Kay and the SOE

Kay had some classified information about secret British operations during the Second World War. She was not allowed to tell anyone what she knew, but I found some stuff on the internet.

This article filled in some of the details for me. 

A book called Code Name: Lise which has more of the personal histories of the people involved. 

Music from Kay's Era: "Gotta Be This or That"

Three Stooges Time!

Kay was included in one scene of a Three Stooges film, but alas, she ended up on the cutting room floor. She maintained a longime friendship with "Curly," and she told an interviewer about watching "Movie Maniacs" at a private screening at Jerome's home.

Watch Three Stooges in "Movie Maniacs"

A name better known in Kay's era than in ours

https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Biographies/Display/Article/107811/general-henry-h-arnold/

War Time

https://www.defense.gov/Explore/Features/story/Article/1779177/daylight-saving-time-was-once-known-as-war-time/

Celebrity of Kay's era: Alexander Woollcott

Alexander Woollcott was a household name in the 1930s and 1940s and here, as "The Town Crier," he introduces the trailer for the 1939 film "Goodbye, Mr. Chips."

During Kay's most active years, Greer Garson was one of Hollywood's best-known stars. Garson appeared in the film version of the best-seller Random Harvest. In the thumbnail for the video we see Garson's co-star Ronald Colman.

The trailer begins with accolades about the novel and what a literary success it had been. The book was by James Hilton, author of Lost Horizon  and Goodbye, Mr. Chips. 

People do enjoy the release of new books, but with e-book, a slew of new fiction appears daily. But in Kay's day, people waited outside bookstores for them to open to get the newest bestseller. Stores had plate glass windows and shoppers on the sidewalk would look anxiously to see when something new was going to appear in the window. Only modern instance I can think of us was the buzz over each new book in the Harry Potter series. 

Women's Army Corps battalion got the mail where it needed to go

This article covers a part of history I missed until today. May appreciation be shown now -- better late than never. 

Kay was a teacher all her life

Kay thought of herself as a musician, as a producer of concerts, as a adoptive parent -- but rarely did she speak of herself as a teacher. She had a teaching certificate, earned in a two-year program which was considered a practical education for young women during the Depression years. And she did teach briefly in a public school, serving as Band Director and music teacher when the original male teacher died unexpectedly during the school year. 

But other than that, Kay taught many people over the years, but always in an unofficial  capacity. For example, she worked at Scott Field (now Scott Air Force Base) as a music librarian, organizing the sheet music for the military bands. Because she shared a quonset hut with the area where all airmen-to-be took Morse Code lessons, she ended up tutoring enlisted men who struggled with learning the Morse alphabet. Many said they would not have passed the course, and thus would not have been qualified to fly, without Kay's help. 

This video goes over the basics of the Morse Code alphabet, at a slow enough pace for someone just learning. 

Actor in gorilla suit falls down

Kay spent a great deal of time inside movie theaters during the 1040s. Theaters often doubled as music venues, especially when Kay traveled with the small jazz ensemble "Dit's Dots," and also when she produced concerts which were also rallies to sell War Bonds.

Kay also went with Teeny Stockton to one of the two Black-owned movie picture houses in the Mill Creek Valley neighborhood of St. Louis. The movies at this theater were terrible, but Kay used to say "You got a lot for your money," meaning that here would often be two or three B pictures in addition to the main feature. 

I don't know which of the movie theaters it was where Kay saw the 1944 movie "Nabonga," a poor man's version of "King Kong." But I have heard a snippet of a home recording of Kay and Teeny laughing about the moment in the film (at 1 hour, nine minutes, just after two shots from a pistol are fired at the ape) when the man in the gorilla suit falls down. He is supposed to be sneaking down a jungle path, and the fake grass on the studio floor, or perhaps his furry gorilla feet trip him up, and down he goes. Does the director keep filming? Yep. They just added a couple of extra meancing grunts and snarls to cover up the "oof" moment. 

Child star of the 1930s/1940s: Jane Withers

Shirley Temple and Baby Rose Marie weren't the only child actor to win the movie-going public's heart; there was also Jane Withers.

Withers, in her younger years, is best known for playing the anti-heroine in "Bright Eyes." But a few years later, she did some Judy Garland style young-teenager singing in a 1944 Broadway musical. I couldn't find a recording on Withers herself singing "I Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out to Dry" in 1944, so here's Kitty Kallem singing a Big Band version the following year.