1944 Command Performance
Episode: #104
Taping
Tuesday
Air Date: February 20, 1944
Hostess: Dinah Shore
Guests: Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra
Produced in Hollywood. Announced by Ken Carpenter. With John Scott Trotter
Orchestra, Ticker Freeman, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby and Dinah Shore (m.c.)
1. Blues In The Night
Dinah Shore
2. Speak Low
Frank Sinatra
3. Candlelight & Wine Bing Crosby
with John Scott Trotter (Piano)
4. Comedy Routine with Dinah, Frank, and Bing (Sinatra sings a little bit
of "All Or Nothing At All")
5. Medley Parodies: Little Sir Echo (Bing & Frank); This Is The Guy
(Sinatra); Was That The Human
Thing To Do? (Bing); The Last Round-Up (Sinatra); If I Had My Way (Bing);
Pony Boy (Sinatra); Falling In Love Again (Bing); I Wonder What's Become
Of Crosby the Sinatra of 1909 (Sinatra); It Makes No Difference Now
(Bing); I Heard You Cried
Last Night (Sinatra); The Daring Young Man On The Flying Trapeze
(Sinatra);
Learn To Croon (Sinatra); Dinah (Bing); Stardust (Sinatra); Sunday, Monday
Or
Always (Bing); Deep Purple (Sinatra)
6. People Will Say We're In Love (Bing & Frank)
Somebody wrote a script for the Bing Crosby - Frank Sinatra radio broadcast
last night, but the two singers found the document valuable chiefly as
something to deviate from as they rollicked through a 40-minute program and
kept a capacity studio audience skittering from chuckles to chortles to
forthright guffaws.
Vocalist Dinah Shore made some remark about Sinatra having plenty of
backbone to get where he is.
"Sure," said Bing, "far as I can see, the guy is all backbone" - which he
wasn't supposed to say at all. Then Frankie spoke unkindly about Bing's
stomach, which really isn't very pronounced, and said he wished he had it
full of war bonds, which wasn't in the script either.
Most of the asides were drowned by studio laughter. But they were picked up
by the microphone and will be heard by the troops overseas, for whom the
broadcast was staged. It was a "command performance" program at CBS under
sponsorship of the Armed Forces Radio Service and was not released for
United States consumption.
Press agents had billed the encounter as a baritones' battle of the century
but if it was a fight, both Crosby and Sinatra seemed to have a lot of fun
waging it.
Barring an impromptu duet on a local golf course last Sunday, inspired by
their success in selling war bonds, it was the first appearance together of
these two crooners, who have become close friends in the last few months.
After sparring around a while with Crosby singing excerpts from songs
Frankie has popularized and Sinatra reciprocating, they joined in a duet of
"People Will Say We're In Love".
Frankie who has taken a lot of kidding about his frail-looking physique,
enjoyed a joke at his own expense. Maj. Meredith Willson, conducting an army
orchestra, suggested that Frank elevate the microphone slightly.
"I'll do it if I can lift it," Frank responded, and Bing laughed and
laughed.
(James Lindsley, writing in the Hollywood Citizen News, February 2, 1944)
In 1943 and 1944 and 1945, Bing and Frank made more benefit appearances, did
more radio shows for soldier and sailor consumption than either has been
able to remember or account for. A series of appearances on the most
glamorous of the service shows, Command Performance, drew devastating
laughter from studio audiences and similar response from the boys for whom
they were intended. The fan mail received from camps and bases overseas was
understandably heavy and enthusiastic. Take the second anniversary show of
Command Performance.
Dinah Shore was mistress of ceremonies. She introduced Frank, seriously,
decorously. He sang Speak Low. She introduced Bing with well-weighed words
about his importance as a singer and a personality, as an institution. He
sang Candlelight and Wine. Then came the talk, fast talk, much of it very
funny, all of it beautifully timed by some of the most practiced
entertainers in the business, by the three biggest singers of the time.
"You know, Bing," Dinah said, "a singer like Frank Sinatra comes along only
once in a lifetime."
"Yeah." Bing responded ruefully with the famous line that has been placed in
a hundred other contexts and used several times by Bing himself and that
actually originated in this fast ad lib interchange on Command Performance.
"Yeah, and he has to come along in my lifetime!"
"No, no, Bing," Dinah protested. "He's quite a man, really."
"I know."
"He has a lot of backbone," Dinah continued.
"He's all backbone," Bing commented.
"Well, how about your pot tummy, Dad?" Frank asked.
"It's not so big," said Bing.
"1'd like to have it full of war bonds," said Frank.
Then the singers told each other how much each genuinely admired the other's
singing, with serious asides to Dinah to give their fulsome mutual praise
conviction. To keep it from becoming maudlin, too lush or gushy, in spite of
the honesty of their stated opinions, they launched a duet, singing a big
song of the year, a wonderfully apposite song, People Will Say We're in
Love. Everybody in the audience and on the show, including Bing and Frank,
broke up.
Followed a skit in Scottish dialect, in which they played Crooner McCrosby
and Swooner MacSinatra, each vying for Dinah McShore's hand. The forced
moments and the poor dialect were quickly compensated for by the ensuing
battle of songs between the two men. Sinatra sang I Wonder What's Become of
Crosby, the Sinatra of 1909. When Frank sang Stardust, Bing commented wryly,
"That's my song. I introduced it in 1904. It was very big for me in Des
Moines."
The loose, relaxed, informal nature of that show on February 1, 1944, was
the proper carry-over from the open golf tournament and bond auction of the
day before at Lakeside.
(Barry Ulanov, The Incredible Crosby, pages 226-227)
