December is the month in which Bing Crosby still has a significant cultural presence. A new documentary, American Masters: Bing Crosby Rediscovered — which premieres Tuesday evening on PBS — makes a powerful case that Crosby deserves to be enjoyed year round, and as much more than a crooner of Christmas tunes.
In the 1930s and 1940s, Crosby was a superstar of a calibre only rarely to be encountered since, but, much more important, he was a key figure in bringing the jazz sensibility into the mainstream of American culture. The documentary provides an excellent anthology of the highlights of Crosby’s career in music and cinema, and gives us a window into the culture of post-war America: Crosby became an icon of America’s self-image as a laid-back people living the good life after prevailing over some very hard times — the Great Depression and the Second World War. (To those of us who grew up in the ’70s and ’80s, it also offers a helpful corrective to the narrative that portrayed him as cold and abusive toward his children. Some of his children appear in the film and say he was a pretty decent father.)
The overall impression one is left with is of a man who was cool and avant garde — and remained true to his sensibility in later years, when the avant garde had moved on. That sensibility contains much to be admired – a relaxed, humorous, and fundamentally decent approach to life.