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In the early days of fast-food-thrus, Rat Pack legend Dean Martin once wrecked an expensive classic car trying to get his girlfriend’s son a burger.
Phil Crosby Jr., Bing Crosby’s grandson, told Fox News Digital that his mother once dated and became engaged to Martin – who she always referred to as “kid” – following her “tumultuous” marriage to the “White Christmas” singer’s son, Phil Crosby Sr.
“I was almost Dean Martin’s son,” he said in a recent interview with Fox News Digital. “So, if that had happened, I would have grown up with a silver spoon in my mouth, but that didn’t happen.”
Crosby said she was very young when her mother, Peggy Crosby, now 85, first met the “That’s Amore” singer after meeting him at a club where she worked, following her brief marriage to Crosby.
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Old family photo of Dean Martin with girlfriend Peggy Crosby and her son, Phil Crosby Jr. (Phil Crosby Jr.)
“And I think my mother wasn’t really ready [to be married again],” Crosby said of their eventual separation. “She was still a young, beautiful woman. She is still a beautiful woman.”
She said Martin, who was 23 years older than her mother, was “23 years old” when they fell in love.
And even though she was very young when she met Martin, she misses him.
Her greatest memory of the passenger was when she peeked into her mother’s room one time looking for him, and Martin was there and asked her to hold him a pack of cigarettes.
“The only thing I really remember him for is superstition,” Crosby said. “He used to call me ‘kid.’ And this is a true story. I was a child. ”Where’s the baby?” Even years later when my mother bumped into him, I was still a ‘Child.’
Crosby said the singer asked him, “‘Hey, kid, you know, come down and get me some cigarettes,’ as an adult in those days should be able to ask a kid and a kid should do.”
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Dean Martin, right, performing with Phil Crosby Jr.’s grandfather, Bing Crosby, center, and Frank Sinatra in 1959. (ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images)
“Well, I’m the first of a spoiled generation where we lost respect for elders,” he continued. “And I told him, I said, ‘You can’t tell me what to do. You’re not my father.’ So that’s my recollection of the Dean Martin story, which I wish was a little better. “
But he said his story about Martin wrecking his vintage car while trying to feed “The Baby” was relayed to him.
“I don’t actually have this souvenir myself, but that’s the story I’ve been told, and I call it the Stutz and the drive-thru, because Dean had a Stutz. [Blackhawk]or I was told the Stutz Bearcat,” Crosby said. “When I do research, I see pictures of him with the Stutz [Blackhawk]. These were big, old cars.”
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Peggy Crosby with Phil Crosby Jr. (Phil Crosby Jr.)
Crosby explained that Stutz cars are “very classic, very valuable, classic cars, but they are spacious.”
“I was a spoiled child. I didn’t like to eat a lot of food, but I loved McDonald’s,” Crosby explained. “So, we were driving back in his Stutz, me and my mom and Dean, and I’m in the back seat, probably complaining, I didn’t eat dinner and maybe complaining that I’m hungry.”
He continued, “So, Dean decides, ‘Okay, McDonald’s has an open drive-thru,’ and drive-thrus were probably new” at the time, saying this happened around 1976 in Santa Monica, California.
Dean Martin hugging Peggy Crosby. (Phil Crosby Jr.)
“But it was very small,” Crosby explained. “So, Dean takes this thing, and he just drives it to this [drive-thru] and it just folds the sides, hits the side of this — I mean, we’re talking about very important, you know, collector cars.”
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He said that his mother just laughed “because when we went up to the window, the people there were just startled, as if aliens had just arrived. They suddenly heard this horrible sound of screaming, and here was Dean Martin sitting there.”
Crosby said he wished he had remembered Martin better because “from that i knowing about him, especially the way he reacted to the expensive damage to his car so that he could feed the ruined pants, blew it.”
A magazine feature in 1977 highlights Dean Martin’s relationship with Peggy Crosby, Phil Crosby’s Jr.’s mother. (Phil Crosby Jr.)
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Crosby said the damage was “nothing to him” because he was not a “materialistic person”.
“He wasn’t an aggressive guy. He was a really nice guy and what I’ve heard about, even some of the Rat Pack stuff, is that, compared to other guys anyway, he was honest and a good, you know, good guy.”
Phil Crosby Sr., left, father of Phil Crosby’s Jr., performs with Bob Hope and the USO during the Vietnam War in 1968. (Phil Crosby Jr.)
When she was young, Crosby said she met Martin again before he died.
“That was good,” he said. “He was a class act.”
Crosby also thought about what Christmas meant to his grandfather.
“Bing was a great American, and I think it meant a lot to him, you know, for his Catholic faith, that. [Christmas] be respected and enjoyed,” he said of his grandfather who died when he was young.
Bing Crosby’s granddaughter says Christmas means a lot to her because of her Catholic faith. (George Rinhart/Corbis via Getty Images)
“He comes from a big family,” Crosby continued. “So, I think, I mean, Christmas just became such an important American tradition … and I know they did it very well at the Crosby House, tall trees, lots of presents.”
He added, “Obviously, Christmas rules, even now, with the voice of Bing Crosby.”
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Crosby said that, although he never met his grandfather, he still enjoyed many Crosby Christmases as a child.
“I grew up with a couple of my cousins and a couple of my uncles … and I’d see them every other holiday,” he said. “We had great holidays with a lot of Crosbys. So, I had Crosby Thanksgivings and Crosby Christmases with Bing’s other sons and their wives and children. And I was very grateful and happy about that. ”
Crosby is also releasing two holiday singles: a cover of a rarely heard Bing Crosby song called “A Time to be Jolly,” and an original titled “Guess Who’s Coming Tonight.”
“It’s a Christmas song nobody else recorded,” Crosby said of “Time to Be Jolly.” “But it’s a great song. It’s a bit silly … I’d never heard it before … You’re not going to find it done by Dean Martin or anybody else. So I hope people enjoy it.”
