The Last Days Of Kay Kendall

In less than five short years she would be dead.

But for now—this period in late 1954—her life was approaching its fullest bloom.

As was the life of the man she had just met.

And there was only laughter between them.

And the beginnings of love. . . .

Rex Harrison and Kay Kendall met in London while working on a picture titled The Constant Husband.

Rex, star of the picture, was forty-six at the time. He had recently returned to England from several miserable years in Hollywood. His long marriage to Austrian-born actress Lilli Palmer was on the rocks. He was not a very happy man.

Kay, who played one of Rex’s seven wives in the picture, was twenty-eight. She had recently scored a triumph as the trumpet-tooting society gal in Genevieve. She was single and fancy free. She was now working with her girlhood idol, a man she’d adored since she’d first seen him on the screen years before. She couldn’t have been happier.

“Tell me,” the temper-mental Rex said to her late one afternoon, shortly after they’d begun to work on the picture and after he and one of his other ‘wives’ had staged a real-life fight on the set, “what do you really think of me?”

“I think,” said Kay, “that though you’re a marvelous actor, Mr, Harrison, you are also pompous, overbearing and terribly conceited.”

Rex mumbled a glum thank-you and began to walk away.

“I think, too,” Kay said, following him, “that these qualities are strangely attractive in you.”

Rex kept on walking.

“And that if I’ve given any offense—I’d like to try to make it up to you.”

Rex stopped.

“How?” he asked.

“I’ll cook you dinner tonight,” Kay said, without a blink.

Rex stared at her. “You’re not a very shy girl, are you now?” he asked teasing her.

“No,” said Kay. “My parents were in vaudeville. I was raised in a crowd. There wasn’t too much time for shyness. Besides, you look as if you could use a home-cooked meal . . . Now, shall I come to your digs or will you come to mine?”

“Why don’t we make it at my place,” Rex said, still not quite over the initial shock.

“Good,” Kay said. She thought for a moment. “Let’s have a Russian meal,” she said then, quickly. “Do you have any vodka?”

Rex nodded.

“I’ll bring the rest,” Kay said. . . .

At promptly eight o’clock that night, she arrived at Rex’s apartment. “Dinner!” she said, gayly, holding up a small paper bag.

Rex led her to the kitchen and watched as she removed two items from the bag—a tin of caviar and a box of crackers.

“Is that to be it?” he asked. “Dinner?”

“Uh-huh,” Kay said. “It’s fish eggs, you know. All very nourishing. And with a little vodka to wash it down it’s even—healthier.”

Sensing that Rex found her dietary figurings a little peculiar, she added, “Anyway, I’m really not too good with things like frying pans and boiling water.”

Rex cleared his throat. “I hear through the grapevine at the studio,” he said, “that your friends—your very best friends—refer to you as Scatty Katty.”

“Why yes, that’s true,” Kay said, smiling. “And I guess you can see why now.”

“Indeed I can,” said Rex, very serious-sounding.

And then, suddenly, he broke out into a peal of loud and hearty laughter, the kind of laughter he hadn’t enjoyed in a long, lone time. . . . .

While they were eating. Rev asked Kay to tell him a little bit about herself.

Kay obliged, practically without let-up.

“Well,” she began, “I was born up in Withernsea—christened Justine Kay Kendall McCarthy, begorra!” She went on then to tell about her childhood: “It was all vaudeville till the war broke out and my folks sent me and my sister Kim to Scotland—for safe-keeping.”

About her first job: “Kim and I ran away from the Highlands after about a year. We came to London and got dancing parts in a revue called Wild Violets. It folded after a bombing raid a week later.”

About her first movie: “London Town, remember it? They billed me as England’s Lana Turner—me, all skinny five-feet-nine of me!”

