Frank Sinatra as Kay Thompson?! - Kay Thompson Website

FRANK SINATRA AS

KAY THOMPSON?! THE ROLE-REVERSAL FOLLY OF HOWARD HUGHES by Sam Irvin In 1950, Frank Sinatra wanted to play “a male Kay Thompson” in Two Tickets to Broadway (RKO, 1951). So what happened? As it turns out, the story behind Howard Hughes’ troubled production is juicier than the film itself.

“Frank Sinatra as Kay Thompson?!”

Copyright © 2012, Sam Irvin

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Long before Kay Thompson wrote Eloise (the bestseller about the little girl who lives at the Plaza Hotel in New York) and co-starred in Funny Face (Paramount, 1957) with Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire, she was queen of the nightclub circuit. In the late-1940s, her act “Kay Thompson and the Williams Brothers” broke records in supper clubs across the country—but much of the ink generated in gossip columns centered on the sizzling love affair that had ignited between Kay and Andy Williams, the youngest member of her backup quartet, nearly twenty years her junior. In fact, the buzz got so intense, it actually inspired a romantic musical entitled Two Tickets to Broadway.

Kay Thompson and the Williams Brothers (Dick, Bob, Kay, Andy, Don)

“The idea came from the success of Kay Thompson and the Williams Brothers,” admitted the film’s director, James V. Kern. “Reversing it, writer Sammy Cahn thought it would be the basis of a good story if a man were teamed in an act with four girls. Howard Hughes liked the idea and bought it.” The fabulously wealthy and exceedingly eccentric Howard Hughes had been a fan of Kay Thompson and the Williams Brothers ever since seeing their act at Ciro’s in 1947. Not long after Hughes became head of RKO Studios in 1948, he was pitched the idea for Two Tickets to Broadway. The Thompson-Williams flip-flop tickled his fancy—as did actress Janet Leigh whom he immediately cast to play “Nancy Peterson,” the Andy Williams counterpart in the movie. Janet would be the youngest member of a female quartet that becomes the backup group for “Dan Carter,” the Kay Thompson-inspired headliner.



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Howard Hughes

Though Janet Leigh was exclusively contracted to MGM, Hughes had borrowed the actress via a three-picture deal for RKO. So far, Leigh had starred in Holiday Affair and Jet Pilot under this loan-out arrangement—with Two Tickets to Broadway set as her third and final movie for Hughes. The project would also serve as his last opportunity to win her affections.

Janet Leigh and Andy Williams

Leigh, on the other hand, was steadfastly focused on the work at hand—and this plume rolereversal in Two Tickets to Broadway represented a challenging departure in her career because she would be required to sing and dance for the very first time on screen. “I had to share my good news with Kay Thompson,” Leigh wrote in her autobiography. Several years earlier, while chirping to herself in a washroom at MGM, Janet had gotten the surprise of her life. “The door burst open,” she recalled, “and a whirlwind blew in, scaring the hell out of me, yelling, ‘You ought to do a musical!’ and whirled out again. It was Kay Thompson!” “Frank Sinatra as Kay Thompson?!”


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The endorsement was not to be taken lightly. From 1943 to 1947, Thompson was head of the vocal department at MGM where her transformative coaching of the stars (Sinatra, Judy Garland, Lena Horne, and dozens of others) and her groundbreaking vocal arrangements had enriched many of the studios greatest musicals, including The Harvey Girls, It Happened in Brooklyn, and Good News. Her astounding success on the nightclub circuit and her mentoring of Andy Williams further enhanced her reputation. As a result, Thompson was known in Hollywood as the “go-to guru” for polishing musical diamonds-in-the-rough.

Andy Williams and Kay Thompson

Jule Styne—who was collaborating with his Gentlemen Prefer Blondes lyricist Leo Robin on new songs for Two Tickets to Broadway—recommended that his old friend Kay do the vocal arrangements as well as give Janet voice and dance lessons—an idea that was enthusiastically rubberstamped by Hughes. Unfortunately, Thompson’s availability in Hollywood throughout 1950 was limited by television and nightclub obligations in New York, Paris and London. So, Kay agreed to work with Janet whenever she could be in Los Angeles but, during her absences, would have to delegate the work to colleagues. As a result, Hugh Martin (a Thompson protégé who composed such songs as “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”) was contracted to do the vocal arrangements; “Frank Sinatra as Kay Thompson?!”


