Kay Thompson (11 page)

Kay had a tempestuous, almost childlike temper, and when things were not going her way, she tended to take out her frustrations on other people, often those working hardest on her behalf. The fall guy this time around was her manager, Danny Winkler. She accused him of concentrating entirely too much of his time on a hot newcomer named Milton Berle while her career was going down in flames. When the smoke cleared, Danny discovered that she’d left him for Mark Hanna, whose showbiz clients included bandleader Benny Goodman.

The first thing Hanna did was get Thompson a nightclub booking in the King Cole Room at the St. Regis Hotel, backed by Emil Coleman and His Orchestra. For five weeks, February 13 to March 18, 1936, Kay performed for the upper crust of Manhattan’s café society—including William S. Paley, president of CBS, who was known to frequent the joint. Of course, that was precisely the reason Hanna had chosen the spot in the first place and the scheme worked like a charm.

Awestruck by Thompson’s versatility and musicianship, Paley decided that she was just the commercial ingredient they needed to team with renowned Russian conductor André Kostelanetz and his forty-five-piece symphony orchestra for a new Friday night series. The program would be called
The Chesterfield Radio Show,
sponsored by Liggett and Myers Tobacco Company, makers of Chesterfield cigarettes. Although Kostelanetz was associated with classical fare, the idea for this new show was to present big-band rhythm and swing tunes augmented by lush orchestrations. But there was a caveat. Paley wanted Kay as well as her large chorus.

That was easier said than done. By then, the Melody Girls and the Three Rhythm Kings had gone their separate ways. Even Kay’s sisters had given up the business and gone back to St. Louis (where Blanche was now married and expecting her first baby). But, with an offer of $1,000 per week on the table for her and her group combined, Kay agreed to deliver whatever CBS wanted.

In Kay’s new choir, there would be three males and a dozen females. She would pay them each a flat weekly salary of $31.75 and pocket the remaining $500 for herself.

Elizabeth Newburger was her first recruit—the only carryover from the original lineup. Thompson let it be known that she was interested in combining several existing groups into one superchorus, to be billed as Kay Thompson and the Rhythm Singers. The components would include the Vass Sisters (Jitchy,
Weezie, and Sally), the Blue Flames (Helen Jackson and Jude and Beverly Freeland), two members of the Symphonettes (Loulie Jean Norman and Marjorie Miller), plus Marion Jernigan and Jessie Mahr from other groups. For the twelfth girl, Jack Jenney recommended eighteen-year-old Bea Wain.

“Jack had me go to Kay’s apartment and talk to her about joining the choir,” Wain recalled. “Kay said, ‘I’d love to have you in my group.’ And I said, ‘There’s only one problem. I’m in a quartet, Bea and the Bachelors, with Al Rinker, Johnny Smedburg, Ken Lane, and me.’ ”

Problem? For Kay, it was manna from heaven. She knew all three of the guys and adored them. Rinker was a former member of the Rhythm Boys with Bing Crosby; Smedburg was a former member of the Three Ambassadors who sang backup for Thompson at the Cocoanut Grove in 1931–32; and Ken Lane was not only a singer but an expert pianist who demonstrated songs for top publishing companies. Wasting no time, Kay awarded them all the final slots on her all-star team.

Next, she spread the word that she was looking for a rehearsal pianist. Loulie Jean Norman recommended a twenty-one-year-old friend from Birmingham, Alabama, named Hugh Martin. When Hugh came to audition at Kay’s apartment, he met an Oklahoman singer named Ralph Blane and, subsequently, they joined forces to become one of the most successful composing teams of the 1940s (“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” “The Trolley Song,” among others). In the meantime, though, Hugh would collect $25 a week playing piano for Kay—and Ralph would join her choir the following year.

“We rehearsed every single day,” Elizabeth Newburger recalled. “The hours were unbelievable.” Even though Kay was the red-nailed dominatrix of a vocal chord sweatshop, the Rhythm Singers were having too much fun to hold it against her. And the results were astonishing.

“I have never heard anything like the sound that came out of them,” Hugh Martin rhapsodized. “It actually made me ill. All the blood went to my feet and I had to lean against the wall for support. It was such a thrilling sound.”

In addition to rhythm, swing, and jazz, Kay specialized in comic novelty songs, like “Us on a Bus” and “The Old Man in the Mountain,” for which she’d have her singers doing sound effects, funny accents, and silly voices. “I Can Pull a Rabbit Outta My Hat” featured imitations of Betty Boop, Portland Hoffa, and a chicken.

