Kay Thompson (48 page)

Roger Edens collected the raves and sent copies to Audrey, who, on April 12, penned the following response: “Dearest Rogé . . . Hurray! Hurray! Please congratulate Kay for her fab reviews (and so they should be); may it mean many more successes for her.”

“Kay Thompson’s the happiest gal in New York over her success in
Funny Face,
” wrote Hedda Hopper on April 5, “and has offers from every top TV show.”

In May,
Funny Face
was presented at the Cannes Film Festival as one of the four official American entries. But while the majority of spectators ate it up, French movie critics spit it out.
The Hollywood Reporter
’s Samuel Steinman was a witness to the perplexing dichotomy, noting, “No film during the festival has received as much applause during its screening, but none of the French reviews was favorable.” When the jury, led by Jean Cocteau, announced their award selections on May 17,
Funny Face
was snubbed in every category.

Somehow, the bubble had burst back in the States, too. As the movie spread to smaller, less sophisticated markets, the box-office receipts were nowhere near the bonanza generated in New York. Ultimately, the film grossed $3 million—a moderately successful amount in its day—but, given the picture’s $3.1 million–plus budget, the thinking around the studio had gone from pink to red.

And then things got worse. Allied Artists decided to release its new Audrey Hepburn picture,
Love in the Afternoon,
on June 30, 1957. Suddenly, three-month-old
Funny Face
was yesterday’s news. Theater owners wanted to exhibit the
latest
Audrey Hepburn movie, not her last one.

When Oscar nominations were announced on February 17, 1958, even without much support from its studio,
Funny Face
was cited in four categories: Best Screenplay (Leonard Gershe), Best Cinematography (Ray June), Best Costume Design (Edith Head and Hubert de Givenchy), and Best Art Direction-Set Decoration (Hal Pereira, George W. Davis, Sam Comer, Ray Moyer). But its absence from the Best Picture and other major categories spoke volumes about the apathy that had developed.

After Kay had been deified by nearly every critic in the land, it was especially astonishing that she had been overlooked in the Best Supporting Actress category. And in the end, the movie failed to win anything.

E
ven though
the
Funny Face
luster had faded, there was serious talk of a derivative television series built around Thompson. In early 1958, producer Ted Granik engaged two of Sid Caesar’s top comedy writers, Mel Brooks and Michael Stewart (
Bye Bye Birdie
,
Hello, Dolly!
), to write
Pilot for Kay Thompson
, for which they were collectively paid $3,000.

According to the twenty-eight-page teleplay, Thompson was to portray Kay Baxter, editor of
Style
magazine, juggling her business affairs in Manhattan
with domestic duties in Westchester, where her husband, two children, and a stuffy housekeeper constantly complain about her “gallivanting off to the city every day.”

In this pilot episode, Kay is vying for exclusivity over “The Bag,” a new collection of dress designs by France’s top designer, “Jacques Deauville”—spoofing Yves Saint Laurent’s recent “sack” dresses for the House of Dior.

“Think, if you will, of a common ordinary shopping bag stuffed full of dirty potatoes,” Jacques explains. “You take
out
the potatoes and put
in
a lady!”

“The bag. The
bag
!” Kay paces excitedly, à la “Think Pink!” “I can see a whole issue devoted to it! Eight full-pages, and the cover! We could even have one of the dresses cut and made-up by Monday afternoon . . . in time for The Fashion Academy dinner at The Plaza Hotel.”

Sound familiar? Perhaps too much so. NBC was gung ho for a while, then CBS, but the project never emerged from the depths of development hell. It was probably a blessing in disguise. The last thing Kay wanted—or needed—was to be typecast.

But that’s what continued to happen. For instance, on
The Garry Moore Show
(CBS-TV, February 28, 1961), Thompson was asked to spoof her
Funny Face
duet with Audrey Hepburn. So, in a comedy sketch called “Frumpy Face,” Kay sings “On How to Be Lovely” while transforming Carol Burnett from ugly duckling to fashion victim.

For laughs, Kay wore a positively outlandish ankle-length dress with matching jacket, spike heels, and a ribbon wrapping her hair up in the shape of a pillbox hat. But even though the wardrobe was supposed to be an over-the-top joke, Thompson took every detail very seriously. She told the costume designer, Robert Mackintosh, that the jacket must be “burgundy and no other shade! A silk velvet—thin, thin, thin! Balenciaga and definitely not Chanel.”

