Kay Thompson (12 page)

“She had a stunning apartment,” Bea Wain recalled. “Highly styled, very dramatic.”

So much so, it got ink. A radio trade paper reported, “The woodwork is largely white and there is a particular fireplace that is the delight of Miss Thompson’s heart. At the first venture with a real log fire, the mantelpiece looked as though it had been held over a Pittsburgh blast furnace. But that’s fixed now.”

Then, quite unexpectedly on January 27, 1937, Kay eloped with Jack Jenney, tying the knot in a secret New York ceremony, witnessed by her manager, Mark Hanna, plus chorus members Elizabeth Newburger and Loulie Jean Norman. Everyone else found out after the fact, including their families. Some friends believed that the bigwigs of CBS and Chesterfield may have pressured them into matrimony to avoid a brewing media scandal about their live-in arrangement. Whatever the true motivation, the bride and groom were back at work the very next day. The honeymoon would have to wait.

Shortly thereafter, Kay signed a deal with Victor Records, under the aegis of Eli Oberstein. A 1930s version of Clive Davis, Oberstein was a formidable figure in the platter biz, with an eye for new talent and an uncanny ability to cultivate hit records. He got Kay to record four sides on April 13, accompanied by Her Orchestra and Her Rhythm Singers. As with her prior Brunswick sessions, Kay’s so-called orchestra was a hastily assembled gathering of crème de la crème musicians conducted by her husband.

Oberstein chose the blues ballad “Carelessly” as Kay’s first single. But there was stiff competition from the twenty-two-year-old legend-in-training, Billie Holiday, who released her own version of the song on Brunswick. Snubbing the African-American singer, the song publisher settled on a photo of Thompson for the cover of the sheet music—perhaps racially motivated, but more likely an honest gamble that Kay’s version would be the bigger hit. However, buyers leaned the other way, giving Holiday her very first No. 1 pop hit on the
Billboard
chart. Oberstein was furious.

It got worse. The flip side of Kay’s single was “There’s a Lull in My Life,” a song from an upcoming movie,
Wake Up and Live,
starring Kay’s fiercest detractor, columnist Walter Winchell. Quite predictably, Winchell sharpened his poison pen. “Kay Thompson certainly spoiled the recording of ‘Lull,’ didn’t she?” he fumed in his column. “All I know is that it didn’t sound like Gordon and Revel’s lovely hit at all [and it] makes me so irritable.”

Kay’s follow-up single, the up-tempo “It Had to Be You,” backed with the bouncy “Exactly Like You,” had all the earmarks of a double-sided crowd-pleaser. Kay promoted them both on
It’s Chesterfield Time,
but the disc just never took off. Irate, Thompson blamed Oberstein, claiming he didn’t support the records because “he thought they were awful.” But realistically, with Winchell on the rampage, Oberstein must have decided to cut his losses.

None of this went down well with the producers of
It’s Chesterfield Time
—especially when, during the same time period, Hal Kemp racked up his third and fourth No. 1 records (“This Year’s Kisses” and “Where or When”). With Kay’s contract up for renewal in June, pressure was building for her to shine like never before.

But catering to the tastes of Joe Q. Public would never be Kay’s strong suit. She could only do what she did best—and, whether mainstream listeners got it or not, she ended up churning out some of the most progressive swing numbers of the era. On the April 30 installment of
It’s Chesterfield Time,
for instance, Kay and her chorus performed a high-energy song called “Whoa Babe,” written by Larry Clinton, that advanced the notion of singers as musical instruments to a new level—with “da-dee-da’s” and “bada-bada’s” replacing the entire brass section.

“I have a special place in my heart for ‘Whoa Babe,’ ” recalled Hugh Martin. “I was singing in the group the night she did it on
Chesterfield
and it was almost a supernatural sensation . . . like flying. People talk about cloud nine—it was something like that, singing this wild, unshackled, yet controlled little gem of jazz.”

Kay’s chorus member Al Rinker had been moonlighting as one of the producers of another CBS radio show,
The Saturday Night Swing Club.
On
June 12, he booked Kay to sing “Whoa Babe” on
The Saturday Night Swing Club First Anniversary Special
as part of an all-star lineup that included Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, and Lionel Hampton.

