Catholic father, they are all
much married (to Bing Crosby's great displeasure). All four
sons became alcoholics, Gary Crosby has publicly stated --
like their mother (who died of cancer when her sons were in
their teens). And two have committed suicide.
Gary's incendiary 1983 book, "Going My Own Way," depicts
Bing Crosby as the embodiment of a dysfunctional father.
According to Gary, he was a cold, aloof, disapproving man
who beat his children for the most trivial of infractions.
Today Gary Crosby, 58, is the picture of a remodeled life --
a recovering alcoholic, a lecturer for Alcoholics Anonymous,
a husband who speaks contentedly of his third wife, Carol
("third time's a charm," he says brightly).
But even as he sits in his olive-tree-shaded home -- no
longer the pudgy kid his father chastised with the nickname
"Bucket Butt" and beat with a belt when he didn't lose
enough weight -- his voice is still full of the anger and
pain he went through as Bing Crosby's child.
"We lived like four kids in a goddamn prison cell," he says.
"If we got caught whispering between the beds before it was
time to get up, the housekeeper was allowed to lick us... .
I never wanted to be home."
But he would be the first to say that the story of his life
and the tragedy of his two deceased brothers is also the
story of the debilitating effects of alcoholism. It's the
story of four different brothers who bonded at times and
pulled away at other times. They all did stints in military
service, and they were all good singers. For a brief time
they had a nightclub singing act. But in the last decade, as
close as they were geographically -- all four lived in
California, three in the San Fernando Valley -- they drifted
apart.
And they were never close to an entirely different second
family that Bing Crosby fathered with his second wife,
actress Kathryn Grant.
Gary, who has made Alcoholics Anonymous a way of life,
hadn't talked to Dennis in more than a year. "My problem
with both Lindsay and Dennis toward the end of their lives
was the fact that I was on the program -- and they weren't,"
says Gary.
And Dennis and Phillip, the twins, rarely saw each other.
However, Dennis and Lindsay were soul mates for life. Both
are described as quiet, gentle, nonconfrontational men.
Lindsay, who killed himself on Dec. 11, 1989, was a
manic-depressive who battled the illness for years, going in
and out of hospitals. He was found in his condominium in the
San Fernando Valley. On a table nearby lay some of the
staggeringly high bills he couldn't begin to pay with the
dwindling monthly check from his inheritance.
Lindsay's death may have been more than Dennis -- who had
never quite stopped grieving over his mother's death --
could bear. "When my mother died, I saw the light go out of
his eyes," Gary Crosby said at the memorial service for
Dennis. "As far as I'm concerned, he's been trying to get
back to her ever since."
Phillip Crosby did not come to his twin's memorial service.
If there is one thing that the extended family of Crosby
siblings and their wives and ex-wives seem to agree on, it's
how much they dislike Phillip. To hear them talk, Dennis and
Phillip were literally the good and evil twins. And
according to Gary there's so much animosity between him and
Phillip that during a two-year stretch when the brothers
lived three blocks apart, they never once saw one another.
Phillip Crosby could not be reached for comment.
"It's not fair for him to not speak up for himself, but he
doesn't take it seriously," says Phillip's 32-year-old
goddaughter, Susan Noonan, who has been in regular contact
with Phillip for the last few months. According to Noonan,
he's in Atlanta working on a business deal and staying with
friends.
"He's probably the kindest, sweetest person who's ever
lived," says Noonan of her godfather. She says she does not
believe he's an alcoholic.
"I've talked to him every day for the last two or three
months and I've never spoken to him drunk. Sure, he'll have
a beer every now and then, but he doesn't have cirrhosis of
the liver," Noonan says. "And I'm an alcoholic -- who
doesn't drink. He is an insomniac and he calls me at all
hours."
Noonan says Phillip spent 10 weeks in northern California
visiting Dennis at the beginning of this year. Phillip, she
says, did not attend Dennis's memorial service because he
believed Dennis would not have wanted one: "He just wanted
to respect his brother's wishes," Noonan says. "Phillip
wouldn't have any part of one because [Dennis] just didn't
want one."
As for the friction between Gary and Phillip, Noonan noted
wistfully, "They're brothers. I think they have more in
common than they realize. All the tragedy that Gary's gone
through, Phillip went through as well. They both lost two
brothers."
All of the sons at one time or another made forays into the
entertainment business, with varying amounts of success.
Gary Crosby says that although his brothers were good
performers, they couldn't shake a certain apprehension.
"Denny never thought he was worth [a damn] doing anything,"
he says. "And actually he was the best dancer and he sang
great. Everybody thought so but him." Three of the sons have
basically lived their adult lives on inherited money. Those
monthly checks have allowed them to live reasonably well and
pay mortgages on comfortable homes.
