Thompson, Kay (c. 1906–1998)

views updated

Thompson, Kay (c. 1906–1998)

American entertainer and author who created the "Eloise" series of children's books. Born Kitty Fink around 1906, in St. Louis, Missouri; died in New York City on July 2, 1998; married and divorced twice; no children.

Kay Thompson is best remembered as the creator of four books featuring Eloise, the mischievous pint-sized denizen of the Plaza Hotel who first came to life in 1955 and, in the years since Thompson's death in 1998, has been rediscovered by a new generation. Thompson was also an acclaimed entertainer, a zany, multi-talented woman who viewed life as a banquet of opportunities. "Enthusiasm and imagination can carry you anywhere you want to go," she once proclaimed, "without Vuitton luggage."

Thompson, who would never divulge her age, was born Kitty Fink in St. Louis, Missouri, around 1906, the daughter of a local jeweler. A musical prodigy, she started piano lessons at age four and at sixteen played with the St. Louis Symphony. Shortly after, she became the featured singer with a local dance band. "I was a stage-struck kid," she recalled in an interview

with Time magazine (November 10, 1947), "and I got out of St. Louis fast." In 1929, Thompson went to California, where she landed a radio gig as a vocalist with the Mills Brothers. Then it was on to New York, to sing and arrange for the Fred Waring band. She later produced her own radio show, "Kay Thompson and Company," with Jim Backus. "We were an instantaneous flop," she said. "After this show I came to a serious decision. I had to be an actress and I had to be alone. So I went to Hollywood, where I was neither."

Unable to find work as a performer, Thompson signed on with MGM as an arranger and composer. After four years, she created her own night-club act, consisting of sophisticated songs, backed by the Williams Brothers—Richard, Robert, Donald, and Andrew. "The effect," said one reviewer, "was a combination of ballet, barber shop, roughhouse and penthouse that never for a moment got out of hand, but always seemed as if it might." The act opened at Ciro's in Hollywood in 1947 and toured for six years, before disbanding in the summer of 1953. Following the break-up, Thompson busied herself for a time designing trousers for tall women ("Kay Thompson Fancy Pants"), then created a one-woman show, which she opened at New York's Plaza Hotel in January 1954. In it, Thompson played an "outrageously blasé hostess" who entertained imaginary cocktail guests. The show was short-lived, but Eloise was waiting in the wings.

Thompson first dreamed up the irascible child back in the days with the Williams brothers. Priding herself on punctuality and expecting it from others, Thompson was late one day for rehearsal and apologized profusely to her colleagues in a high-pitched childish voice that she had never used before. One of the brothers jokingly asked her, "Who are you, little girl?" Thompson replied, "I am Eloise. I am 6." The others joined in, each assuming a different juvenile character, and the repartee became a regular pastime during rehearsals. Eloise was put aside when the night-club act ended, but reemerged shortly after Thompson began performing her solo show at the Plaza, when a friend introduced her to the artist Hilary Knight, thinking that he might be able to help bring Eloise to life through illustration. Knight sent Thompson the first rendering of Eloise on a Christmas card, and the two became collaborators a short time later.

Thompson took a three-month leave from her show to write the first Eloise book, Eloise: A Book for Precocious Grown Ups, which was published by Simon & Schuster in November 1955. By the time the first sequel, Eloise in Paris, was published in 1957, the initial book had sold 150,000 copies. The second volume sold 100,000 copies within a week and prompted a reviewer from Publishers Weekly (December 16, 1957) to explain the little girl to anyone who might still be in the dark. "Eloise is an over-privileged six-year-old, the terror of the Plaza Hotel in New York. She is also ill-mannered, illtempered and ugly. But she has her charm. She often means well, and her mother neglects her. Even though you know that you would do the same thing if she were yours, you can't help finding this appealing."

By the time Thompson's second book hit the shelves, Eloise had her own corporation, Eloise, Ltd., appropriately located at the Plaza Hotel. In 1963, the Plaza also established an Eloise room. Eloise merchandise included recordings, postcards, dolls, fashions, and an Emergency Hotel Kit for itinerant six-year-olds. Meanwhile, Thompson produced three additional sequels: Eloise at Christmastime (1958), Eloise in Moscow (1959), and Eloise Takes a Bawth (1964).

When not writing, Thompson continued to pursue her performing career, appearing with Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire in the movie Funny Face (1956), and starring in her own television special, which, according to the New York Herald Tribune (October 16, 1957), was "an almost unqualified disaster." In 1970, she made another movie appearance in Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon. That year, she abandoned Eloise to write Miss Pooky Peckinpaugh and Her Secret Private Boyfriends Complete with Telephone Numbers.

In her later years, Thompson, who was married and divorced twice and had no children, resided in Manhattan with her goddaughter Liza Minnelli . Her friendship with Judy Garland and Vincente Minnelli dated back to her Hollywood days when she worked on the Minnelli-Garland movie The Harvey Girls. Before her death, Thompson had agreed to keep the original Eloise in print, but requested that the three sequels not be reprinted. After her death, her family allowed Simon & Schuster to reissue the unavailable titles, thus unleashing Eloise on a new crop of young, and not so young, readers. Also published was a new edition of the first book, retitled Eloise: The Absolutely Essential Edition, which included an 18-page scrapbook overview of Eloise's history by Marie Brenner , with assistance by Hilary Knight. Both declared the project "an act of love."