“That was the big night for Kay,” recalled CBS publicist Gary Stevens, who was there to witness it. “That was her shining hour. That’s when Kay electrified musicians, critics, CBS,
everybody.
That’s when Kay became a big leaguer. Everybody was there—Goodman, Ellington, an all-star group—and she was startling. They idolized her. She was like a god to these guys. She was the patron saint of scat, of singing, of everything. She just won everybody over. When she opened her mouth and moved, well . . . that was
it.
”

One of Kay’s quirkiest signatures was introduced in “Whoa Babe.” “We used to have musical breaks,” Bea explained, “and whenever we needed to fill in something, Kay would have us just sing, ‘Simone, Simone, Simone.’ And the orchestras all knew it. They’d wait for us to do it.”

Down Beat
dubbed it her “famous ‘Simone Simon’ break.” But where the heck did it come from? It was, in fact, a reference to the gorgeous French starlet Simone Simon, who had started making pictures in Hollywood that year.

“Simone Simon was very ‘hot’ at the time,” Hugh Martin recalled, “and her studio ran ads telling the public how to pronounce her name. ‘SEE-MOAN SEE-MOAN,’ the advertisements advised us. Kay thought it was ridiculous, which it was, and worked it into the arrangement in a most marvelous way.”

Although
Down Beat
raved that Kay’s rendition of “Whoa Babe” was “plenty hot,” it was apparently not the sort of heat the Chesterfield people were after. A short time later, it was announced that starting in July, Hal Kemp and his band would be relocated to the West Coast for
Chesterfield’s Music from Hollywood
starring Alice Faye (aka Mrs. Tony Martin). The services of Kay Thompson and the Rhythm Singers were no longer required.

“Exhaust pipe!” was the expression Kay always used when she’d had it. Reeling from the ups and downs of the past few months, she needed a breather to focus on herself and her marriage, which had been on the back burner ever since the January “I dos.”

So in early July, Kay and Jack boarded the
Queen of Bermuda
for a belated honeymoon. As they sailed out of New York Harbor, Kay waved good-bye to chorus members who had come to see them off. As the luxury liner drifted by the Statue of Liberty, a feeling of newfound freedom washed over her. She looked at Jack, a glint of mischief in her eyes. With nothing more to hide, she cracked open a fresh new pack of Camel cigarettes.

Broadway Bound-and-Gagged

(1937–42)

The screaming and the sobbing were something you can’t imagine out of Kay—she went to pieces in such a spectacular way.

—Hugh Martin

I
n July 1937, while Kay and Jack were on their belated honeymoon in Bermuda, Republic Pictures’ Herbert J. Yates cabled an offer for Thompson to appear in a new movie musical called
Manhattan Merry-Go-Round
. Unlike the leading role he’d wanted her to play in
Hit Parade of 1937,
however, this new opportunity would only be a guest appearance as herself—along with her Rhythm Singers—wedged among a cavalcade of cameos by the likes of Gene Autry (“the singing cowboy”), the Cotton Club’s Cab Calloway, and, to cover all bases, Joe DiMaggio, the Yankees baseball champ. Even though her screen time would be limited to just two songs, Thompson accepted an offer of $5,000 on the condition that her husband be hired as her on-screen bandleader—a move she hoped would help Jenney launch his own orchestra. Yates agreed.

Because the budget of the picture was poverty-stricken, both of Kay’s numbers would have to be completed in one day of shooting on August 4. And,
to save the cost of transporting her ensemble to Hollywood, her sequences would be filmed at the decidedly less glamorous Biograph Studio on East 175th Street in the Bronx. What’s more, Kay’s scenes were being relegated to an uncredited “second unit” director named John H. Auer—remembered today for having helmed nineteen-year-old Frank Sinatra’s featurette debut in
Major Bowes’ Amateur Theater of the Air
(RKO, 1935) on the exact same stage.

Cutting their vacation short, the Jenneys sailed on the first ship back to Manhattan. Upon arrival on July 26, Kay learned that half her Rhythm Singers had flown the coop, but replacements were quickly rustled up. With less than a week to go, Kay had to create vocal arrangements for two new songs, “All Over Nothing at All” and “I Owe You,” plus rehearse her new group to perfection.

Manhattan Merry-Go-Round
tells the story of how a mobster muscles his way into the music business by strong-arming major artists into joining his new record label.

“We need stars,” he demands, “like Ted Lewis, Kay Thompson and her singers, and Cab Calloway!”

The Mob boss sends a couple of his thugs over to a radio station, where the marquee announces “Kay Thompson and Guest Star Joe DiMaggio.”

