Kay Thompson (49 page)

When asked if the connection was deliberate, Hilary Knight said, “You could be right but it wouldn’t have registered with me at the time. I knew many, many people who went to Dr. Jacobson and so it doesn’t surprise me that Kay was involved. But nobody knew what amphetamines were back then.”

On a happier note, the book is littered with surprise appearances. Just as Alfred Hitchcock popped up in his own films, Thompson and Knight appear on page 59, seated in a red banquette at Maxim’s. There are also depictions of Kay’s famous friends—in one case, without her knowledge. On pages 36–37, at Fouquet’s sidewalk patisserie, you can spot Lena Horne and her husband, Lennie Hayton, as “extras” seated near Eloise.

“Kay was furious when she found out I had done that without consulting her first,” Knight confessed. “She should have seen it in the proofs but she didn’t notice it until after it was published. Kay never liked
anything
she didn’t instigate but, of course, Lena and Lennie were absolutely thrilled by it.”

Other celebrity cameos included Richard Avedon as Eloise’s passport photographer. “That was planned,” said Hilary. “So was the Christian Dior page, which was based on an actual visit we made to his salon.”

On page 51, Dior is seen designing a dress for Eloise. Nearby, an unnamed twenty-one-year-old protégé holds a sheath of pink fabric. The young man turned out to be Yves Saint Laurent.

Also on the Dior page is a bejeweled lady in a turban who ponders the unsightly state of Eloise’s flyaway hair. Some readers jumped to the conclusion that this must be Eloise’s elusive mother, but she was, in fact, Madame Germaine “Mitza” Bricard, Dior’s “empress-muse,” a high-society
vendeuse
“never seen without her turban and pearls.”

In a case of life imitating art, Dior had just created the black evening gown Kay wore on
The Standard Oil 75th Anniversary Show
(NBC-TV, October 13, 1957). Just ten days after the broadcast, Dior died of a heart attack. Kay flew to Paris to attend the funeral alongside the Duchess of Windsor, Jean Cocteau, Coco Chanel, Hubert de Givenchy, Pierre Balmain, Pierre Cardin, Cristóbal Balenciaga, Carmel Snow of
Harper’s Bazaar,
2,500 other mourners inside the church, an overflow of 7,000 outside, an ocean of flowers, and two humongous wreaths sent by Marlene Dietrich and Olivia de Havilland.

By the time
Eloise in Paris
was published three weeks later, Yves Saint Laurent had been named head designer for the House of Dior. While newspapers scrambled to find pictures of the heir apparent to the fashion throne, Kay and Hilary had already immortalized him in
Eloise in Paris.
Talk about au courant.

Thompson had also turned product placement into an art form long before Madison Avenue got on the stick. In addition to the pact with Sabena Airlines, she signed a one-year “swap deal” with Renault, the French car maker, for Eloise to be a spokesperson for the company’s Dauphine automobiles. Seven different illustrations of the car appeared in
Eloise in Paris
and the automobile was mentioned twice in the text.

Reciprocally, Eloise starred in advertisements for Renault Dauphine in
Esquire, The New Yorker, National Geographic,
and
Holiday.
In lieu of monetary compensation, Kay got a free Dauphine, but because she already owned a Jaguar XK125 and a BMW Isetta microcar, she sold it to Noël Coward.

Eloise in Paris
was chock full of other promotional plugs for Balmain, Hermès, Maxim’s, the Ritz, Macy’s, the Irving Trust Company, Gristedes Market, Johnnie Walker Black Label scotch, Perrier, the
New York Herald Tribune
(Paris edition), Band-Aid bandages, Hoover vacuum cleaners, and, of course, The Plaza.

In support of the book, a whole array of Eloise merchandise was ready to hit the stores, including Eloise French Postcards (which folded out like an accordion) and an elaborate Eloise Emergency Hotel Kit—a ten-inch hat box stuffed with such necessities as a “Sleep with Me Eloise” pillow; an Eloise “Do Not Disturb” sign; a picture of the house detective (“who is Mr. Matthews, just in case”); and a wooden resting block (“for exhausted chewing gum”).

“We got different companies to contribute their products to be in the kit,” Bernstein noted. These included Crayola crayons, Jujubes candy, Bazooka bubble gum, and ten thousand travel-size tubes of Pepsodent toothpaste. “We sold about eight thousand kits, so we had about two thousand tubes of toothpaste left over,” Bob laughed. “For the next several years, I was giving them away at Halloween at our house in Scarsdale. We were not popular.”

