To Kidnap Bing Crosby's Bride

ISBN: 1478299797

Author: Trimble, Vance H.

Condition: New

About the Author      Vance H. Trimble was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting in 1960 in recognition of his exposé of nepotism and payroll abuse in the U.S. Congress. For this work, Trimblewas awarded the other two top prizes for "distinguished Washington correspondence," the Raymond Clapper and the Sigma Delta Chi, honoring him as a rarity in American journalism-- "a Triple Crown winner."      Born in Arkansas in 1913, Vance Trimble grew up in Oklahoma where at age 14 he became a cub reporter: on The Okemah Daily Leader.  He went on to reporting and desk work on daily newspapers in Wewoka, Seminole, Muskogee, Okmulgee, and Tulsa.      During the Depression, Trimble freelanced as a typewriter\adding machine repairman, traveling the South for a year in a rusty $35 1926 Chevy.      In 1955, Trimble was promoted from managing editor of The Houston Press to news editor of the Scripps-Howard national bureau in Washington, D.C.      "I grew a little restless by my desk job," says Trimble. "In Houston, I was under deadline pressure, working fast. My new job seemed to slow. So in my spare time, I began roaming Capitol Hill."      Soon his digging unearthed scandalous nepotism and payroll shenanigans in Congressional offices.  The Scripps-Howard news wire planted his daily stories on page ones from New York to San Francisco. These exclusives continued for six months. TIME magazine admiringly profiled him as "The Digger on Capitol Hill." The cheating revelations outraged the public.  Because of this grass roots outcry, the U. S. Senate, voted to relax its secrecy on office payrolls.  In its page 1 headline, The Washington Daily News hailed this as "A Victory for the Taxpayers and Vance Trimble."      Trimble is author of 13 hardcover books, the first being a history of hyperbaric medicine.  Others include bios of Sam Walton, FedEx's Fred Smith, publisher E.W. Scripps, baseball commissioner "Happy" Chandler. Product Description Texas beauty Kathryn Grandstaff went to Paramount as a starlet and caught Bing Crosby's amorous quick eye. She was 20, he 51. With wife Dixie Lee dead two years, Bing nailed Grace Kelly and other co-stars, but looked for more young conquests. He set a date to marry Kathryn. That triggered kidnap plotting by Houston?s underworld, which would strike when Kathryn came to show homefolks her big catch. But Bing dwadled two years, jilting Kathryn four times! That killed Houston kidnap schemes. But two dangerous felons prowled Hollywood streets to snatch the starlet Bing had finally married (with a $6 ring). They were trying to grab and chain her?now pregnant--in a filthy slum bathroom and ask $100,000 ransom. The book is built around the intimate details of the Bing-Kathryn love story, and the explosion of the one real kidnap attempt?those parts all brutally true.