Kay Thompson (56 page)

After the 1957 death of Holmby Hills Rat Pack leader Humphrey Bogart, Sinatra had kept the flame alive with his own rowdy bunch of ring-a-ding ding-dongs, now simply the Rat Pack: Dean Martin, Peter Lawford, Sammy Davis Jr., and Joey Bishop. In addition to the usual carousing, they’d gone professional as an all-star act in Vegas and as the ensemble cast of the hotly anticipated new heist movie,
Ocean’s Eleven,
set to begin shooting in January 1960.

The gang’s roster extended to “Rat Pack Mascots” (aka “Satellite Charleys”) including Jack Kennedy (nicknamed “Chicky Baby”), Judy Garland, Tony Curtis
and Janet Leigh, Shirley MacLaine, Angie Dickinson, Marilyn Monroe, Robert Wagner and Natalie Wood, David Niven, and, of course, Thompson, who’d been Sinatra’s on-and-off “vocal guru” since 1943. And so, when Sinatra pledged his support of JFK, he brought a legion of Hollywood clout to the party—a fiercely loyal faction that became known as the “Jack Pack.”

Blending the JFK crusade with showbiz, Kay served as a creative consultant on
The Frank Sinatra Timex Show: To the Ladies
(ABC-TV, February 15, 1960) with guests Lena Horne and Eleanor Roosevelt. She helped coax the best out of Sinatra and Horne for a critically acclaimed medley of Harold Arlen songs, cited by
The New York Times
as the “highlight” of the program.

The most unusual segment, however, was Sinatra’s sit-down chat with Eleanor Roosevelt, who received some tips from Thompson before the taping began on February 9. Kay recommended that rather than attempt to sing, Mrs. Roosevelt should “recite” the lyrics to “High Hopes” (Sammy Cahn–Jimmy Van Heusen), Sinatra’s Oscar-winning hit from
A Hole in the Head
(United Artists, 1959).

However, unbeknownst to Mrs. Roosevelt, exactly two days earlier, Sinatra had been carousing with Jack Kennedy at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas, where it had been decided that the senator’s new official anthem for the presidential primaries would be “High Hopes,” to be rerecorded by Frank, featuring customized lyrics such as, “K-E-double-N-E-D-Y, Jack’s the nation’s favorite guy.” Kay helped brainstorm the new words and arrangement with Cahn, Van Heusen, and conductor Nelson Riddle, and coached Frank for the hush-hush recording session on February 9—just hours after Eleanor had left the building.

Since Mrs. Roosevelt had already pledged her support to Adlai Stevenson for the Democratic nomination, her performance of JFK’s campaign song became a huge embarrassment.

“My recitation of the song has no political significance,” Eleanor Roosevelt angrily protested at a February 12 press conference—three days before the broadcast of her pretaped appearance on the Sinatra special would imply just the opposite. “I didn’t know anything about it being [Kennedy’s] campaign song.”

By the time the Democratic National Convention kicked off on July 11, 1960 (at the Los Angeles Sports Arena), the Kennedy camp was tense because their man had not yet secured all the delegates needed to clinch the nomination.

“Frank Sinatra would’ve done anything to get Jack elected,” Peter Lawford recalled. And if that meant glad-handing every undecided delegate in the
stadium, Frank was determined to do it. He gathered his troops—including Kay, Judy Garland, and the rest of his “Jack Pack”—and hit the floor poised for battle.

“They prowled the aisles restlessly,” Kitty Kelley reported, “wanting to be a part of the Kennedy power-brokering . . . [wandering] at will from one delegation to the next, impervious of barriers and restrictions.”

The next day, with the nomination still uncertain, Kay and Judy flew to New York, where, in Thompson’s apartment, they gathered Lena Horne, China Machado, and others to watch the final delegate count on television. Amid cheers and tears of joy, Kennedy won his party’s nomination, and on Election Day in November, he prevailed by the slimmest of margins, winning “by only 118,550 votes out of 68,832,818 cast.”

Many believe that the election results were swayed by the Mob. Sinatra’s own daughter, Tina, admitted in her memoir that her father “had served as a liaison between Joe Kennedy and [Sam] Giancana on a mission that may have swung the 1960 presidential election.” But the Jack Pack had certainly done its part to help the cause.

And it is worth noting that Jack Kennedy and Kay Thompson had more than friends in common. According to FBI records, Dr. Max Jacobson had begun administering his methamphetamine-laced “vitamin cocktail” to JFK the week of his September 26, 1960, television debate with Richard M. Nixon.

