Customer Reviews

Going My Own Way

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I read this book over 20 years ago when I saw Gary on the Phil Donahue show talking about his upbringing. I just recently purchased a copy. The writing style of the book is highly reminiscent of the character Holden Caulfield in "The Catcher in the Rye", and just like that novel, there are laugh out loud parts in Gary's autobiography. I am disturbed that people who read the book would critisize his motives for writing it. Gary wrote it after Bing had died and without a doubt the writing of it was therapy. Clearly, Gary loved his dad. Most of us from that era who were abused by our parents still loved them. If Gary needed the money from book sales, so what? He did not receive an inheritance from his dad and his trust from his mother was modest. One reviewer said to read Bing's book if you want to know about Bing. That would only be one side of him. Read Gary's book if you want to know about Bing's family life and relationship with his 4 boys. I think "tell all" books are just fine after the person in question has died.

I read this book when it first came out and I thought it was fascinating. I enjoyed Crosby's description of Louis Armstrong's tour among many other things. Crosby talks about how out of control he was on alcohol and the famous people he would run with when he was drinking. Lots of things happen in this book. If you like biography, this is a great choice.
By the way...
I'm surprised that someone would write a scathing review without even having finished the book. Bing was awful to the Crosby boys. He refused to let Gary and his brothers enjoy life. Just one example is how he imprisoned them each summer on a working ranch where they had to do miserable labor which they hated. Too bad he couldn't have thought of what they wanted to do. Two of the brothers committed suicide and while it's impossible to lay this at Bing's doorstep, a better, kinder upbringing certainly couldn't have hurt.

I was never a fan of Bing Crosby's regardless of the fact that he was way before my time, but I had been aware of son Gary Crosby's book and the controversy surrounding it's original release. I wanted to read for myself what Gary had to say about his famous father and upbringing, and what I found was a very enjoyable, wonderful read. In fact, after having read the book, I feel as if I have a friend in Gary. His book is very honest and straight forward. I am very saddened by the reminder that he has since passed on (1995).

I feel as if both his famous father and mother, were to blame for Gary's attitude towards life, this heavily contributing to his personal problems and demons. From very early on about the age of six or seven, he realized thru classmates that his father was famous, and began to see himself as someone "special." But his mother quickly told him that he wasn't, and that he was no better than any of his classmates. This was the beginning of Gary's way of thinking, and all the rewards that later came his way, meant nothing to him. When he got on the cover of LIFE magazine later as a teen sensation, instead of being elated, he told a friend that he was nobody special and shrugged it off. If that breaks your heart as it did mine, you'll be moved by the many similar stories Gary writes about.

For those unaware, two of Gary's three younger brothers have since committed suicide. While I did learn to like Bing Crosby as a person (he was very good to his public, which is rather rare folks), Bing is very much to blame for all the problems his four sons suffered in their adult life. It was Bing's strict upbringing and lack of love and affection that affected the four Crosby sons for the rest of their lives. This is an excellent book on a number of levels. I can't recommend reading this book enough. I've never read a book where I've come to know someone as much as I have about Gary. He's a really great guy.

I never knew much about Gary Crosby. I remember when I was in Junior High and High School, there was a wonderful TV show called "Adam-12" on the air on NBC. I clearly remember seeing Gary Crosby in a number of episodes. My folks had mentioned that Gary and his ultra-famous father Bing didn't get along very well. (Everybody at that time knew who Bing Crosby was, doubt that can be said of the iPOD/texting generation today!) I never really knew more about it than that. Recently, I've been watching all the Adam-12 episodes available on DVD and of course have seen Gary Crosby.
On a whim I came across Gary's book from 1984. I bought it for 4 cents and for $4 more, it was mailed to me.
I find it hard to put the book down. I am a mental health professional and anyone who has been a psychiatrist, counselor, or therapist will immediately recognize this story as that of a highly dysfunctional family struggling with many serious issues including alcoholism--and not primarily a story about a kid who was a "whiner".
I found Gary's self-awareness (by the time of writing the book) to be heartening. I echo what some other reviewers have written here. Gary's love for his dad, as reluctant as it was, still comes through and it seems Gary was aware of it too (despite all the dysfunction.) At times it was painful to read about the stereotyped behavior he developed in order to cope with his fears, pain, and emotions. I agree, also, that it must have been rather therapeutic to review his life and focus on the relationships he had with his parents and siblings (and with others in his life.)
Most of us really have no truck with celebrities or with the wealthy. Perhaps reading Gary Crosby's story wouldn't even be a tiny blip on most people's "interest" radar scope. However, if you want to read one man's experience of a dysfunctional family, and how destructive alcoholism can be to all people touched by it, even the super wealthy and famous, then you might find his story interesting. The next time you see an old episode of "Adam-12" with Gary Crosby in it, give his story some thought. Thanks for taking the time to read my opinion!

