Kathryn Crosby, actor and wife of Bing Crosby, dead at 90
Kathryn Crosby, the famous actor and widow of ‘White Christmas’ singer Bing Crosby, has died aged 90.
The 7th Voyage of Sinbad actor died peacefully on the evening of September 20th, at her home in Hillsborough, California, surrounded by her family, a spokesperson has confirmed.
Crosby was born in Houston, Texas, on November 25th, 1933, as Olive Kathryn Grandstaff and was raised in West Columbia. While she might be an unknown name to younger cinema fans, she starred in an array of hit movies in the 1950s, including the noir maestro Phil Karlon’s 1955 hits Tight Spot and The Phenix City Story. Elsewhere, she starred alongside the iconic Tony Curis in 1957’s Mister Cory.
Her most famous role was as Princess Parisa in Ray Harryhausen’s 1958 classic, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, the first in a successful trio of Sinbad features from Columbia Pictures. The movie also starred Kerwin Mathews, Torin Thatcher, and Richard Eyer.
Not long after filming finished on the fantasy epic, she married the world-famous musician, actor and media personality Crosby in Las Vegas on October 24th, 1957. They first met when she worked a temp job in the Paramount wardrobe department in 1953 as he was wrapping up Little Boy Lost, and they would meet once more just a few months later when she was escorting visitors to the set of Crosby’s most storied movie, White Christmas. She also interviewed him for her Texas Girl newspaper column.
In Las Vegas, she became Crosby’s second wife, as he had been married to actor and dancer Dixie Lee from 1930 until her death from cancer in 1952. There was a significant age gap between Kathryn and Bing, with her 23 and him 54 when they married.
“I’m glad I married an older man,” Kathryn explained in the 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’s acting career slowed as she had three children with Crosby, Harry in 1958, Mary the following year, and Nathaniel in 1961. In 1963, she became a registered nurse after studying to do so at Los Angeles’ Queen of Angels Hospital.
She didn’t entirely quit acting, though, and would regularly appear in Christmas specials with her family, as well as the ABC’s variety show, The Hollywood Palace and an orange juice commercial.
Bing Crosby died aged 74 on October 14th, 1977, from a significant heart attack after a round of golf in Spain. After his death, she would appear in several stage productions, including the 1996 State Fair Broadway revival.
Her late husband “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 told the Santa Cruz Sentinel shortly after his death. “He didn’t know that he was a male chauvinist pig, but he was!” she added, laughing.
On November 4th, 2010, Kathryn Crosby was seriously injured in a car accident in the Sierra Nevada that killed her second husband, Maurice William Sullivan, whom she married in 2000. The year of the crash, she also featured in the film Queen of the Lot, her first since 1979’s This Is the Life. That was her final movie role.
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