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Harriet Lee (whom Kay had hired to sing “Limehouse Blues” in Ziegfeld Follies), was brought in as the vocal cord drill sergeant; and Marge and Gower Champion (devotees of Kay’s nightclub choreography) were borrowed from MGM to teach Janet how to dance. “Singing lessons were set for nine o’clock every morning,” wrote Leigh in her autobiography. “Then onward to RKO to rehearse with Marge and Gower Champion… We rehearsed—and rehearsed—and rehearsed. And we began to wonder if that was all we were going to do. I honestly believe we would have rehearsed for the next ten years, if Hughes had had his way. Granted, I needed much preparation, but no production plans were even in progress.” Though valiant attempts were made to inch the project forward, Hughes’ obsession with Janet and his capricious demands speed bumped progress at every turn. The project’s first producer, Alex Gottlieb, got fed up and left. His replacement, Danny Dare (on loan from NBC-TV), started in June 1950 but didn’t last through the summer. By August, Norman Krasna and Jerry Wald became the third régime—though with Hughes pulling the strings, no producer had the power to reign in the madness. Hughes kept ordering revisions to the script with a revolving door of writers that included Sammy Cahn, Ken Englund, Hal Kanter and Sid Silvers. Casting was likewise moving along at a snail’s pace. Jimmy Durante and Laurel & Hardy were lined up for supporting roles, but, by the time shooting finally got underway, Durante was tied up with television commitments and Stan Laurel had become gravely ill. They would be replaced by Eddie Bracken and Smith & Dale. To flesh out the distaff version of the Williams Brothers quartet, Hughes auditioned hundreds of women, finally settling on Ann Miller, Gloria DeHaven and Barbara Lawrence. More importantly, though, no leading man for the Kay Thompson role-reversal had surfaced in over nine months of trying. Babies had been conceived and born faster. Hughes first went after the obvious choice, Danny Kaye, who had famously impersonated Thompson so brilliantly at several charity functions in 1948. But, as rotten luck would have it, Danny’s schedule was jammed. Then Hughes tried to woo Bing Crosby—and, to sweeten the deal, he agreed to cast Bing’s brother Bob Crosby in a cameo role as the host of a TV show on which the newly formed quintet would make its debut. But, like Danny Kaye, Bing’s dance card was full for the foreseeable future. Next on the list was Bob Hope who was eager to do the film until Paramount refused to loan him out to RKO.



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Danny Kaye in drag as Kay Thompson, with Jack Benny, Jack Carson, Van Johnson and George Burns spoofing the Williams Brothers

It started to seem like every star in Hollywood was all sewn up—until, in April 1950, headlines screamed that Frank Sinatra had suddenly become a free agent. Sinatra’s career was in a terrible slump. His records were not selling and, because his movies were no longer making money, MGM had just fired him. Ongoing rumors of mob connections and his illicit romancing with Ava Gardner (while still a married man) dogged him in the media. His violent temper with certain members of the press had not helped matters—nor had the sudden death of his longtime publicist George Evans (whose adept spin control of Sinatra’s antics was sorely missed). None of this mattered to Howard Hughes, though. In fact, it was music to his ears. In May 1950, Hughes met with Sinatra and offered him the lead in Two Tickets to Broadway. “Sinatra would like to do a picture at RKO,” Hedda Hopper noted in her column that month. “Said he’d play a male Kay Thompson in it. We both roared.” Since Kay’s penchant for wearing pants had already made her the butt of jokes, punch lines weren’t even necessary. Just days after meeting with Hughes, however, specks of blood began spurting up from Sinatra’s throat into his mouth during a performance at New York’s Copacabana. “I went for a note and nothing came out,” Sinatra recalled. “Nothing, just dust. Finally I turned to the audience and whispered into the microphone ‘Goodnight,’ and walked off the floor.” “Frank Sinatra as Kay Thompson?!”


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The condition was diagnosed as a vocal cord hemorrhage and Sinatra was ordered to stop drinking alcohol, to stop smoking and to remain absolutely silent for weeks—a prescription that was practically unthinkable for the hard-drinking, chain-smoking, and outspoken Sinatra. Even if he followed doctors’ orders to the letter, though, his recovery was going to take months—and there was no guarantee his voice would ever fully recover. Hughes was not willing to risk the wait. (That fall, Sinatra managed to headline The Frank Sinatra Show, a weekly variety series on CBS-TV, but critics noted that his singing voice was not yet fully restored.)