The reverberations of
Funny Face
were far from over. After Warner Brothers struck gold with its enormously successful 1964 release of
My Fair Lady
starring Audrey Hepburn, Paramount rereleased
Funny Face
with posters and ads that proclaimed, “She’s the Fairest Lady of All!” Box office results were so brisk, NBC snapped up the television rights and
Funny Face
was given a splashy prime time premiere on October 12, 1965. It was on this night that
Funny Face
finally found its mass audience. And Thompson, for better or worse, was lionized in the role with which she would forever be identified.

Eloise Runs Amok

(1956–61)

I’d hate to call her a Frankenstein, but she scares me, just the same.

—Kay Thompson

M
iss Thompson is of the type which not only would launch a thousand ships but first would design and build them,” declared
The New York Times
in 1957.

When it came to merchandising Eloise, however, Thompson couldn’t do it all by herself. Richard Grossman of Simon & Schuster introduced her to another S&S executive, Robert L. Bernstein, who later became president of Random House. “Bob was a very sharp guy and he had been very instrumental in the development of both Golden Books and Golden Records at Simon & Schuster,” explained Grossman. “I thought with his savvy, he and Kay would make great partners.”

“So, Kay and I set up a little company called Eloise Limited,” recalled Bob Bernstein, “and we started to merchandise the character. For about a year, I was
allowed to moonlight for Kay while I was still working at Simon & Schuster. They gave me permission to do it.”

Thompson named herself president and Bernstein was given the title of executive vice president. “She took sixty percent and I took forty percent,” Bernstein recalled. “I think it was a three- or five-year deal.”

In the fall of 1956, Kraft Foods, Inc., contacted Eloise Limited with an extraordinary proposal. “They wanted to use Eloise in all their advertising for Kraft Caramels, the way that Kleenex was using Little Lulu,” said Bernstein. “They were going to guarantee us a quarter of a million dollars against whatever they spent.”

But Thompson demurred: “Bob, we can’t take the deal because Eloise doesn’t like Kraft Caramels.”

“Kay, for a quarter of a million dollars, she could really learn to love them,” Bob argued.

“You just don’t understand Eloise,” Kay sniffed. “Eloise loves Rosemarie chocolates. Could you make the deal with Rosemarie?”

Rosemarie de Paris Chocolate Shops were the crème de la crème of ritzy tearoom sweeteries, but there were only a few locations, mainly in Manhattan. Bernstein tried to reason with Thompson. “They’re not about to spend money for a national advertising campaign,” he said. “Can Eloise adjust?”

“No, she can’t,” Kay insisted.

“So, we didn’t make the deal,” Bernstein concluded with a laugh. “It was tragic, but that was Kay.”

Consequently, as of January 1957, Eloise Limited had zero earnings, making it difficult for Bernstein to justify his involvement. With sales of the book starting to ebb, there was growing pressure for Kay to deliver her sequel,
Eloise in Paris,
which had been languishing since the summer of 1956.

Eloise in Paris
was to be the first in a series of “Around the World with Eloise” adventures. In interviews, Kay rattled off future book ideas such as
Eloise in London, Eloise in Rome, Eloise in Venice, Eloise on the Orient Express, Eloise in Hollywood, Eloise in Las Vegas,
and
Eloise Goes to Washington.
Thompson was only half joking when she quipped
Eloise in Phoenix, Arizona
(“It’s such a strange place”). But for now, Eloise would explore the City of Lights.

According to illustrator Hilary Knight, “Kay didn’t think we got enough material the first time in Paris.”

Simon & Schuster refused to foot the bill for a
second
trip but that didn’t stop Kay. Inspired by the product placement of TWA in
Funny Face
and American Airlines in the
Playhouse 90
production of “Eloise,” Thompson got Bernstein to negotiate a “swap deal” with Sabena, the national airline of Belgium. In exchange
for four round-trip tickets to Paris via Brussels, Kay would devote three full pages of
Eloise in Paris
to the airline. Furthermore, media outlets were supplied with photographs showing Kay and Hilary boarding a Sabena carrier on February 11, 1957, with Andy Williams and Bob Bernstein on hand to wave them off.