I just finished reading this book and was very disturbed how the infamous Bing treated his sons. A man who had everything and nothing. What a twisted parent.
If anyone can recall watching Bing's son Gary on Emergency or on Adam-12 back in the 60's and 70's, you can literally see the pain in Gary's face. Going My Own Way

This is a great biography. Very well written and completely absorbing. Gary is hardest on himself-totally honest. I have a special contempt for the assistant coach who would not let him have the spot he earned on the Stanford team.

During this time of year people are inundated with Christmas specials on television. This was really the norm during the 1960's when Bing Crosby would host Holiday shows featuring his family perpetuating the image of a loving and attentive father to his sons. That image was destroyed when one of his children, Gary Crosby, wrote a tell-all book about his famous dad entitled "Going My Own Way". Released only six years after Christina Crawford's jaw-dropping memoir "Mommie Dearest" which dramatized her life with screen legend Joan Crawford, "Going My Own Way" was obviously written in response to the tremendous success of Crawford's book. Still, "Going My Own Way" is a story everyone should read.

In his revealing memoir Gary writes how his father continuously abused him emotionally and physically for years. He could never live up to his father's high expectations, and when Bing felt he couldn't control Gary the way he wanted to, whippings, usually with belts, ensued. This continued until Gary was 18 years old when he finally had had enough. One night, for some minor infringement of the rules, Bing grabbed a walking cane and told Gary to position himself for the upcoming beating which consisited of Gary croached over the arm of a sofa, with Bing hitting him. After about a dozen or so blows Gary turned around, grabbed the cane from his dad, broke it over his knee, and told Bing, "If you ever hit me again I'll kill you!".

Not only does Gary detail the abuse he suffered, but reveals Bing was not the dedicated family and religous man his image projected. Gary talks about Bing's womanizing, his drinking, and other hobbies he liked to indulge in. Gary also states that his own life-long battle with alcohol and drugs stemmed from the child abuse he endured.

A book all should read, if you have ever been abused as a child, like I have, "Going My Own Way" is a must-read. For me this book had more of an influence on my life than "Mommie Dearest" because I thought only young, innocent girls got abused at the hands of a parent. Upon reading Gary's horror story I realized abuse can happen to boys and that there are life-long consequences for the victim if they don't pursue help early on in adulthood. I am very proud Gary Crosby had the courage and the guts to write such a memoir.

Unfortunately, Gary died in 1995 from cancer, but his stance on child abuse issues will always live on due to his book.

When I was a child, my siblings and I had no opinions of our own, our preferences were never an issue and if you complained by sighing the wrong way when watching TV we were likely to get something thrown at us, or to get sucker punched from behind on our ears (that way, we couldn't "complain" about something we couldn't hear), or literally being put out on the porch and left there all night. Some people have this silly notion that just because child abuse wasn't a well known term or that our parents were only doing what they knew how to do, then it wasn't really child abuse. I ask you, "How dumb is that!?" Of course it was child abuse!
Mr. Crosby was a talented man and he knew how to entertain his audiences. However, he was not a good father and he didn't know how to love his children. Bing Crosby and his wife were sadistic, hateful, hurtful and uncaring parents. If he was JUST the "absent father" like some have suggested, this book would have never been written. However, they tormented their children not in the name of discipline, but in the name of self gratification. You do not demean, humiliate or hit your children like they did (or like my father did) without enjoying it to some extent.

