Kay Thompson (27 page)

“She wanted me there at the recording sessions,” Elinor said, “so that I was familiar with what I was going to sound like, before she gave me the disc to practice with at home. Then, whenever a song was being lip-synched in front of the cameras, she was always on the set to make sure that everybody’s mouth was moving the way they were supposed to.”

Kay also arranged and conducted a large choir for the sublime concerto “Ritual Fire Dance” (from Manuel de Falla’s
El Amor Brujo
). For filming, it was staged at an open-air amphitheater with an eighty-piece symphony orchestra. On risers behind the musicians stood Kay’s forty-eight-member choir. Though she is only microscopically discernible in wide shots, eagle eyes can spot Thompson standing among her ensemble—taller and blonder than anyone else, dressed in a floor-length white gown. While this celluloid speck hardly counts as “an appearance,” it does represent the one and only time Kay was allowed to stand in front of the cameras for an MGM movie.

K
ay turned thirty-seven on
November 9, 1946. For the Third Annual Kay Thompson–Roger Edens Birthday Bash, Roger wrote the “The Passion According to St. Kate, Opus 19, #46, a birthday cantata for baritone, contralto, coloratura soprano and choir.” The ten-minute roast was lovingly sung by Judy Garland, Ralph Blane, Conrad Salinger, and chorus, accompanied by Edens on piano.

But there was more than just one number performed at that historic party. “That’s when I did ‘Jubilee Time’ for [Roger],” Kay recalled. With music and lyrics by Kay, “Jubilee Time” was a take-no-prisoners swing blowout, sung and danced by Thompson while Judy Garland, Cyd Charisse, Peter Lawford, and Ralph Blane provided powerhouse backup harmonies, syncopated hand claps, and synchronized steps—choreographed by Bob Alton.

“We certainly prepared [‘Jubilee Time’] like we were never gonna get to prepare another thing,” Kay reminisced. “And Bob [Alton]—oh God!—rehearsing every night! Great fun!”

“It was the first time I saw Kay perform,” Adolph Green recalled. “She was spectacular that night. It was thrilling.
Thrilling!
It obviously evolved into her later nightclub act with the Williams Brothers.”

At parties like these, Bill Spier and Vincente Minnelli were bystanders, keeping each other company while the girls did their thing. With so much in common, the foursome was often a better match than the couples themselves.

“Friendship of two couples for each other doesn’t happen every day,” Judy marveled about the rare affinity she and her husband shared with Kay and Bill. “If the wives get along, the husbands don’t, or it’s a reverse of that . . . We’re lucky.”

Modern Screen
devoted an entire spread to “the Boresome Foursome,” subtitled “That’s what Judy Garland calls the Minnellis and the Spiers. But when a laughing jag hits ’em, who wants to go home?”

The article described in great detail a November 1946 weekend the two couples spent “among the artists, crackpots, and plain honest citizens” at the Coast Inn in Laguna Beach. To the casual reader, it seemed fairly innocuous. But for those in the know, the Coast Inn was the home of the South Seas Bar (later renamed the Boom Boom Room), which, according to the
Los Angeles Times
, was “frequented by sailors and became notoriously known as a clandestine meeting ground for homosexuals.”

Given the extraordinarily high percentage of gay men that populated the social circle of the Spiers and Minnellis, it seems unlikely that they were oblivious
to the destination’s lurid reputation. And, after a yearlong campaign touting the wholesome harmony among the Boresome Foursome, the Coast Inn had to be the very last place on earth where MGM’s spin doctor wanted them to be seen. But, luckily, the activities delineated in the report seemed perfectly harmless. When they decided to eat in their room, for instance, the men went grocery shopping and, with a portable Sterno stove, Kay became their short-order cook for the evening.

“It’s a miracle,” Judy marveled. “Oscar of the Waldorf never served a finer banquet.”

The next day, Kay got out her camera and handed it to the “experts in camera angles and direction.” As Vincente and Bill took turns behind the lens, “Judy and Kay posed like fashion models, on the high stairway which leads to the ocean, sitting on the rocks, looking out halfway to Honolulu.”

“Get this one,” Judy called, striking a pose. “I’m looking out longingly.”

“Some actress,” Kay retorted. “You look like a mermaid standing in a rowboat that isn’t there.”

Shortly after they returned to Los Angeles, Garland guest-starred as a terrorized car-hop waitress in “Drive-In,” the November 21 episode of
Suspense
that gripped listeners coast-to-coast. Reviews were ecstatic, and, in conjunction with her first nonsinging movie role in
The Clock,
it helped establish her as a serious actress.