The freebies did not stop there. For Eloise’s official Parisian home away from home, Kay finagled gratis accommodations at the Relais Bisson, where she and Dave Garroway had stayed in the summer of 1950. À la the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Relais Bisson slanted to the right, so with no elevator, guests had to carefully navigate six flights of oblique stairs. They also had to put up with the hotel’s cantankerous matron, Madame Dupuis, who is depicted quite accurately in the book.

“I would do documentary research with a camera and with a sketchbook,” Hilary Knight explained. “And then we’d have meetings in Kay’s hotel room and go over things. After we got back to New York, we’d meet in her apartment or mine.”

Once the text and preliminary sketches were completed, it took Knight several weeks to draw the final illustrations. This freed Thompson to focus on merchandising. At the top of her agenda: a doll.

“We had a very hard time getting anybody interested in doing the Eloise doll,” Bernstein recalled. “Most people regarded it as much too small a market. It wasn’t Mickey Mouse.”

After being rejected by Mattel, Madame Alexander, and American Character Doll Company, they finally secured a deal with an up-and-coming New York firm called Hol-le Toys, a partnership of Inez Holland House (the “Hol”) and Morris Levitch (the “le”).

In a 2001 interview, Hol-le’s lead designer, Vilma Kurzer, recalled, “I usually worked in the factory in the Bronx, but Mr. Levitch called me down to the showroom in Manhattan, at 200 Fifth Avenue, to meet Kay Thompson and Hilary Knight. They showed me their book called
Eloise
and when I saw the pictures of this little girl, I said, ‘Oh boy, let me get my hands onto this.’ ”

I
n late April 1957,
Thompson collapsed at a restaurant and had to be rushed to the emergency room at New York’s Mt. Sinai Hospital. In his column, Walter Winchell downplayed it as “just sheer exhaustion,” but Earl Wilson gravely reported she had suffered “a stroke.” When asked about it in 2002, Andy Williams recalled it as “a heart attack,” but Vilma Kurzer agreed with the claim in
Daily Variety
that it was “an acute gall bladder attack” that required an emergency cholecystectomy.

While convalescing from whatever it was, Thompson conducted business
meetings from her bed at Mt. Sinai. “When I was finished with the first sample of the Eloise doll,” Vilma Kurzer explained, “I had to take it to her in the hospital for approval. She must not have been feeling too much pain because when she saw the doll, she jumped out of bed and started dancing with it.” Manufacturing would move ahead for an October launch to support the November publication of
Eloise in Paris.

Then, on July 23, 1957, Kay received word that Simon & Schuster vice president Jack Goodman, Thompson’s main editor, had died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of forty-eight. In the wake of this tragedy, Nina Bourne, who had written wonderfully clever jacket and ad copy for
Eloise,
was assigned to finish editing
Eloise in Paris.

“I tried to make it less hostile to Paris,” Bourne recalled, “but Kay very agreeably undid most of my editing.”

It hardly mattered. Published on November 14, 1957,
Eloise in Paris
flew out the door in record numbers, prompting ad copy that queried, “Does anybody know the French for
runaway
?” Within three weeks, the number of copies in print had to be increased to 100,000. It had taken five months for the first
Eloise
book to reach that plateau.

To the pleasant surprise of critics, Thompson had overcome the sophomore jinx with aplomb. “
Le brat magnifique,
” raved
Time
magazine. “Eloise observes the French scene with a sharp eye that would have done credit to Voltaire or Art Buchwald.”

For trivia buffs, there were many interesting details. For instance, Alphonse Salomone, The Plaza’s managing director depicted in the first book, had recently been transferred to the Caribe-Hilton in San Juan, Puerto Rico. So, for the second book, Thompson substituted general manager Gene Voit.

There was another new face, too. On page 10, a physician named Dr. Hadley makes a house call at The Plaza to administer a shot to Eloise—presumably an inoculation for her trip abroad. There is a chilling illustration of Eloise hiding under a pillow as the doctor forcefully clenches her arm, poised to strike with his hypodermic “zambo sting sting stinger.”

In light of the fact that Kay was regularly receiving Dr. Max Jacobson’s “pick-me-up” injections, this episode takes on an added layer of creepiness. Even the red flower on the doctor’s lapel parallels Thompson’s tradition of giving a rose to Jacobson every time they met.