Ghost Town (1988)

 

Bing Crosby’s Merrie Olde Christmas (1977)

    As I watched this special it became increasingly important to know who was responsible. Most of the moving parts that brought this into being are relatively straightforward: it was set in England because Crosby was doing a tour of the UK at the time, David Bowie guested because the producers wanted to appeal to a younger crowd and Bowie agreed to do it as something nice for his mom, Twiggy had just released an album and wanted to break into the US record market, the larger pieces slot into place without many problems. It’s when I looked at the writer and director for this thing that it became truly clear: this was a special shot and set in England with mostly English guest stars produced by and entirely intended for an American audience and it fucking well shows.

I'm surprised they didn't spell it 'Christmase.'

    Leaving David Bowie to the side for the moment the other big guest star was Twiggy who in 1977 was doing pretty well for herself. She’d almost entirely shed her past as a model in the late 60’s and was much better known for her film work and had started releasing fairly well-received albums, at least in the UK. I’m genuinely curious about how big a name she was in the US at the time. A bit of trivia: she appeared along with Bowie on the cover of his 1973 covers album ‘Pin Ups.’ For the record it’s my least favorite album he recorded in the 70’s, for whatever that’s worth, they’re all great.

    Ron Moody of ‘Oliver!’ fame also appears to do a turn as Dickens and run through a number with Twiggy that could be read as a metafictional examination of the roles of protagonists and antagonists in narrative structures but probably shouldn’t. Stanley Baxter appears to put a face with a name I’ve heard referenced any number of times and prove that I should never look deeper into his work.

    The special was recorded on September 11^th, 1977. On October 14^th Bing Crosby died on his 74^th birthday of a massive heart attack directly after playing a round of golf. The special then aired on November 30^th with a special introduction from his wife.

    The show opens with an inexplicably English bike messenger arriving to Crosby’s supposed US home with a message for one Harry Lillis Crosby Jr., Crosby’s real name. It’s clearly a random set they borrowed for the scene and a random British actor they borrowed for the part. Crosby is asked to prove his identity before the messenger will deliver anything. After singing a few bars doesn’t work he just hands the guy his driver’s license. I get that we need to establish a reason for them to fly to England but why the awkward messenger scene? Did anything remotely like that even happen anymore in 1977? Anywho he and his family are invited to visit England by a previously unknown relative, Percy Crosby. He goes inside and sings a song with his wife and jarringly more grown children about his genealogy that doesn’t really end up going anywhere and sets up something of a running joke about possible mistaken identity that gets forgotten about halfway through the show and never pays off.

    There’s stock footage of planes and London and they end up at the set of a stately home. There’s this low murmur of banter between them all the entire way that I paid just enough attention to to know that it’s of no consequence. They ring a bell-pull and the door is answered by a butler played by Stanley Baxter.

Supposed hijinks ensuing.

    A word about Stanley Baxter. He was most well known as an impressionist, having starred in four series of ‘The Stanley Baxter Show’ and various specials going by variations on the name ‘The Stanley Baxter Picture Show.’ He did specific impressions such as the Queen and various public figures but he also did the a lot of exaggerated characters and female impressions in that Monty Python kind of way. If you’re familiar with more modern shows like ‘Little Britain’ or ‘Mrs. Brown’s Boys’ you’ll get what I’m talking about. He was, apparently, very popular at the time and is still working today.

    In this special he plays the various members of Percy Crosby’s staff such as the butler, the cook, the maid, the resident ghost, and they’re the kind of performances where he’s playing to the cheap seats during the close up shots. Everything is exaggerated grimaces and accents and a half, just incessant mugging. He’s by far the most unpleasant part of this entire show.

    And then BAM! 1977 David Bowie is on screen claiming to be a neighbor wanting to borrow the piano for a bit. I’m just going to need to take a moment here ... ok I’m back. He doesn’t appear after his section so it’s clear he was on set for a few hours then took off again. I mentioned last time that I was looking forward to how coked-out he was and it turns out I was off by a year, this was during the time period he was coming down from his truly deranged drug years and was actually trying to straighten his life out a little. I mean, he’s still David Bowie on screen with an elderly Bing Crosby so it’s going to be weird anyways but he’s nicely understated and normal here. I’m actually pleased.

*swoon*

    This next section is the stuff of legend and has been deeply documented so I’ll just do the highlights. As normal as he was being Bowie apparently showed up on the day of shooting in full glam rock outfit before wiping off the lipstick and toning it down. The plan was apparently to duet on ‘Little Drummer Boy’ but he asked at the last moment if they could do something else as he wasn’t a fan of the song. The producers threw a song together, spliced it into ‘Little Drummer Boy,’ Bowie liked it and you have the song that has somehow become a Christmas staple. I’ve never been a fan myself. Apparently Bowie and Crosby got along just fine on set as they both could tell a musical professional when they saw one. Rather than the weirded-out normies put in their place by the transcendental David Bowie it was two musicians from wildly different times getting along just fine and turning out a well-liked tune. In the end it’s a rather nice story.

