Kay Thompson (34 page)

“Kay told me she went on Aly Khan’s yacht in the south of France,” recalled Deanna Wenble, Liza Minnelli’s manager in the 1970s. “He’d just been married to Rita Hayworth for a very short time. Kay said he made a pass at her but she didn’t accept his advances.”

Though critiques were generally positive, they were somewhat restrained. “Nobody said it was
not
going well,” recalled George Martin, “but you could feel it. The locals didn’t go for her.”

Several newspaper accounts complained about the excessive cover charge and a sizable language barrier. So, after the first week, prices were reduced and Kay performed several numbers
en français.
The diplomacy did little to thaw the French
résistance,
but Thompson continued to be a magnet for famous faces, including Eleanor Roosevelt, Edith Piaf, and Tennessee Williams.

Columnists were agog when the Duke and Duchess of Windsor showed up several nights in a row with their constant companions, Jimmy Donahue and his mother, Jessie Woolworth Donahue (heir to the Woolworth fortune).

“Dave Garroway was visiting Paris that summer,” recalled Art Buchwald, “and he took me to see Kay’s show several times.” Curiously, Kay and Dave were staying at the same hotel, the Relais Bisson, a small Left Bank establishment located on the Quai des Grands Augustins, later immortalized as Eloise’s home away from home in
Eloise in Paris.
Had things temporarily cooled with Andy?

Barbara Stanwyck’s passion for Kay’s act was so intense, people wondered aloud if the legendary actress might be a trifle smitten. If so, the infatuation was one-sided. Thompson bristled with disdain when she recounted how “Barbara Stanwyck came running back after one performance and said, ‘Oh, Kay . . . after last night, I went out to dinner and I did the whole ‘Suzette’ number.’ She believed that she had done it. It was just pitiful.”

One fan whom Kay truly appreciated was Lena Horne, who was concurrently appearing in Paris at Club Baccarat, accompanied by her conductor-husband, Lennie Hayton. Their secret three-year marriage was revealed in the press that summer, as was the appearance of Lena’s name in
Red Channels
as a “suspected Communist.” They were residing at the Hôtel Raphaël with Lena’s twelve-year-old daughter, Gail, who was “teased about being adept at room service.” Like a doting aunt, Kay dropped by often that summer, collecting mental notes that eventually turned up in the pages of
Eloise.

Both Lena and Kay would be out of a job sooner than they anticipated. First, it was announced that Club Baccarat was closing, and then, just five weeks into Thompson’s three-month booking, Les Ambassadeurs folded, too. Kay had to sue the owners for her guarantee and she never accepted another nightclub booking in Paris again.
Fin.

T
hompson and her trio
moved on to London to reopen the Café de Paris (off London’s Piccadilly Circus) on August 28, 1950. “Besides being the first cabaret artiste at the Café de Paris after the war,” wrote historian Charles Graves, “Kay Thompson was the first to be labeled as receiving a salary of one thousand pounds a week [$2,800].”

The money was low, but so was the workload—just six midnight shows per week, Sundays off. In addition to the usual parade of stars, members of the royal family showed up, including Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret.

“The reception in London was
very
big,” recalled George Martin. “Big, big,
big
! They
loved
Kay. And business was terrific. Complete opposite of Paris.”

Walter Winchell called her “The Toast of Piccadilly,” noting that “Kay Thompson’s London notices were practically love-letters.” The duration of the run expanded from three weeks to six.

Cecil Beaton, one of the world’s most celebrated designers and photographers, was assigned by
British Vogue
to capture Thompson’s elusive mystique for a spread in its November issue. “One of the misfortunes about being a card manipulator is that nobody can ever write about you,” Beaton recalled. “I feel much the same way about Kay Thompson, whose magic is similarly incommunicable . . . The facts about her are that she sings and prances in cabaret between Los Angeles and Istanbul; that she is skeletal, hatchet-faced, blonde and American; that she wears tight, tapering slacks, and moves like a mountain goat . . . The proper language in which to review her is not English at all but Esperanto. Or possibly Morse code.”

While in London, Kay rented a place near Noël Coward’s 17 Gerald Road
apartment and took an immediate liking to his local entourage, led by his thirty-two-year-old lover, Graham Payn, and his confidant-biographer, Cole Lesley.

