1903-1977
US writer, socialite
1. Introduction
Kay Halle (pronounced ‘HAL-ee’) was an American writer, broadcaster, intelligence officer, heiress and socialite, with a German Jewish and Irish Catholic heritage. Her father co-founded Halle Brothers, an iconic Cleveland department store business. She was a Democrat campaigner, a political hostess and an intimate associate of various influential men, but never married. She turned down Randolph Churchill’s marriage proposals but remained his friend for life and became close to the wider Churchill family. She assisted the process of Winston being granted honorary US citizenship and published two books of his sayings and writings.
2. Stories
- Halle decided not to go into the family department store business and instead forged her own career.
- Randolph Churchill was one of Halle’s many suitors.
- Halle was instrumental in Churchill being granted honorary US citizenship in 1963, the first person ever to gain the honour.
- Halle facilitated the installation of a statue of Churchill at the British Embassy in Washington, D.C.
- Halle was a fan of Winston’s wit and wisdom and published a collection of his sayings and writings.
- Halle’s shared interest in Winston’s fascination with Anglo-American relations prompted her to publish a second collection of his writings.
- Halle worked on a third collation of Churchill’s writings, entitled Churchill Clairvoyant.
Halle decided not to go into the family department store business and instead forged her own career.
Kay’s father Samuel and his older brother Salmon co-founded the department store Halle Brothers in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1891. It grew to include several suburban branches in addition to its downtown high-end flagship store, with over 3000 employees by the late 1940s. The Halle brand developed a particular cachet, influencing the naming of Cleveland-born actress Halle Berry in 1966. However, its business declined due to competition and the company went into liquidation in 1982.
Kay became a journalist in the 1920s, initially using her family contacts and then her own influence to establish herself in distinguished circles. She moved to London in the 1930s to write a column for the Cleveland News, where she became friendly with the Churchill family and other dignitaries. Returning to the USA, she continued her journalism and campaigned for Franklin D. Roosevelt. She began radio work in 1939.
From 1943 to 1947, she was an executive in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a predecessor of the CIA. Known as ‘Mata Halle’ after Mata Hari, the World War I spy, she ran the Records and Reports Office of the Morale Operations (‘MO’) section, which sought to undermine enemy confidence through rumours and disinformation. This included seeking to overcome Japanese unwillingness to surrender and to strengthen Chinese opposition to Japanese invasion.
After the war, she lived in Washington, D.C., mingling with high society, including presidents Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy (‘JFK’). In the 1950s, she travelled the world, interviewing celebrities for radio. In 1960 she was closely involved with JFK’s presidential campaign, after which she worked alongside the Kennedy administration on various projects. In her later years she supported many civic organisations.
She was well known for her charm, confidence and attractiveness to men, being associated to various degrees (not always clear to what extent, given her discretion) with composer George Gershwin, politician Averell Harriman, JFK’s father Joe Kennedy, writer Walter Lippmann, architect Buckminster Fuller and sculptor Isamu Noguchi. Her involvement with Randolph Churchill is better understood (see below). She is said to have shown a friend a list of 64 men who had proposed to her but she never married.
Randolph Churchill was one of Halle’s many suitors.
Clementine visited her son Randolph in the USA in February 1931 and told Winston that Randolph had proposed several times to a lady from Cleveland. They had met at a wedding reception the day before Randolph was due to give a speech in her home city. Winston’s friend Bernard Baruch conducted secret enquiries into her background, enabling Clementine to report that she was from a wealthy, respectable family and had been well brought up. Randolph was 19 years old and Halle was 27.
Clementine met her and described her as tall with a beautiful figure and a sensible and intelligent face. ‘A clear & lovely complexion, fair hair, good hands […] earnest in her outlook & a little provincial in her manner’.1 The two got on well and Halle indicated that if she also got on well with Winston (she was visiting Britain four months later), it would help her to be more amenable to Randolph’s proposals.
Clementine was concerned about the age gap, to which Randolph countered that a younger wife would bore him and that he needed someone who would not allow him to be overbearing. Clementine was also concerned about Randolph’s finances.
Halle did not give in to Randolph’s entreaties, despite her attraction to his looks and his way with words. Nevertheless, she became devoted to him as a friend for almost forty years. She wrote later that he inspired her ‘to look above the hedgerows of my young life and explore the world’.2 She visited Chartwell and got on very well with Winston and his family. She saw various Churchill family members again on many occasions, including hosting them at her home in Washington, D.C.
