Kay Thompson (41 page)

Eloise
didn’t come cheap. CBS had to cough up a record-breaking $15,000 to acquire the rights for a single live broadcast (compared to the $1,000 Ian Fleming got for the dramatization of his James Bond novel,
Casino Royale,
on
Climax!
). There was no such thing as reruns back then, so exposure was automatically limited to one performance that could serve as an entrée to Hollywood. In fact, many CBS productions of that era—such as
The Miracle Worker, Judgment at Nuremberg,
and
Days of Wine and Roses
—were later remade into major motion pictures. Even though the dramatization of
Eloise
was a one-shot deal, CBS had the foresight to negotiate options for sequels and a spin-off TV series.

Eloise
was assigned to
Playhouse 90,
a new ninety-minute anthology series that promised weekly adaptations of literary works by the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and William Faulkner. Not only did “Eloise” stand out as the only musical-comedy in an otherwise serious slate of dramas, journalists expressed skepticism over the ninety-minute running time. A humor piece in
Cue
magazine by Philip Minoff, written in Eloise-speak, wondered “what in the world they were going to do with all that time, time, time . . . It took me only ten minutes to read the whole book, for Lord’s sake, and I can’t even read.”

The good news was that anticipation was building. With the combined buzz surrounding
Eloise
and the soon-to-be-released movie
Funny Face,
Kay’s stature within the entertainment industry had elevated to new heights, enabling her to demand final creative control over the
Playhouse 90
production of “Eloise.”

Unfortunately, producer Martin Manulis was given extremely limited funds with which to work. The standard per-episode budget for
Playhouse 90
was fixed at $175,000, and “Eloise” would be no exception—despite the added challenges a musical presented.

Because the
Playhouse 90
budgets were so modest, Manulis had already
instituted a ceiling of $10,000 per actor, no matter how big the star. And, to handle the overlapping workload, he declared that several directors would divvy up the season on a rotating basis, earning $1,000 per week, multiplied by the three weeks it took to put on each installment.

Ralph Nelson, who would first helm the
Playhouse 90
production of “Requiem for a Heavyweight” (CBS-TV, October 11, 1956)—considered by many to be one of the finest television dramas ever—was initially awarded “Eloise” as his follow-up assignment.

On July 19,
The Hollywood Reporter
announced that “Bill Spier, Miss Thompson’s ex, is scripting ‘Eloise’ ” for a
Playhouse 90
slot in January 1957.

After years of developing hard-boiled radio noirs for
Suspense
and
The Adventures of Sam Spade,
Spier could not resist the temptation to devise a mystery at The Plaza with nosy little Eloise poised to solve the crime. Though Kay loved whodunits as much as Bill did, she did not see Eloise as a young Nancy Drew, so she rejected his take entirely.

At the same time, Kay had become disenchanted with the idea of playing Nanny, a decidedly nonglamorous role. When she confessed to Manulis that Mildred Natwick was her idea of the quintessential Nanny, he wholeheartedly agreed to offer Natwick the part once they had a suitable script.

Then Cole Porter let it be known that he was “so crazy” about
Eloise
that he’d “like to write the music for it.” Unfortunately, there was neither enough money nor time to meet Porter’s demands—though it was a tantalizing proposal.

Undaunted, Thompson felt she was perfectly capable of rustling up the song score herself, so she staged a dog-and-pony show for the brass at CBS, reading excerpts from her book and performing her hit song “Eloise.”

“Kay had me come over to CBS Television City in Hollywood,” recalled Don Williams of the Williams Brothers. “We sat on a couple of stools and I sang, ‘Who is the little girl who lives at The Plaza in New York?’ and she’d say, ‘That’s me, I’m Eloise.’ And we rehearsed that thing together and then Kay and I did it for Martin Manulis and some other executives so they could get a feel of what Eloise would be like.”

Never missing an opportunity, Kay had photographs of the recital dispatched to newspapers around the country, whetting appetites for the special.

Thompson not only announced her intention to compose all the songs, she also pitched her concept for the adaptation—simply a day in the life of Eloise as she crosses paths with an expanded assortment of colorful adults, herself included. She figured she could persuade some of her celebrity friends to play themselves as guests in the hotel.

