Kay Thompson (40 page)

Thompson was known to storm bookstores that dared to display
Eloise
in the children’s section. She would grab the books and haul them to the adult fiction shelves.

“Once Kay left, the books would go right back to the children’s section,” chuckled Hilary Knight, “but it made her happy.”

With or without Thompson’s commando raids, the book delighted young and old readers in equal measure. And she certainly did not begrudge the loot being generated from both demographics.

Eloise
was not impervious to gusts of backlash. Some people were disturbed by Eloise’s lack of parental supervision and felt that she was a dangerous role model. Certain passages were interpreted as subversive—such as on page 51, when Eloise explains the fundamental difference between her mother’s lawyer and herself: “Here’s what he likes: Martinis. Here’s what I like: Grass.”

Since 1938, “grass” had been widely used as slang for marijuana—and Thompson was no stranger to the lingo or the weed itself. Alcohol was even more prevalent in Eloise’s universe. Not only did her lawyer drink martinis, her nanny imbibed pilsner beer on the job, and, most startling of all, Eloise kept a bottle of gin in her own bedroom—on a shelf right next to her handsaw.

In the 1960s, when substance abuse among minors was on the rise, one concerned mother confronted Kay about her reference to “grass” in
Eloise.

“Do you know she asked me if I meant marijuana,” Thompson related in
The New York Times
in 1968. “I told her ‘no’ but to read it any way she wanted to.”

Kay’s feigned innocence did nothing to quell reefer madness. As outrage grew over the years, Simon & Schuster redacted “grass” from new editions starting in 1983, replacing it with the more innocuous “dandelions.” And while the publisher was at it, out came an entire vignette, formerly found on page 41, of Eloise flushing a toilet in a public restroom. Oddly, however, Eloise’s gin bottle was allowed to stay on that shelf—where it steadfastly remains to this day.

Rather than quash complaints, though, the censorship heightened suspicion about other hidden meanings. For instance, just exactly what was meant by the title of a book on the floor of Eloise’s room:
The Little Beaver
? Or what about the line “Sometimes I go into the Men’s Room which is very good for playing Railroad Station or something like that”? Taking into account Thompson’s wicked sense of humor (as well as early drafts that were even more bawdy),
these innuendos had to be intentional. As a result, a small but vocal contingent of do-gooders would continue to protest that
Eloise
was unsuitable for children. As recently as 2008, the ACLU reported that an elementary school in Texas had banned
Eloise
from its shelves.

Kay’s defense to all these charges would be that she wrote
Eloise
for adults. It was booksellers who peddled it to kids. Thompson purposefully bombarded her book with mature references to such corporate concerns as AT&T, Kleenex, General Motors, Corvette, and TWA. Aside from The Plaza, Eloise rattled off names of other tony hotels like the Sherry-Netherland in New York and the Roney in Miami. Other topics of conversation included Andover and Buckingham Palace. Even Thompson’s favorite department store, Bergdorf Goodman, got a plug. And on page 50, Eloise proclaimed, “My mother knows Lilly Daché” (the famous hat designer), later changed to a more timeless “My mother knows Coco Chanel.”

Most of these references go right over the heads of children and are only savored by adults. “I always felt that Eloise was funny on two levels—one for adults and one for children,” remarked dancer Marge Champion. “There is something in it for everyone.”

V
ery early on, Kay
knew that Eloise could earn money in other mediums. For example, she hoped the “Eloise” song she’d composed for her nightclub act could be turned into a hit single.

When major labels weren’t interested in “a novelty record for kids,” Kay turned to an old friend, Archie Bleyer, who owed her a favor. Way back in 1941, Thompson had given Bleyer his first big break as her radio conductor, and later got him his first gig conducting a major Broadway show. This led to television in the early 1950s, where he served as Arthur Godfrey’s music director. Then in 1952, he formed Cadence Records, a small New York firm that soon generated a remarkable string of hits including “Mr. Sandman” by the Chordettes and “The Ballad of Davy Crockett” by Bill Hayes, the third-highest-selling record of 1955. Because “Davy Crockett” had initially been written off as just “a novelty song for kids,” Kay was impressed that Bleyer had seen its potential as a crossover hit. So, naturally, when she asked him to work the same magic for “Eloise,” he was more or less obligated to try.

