Kay Thompson (45 page)

“They’re all agog at MGM over Kay Thompson’s test for the fashion editor in
Wedding Day,
” noted
The Hollywood Reporter
on October 6.

Well, not exactly “all.” Kangaroo Court Judge Schary firmly vetoed Thompson and instead assigned the part to studio contract player Dolores Gray. Embarrassed and humiliated, Kay prayed that the November publication of
Eloise
would not be a bust, too.

Meanwhile, complications plagued the production. Carol Haney discovered that she was three months pregnant about the same time Dan Dailey was hospitalized for “a neck injury suffered in a fall from a horse.” Making matters
worse, Edens had reached an impasse in his negotiations with Warner Brothers for the rights to the Gershwin songs. And so, as the Christmas holidays approached,
Wedding Day
was, in Stanley Donen’s estimation, “dead in the water.”

But then came the first of several miracles. Donen received a letter from Broadway director George Abbott, asking if he might be interested in codirecting Warner Brothers’ film version of
The Pajama Game
after he completed
Wedding Day
. Donen recalled, “I said to Roger, ‘Here’s the deal . . . I’ll get my agent to make an agreement that says Warner Bros. can have my services
if
MGM gets the rights to use [the Gershwin songs].’ ”

It worked. However, bagging Gershwin chestnuts did not a picture make.
Wedding Day
was still minus a bride and groom.

In the interim, Gershe stumbled onto a magazine interview with Audrey Hepburn in which she declared her passionate desire “to do a musical one day” because she had grown up idol-worshipping the films of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

When Gershe reported this intelligence to Edens and Donen, they were excited by the prospect—though it seemed a long shot. First, the Oscar-winning actress was arguably the hottest star in Hollywood; second, she was under contract to Paramount; and third, even if a loan-out could be negotiated, she would not come cheap.

In mid-December 1955, shortly after completing
War and Peace
with her husband, Mel Ferrer, Audrey was holed up in Paris at the Hôtel Raphaël, poring over screenplays, trying to decide on her next movie—and there was no shortage of juicy projects from which to choose.

The odds of her selecting
Wedding Day
were ridiculously slim, but, with no stars other than Dolores Gray, Roger and Stanley were in desperate need of some marquee razzle-dazzle to keep their project afloat. So they pitched the project to Hepburn’s agent, Kurt Frings, and demanded a fast answer. “She’s at the Raphaël in Paris,” Frings told them. “Send her a copy of the script and send one to me.”

The agent received his copy first and read it immediately. “Kurt Frings hated it,” Gershe admitted. “He kept saying how embarrassed he was that he had told Roger and Stanley to send it to Audrey, because he couldn’t stand it.” It was too late to stop Audrey’s copy of the script from being delivered to her hotel, but Frings informed the crestfallen filmmakers that he would be advising his client to pass.

While the script was still making its way across the Atlantic, Edens attended a Christmas party at the Beverly Hills home of Clifton Webb. Spotting his old friend Fred Astaire, Roger had an epiphany: “Why not Fred?” Though
the fifty-six-year-old actor was a bit long in the tooth for the role of the thirtysomething photographer as written, an open mind, a little squinting, and a judicious dose of desperation led Roger to confront Fred with the opening line “What are you doing?”

Fred explained that he had just signed a two-picture deal with Paramount, the first of which would be
Papa’s Delicate Condition,
set to start preproduction after the first of the year.

Emboldened by a few cocktails, Roger pitched
Wedding Day
and lied through his teeth: “Audrey Hepburn likes the script and will do it if we get you!”

“Say that again, please!” Astaire whiplashed. “Audrey Hepburn? That’s the dream of my life!”

That was all Roger needed to hear. He cabled Audrey that Fred Astaire would be her leading man if she came aboard
Wedding Day.

“Audrey usually takes about three days to read and consider a script,” Mel Ferrer told
Photoplay.
“This one she finished in two hours. She burst into the room where I was working and cried, ‘This is it! I don’t sing well enough, but, oh, if I can only do this with Fred Astaire!’ ”

Elated, Audrey sent a telegram to Roger Edens that read:
THIS IS THE ONLY THING I WANT TO DO FOR MY NEXT PICTURE
.

