Growing Up Laughing_ My Story and the Story of Funny - Marlo Thomas [32]
The four Crosby boys (Bing’s sons) were also part of our teenage crowd. They went to Loyola, the Catholic boys’ school, and they always hung out together, with their nanny and guardian, Georgie, forever hovering nearby. Georgie was tough, the boss.
With my godmother, Loretta Young. She was ever beautiful.
Gary and the twins, Dennis and Philip, were older, and Linny (Lindsay) was our age. He was the sweetest of the brothers. All four were fun to be with, always pulling pranks and laughing. But even as teens, they smoked and drank heavily. I didn’t like going up to the Crosby house on Mapleton, and we didn’t go often. Their mom, Dixie, was always in her room “resting.” But everyone knew she had a drinking problem. And their dad was hardly ever there, but even when he was, he was gruff and not so nice.
The Crosby boys didn’t really talk about it, but they sometimes let it slip that their father treated them roughly. He called them mean names and knocked them around. That made me especially sad, because they were such sweet and respectful boys.
I ran into the Crosby kids through the years, even after I left Beverly Hills, and they weren’t faring well. They had tried show business, first singing as a quartet, then as a trio when Gary went out on his own. I cried the day I heard on the radio that Linny had killed himself, brutally, by putting a shotgun in his mouth. Sweet Linny. He was 52.
Some houses had glamour, some had laughs, some had secrets and some had the worst of it. A neighborhood.
Dancing with Linny Crosby at my eighth grade graduation party. You can see how sweet he was.
DID YA HEAR THE ONE ABOUT . . .
Two Beverly Hills women are shopping on Rodeo
Drive when one of them notices a child in a baby carriage.
“Oh, look at that beautiful baby!” says the first woman.
“Aww, how adorable,” says her friend.
Then the first woman gasps.
“Oh my God, that’s my baby!”
“How do you know?”
“I recognize the nanny.”
Chapter 16
My Dad
He was an old-fashioned dad. For all the fame and money my father had earned, at his core he was a working-class guy, the middle son of a large family from Toledo, Ohio.
I’ve listened to many sad “dad tales” from some of my women friends—about their distracted, non-demonstrative or simply unloving fathers. These stories have always sounded so foreign. My father truly enjoyed the company of his children. He hugged and kissed us daily, he told us that he loved us, he was emotional. We used to kid him that he cried at basketball games.
Through the years, whenever I called home, it was always a boost. When he’d hear my voice, I could hear the pleasure in his. “How’s my beauty?” he’d say. I once said something to him that I was sorry about later, and when I called to apologize, he said, “Mugs, you know you can do no wrong with me.”
In 1965, Dad’s pal, Joe Robbie, asked him to partner with him to buy the Miami Dolphins, the first expansion team of what was then the American Football League. Dad was a big sports fan, so this was an irresistible opportunity for him.
Dad greets Joe Auer in the end zone. They’d both run 95 yards, Joe with the football, my father with the cigar.
In their first game, the Dolphins received the opening kickoff from the Oakland Raiders, and running back Joe Auer sprinted an amazing 95 yards for a touchdown. My dad was so excited that he jumped off the bench and ran along the sidelines the entire way with Auer, his cigar clenched in his teeth, his change falling out of his pockets, yelling “Go, baby, go!” When Auer finally crossed into the end zone, my father grabbed him and kissed him. He was a different kind of owner.
Dad brought that childlike enthusiasm to everything he did. When I was at USC, I got a 3.8 average one semester. He was so proud, he took my report card onto The Tonight Show with him,