About what happened after the movie was released: “The studio boss called me into his office. ‘Miss Kendall,’ he said, ‘you’re ugly, you have no talent, you’re too tall and you photograph badly. Why don’t you go marry some nice man, settle down and have a family?’ ‘Am I being fired, sir?’ I asked. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘yes!’ “

About how she gave up show business—temporarily: “I took a job in an antique shop. I broke two Wedgwood vases my second day. I was fired again. I had to go back to show business.”

About the rough years of almost constant unemployment that followed, until her big breaks came—first in Genevieve, and most recently in The Constant Husband. . . .

“With Rex Harrison,” she said now, almost as if she were realizing it for the first time. She bit her lip. “I can’t believe it. You know—I just can’t believe it.”

Suddenly, she began to cry.

“I’m sorry,” she said, reaching into Rex’s lapel pocket for a handkerchief and blowing her nose. “I’m terribly sorry for being so silly, Mr. Harrison.”

Rex took her chin in his hand.

“First of all, young lady,” he said, “don’t go on calling me Mr. Harrison. The name happens to be Rex. D’you hear?”

“Yes, Rex,” Kay said, still sobbing a little.

“Secondly, don’t cry,” he said. “I don’t like women who cry. Understand?”

Kay nodded. “Yes, Rex.”

“And third,” he said, “how about you and me leaving here and getting ourselves a good fat bag of fish ‘n’ chips? It’s not very Russian, I know. But I think we both could use a wee bit more dinner . . . All right?”

“All right, Rex,” Kay said, wiping away the last of her tears and blowing her nose once more. . . .

They were in the hallway a little while later, waiting for the elevator to take them down, when Kay—dry-eyed and ebullient again—suddenly remembered that she had left a scarf behind.

“I’ll be right along,” she said, rushing back into the apartment.

When she came back out, Rex shook his head.

“What’s wrong?” Kay asked.

“A minor point,” Rex said, “—just that you didn’t shut the door.”

Kay looked at him, contritely. “It’s an awful habit of mine,” she said. “I never shut doors. It makes things seem so final, so ended.”

Rex tsk-tsked.

“Scatty Katty,” he said, shaking his head.

Then he walked past her and towards the door, to shut it himself.

“Scatty Katty,” he said again, smiling this time, now that she couldn’t see his face. . . .

Rex and Kay were inseparable those next twelve months. They had fallen desperately in love. They knew that as soon as Rex got his divorce they would be married. And though they knew the divorce might take a long time coming, since Lilli Palmer seemed to be in no hurry to grant Rex his freedom, they didn’t care. They had each other. That was all that mattered to them.

There was almost no indication that anything was wrong with Kay’s health during this period. Most of the time she was her usual self—bubbling over with radiance, life, laughter. And it was only once in a great while that she would complain about pains in her stomach. But she would then shrug these off by saying something about an ulcer attack she’d had back when she was eighteen, and that would be that. . . .

Kay went to see Rex off at the airport the night he left for New York and rehearsals of My Fair Lady.

Her face looked a little pale that night, drawn.

“What’s the matter?” Rex asked her. “Are you feeling all right?”

“No,” Kay said. She smiled. Then she said, “How can I be feeling all right with you going away. I’m lost without you.”

In the few minutes they had left, they reminded themselves of all their plans for the future—how, if the play went well, Kay would come to New York; how they would be together again; how they would wait out the divorce together, even if it took five years, ten, fifteen.

And then it was time for the plane to leave.

And they kissed and parted. . . .

My Fair Lady played its hugely-successful opening performance in New York on the night of March 15, 1956.

It was exactly a month after that when Kay arrived in town.

She stayed for four months, returned to England for some seven or eight weeks of television work, and then returned once again to New York.

It was shortly after this when Rex got a phone call from a doctor friend of theirs.

The doctor’s voice sounded urgent. “I’d like to see you Rex,” he said, “—in private.”

Rex asked when.

“In half an hour,” the doctor said.

They met in the cocktail lounge of Rex’s hotel.

Rex smiled as they shook hands.

The doctor did not.

Rex ordered a drink.

The doctor did not.

“Why so serious?” Rex asked.