To go with the new Eloise dolls, Kay designed “Eloise Fashions,” a line of doll clothes and matching life-size versions for young girls. According to
Good Housekeeping,
the breast pocket of the Eloise Car Coat had an embroidered Renault automobile emblem patch that made it “perfect for tricycling through the halls of The Plaza.” It also helped justify the freebie automobile.

Naturally, the Plaza gift shop and the neighboring FAO Schwarz toy store were on board as outlets for Eloise products—but that was just the tip of the iceberg. When a deal with Rosemarie de Paris failed to congeal, Schrafft’s became the official sweetery for Eloise, with merchandise available at checkout counters. Of even greater value, the entire line of Eloise products would be carried by several major New York department stores, including Saks Fifth Avenue, Lord & Taylor, Bonwit Teller, Best & Co., and, most amusingly, Bloomingdale’s, which gave all its employees a special “Eloise’s Guide for Bloomingdale’s Sales People” written “in Eloise’s
rawther
unusual style.”

With New York setting the pace, more than one hundred trendsetting department stores around the country jumped on board, including Neiman-Marcus of Dallas, based on Thompson’s long-standing personal friendship with Billie and Stanley Marcus.

On page 16 of
Eloise in Paris,
Kay included the following quote: “My
mother has a charge account at Neiman-Marcus.” This little mention helped instigate a grand annual tradition that would reverberate for the next thirty years. As it happened, 1957 marked the store’s fiftieth anniversary, and to commemorate this milestone, Stanley Marcus wanted to organize a cause célèbre in October, a fête that would attract consumer and media attention. In his search for a theme, Kay’s timely love affair with France rubbed off, because the extravaganza evolved into “The French Fortnight” with Thompson, “star of
Funny Face
and author of
Eloise in Paris,
” crowned “Special Guest of Honor” and behind-the-scenes “Creative Consultant.”

To salute the event, Coco Chanel and a hundred other dignitaries from Paris were flown in on a chartered Air France plane, the first international flight to land at the Dallas Airport. The October 1, 1957, issues of both the American and French editions of
Vogue
devoted thirty-five pages to the bazaar, with full-page ads from A to Z representing name-brand sponsors: “A is for Air France,” “B is for Baccarat,” “C is for Chanel,” “D is for Dior,” etc.

Time
called the $400,000 event “the biggest birthday party ever attempted by any U.S. department store.” Amid Gallic art, decor, food, and haute couture, Eloise got her own three-dimensional in-store and window displays. Plus, fashion shows featuring the latest collections of Dior, Balmain, and Nina Ricci were upstaged by surprise intrusions of mischievous youngsters wearing Thompson’s embroidered “Je Suis Me” smocks, “Allo Cherie” aprons, and “Renault Dauphine” car coats. The
Denton Record-Chronicle
reported, “Kay Thompson was in the audience and made entertaining comments when little girls modeling Eloise dresses appeared.”

Beyond everyone’s wildest expectations, the expo drew World’s Fair–like hordes of tourists and opinion makers from around the globe. Long before the event was over, Stanley Marcus was being asked the same question everyone was asking Thompson: “What country are you going to feature next year?”

And so, by popular demand, Neiman-Marcus began hosting annual Fortnight expositions—Britain was chosen for 1958—while Thompson told
The New York Times
that for her next Eloise adventure, “I think she’ll visit England.” Synergy, anyone?

T
hree days before the
official publication of
Eloise in Paris,
Bob Bernstein left Simon & Schuster, freeing himself to focus all his energies on Eloise Limited while the iron was red-hot.

“I talked The Plaza Hotel into giving us a free office on the first floor above the lobby, Room 107,” Bernstein recalled.

Bernstein brought along his secretary, Jill Herman, to be publicity director. “Kay immediately nicknamed me Jilloise,” Herman said, “and, aside from legitimate Eloise business, she had me picking up cosmetics, taking shoes to the shoemaker, you name it. Nothing was off-limits.”

That included walking and/or babysitting Kay’s brand-new pug dog—a real-life manifestation of Eloise’s Weenie. Thompson dubbed him Fenice (“feh-NEE-chay”)—Italian for “phoenix”—named after Teatro La Fenice, the historic opera house in Venice, Italy.

“That dog was her child,” recalled Jill Herman. “Absolutely. She tried to take him just about everywhere she went—even into restaurants that didn’t allow dogs. She could talk her way into anywhere and anything.”