Frank Sinatra and Kay Thompson The Frank Sinatra Show (CBS-TV, October 28, 1950)

“We decided to try television,” noted director James V. Kern. “Sid Caesar was suggested. Hughes thought he would be great. But Caesar had no interest in the movies.” With a $25,000 weekly paycheck for Your Show of Shows (NBC-TV, 1950-1954), it was no wonder. When Tony Martin’s name was floated, Hughes resisted the idea because of a long-standing grudge. A few years earlier, there had been a bitter rivalry between Hughes and Martin over Cyd Charisse. At the time, Hughes had given Martin two free round-trip tickets to anywhere in the world—just to get lost. But Martin refused to back away from his love for Charisse and when he married her in 1948, the newlyweds used those free plane tickets for their London honeymoon. Naturally, Hughes was not amused—and he badmouthed the actor all over town. Consequently, Martin had not been offered a single picture in Hollywood ever since.



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Tony Martin and Cyd Charisse

After months of rejections from other leading actors, however, Hughes decided to bury the hatchet and consider Martin for the part. He admired the actor’s abilities, of course, but he also knew that Martin was steadfastly devoted to Cyd Charisse and, therefore, would not pose a threat to his own amorous interest in Janet Leigh. So, in July 1950, when Tony was headlining at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas, Hughes approached him in his dressing room with the opening line, “Hi, Tony. How’s Cyd?” Tony replied that she was fine but, warily, he wondered what the visit was really all about. Hughes got right to the point: “I’m going to make a picture and I’d like you to be in it.” Hughes offered Martin $7,500 per week for a guarantee of 10 weeks—not such a great deal considering that Martin earned $12,000 weekly in Vegas. But Martin was intrigued by the idea of playing a male version of Kay Thompson. Martin had known Thompson since 1932 when they performed together with Tom Coakley and His Orchestra at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood. In 1939, they had co-hosted the variety series Tune-Up Time (CBS-Radio) and, subsequently, Kay had created many of Tony’s vocal arrangements for such films as Music in My Heart (Columbia, 1940), Ziegfeld Girl (MGM, 1941) and Till the Clouds Roll By (MGM, 1945). Aside from the Thompson connection, though, there were pragmatic considerations. With his movie career in a slump, Martin needed a comeback—and Hughes’ offer of seventy-five grand was the most he’d ever been paid for a movie, so the answer was a resounding “Yes!”



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Little did Tony know at the time, however, that it would take far more than 10 weeks to complete the film. In his memoir, Martin recalled, “The reason the production lasted so long is because Hughes developed a crush on the girl star, Janet Leigh, and kept it going so he could be around her more.”

Kay Thompson and Andy Williams

The sexes may have been reversed, but the May-December aspect of the Thompson-Williams alliance was kept intact. At 38, Tony Martin was not far from Kay’s 41 years, and Janet Leigh, at 23, happened to be the exact same age as Andy Williams. Though the age gap was controversial, audiences were far more accepting of an older man with a younger woman than the other way around. Shooting finally got underway in November 1950. Immediately following an East Coast television guest spot on The Frank Sinatra Show (CBS-TV, October 28, 1950), Kay flew to the West Coast for some last-minute polishing of “Big Chief Hole-in-the-Ground” (Jule Styne-Leo Robin), a jazzy musical number in the tradition of “I’m An Indian, Too” (Irving Berlin) from Annie Get Your Gun (Imperial Theatre, 1946-49), “Pass That Peace Pipe” (Roger Edens-Hugh MartinRalph Blane) from Good News (MGM, 1947), and, perhaps more pointedly, “H’ya Hiawatha” (Kay Thompson) from the Kay Thompson-Williams Brothers nightclub act. (All four of these songs are relics of a less-enlightened era when offensive stereotyping of Native Americans was considered amusing.)