Consequently, on December 2, 1955, the day after Kay’s gig at Ciro’s ended, Bleyer financed a Los Angeles recording session with Buddy Bregman’s orchestra for “Eloise” and, to fill the single’s B-side, Kay’s bugged-out bongo makeover of Cole Porter’s “Just One of Those Things.”

At the conclusion of the session, Kay sent this telegram:
DEAR ARCHIE, JUST FINISHED. SMASH TIME! MAILING THE TAPES BY AIR TONIGHT TO YOU
.

When Bleyer finally heard “Eloise,” however, he felt it was too risqué and convoluted for mass appeal, so he convinced Kay to clean up the lyrics and simplify the arrangement. As a result, it became a catchy “call-and-response” bubblegum pop song that began:
CHORUS
: “Who is the little girl who lives at The Plaza in New York?”
ELOISE
: “That’s me, Eloise. I’m six. I live on the top floor.”

In January 1956, the tamed version of “Eloise” was recorded in New York by Bleyer and his orchestra. Thompson performed the voices of both Eloise and Nanny with an impromptu male chorus that included Andy Williams, Ralph Blane, and Simon & Schuster’s publicist Larry Vinick.

To promote the song in February, Kay got herself booked again on
The Tonight Show,
where she performed it with Andy. On March 3, Cadence rush-released the “Eloise” single and it rose to No. 39 on
Billboard
’s pop chart—allowing Kay to boast that it had become “a Top 40 hit.” Though hardly a smash, it certainly wasn’t a dud—and it had legs. According to
Publishers’ Weekly,
by year’s end, Cadence had “sold out absolutely all the available stock of 100,000 records.” Rather than press more copies of the single, Kay convinced Archie to “leave ’em wanting more,” insisting that the next step should be an Eloise album. Bleyer went on blind faith that Thompson would follow through with that idea—though ultimately she never did.

As success went to her head, Thompson started alienating the very people who had served her well.

“I set up a publishing company called Kay Thompson Music, Inc., when Kay had written the song of ‘Eloise,’ ” recalled business manager Leonard Grainger. “The deal was that we each owned fifty percent of the publishing company. It really had virtually no value. It only had two songs in it, ‘Eloise’ and ‘I Love a Violin.’ I don’t think you can find much royalties on either of them. But when I gave her the capital stock to sign, she said she couldn’t sign it. I asked her why and she said, ‘I just can’t share it or give anything away.’ Kay and I had made a deal and she reneged on the deal, so I quit. I’m sure she had a great love for me and a great sense of appreciation but she had trouble giving and sharing things. She had to be in control. She was a control freak.”

Thompson’s agent, Barron Polan, was kicked aside, too. On March 14, 1956, Kay filed papers with Simon & Schuster that eradicated Polan as her agent on the
Eloise
book.

And she certainly took advantage of Hilary Knight. When a drawing from the book was reused on the cover sleeve of the record, for example, Knight
received no additional compensation. Had Thompson been consulted, he would not have received credit, either.

“It was quite unusual to have the artist’s name on the cover of a record,” Knight said, “but they ended up printing my name quite prominently on the jacket—‘Drawing by Hilary Knight’—and Kay was furious. I certainly didn’t say that my name should be on there. The printer just did that and she was very mad about it.”

Even though Knight was not to blame, Thompson remained disgruntled and seemed to be looking for ways to get even. “For Christmas that year,” Knight recalled, “Kay asked me to do an Eloise drawing that she could use for her own personal Christmas card. I had signed my name discreetly along the margin of the picture but when the cards were printed, my name was nowhere to be seen. I asked her about it and she said, ‘Oh, the printer cut it off. Isn’t that awful.’ I knew she had done it because that’s how she was. With me and with everybody. It was so small of her.”

Similarly, when Kay reused Don Freeman’s 1951 advertising caricature of her for the cover of her 1954 album, his signature was dropped and he received no compensation.

“I wouldn’t put anything past her,” concluded British journalist Elspeth Grant. “Nor would I ever wish to get into an argument with her: she seems to have rather more teeth than usual—and all the better to bite your head off with, my dear. Miss Thompson is something to marvel at from a respectful distance.”

