T HOMPSON, KAY Entertainer, author
Address: b. Eloise, Ltd., Hotel Plaza, New York 19

When Simon and Schuster published Eloise in Moscow on October 30, 1959, it was exploiting a market which showed no trace of a recession. The fourth volume about the fiendish child who lives in New York's Hotel Plaza, the book immediately promised the same success as the earlier best sellers and the Eloise dolls, fashions, and phonograph records which preceded it.

Eloise, the enfant terrible, is the creation of Kay Thompson, who first courted success as a piano prodigy with the St. Louis Symphony. She tried again as a vocalist on radio, and then went to Hollywood for a career as a writer and arranger for film musicals. In 1947 she went out on the road with her own night club act. The tour ended before the creation of Eloise in 1955, although Miss Thompson has since managed to combine her new profession with appearances on television, a movie, and the writing of popular songs.

Kay Thompson was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of a local jeweler. She early showed promise as a pianist; she started to play the piano when she was four, and at sixteen played Franz Liszt with the St. Louis Symphony. Shortly afterward, she appeared as featured vocalist with a local dance band.

"I was a stage struck kid," she recalled (in Time, November 10, 1947), "and I got out of St. Louis fast." She went to California in 1929, when she was seventeen. Hr first employment was as a diving instructor, but soon she was on the radio as a vocalist with the Mills Brothers. Later she joined Fred Waring's band in New York as a singer and arranger "and was a brilliant success at both," according to writer Cynthia Lindsay (McCall's, January 1957). She decided to produce her own radio show, which was aired over the CBS network under the name Kay Thompson and Company, with Jim Backus as collaborator. "We were an instantaneous flop," Miss Thompson said (in McCall's, January 1957). "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 earn a performer's role, Miss Thompson signed a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios as an arranger and composer. Beginning in 1942, she worked with MGM choreographer Robert Alton on such films as The Ziegfield Follies, The Harvey Girls, and The Kid From Brooklyn. She remained with the studio for four years until she created her own night club routine with Alton's help.

The show opened at Ciro's night club in 1947 and was successful enough to be taken on the road. That autumn she opened in Chicago and in February 1948 she moved to Miami for a $15,000-a-week engagement. When she played the new Le Directorie night club in New York City, her verve kept going until 1953.

"She is witty, friendly, an accomplished musician, very agreeable to look at, and hardworking as a woodpecker." Remarked a writer for Harper's Magazine (July 1948). The show consisted largely of sophisticated songs, backed up by the Williams Brothers (Richard, Robert, Donald, Andrew), whose contribution too the routine was to "dance, and sing and fall on their faces and mug," according to the same reviewer. "The effect," he added "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."

Another writer (Harold Clurman in the New Republic, July 19,1948) saw Miss Thompson as a "brief and abstract chronicle" of America. "The approach to the audience is erect and direct with a kind of horizontal thrust like a lightening-fast projectile." He wrote. "There is punishment in the pleasure, but it is all so neatly done that we cannot protest; we can only admire. Efficiency is the ultimate beauty of our society."

After a six-year tour, the act was disbanded in the summer of 1953. Miss Thompson amused herself by redecorating her Beverly Hills home and designing fashion slacks for long-legged women, a line called "Kay Thompson Fancy Pants." Then she created a one-woman show which opened at New York's Hotel Plaza in January 1954. Playing the role of an ""outrageously blasé hostess," she entertained imaginary cocktail guests for forty minutes nightly. The routine was applauded, but destined for a shorter life than her earlier show. Eloise provided the interruption.

"Eloise's birth was unexpected," said Maurice Dolbier in the New York Herald Tribune (October 12, 1958) . "At rehearsals of her hotel and night club act with the Williams Brothers, Miss Thompson prized punctuality in herself and expected it from others. Then, one day, she was late. In a high childish voice that she had never used before, she made her apology. One of her co-workers said "Who are you, little girl?" Miss Thompson replied, "I am Eloise. I am six." The others joined in the game and it became a regular rehearsal pastime."

Later when Eloise was performing her new act at the Plaza's Persian Room, a friend introduced her to an illustrator who might be able to bring Eloise to life. The artist was Hilary Knight. She gave Knight a few lines to work with, and they became collaborators after he sent her a Christmas card containing his ideas of what Eloise looked like. Miss Thompson took a three month furlough from her show to write her book. Eloise was released by Simon and Schuster in November 1955 and had sold 150,000 copies by the time its sequel. Eloise in Paris, was published two years later. Also published by Simon & Schuster, the second volume had 100,000 copies in print within a week of publication day (November 14, 1957).

"Eloise is rawther unique," explained to a writer in Publisher's Weekly (December 16, 1957). "As everyone who can read must know by [now], Eloise is an overprivledged six-year-old, the terror of the Hotel Plaza in New York. She is also ill-mannered, ill-tempered 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 the Paris volume appeared, Eloise was a minor industry. In addition to the books (joined in September 1958 by Eloise At Christmastime, Random House), Miss Thompson created the firm of Eloise, Ltd. with headquarters appropriately located at the Hotel Plaza. Among its products are a phonograph record, "Absolutely Christmas Time," and a set of French postcards suitable for Eloise fans. Eloise has also inspired merchandise ranging from little-girl fashions to dolls and an Emergency Hotel Kit for itinerant six-year-olds.

Miss Thompson has not devoted all her time to Eloise, however. In 1956 she appeared with Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire in the motion picture Funny Face. The following year she created and starred in a television "spectacular" on NBC-TV, October 15, 1957, which John Crosby in the New York Herald Tribune (October 16, 1957) characterized as "an almost unqualified disaster." More recently, she composed a hit song, "Promise Me Love," which was recorded by Andy Williams, and co-starred with Margaret Lockwood and Trevor Howard in the British Television Series, Riverside 1. Unmarried, Miss Thompson has been described (in American Magazine, April 1956) as a "tall, slender, silver blonde whose particular appeal . . . is an explosively zany style" which has served her well in her several careers.

"She doesn't think her diversity of talent is unusual" wrote Cynthia Lindsay (McCall's January 1957). "'If artistically you are able to do one thing,' she says, 'you are more than likely able to do them all.' When asked her plans for the future, she says, 'The thing that comes up next is what I'll do next."'

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