And there was a certain mascot who often popped up unexpectedly during rehearsals. “Kay always used to do the Eloise bit,” Bea Wain recalled. “She would come into the room and do the voice: ‘How’s everybody? Well, I was late today because I did so-and-so and so-and-so.’ And we used to be hysterical.”

“Kay used to do Eloise a lot,” Elizabeth Newburger confirmed. “It was as if her freedom gave us permission to come up with crazy things of our own.”

“Kay used to use her Eloise voice to quiet us down when we were not behaving or singing the right note or something,” Virginia “Jitchy” Vass explained. “She would say, ‘I’m Eloise and I think Jitchy and Loulie are talking too much and I’m gonna report them to the management.’ Then we’d all stop and laugh and get to work again.”

Another habitué of their rehearsals was Mr. Chips. Unfortunately, he was not always a gentleman. “I wasn’t crazy about Chips,” recalled Loulie Jean. “He got on my leg once, and well, he lost me there.”

“Kay also had a housekeeper,” Bea explained, “which was
very
impressive. Her name was Mamie. She was young and black, a sophisticated Lena Horne type, who did everything from cooking to cleaning to secretarial duties.”

In the mornings, Kay would rehearse the small army at her place, then march everyone over to CBS at 485 Madison Avenue (between Fifty-first and Fifty-second Streets) for afternoon and evening sessions with Kostelanetz—Kosty, as they called him. In addition to his regular musicians, the maestro brought in a number of top jazz sidemen, including, quite conveniently, Jack Jenney—who, by then, was “living in sin” with Kay at her apartment.

“Kosty was crazy about our group,” Bea remarked, “which was quite something because he was really a very cultured conductor.”

They charmed other starched collars, too. “This very dignified gentleman came to one of our first rehearsals,” Bea recalled. “He was a big shot. And our little Southern girls, Jitchy, Weezie, and Sally Vass, shouted, ‘Cousin Willie!’ ”

It turned out that William Randolph Carmichael, vice president of Liggett and Myers Tobacco Company, was a cousin of the Vass sisters. Jitchy’s diary entry understated the obvious: “Kay is so thrilled that we’re kin to the Vice President.” No kidding.

Thompson was very careful not to offend Cousin Willie and his Chesterfield colleagues. “Kay only smoked Camels,” Bea said, “so she would take all her Camels out and put them in the Chesterfield package.”

The Chesterfield Radio Program
made its debut on May 1, 1936, and the reaction was seismic—especially for Kay and her Rhythm Singers.

“I have to tell you,” Bea reflected, “Kay was a mentor and a goddess and everything else. To us, she was the Statue of Liberty.”

The show was such a smash, Paley expanded it to two nights a week, Wednesdays and Fridays, starting July 1. It became one of the hottest tickets in town, especially for composers and musicians enraptured by Thompson’s unique vocal arrangements. Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, George and Ira
Gershwin, Harold Arlen, and E. Y. “Yip” Harburg were but a few of the avid fans who considered
The Chesterfield Radio Program
inspirational.

The great jazz vocalist Mel Tormé was only 11 years old when he first discovered Kay on
Chesterfield
. He was enthralled by her innovative use of voices and the fact that her group was the very first “to approximate a band.”

“Kay knows more about vocal-group writing than any other person alive,” Tormé wrote in his book
My Singing Teachers
. He particularly loved one of her signatures. “Kay’s tag endings to her arrangements were a hoot. She made a specialty of starting a line, adding to it, adding a bit more to it, then saying the whole line. Example: In
Back in Your Own Backyard
, she would wind up the arrangement with:
Back . . . Back in . . . Back in your . . . Back in your own . . . Back in your own back yard
.”

When Vincente Minnelli directed his first Broadway musicals,
The Show Is On
(1936) and
Hooray for What!
(1937), he wanted the scores to emulate the “marvelous André Kostelanetz arrangements on the radio,” and ended up borrowing Kay and Gordon Jenkins from Kosty’s staff to re-create that magic formula. This was just the beginning of a lifelong family bond between Thompson and Minnelli (later extending to his daughter Liza).

Initially,
The Chesterfield Radio Program
was staged at CBS’s Forty-fourth Street Playhouse, but as demand for seats intensified, the series was moved in September to a larger facility, the newly acquired CBS Radio Theater 3 (at Broadway and Fifty-third), later rechristened the Ed Sullivan Theater.

