Rex Reed on Kay Thompson: You've Never
Seen Anything Like Her
Rex Reed
Harper's Bazaar
November 1972
Contrary to what you might think from watching the six o'clock news, there are a few original things in this seemingly joyless world! Things there are no things like. Some of them are: koala bears, Howard Arlen songs, country tomatoes served with fresh dill, Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat at four in the afternoon when the sun bounces polka dots off the fishing boats' any house Gloria Vanderbilt lives in, Concord Bridge bathed in the lemon of mid-October, the smell of gingerbread baking . . . and, of course, Kay Thompson.
If you don't know who Kay Thompson is, please turn the page. You just flunked pizazz. Legend has it that she even invented the word. In the 1940's she was the 10-carat referee at MGM who put the kicker in those champagne Technicolor musicals with her stylish vocal arrangements for everybody from Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly to Lena Horne and Judy Garland (who later made her Liza Minnelli's godmother!) In the 1950's she sang with Audrey Hepburn and danced with Fred Astaire in Funny Face, making movie history as a dazzling fashion editor, like Coco Chanel cross-pollinated with Diana Vreeland. In the 1960's she revolutionized children's books by turning out four sophisticated Eloise classics. But more than all that, she is best known for her nightclub act Jubilee Time with the four Williams Brothers -- an act so innovational every major nightclub star has tried unsuccessfully to copy it ever since. In classy circles people still talk about seeing Kay Thompson's act if they saw it, and hearing about it if they didn't. When she opened at New York's posh Directoire in 1948; Constance Talmadge, William Randolph Hearst and Maurice Chevalier were sitting ringside. After the screaming died down, they turned to Chevalier and asked "Well Maurice. What do you think?" "I don't know," he said puzzled. "I've never seen anything like her." Years later, the world still agrees.
"Boodle-dee-bopbop-bum-swe-bop . . ."
Fingers popping, she scats into the Oak Room of the stuffy old Plaza Hotel like a magic ray from a voodoo moon, wearing pants. Not just any old pants. Chamois by Halston, with a black-ribbed Italian scoop-neck sweater, a black belt with a big silver Pilgrim buckle, no makeup, black sunglasses on her head. She looks like a cross between Isak Dinsen and a rhythmic condor as she folds gingerly into a leather chair like crushed chiffon. "This isn't going to be one of those 'And then I wrote' pieces, is it? I don't like looking back. Let's keep it crisp as lettuce."
Original? "Well, I've always had a sense of line. In clothes. I started a uniform look. Because of my height and sharpness, I didn't need ruffles, bows and bracelets. I was the first to wear pants and simple shirts because they were easier for my arms to move in. I've always been a long drink of water. I think it was the tempo and movement the audience responded to that made our act such a great success. In show biz, people always did certain things. Esther Williams swam. Fred Astaire danced. Xavier Cugat played the maracas. Suddenly along came Kay Thompson, who did all the things people had done before, but it was totally different. The act started at a birthday party for Roger Edens. I got some of the kids together -- Judy, Cyd Charisse, Peter Lawford and songwriter Ralph Blane -- and dressed them in costumes from Show Boat. Bob Alton, the MGM choreographer, said 'I think you've got an act!' I said, 'What's an act?' The world soon found out. The ingredients were joyous purity, energy, and five voices that hit them in the stomach."
Energy is the key word in Kay's computer. She has a trumpet where her heart should be, an abundance of energy that does not come from a bottle, and even if it she's walking through a revolving door, she does it with fanfare and a drum roll going on inside. "Fatigue is a stranger to me. It's caused by monotony and a lack of interest in things. It has no place in a creative mind. People with nothing to do and nowhere to go bore me. Cary Grant in a hotel lobby after a long trip is like four showers and a glass of shampoo to me. Whenever I'm tired, I just think about the glorious colors of butterfly wings. It's refreshing. I mean, butterflies never get tired - or if they do, we never hear about it. Enthusiasm and imagination can carry you anywhere you want to go without Vuitton luggage.
Dramatically tall (actually 5'5 ½", but looks more like 7') reed thin (110 lbs. of unharnessed hydroelectric power) and limber as a Haitian dancer, Kay has her own solar system to feed her peculiar sunburst of energy. "I go along with a low-sugar diet, which means nibbling a lot of times during the day. In the a.m., an egg and piece of orange. Two hours later, two ounces of Gorgonzola cheese and some cold roast beef with maybe a chunk of grapefruit. Two hours after that, a small portion of beautiful fish with watercress and lemon. Everything in tiny portions. I never eat much after 9 p.m. Maybe a peach before bed. Nothing heavy before sleep, unless you want to dream about dock strikes. An occasional B-12 shot if I feel tired, which isn't often."