However, Paramount head honcho Barney Balaban flatly refused to play ball. With
Papa’s Delicate Condition
ready to start preproduction, he had no intention of postponing it. And, the idea of loaning Astaire
and
Hepburn to MGM was simply out of the question.

“I was repeatedly told that there was no chance to put the deal across,” Astaire wrote in his memoir. “However, I knew that Audrey wanted to make the picture and sooner or later they would all come around—because Audrey is a lady who gets her way.”

And she did—by bringing the mountain to Muhammad. After contentious negotiations, Schary agreed to sell Paramount the entire
Wedding Day
package (Gershe’s script, Donen, Edens, and the Gershwin song rights) for a cool $350,000. In exchange, MGM would gain the right to hire Audrey for
Green Mansions
and Fred for
Silk Stockings.

Rechristened
Funny Face
, the movie would start filming on April 9 at Paramount Studios in Hollywood, followed by location shooting in Paris during the month of June.

One important piece of the
Funny Face
puzzle that was
not
included in the complex transaction was Dolores Gray, who remained exclusive to Metro and was immediately reassigned to
The Opposite Sex
(MGM, 1956).

This left the door wide open to reinvite Thompson to the party, but by then, she was busy in New York promoting her runaway bestseller,
Eloise,
as well as rehearsing for a mid-February nightclub gig at The Plaza’s Persian Room. Roger flew to New York to meet with Kay and simply refused to take no for an answer.

“It would be wonderful to do because we were so close,” Kay said. “Roger and I were just one, into one.”

So, with a wave of her arm, she blew off the Persian Room date and on February 7, 1956, the front-page headline of
Daily Variety
heralded: “Kay Thompson in FUNNY Twist, Winds Up In Role.”

She would be paid $1,600 per week with a guarantee of fifteen weeks, raised to $2,000 after that—for a total of $30,667 by the time she wrapped on July 3.

By contrast, Audrey would make $195,049, plus 5 percent net profits; and a guarantee that Hubert de Givenchy would be retained to design her high-fashion ensembles—all of which she would get to keep. Astaire would earn a flat $165,000 with no perks. Metro’s original projected cost of $1,898,205 would ultimately balloon to $3,164,000 when all was said and done.

“I suppose you might say I’m the result of Hollywood’s quest for new faces,” Kay joked in a Paramount press release. “New! That’s a good one. I’ve been around so long I remember when it was safe to walk across Hollywood Boulevard.”

I
n the latest draft
of Leonard Gershe’s script, dated January 20, 1956, there was a highly developed courtship between Miss Prescott and a Christian Dior–like fashion designer named Pierre Duval (to be played by a major French star like Jean Gabin or Jean Servais). In fact,
My One and Only
(George Gershwin–Ira Gershwin) had been planned and licensed as a romantic duet for these characters and, during the finale, they were supposed to be married in a double wedding ceremony along with Jo and Dick.

When Thompson was signed to play Miss Prescott, however, the decision must have been made that her strident and masculine aura did not lend itself well to this lovey-dovey subplot, because in the next re-write it was nowhere to be found. Duval’s relationship with Miss Prescott became strictly business and his scenes were significantly reduced (the role was ultimately cast with the economical character actor Robert Flemyng).

Conversely, Miss Prescott’s scenes were beefed up as a sexless third wheel to Jo and Dick. In place of the Prescott-Duvall duet, for instance, it was decided
that Kay’s screen time would be much better spent performing a song with Audrey. So Edens and Gershe composed a new number entitled
On How to Be Lovely
during which the novice is taught the fine art of modeling by the worldly fashion editor.

Somewhat less savvy was Thompson’s real-life decision to have the bags under her eyes removed and to undergo her
fifth
rhinoplasty—which, unfortunately, resulted in complications. The following November, after
Funny Face
was in the can, columnist Dorothy Kilgallen revealed, “Only a few friends know that during the shooting of the picture Kay was suffering all kinds of tortures, mental and physical, because of an unsuccessful plastic surgery job on her nose.”

As a result, Kay had to be caked in heavy makeup and photographed from a becoming distance, rarely closer than a medium head-to-waist shot. And all her publicity stills from the movie were extensively retouched.

