Kay Thompson (55 page)

“Kay was wearing so many real diamonds, there were two detectives following her everywhere,” Marge Champion said with a chuckle. “They would even follow her into the ladies’ room. She got so upset.”

With new technological advances for split-screen compositing during a live broadcast, Avedon played tic-tac-toe with multiple subframes floating on colored backgrounds. Squares with Kay’s face, snapping fingers, and tapping feet gave way to a full screen, revealing a swirling grand staircase, a ballroom floor painted as the face of a clock, and a magnificent chandelier shaped like a multilayered birthday cake.

Though most Americans only had black-and-white TV sets, brand-new color technology allowed Thompson and Avedon to one-up their “Think Pink!” opening from
Funny Face
by drenching “Jubilee Time” in rich hues of green and yellow. As the corporate muckety-mucks in the control booth cheerfully raised their champagne glasses to toast the launch of the show, however, Jack Rathbone, the president of Standard Oil, stood up and shrieked, “Green and yellow?! Those are the colors of British Petroleum!”

Immune to such corporate concerns, critics hailed “Jubilee Time” as the highlight of the show. The rest of the broadcast? Not so much. Still,
The Standard Oil 75th Anniversary Show
was seen by 40 million people, one of the highest-rated shows of the season.

A week later, Kay was hired to save
The Big Record
(CBS-TV, 1957–58), a weekly musical hour hosted by Patti Page that was getting trounced in the ratings by
Wagon Train
(NBC-TV, 1957–65).

“One of Kay Thompson’s first suggestions for improving the program was, ‘More Patti!’ ” wrote columnist Earl Wilson. Kay also insisted the show be “youth-enized” by dumping older guests like “The Incomparable Hildegarde” in favor of under-forty popsters like Andy Williams, Teresa Brewer, and Bill Haley and the Comets.

“Many artists had not really performed on TV before and they needed a lot of help,” Patti Page recalled in 2006. “That’s where Kay was involved, behind the scenes. She tried very hard to change
everything
on our show for the better, but they didn’t change
Wagon Train,
so we only lasted one season.”

Subsequently, Kay was often hired as a “creative consultant” on variety specials such as
Ford Startime:
“Ethel Merman on Broadway” (NBC-TV, November 24, 1959) and
A Toast to Jerome Kern
(NBC-TV, September 22, 1959), starring Carol Channing, Lisa Kirk, and Patrice Munsel.

In 1959, she signed with NRB Associates, Ltd., a boutique agency co-headed by Mace Neufeld, thirty, long before he produced such blockbuster movies as
The Hunt for Red October.

“I first met Kay when she appeared on
The Ed Sullivan Show,
” Neufeld recalled in 2008. “We struck up a friendship and I would stop over at her apartment on the way home from my office and we’d have some drinks and talk and try to cook up songs and shows. I remember writing a song with Kay. As soon as we finished it, she jumped up and said, ‘Let’s sing it to Frank.’ I said, ‘Frank who?’ She said, ‘
Sinatra!
’ She picked up the phone and dialed Sinatra and we sang the song to him on the phone. Nothing ever came of it but, eventually, I was formally managing her.”

Kay and Mace collaborated on other projects, too. “We tried to put together a TV show with Peter Ustinov as the host,” Neufeld explained. “Kay wanted to call it
Manet, Monet and Jacques
, which was a play on Manny, Moe, and Jack of the Pep Boys Auto Supply Centers. Unfortunately, Ustinov’s availability was up in the air because of all the movies he was doing, so it never happened.”

Kay also worked behind the scenes on a surprising number of stage shows. During a London gig in 1951, she got very involved coaching Noël Coward’s lover, Graham Payn, for his participation in
The Lyric Revue,
a variety show that opened that May at the Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith.

To help him get over his insecurities, Kay said, “Graham, if I can make June Allyson sing, I can make you sing.” As Payn recalled in his memoir, “She
wrote a strong number for me, called ‘Lucky Day,’ about a gambler who loses on every race he bets on. It was very much in Kay’s distinctive ‘never-stop-singing-for-a-second-and-while-you’re-singing-keep-moving’ style.”

After a year of SRO business,
The Lyric Revue
moved to the Globe Theatre in the West End on July 10, 1952, where it was renamed
The Globe Revue.
To freshen things up, Kay wrote another song for Graham entitled “Kiss the Girls Goodbye,” and the show ran two more years.

