Books

When would-be starlet Kathryn Grant, the future Mrs. Bing Crosby, met her already-famous husband, she was moonlighting as a reporter, sending Hollywood gossip back to her hometown of West Colombia, Texas. "Bing liked that I was a writer," she says. "He thought it would keep me sitting still."

No chance of that. During their 22-year marriage, which ended with Bing's death in 1977, Kathryn raised three children, earned a nursing degree, performed on television and golfed in celebrity tournaments. She even went on safari with Bing. "Shooting with him was like dancing," she says.

She shares her memories in her most recent book, My Last Years with Bing, published by Collage Books of Naples. Publisher Michael Hirsch, an old friend of the Crosbys, will also reissue Kathryn's first book, with the new title My First Years with Bing. Kathryn stayed with Hirsch and his wife, Harriet, at their Gulf Shore Boulevard residence in Naples last spring, when she performed at the Sugden Theatre as part of a series of appearances for clients of Northern Trust.

Many of the books' photographs are unique. Kathryn Crosby pauses to reflect on one that's emblematic of the magical life she shared with Bing. Clad in a Dorothy Lamour-style sarong, she's laughing into the camera as she stands with her arms around some of a bygone age's most recognizable men. "Every woman in the world wanted to dance with Fred Astaire, sing with Bing Crosby and joke with Bob Hope. And there I am," she says.