On the night of the broadcast, Bill directed Judy while Kay and Vincente provided coaching and moral support. The occasion was immortalized in a series of behind-the-scenes snapshots that were dispensed to the media with alacrity and purpose—reinforcing notions that the foursome was right as rain.

Half of that grand illusion crumbled when Kay and Bill separated in mid-December.

“They’d had a series of spats,” recalled a friend, “and you know she was very volatile. It came to a head when Bill said, ‘After all, who the hell are you but a voice coach for Judy Garland?’ She said, ‘To hell with you.’ ”

While still sharing the same home with Bill—though they were sleeping in separate bedrooms—Thompson focused on work, which included the Freed Unit production of
The Pirate,
Garland’s comeback movie with Gene Kelly, directed by Minnelli, featuring songs by Cole Porter. The studio and Vincente relied heavily on Kay to be not only Judy’s vocal arranger and coach, but also her motivational therapist. While prepping, Garland described Thompson as “my best critic and severest friend.”

Kay had reason to be tough on Judy, who was acting out in all the wrong ways. Of
The Pirate’
s 135 shooting days, Garland missed 99 due to “illness.” Tension
on the set and at home proved unbearable for Vincente, who vowed never to direct Judy again. Not long afterward, their marriage would be kaput, too.

In the wake of weak test screenings,
The Pirate
went through a number of changes. Kay’s manic, six-minute “Mack the Black” opus was replaced by a shorter, blander arrangement without Thompson’s involvement. Louis B. Mayer hated the “Voodoo” number so much, he purportedly bellowed, “Burn the negative!” Cole Porter thought the movie was “unspeakably wretched.” The public agreed. It was the one and only Garland vehicle at MGM that lost money.

Years later, Mart Crowley asked Kay, “What the hell went wrong on
The Pirate
?” Thompson’s eyebrow went up and she responded with one word: “Drugaroonies.”

W
hile at work
on
The Pirate,
Kay briefly contributed to the breezy whodunit
Song of the Thin Man
(MGM, 1947), starring William Powell and Myrna Loy as Dashiell Hammett’s Nick and Nora Charles, the lovably boozy husband-wife detective team. Kay provided the vocal arrangement and coaching for a prerecording of “You’re Not So Easy to Forget,” by the Williams Brothers, who were scheduled to perform the song on-screen. Ultimately, however, sullen starlet Gloria Grahame, portraying a nightclub chanteuse, performed all versions of the song (dubbed by Carol Arden under Thompson’s direction).

That same winter of 1947, Kay also worked on
The Hucksters,
starring Clark Gable as an advertising agency/radio producer strikingly similar to Bill Spier when he was at BBDO in the 1930s. The fictional ad agency’s main client was Beautee Soap, owned by a gruff and eccentric tycoon (played by Sydney Greenstreet)—a biting send-up of real-life tobacco magnate George Washington Hill, who had fired Thompson and Lennie Hayton from
The Lucky Strike Hit Parade
in 1935. With considerable irony—and a poetic dose of payback—Hayton was the music conductor on
The Hucksters
, and he enlisted Thompson to create several faux advertising jingles for Beautee Soap.

Also featured in the film was Ava Gardner, who performed “Don’t Tell Me” in a nightclub sequence. After Kay coached her for weeks, Ava prerecorded her own vocal on January 21, 1947. But the studio disliked the result. Consequently, Thompson replaced Ava’s voice with that of Eileen Wilson, one of her former Rhythm Singers.

In February, Kay was assigned to the Freed Unit’s
Good News,
based on the 1927 Broadway musical. “Much of the original DeSylva-Brown-Henderson score was retained for the screen,” wrote George Feltenstein, “but given a new, dynamic harmonic sense by vocal arranger Kay Thompson. Thompson used her
genius to dramatically alter several of the songs with her complex, wonderful arrangements.”

Starring Peter Lawford, June Allyson, and Joan McCracken,
Good News
marked the directorial debut of choreographer Charles Walters, with Bob Alton on board to choreograph—a collaboration of like-minded specialists that resulted in what critic Norman Frizzle hailed as “some of the most zestful dance sequences ever conceived for movies.”

“[Thompson] changed ‘He’s A Ladies’ Man’ by rewriting the lyrics to ‘Be A Ladies’ Man,’ ” noted Feltenstein, “and developed a magnificent vocal routine with Peter Lawford and Ray McDonald, who were ably supported by Mel Tormé and (on the soundtrack only) The Williams Brothers (Andy, Bob, Dick, and Don).”