“It’s Kay,” the doctor said. “She’s very sick.”

“Kay—sick?” Rex asked. He began to laugh. “Well, she certainly has a funny way of showing it. We were just together, this afternoon. We clayed tennis and—”

The doctor interrupted him.

“She’s sick,” he said again. “She came to my office this morning. She said she had a pain in her stomach and in her chest. I examined her. I examined her for two hours—extensively.”

The smile began to leave Rex’s face.

“I couldn’t believe it,” the doctor went on. “I’ve checked since, with a specialist . . . Kay has leukemia.”

He waited as Rex lifted a drink that had just been placed before him and downed it, in one swallow.

“She doesn’t know,” the doctor went on then. “She asked me midway, ‘Why is this taking so long?’ I told her I suspected a rare form of anemia. She giggled and said she guessed that was because she’d never learned to cook and because she was constantly eating from cans. Then she said, ‘Well, whatever kind of silly thing it is, please don’t tell Rex. He worries so about these things.’ She made me promise. I’m breaking that promise now . . . I felt that you should know, Rex. Just as I feel Kay shouldn’t know.”

There was a long silence.

Then a waiter came to the table and asked if the gentleman would care for another drink.

The doctor nodded this time. “Two,” he said.

The waiter returned a few minutes later, placed the drinks down and left.

Rex lifted his glass.

He was about to bring it to his lips when he asked, suddenly: “Will she die?”

“Yes,” the doctor said.

“When?” Rex asked.

“In two years,” the doctor said, “—three, if she’s lucky.”

Rex’s hand began to tremble. The drink began to spill onto the table. He put down the glass.

“There’s nothing we can do about it,” the doctor said. “The suffering won’t come till close to the end. Till then, there’s nothing to do but to keep her happy. She’s happiest with you and with her work. Stay with her. Rex, as much as you can. See that she works from time to time, too. This is as important as anything else; to keep her occupied . . . Other than these things, there’s nothing else that can be done.”

He picked up his own glass now.

“There’s nothing else,” he said. . . .

Kay was on the telephone when Rex walked into her hotel room a little while later.

She looked over at him, surprised, blew him a kiss and indicated she’d be off the line in a minute.

“Darling,” she said, when she’d hung up, “that, I’ll have you know, was Hollywood, and calling me”

“Well now, was it?” Rex said, trying hard to keep his voice steady, and taking her hand in his.

“Oh yes,” Kay said. “Metro-GoldwynMayer studios,” she added, with a flourish. “It seems there’s a super-colossal film they’re readying for production—Les Girls, I think they’re calling it—and they say they will simply collapse if I don’t agree to do it.”

She laughed.

“You will do it, of course,” Rex said.

“I will not,” said Kay. “I’m here with you, and to stay this time. I’ve ended all my commitments. I’m all yours now, Rex—like it or not.”

He drew her close to him.

He kissed her.

“I’m glad you came back,” Kay said, softly, as their faces separated.

“I’ve got some important news, good news,” Rex said. “I wanted to wait until tonight, after the show. But—”

Kay didn’t let him finish. “The divorce,” she said, “it’s coming through?”

“Yes,” Rex said.

“And we’ll be married?” Kay asked.

“Yes,” Rex said.

“Oh darling, my darling,” Kay said, grabbing him, hugging him. “When?”

“In a few months,” Rex said, “—four or five or six at the most. It takes time.”

Kay placed her head against his chest. “So long?” she whispered.

“It takes time, Kay,” he said again. And then he drew her away from him and he asked, “What did you tell them at MGM—about the picture?”

“That I couldn’t do it,” Kay said.

“And what did they say?”

“They asked me to reconsider.”

“Do it,” Rex said.

“Why?” Kay asked.

“It’ll make the time go doubly fast for you,” Rex said. “You’ll be busy. You’ll be working. You’ll—” He stopped and took her hand again. “After we’re married, Kay,” he said, “you and I aren’t going to be separated, ever, not for one minute. We’ll work together when we work. Or we’ll arrange to be with one another when only one of us is working . . . But for now I’d rather you worked alone, if you must. I’d like you to go to Hollywood and do the picture.”