“She had a flat round the corner at Chesham Place,” noted Cole Lesley, “came at weekends to White Cliffs [Coward’s seaside home at the White Cliffs of Dover] and as good as lived with us at Gerald Road where she flew to the piano to improvise and compose and ate nothing except very thin slices of bread burnt black, piled thick with Tiptree jam.”

After she’d had her fill, Kay left Merry Old England for Old Blue Eyes in the Big Apple, where she guest starred on
The Frank Sinatra Show
(CBS-TV, October 28, 1950). The variety series had debuted earlier that month to down-beat reviews and limp ratings, so producer Irving Mansfield (husband of
Valley of the Dolls
author Jacqueline Susann) had been brought in to help turn things around. Because he barely knew Sinatra, Irving signed Thompson, not only as a guest but also as an ongoing “creative consultant.”

As a guest, Thompson sang her two Decca singles, “That Old Feeling” and “(The Birds Are Talkin’) ’Bout You ’n’ Me”—the latter performed as a duet with Sinatra, with backup vocals by the Whippoorwills.

Kay and Frank also performed in a comedy sketch entitled “Hot Closet,” set in the boudoir of a British manor where the lady of the house, Cynthia (Thompson), is carrying on an illicit affair with Sir Guy (Sinatra). When her husband, Lord Humphrey (Ben Blue), returns home unexpectedly, Sir Guy hides in the closet. Breaking character, Sinatra comes out of the closet, complaining that it is too hot inside. Blue suggests they switch roles. But he can’t handle the heat either. Frustrated, Kay calls them both “cream puffs” and insists
she’ll
play Sir Guy, forcing Frank to portray Cynthia in drag.

Unfortunately, Sinatra was in terrible shape—emotionally and physically. His records were not selling and MGM had fired him in April 1950. Then, in May, while performing at New York’s Copacabana, he had suffered a vocal cord hemorrhage. By the time work began on his television series that fall, his voice had barely recovered and his mood was grim. One of Sinatra’s “three Manhattan throat specialists” was apparently Dr. Max Jacobson, who routinely administered his “magic elixir” throat injections. The mood swings associated with methamphetamine abuse—particularly when mixed with alcohol and other medications—would certainly account for Frank’s “impatience, irritability, and grandiosity,” and his “exaggerated sense of personal power.”

Kay was privy to disturbing displays of obsessive-compulsive behavior, such as Frank constantly washing his hands and changing his underwear every twenty minutes—in full view of the entire television crew. She was around Frank during off-hours, too. They both were residing at the Hampshire House at Fifty-ninth
and Sixth, where Frank had sublet a love nest for himself and Ava Gardner, though he was irrationally paranoid that Gardner was cheating on him.

“I know she’s with that goddamn Artie Shaw,” Frank barked like a rabid dog. “I know she’s with that bastard. I’ll kill her. I’ll kill her. I’ll kill her.”

After only four shows, Irving Mansfield threw in the towel and Thompson gracefully bowed out to resume touring, first at El Rancho Vegas, then at the Mocambo in L.A. on the Sunset Strip—Ciro’s top competitor. Ringsiders included two new couplings making news: Judy Garland and Sid Luft; and Ronald Reagan and Nancy Davis.

“The competition on the Strip was deeeelighted yesterday when the Mocambo banner for Kay Thompson was torn down and replaced by one for Vic Damone,” noted Herb Stein in
The Hollywood Reporter.
“F’get it, lads—it was simply for a film sequence needed by MGM for
The Strip
and Kay went right back up after it.”

A murder mystery set amid the Sunset Boulevard nightclub scene,
The Strip
(MGM, 1951) was a Joe Pasternak production starring Mickey Rooney, Louis Armstrong, and others. There was talk of Thompson performing a song in the film but, naturally, they couldn’t meet her demands.

Even so, Kay did not shy away from visiting the Metro lot to catch up with old pals. Gene Kelly solicited her opinion about the young actress who had been cast in his next picture,
Singin’ in the Rain.
As they quietly observed Debbie Reynolds working on a routine for the movie, Kay told Gene, “This girl’s gonna be big, and she’s gonna stay around—look how much she sweats.”

It was during this same visit that Kay recommended her own dancer, Jimmy Thompson, for the “Beautiful Girl” number.

“The next thing we knew,” said George Martin, “Jimmy had left to do
Singin’ in the Rain
and Jonathan Lucas, of
Touch and Go,
replaced him in our trio—but the chemistry never quite gelled. Don’t ask me why but Kay warmed up to Buzz and me more than the various third members.”

