to offend Cousin Willie and his Chesterfield colleagues. “Kay only smoked Camels,” Bea said, “so she would take all her Camels out and put them in the Chesterfield package.”
The Chesterfield Radio Program made its debut on May 1, 1936, and the reaction was seismic—especially for Kay and her Rhythm Singers.
“I have to tell you,” Bea reflected, “Kay was a mentor and a goddess and everything else. To us, she was the Statue of Liberty.”
The show was such a smash, Paley expanded it to two nights a week, Wednesdays and Fridays, starting July 1. It became one of the hottest tickets in town, especially for composers and musicians enraptured by Thompson’s unique vocal arrangements. Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, George and IraGershwin, Harold Arlen, and E. Y. “Yip” Harburg were but a few of the avid fans who considered The Chesterfield Radio Program inspirational.
The great jazz vocalist Mel Tormé was only 11 years old when he first discovered Kay on Chesterfield . He was enthralled by her innovative use of voices and the fact that her group was the very first “to approximate a band.”
“Kay knows more about vocal-group writing than any other person alive,” Tormé wrote in his book My Singing Teachers . He particularly loved one of her signatures. “Kay’s tag endings to her arrangements were a hoot. She made a specialty of starting a line, adding to it, adding a bit more to it, then saying the whole line. Example: In Back in Your Own Backyard , she would wind up the arrangement with: Back . . . Back in . . . Back in your . . . Back in your own . . . Back in your own back yard .”
When Vincente Minnelli directed his first Broadway musicals, The Show Is On (1936) and Hooray for What! (1937), he wanted the scores to emulate the “marvelous André Kostelanetz arrangements on the radio,” and ended up borrowing Kay and Gordon Jenkins from Kosty’s staff to re-create that magic formula. This was just the beginning of a lifelong family bond between Thompson and Minnelli (later extending to his daughter Liza).
Initially, The Chesterfield Radio Program was staged at CBS’s Forty-fourth Street Playhouse, but as demand for seats intensified, the series was moved in September to a larger facility, the newly acquired CBS Radio Theater 3 (at Broadway and Fifty-third), later rechristened the Ed Sullivan Theater.
Unfortunately, double weekly doses were perhaps too much of a good thing. As ratings for the series began to soften, the folks at Chesterfield got spooked and, by the end of September, the Wednesday night installment was changed to classical music featuring opera singer Lily Pons (Kostelanetz’s future wife). The expectation was that the Friday night ratings would rebound, but when that did not happen, the maestro became the fall guy.
Although Kostelanetz’s orchestral treatments were critically acclaimed and had a major impact on Broadway and movie musicals, the biggest dance hits of the day continued to be those with the stark, brassy arrangements of the big band sound. When it was clear that a more youthful and hip bandleader was being sought, Kay recommended Lennie Hayton or Jack Jenney. Ultimately, the Chesterfield execs settled on Hal Kemp, who, with his thirteen-member ensemble, had not only been voted “Favorite Dance Band of 1936” by the readers of Radio Guide, but had also dominated the pop charts that year with two No. 1 records, “There’s a Small Hotel” and “When I’m with You.”
With such sweeping renovations, Kay feared she might get thrown under the bus, too, but her impressive rankings in popularity polls apparently savedher. The year-end Hearst Newspaper Radio Editors Poll ranked Thompson as the No. 2 Best Female Vocalist (behind Frances Langford) and her Chesterfield program was voted No. 1 Best All-Round Musical Show.
Bob Hope was offered the job of master of ceremonies, but that dream quickly faded when he demanded the moon. Instead, it was decided
The Chesterfield Radio Program made its debut on May 1, 1936, and the reaction was seismic—especially for Kay and her Rhythm Singers.
“I have to tell you,” Bea reflected, “Kay was a mentor and a goddess and everything else. To us, she was the Statue of Liberty.”
The show was such a smash, Paley expanded it to two nights a week, Wednesdays and Fridays, starting July 1. It became one of the hottest tickets in town, especially for composers and musicians enraptured by Thompson’s unique vocal arrangements. Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, George and IraGershwin, Harold Arlen, and E. Y. “Yip” Harburg were but a few of the avid fans who considered The Chesterfield Radio Program inspirational.
The great jazz vocalist Mel Tormé was only 11 years old when he first discovered Kay on Chesterfield . He was enthralled by her innovative use of voices and the fact that her group was the very first “to approximate a band.”
“Kay knows more about vocal-group writing than any other person alive,” Tormé wrote in his book My Singing Teachers . He particularly loved one of her signatures. “Kay’s tag endings to her arrangements were a hoot. She made a specialty of starting a line, adding to it, adding a bit more to it, then saying the whole line. Example: In Back in Your Own Backyard , she would wind up the arrangement with: Back . . . Back in . . . Back in your . . . Back in your own . . . Back in your own back yard .”
When Vincente Minnelli directed his first Broadway musicals, The Show Is On (1936) and Hooray for What! (1937), he wanted the scores to emulate the “marvelous André Kostelanetz arrangements on the radio,” and ended up borrowing Kay and Gordon Jenkins from Kosty’s staff to re-create that magic formula. This was just the beginning of a lifelong family bond between Thompson and Minnelli (later extending to his daughter Liza).
Initially, The Chesterfield Radio Program was staged at CBS’s Forty-fourth Street Playhouse, but as demand for seats intensified, the series was moved in September to a larger facility, the newly acquired CBS Radio Theater 3 (at Broadway and Fifty-third), later rechristened the Ed Sullivan Theater.
Unfortunately, double weekly doses were perhaps too much of a good thing. As ratings for the series began to soften, the folks at Chesterfield got spooked and, by the end of September, the Wednesday night installment was changed to classical music featuring opera singer Lily Pons (Kostelanetz’s future wife). The expectation was that the Friday night ratings would rebound, but when that did not happen, the maestro became the fall guy.
Although Kostelanetz’s orchestral treatments were critically acclaimed and had a major impact on Broadway and movie musicals, the biggest dance hits of the day continued to be those with the stark, brassy arrangements of the big band sound. When it was clear that a more youthful and hip bandleader was being sought, Kay recommended Lennie Hayton or Jack Jenney. Ultimately, the Chesterfield execs settled on Hal Kemp, who, with his thirteen-member ensemble, had not only been voted “Favorite Dance Band of 1936” by the readers of Radio Guide, but had also dominated the pop charts that year with two No. 1 records, “There’s a Small Hotel” and “When I’m with You.”
With such sweeping renovations, Kay feared she might get thrown under the bus, too, but her impressive rankings in popularity polls apparently savedher. The year-end Hearst Newspaper Radio Editors Poll ranked Thompson as the No. 2 Best Female Vocalist (behind Frances Langford) and her Chesterfield program was voted No. 1 Best All-Round Musical Show.
Bob Hope was offered the job of master of ceremonies, but that dream quickly faded when he demanded the moon. Instead, it was decided
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