In a 1997 phone interview with writer Lisa Jo Sagolla, Thompson commented, “They just loved singing [it]. Peter Lawford . . . ah! He was
so
happy. He didn’t want to do the picture and there he was smiling and singing.”

“In the breaks between takes on ‘Varsity Drag,’ ” Feltenstein added, “you hear Kay singing along with Peter Lawford, to try to get him on key. That’s why they had him shouting, ‘Down on your heels, up on your toes,’ in a speaking voice because he just couldn’t sing.”

It worked like a charm. “Most surprising of all is Peter Lawford as the juvenile lead,” read one review, “belting out numbers with 100% charm and commitment.”

Several compositions were added to the score, including a
Ziegfeld Follies
reject, “Pass That Peace Pipe” (Roger Edens–Hugh Martin–Ralph Blane), sung by Joan McCracken and Thompson’s choir, which went on to be Oscar-nominated for Best Song. Critic Norman Frizzle wrote that it “ranks amongst the greatest production numbers ever devised for the camera.”

Recalling McCracken, Thompson told Sagolla, “She came up to my office . . . and I asked her what she was supposed to be doing in my office. Nobody told me. She said, ‘Well . . . ’ and she took off her bra.”

When Sagolla asked
why
McCracken had exposed herself, Thompson replied, “I didn’t ask her . . . and she wasn’t the least bit interested in whom I was or what I was gonna do for her. Just
oomph
.” End of story.

What happened after that is anyone’s guess—and Thompson obviously enjoyed the head-scratching it induced.

A
lthough Kay put forth
an aura of invincibility, things were not always as they seemed. In the mid-1940s, what began as occasional headaches escalated into migraines and other ailments.

“Kay was rather delicate and it was common knowledge,” noted actress June Havoc. “She had all this energy when she was
on,
you know? Enormous energy. But, she wasn’t that strong. She lost a lot of weight and was very, very slim. She ate baby food at one point. It was an intestinal something or other and everyone was very, very worried.”

Kay’s disorders went undiagnosed. By choice. It was during this time that she took an interest in Christian Science, a religion that believes true healing comes from the mind, not from modern medicine.

“Don’t you think that’s interesting that that’s why Kay became a Christian Scientist?” pondered Lorna Luft. “She found a religion so that she could put doctors off. It’s a great excuse. ‘It’s against my religion.’ ”

However, Thompson had no problem relying on the medical profession for cosmetic alterations. “I took Kay to the doctor when she got a nose job done,” revealed Andy Williams, referring to her
third
rhinoplasty. “It was in the spring of 1947 before we went out on the road with the act. I know she had already split with Bill, which is why he did not take her instead of me.”

The positive-thinking aspect of Christian Science was well-suited to her own philosophy. “I’ve discovered the secret of life,” Kay once said. “A lot of hard work, a lot of sense of humor, a lot of joy and a whole lot of tra-la-la!”

“Kay was really visual,” Lorna Luft explained, “and she would say things like, ‘Let’s pretend. Just picture yourself floating on a cloud. It’s a pink cloud and it’s just the most beautiful thing and you can just lie there and put your head on it and just pull part of that cloud up over you like covers.’ Next thing you knew, you were feeling better.”

Armed with pink clouds and a new nose, Kay asked to be released from her MGM contract. “I had had a headache for two years,” she told writer Stephen M. Silverman. “I thought, ‘I gotta get out of this place. It’s just too much.’ ”

“Oooooh, that MGM,” Kay later railed in the
Los Angeles Times
. “I was using about 5% of my potential. How I wanted to get away from there. I used to tell my husband, ‘I’m going to quit . . . even if I have to scrub floors in General Hospital and bring my own scrub bucket.’ ” She complained to another writer, “I used to audition songs for the big producers. They’d say, ‘Gee, that’s great, Kay. Now, who’ll we get to sing it in the movie?” Dick Williams thought “she’d had enough of making all these other people sound great—Judy, Lena Horne. I think she just wanted to show that she could do it herself.”

MGM had options on her services that could extend her exclusivity through May 15, 1950, but when her annual renewal came up on May 15, 1947, she appealed to Louis B. Mayer himself for her freedom. He agreed to
let her go on the condition that she sign a sixty-day extension, through July 14, “for completion of services” on
Good News
and
The Pirate
.