    Then fucking Baxter is back for a scene as the cook with Kathryn Crosby as they do something in the kitchen that I think is trying to be about the difference between British English and American English but they’re both just saying nonsense and we’re moving on.

This somehow lead directly to Brexit, I'm convinced.

    Pffft, this next section. I get what they’re trying to do but they don’t pull it off. Crosby wanders into the study where Ron Moody is just there being Charles Dickens. Crosby goes with it. While they’re trading vague jokes about Dickens characters Twiggy shows up at the front door as another neighbor and then just starts wandering around the house. She goes into the study and starts talking with Dickens as well and accepts that he is who he is just as easily.

    Then comes the most elaborate part of the entire show and as Bing doesn’t appear at all it must have been shot completely separately. From what I can tell it’s shot at one of those outdoor sets that the BBC has for the various time periods they use and reuse. Moody and Twiggy appear as various pairings for three of Dicken’s novels arguing through song and dance with a cast of tens over who’s the actual ‘star’ of each story. The first is Ebeneezer Scrooge vs. Tiny Tim which is just confusing as Tiny Tim is little more than a glorified cameo in Scrooge’s story. The next pairing is Fagin vs. Oliver which goes the other way, it’s clearly Oliver’s story but at least Fagin is a central character. The last one is just plain odd, as it’s Little Nell vs. Quilp. You know, from that super well known work of Charles Dickens ‘The Old Curiosity Shop.’ The one where everyone dies at the end, that old favorite. I get that the thought process probably went something like: “Well, Americans know who Charles Dickens is so we’ve got to do a ‘Christmas Carol’ thing, and we’ve got the guy from ‘Oliver!’ so we should do ‘Oliver Twist’ as well. Hmm, we’ve got Twiggy for the whole show so she can be Oliver Twist to Moody’s Fagin, that’d be interesting, who can she play opposite Scrooge? Hell, Tiny Tim, people know who that is at least. We just need one more where he can be the bad guy and she can be the good guy.” And somehow the end of that thought was ‘The Old Curiosity Shop.’ Fine.

Not sure I'm comfortable with attractive Tiny Tim.

    Cut to the attic where Crosby is back to appearing in his own special and duets with Twiggy in a slightly rewritten ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.’ It’s nice enough. Then the drugs kick back in and we’re suddenly watching the video to David Bowie’s ‘Heroes,’ I would argue one of the greatest rock songs of all time. Rolling Stone puts it at 46, the cowards. This was apparently one of the ways the producers got Bowie to appear on the special, by agreeing to air the video as part of the special. As great as it is to see it again it’s just as jarring as it sounds.

Well it puts me in the Christmas spirit.

    Percy Crosby finally shows up, played by Moody, to duet with Crosby and his wife on a version of ‘Side by Side.’ Then Baxter is back as the resident ghost doing a very broad Bob Hope impression and they continue the song. The Trinity Boys Choir shows up as carolers and they’re invited inside to make the end of the show song medley more impressive. It’s your standard “we don’t feel like coming up with ten more minutes of material” close but I will at least give it this: it does slowly build from song to song as they get bigger and more voices join in reaching a climax during ‘Carol of the Bells’ and finishing with one last dollop of ‘I Saw Three Ships (Come Sailing In).’

Fine, it's a nice moment, happy?

    Everyone does little Charlie-Brown style vocal ‘Ooo-ooohs’ while Crosby strides forward to address the camera directly. He gives a boilerplate but nice speech about the meaning of the season, welcoming friends both old and new, connecting with family, and it’s only the tiniest bit spoiled by how obviously he’s reading it directly off of the cue cards being held a little too far to the side of the camera. He wraps it up with a simple “Til next time.”

    Then he does goddamn ‘White Christmas’ again.  Dammit, we were so close.

He just ... never got to stop singing it.

    So that was the final Bing Crosby Christmas. The first time through I was taken aback about what an American take it was on English culture but whatever, David Bowie was on my screen and Twiggy did the usual female guest star bit of running rings around the male guests. Crosby looks every one of his 73 years and his voice is noticeably weaker but he’s still the same old Bing Crosby. Some of the efforts to bring the special more up to date do work. Bowie and Twiggy are fine, Ron Moody could do character actor work in his sleep, and as much as Anglophiles are loathe to admit it there is a deep, very low-brow streak in much of British humor that Stanley Baxter is a fine example of. I mean it could have been Benny Hill.

    Looking back on these specials as a whole I am not left with begrudging warm fuzzies like I was with Perry Como or genuine interest like I was with Johnny Cash. Bing Crosby always struck me as too aloof and inherently distant to ever really connect with, despite how technically proficient his singing may have been. Even Sinatra could act if given the right part, I don’t know if it would ever have occurred to Crosby to even try. There was at least one moment from almost all of these specials that I’m glad I saw so I’m certainly not going to completely write these off but there’s no way I’m ever going to watch these again. Now if you don’t mind I have to go pull out my vinyl copies of the entire Berlin Trilogy.