NEW YORK -- Bing Crosby was an abusive father who beat his sons until he drew blood and whose progeny endured the pain by dreaming up ways of murdering him, his children recalled Sunday.
'Am I supposed to act like I loved him all my life?' asked oldest son Gary in People magazine. Gary Crosby, 49, recently published his memoirs, 'Going My Own Way,' attacking the image of his father as a warm, wise patriarch.
As a child Gary Crosby had a weight problem and recalled his father weighed him once a week and if he had gained weight he was ordered into his father's office for a whipping.
'I had a big, broad ass on me as a kid that used to annoy the hell out of my father,' said Gary Crosby, who recalled his father's favorite nickname for him was 'Bucket Butt.'
Gary Crosby said his father beat him almost daily. 'My father would come home at 6 o'clock and by 6:05 he'd heard the news of what I'd done. Then I'd get bent over and by pants taken down and beat till I bled,' he said. He said he endured the pain by dreaming up ways to murder his father.
Lindsay Crosby, 45, the youngest of Bing's sons by his first wife Dixie Lee, supports his brother's memoirs. 'I hope it clears up a lot of the old lies,' he said.
Phillip Crosby, 48, however, said Gary Crosby was a 'whining, bitching crybaby,' and claimed, 'I was happy to be who I was, even if I had the hell kicked out of me.'
In the memoirs, his brother said the boys were required to eat everything on their plates and once, after the family moved into their 20-room Hollywood mansion, Phillip hid bacon and eggs under a rug. When the food was discovered, Phillip was required to eat it, 'dirt, hairs and all,' Gary said.
Phillip's twin, Dennis, called Gary Crosby's revelations of parental abuse 'Gary's business,' but said his older brother was the most severely treated of the four boys. 'He got the first licking, and we got the second.'
None of the four holds a steady job, each receiving a monthly check from a trust fund their mother established. Their father also set up a fund for each of his sons, but placed the money in a blind trust none of them can touch until age 65.
Said Phillip Crosby: 'My father thought, 'How much trouble will they be able to get into then?''
