Kay Thompson

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Kay Thompson (real. Catherine L. Fink ; born November 9, 1908 in St. Louis , Missouri , † July 2, 1998 in New York City ) was an American singer , arranger , composer , actress and writer .

Live and act

Career as a musician, arranger and actress

The second of four children of Leo George Fink, who immigrated from Austria , and his American wife Hattie from Kansas , Catherine Fink grew up in St. Louis, where her father ran a jewelry store. She started taking piano lessons at the age of four; At the age of 16 she made her debut as a pianist at a concert of the symphony orchestra in her hometown with interpretations of the works of Franz Liszt and made her first appearances as a singer with a local dance band.

In 1929 she went to California, where she soon found employment in the radio under the stage name Kay Thompson and first appeared as a singer with the Tom Coakley orchestra and then with the Mills Brothers . At the beginning of the 1930s she worked for the vocal ensemble "Waring's Pennsylvanians" by Fred Waring not only as a singer but also as an arranger and composer.

In 1935 she made her first own recordings at Brunswick Records and also worked in the studio with André Kostelanetz's orchestra . With her first own ensemble, the Kay Thompson Swing Choir , she was from then on regularly on the radio, including in the Saturday Night Swing Club at CBS , where she occasionally presented her own radio show with Kay Thompson & Company . In 1937 she had a guest appearance in the Hollywood musical Manhattan Merry-Go-Round . In the same year she married the trumpeter Jack Jenney ; the marriage was divorced in 1939 without children.

On the mediation of the composer Hugh Martin , the film producer Arthur Freed brought Kay Thompson to Hollywood in 1943, where she coined the soundtrack of numerous musical film adaptations at MGM until 1947 and designed song numbers for stars such as Lena Horne , Judy Garland , June Allyson and Frank Sinatra ; in The Kid from Brooklyn (1946) she also starred herself.

For a short time during these years she was married to the radio producer William Spier (1906–1973). In 1946 she became the godmother of Liza Minnellis , the daughter of Judy Garland and Vincente Minnelli .

Kay Thompson left MGM in 1948 and built her own stage show together with the choreographer Robert Alton , with which she made regular guest appearances on smaller music and cabaret stages across the USA until the late 1950s; the ensemble temporarily included the Williams Brothers around Andy Williams , whom she met while filming The Harvey Girls (1946). Her program, which is characterized by jazz and musicals, which also included some self-written songs, was often heard on the radio; in addition, she appeared on a number of popular television shows.

1957 was Thompson in the role of the fashion journalist "Maggie Prescott" in the musical film A Sweet Face ( Funny Face ) with Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire , for which she also contributed the musical arrangements. In 1962 she worked as a consultant on the vocal choreography for the Judy Garland Show with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin .

Her last film appearance was Kay Thompson in 1970 alongside her goddaughter Liza Minnelli in Otto Preminger's stripes Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon .

Career as a writer

In the 1950s, Thompson invented the literary figure of the lively six-year-old girl "Eloise", who lived with her nanny, her pug "Weenie" and her turtle "Skipperdee" in the New York Plaza Hotel (where Thompson himself lived until the early 1960s was at home) and experienced numerous adventures there. In 1955 she published together with the illustrator Hilary Knight (born 1926) under the title Eloise. A Book for Precocious Grown-Ups ( Eloise. A book for young and old ) a first children's book with stories about Eloise, which quickly became a bestseller with a first edition of 150,000 copies. As part of the television game series Playhouse 90 , the book was also filmed under the direction of John Frankenheimer ; Thompson himself acted as a narrator in the film.

1957 followed the band Eloise in Paris , which is based in the Paris hotel "Relais Bisson" and for which Thompson and Knight themselves spent a month there. The third band, Eloise at Christmastime ( Christmas with Eloise ), also playing in New York, was similarly successful. In February 1959 she traveled with Knight to Moscow , where the book Eloise in Moscow , published that same year, was written. Her visit to Moscow also inspired Thompson to write her album Kay Thompson Party, also released in 1959 : Let's Talk about Russia .

At the Plaza Hotel, Thompson held regular children's parties in the late 1950s, at which she herself slipped into the role of Eloise. Through her own company, "Eloise Ltd.", she also sold numerous merchandising items such as dolls, children's fashion and radio play records until the mid-1960s .

