| Kay Thompson | |
|---|---|
Hilary Knight's 1996 portrait of Kay Thompson for Vanity Fair. |
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| Born | Catherine Louise Fink November 9, 1909 St. Louis, Missouri, U.S. |
| Died | July 2, 1998 (aged 88) New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Spouse | Jack Jenney (1937-1939; divorced) William Spier (1942-1947; divorced) |
Kay Thompson (November 9, 1909 — July 2, 1998) was an American author, composer, musician, actress and singer. She is best known as the creator of the Eloise children's books.
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Catherine Louise Fink was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1909, the second of the four children of Leo George Fink, an Austrian-born pawnbroker and jeweler, and his wife, the former Hattie A. Tetrick. Her siblings were Blanche, Marian, and Leo.
She married twice:
Thompson began her career in the 1930s as a singer and choral director for radio. Her first big break was as a regular singer on The Bing Crosby-Woodbury Show (CBS, 1933–34). This led to a regular spot on The Fred Waring-Ford Dealers Show (NBC, 1934–35) and then, with conductor Lennie Hayton, she co-founded The Lucky Strike Hit Parade (CBS, 1935) where she met (and later married) trombonist Jack Jenney.
Kay Thompson and Her Rhythm Singers joined André Kostelanetz and His Orchestra for the hit series The Chesterfield Radio Program (CBS, 1936), followed by It's Chesterfield Time (CBS, 1937) for which Kay and her large choir were teamed with Hal Kemp and His Orchestra. For her motion picture debut, Kay and her choir performed two songs in the Republic Pictures musical Manhattan Merry-Go-Round (1937). In 1939, she reunited with André Kostelanetz for Tune-Up Time (CBS), a show that was produced by radio legend William Spier (who later married Kay in 1942).
On an installment of Tune-Up Time in April 1939, 16-year-old Judy Garland was a guest. It was at this time that Kay first met and worked with Judy, developing a close personal friendship and professional association that lasted the rest of Garland's life.
In 1943, Thompson signed an exclusive contract with MGM to become the studio's top vocal arranger, vocal coach, and choral director. She served as main vocal arranger for many of producer Arthur Freed's MGM musicals and as vocal coach to such stars as Judy Garland, Lena Horne, Frank Sinatra, and June Allyson. A wealth of information examining Thompson's contributions to Freed's musicals is found in Hugh Fordin's The World of Entertainment!: Hollywood's Greatest Musicals (1975), and in Sam Irvin's Kay Thompson: From Funny Face to Eloise (2010).
She was the vocal arranger for Ziegfeld Follies (1946), The Harvey Girls (1946), Till the Clouds Roll By (1946), Good News (1947) and other films. After working on The Pirate (1948) with Judy Garland and Gene Kelly, she left MGM to create the night club act: "Kay Thompson and the Williams Brothers" (Bob, Don, Dick, and Andy Williams). She wrote the songs and Robert Alton did the original choreography for the act.
Thompson, who lived at the Plaza Hotel in New York City, became most notable as the author of the Eloise series of children's books, which were partly inspired by the antics of her goddaughter Liza Minnelli, daughter of Judy Garland and film director Vincente Minnelli, but when asked if this was true responded, "I am Eloise". The four books in the series, illustrated by Hilary Knight, are Eloise (Simon & Schuster, 1955), Eloise in Paris (Simon & Schuster, 1957), Eloise at Christmastime (Random House, 1958) and Eloise in Moscow (Simon & Schuster, 1959). They follow the adventures of the precocious six-year-old girl who lives at The Plaza. All were bestsellers upon release and have been adapted into television projects. She also composed and performed a Top 40 hit song, "Eloise" (Cadence Records, 1956). A fifth book, Eloise Takes a Bawth was posthumously published by Simon & Schuster in 2002, culled from Thompson's original manuscripts once slated for 1964 publication by Harper & Row. However, at the time, Thompson was burned out on Eloise; she blocked publication and took all but the first book out of print, drastically reducing the income of her collaborator.[1]
As a film actress, Thompson played fashion editor Maggie Prescott in the musical Funny Face (1957), which starred Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire. Reunited with her colleagues from MGM, producer/songwriter Roger Edens and director Stanley Donen, Thompson garnered critical praise for her stylish turn as an editor based on real-life Harper's Bazaar editor Diana Vreeland, opening the film with her splashy "Think Pink!" and performing duets with Astaire and Hepburn. In a December 6, 2006 interview on Turner Classic Movies, Donen said that Funny Face was made at Paramount with a primarily MGM crew, including Donen, Edens and Thompson, because Paramount Pictures would not release Hepburn for any film except one made at Paramount. Thompson didn't act in any other films because, according to Liza Minnelli, Thompson disliked the slow speed of production.[2]
As a singer, Thompson made very few records. In 1935, she recorded four sides for Brunswick and another four sides for Victor. The Brunswick sides ("You Hit The Spot", "You Let Me Down", "Don't Mention Love To Me" and "Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind") are about as good as any example of sophisticated cabaret singing in the mid-1930s. She later recorded for Capitol, Columbia, Decca, and, most importantly, for MGM Records which issued the one and only complete album of songs by Thompson in 1954. In February 1956, Thompson wrote and recorded the song "Eloise" at Cadence Records with an orchestra conducted by Archie Bleyer. The song debuted on March 10, 1956, and became a Top 40 hit, selling over 100,000 copies.
Thompson attempted to sue female impersonator Lynne Carter. The resulting attention successfully helped Carter's career in Hollywood.[3]
Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, Kay mentored the solo career of the young Andy Williams. She helped land him a regular singing spot on NBC-TV's new late-night series, The Tonight Show, hosted by Steve Allen. She got her friend Archie Bleyer to add Andy to the roster of artists on his label Cadence Records where she wrote many of the songs Andy recorded, including the 1958 Top 20 hit "Promise Me, Love". Though it had been denied for decades, Williams finally admitted in his 2009 memoir, Moon River and Me (Viking Press), that he and Kay had been secret lovers for several years, despite the 18 year age gap between them.
She later recorded a spoken-word album for Signature Records, Let's Talk About Russia, which detailed her adventures in Moscow. Signature also released a single of two songs by Thompson, "Dasvidanya" and "Moscow Cha Cha". She served as an advisor to the 1957 Patti Page TV series The Big Record, and also was creative consultant and vocal arranger for The Judy Garland Show, Judy Garland's highly rated 1962 television special with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, and she kept busy with nightclub and television performances, as well as overseeing her successful "Eloise" franchise.
She returned to live in New York in 1969. Immediately following the death of Judy Garland, Kay appeared with her goddaughter Liza Minnelli in Otto Preminger's Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon (Paramount, 1970). In 1974, Thompson directed a groundbreaking fashion show at the Palace of Versailles featuring performances by Liza Minnelli and the collections of Halston, Bill Blass, Oscar de la Renta, and Anne Klein.
Thompson eventually moved into Minnelli's Upper East Side penthouse, where she died in 1998 at the age of 88.