Jack was so impressed by the euphoric blast of energy, he summoned Max to his home in Hyannisport shortly after the election for more of his “pick-me-up” boosters. Although there is no evidence that Kay had anything to do with connecting Jack with Max, the mutual association may have drawn them closer.

“By the summer of 1961, [the President and the First Lady] had both developed a strong dependence on amphetamines,” reported C. David Heymann in
A Woman Named Jackie
. According to Heymann, Robert Kennedy asked the FBI to analyze the contents of five vials Jacobson had left at the White House: “The subsequent FBI report showed the presence of amphetamines and steroids at high concentrated levels.” Confronted with the lab results in 1962, Jack raged, “I don’t care if it’s horse piss. It works.” It was a sentiment shared by Thompson and many others.

A
fter Kennedy’s victory Sinatra
volunteered to organize the John F. Kennedy Inaugural Gala, an all-star fund-raiser for the Democratic Party, to take place at the National Guard Armory in Washington, D.C., on January 19, 1961, the night before the inauguration. Although Sinatra and Peter Lawford would be
the figureheads of the event, three
Funny Face
colleagues—Thompson, Roger Edens, and Leonard Gershe—were drafted to respectively direct, produce, and write the extravaganza. They had the enthusiastic blessing of the President-elect and especially his wife, Jackie, who was a big fan of
Funny Face
. (Further channeling the movie, Jackie made immediate arrangements for Richard Avedon to photograph her for
Harper’s Bazaar
in the Oleg Cassini gown she would wear to the Inaugural Gala.)

“Kay Thompson flew to Washington last Friday [January 6, 1961] in the Kennedy plane,” reported columnist Leonard Lyons. Arriving at the Butler Aviation terminal at National Airport, Kay disembarked the twin-engine
Caroline
with a posse that included Sinatra, Lawford, Edens, and Thompson’s pug dog, Fenice, sporting “a smart black sweater.”

Preparations and preliminary rehearsals would take place at the Statler Hilton Hotel where Thompson and company set up camp. Plans called for a three-hour show with thirty stars working for free, including Gene Kelly, Jimmy Durante, Milton Berle, Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, Bette Davis, Laurence Olivier, Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, plus a seventy-five-piece orchestra alternately conducted by Nelson Riddle and Leonard Bernstein.

Aside from directing, Thompson would appear in the extravaganza, too, leading the cast in an all-star parade that would open and close the show singing “Walking Down to Washington”—another Kennedy campaign song.

Trolling for more star wattage, Kay boldly suggested Ethel Merman—an idea that seemed absurd because of her tireless campaigning for Richard Nixon. But, when the offer was floated, Ethel earnestly told reporters, “It would be an honor to entertain
any
President, Democrat or Republican.”

There was one major catch. The Merm was starring in
Gypsy
on Broadway, and producer Leland Hayward refused to underwrite the $12,000 it would cost to go dark for the night. But now that Kennedy had high hopes about Merman’s participation as “a show of unity,” Sinatra turned to Thompson and said, “I don’t care how you do it, just make it happen.”

Through the grapevine, Kay knew that Leland Hayward was trying to sign up stars for his latest television special,
General Electric Theatre:
“The Gershwin Years” (CBS-TV, January 15, 1961), but, so far, only Ethel Merman had committed. According to journalist Peter J. Levinson, “Kay called Leland and said, ‘Look, if I can get you Frank for free, will you let Ethel do the gala?’ ”

Booking Sinatra for a TV special would normally have cost in excess of $100,000—so, if all it would take was $12,000 to close
Gypsy
for the night, Hayward was in. Now it was up to Thompson to deliver Sinatra.

“If anyone else had asked Frank to do that, he would have flipped,” Levin-son insisted. “But coming from Kay? It carried a different weight.”

Sinatra acquiesced to the trade-off but strictly limited his time to one four-hour videotaping session in New York on January 9 “with Kay Thompson on hand to supervise each of the numbers.” Taking a break from planning the gala, Kay and Frank flew up from Washington on Kennedy’s plane, and shortly after one o’clock, they marched into CBS Studio 52 at 254 West Fifty-fourth Street (later the discotheque Studio 54).