Kay smiled. “Is that an order, sire?” she asked.

“Yes,” Rex said.

“I have no alternative?”

“No.”

“If I refuse will you leave me and will I remain an unhappy spinster for all the long years of my life?” Kay asked.

Rex tightened his hold on her hand. “That’s right,” he said. “That’s right. . . .”

It was early evening by the time Rex left Kay’s hotel.

He took a cab to the theater and went straight to his dressing room.

There, alone, he picked up his phone.

And he placed a call to Lilli Palmer, his wife. . . .

“From the beginning of shooting, it was Kay who set the happy mood on Les Girls,” remembers Mitzi Gaynor. “She was so beautiful and spontaneous. She spoiled everyone by splurging on gifts. On the starting day, Gene Kelly wasn’t there and he forgot to send flowers to his leading ladies—Kay, Taina Elg and myself. So when he came in the next day Kay deluged him with roses and wires saying, GOOD LUCK ON YOUR PICTURE! That was the beginning of the fun we all had together. Kay made it last until the very final day.”

Taina Elg remembers that “During lunch, Kay and Mitzi and I would sit together in one of our dressing rooms, munching on sandwiches and salads while Kay kept us in uproarious laughter. She knew so many funny stories. She had such a marvelous wit and joie de vivre. The only time she ever became serious, in fact, was when either Mitzi or I would mention something about our husbands. Then Kay was the typical anxious bride-to-be wanting to hear all about married life. Very often she would say, ‘I wish I were in your shoes—right now.’ We would remind her that she would be marrying Rex before not too long. ‘Yes.’ she would say and her face would light up, ‘that’s right, isn’t it?’ And then she would go back to making a joke about something or other, but you could tell that deep in her mind she was still thinking about her man, her Rex—and that her heart was just bursting to marry him. . . .”

The wedding took place on June 20, 1957, shortly after midnight, in New York’s Universalist Church of the Divine Paternity.

It was a simple and lovely affair.

Kay was attended by her sister, Kim, who had married an American and was now living on Long Island.

Rex’s best man was his lawyer and good friend, Aaron Frosh.

On the altar before them were symbols of all the earth’s religions.

As the service began, Kay wept a little.

But when the minister said “Join right hands” and Rex stuck out his left, she smiled.

“Opening night jitters,” Kay said later to a friend. “But I think we’re settling down now and are good for a sixty, seventy-year run. . . .”

“Yes, all brides are happy,” another friend of Kay’s has said. “But I’d never seen a girl as happy, as ecstatic, as the new Mrs. Harrison.

“Some people tired of her happiness, and began to talk about her behind her back. ‘Isn’t it a little boring,’ they would ask, ‘all this gushing about Rex, Rex, Rex . . . And carrying those two bracelets and that brooch he gave her in her purse all the time, even when she’s not wearing them—I mean, isn’t that all a little bit too much?’

“But Kay was oblivious to any of this talk.

“And she continued gushing over her husband, unashamedly.

“I remember the night in November of that year, just after Rex had left the New York company of Fair Lady and just before they sailed for England.

“We were at a party.

“Rex was on one side of the room, talking to my husband and a few other people.

“I was alone with Kay on the other side of the room.

“First, I remember, I congratulated her about her fantastic success in Les Girls, which had just been released. ‘I hear, I said, ‘that four studios are hot after you to do another picture.’

“Kay winked. ‘Five studios,’ she said.

“And then she shook her head and said, ‘But I’m saying no to everything right now. We go to England, Rex does Fair Lady there for a while, we take a short vacation and then if there’s any picture work to be done we do it together.’

” ‘No splitting the act?’ I asked.

” ‘Not if I’ve got anything to say about it,’ Kay told me. ‘It’s too good an act. I don’t know what I’d do if it folded, even for just a little while. Rex is my life.’

