Bob Crosby (Big Band Leader of the Bob-Cats) Autograph, Winged Victory, 1945

Description

About the Autograph Collection. My Aunt Helen spent years collecting autographs during her tenure at The National Theater in Washington DC.
She began her tenure in 1932 until her retirement in the mid 1980's due to an Auto Accident. Most of the collection spans the 1940's, 50's with some autographs from the 60's and 70's. Some of the Autographs Collection was recently sold to
Tamino Autographs in New York.
As a point of interest I've included a couple family photos.
I will be listing more from this fairly large collection over the next few weeks.
NOTE THE IMAGES OF BOB CROSBY ARE NOT IN PLAYBILL AND ARE FOR REFERENCE ONLY.
Bob Crosby Autograph, "Winged Victory" Playbill 1945.
George Robert Crosby (August 23, 1913 – March 9, 1993) was an American jazz singer and bandleader, best known for his group the Bob-Cats, which formed around 1935.
The Bob-Cats was a New Orleans Dixieland-style jazz octet.
He was the younger brother of famed singer and actor Bing Crosby.
On TV, Bob Crosby guest-starred in The Gisele MacKenzie Show and was also seen on The Jack Benny Program. Crosby hosted his own afternoon TV variety show on CBS, The Bob Crosby Show, which aired from 1953 to 1957. Crosby received two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on February 8, 1960, for television (at 6252 Hollywood Boulevard) and radio (at 6313 Hollywood Boulevard)
Winged Victory is a 1943 play by Moss Hart, created and produced by the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II as a morale booster and as a fundraiser for the Army Emergency Relief Fund
. Hart adapted the play for a 1944 motion picture directed by George Cukor.
Winged Victory tells the story of a group of recruits struggling to make it through pilot training. The trainees are a cross-section of American young men. Their personal lives, their families and sweethearts make up a small part of the story, but most of the drama focuses on training and camaraderie. Music plays a large part in the play, and most of the huge cast were primarily members of a chorus under the direction of famed choral leader Leonard de Paur. Among the musical numbers are "My Little Dream Book of Memories," and the stirring title anthem, "Winged Victory".
The play opened in Boston, Massachusetts in the fall of 1943, in a pre-Broadway run, and was a huge success. It then opened in New York at the 44th Street Theatre on 20 November 1943 and became a smash hit, playing to over 350,000 people in 226 performances. During the New York run, performers in the show also toured local military camps, providing entertainment to the troops. A number of Winged Victory actors also rehearsed and produced a production of the play Yellow Jack by Sidney Kingsley, under the direction of Martin Ritt, which played briefly and simultaneously on Broadway. The successful run of Winged Victory on Broadway ended only in order that the entire cast travel to Hollywood to appear in the film version. Twentieth Century Fox purchased the rights and contracted the full cast and in the summer of 1944 produced a film version (which featured a few actors who had not been in the play, including Lon McCallister and Judy Holliday), under the direction of George Cukor.
Following filming, the company embarked on a national tour of the play, performing 445 times for over 800,000 people in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, Kansas City, Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore (where the theatre proved too small to admit the huge section of a bomber, part of the set for one scene), Washington D.C., and Richmond. At tour's end in April, 1945, the cast and crew were dispersed throughout the Army Air Forces, many of them transferring to the First Motion Picture Unit in California, there to make training films. The Winged Victory company (officially known as the 31st AAF Base Unit) officially disbanded in November 1945.[1][2]
Due both to its enormous cast and staging demands as well as to the extremely era-specific nature of the play, Winged Victory is one of the biggest hits in Broadway history never to have a second production anywhere.