Gary Crosby says he never paid much attention to the
handling of the inheritance. "I was always convinced I was
going to make it on my own," he says quietly. "What I did
was accept the check and go on." But with the exception of a
five-year stretch as a semi-regular on the television series
"Adam-12," Gary's acting career has been an uphill battle
that he still pursues, winning a role here and there. His
wife sells real estate.
The one son who has managed to prosper some in business is
Phillip.
"Don't you know Phillip would have money," says Gary.' "He
invested in some clubs in Atlanta... . From what I
understand, when he feels like it, he goes down there every
once in a while and sings a bunch of old songs of Dad's and
tells these stories about how Dad loved him. Dad wasn't too
fond of him," says Gary with a chuckle. "Dad thought he was
a pathological liar."
The sons have been supported by their mother's estate --
which was actually a trust set up by Bing Crosby in Dixie
Crosby's name. (When the actor died in 1977, he left what
remained of his estate to his second wife and the three
children he fathered with her.)
As estranged as the brothers may have become, their wives
and ex-wives have grown fiercely close. Even as they were
divorcing or separating from their Crosby husbands, they
seem to have metamorphosed into spiritual sisters.
"It's just a regular big old Irish family," says Lindsay
Crosby's ex-wife, Susan, surrounded by other Crosby ex-wives
at her kitchen table the day before the memorial service for
Dennis. She pauses. "Well, it's not really normal."
The Women Remember
The women sit around a breakfast nook, the sun streaming in
through leaded windows in Susan Crosby's Tudor house.
Various children, ranging in age from late teens to
twenties, amble through the kitchen, then head back out to
their own conversations.
"This is the house we all went to," says Arleen Crosby.
"It's where we could go to collect -- even when it was
crazy."
On this day they are sifting through old photographs and old
memories to prepare for Dennis's memorial service the next
day. They laugh over snapshots from 20 years ago that now
look quaint.
"Dennis was great," Susan recalls. "He'd sit with us right
now if he were here and talk with the girls in the kitchen."
"If there were no ballgames on," Arleen adds.
They trade names of friends and relatives who are expected
at the service, and there's an air of anticipation. A rare
family reunion of sorts is about to take place.
Kathryn Crosby, Bing's second wife, is not coming. She's
preparing for a Crosby golf tournament she's hosting. The
women at the table graciously excuse her. It turns out that
Kathryn Crosby did pay her respects at Lindsay's memorial
service -- and ended up the object of a tirade by an
outspoken guest no one in the family knew. "If I were her, I
wouldn't come," Arleen says.
The wives' recollections of their father-in-law are vague.
By the time these women married their Crosby husbands and
began raising children and dealing with the firestorm that
each of their marriages was, Bing Crosby was raising his
second family with Kathryn.
"They had an entirely different man," Arleen speculates of
the second family. "Dennis said they had it good. He
didn't."
"He was a good father to Lindsay," Susan says. She remembers
that Bing Crosby offered to help pay Lindsay's medical
bills, but she declined his help. "I was too proud," she
says. "Now, I think that was rather stupid pride."
Peggy Crosby says her ex-husband, Phil, remembers a distant,
absentee father. "What Phil told me was if [his father]
wrote him a letter, it was typed," Peggy says. "On Father's
Day, I would say, 'Do you want to send him something?' And
Phil would say, 'No, we don't do that.' "
However, Phillip was never happy with Gary's book on his
father. "That's why Phil hates Gary," says Peggy. "Because
Gary tells his truth and Phil doesn't see it that way."
When the phone rings and it's an old friend asking for
details, Arleen gets on and efficiently goes through the
schedule. When she hangs up, she quietly walks outside and
begins sobbing. Susan goes out to comfort her.
Peggy Crosby is left alone in the kitchen talking in her
calm, low-key voice about tracking down Phillip, to Atlanta
to relay the message that his twin brother had died. She's
closed the door on the troubled chapters of her life as
Phillip Crosby's fourth and fifth wife.
"One year we got married and had a baby. The next year we
got divorced. The next year we got remarried. The next year
we got divorced. I was in and out so much I was thinking I
should be living in a motor home," she says with a little
laugh.
And why did she come back?
"Well, I raised his son," she says. "Surely, I tried. He
really just didn't want to be married. We'd get married and
he would say, 'I can't handle this' -- whatever it was.
Life, really. So we'd get divorced. And then he comes back
and says, 'Please marry me.' I said, 'You've got to be sure
you want it this time.' "
Back inside, Susan and Arleen chortle at the mention of
Phil's name.
"What we say is we divorced Phil," says Susan.
Not only have their divorces not stopped these women from
being close to each other, in the case of Arleen and Susan,
it didn't stop them from being close to their husbands.
Susan, in particular, was always Lindsay's wife in a way.
"At no time were we not in love," she says quietly.