“I noticed Kay stayed right by his side all afternoon,”
Newark Evening News
reporter Tom Mackin recalled in 2008. Levinson concurred: “They huddled by the playback monitor after each take and he obviously hung on her every word. They seemed very intimate.” Until Merman showed up. Upon seeing Ethel, “Sinatra smirked and said, ‘Vice President Nixon,’ ” noted Mackin. “It broke everyone up, including Kay Thompson.”

With the gang in good spirits, the taping session was completed a half hour ahead of schedule and Thompson and Sinatra jetted back to Washington to resume preparations for the main event.

On the first day of rehearsal, all the stars were present except for Merman, who could not travel to D.C. until the day of the show. To fill in for Ethel singing “Everything’s Coming Up Roses,” Kay did a dead-on impression that had everyone in stitches.

“It was parody, it was camp, it was brilliant,” bellowed fashion illustrator Joe Eula, on assignment for the
New York Herald-Tribune.
“We all were gasping for air when it was over. Strike me dead, but Kay did Ethel better than Ethel did Ethel.”

To Kay’s chagrin, Mahalia Jackson did not know any of the words to “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and because she couldn’t read, cue cards were not an option.

But that was the least of their worries. On the big day, it began to snow and by evening, eight inches had accumulated.

“It’s an absolute catastrophe,” Thompson declared, gawking at the blizzard in disbelief. “Just wretched, positively kooky.”

“Confusion we have seen before,” observed
The Washington Post
, “but this was gilt-edged, mink-lined, silk-hatted, 10-gallon, 100-proof, classic and absolutely capital chaos. It snowed—
sideways.
”

“The original schedule called for a 9 o’clock curtain,” explained
The New York Times,
“[but] at that time the hall was virtually empty and even the President-elect, despite motorcade escort, was slogging through stalled traffic downtown.”

When the Kennedys finally arrived at 10:40 p.m., Leonard Bernstein “raised his hands for a fanfare.”

“Hooray, hooray! Come join the jubilee,” Kay sang while leading the parade of stars in a “Walking Down to Washington” procession to the stage. When the cast had settled, Mahalia Jackson stepped up to the podium to perform “The Star-Spangled Banner,” but all of Thompson’s coaching had been for naught. Nervous and forgetful, the singer frequently glanced down at a cheat sheet on the podium.

“What the hell is she looking at?!” Thompson hissed. “She can’t read!”

The rest of the show went considerably better and, near the end, the President-elect stepped up to the podium and said, “The happy relationship between the arts and our long history, I think, reached culmination tonight.”

For the grand finale, the program booklet instructed the audience, “Please join in,” with lyric sheets for “Walking Down to Washington” distributed to everyone in the house. Overflowing with pride and optimism, enhanced by the communal ordeal of just getting there, thousands sang along. Of all the super-choirs Kay had ever conducted, this one couldn’t be topped.

There were, however, a couple of sour notes. First, drug abuse was as prevalent as the driven snow. According to
A Woman Named Jackie,
Dr. Max Jacobson was in Washington for the festivities “as a guest of Florida Senator Claude Pepper and his wife,” patients of Max since the late 1940s. It is not known exactly who got what and when, but the participants in the Inaugural Gala read like a sign-in sheet from Jacobson’s Manhattan waiting room.

The other problem was a clash over billing. The official credits in the Inaugural Gala program read “Staged and Directed by Roger Edens; Associate to Mr. Edens: Kay Thompson.” Yet
The Washington Post
seemed completely unaware of any contribution by Edens to the show “which the tireless Kay Thompson’s been rehearsing all week.”

Asked about the discrepancy in 2002, Janet Leigh said, “I don’t even remember seeing Roger there. Kay was in charge of everything I did—and as far as I could tell, she was in charge of everything that everybody else did, too.”

When the program credits were read to Joe Eula, he hit the ceiling: “That’s insane! All I know is that Kay was the fuckin’
boss
! She was blazing around in her Wicked Witch shoes, clicking those heels all over Washington, honey. And
nobody
was telling her what to do. She did the whole thing. She was up there
doin’
it. She was the bandleader. She was John Philip Sousa.”

In the month leading up to the gala, it had been announced that Thompson and Edens were forming a partnership to launch “a TV production company,” but, in the wake of the credit flap, those plans fell by the wayside. The bond
they had shared was never quite the same after that, though Kay remained superficially friendly.

“You never know when he might prove
useful,
” she reasoned with brutal pragmatism. According to a number of acquaintances, she used that same callous criterion whenever deciding who to “cut off at the ankles” or to “keep on the list.”