“Joe DiMaggio?! The ballplayer?” asks Thug #1. “I’m laying off him. He hits too hard. Besides, the boss only wants Kay Thompson.”

Once inside the studio, the gangsters watch Kay and her chorus performing “All Over Nothing at All” in front of a live audience. After a straightforward rendition of the first verse, the ensemble launches into what can only be described as an aural roller-coaster ride, slowing for anticipatory rises, then whiplashing into supersonic free falls. Incredibly, there are no fewer than seven tempo shifts within the last two minutes of the song, deliriously careening up, down, under, and way over the top. Never had an arranger broken so many rules in such a short span of time—and with such gleeful abandon.

The only thing Kay’s motion picture debut lacked was a visual presentation as kinetic as her arrangement. With Thompson nailed to a piano stool and her chorus members rigidly standing on their marks, it truly was a radio performance caught on film. The song screamed out for choreography, camera movement,
anything
but the dull, static direction it got. Kay had perfected her sound, face, hair, and wardrobe, but without body language, it was all for naught. Her latent abilities as a dancer would not be put to the test until a decade later when she exploded onstage with the Williams Brothers. For now, heaven would have to wait.

Following Thompson’s first number, the script called for DiMaggio to warble the first verse of “Have You Ever Been in Heaven?”—someone’s idea
of funny shtick. The director had presumed that Kay would remain in her position at the piano to accompany him. At the appointed time, however, Miss Thompson suddenly became indisposed. DiMaggio found her sulking in her dressing room.

“Joe asked Kay to play for him,” recalled chorus singer and rehearsal pianist Hugh Martin. “But she said to Joe, ‘Nah, I think I’d rather not. I want to look like a star in this movie. Maybe Hugh will do it.’ So I played for Joe.”

DiMaggio may have been one of the greatest baseball sluggers in history, but on the movie soundstage, he struck out big-time. Even though he only had a few lines of patter, it required twelve takes to get something remotely usable.

With so much time wasted, the most obvious casualty of compromise was Jack Jenney, whose close-up coverage was jettisoned. As a result, he is only vaguely discernible in crowded wide shots conducting the orchestra for Thompson’s and DiMaggio’s numbers. So much for a career boost.

Kay’s second number, “I Owe You,” popped up later in the movie, visible on the screen of a “Remote Control Short-Distance Television Set.” This product placement—one of the very first live television broadcasts documented on film—served to introduce the newfangled technological wonder of TV. It would be more formally introduced by RCA at the 1939 World’s Fair, but here was Kay, always ahead of her time, on TV in 1937. As Kay saw it, she had been thanklessly upstaged by an electronic device.

On a happier note, DiMaggio’s presence created a photo opportunity of which Thompson took full advantage. One of the press pictures was staged in the makeup room where Joe was getting powdered, combed, and manicured by Kay and a “bevy of beauties” from her chorus. Days later, the shot turned up in major newspapers across the country, including the
New York World-Telegram,
where Joe was quoted saying, “This is hotter’n a ballpark.”

Manhattan Merry-Go-Round
had its world premiere in San Francisco at the Paramount Theater on November 17, 1937, with a first week gross of $13,000—a smash hit by Republic’s modest standards. Local reviews were good, too.
The San Francisco Examiner
proclaimed, “Republic Studios jumped into the grade ‘A’ feature program category yesterday [with a movie that is] more entertaining than some widely heralded, highly financed films with music.”

However, when the film was launched the following month in Manhattan at the Criterion Theatre, Bosley Crowther’s review in
The New York Times
was less upbeat. He mentioned that “Kay Thompson and her radio choir” were among “assorted personalities paraded into camera range,” none of which caught his fancy.

Nevertheless, publicity generated by the movie drummed up Hollywood interest in Kay. Long before the picture even opened, she was approached for a second movie appearance, this time for RKO, a studio considerably higher on the food chain.
Radio City Revels
would feature appearances by Ann Miller, Milton Berle, and the Vass Sisters (formerly of Kay’s Rhythm Singers). Hal Kemp and His Orchestra was also on board and it had been hoped that Alice Faye, currently teamed with Kemp on
Chesterfield’s Music from Hollywood,
would sing “Take a Tip from the Tulip” and “Speak Your Heart” with the band. Faye was under exclusive contract to Twentieth Century-Fox, however, and her bosses would not agree to a loan-out. That’s when Kay got the call. Not only would Thompson’s reunion with Kemp be something of a vindication, she relished the idea of snatching anything away from Alice Faye.