” ‘Ah love,’ I said ‘it’s wonderful.’

” ‘And so is security,’ Kay said. ‘You see,’ she went on to say then, ‘being married to Rex has given me that, security. I’ve got some roots now. I belong. My friends used to talk about me as an old nut-head before, and I suppose I was, living like a champagne bottle, making big pop and splash-noises all over the place. I’d just had a career and very little else then. No home, sometimes a flat, sometimes a hotel room . . . Well, with Rex it’s different now. Oh I suppose I still don’t have a home, a real home, not yet at any rate. But I’ve got roots now. In my husband. I belong now—to a fine man. And I wouldn’t give up a bit of him. Not for a minute.’

“That was the last time I talked to Kay.

“A few days later she and Rex sailed on the Queen Mary for England.

“Then, shortly after this, I got a letter from Kay telling me that there had been a change in their plans, that she and Rex were going to make The Reluctant Debutante in Paris before the London opening of Fair Lady. ‘See?’ she wrote. ‘No splitting up the act!’

“Her next letter came in May, following the opening of the show. In it she wrote: ‘Pardon me, but I now own a mink coat, m’dear. Rex surprised me with it last week. I was very naughty. I told my husband I didn’t really like fur and that I didn’t think I would really need any until I was ancient and prone to all kinds of draughty weather. Rex insisted that I keep it and wear it. Of course I got to adore it in twenty minutes’ time and had to take back everything I’d said. And I’m only sorry now that summer’s coming and that I’ll have to put it in mothballs until we go to Switzerland this fall.’ . . .”

They went to Switzerland in late November of 1958, just After Rex left My Fair Lady for good.

And it was there, a few days after they arrived, that Kay suffered her first serious attack.

They had spent most of the early part of that day skiing first, and then reading—Kay reading the script of Once More With Feeling, a picture she would be making in Paris soon; Rex reading the script of a play he expected to do in New York the following fall.

It was 6:30 p.m. now.

They were dressing for dinner.

Suddenly, Kay moaned and brought her hands up to her stomach.

“Oh my God,” she said, the blood draining from her face. “Rex,” she called. “Rex!”

He came rushing over to her and caught her just as she was about to fall.

“A terrible pain,” Kay said, looking up at him. “I don’t know why. But it hurts me so much—”

And then she fainted.

Rex carried her and placed her on their bed.

He phoned a doctor.

The doctor, a cancer specialist from nearby Geneva, already alerted to stand by in case of any such emergency, arrived a short time later.

He examined the still-unconscious Kay.

He administered an injection.

Then, turning to Rex, he shook his head and he said, “I have done all that there is to be done for now. . . .”

Kay was conscious a short time later.

Rex, seated by the bed, leaned over and smiled at her.

“Do you feel any better?” he asked.

“Yes,” Kay said, groggily. “What—what Happened to me, Rex? What’s wrong with me?”

“You’re run down,” Rex said, “—very much run down. You need a good rest. You need healthy food.” He pointed to a jar of pain-killing pills the doctor had left behind. “And you need those, regularly, every four hours,” he said.

“What are they?” Kay asked.

“Vitamins,” Rex said.

Kay closed her eyes.

“Will I be all right?” she asked.

“Of course,” Rex said.

“It’s nothing more than what you tell me, darling?” she asked.

“Nothing more,” Rex said.

“If you were anyone else, telling me this, I don’t know that I’d believe you,” Kay said. “I felt so terrible. I had such pain.”

“Believe me,” Rex said. “I’m telling you the truth.”

“Good,” Kay said. “Because I was afraid.”

She lay there, her eyes still closed, repeating the phrase.

“I was afraid,” she said. “. . . I was so afraid.”

“Of what, darling?” Rex asked, finally.

“Of us,” Kay said. “That it would all be over for us, that I would die, that I would be alone, far away, without you.”

Rex placed his hand on her forehead.

“Am I still a Scatty Katty?” Kay asked. “Is that what you’re thinking?”

