one—to get Kay home for the holidays.
While Kay had been away, her St. Louis–based trio, the Debutantes, had morphed into Three Best Girls, featuring Blanche Fink, Louise LaRue, and Georgia Erwin, regularly featured on KMOX County Fair with pianist Ted Straeter. Marian Fink, who did not have as strong a passion for showbiz asher sisters, had decided to leave the group but would occasionally fill in when needed. Kay was happy to see them and enjoyed getting caught up on all the local gossip.
Jimmie, the young man who had partied with Kay the day she got canned from KMOX, asked her out on a Saturday night date to the Beaux Arts Room, a fancy dinner/dance club at the Coronado Hotel in downtown St. Louis. After the first course, he proposed.
“I don’t want to get married,” Kay responded. “My place is at a microphone in front of an orchestra like that one. Now, be a good boy and wangle me an introduction to that bandleader.” The puppy dog obeyed and, a short time later, Jimmie formally introduced conductor Al Lyons to his non-fiancée, “Kitty Fink.”
Winking at Jimmie to keep his mouth shut, Kay took over the conversation: “I have a friend who was a sensation at the Cocoanut Grove and she’d love to sing with your band.” With devil horns practically growing out of her head, Kay added that her “friend” was a West Coast singer named Kay Thompson, in town for the holidays.
Mesmerized by two magic words—“Cocoanut Grove”—Lyons said, “Send her around to the Fox Theatre tomorrow for an audition.”
The next day, when Kay came sauntering down the aisle at the Fox, Al asked where the Cocoanut Grove vocalist, Kay Thompson, was.
“Here I am,” she said with a smirk, sashaying over to the piano. “I’m the girl.”
The hoax went over better than the audition itself. Suddenly, Kay was stricken with stage fright. Her voice cracked through the first eight bars of “Underneath the Harlem Moon.”
Thinking fast, she exaggerated the deterioration in her voice, whispering pathetically, “I’ve got laryngitis. But I’m really very good.”
“I’ll never forget it! It was horrible!” Kay later recalled. “But he said to return to work, to my astonishment.”
Pulling herself together, Kay performed with Lyons regularly at the Fox Theatre, the Coronado Hotel, and the Meadowbrook Country Club, plus two nights a week on KMOX.
Around Christmas, however, after she’d been back home only a month, fate dealt Kay a card that took her right back to Hollywood for her biggest break yet.
Chapter Two
A FACE FOR RADIO
Thompson on the Air
(1933–37)
To us, she was the Statue of Liberty.
—Bea Wain, of Kay Thompson’s Rhythm Singers
“N ext came a wire from Los Angeles,” Kay told a reporter, “asking me to sign up with Columbia.” Offered an eye-popping $200 per week, Kay was being recruited by Don Lee’s KHJ radio station, the Los Angeles affiliate of the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS). “A horseshoe must have appeared over my head!” Kay recalled. “My lucky day had come! So, away I swished myself.”
Kay settled back into her La Marquise apartment in Los Angeles—just three miles from her new place of employment in the eight-story Don Lee Building at 1076 West Seventh Street (at the corner of Bixel). A Cadillac dealership, also owned by Lee, took up the ground floor, with KHJ occupying several of the floors above.
Wasting no time, Lee placed her on a new program, The Merrymakers Hour , which premiered on January 1, 1933. It should come as no surprise that the sponsor was the Union Oil Company, arranged by marketing manager DonForker, whose undying loyalty to Kay was surely a factor in Lee’s decision to hire her in the first place.
The show’s ensemble of comic performers was led by Sterling Holloway, twenty-eight, a redheaded Georgian with a raspy falsetto who would later supply the voice of Walt Disney’s Winnie the Pooh. Though Sterling was a gay man, he and Kay had
While Kay had been away, her St. Louis–based trio, the Debutantes, had morphed into Three Best Girls, featuring Blanche Fink, Louise LaRue, and Georgia Erwin, regularly featured on KMOX County Fair with pianist Ted Straeter. Marian Fink, who did not have as strong a passion for showbiz asher sisters, had decided to leave the group but would occasionally fill in when needed. Kay was happy to see them and enjoyed getting caught up on all the local gossip.
Jimmie, the young man who had partied with Kay the day she got canned from KMOX, asked her out on a Saturday night date to the Beaux Arts Room, a fancy dinner/dance club at the Coronado Hotel in downtown St. Louis. After the first course, he proposed.
“I don’t want to get married,” Kay responded. “My place is at a microphone in front of an orchestra like that one. Now, be a good boy and wangle me an introduction to that bandleader.” The puppy dog obeyed and, a short time later, Jimmie formally introduced conductor Al Lyons to his non-fiancée, “Kitty Fink.”
Winking at Jimmie to keep his mouth shut, Kay took over the conversation: “I have a friend who was a sensation at the Cocoanut Grove and she’d love to sing with your band.” With devil horns practically growing out of her head, Kay added that her “friend” was a West Coast singer named Kay Thompson, in town for the holidays.
Mesmerized by two magic words—“Cocoanut Grove”—Lyons said, “Send her around to the Fox Theatre tomorrow for an audition.”
The next day, when Kay came sauntering down the aisle at the Fox, Al asked where the Cocoanut Grove vocalist, Kay Thompson, was.
“Here I am,” she said with a smirk, sashaying over to the piano. “I’m the girl.”
The hoax went over better than the audition itself. Suddenly, Kay was stricken with stage fright. Her voice cracked through the first eight bars of “Underneath the Harlem Moon.”
Thinking fast, she exaggerated the deterioration in her voice, whispering pathetically, “I’ve got laryngitis. But I’m really very good.”
“I’ll never forget it! It was horrible!” Kay later recalled. “But he said to return to work, to my astonishment.”
Pulling herself together, Kay performed with Lyons regularly at the Fox Theatre, the Coronado Hotel, and the Meadowbrook Country Club, plus two nights a week on KMOX.
Around Christmas, however, after she’d been back home only a month, fate dealt Kay a card that took her right back to Hollywood for her biggest break yet.
Chapter Two
A FACE FOR RADIO
Thompson on the Air
(1933–37)
To us, she was the Statue of Liberty.
—Bea Wain, of Kay Thompson’s Rhythm Singers
“N ext came a wire from Los Angeles,” Kay told a reporter, “asking me to sign up with Columbia.” Offered an eye-popping $200 per week, Kay was being recruited by Don Lee’s KHJ radio station, the Los Angeles affiliate of the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS). “A horseshoe must have appeared over my head!” Kay recalled. “My lucky day had come! So, away I swished myself.”
Kay settled back into her La Marquise apartment in Los Angeles—just three miles from her new place of employment in the eight-story Don Lee Building at 1076 West Seventh Street (at the corner of Bixel). A Cadillac dealership, also owned by Lee, took up the ground floor, with KHJ occupying several of the floors above.
Wasting no time, Lee placed her on a new program, The Merrymakers Hour , which premiered on January 1, 1933. It should come as no surprise that the sponsor was the Union Oil Company, arranged by marketing manager DonForker, whose undying loyalty to Kay was surely a factor in Lee’s decision to hire her in the first place.
The show’s ensemble of comic performers was led by Sterling Holloway, twenty-eight, a redheaded Georgian with a raspy falsetto who would later supply the voice of Walt Disney’s Winnie the Pooh. Though Sterling was a gay man, he and Kay had
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