| Kathryn Crosby | |
| Birthname: | Olive Kathryn Grandstaff |
| Birth Date: | 25 November 1933 |
| Birth Place: | West Columbia, Texas, U.S. |
| Education: | University of Texas at Austin (BFA) |
| Othername: | Kathryn Grandstaff Kathryn Grant |
| Spouse: | |
Kathryn Crosby (born Olive Kathryn Grandstaff; November 25, 1933)[1] is a retired American actress and singer who performed in films under the stage names Kathryn Grant and Kathryn Grandstaff.[2]
Born Olive Kathryn Grandstaff on November 25, 1933 in West Columbia, Texas to Delbert Emery Grandstaff, Sr. and Olive Catherine Grandstaff (née Stokely). Kathryn has four siblings. She graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1955. Two years later, she became Bing Crosby's second wife, being more than 30 years his junior. The couple had three children, Harry, Mary Frances, and Nathaniel.[3]
Crosby appeared as a guest star on her husband's 1964–1965 sitcom The Bing Crosby Show.
Crosby largely retired from acting after her marriage, but did have featured roles as Princess Parisa in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) and in the courtroom drama Anatomy of a Murder (1959). She also played the part of Mama Bear with her husband and children in Goldilocks, and she co-starred with Jack Lemmon in the comedy Operation Mad Ball (1957), with Tony Curtis in the drama Mister Cory (1957), and as a trapeze artist in The Big Circus (1959). In the mid-1970s, she hosted The Kathryn Crosby Show, a 30-minute local talk-show on KPIX-TV in San Francisco. Husband Bing appeared as a guest occasionally. Since Bing Crosby's death in 1977, she has taken on a few smaller roles and the lead in the short-lived 1996 Broadway musical State Fair.
On June 16, 1963, Crosby became a registered nurse after studying at Queen of Angels Hospital in Los Angeles.[4] [5]
For 16 years ending in 2001, Crosby hosted the Crosby National Golf Tournament at Bermuda Run Country Club in Bermuda Run, North Carolina. A nearby bridge carrying U.S. Route 158 over the Yadkin River is named for Kathryn Crosby.[6] On November 4, 2010, Crosby was seriously injured in an automobile accident in the Sierra Nevada that killed her second husband, 85-year-old Maurice William Sullivan, whom she had married in 2000.[7]
On June 1, 2014, Crosby sang in a Rodgers and Hart tribute.[8]