'A Man Worth Fighting For'
She was 20, an actress and a former Miss Alaska when she met
Lindsay Crosby at a gathering at her agent's house. He was
walking by with a carton of the brand of cigarettes she
smoked. Even though they'd never met, she saucily pretended
the cigarettes were an offering for her. "Thanks," Susan
said and lifted the carton out of his hand. She turned on
her heel and he pursued her relentlessly ever after.
Of course, he was married at the time. But in the tradition
of these men and their ex-wives, he eventually divorced that
wife, Janet, and now she and Susan are close friends. "I
didn't fall madly in love with him," Susan explains. "He was
my best friend." And, as she tells it, he adored her.
"Everything I did was great in Lindsay's eyes," she says.
"This was a man worth fighting for," she says, her voice
trembling a bit. "I didn't like losing this man."
The day after her 48th birthday, she apologizes for looking
tired. She still has the high cheekbones and hazel eyes that
made her a beauty queen, but this birthday and Dennis's
recent death make the loss of Lindsay raw again. What she
didn't know when she married him was that Lindsay was a
manic-depressive.
In the manic phase of his illness, he bought horses,
stereos, cars, ranches, trucks. "Very macho things," Susan
relates. "Black cars, black hat, black clothes. Black
horse." She lets out an empty chuckle.
What he bought he often signed away to others. He drank, he
borrowed money, he slept with other women. He collected
around him a group of people that Susan Crosby seethingly
calls leeches and hangers-on who were only too happy to be
associated with a celebrity's son, especially such a
free-spending, freewheeling one.
He disappeared for stretches of time, once taking her infant
son, Lindsay Jr. ("Chip"), with him. She couldn't find them
for 24 hours. In the years after that incident, when his
manic phases came on, Susan would sometimes pack up the
children and take them to Alaska to stay with her parents.
When he came out of his phases, it fell to Susan to attempt
to repair some of the damage. She tried, usually
unsuccessfully, to regain some of the property he had signed
away. She had him tested for AIDS regularly. He had himself
committed at least once a year. She and her parents paid his
medical bills.
They decided together in 1988, she says, that they should
divorce to protect her from further financial liability. At
the time of his death at 51, he was under the care of both a
psychiatrist and a clinical psychologist. "He was on
lithium," she says. "It was the first time I had seen even a
glimmer of hope."
Lindsay knew that for Susan to help him, she would have to
sell her house. "I told him, 'So we'll sell the house. We'll
start over.' ... He kept saying, 'I can't believe what I've
done to you, Suz, I can't believe what I've done to you.' "
One Sunday night in December 1989, he was so depressed that
when Susan put him to bed she hid his car keys. But in the
middle of the night he found them and drove to his condo.
The next morning at 9, he called and talked to Chip. He
sounded better. He said he would be home that afternoon and
he was going to talk to the psychologist who was treating
him.
It wasn't until early that evening as she was making dinner
that she got the phone call telling her Lindsay had shot and
killed himself. It was a year to the day since they had
divorced.
When he died, she says, a group of sympathetic friends,
including Dolores Hope, the Sinatras, Jack Haley Jr. and a
few others, donated money for burial costs.
Meanwhile, Susan is still coping with what she estimates are
$ 800,000 worth of claims against Lindsay Crosby's estate.
What Drove Dennis Down
In the wake of Lindsay's suicide, the specter of
self-destruction hung over Dennis, who drank so
destructively and grieved so hard that he couldn't even
attend his brother's memorial service. "It was a topic in
this house since Lindsay died," says Susan. "When one person
in a family does it, it gives permission to others." Dennis
himself talked about suicide. "He said he would never do
it," remembers his daughter Kelly. "He said he was too much
of a coward."
As a child, Dennis was full of bluster and adventure. But it
was his mother who convinced him he was smart and attractive
and a terrific athlete. He was 17 when she died. "He hung
all his self-worth on his mother," Gary recalled. From then
on, according to everyone in his family, he became more shy,
quieter, more sensitive.
And that, according to Gary, is when Dennis developed into
an alcoholic. "I cannot remember Dennis hurting anybody --
except the people who loved him. He punished himself so
badly and his self-worth went down so far that he believed
he couldn't be anything in life or be successful at
anything. And through that, he kept his humor. His children
loved him and his wives loved him and his brothers loved
him. And we just sat and we watched what happened to him
year after year."
His attempts to confront his alcoholism were brief and
unsuccessful.
Gary remembers that during the part of his therapy in which
the family confronts the drinker, when Dennis's daughter
Erin told her father what his drinking had done to her,
Dennis tried to deflect it with humor. The therapist called
Dennis on it: "Why is it that every time we try to get to
something serious with you, you start with the jokes? Your
daughter is telling you this. You should be crying."
Dennis said he couldn't cry. Why, the therapist asked.
"He said, 'If I start crying I'll never stop,' " Gary
recalls. "That's the degree of pain he was in."