Frankie vs. Bing
Who would win?
Well,
it was put to the test in a 1944 WB cartoon called
Swooner Crooner,
an absolute classic!
The full version got taken down from yootoob due to copyright or whatever,
but can still be seen in full here:
http://rarebit.org/?animation=swooner-crooner
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...here's the yootoob excerpt:
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAEUWL76ww0
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...in the part not shown, since Porky Pig's egg farm (the Flockheed Eggcraft Factory!) went afoul when his hens leave their posts to swoon over "Frankie" (a crooning rooster singing "As Time Goes By"), Porky goes out and hires a new rooster (a pipe-smoking Bing Crosby-type) and the two roosters have a crooning contest that produces mountain of eggs, including an unexpected pile from Porky himself!
It's a great old cartoon, also featuring the brilliant Raymond Scott's massive track,
Powerhouse...
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfDqR4fqIWE
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In real life, Frankie was of course very very fond of Bing...
"A short time after Frank started going out with Nancy," said his aunt Josie, "he took her to see Bing Crosby. And after Crosby went off the stage Frank turned to Nancy and said: 'I'm going to be a singer.' When they got home that night he announced it, very seriously."
"Most people," Frank reportedly said of Crosby, "think he's just a crooner. But they're wrong. he's a troubadour. He tells a story in every song...He makes you feel like he's singing just for you. I bet I could sing like that."
"Someday," Nancy remembered him saying on the way home from the Crosby show, "that's gonna be me up there."
Family sources differ as to when and where frank had this revelation, but it seems not to have been merely some publicist's invention. Sinatra recalled the moment. "From the first time I first heard Bing on the radio, I thought he was in a class by himself. He was the greatest...the Will Rogers of song."
Musician and Hoboken contemporary John Marotta recalled seeing Frank "standing on street corners wearing a blazer, a sailing cap and smoking a pipe" - aping Bing Crosby.
From another book,
someone describes seeing him on the set of The Manchurian Candidate (1962)...
He was sitting quietly in a chair, Coke at hand instead of vodka, puffing leisurely on a pipe instead of dragging hastily on a cigarette. He was listening to a record album entitled "Relaxism", a gift from Dean Martin.