By then, Thompson was, as one friend put it, “very New York.”Īs a teenager, she’d set out to lower her voice so she could horrify her father by becoming a throaty blues singer. Louis native, Agnes Moorehead-in adulthood. Vincent Price was two years younger and lived a few miles west on Forsyth, but Kitty would strike up an acquaintance with him-and with another St. The Williamses lived on Westminster Place, the Finks just blocks away at 17 Parkland Place. At Washington University, she focused on sorority life-and didn’t graduate at all.Īs kids, Kay and her brother had hung out a bit with another future author, Tennessee Williams-whom they called Tom-and his sister Rose. Disdaining study, she graduated 209th in a class of 214. She sang and acted in operettas, and moonlighted as a pianist for the St. The second of four children, Kitty went to Soldan High School, where she threw herself into every possible extracurricular activity. Kitty’s mother had been waiting tables at a coffee shop when they fell in love. A jeweler and occasional pawnbroker (Kitty never mentioned that part), he still spoke broken English with a Yiddish accent. Her father, Leo Fink, had come to the States from Austria. The character we understand less well is Thompson herself.Ĭatherine Louise Fink, called Kitty by all, was born on November 9, 1909. Eloise’s worldliness, loneliness, and self-invention grow more recognizable every decade. Today’s kids are well used to being ignored by over-busy parents they commandeer credit cards and monitor the adults’ martinis. Instead, she withdrew the licenses for everything (movies, merchandise, reprints) but the original book.ĭecades later, after her death, the franchise exploded with Eloise reissues, collections, special editions, audiobooks, shows, documentaries, events, and swag. But when the fifth book was complete, Thompson maddened everyone around her by refusing to sign off. Three books followed in quick succession, taking Eloise to Moscow and Paris and letting her make holiday mischief at The Plaza.

Sophisticated and gleefully self-indulgent, it arched an eyebrow at the world.

Yet kids adored the book, precisely because it refused to placate or preach. And, above all, the sense of fun that drew readers to both the character and her author.Įloise was subtitled A Book for Precocious Grown-ups Thompson wasn’t the least bit fond of kids and had no intention of writing for them. A simple enough declaration, but once you’ve met Eloise, you can hear the tone beneath it: all that childish imperiousness and determined energy. Those are the first words of the first book by Kay Thompson.

Eloise by kay thompson