“Kay told me the difference between working with the Williams Brothers and the three dancers,” said Liza Minnelli with a giggle. “After a show with the Williams Brothers, the boys would say, ‘Do you wanna grab something to eat?’ But after a show with the three dancers, they’d say, ‘Kay, we’re rinsing out our underwear. Do you want us to do your panties?’ That was the difference.”

A
fter a Chicago gig,
Kay agreed to a return engagement in London for six weeks, at the Café de Paris starting April 9, 1951. Conveniently, Judy Garland had been booked for a month at the London Palladium starting on the exact same date.

Arriving on April 5, Judy checked into the Dorchester Hotel while Kay moved into the Chesham Place flat she had occupied the previous fall. Then, it was down to business, rehearsing Judy day and night.

“Judy just had a big voice,” noted Rex Reed. “Kay softened the tones and made her hold certain notes longer. She is the one who put the sob in her voice. Judy was always running out of steam on notes and she would have to catch her breath. She’d say, ‘Oh, God, I ruined it.’ And Kay would say, ‘You didn’t ruin it—use it!’ ”

Kay also gave Judy lessons on what to do with her hands and how to move about the stage. “There was the hand on the hip,” noted
Vanity Fair
writer-at-large Marie Brenner, “a gesture Liza Minnelli later adopted as well. Thompson had a distinct bow—one arm perpendicular, the other behind her back—which Garland used.”

“They stole from each other,” concluded Lorna Luft. “They were the presidents of each other’s fan club.”

On opening night, Garland made Thompson stand in the wings for moral support. “I’ve got the order of the songs,” Judy told her before going on. “I know the words and so long as I don’t fall down I shall be all right.”

Famous last words. “Just after the fourth number,” wrote Gerald Clarke, “she tripped and fell—landing smack on her backside.”

“Get back up!” Kay screamed from the wings. “They love you!”

After the pianist helped her to her feet, Judy shrugged her shoulders and said with a grin, “That’s probably one of the most ungraceful exits ever made.”

The crowd exploded, and by the time she climaxed with “Over the Rainbow,” London was over the moon for Judy Garland.

But the night was young and Judy had a favor to return. Just before midnight, she sashayed into the Café de Paris to a standing ovation and took her ringside seat. Now it was Kay’s turn to shine—and boy, did she. The crowd was so pumped up, the place nearly went berserk.

“The success of Kay Thompson’s return engagement here has eclipsed her earlier triumph,” raved
Variety,
“a performance rich in artistry, graceful in rhythm and reaching its peak in sophistication and polish.”

Thompson’s six-week booking turned into nine—plus two more days beyond that—until the next scheduled performer, Beatrice Lillie, could be politely bumped no further. It went down in the history books as the longest engagement of any Café headliner.

Barron Polan came to see the show with his fiancée, Julie Wilson, currently in the London production of
Kiss Me, Kate.
However, Barron’s devotion to Julie, in addition to his ever-expanding list of other female clients, was a
bit too much competition for Kay. So, she decided it was time for a change in management.

“Barron recommended my name to her,” recalled Lou Weiss, a young agent at William Morris—and the nephew of George Burns. Lou advised her that if she were to reunite with the Williams Brothers, the sky would be the limit.

Andy’s solo career had floundered, so he was more than eager to earn some serious dough (not to mention the potential “fringe benefits”). Don could use the money, too. Dick was singing with Harry James and His Orchestra, but was willing to quit for the reunion. The main holdout was Bob Williams.

“Bob was a milkman with a family in the San Fernando Valley,” Weiss recalled, “so it was my chore in those days to convince him it was worth it.”

Eventually, Bob caved. On July 10, 1951,
Daily Variety
announced: “Kay Thompson and the Williams Brothers are re-teaming.” At first, William Morris pitched a
Kay Thompson and the Williams Brothers
variety series for television.

“The story line must be the thing,” Kay insisted, “and so the show will be musical comedy on television. It will be an intimate sort of revue. After all, television is intimate, right in the living room, and sweeping staircases just won’t fit in. Good music, good stories and, we hope, a good show.”

TV networks were not so sure Middle America was ready for a steady diet of Miss Thompson, so Kay and her boys packed their bags for the supper club circuit, where the appetite for them remained insatiable.