Free Kay Thompson by Sam Irvin Page B

name was George Kinney. He was from Oakland and he played clarinet and saxophone. Sometimes he sang, too. This affair he had goin’ with Kay developed into a pretty hot thing. It was the talk of the band, you know. Everybody was teasing them but Kay and George just laughed it off. They were very sharp with the double entendre. Of course, therewas the sex angle, but I think they had a wonderful rapport as far as humor was concerned. They laughed a lot.”
    “In love?” Kay pondered, responding to gossip about her many romances. “I’m in love all the time! It’s fun! It’s the salt and pepper of life—and I adore salt and pepper! I want my whole life to be highly seasoned. Oh, I’ve been in love, all right—but so far, I haven’t got beyond the stage of being in love with love.”
    Victor Records invited Kay to be the featured vocalist on several of Coakley’s sessions for the label, but Brunswick would only grant a “loan-out” for Kay to do one side. Recorded on September 25, 1934, “Take a Number from One to Ten” (Victor 24744-A) became Thompson’s first record. When it was released the following month, Variety called it “a brace of brisk foxtrotology.”
    W hile Kay was hanging out with Coakley in 1934, New York–based radio star Jane Froman dropped her manager, Danny Winkler, leaving a vacancy at the Morrison-Winkler Agency for a female singer on the rise. Danny had been keeping close tabs on Kay’s career ever since she had shared the KHJ airwaves with his client Lennie Hayton. Now that Kay was no longer represented by Thomas Lee, Danny began actively courting her to sign with Morrison-Winkler and advised her that, if she was really serious about a career in radio, she’d have to move to New York, where the major networks were based. Kay told him she’d consider it if he got her a New York radio gig first.
    It just so happened that Danny was friendly with Burt McMurtrie and was well aware of the romantic fireworks that had ignited between them in Los Angeles. No longer with CBS, Burt was now head of programming for WMCA, the New York hub of an upstart rival network, Associated Broadcasting System (ABS), where he was creating a whole new slate of programming. When Danny informed him that Kay was available, Burt promptly signed her up to headline a show.
    Just hours after recording her Victor record with Coakley, Thompson grabbed her dog, blew a kiss to George Kinney, and flew to New York, where, starting September 30, The Kay Thompson Show would air three nights a week from the WMCA studio in the Hammerstein Building at Fifty-third and Broadway.
    Unsure if her relocation would be permanent, Kay—and Mr. Chips—moved in with her younger sister, Marian, who as luck would have it was studying painting in Manhattan. When Blanche, the eldest Fink sibling, got wind that Kay had joined Marian in the Big Apple, she took a break from St. Louis and boarded a train for a little sightseeing/family reunion.
    The exposure on ABS was nothing to sneeze at, but the network trailed far behind CBS and NBC in the ratings. Wary of becoming an indentured servant again, Kay refused to sign a long-term contract for The Kay Thompson Show , opting for a single thirteen-week season commitment.
    That hard bargain prompted McMurtrie to affectionately call Thompson “a bitch,” a term of endearment that stuck. In fact, nineteen years later, in a wistful love letter to Burt (by then, a top radio personality in Tacoma, Washington), Kay nostalgically wrote, “I have never forgotten you. Years come and days go merrily dancing into the blue beyond, but I still think of you when I hear the word bitch (which of course is very often now that I’m all grown up and all). I am more than delighted that you are Mr. Tacoma. I am not in the least surprised. You have always been twice as bright as anybody else in the world. And you know it.”
    But in 1934, McMurtrie was essentially a lovesick puppy caving to Thompson’s demands. Leaving