Kay was given just three weeks to write the score and come up with a viable script—a frightfully short period of time, especially for an inexperienced screenwriter. It soon became apparent that she had bitten off more than she could chew. So, while she focused on the music, Leonard Spigelgass, who had just finished collaborating with
Funny Face
writer Leonard Gershe on the screenplay to
Silk Stockings
(MGM, 1957), was hired for $10,000 to churn out a teleplay.

“Kay
hated
the script that Leonard Spigelgass wrote for ‘Eloise,’ ” recalled film critic and Thompson confidant Rex Reed. She grudgingly endorsed the teleplay, however, assuming there would be plenty of time to make improvements during the rehearsal period.

A number of vignettes came straight out of the book, and the dialogue was sprinkled with familiar Eloise witticisms. The script introduced Kay cleverly: Always scrawling her name as graffiti, Eloise would “autograph” a poster display in the hotel lobby for “Kay Thompson, Appearing Nightly in the Persian Room.” This would segue into “3:00 a.m. in the Persian Room,” a musical number starring Kay and the Four Singing Busboys (Don Williams, Bill Norvas, Joe Marino, and Hans Conried, modeled after the Williams Brothers) as they clean up the empty nightclub.

Naturally, this appealed to Thompson’s ego, but it also satisfied the need for periodic scenes without Eloise, since labor laws limited work for child actors to four hours per day. With rehearsals lasting twelve hours, scenes had to be created among the adult actors to make use of the surplus time.

Standards and Practices decreed that Eloise should have attentive parents and there must be an explanation for their absence from The Plaza. So, although it might have been easier to state that Mom and Dad were on vacation, it was contrived that the parents were steering clear of The Plaza in order to keep reporters and paparazzi away from their daughter during their high-profile divorce and custody battle. It was a very odd way to assuage concerns over family values, but it satisfied the network censor.

W
hen ABC announced that
“Madeline” would air on the December 23 installment of
Omnibus,
CBS struck back by switching “Eloise” from January to November 22—beating them by a full month. The upside for “Eloise” was that this new date happened to be Thanksgiving night, when the country would be in the right mood for light family fare. The downside was that many weeks of precious preparation time would be lost.

To accommodate the scheduling change, director Ralph Nelson had to
be replaced by twenty-six-year-old John Frankenheimer, who, in addition to directing twenty-six thrillers for
Climax!
had helmed the premiere installment of
Playhouse 90
on October 4 (Rod Serling’s “Forbidden Area” starring Charlton Heston and Vincent Price) and was working overtime on another one for October 25 (Cornel Woolrich’s “Rendezvous in Black” starring Boris Karloff).

Steeped in murder and mayhem, Frankenheimer was certainly an odd choice for “Eloise.” The ex–military man would later become famous for directing such muscular political thrillers as
The Manchurian Candidate
(United Artists, 1962),
Seven Days in May
(Paramount, 1964), and
Seconds
(Paramount, 1966). Frothy musical comedy was as far removed from his cinematic vocabulary as one could imagine, especially with a precocious subdebutante as the star. However, it just so happened that, in April of that year, Frankenheimer had become the father of a baby girl—named, similarly, Elise—which may have softened his macho demeanor just enough for Manulis to entrust him with “Eloise.”

Taking no chances, Thompson insisted on a conductor of her choosing. She wanted Lennie Hayton, but he was busy conducting the nightclub tour of his wife, Lena Horne. After Kay prevailed upon Lena to share her man, however, Lennie joined the “Eloise” task force.

When it came to populating the program with familiar faces, Thompson suggested Louis Jourdan.

“He’s doing a picture with Doris Day,” Manulis reasoned. “He’s way too hot right now. You’ll never get him.”

Unfazed, Kay called Jourdan and, in the voice of Eloise, charmed him into doing it. Then Mildred Natwick jumped at the chance to play Nanny. With any luck, Kay’s next big “catch” would be Noël Coward. Unfortunately, he was in the middle of an ongoing dispute with CBS over his own contracted specials, so he respectfully declined.

“No worries,” Kay said. “We’ll just find another old poof.”