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“Big Chief Hole-in-the-Ground” number from Two Tickets to Broadway

The Champions, who were on the verge of starting Show Boat at MGM, were frantically putting the final touches on the choreography. “The set was rigged on the largest stage at RKO and was about four stories high, with a winding circular staircase,” noted Theodore Taylor in Jule: The Story of Composer Jule Styne. “It was so mammoth that some of it projected outside the stage. Even Busby Berkeley would have been envious of this awesome Gog and Magog.” Then word came down that Howard Hughes wanted to see the work-in-progress. That alone would have been a reasonable request but Hughes was rarely a reasonable guy. Plagued by debilitating phobias and superstitions, he refused to set foot on his own RKO lot because he thought it would bring him bad luck. Strange as it may have seemed, he preferred to conduct business meetings at his Beverly Hills Hotel bungalow or at Samuel Goldwyn Studios where he rented an office (RKO was the exclusive distributor of Goldwyn’s movies). Determined, Hughes instructed his producers that he wanted to view a full-fledged dress rehearsal of “Big Chief Hole-in-the-Ground”—performed on the completed set which was to be brought over to the Goldwyn lot—for the approval of His Highness. After bewildered protestations, Hughes generously allowed his minions two days to get it together. “The production department was stunned,” Taylor added. “Carpenters and grips sat down, weak from the thought of it. Did Mr. Hughes know what it meant to dismantle a four-story set, truck it three miles, and rebuild it in forty-eight hours?” But somehow, incredibly, the mountain came to Mohammed. “Promptly at one o’clock, Mr. Hughes made his entry, along with a covey of assistants,” Taylor explained. “He observed the number and quickly reacted by firing Kay Thompson. A few minutes later the Champions were fired, without explanation. By 6:00 P.M., composer Jule “Frank Sinatra as Kay Thompson?!”


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Styne had quit, along with lyricist Leo Robin.” The exodus also included Hugh Martin, whose vocal arrangements were tossed in the trash. Hughes’ sour mood was attributed to the fact that Janet Leigh had fallen madly in love with Tony Curtis and, making matters worse, the gossip columns were rife with rumors that the couple was secretly engaged.

Tony Martin and Janet Leigh in Two Tickets to Broadway

The “Big Chief” set was hauled back and re-erected at RKO. Busby Berkeley was hired to take over the choreography. Eliot Daniel (composer of the theme to I Love Lucy) was assigned as the new vocal arranger. But Hughes’ passion for Janet Leigh and Two Tickets to Broadway had wilted. “It all ended when Janet announced she was going to marry Tony Curtis,” recalled Tony Martin. “Instead of more delays, now suddenly they told us we’d have to wrap the picture that midnight. We still had one big eight-minute number, ‘Big Chief Hole-in-the-Head’ [sic], to shoot. Ordinarily, it would have lasted a week. We had to finish it that night. We did—five minutes to midnight. But that was Howard. When he had a thing for a girl, he didn’t let anything stand in his way. His unrequited crush on Janet Leigh must have cost him millions, but that was the way he was.” By the time things were all sung and done, Tony Martin’s salary had ballooned from $75,000 to a dizzying $200,000. “The incongruity of the whole mess was that everyone had benefited from this episode,” Leigh recalled in her memoir. “Marge and Gower had enough money to buy their home in the Hollywood Hills, Harriet Lee was able to build a soundproof studio off her house… and me, well,



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I was close to a nervous breakdown. Yes, I was on salary. But the work, the harassment, the frustration had taken its toll.” “I saw the preview of the picture with Janet, and by that time she was going with Tony Curtis,” recalled Marge Champion. “We all went out to Pasadena to see a preview and I never saw anybody more miserable in my life because it really was not a good film. After all this work, the result was such a bummer.” The reviews didn’t help soften the blow. Time declared, “Bright-eyed actress Leigh proves a bust as a singer and a dancer, but is undeniably a hit as a bust.” The Champions were philosophical about their ten-month ordeal. “We weren’t disappointed, just frustrated,” Marge explained. “As Gower says, we got absolutely nothing out of it but a home and a swimming pool.” Never one to dwell on unhappy memories, Kay Thompson refused to discuss the debacle— though she, like all her colleagues, made out like a bandit and never looked back.

Ann Miller, Janet Leigh, Tony Martin, Barbara Lawrence and Gloria DeHaven in Two Tickets to Broadway (3-sheet poster detail)



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About the Author: Sam Irvin is a veteran director, producer and screenwriter. He co-executive produced Bill Condon’s Academy Award winning film Gods and Monsters and was the historical consultant on the Tony Award winning event Liza’s at the Palace. His first book, Kay Thompson: From Funny Face to Eloise (Simon & Schuster), was nominated for a Theatre Library Association Award and selected by Kirkus Reviews as one of the Best Biographies of the Year. Between projects, he teaches graduate courses on directing at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts.



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