With the success of
Eloise
came demand for more. “I went to California for the very beginning of the production of
Funny Face,
” recalled Hilary Knight, “because Kay had an idea about doing a magazine piece on ‘Eloise in Hollywood’ while she was shooting the movie. And I did a lot of work on it, a lot of sketches, and I have a drawing of Fred Astaire’s toupee in my sketchbook. But that never happened.”

The demise of “Eloise in Hollywood” coincided with a falling-out between Thompson and Fred Astaire—which may explain why she redirected her enthusiasm toward a sequel book,
Eloise Abroad.
While Kay was shooting
Funny Face
in Paris, Hilary joined her there to research the sights firsthand, and, eventually, the focus of the book was narrowed to just one European capital—becoming
Eloise in Paris.

M
eanwhile, United Productions of
America (UPA), producers of the highly successful
Mr. Magoo
cartoons, had been negotiating for months to make a
series of animated
Eloise
featurettes with Kay providing the voice. Discussions were proceeding quite nicely until her new agent, Wynn Rocamora, among others, advised that the franchise would benefit more if
Eloise
became a live-action, feature-length movie. Acquiescing to conventional wisdom (a rare Thompson occurrence), she went along with the idea as long as she retained creative control. “
Eloise
 . . . is being packaged as a motion picture by Kay,” revealed Louella Parsons in the
Los Angeles Examiner
on December 22, 1955. “Her choice to play the modern child is that modern young lady, Miss Portland Mason.”

The plump seven-year-old daughter of Pamela Kellino and James Mason had a potbelly à la Eloise and a
réputation
to match. The Associated Press claimed that her parents “take her to cocktail parties and nightclubs” wearing “her own fur coat.” James admitted that they had “sneaked her into Ciro’s” on at least one occasion. In
Daily Variety,
Army Archerd reported a Portland Mason sighting at the Mocambo, where she spontaneously jumped onstage and “did a burlesque dance routine, complete with grinds, which left [Dean] Martin gaping.” And when James Mason starred in
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
for Walt Disney in 1954, he famously got his agent to add “the Portland Clause” to his contract, obliging the studio to lend its films, free of charge, to his pampered offspring so that she could privately screen them at home. Producer Ray Stark, son-in-law of Fanny Brice, had even screen-tested Portland for the proposed television series
Baby Snooks,
based on Brice’s alter ego, but nothing had come of it.

Having outgrown Baby Snooks, Eloise was now deemed the perfect starring vehicle for Portland. So, in December 1955, with Thompson’s endorsement, James Mason pitched the idea to Twentieth Century-Fox, where his daughter was currently making her feature film debut with Gregory Peck in
The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit
(1956). The powers that be, however, passed on the idea because they believed “kiddie pix don’t make money.”

All the other major studios passed on
Eloise,
too. But the concerns were not solely based on pessimistic box-office projections.
Eloise
had no plot. The book was a stream-of-consciousness day-in-the-life of a poor little rich girl. Adapting this flimsy premise into a feature-length screenplay was a tall order indeed, made even trickier by Thompson’s veto power.

With movies ruled out, television was the next logical stomping ground for the unruly tyke—and Kay’s ex-husband, Bill Spier, wanted in on the action. He pitched turning
Eloise
into a TV musical starring Portland Mason as Eloise and Kay Thompson as Nanny, with an original song score by Thompson. After all, Kay had voiced both Eloise
and
Nanny on her hit record, a tune that could now be repurposed as the theme for the television special.

Bill suggested that the dramatization would be a perfect fit for
Omnibus,
the highbrow anthology television series he had created and produced for CBS-TV starting in 1952, hosted by Alistair Cooke. During its summer hiatus of 1956, however,
Omnibus
was in a state of flux. In a dispute over rising costs, its sponsor had decided to move the series to ABC starting in the fall. Before those negotiations were concluded, Spier brought
Eloise
to the attention of CBS chairman William S. Paley, who promptly outbid ABC for the television rights.

In retaliation, ABC snapped up the rights to Ludwig Bemelmans’
Madeline
for live-action dramatization on
Omnibus
—instigating an all-out “War of the Moppets” between rival networks that would be fought tooth and nail to the bitter end.