Kay Thompson by Irvin Sam

Author:Irvin, Sam [Irvin, Sam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Of course, Eloise needed a caretaker, and that character took the form of Nanny, a British au pair.

“I helped her write that,” claimed Paul Methuen, Noël Coward’s friend who played Kay’s British butler in her 1954–55 nightclub act. “I was appearing with her when she was writing it. Of course, I had a darling English nanny when I was young, so I gave Kay all the things an English nanny would say.”

When Kay went into her Eloise voice, Paul would pretend to be her nanny and they would improvise endless conversations that Kay would jot down or tape-record for later transcribing.

“My drawings of Nanny,” revealed Hilary Knight, “were based partly on Kay and a British actress named Martita Hunt, who played Miss Havisham in Great Expectations [General Films, 1946]. But Nanny is very much Kay’s personality.”

Besides Thompson and Hunt, there was another movie star who came to mind. “Kay and I loved the old Fred Astaire film Yolanda and the Thief [MGM, 1945],” Hilary recalled. “In it, Mildred Natwick played an eccentric woman who says everything in threes, like ‘Hurry hurry hurry!’ and ‘March march march!’ Kay made Nanny speak like that.”

That predilection for speaking in triplets came from one of the movie’s writers, Ludwig Bemelmans, author of the Madeline children’s book series—a precursor and leading rival to the Eloise franchise. Kay knew Ludwig when they were both under contract at MGM and she certainly took notice of his work and success. And, there was no question that Mildred Natwick embodied the nanny that Kay envisioned. Not only had Thompson gotten to know Natwick while working as the vocal arranger on Yolanda and the Thief, but later, when it came time to dramatize Eloise for television in 1956, Kay would personally choose Mildred to portray Nanny.

Eloise had two pets: a turtle named Skipperdee and a pug dog named Weenie. Kay was very chummy with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, who famously collected pugs. So, when Hilary suggested the breed, she thought it would be a funny nod to her blue-blooded buddies.

One more likely inspiration was the pug in Her Highness and the Bellboy (MGM, 1945), another film for which Kay did the vocal arrangements. The movie took place in a fictionalized version of The Plaza where a bellboy (Robert Walker) takes a stroll through Central Park, exercising a guest’s pug—a dead ringer for Weenie.

People were divided over the name Kay gave the pooch. “I didn’t want a dog named Weenie,” grimaced actress Mariel Hemingway, granddaughter of Ernest. “That was embarrassing to me when I first read it as a child.”

More devilish minds relished it. “Any girl who named her dog Weenie was a friend of mine,” quipped Cassandra Peterson, aka Elvira, Mistress of the Dark.

Eloise was not going to be sugarcoated. For decades, Kay had been a fan of the adult cartoons that sprinkled the pages of The New Yorker, especially those of Peter Arno and Charles Addams, both of whom she knew socially. Their sardonic worldview was just the sort of sophisticated wit to which Thompson aspired for Eloise.

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