When Bing Crosby’s nephew asked him, casually and in the last years of his life, what the most difficult moment of his career had been, he expected some juicy anecdote about a difficult Hollywood director or a conflict with a movie studio.
Instead, Bing told him about a moment during a USO tour in December 1944, in an open field in France.
He had just made 15,000 French and American soldiers laugh and scream with joy with Dinah Shore and the Andrews Sisters. Then he had to close the show with a more intimate number: “White Christmas.” He described the most difficult moment of his career as maintaining composure and vocal control in front of 15,000 tearful soldiers.
Bing never wore his toupee on USO tours—a small thing, but for him such occasions transcended the Hollywood artifice. He also insisted that front row seats should not be reserved for officers or top brass, but for privates who were destined for the front.
A few days after this performance of White Christmas, many of the soldiers present were sent to the Battle of the Bulge, one of the deadliest engagements in human history.