Back in the States, Thompson began secretly coaching Bette Davis in mid-September 1952 for her Broadway-bound musical revue,
Two’s Company.
With a frog’s croak for a voice and no dance experience whatsoever, Davis was hopelessly miscast yet stubbornly determined to prove the naysayers wrong. In desperate times like these, Thompson always suggested “reciting the lyrics” rather than trying to carry the tune—advice Davis thankfully took to heart.

On opening night of the Boston tryout, Kay sent Bette a confidence-boosting telegram that read:
YOU ARE NATURALLY MAGNIFICENT. SO
.

Unfortunately, Davis came down with what appeared to be a serious case of influenza and the Broadway opening, scheduled for December 4, 1952, had to be postponed because of “an acutely infected larynx” and exhaustion. On December 8,
The New York Times
reported that her recovery was “coming along very well” under the care of “Miss Davis’ physician, Dr. Max Jacobson.” No one knows exactly who recommended Dr. Feelgood, but it could easily have been Kay or the director of the show, John Murray Anderson, who also happened to be one of Max’s patients.

With methamphetamines injected directly into her throat, Bette was able to open
Two’s Company
on December 15. However, speed did nothing to help her
real
problem, which turned out to be a severe wisdom tooth infection that caused osteomyelitis of the jaw, a life-threatening inflammation that would have spread to the brain without immediate surgery. Luckily, Dr. Stanley Behrman was brought in for a second opinion before it was too late. Consequently, the revue closed on March 8, 1953, and Bette’s rehabilitation kept her out of work for the next two years.

An eerily similar situation occurred when Kay coached Lucille Ball for her Broadway musical debut in
Wildcat,
which opened December 16, 1960—financed by Ball’s own company, Desilu Productions. Not only had Ball relied on Thompson’s coaching for over a year, she wanted Kay to be a major creative component and guest star on
Lucy Goes to Broadway,
a CBS-TV special Desilu was developing as a fictionalized spin-off, to be filmed in Manhattan throughout April 1961. The comedy would feature the Lucy Ricardo character from
I Love Lucy
experiencing many of the funny things that Lucille
Ball had experienced herself. It would feature a constellation of stars playing themselves (Kay among them), and the cast would also include
I Love Lucy
regular Vivian Vance, Thompson’s understudy from
Hooray for What!
who had usurped her role during its Boston tryout in 1937. Was the idea of Kay and Viv sharing screen time in a spoof about Broadway someone’s idea of a sick joke? Or was Thompson plotting to exact her revenge with some merciless upstaging of her own?

Alas, we’ll never know. Plans for the special were derailed when Ball suffered a near-collapse from chronic vocal cord injuries and exhaustion. Witnesses recalled “a constant influx of needle-wielding doctors promising miracle cures,” suggesting that the ubiquitous “Miracle Max” was likely in the mix. Ball’s condition worsened, forcing the early closure of
Wildcat
on June 3, 1961.

Slightly less traumatic was Kay’s work on Jule Styne’s production of
Mr. Wonderful
starring Sammy Davis Jr. Styne wanted Kay to collaborate on the score with composer Jerry Bock and lyricist Larry Holofcener.

“Jerry didn’t really want Kay Thompson in there with us,” Holofcener explained. “So, over a weekend, he and I got together without her and wrote four songs for
Mr. Wonderful.
On Monday, we played them for Jule and Kay. Kay was aghast. She said, ‘My God, where did you get these? Were these in your trunk?’ We said, ‘No, no. We wrote them over the weekend.’ And she said to Jule, ‘Well, they don’t need me. These boys can write the score, no problem.’ And that was that.”

Then it was announced that Kay would choreograph the show—until Sammy Davis insisted on doing his own dance moves. Nonetheless, she remained involved, advising Styne on all aspects of the production. “Kay Thompson does everything well and knows about everything,” Styne enthused on a radio show in 1957.

Shortly after
Mr. Wonderful
was up and running, Kay began helping Ethel Merman with her self-financed Broadway musical,
Happy Hunting,
featuring songs by newcomers Harold Karr and Matt Dubey. When Kay beefed up some of the vocal arrangements, however, the composers objected.

“Miss Merman,” Dubey complained during a rehearsal, “if I wanted the song sung that way, I’d have written it that way.”

