Kathryn Grant Crosby: Life and Legacy of Bing Crosby's Wife (1933–2024)

Olive Kathryn Grandstaff Crosby, actress and singer, better known to the public as Kathryn Grant Crosby after she married Bing Crosby, was born in West Columbia, Texas, on November 25, 1933, to Delbert Emery Grandstaff and Olive Catherine (Stokely) Grandstaff, both schoolteachers. In addition, Delbert Grandstaff served as a football coach and a Brazoria County commissioner. At an early age, Kathryn Grandstaff enjoyed acting and singing and appeared in a variety of school plays. She  also took part in beauty contests and, at the age of three, she won a pageant as “Splash Day Princess” in Corpus Christi. As a teenager, she won the title of Texas Rodeo Queen at the Houston Fat Stock Show and also won a contest as queen of the Houston Buffaloes, a Texas League baseball team. In order to take ballet lessons in Corpus Christi, she lived part-time with an aunt and uncle in nearby Robstown and graduated from Robstown High School. In 1952 she attended the University of Texas at Austin, where she was a member of the Curtain Club. That same year she was first runner-up in the Miss Texas Pageant held in Galveston. Even though she was not the winner, Kathryn caught the attention of a talent scout and traveled to Hollywood, where she had a screen test with William Holden.

Billed as Kathryn Grant, she was signed by Paramount Pictures and was cast in uncredited bit parts in a number of movies starting in 1953, including Arrowhead (1953), Living It Up (1954), and Rear Window (1954). While in Hollywood, she took courses at UCLA but eventually continued her studies at UT-Austin, where she earned a bachelor of fine arts degree in 1955. By 1955 she signed with Columbia Studios. That same year she received her first official screen credit for Cell 2455, Death Row. Grant appeared in three 1955 film noir thrillers directed by Phil Karlson—Tight Spot (uncredited), 5 Against the House (uncredited), and The Phenix City Story. The latter, filmed on location in Phenix City, Alabama, was an exposé of small-town corruption in the Deep South. Well-received upon release, it was placed into the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 2019. Grant later appeared in two other Karlson films—crime thriller The Brothers Rico (1957) and Gunman’s Walk (1958), a Western. Along the way, she also had supporting roles in a number of “A” movies such as The Guns of Fort Petticoat and Operation Mad Ball in 1957, and Anatomy of a Murder and The Big Circus in 1959. 

The movie Grant is perhaps best remembered for is The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), an Arabian nights fantasy in which she played a princess who was shrunk to miniature size by an evil wizard. In this film, however, all the actors took a back seat to the wizardry of special effects legend Ray Harryhausen. A hit when released, the movie remained popular with subsequent generations of fantasy film buffs and was named to the National Film Registry in 2008. The film spawned two more Sinbad films, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973) and Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977).

While Grant appeared to have established herself in Hollywood, she semi-retired after her marriage to Harry Lillis “Bing” Crosby, Jr., famed star of radio, television, and movies. She had first met Crosby in 1954 while she was interviewing Hollywood people for her newspaper column, “A Texas Gal in Hollywood.” They had an off-and-on courtship until they wed on October 24, 1957, at St. Anne’s Catholic Church in Las Vegas. Grant, who was originally Baptist, had converted to Catholicism. Crosby, a widower at the time, was thirty years older than his bride and only five years younger than her father. Two weeks later a reception was held for the newlyweds at the Grandstaff home in West Columbia. The couple made regular visits to the family homestead during the next twenty years and remained devoted to each other until Bing Crosby’s death in 1977. They had three children together—Harry III, Mary Frances, and Nathaniel.

During her marriage Kathryn Crosby appeared in but a handful of episodes of television series. She did, however, appear regularly in Crosby’s Christmas specials. In 1963 she was certified as a registered nurse after studying at Queen of Angels Hospital in Los Angeles. Shortly thereafter, the family moved to Hillsborough in Northern California. There, Kathryn was also accredited as a teacher in Hillsborough schools. From 1972 to 1974 she hosted a morning talk show on KPIX-TV in San Francisco.  

While married, she also appeared in commercials for Minute Maid Orange Juice, which had begun its association with Bing Crosby as a sponsor of his radio broadcasts in the 1940s. Strapped for cash, Minute Maid had paid him in shares of stock, and Crosby and his family prospered greatly over the years as the company grew. 

After her husband’s death, Kathryn Crosby resumed her acting career with various credits in television shows and theater, notably appearing on Broadway in a 1996 revival of State Fair. She was also involved with the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. She did not abandon her husband’s legacy, however. Through the years she authored several books chronicling her relationship with him, including her first publication, Bing and Other Things (1967), My Life With Bing (1983), and other memoirs. She also published Kathryn Crosby’s State Fair Cookbook (1995). In 1986 she moved the Crosby National Celebrity Golf Tournament, founded by her husband in 1937, from California to the Bermuda Run Country Club near Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The tournament, which raised millions of dollars for local and national charities, carried on as the Crosby Scholars Invitational in the 2020s. A bridge on U.S. Highway 158 outside the city is named after her. 

On October 17, 2000, Kathryn Crosby married Maurice William Sullivan, a trustee of the Crosby estate. He was killed in a 2010 automobile accident near Placerville, California. Kathryn herself was seriously injured in the wreck.

Her three children with Crosby were successful in various fields. All appeared on Bing’s holiday television specials. Harry III became an investment banker. Nathaniel picked up the game of golf from his father (an avid player) and played for ten years on the pro golf circuit. Mary Crosby, also a UT-Austin alumna, forged a career in show business with credits in movies, television, and theater. She earned a special niche in pop culture when she portrayed Kristin Shepard on the Dallas television series. After the lengthy “Who shot J.R.?” hoopla, the November 21, 1980, telecast of the show, at the time the highest-rated program in television history, finally revealed that Mary Crosby’s character, Kristin Shepard, was the culprit.

Kathryn Crosby’s last film appearance was in Queen of the Lot, a 2010 feature by cult director Henry Jaglom. Mary Crosby also appeared in the film. Kathryn Grandstaff Crosby, at the age of ninety, died of natural causes at the family home in Hillsborough on September 20, 2024. She was buried in the family plot at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California, along with Bing Crosby and his three sons (Lindsay, Phillip, and Dennis) from his first marriage.