Unfortunately, double weekly doses were perhaps too much of a good thing. As ratings for the series began to soften, the folks at Chesterfield got spooked and, by the end of September, the Wednesday night installment was changed to classical music featuring opera singer Lily Pons (Kostelanetz’s future wife). The expectation was that the Friday night ratings would rebound, but when that did not happen, the maestro became the fall guy.

Although Kostelanetz’s orchestral treatments were critically acclaimed and had a major impact on Broadway and movie musicals, the biggest dance hits of the day continued to be those with the stark, brassy arrangements of the big band sound. When it was clear that a more youthful and hip bandleader was being sought, Kay recommended Lennie Hayton or Jack Jenney. Ultimately, the Chesterfield execs settled on Hal Kemp, who, with his thirteen-member ensemble, had not only been voted “Favorite Dance Band of 1936” by the readers of
Radio Guide,
but had also dominated the pop charts that year with two No. 1 records, “There’s a Small Hotel” and “When I’m with You.”

With such sweeping renovations, Kay feared she might get thrown under the bus, too, but her impressive rankings in popularity polls apparently saved
her. The year-end Hearst Newspaper Radio Editors Poll ranked Thompson as the No. 2 Best Female Vocalist (behind Frances Langford) and her Chesterfield program was voted No. 1 Best All-Round Musical Show.

Bob Hope was offered the job of master of ceremonies, but that dream quickly faded when he demanded the moon. Instead, it was decided that the modestly priced announcer Paul Douglas could handle the introductions just fine. (Ten years later, Douglas would star opposite Judy Holliday in
Born Yesterday
on Broadway.)

Renamed
It’s Chesterfield Time,
the stripped-down version of the series was launched on January 1, 1937. Billed by CBS as “Our First Lady of Rhythm,” Kay remained the overall driving force as star vocalist, choral director of her Rhythm Singers, and vocal arranger.

“I rehearse my group and make the arrangements,” she told a reporter, “and then give them to Hal Kemp, who fits his orchestra into it the way he wants to. But my arrangements of tunes are set and are the basis for any elaboration the orchestra makes.”

Kemp’s elaborations were the antithesis of Kosty’s—light on symphonic flourishes, heavy on blasts of brass and percussion. “It was better for Kay with Kostelanetz,” Hugh Martin believed. “I liked it better because I liked the rich, plush sound that Kostelanetz got. But, it was good both ways. Kay seemed to get along fine with both of them.” And according to all accounts, Kemp got on well with Kay.

T
hompson’s popularity was at
an all-time high but, of course, being a radio star did not necessarily translate into being mobbed on the street. Other than the occasional fan magazine spread and print ads for Dodge and Chesterfield, the general public had rarely glimpsed what Kay looked like. With any luck, that was about to change.

Herbert J. Yates, the cigar-chomping honcho of Republic Pictures, the Poverty Row movie studio, offered Kay the lead in
Hit Parade of 1937,
a musical scripted by Bradford Ropes, author of
Forty-second Street.
Despite the dubious pedigree of the low-budget quickie, it was just the sort of showcase she needed to springboard her way into major studio pictures. And the part was not a stretch. Kay was set to play Ruth Allison, an aspiring radio singer who becomes an overnight sensation via the guidance of talent agent Pete Garland (Phil Regan), with whom she falls in love. All would be perfect except that Ruth has a secret criminal past that threatens to ruin her career and her relationship.

Although Kay was announced for the role in the
Los Angeles Times
on January 18, 1937, her commitment to
It’s Chesterfield Time
prevented her from being available for the West Coast shoot in February. Her appeal to William Paley for a leave of absence was denied and so, to her great dismay, she was replaced by Frances Langford, her top radio rival.

On a brighter note, Kay was enjoying the riches of steady employment. She moved into a bigger, more luxurious apartment at 520 Madison Avenue between Fifty-third and Fifty-fourth Streets—within sneezing distance of CBS.

As
Radio Mirror
reported, “Kay took an entire floor, so that her three dogs could have plenty of room.”

Indeed, Mr. Chips had acquired two roommates, a pair of cocker spaniels named Nooky and Mooey (after characters in Mazo de la Roche’s novel
The Master of Jalna
). The additional space would also provide more elbow room for the human members of Kay’s entourage—boudoir companion Jack Jenney and maid Mamie—not to mention ample expanse for entertaining. Kay decorated the place herself, the first time she really had the money and a canvas large enough to serve as an outlet for one of her latent talents.