The "Eloise" books are still popular today and have been translated into various languages, some of them also into German. Four years after Thompson's death, a fifth volume Eloise Takes a Bawth appeared in 2002 , which she completed in 1964, but then withdrew. Since then, the series has been continued by other authors.

In 2003 the television films Eloise at The Plaza and Eloise at Christmastime were made with Sofia Vassilieva as "Eloise" and Julie Andrews as "Nanny".

Last years and death

In the early 1960s, Thompson moved from the New York Plaza Hotel to the Palazzo Torlonia in Rome . After her last film appearance in 1970, she withdrew from show business, but in the 1970s she still worked as a choreographer for fashion shows by the American designer Halston .

At the end of the 1980s, she moved into the New York apartment of her goddaughter Liza Minnelli, with whom she was a close friend throughout her life. Thompson died there, last in a wheelchair, on July 2, 1998, a few months before her 90th birthday.

As a musical homage to her godmother, Liza Minnelli developed a show block with songs by Kay Thompson for her concert appearances in 2008, which is closely based on Thompson's stage show of the 1950s and 1960s and the Minnelli in her Broadway show Liza's at The Palace in December 2008 . ..! integrated.

Filmography

Films as an actress and vocal arranger at the same time

Films as a vocal arranger

TV appearances (selection)

Discography

Original singles

Original ben

  • 1952: Kay Thompson
  • 1959: Kay Thompson Party: Let's Talk About Russia

Compilations on CD

  • 1999: The Golden Years 1934–1954 (Box Office) (contains, inter alia, her studio album from 1952)
  • 2003: The Queen of Swing Vocals and Her Rhythm Singers 1933–1937 (Baldwin Street Music)

Own compositions

  • Au Revoir, Paris
  • Bazazz
  • Bout you 'n' me
  • Charades
  • Dasvidanya
  • Eloise
  • Follow me
  • Hola Hola, It's the Jubilee
  • Holiday Season
  • How To Raise a Child
  • I love a violin
  • I'm in love with Paris
  • Isn't it wonderful
  • Katie's blues
  • Love on a Greyhound Bus
  • More Wonderful Than These
  • Morning song
  • Moscow Cha-Cha-Cha
  • Myrtle
  • Old-fashioned hammock
  • On a summer evening
  • On the Caribbean
  • Poor Suzette
  • Promise Me Love
  • Quel Joi
  • Stop teasing me
  • Straight from my heart
  • Subito
  • Summer love
  • This is the time
  • This Reminds Me of London
  • Three AM at The Plaza
  • Vive l'Amour
  • You Gotta Love Somebody

Children's books

  • Kay THOMPSON (with illustrations by Hilary KNIGHT): Eloise. A Book for Precocious Grown-Ups. New York City: Simon & Schuster, 1955. (First German edition: Eloise. A book for young and old , translated by Ursula Renate. Munich / Vienna / Basel: Desch, 1959. [No ISBN]; second German edition: Eloise. A book for precocious adults , translated by Joachim Kalka. Berlin: Berlin Verlag, 2000. ISBN 3-8270-0362-8 .)
  • Kay THOMPSON (with illustrations by Hilary KNIGHT): Eloise in Paris . New York City: Simon & Schuster, 1957. (German edition: Eloise in Paris , translated by Elisabeth Åkerhielm. Berlin: Berlin-Verlag, 2001. ISBN 3-8270-0426-8 .)
  • Kay THOMPSON (with illustrations by Hilary KNIGHT): Eloise at Christmastime . New York City: Simon & Schuster, 1958. (German edition: Christmas with Eloise , translated by Elisabeth Åkerhielm. Berlin: Berlin-Verlag, 2000. ISBN 3-8270-0382-2 .)
  • Kay THOMPSON (with illustrations by Hilary KNIGHT): Eloise in Moscow . New York City: Simon & Schuster, 1959.
  • Kay THOMPSON (with illustrations by Hilary KNIGHT): Eloise Takes a Bawth . [posthumous, manuscript 1964]. New York City: Simon & Schuster, 2002.

Film adaptations

Web links

Commons : Kay Thompson  - Collection of Images
personal data
SURNAME Thompson, Kay
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fink, Catherine L. (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American singer, arranger, composer, actress and writer
DATE OF BIRTH November 9, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH St. Louis , Missouri , United States
DATE OF DEATH July 2nd, 1998
Place of death New York City , New York , United States