Portis, Portis, Everywhere

Bing Crosby appeared in Paramount features for years. Bingo Crosbyana appeared in one Warner Bros. cartoon.

History doesn’t record whether the idea for the cartoon Bingo Crosbyana or its title song came first. The song was written by Irving Cahal and Sanford Green, and published by one of the Warners-owned music publishers. But it doesn’t appear to have been used anywhere but in this 1936 animated short. It seems odd to go the trouble of writing a Bing Crosby parody song just for a cartoon, but I can’t see Warners including something like that in a feature.

This cartoon is a gold-mine when it comes to Portis references. Portis, Kansas was the home town of writer Tubby Millar and someone in the background department liked sticking “Portis” on things in his backgrounds. You can see “Portis” in Porky's Pet, Porky in the North Woods, Porky's Road Race, Sniffles and the Bookworm, The Case of the Stuttering Pig and four times in this cartoon.



Other cartoons around this time had “Millar” in background art. Someone must have loved ol’ Tubby at the studio.

Is it true a lawsuit resulted from the cartoon? Yes. Well, presuming it was filed. The Hollywood Reporter told readers in a front-page story on August 5, 1936:

A potential blow to cartoon producers who caricature stars is seen in the legal threat by Paramount and Bing Crosby, Inc. against Warner Bros. over the latter company’s cartoon titled “Bingo Crosbyana.” Through the law firm of O’Melveny, Tuller & Myers, the Crosby corporation has demanded that Warners cease distribution and exhibition of the reel. The demand states that the Crosby voice is imitated and the character of “Bingo Crosbyana” is shown as a “vainglorious coward.”

The cartoon was still being shown in November so, no, it wasn’t pulled. It was never re-issued, but that could be a coincidence.

Crosby didn’t get the worst of it in this cartoon. Look what happened to the spider, thanks to an egg-beater.



There were any number of imitators (individual and in groups) on the air in Los Angeles at the time who could have supplied the impersonation of Crosby. Billy Bletcher plays the evil spider, the Rhythemettes are the fly girls (how meanings have changed!) singing away. Norman Spencer supplies a typical score, with an off-beat wood block and one of my favourite J.S. Zamecnik cues, “Storm Music” (published in 1919).

Friz Freleng directed this short. Not only did he have an earlier Mexi-insect short (The Lady in Red starring happy, dancing roaches) but earlier in the year, he directed a crooning Crosby chicken in Let It Be Me. These cartoons are pretty weak when it comes to parodies. Things were more fun in later years when, just like on radio shows, cartoons made fun of Bing’s lousy thoroughbreds, his Hawaiian shirts, his pipe, his “war” with Sinatra. By then, Crosby was like an old shoe, the ultra-laid-back host of radio’s Kraft Music Hall and, later, Philco Radio Time who recorded one of the biggest hits of all time, “White Christmas.” That’s a change from being a cartoon Cuban fly in a kitchen-full of things made in Portis, Kansas.