Beatrice Kay Collection

Beatrice Kay
(1907 – 1986)

The decade before the dawn of the Twentieth Century the Gay Nineties. It was the time of gas lights, Gibson girls, vaudeville, Teddy Roosevelt, and Nickelodeon theaters. It was not a particularly prosperous time for the United States, but from the perspective of the Great Depression, it was remembered as a comfortable time. It was also a profitable concept for anyone who could play on the nostalgia people held for the period.

Beatrice Kay got her start in vaudeville well after the Gay Nineties had ended, but she would be labeled as the Gay Nineties' girl. Born Hannah Beatrice Kuper in New York City, 1907, she went by "Honey Kuper" or "Honey Day" during her early vaudeville days. She got started at the age of six playing "Little Lord Fauntleroy" in a stock company and was soon touring the vaudeville circuit, dancing on her toes while waving American flags. "When things like that happen to you before you're 10 years old," she said years later, "you can do or say or think anything you want to, but you are permanently addicted to show business". She settled on the name Beatrice Kay when she began working in silent films at a New Jersey studio.

Miss Kay developed the style which gained her national attention when she auditioned for Billy Rose's Diamond Horseshoe Club on Times Square. "I didn't know any Gay '90s songs when I went to audition for Mr. Rose," she later related. "He told me to come back with a bunch of old songs, but none of them were old enough to suit him." Rose still was not satisfied when she sang "Ta-Ra-Ra-Boom De-ay" and asked her to try again. Becoming a bit miffed, she belted out the tune and Rose was sold. Soon, she was the headline act at The Diamond Horseshoe, and The Beatrice Kay Show was tapped as a summer replacement for Fred Allen. She also starred in CBS's The Gay Nineties Revue in the early Forties.

Beatrice found considerable success on the nightclub circuit and was the headline act at the El Rancho Casino in Las Vegas for several years. Her Vegas success was profitable enough for her to open a dude ranch near Reno, the Lazy BK, but business expenses closed the ranch in the early 1960s. She went into semi-retirement to care for her mother in Hollywood, but after a fire claimed most of her possessions she went back to work until a stroke in the late Seventies forced her into full retirement. She died from stroke-related complications in North Hollywood on November 8, 1986. She was 79.