Kathryn Crosby, the actress and second wife of legendary crooner and White Christmas actor Bing Crosby, has died. She was 90.
Crosby died of natural causes at her home in Hillsborough, California surrounded by family, Entertainment Weekly reported.
The Bing Crosby estate shared a message about Kathryn's death on X.
Kathryn Crosby, the widow of Bing Crosby, has died peacefully at her home in Hillsborough, California, surrounded by her family at the age of 90.
Kathryn lived a remarkable life filled with love, talent, and dedication. She is survived by their three children, Harry, Mary and… pic.twitter.com/TeAAlzZzlI
— Bing Crosby (@BingCrosby) September 23, 2024
Crosby was born Olive Kathryn Grandstaff in West Columbia, Texas in 1933. She launched her Hollywood career in the 1950s with uncredited roles in movies like the Alfred Hitchcock classic Rear Window.
Going by the stage name Kathryn Grant, she appeared alongside some of the greatest leading men of the time, co-starring with Jack Lemmon in Operation Mad Ball (1957) and Jimmy Stewart in Anatomy Of A Murder (1959).
She put acting on the backburner after her 1957 marriage to Bing Crosby, whom she met on the set of his 1954 Christmas classic White Christmas while conducting interviews for her hometown newspaper.
"We kept meeting each other, and then we'd plan to get married, and he would have a kidney stone or something dreadful like that," Crosby told Smashing Interviews in 2014.
"We kept waiting, and I kept working. Later on, we finally managed to get married, which was a secret."
After marriage, Crosby became a registered nurse and continued acting in her husband's Christmas specials, also appearing as a guest on The Bing Crosby Show, which ran for one season from 1964 to 1965.
She bore three of Bing's children, Harry, Nathaniel, and Mary Frances.
Following her husband's death from a heart attack in 1977, she returned to acting, starring in the 1996 Broadway revival of State Fair.
In 2010, Crosby was seriously injured in a car accident that killed her second husband of 10 years, Maurice William Sullivan.
The author of several books, including Bing and Other Things, My Life With Bing, and My Last Years with Bing, Kathryn Crosby harbored no illusions about the main reason for her notoriety.
"I want you to understand," she once told People magazine, "that my position in this world rests on being Mrs. Bing Crosby."