Her “darling baby boy” was spoon-fed braised chicken liver and constantly rewarded with Chuckles jelly candies. “The green lime ones are his favorites,” she’d dote.

In order to escape Eloise during her off-hours, Kay decided to give up free accommodations at The Plaza and rent an apartment three blocks north at 9 East Sixty-second Street, a brownstone building just off Fifth Avenue, one block south of Andy Williams’ bachelor pad. “There was only one bedroom,” recalled model China Machado, “but it had a huge living room, all with twenty-foot ceilings. There were two beautiful antique chests that she’d painted orange and I said, ‘Oh my God?! How could you do that?!’ And she said, ‘You can have them.’ You know, I can’t even begin to tell you how crazy she was, but I
adored
her. She was just so fantastic.”

Sales expectations for Eloise products were high, but none of the manufacturers were prepared for the level that Thompson was about to generate. Consumer awareness detonated with the November 20, 1957, installment of
The Today Show
when Dave Garroway introduced Thompson and her Eloise dolls to millions of home viewers. Kay also appeared on many other television and radio programs, including a December episode of
The Helen Hayes Story Circle,
a syndicated radio series broadcast each week from Miss Hayes’ landmark mansion, Pretty Penny, in Nyack, New York.

Having just read
Eloise in Paris,
Hayes observed, “You’re getting to be quite a traveler these days.”

“Yes,” Kay replied in the haughty voice of Eloise. “I am
rawther
a
voyageur
. Here’s where I’ve been: Central Park and Paris, France. And now, Nyack. I do quite a lot of traveling.”

A December ad campaign for Cannon sheets featured the Eloise doll, FAO Schwarz included the doll in its Christmas mail-order catalog, and magazine coverage was unprecedented. Four Eloise dolls adorned the cover of the
December issue of
Good Housekeeping
, inside was a full-color pictorial entitled “Fashions for Eloise,” featuring a young girl modeling the new line of Eloise children’s clothes in familiar poses around The Plaza.

That same issue of
Good Housekeeping
introduced an all-new Eloise adventure entitled “Kay Thompson’s Eloise at Christmastime,” an exclusive four-page spread with fresh drawings by Hilary Knight and text by Thompson written in rhyming verse—an Eloise first. A sample stanza: “There’s quite a bit of racket, but here’s the thing of it: Mr. Voit, the manager, doesn’t mind a bit.”

Kay also wrote a one-page advice column in the December issue of
Harper’s Bazaar
called “Charge It, Please—Eloise’s Christmas List.” It was essentially Eloise’s guide to Christmas shopping, with such advice as “Will you kindly send over a little petite of quelque chose gift wrapped for me Eloise? And charge it please and thanks a lot.”

And then, for the third time in two years, in its December 9, 1957, issue,
Life
magazine devoted a spread to Eloise showing a young girl surrounded by Eloise dolls, clothes, hotel kits, and, most spectacularly, two forty-three-inch, life-size Eloise dolls that Hilary Knight later joked were “a little scary.”

Singer Nat King Cole ran into Kay and asked where he could get one of those humongous Eloise dolls for his seven-year-old daughter. Thompson told him mass production had been put on hold so that the factory could concentrate on the smaller ones. Nat seemed so disappointed, until a delivery arrived later that day from Kay, containing one of the gigantic prototypes (of which only seven were made).

Natalie Cole said it was her favorite present ever, and that she identified with Eloise’s Plaza antics. “Her primary delight in life was raising hell with the staff, roller-skating in the hallways, pushing all the buttons in the elevator, and in general making a pest of herself—like me that Christmas morning.”

With the onslaught of media coverage, Hol-le Toys was suddenly deluged with orders for the regular-size Eloise doll.

“The factory was small, only about forty-five people,” noted Vilma Kurzer. “So we stayed open around the clock, three shifts. But the manager wasn’t capable of running a big production and we couldn’t make enough for all the deliveries that were demanded for Christmas. I remember the chaos. It was
unbelievable
.”

In the midst of this bedlam, Bernstein told Thompson he’d gotten an offer he couldn’t refuse—to become sales manager at Random House under Bennett Cerf, effective January 1, 1958.

“You can keep your Thompson thing,” Cerf told Bernstein. “We just want you here.”

“It turned out to be the greatest break in my life,” Bernstein reflected, “because I eventually became president of Random House in 1966.”