One of Irvin's big revelations is that Thompson spoke like a child herself, often imagining herself as a 6-year-old. Some places she didn't get in, but she'd make headlines with it, and she would use that to help sell her line of pants, which were marketed exclusively at Saks Fifth Avenue."
You know, most restaurants back then had dress codes, and she'd show up and try to defy the code and get in. She wrote the material she designed the wardrobe that she wore, which was slacks. Her grand success even led to a new fashion trend. Her nightclub act pulled in huge money - she was the first person to crack the million-dollar ceiling performing cabaret. "And it was unbelievably well-received, just this overnight sensation." "That was little 19-year-old Andy Williams and his three brothers," explains Irvin. Now who are we going to get to sing it in the movie?' "įinally, in 1947, after being rejected by MGM time after time, Thompson quit to star her own cabaret act with the Williams Brothers. She would come in and demonstrate her latest vocal arrangements for a musical, and they would say, 'God, Kaye, that is fantastic. Hollywood wouldn't quite see it that way. But she had this idea that she wanted to be a movie star. "She wasn't a traditionally beautiful woman she was kind of masculine. "When she went to MGM, she had already been a star in radio, and people always joke about, you know, she had a face for radio," Irvin says of Thompson's early life in movie musicals. It was a farce of childhood meant for adults and youth alike, and it all came from Thompson's often-warped mind (rumor has it she often spoke in a child's voice). She was such a big personality, in fact, that she had to diffuse it into an alter ego, the impish 6-year-old she called Eloise.Įloise lived in New York's Plaza Hotel and had adventures in glamorous locations like Moscow and Paris, dragging her nanny around while she drank champagne, wore fur and tended to her pet pigeon. Thompson was a true eccentric, the kind of woman who could waltz through ballrooms and turn every head. She was of her time, and before her time - a woman, as they say, of great substance and character. But she was also the woman who gave voice to MGM's musicals a legendary vocal coach for the likes of Frank Sinatra, Lena Horn, Marlene Dietrich and Lucille Ball a fabled friend and mentor to Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli the actress who stole a film from under the feet of Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn and the most popular and highest-paid cabaret performer of all time.Īnd if that wasn't enough, she made women's slacks into a high-fashion item. She was, most famously, the creator of the Eloise book series. Kay Thompson is a difficult woman to describe.
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