And that’s when they hired erudite character actor Monty Woolley, who, legend has it, introduced his Yale classmate and confidant, Cole Porter, to male bordellos.

The “Eloise” teleplay also called for a famous sports figure to be staying at The Plaza, so boxer Rocky Marciano joined the cast on October 4. A week later, however, he was replaced by heavyweight champion Slapsie Maxie Rosenbloom, whose knockout performance in
Playhouse 90
’s “Requiem for a Heavyweight” (October 11) had just struck a chord with critics and viewers.

By the end of October, the legendary Ethel Barrymore had joined the lineup, too. Since she’d recently been convicted of tax evasion, Ethel’s entire fee
would go to the IRS. So, Ethel quietly demanded that Manulis cast her son, Samuel Colt, as the bell captain, a peripheral character with only a couple of lines, for which he would be paid the $10,000 guest star rate—a transparent but perfectly legal way to circumvent the IRS lien. In exchange, Ethel accepted minimum union scale for her time—severely limiting the amount she would forfeit to the government.

Others in the cast would include Inger Stevens, Charles Ruggles, and Plaza bigwig Conrad Hilton.

Even actress Marion Marshall, the wife of
Funny Face
director Stanley Donen, appeared in an uncredited cameo. “We were at dinner one night,” Marion recalled, “and Kay said, ‘Oh, you’ve got to play Eloise’s mother! Come on and do this for me.’ So I did. It was really nothing. No lines. You never see my face, only parts of my body.”

F
or the all-important title
role, Portland Mason suddenly faced formidable competition from Patty McCormack, whose about-to-be-released movie,
The Bad Seed,
was the buzz of the industry. Thompson insisted on auditioning both potential candidates before making a decision.

So, James and Pamela Mason brought their seven-year-old daughter all the way from London and finagled a timely profile in the September 28 issue of
Collier’s
magazine entitled “L’Enfant Terrible.” Unfortunately, there was no getting around the fact that Portland had become more portly than ever, several sizes larger than the pleasantly plump silhouette of Eloise.

Patty McCormack’s figure was more pleasing, but at age eleven, she was a bit long in the tooth to be cast as a six-year-old.

After rejecting both girls, Kay decided to hold an open casting call, organized by Ethel Winant, a dynamo who later cast
The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

Hollywood Reporter
columnist Leo Guild immediately recommended seven-year-old Evelyn Rudie. “We’ve known the youngster for a couple of years,” Guild campaigned in his column, “and one time when she scribbled a post card from NY to us—‘I hate you because you didn’t write. You are an ogre and I won’t kiss you anymore.’—we figured this little girl really had something.”

Rudie’s credits were certainly promising, boasting appearances in eighteen television shows and seven movies, including the role of John Wayne’s daughter in
The Wings of Eagles
(MGM, 1957), directed by John Ford.

“I remember going in and meeting Kay Thompson,” Evelyn recalled. “I can’t remember who else was in the room because when Kay was in a room, no one else was in the room. Kay was a bright light. And she started asking
me questions. And I started telling her stories about my dolls and my life and about my parents.”

“I called her mother,” Kay recalled, “and asked if I could take the child for a ride.”

“And so we went into her gorgeous car,” Evelyn said, “which was a Jaguar XK125, still my favorite car to this day, the most beautiful car in the world! And we went driving around town and we went to lunch. She spoke to me of her hopes and dreams, of how Eloise really was her in many respects, about her excitement that a larger audience would finally be introduced to Eloise, and that little girls everywhere would be able to see that they didn’t have to fit into any particular mold.”

“Girls can be whatever they want to be!” Kay told Evelyn. “Just look at me!”

Soon afterward, Rudie was awarded the part. “Kay became like a second mother to me,” Evelyn added. “That week, she invited me to Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills and took me shopping for Eloise clothes. The next thing I knew, they were adding padding for a proper potbelly and they bleached my brunette hair blond. My missing front teeth would have been replaced if my father hadn’t put his foot down.”

On Friday, October 26, a fully made over Evelyn and her parents, along with Kay and John Frankenheimer, were whisked to the East Coast for research and photo ops at The Plaza, where they stayed for free. American Airlines comped their round-trip tickets in exchange for a mention on the program.