“I am Eloise and I am six!” declared the little girl who lived at the Plaza Hotel in New York City. With those seven words, first published in 1955, children and adults alike were enchanted by the impish, mischievous, and dare we say, naughty child.
These iconic children’s books introduced us to Eloise’s world; with her dog, turtle, British nanny, and endless fun, it truly was Eloise’s world and everyone else was simply living in it. But what about the woman who wrote Eloise?
A character equally precocious, eccentric, and the subject of countless fascinating tales repeated across the country from New York to Hollywood. We speak, of course, of the inimitable Kay Thompson.
Kay Thompson is one of few children’s book authors who can claim fame almost as significant as the characters they create. Old Hollywood royalty, Thompson was a singer, dancer, vocal arranger, and coach long before she was an author.
She was an alumnus of the infamous Zigfield Follies, a coach and choral director at MGM Musicals all through the 1940s, and in 1957 appeared as fashion magazine editor Maggie Prescott in Funny Face alongside Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire (who she reportedly hated).
She coached film and music icons such as Judy Garland and Frank Sinatra, teaching them to hone and polish their craft.
Before she became a showbiz sensation, however, Thompson was an imaginative little girl from St. Louis, Missouri. Often lonely or bored, she created an alter ego that she would show off for friends: Eloise. She carried Eloise with her into adulthood. Once, when late to rehearsals for a cabaret production and berated by directors, The Williams Brothers, Thompson stopped, changed voices, and announced, “I am Eloise and I am six!” to diffuse the tension.
It was her friend and former Harpers Bazaar editor D.D. Ryan who urged Thompson to turn Eloise into a book, and thus, a star was born.
To illustrate the books, Thompson turned to her neighbor Hilary Knight.
With Thompson’s musical, lilting prose and Knight’s charming illustrations, Simon & Schuster quickly picked up the first Eloise book and published it in 1955. It became an overnight sensation and sold 150,000 copies within two years.
While children loved Eloise, Thompson intended the book to be for adults in need of reclaiming childhood whimsy. Hence the original title: Eloise: a book for precocious grownups.
And precocious she was. Like her heroine Eloise, Thompson was a wacky, eccentric character who loved to indulge in all manner of strange frivolities. When living in Rome, she had the legs sawn off her piano to move it into her apartment so she could play music for her pet pug Fenice. When she determined Fenice no longer liked the piano, she taught herself the banjo so she could serenade him.
Upon returning to the U.S., she lived, of course, at the Plaza Hotel. Thompson lived there for seven years where she established squatters rights and got away without paying a penny of rent.
In 1988 the Plaza was acquired by new management and Thompson was forced to leave the hotel. The management in question was none other than Donald Trump. Thompson then moved in with her devoted goddaughter, the one-and-only Liza Minelli.
Still, the Plaza had Thompson and Eloise to thank for helping it become even more of a cultural touchstone. Indeed, she commissioned Knight to create a watercolor painting of Eloise to hang in the Plaza lobby. It was given a place of honor from 1957-1960 when it was stolen! The thief was never found, although some suspected Thompson herself had done it as a publicity stunt. In 1962 she reported getting an anonymous phone call that led her to find the painting damaged in a dumpster.
She commissioned Knight to make another in oil paint. It would remain at the Plaza for the next five decades.
Thompson and Knight published four Eloise books: Eloise, Eloise in Paris (1957), Eloise at Christmastime (1958), and Eloise in Moscow (1959).
The pair were serious about doing the books well, and for Eloise in Paris, they took two research trips to Paris to gather material for the book. When Simon & Schuster refused to pay for the second trip, Thompson got round-trip tickets from a Belgian airline in exchange for an appearance in the book. Thus, Sabena Airlines appears on three pages of Eloise in Paris. The concept for Eloise in Moscow was originally Eloise in England, but Thompson loved the idea of the wealthy little girl running around a socialist republic like the Soviet Union. To further the point, Knight hid a little man in a trenchcoat on every page of Eloise in Moscow. Pull out your old copy and see if you can spot them!
Thompson’s flamboyant personality, while charming, also meant she could be quite mercurial. She and Knight were working on a fifth book, Eloise Takes a Bawth, when Thompson abruptly halted publication and fired Knight for reasons unknown. The book was published posthumously in 2002.
Thompson continued to be unfailingly herself into her old age, allegedly subsisting solely on Coca-Cola in her later years. She lived with Liza Minelli until she passed away in 1998 at the age of 88.
She left behind an indelible mark on music and culture, a host of showbiz icons who owe her their vocal performances, and a precocious little girl named Eloise who taught us how to bang sticks against walls, how to run up flights of stairs to catch the elevator, and how to never stop being ourselves, no matter how many boring grown-ups call you a nuisance.
