Kay Thompson: From Funny Face to Eloise - Hardcover

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SAM IRVIN is a veteran filmmaker. After beginning his career as Brian De Palma’s assistant on Dressed to Kill, Irvin has directed a dozen movies, including Guilty as Charged, Elvira’s Haunted Hills, and Kiss of a Stranger (from his own original screenplay). Irvin’s other credits include co-executive producing Bill Condon’s Academy Award-winning motion picture, Gods and Monsters. Between projects, he teaches graduate courses on filmmaking at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts.

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Chapter One

THINK FINK

Like Eloise at The Plaza, Kay Thompson was a figment of the imagination.

Both were dreamed up by Kitty Fink as whimsical escapes from a mundane and sometimes painful childhood.

Kitty’s father was Leo George Fink, born on January 12, 1874, in Vienna, Austria, the son of Mark Fink, a Jew from Norway, and Antoinette “Antonie” Steiner, a Christian from Vienna. Troubled by anti-Semitism and interfaith bigotry, the Fink family immigrated to America in 1886 with high hopes for a safer and more prosperous future. Unfortunately, anti-Semitism existed on both sides of the Atlantic and so, like many others, the Finks submerged their Jewish heritage in order to assimilate into mainstream society.

When Leo arrived in the United States at the age of twelve, he was teased by bullies for his broken English and foreign ways. Afraid to draw attention to himself, he kept his mouth shut and faded into the background. As he sat on the sidelines, Leo’s youth passed him by, and when it came to dating girls, he was a late bloomer. How Leo ended up in St. Louis is not known, but it was love that anchored him there.

The object of his affection was a waitress named Harriet Adelaide Tetrick, an attractive WASP from the Midwest. Most people called her Hattie, but Kay later nicknamed her Flavia, the Latin word for “yellow-haired,” because of her bleached-blond tresses (a look Thompson later adopted). Though her ancestors were German, Hattie was as American as apple pie. Born in 1888 in Eureka, Kansas, she was raised 140 miles northwest in Abilene, home of future President Dwight D. Eisenhower, two years her junior. She also lived for a time in Iowa, but by the age of eighteen ended up in St. Louis, where she got a job waiting tables at a local restaurant. It was there that she met a shy, thirty-two-year-old admirer named Leo Fink.

For Leo, Hattie was stylish, youthful, and outgoing, an appealing manifestation of everything he was not. And that was just fine with Hattie. Though he was fourteen years her senior, she admired his gentle demeanor and saw him as a responsible man who would provide well for her and their intended family. Smitten, Leo wanted to “rescue” Hattie from the workplace, so he proposed marriage on the condition that she quit her job and become a stay-at-home wife. She agreed and they tied the knot.

Emulating family trades he knew from Vienna, Leo had opened L. G. Fink, Inc., Jeweler and Pawnbroker, at 719 Pine, on the corner of North Eighth Street, where three balls, symbolic of pawnshops, hung over the door.

The first Fink residence was a modest apartment in a lower-income neighborhood at 3966 Laclede Street. Hattie was musical at heart, so even though space and money were tight, she convinced her husband to acquire an upright piano—probably an orphan from his pawnshop.

Sociable with all the neighbors, Hattie offered piano and singing lessons to friends while her husband managed the store in town. Leo didn’t like this arrangement one bit. He believed a wife should be making babies, not earning money; that was the man’s job. Unfortunately, Hattie’s passion for fashion exceeded her spending allowance, so she saw no reason why she couldn’t help fund her expensive taste in clothes. This rebellious behavior was a constant source of conflict—with Leo assuming the role of strict disciplinarian.

The solution to their differences came on January 28, 1907, when the stork delivered a baby girl named Blanche Margaret, a dark-haired beauty. To Leo’s great relief, Hattie would now have no time for anything except being a mom. And the job title stuck.

Hattie may have acquiesced to her duties as a housewife, but when it came to religion, her Presbyterian background prevailed. However, no matter how much Leo may have desired to blend in as an American Protestant, he was never able to erase his Yiddish accent. Regardless, there were no menorahs to be found at holiday time; their house had the requisite Christmas tree and stockings were hung by the chimney with care.

On November 9, 1909, the stork made a second stop at the Fink residence, this time armed with a blue-eyed, redheaded, freckle-faced bundle of joie de vivre named Catherine Louise, but everyone called her Kitty—until the time when she left home to become Kay Thompson. Her middle name, Louise, was inspired by her city of birth, St. Louis, and it became the basis for the name of her alter ego, Eloise.

Having outgrown their tiny home, the Finks relocated three miles northeast to a slightly larger dwelling at 5965 Maple, in a more family-oriented, middle-class neighborhood. Hattie busied herself with a rapid succession of additions to the family: first, on March 20, 1911, a boy christened Leo George Fink Jr., known to everyone as Bud, and then, on August 20, 1912, a girl named Marian Antoinette.

The Fink kids were welcomed into the neighborhood, with frequent compliments on how cute Blanche, Bud, and Marian were. The comments about Kitty were not quite as enthusiastic—and it was painfully apparent why: she wasn’t blessed with beauty. Even as a toddler, Kitty could sense that her siblings got more notice than she did. She quickly learned that if she wanted to vie for attention, she would have to do something to earn it. So, she made faces. She grimaced. She stuck out her tongue, messed up her hair—whatever silliness came to mind. Hardly a coincidence, Kitty pulled the same sort of attention-grabbing stunts that later turned up in all those Eloise books—like putting toe shoes on her ears or wearing a cabbage leaf as a hat. And it worked. People began to notice her. They thought she was funny. In the midst of laughter, Kitty was no longer second fiddle. She was a self-made star.

She was also a daredevil, often climbing trees and roughhousing with the neighborhood boys. But she loved fantasizing with dolls and playing dress-up, too. This split personality—half tomboy, half girlie girl—would prove to be just one of her many dichotomies.

“I was different from my siblings,” Thompson later reflected. “I used to lie awake nights, trying to think up ways of keeping up with brilliant Blanche and good-looking Marian … whom everyone admired while they disregarded me.”

As feelings of insecurity and alienation intensified, Kitty often retreated into her own world, where, in her solitude, she developed an imaginary friend—the first signs of an alter ego that later evolved into Eloise. While others played games, Kitty played God. She created characters, not only fictional ones but flesh-and-blood personas like Kay Thompson—a calling she continued throughout her life, both for herself and for many others.

She was also obsessed with music. Before she could walk or talk, Kitty merrily banged away on the piano, composing her own discordant cantatas. To preserve the family’s sanity, her mother began giving Kitty piano lessons when she was three. To Hattie’s astonishment, the toddler took to classical music like a duck to water. Neighbors clamored to hear for themselves what this precocious youngster would master next—Bach? Beethoven? In no time flat, Kitty’s reputation switched from clown to prodigy and, with her tiny legs dangling off the piano stool, she got her first taste of applause, a genuine appreciation that she liked much more than mere attention.

The day after...