Kay isn't big on cosmetics. "I use a moisturizer from Orentreich's, a pale light power from Kenneth, Chinese lily pink lipstick, and Ivory soap." And in spite of her reputation as a fashionaut, she says she only owns seven dresses and fifty pairs of shoes. Crazy for shoes. "I only wear three designers when I do dress: Norell for sweetness and elegance, Georgio di Sante'Angelo for marvelous, wild fun, turkey feathers and shells; and Halston for glorious fabrics and uniform-like casualness. No ball gowns. Just give me a prison shirt and prison pants, a four yard long scarf tied around my head, and I'm ready to go." Her unwillingness to be saddled by conventional formulas, her ocean-spray zest for living on the wind, and the aura of Garbo mystery that surrounds her (nobody knows how old she is, or how many times she's been in love) have made her a welcome face in every port. "My life has been sic transit, and now I'm sick of transit. No point in saving memorabilia - somebody always steals it. I own an orange tree here, a rattan chair there, and the rest is in storage in Rome."
To Kay "home" is Rome, and New York. In Rome, it's the top floor of an elegant house owned by the daughter of the infanta on the Palazza Torlonia - an aerie containing leopard rugs, Baccarat crystal and a piano with the legs cut off so you have to sit on the floor to play it. In New York, it's an autumnal suite at the Plaza where people often call and ask "Is Eloise in?" and the operators all know to put the calls through to Kay. Some people say she lives at the Plaza rent-free but even the Plaza won't tell. "She's as much a part of the hotel as the palm trees," says a PR lady there. "She moved in two years ago to do some publicity for the Eloise books and we've never asked her when she plans to leave."
People give her go-power. Noel Coward keeps a spare piano in his Swiss chalet in Montreaux for her to compose songs on. In Rome, it's photographers and art gallery owners. In London, it's Stanley Donen and John Gielgud. In Paris, it's lunch at Maxim's with Roger Vivier, who makes shoes. "I'm stimulated by whoever is around - queens, dukes, dishwashers. If the tailor is attractive, it's him for a week." She prefers hanging around in furniture refinishing joints with the smell of banana oil to New York Parties, and says her greatest ambition is "to sit at Picasso's feet and clean his brushes with turpentine."
She's passionate about privacy, pedicures, Portofino and Porthault linen; detests heat, Caribbean islands, suntans, flies, mosquitoes and wasps (living or dead), fads, phonies, drunks, loudmouths and Miami Beach. Loves: whales, pug dogs, films, fashions, fettuccini, feathers, furs, and fuss. Hates: plastic hair curlers, air-conditioning, laundromats, people who are heavy furniture, smelly trains, broken sidewalks, hibiscus trees and plays by Edward Albee and Neil Simon ("both are overrated and nobody can tell you why").
Twice married to men she doesn't talk about, she's been single since 1947. "I love love and I believe in divorce. Two great things. I've lived with quite a few men and alone is better. That doesn't mean I'm a loner; I just don't like to ask permission." Psychiatry? "All for it. Got a problem? Talk to somebody and get it fixed. We are what we think. I've never been to a shrink myself, but I've dated a few." Female friends? Her face becomes a dried apricot. "I'm not much of a gossip. I don't like to get angry. It's unhealthy. I refuse to waste energy on anything that will pass tomorrow."
Ditto the future. What happens next depends on mood, temperament, laughter in the tarot cards and the best invitation. "Reality has left the building. Nothing is simple. The streets are the stage and we've got a whole new set of actors. My philosophy about work is the dream never passes, only the place you act it out in. I'm not sentimental about the old days, but I see no genus coming out of show business now, either. There are good people, but there are too many of them and they're all alike. Elvis was unique, so why copy him with imitators? Nothing Mick Jagger does is new. It's all copied from blacks. Bob Dylan is Leadbelly. The law of progress always carried me on to the next plateaus, too. Let's all go out and be ourselves. Theatres are being sold, the record business is being choked by its own lack of imagination, and in about ten minutes rock and roll will be finished. Everyone's looking for something different. What's next? Somebody who looks like Louis XIV in sweet little heels? I think it's going to be something elegant. Maybe the clavichord will come back. Originally will return, but it might take a revolution to do it."
Meanwhile, Kay Thompson is turning out her fifth Eloise book, Eloise's Wit and Observations, and designing and merchandising Eloise rag dolls, wigs, clothes, luggage and toys. Next she might coach Lucile Ball in the movie version of Mame. Or she might do a TV special. Or she might just stay home, like Eloise, and pour Perrier down the Plaza mail chute. Whatever she does, she'll do it with pizzaz.