I'm utterly shocked at some of the comments left by other reviewers. Just because Bing Crosby and Dixie were obviously well off financially doesn't mean their kids were well off financially and it certainly doesn't mean that their kids should have just sucked it up and to "stop whining"! I'm truly confused why someone would have purchased this for "entertainment". Who would be entertained by someone else's misery other than another sadistic abuser? I bought this book because I could relate to those kids. It helps knowing that there are others who have found a will to go on or try to understand why they simply couldn't face life any longer. I'll spare you the details but I often write of the horrors I lived through as a child and for me, it's a kind of therapy. Maybe it was like that for Gary Crosby too?

Summary:

If you haven't been in a similar situation of abuse or you need a form of entertainment then you won't understand this book or others like it and you should take up a hobby...try the "Paint by Numbers" craft.

The advent of Christina Crawford's "Mommie Dearest", spawned an entire genre of celebrity books. These are - as "Sophia" from the "Golden Girls" put it, the "Bitter child of celebrity" tales. I read this book for the first time when I was 13 years old. In reading it again, after becoming a parent myself, I can now more clearly see just how badly our children want our love and approval. Bing Crosby never approved of his oldest son Gary, named for his good friend Gary Coooper. Bing, and his first wife "Dixie", seem to believe that children are our natural enemies, and you have to "break" them, as you would an unruly mule. Here are some examples of their parenting techniques:
-- The "boys" and there were four, had to use the right utensils during dinner in the formal dining room. The right fork, correct spoon, fold the napkin properly- before they even started going to Kindergarten. If Dixie Crosby noticed they were making mistakes, she whacked the offender's knuckles with the back of her butter knife- which was heavy silver.
--The boys had to eat every bite of food, whether they liked the food in question or not. One of the brothers simply HATED eggs- as people do. One morning, he just couldn't face them, so he got the bright idea of hiding them under the hall carpet. His mother noticed the bulge under the rug, discovered the uneaten eggs, and made her son choke down every bite- as Gary put it "Dirt, hairs, and all."
-- Gary, eldest son, was, like his father Bing, prone to putting on weight. His father made him hop on the scale, every Wednesday. If the number was steady- great! Gary, at the age of nine or ten, would use his allowance to buy the strongest laxatives he could find, and his father made him run ALONGSIDE the Limo on the way to school in the morning. Sometimes, it worked, sometimes not. If "not", he got a "whipping". A whipping from Bing Crosby meant bending over a chair, with bare legs and bottom facing him, whereupon he would flail away with his walking stick. The whipping ended after Bing drew the first "beads of blood."
--Dixie, the mother, was worse, in my opinion. If the boy she was targeting finished his assigned homework early, like a page of Math problems, she'd say, "Done already? Well, it's too soon. Read the next fifty pages (in a MATH BOOK?) , and write down for me what they're all about. Why are you looking at me that way? What, you don't like it!!!??? Go outside and get a switch!" The switch had to be green, and somewhat "springy". Employing the same method as her beloved husband, the boy would bend over, while she used BOTH hands, "Whipping" the switch up and down his legs and rear, as fast as her arms would go. And, God help the poor child if he dared to move during his beating: "I TOLD YOU TO STAND STILL- NOW you're REALLY gonna get it!!" She was usually in a drunken stupor, and wouldn't remember any of it the next day. Gary said, "As soon as I stopped 'flinching' after a few days from the beating, she'd scare me again by exploding even worse.."
I give these stories, practically word for word, because I have no sleek adjectives, no clever puns, or just honest, straight prose at my disposal, that could convey to you, or myself, the full horror of these stories.Dixie and Bing Crsoby had four sons together: Gary, Phillip and Dennis (twins), and Lindsay. If you really want to know the effects of their parenting, please consider this:
-- Dennis, nick-named "ugly" and "loser" by his famous Dad, killed himself a few years after denying much of the content of his brother Gary's book.
--Lindsay, the baby boy, and the most sensitive, attempted suicide many times, before finally succumbing to a final attempt in the early 1990's.
