Book: On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio
Quotes of Book: On the Air: The Encyclopedia
Donald Shepherd and Robert F. Slatzer wrote a tough biography, The Hollow Man, which depicted Crosby as a cold, calculating dictator who abandoned his first family to start a new one, who turned his back on his wife Dixie Lee as she lay dying of cancer in 1952, who left a cruel will for his second wife, Kathryn, manipulating his money from the grave. The book was condemned by Crosby's most ardent fans as a hatchet job, but the charges lingered. Perhaps the most revealing piece on Crosby was his interview with Barbara Walters, given a second airing on television after his death. At one point Walters asks what Crosby would do if his daughter began openly living with a man against Crosby's wishes. "Why, I'd never speak to her again," Crosby says, and the way he says it makes a viewer believe there wasn't much compromise in his nature. He did things his way, and that's how people around him did them too. book-quote
