Dixie Lee 1909-1952

The stage name was a studio's idea. Wilma Wyatt took "Dixie Carroll" to win a Chicago amateur contest in 1928, whose prize was a singing job at the College Inn; a scout for the show Good News spotted her there. Fox's chief, Winfield Sheehan, renamed her Dixie Lee so she would not be confused with Nancy Carroll or Sue Carol. She married Bing Crosby in 1930 and left show business after 1936. She returned once for his radio show in December 1950. The 1947 film Smash-Up is loosely based on her life.

What the plaque says

Dixie Lee 1909-1952 Wilma W. Wyatt was born in a house that stood near this spot on November 4, 1909. Her stage career began after she won a Chicago singing contest in 1928. She adopted the stage name "Dixie Lee" after joining Fox Film Corp. in 1929. A year later, she married crooner Harry "Bing" Crosby; they had four sons: Gary, twins Dennis and Phillip, and Lindsay Crosby. Her most well-known film is "Love in Bloom". In 1935, she retired from acting to be a devoted wife and mother. Dixie Lee died of ovarian cancer on November 1, 1952.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Southwest Point State Historic Park — 5.9 mi
  A reconstructed 1797 federal fort on a knoll at the meeting of the Clinch and Tennessee rivers, headquarters of Cherokee agent Return J. Meigs, a state park since July 2026.
• Historic Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary — 12 mi
  The coal-mining prison opened in 1896 after the Coal Creek War ended convict leasing, where James Earl Ray escaped in 1977, now a tourist site and distillery.
• Frozen Head State Park — 13 mi
  A 24,000-acre Cumberland Mountains park around a 3,324-foot peak, made from Brushy Mountain prison lands and the CCC, and home to the Barkley Marathons.
• American Museum of Science and Energy — 17 mi
  The Oak Ridge museum that opened in 1949, when the Manhattan Project city's gates opened, in a town whose Black workers were housed in the Gamble Valley hutments.

More markers nearby

• Harriman: Utopia of Temperance — 1.1 mi
• Honoring the Kingston Coal Ash Cleanup Workers — 2.5 mi
• Southwest Point — 5.0 mi
• Capitol for a Day — 5.3 mi