--Gary, had such anger and anguish in his soul that even counseling and writing this book was not therapeutic enough for him; after a series of heart attacks in the 1980's, his doctor told him that he had so much violence and malice in his heart, it was literally "exploding" due to the pressure, warning Gary that he HAD to get rid of the anger towards his father, or it would utterly consume (or kill) him- which it did, a few years ago..
-- Of the four from Bing and Dixie, only Phillip Crosby managed to live to the age of sixty-five- if you want to call what he did "living", that is. He resided in a trailer that a reporter described as a "roach infested, termite-ridden, urine soaked "flop-house". "Sixty-five' was an important number to Bing Crosby, it would seem, since attaining this age was the only way the "boys" could get their hands on their inheritance, yet another cruel proviso of the crooner's will- I guess he thought that his children would be too immature to handle their finances at the tender ages of forty or fifty. Phillip Crosby only got to enjoy his money and new found security for five years, before passing away in in 2004, at age sixty nine. Like his brother Gary, and his famous father before him, he suffered a massive heart attack.
There are dozens of horror stories in this boook. I never thought people living in 25+ room mansions in Beverly Hills would be this bitter and tortured. Dixie, a former country singer and actress, drank herself into oblivion, dying of uterine cancer in her forties. Bing went on to marry a nineteen year old woman named Kathryn, and having three more children: two more sons, Harry and Nathaniel, and a daughter, Mary Frances, all of whom are alive, and all of whom have described Bing Crosby as nothing less than a caring, nurturing parent. (Some of us remember his daughter, Mary Frances Crosby, as "Kristen"- the sultry vixen who infamously shot J.R. Ewing on T.V.'s "Dallas")BOTH camps could very well be right in their estimation of Bing- after all, people change, and some people have "split personalty" parenting- being a totally different guardian at different times...
One image stands out in my mind's eye: Gary would ride along with his father sometimes, for out-of-town commitments, or singing projects they did together. Some of these car trips took 4-5 hours, at times, and what strikes me is that Gary writes that he and his father did not exchange one single word the entire time. It was dead silent- with Bing ocassionally breaking into one of his "peppy" songs. When they got out of the car, he says, Bing became "Bing!", in the presence of other people, of course- a model father, calling Gary "pal" and "Buddy- unless Gary said something "stupid", and his father would whisper, "Uh- uh, Dummy. Wrong answer. Back in your trunk." with Gary assuming he meant they had a "ventriloquist-wooden dummy" working relationship.... During the return trip, his father would tell him it was time to get back to reality -to wit:"In the car lard a--. Move." And then, total silence all the way home. I personally think that Bing got himself in so deep as the firm, disciplinarian, he COULDN'T get out; that he had no idea how to now treat his boys like mature, human beings, therefore, he chose silence.
Shortly before Bing's 1977 death, he admitted to his friend, actress Nanette Fabray, that he was probably too hard on his boys, and he was sure that, at various times, they actually hated him! Ms. Fabray explained to Gary that Bing confided in her that he really DID love his sons, and he acted in that manner because he didn't want a bunch of second generation "soiled brats". Gary begins the book by writing, "A few years after my Father died, I found out he really did love me..." and maybe he did. I don't know- but, at least Gary thought so..

gary crosby's story is heartbreaking.i read this book many years ago and decided to pick it up again. it was as difficult to read this time, as it was the first time... he was the son of bing crosby and dixie lee. both parents abused gary and gary's brothers. the boys were abused physically and were emotionally beaten down. as i read it,i can feel gary's frustration towards his whole life:the beatings,the "rules",the constant put-downs. i am amazed that gary ended up somewhat normal although (he admits),he was a bad alcoholic and not very nice to other people sometimes.
i am very puzzled by bing and dixie's behavior. i do not know "what" they were thinking. maybe they thought they were not doing wrong? it does not make sense and never will because,we cannot get into their' heads. i am not judging bing crosby as a person,but i will judge him as the father he was to his children and i think he DID NOT deserve to be a father.
a very sad story,the saddest thing is,if bing had really loved his children(gary,phillip,dennis,and lindsay) and treated them decent,they would have loved him beyond measure...imagine that.