Also, upon close scrutiny, one cannot help but notice that in certain scenes, Kay seems slightly hunched forward like a vulture. “By then, Kay had developed osteoporosis and was very self-conscious about it,” Mart Crowley recalled. “She’d do her best to stand straight up but it didn’t always work. And she thought Edith Head’s clothes did nothing to disguise the hump on her back.”

Edith Head was Paramount’s resident fashion chief, with an army of Oscars to her credit and an ego to match. On the surface, it seemed logical that she would be assigned to
Funny Face
because she had previously won Academy Awards for two Audrey Hepburn films,
Roman Holiday
and
Sabrina.
For the latter, however, Hubert de Givenchy deserved to share the Oscar for designing Audrey’s most memorable couture. Astonishingly, he had not been included on the ballot, and Edith had no qualms about taking home the prize with nary a word of thanks to the snubbed French designer. Not so this time. Before signing his contract for
Funny Face,
Givenchy demanded contractual clauses that would ensure prominent attribution in the main titles and, in the event of an Academy Award nomination, shared credit with Head. And because
Funny Face
was about the world of haute couture, Givenchy would design all of Audrey’s high-fashion ensembles, leaving Head to do her dowdy, pre-supermodel attire—which had to be purposefully ugly for the sake of contrast.

Adding to the tense atmosphere was Kay’s highly vocal campaign to have Givenchy design
her
wardrobe, too. She argued vociferously that Miss Prescott was the editor of the monthly bible of the fashion trade and should be dressed accordingly. But Head fought tooth and nail to keep Thompson under her jurisdiction—and won—though it turned out to be a Pyrrhic victory.

“Kay was very,
very
upset about her wardrobe in
Funny Face,
” recalled Marion Marshall, then the wife of Stanley Donen. “She didn’t think that Edith Head had done a good job for her—which I can’t disagree with.”

“[Kay] persuaded Roger Edens to call the egomaniacal, implacable Edith Head while she listened on the extension phone,” recalled Rex Reed. “ ‘Kay is playing a fashion editor based on Diana Vreeland,’ [Roger] said, ‘so we need a wardrobe that is very Coco Chanel.’ Dead silence, followed by, ‘Roger, go fuck yourself.’ Kay said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll do my own clothes,’ and she did.”

Marching right into the Paramount wardrobe department, Kay dictated her vision to Edith, who later described the Prescott designs as the result of a “happy collaboration” with Thompson: “In
Funny Face,
[Kay] had a code: two-piece costume with a short, short skirt and a long, long jacket, a tiny sailor collar at the top. She wore this from tweeds to chiffon. It became a long skirt for evening wear. The point of the uniform was that here was the editor who told every woman what to wear—‘Everybody must wear pink!’—but for herself, ‘I wouldn’t be caught dead in it.’ She announces that every woman must wear different clothes for different moods, and then proceeds to wear her two-piece suit.”

Though Edith had been reduced to a seamstress like Ozel following Kay’s instructions, the dressing-down was softened by Kay assuming her Eloise voice, making light of each directive—a routine Edith later described as the “squeaky voice of a little girl ‘shot with arsenic.’ ” Head could have put up a fight, but with Edens on Thompson’s side, she did not relish eating crow. “Kay is completely Kay,” Edith acquiesced philosophically.

Whereas Head had envisioned Miss Prescott wearing either skirts or dresses, Kay could not help but slip in a pair of black Capri-style slacks from the latest “Kay Thompson’s Fancy Pants” collection. And she persuaded Audrey to wear them, too, during her “Basal Metabolism” dance in the beatnik club, as well as during her duet with Kay, “On How to Be Lovely.”

However, the young star had not yet cottoned to the new Italian fashion trend and was not keen on the idea of exposing her ankles. So when it came time to film the sequence, Audrey covered every inch of her lower extremities with black socks and black ballet slippers that essentially turned Kay’s fashion-forward Capris into standard-issue leotards.

Stanley Donen took one look at the ensemble and concluded that instead of black socks, she should wear white ones. Otherwise, she would not stand out in the darkly lit café.

“Absolutely not!” Audrey cried. “It will spoil the whole black silhouette and cut the line at my feet!”

“If you don’t wear the white socks,” Donen reasoned, “you will fade into the background, there will be no definition to your movement, and the dance sequence will be bland and dull.”