“That is exactly what I’m thinking,” Rex said. “Now how could you guess . . .?”

Kay suffered two additional attacks after that initial one.

The first came five months later, in March of 1959. Kay and Rex were in Paris, where Kay was finishing work on Once More With Feeling. She was on the set one morning, beginning a rollicking comedy scene with Yul Brynner, her co-star, when the pain hit her. She collapsed and was rushed to the hospital.

That night, Rex announced to reporters that his wife was suffering from “anemia complicated by a liver ailment.” He added that she was resting well and that she would be back at work within a week. “Nobody’s to worry about her,” he said, watching the reporters as they took down his words, knowing that Kay herself would be reading these very words in the evening papers. “She is in very good shape.”

“How about rumors that her health will keep her from working for a couple of years?” a reporter asked. “That what she needs is a good long rest.”

“Complete nonsense,” Rex said. “Kay will rest at our villa in Italy this summer—yes. We’ve looked forward to an entire summer together with nothing to do but loaf in the sun, swim, fish, dance. But after that, at the end of the summer—”

And though he talked on now about the plans for his and Kay’s future, his voice became suddenly hollow-sounding.

Because he knew, from what the doctor had told him just a little while earlier, that by the end of the summer Kay would probably have had another, and final, attack.

“Then, at the end of the summer,” he went on, watching the reporters’ pencils move across their pads—

The final attack came in Portofino, Italy, on Friday, August 28, of this year.

The next day, after an all-night train ride through northern Italy and France, Rex carried a drug-numbed Kay aboard a Channel steamer for the last part of the trip home.

When the steamer arrived in England late that afternoon, two seamen helped Rex—exhausted himself now with fatigue and worry—carry his wife off the boat and to a waiting car.

The car sped to London and a hospital there.

Kay was placed under the immediate care of three physicians.

Rex then held one of his usual interviews with waiting reporters. “Nothing to flap about,” he said, forcing a smile. “Kay’s all right. She’ll be here for four or five days. Then, in a week or so, we’re off to New York.”

The days passed.

Kay’s condition grew gradually worse.

“Nothing to flap about,” Rex said, over and over. “She’ll be leaving here soon. Print that in your papers, and in great big capital letters . . . !”

On Sunday night, September 6, Rex sat on a bench outside Kay’s room, smoking a cigarette.

The corridor was unusually quiet.

Then, at one point, a nurse came walking over to him.

“Is your wife asleep?” she asked.

“She was a little while ago,” Rex said.

“I’ll just look in on her,” the nurse said, turning and heading for Kay’s room.

Less than a minute later, she came rushing back out.

She walked past Rex.

“Miss!” he called out.

The woman didn’t turn.

Rex rose. For a moment his legs felt heavy under him, as if they could not move. And then, he began to walk.

He opened the door.

“Kay,” he said when he saw her, trying to sit up in her bed, looking wildly about the room, gasping for breath.

“Kay!”

He raced over to the bed and took her in his arms.

She turned to look at him.

Her lips parted, slowly.

She tried desperately to say something.

But she couldn’t.

“Shhhh,” Rex said, “don’t talk, don’t even try.”

He kissed her.

“Rest now, my darling,” he said. “The pain will go. The doctor will come soon and the pain will go.”

Kay closed her eyes.

A moment later, her breathing stopped.

“Rest now, my love,” Rex said, still holding her in his arms. “Rest . . . rest . . . rest. . . .”

It was a few hours after that when Rex, dazed with grief, returned to the apartment where he and Kay had lived.

He headed straight for the room that had been theirs.

He entered the room and was about to close the door when he remembered a voice, way back, that had said to him:

“I never shut doors. It makes things seem so final, so ended.”

He removed his hand from the knob.

And, the door still open, he walked to a chair and he sat and he began to cry.

THE END

Kay starred in Columbia’s ONCE MORE, WITH FEELING.

 

It is a quote. MODERN SCREEN MAGAZINE DECEMBER 1959