Bing Crosby

The Bing Crosby charity golf tournament, a California fixture for 44 years, will be moved to North Carolina next year and apparently will not be sanctioned by the Professional Golfers' Assn. Kathryn Crosby, Bing's widow, announced in April that she was canceling the tournament, founded in 1937 by the late singer-actor. She said Tuesday, however, that the Bermuda Run Country Club in Winston-Salem, N.C.

It was the greatest race ever run on his race track. It was a pity Bing Crosby wasn't around to see it. Nor were Pat O'Brien, W.C. Fields and a handful of other cronies who were in at the outset. In 1937, when Bing Crosby and a few of his poker-playing buddies first dreamed up the idea of buying a racetrack down by San Diego, it was widely perceived that it was merely a kind of complicated hobby.

The scene: Lakeside Golf Club, where, according to Bing Crosby, no one was immune to put-ons and put-downs. A club member whose name, Crosby wrote, he "wouldn't dream of disclosing" played the horses and had piled up massive debts with a ring of bookmakers. Despite threatening telephone calls about what might happen to him if he didn't pay up, the horse player boasted airily to friends that he'd pay when he got "good and ready."

Lindsay Crosby, son of crooner Bing Crosby, apparently shot himself to death Monday in his home in Las Virgenes, the Los Angeles County Coroner's office reported. Crosby, AGE 51, was found dead in the den of his home in the 26300 block of Bravo Lane with a gunshot wound to the head, said coroner's and Los Angeles County Fire Department investigators. He was the youngest of four sons of Crosby and Crosby's first wife, Wilma Wyatt, a jazz singer whose stage name was Dixie Lee. She died in 1952.

Dennis M. Crosby, one of Bing Crosby's twin sons by his first marriage, has committed suicide, police said Monday. Crosby, 56, was found dead in his home in Novato in Northern California late Saturday by his roommate, said Marin County Sheriff's Lt. William Donovan. He was shot in the head, Donovan added, and a 12-gauge shotgun lay near the sofa where his body was found. There were no signs of foul play, and his death is being treated as a suicide.

Bing Crosby's films have nearly reached the status of Santa Claus' sleigh and reindeer as symbols for the holidays. Consider how Der Bingle starred in three of the most popular Christmas films ever made: "Holiday Inn," "Going My Way" and "White Christmas." He also recorded "White Christmas," the best-selling yuletide tune of all time. And until his death in 1977, Crosby and his family appeared in 13 Christmas TV specials.

The large child known as Jonathan Winters died Friday at age 87. Accompanying him into the now-noisier hereafter were the multitudes he contained, a cast of men, women, children of every race and nationality, rich and poor, city and country. Some were characters with names to whom the comedian would return - Maude Frickert, the go-go granny - but more of them existed for a minute or less, brought into focus, played with and then sent on their way, as another appeared in their place.

Among other things, the new musical "Robin and the 7 Hoods" is a love letter to composer Jimmy Van Heusen. On first glance it might seem an homage to Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack in their heyday, but it's Van Heusen's infectious melodies, found in "Come Fly With Me," "The Tender Trap," "Ain't That a Kick in the Head," "High Hopes" and 15 other tunes, that are the lifeblood of the effort. The show's music supervisor and vocal arranger, John McDaniel, listens to Van Heusen with an admiring ear. "His uptempo songs have a harmonic jazz beat," he said.

Newlywed actress and model Milla Jovovich, the weapon-toting glammando from the "Resident Evil" films, has sold a Beverly Hills Post Office-area home for $2.75 million. Although she lived in the John Woolf-designed, Hollywood Regency-style home for a couple of years after her 2001 purchase, the Ukraine-born cover girl with the striking eyes more recently had been renting it out. The 3,582-square-foot home, with four bedrooms and four bathrooms, sits on about 1.2 acres at the end of a cul-de-sac.

In 1937, Bing Crosby was unarguably the most popular entertainer in the United States, maybe the world. His records grossed in the millions, his films filled theaters. Every kid in America singing in the shower pretended he was Crosby. Crosby pioneered a new way of singing that went into the language as "crooning. " Everybody wanted to be Bing Crosby. But Bing Crosby? He wanted to be Sam Snead. Ben Hogan. He wanted to be a golfer. He was a scratch player. He tried out for the U.S.