“Merman never spoke to Dubey thereafter,” wrote theater historian Ken Mandelbaum, “and he was not permitted to speak to her.” By association, Karr got the cold shoulder, too. “During the tryout,” Mandelbaum added, “Merman’s original opening song, ‘The International Set, Yet,’ was replaced by a terrific Merman introductory number, ‘Gee, but It’s Good to Be Here.’ ”

Exactly how the Karr-Dubey brain trust had suddenly gone from mediocrity
to brilliance had always been something of a mystery. George Martin, Thompson’s former dancer who was featured in
Happy Hunting
, claimed, “Kay came in and she secretly wrote that new opening number for Merman. She came to Philadelphia when we were in previews and that’s where it happened. Just listen to it. It’s typical Kay. Like ‘Madame Crematante’ in
Ziegfeld Follies,
it has Merman addressing a bunch of reporters—and I was one of the reporters. But Karr and Dubey were given the credit because their contract or the union made it difficult not to.”

In any event, it was the one song in the show that Merman relished, and according to Mandelbaum, she kept it “in her repertoire for the rest of her career.”

When
Happy Hunting
failed to win a single Tony Award, Merman demanded that two of her weakest songs be replaced by new ones. With Dubey and Karr no longer on the payroll, Ethel announced to the world that Kay Thompson had written two new songs for the show: “Just a Moment Ago” and “I’m Old Enough to Know Better and Young Enough Not to Care.” Actually Thompson had collaborated on both songs with Roger Edens, but because he was still exclusive to MGM, he could not be credited.

Sometimes Thompson’s involvement in a project would be more at arm’s length. For instance, at a party at Clifton Webb’s home in August 1957, Lena Horne asked Kay for advice on her upcoming Broadway debut in
Jamaica,
the new Harold Arlen–Yip Harburg musical. Privately, they went over all the songs (including “Napoleon’s a Pastry,” revived and updated from
Hooray for What!
), fine-tuned the vocal arrangements and phrasing, and called in Peter Matz to compose some supplementary dance music and write additional lyrics. The effort paid off.
Jamaica
was nominated for seven Tony Awards, including Best Musical and Best Actress in a Musical.

Then, Horne’s daughter, Gail benefited from Thompson’s guidance. The precocious little girl Kay once teased for “being adept at ordering room service” had grown into a lovely twenty-two-year-old Ivy Leaguer on the cusp of making her off-Broadway debut in Sandy Wilson’s musical comedy
Valmouth,
set to open October 6, 1960, at the York Playhouse.

The second-generation angle was big news. Gail was splashed on the cover of
Ebony
magazine, and columnist Earl Wilson scooped, “Kay Thompson, who once coached Lena Horne at MGM, is now coaching Lena’s daughter, Gail Jones.”

While the publicity had a positive effect on advance ticket sales, it also raised impossibly high expectations that Gail was the next Lena Horne.

“I was very timid about singing,” Gail Jones Lumet Buckley recalled in
2002. “So, Kay put on records of the Hi-Lo’s and Ethel Merman. Then she turned the volume up very loud, almost deafening, and she said, ‘I want you to sing along with these people—
loud!
Sing out so that the head and the chest come together. You’ve got to sing
through
it!’ It wasn’t a pretty sound to begin with, but she got me to make my voice bigger. Then she worked with me to make it sound better.”

Regarding Thompson’s teaching fee, Gail explained, “There was never any money exchanged. It was just gratis. Kay was a pal. I didn’t get bad reviews but, frankly, I’m not a dedicated performer. Luckily for me, the show didn’t run very long and I eventually went into journalism.”

Kay occasionally coached friends for movies, too, including Rosalind Russell for “If You’ll Only Take a Chance” and “My Hillbilly Heart” in
The Girl Rush
(Paramount, 1955)—numbers featuring male backup dancers (choreographed by Bob Alton) that simply screamed Kay Thompson and the Williams Brothers.

When her ex-husband, Bill Spier, made his directorial debut with
Lady Possessed
(Republic Pictures, 1952), Thompson gamely coached James Mason to warble “More Wonderful Than These” (Kay Thompson–Bill Spier), the weekly sign-off theme for
Kay Thompson and Company
(CBS Radio, 1941–42), which Spier had produced.

Time
magazine described the movie as “foolish,” but noted the “outstanding novelty” of watching Mason, “usually typed as a glowering heavy, blithely crooning.”

K
ay became very political
on January 2, 1960, when Senator John F. Kennedy announced he would run to become the Democratic nominee for president. She had known Jack since 1945 and was convinced that he was destined for greatness. Aside from Thompson, Kennedy received immediate support from many other showbiz friends, especially Frank Sinatra and, of course, Peter Lawford, who was married to Kennedy’s sister, Pat.