After Randolph’s death in 1968, Halle arranged various tributes and published them in Randolph Churchill, The Young Unpretender: Essays by His Friends (1971), issued in the USA as The Grand Original: Portraits of Randolph Churchill by His Friends. Contributors included Jackie Onassis, Aristotle Onassis, John Betjeman, Harold Macmillan, Isaiah Berlin and Malcolm Muggeridge.
Halle was instrumental in Churchill being granted honorary US citizenship in 1963, the first person ever to gain the honour.
Halle played a key role in initiating the process and seeing it through Congress, which took two years. Her correspondence with JFK at the time included a long letter to him in August 1961, beginning, ‘I thought it would please you to know that Randolph and I spent the day with Sir Winston and his family at Chartwell’.3 She gave a full account of the visit, including a transcript of a mumbled toast by the ageing Churchill: ‘To your great President Kennedy… and… and… ours.’4 She told Kennedy that Churchill’s health was declining, urging that he be granted honorary American citizenship soon: ‘Though his cheek was warm when I kissed him farewell, both hands were cold.’5
Churchill was not fit enough to attend the ceremony in the White House Rose Garden in April 1963, but Randolph and his son Winston attended on his behalf. Several hundred others were there including Churchill’s friends Bernard Baruch and Averell Harriman. Churchill watched the ceremony, deeply moved, on a live satellite relay. He was not able to respond to JFK’s speech as the transmitter in Cornwall did not allow two-way interaction. This could have been done via France, but was not requested, to keep the proceedings as an entirely Anglo-American arrangement.
The honour was one of Churchill’s most prized awards. He is one of only two to have been granted it in their lifetimes, the other being Mother Teresa in 1996. Six others have been given the honour posthumously since 1981, including William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania.
The honorary citizenship document looks like a passport but is not valid for travel. Citizenship could potentially have caused Churchill some tax problems, although the regulations were not as strict then as they are now. Boris Johnson, a dual UK and US citizen, received a US tax bill after the sale of his north London home in 2014, even though the transaction was not taxable in the UK. Furious, he renounced his US citizenship in 2016.
Halle facilitated the installation of a statue of Churchill at the British Embassy in Washington, D.C.
The statue was made by American sculptor William McVey and unveiled by US secretary of state Dean Rusk in 1966 on the third anniversary of Churchill receiving honorary US citizenship. Randolph, Winston’s daughter Mary Soames and two of her children were present. Churchill’s uplifted right hand displays his trademark victory sign and in his left hand are a cane and a cigar (there are five spare cigars in case of vandalism).
Underneath the statue is a time capsule which includes a letter from President Dwight Eisenhower, to be opened by the US president in 2063, the hundredth anniversary of Churchill’s citizenship. It also has some soil from his birthplace Blenheim Palace, from his Chartwell rose garden and from his mother’s Brooklyn home.
Halle laid the cornerstone for the base of the statue a few months before the statue itself was installed and unveiled. She did so on behalf of the English-Speaking Union (‘ESU’), a London-based international charity that promotes education and communication using the English language. Some anti-smoking members of the ESU objected to the cigar but it was approved by a majority vote. The ESU’s activities include administering science scholarships, called Lindemann Trust Fellowships, set up in 1972 by Brigadier Charles Lindemann, brother of Professor Frederick Lindemann, Churchill’s scientific advisor. Charles was also a scientific advisor, first to the British Army and then to the British embassy in Washington during World War II.
A plaque states that ‘One foot stands on United States soil, one on British Embassy grounds: a symbol of Churchill’s Anglo-American descent, and of the Alliance he did so much to forge, in war and in peace’.6 This does not mean that one of Churchill’s feet is on British soil, contrary to the common misconception that countries have sovereignty within their diplomatic missions. Sovereignty remains with host countries but hosts are not allowed to enter diplomatic property without permission.
Opposite Churchill’s statue, outside the embassy of South Africa, a former British colony, is a statue of Nelson Mandela with his own well-known gesture, a raised fist. Referring to the game ‘rock, paper, scissors‘, a South African ambassador commented on Churchill’s V-sign and Mandela’s fist, saying with a smile that ‘rock beats scissors’.7
Halle was a fan of Winston’s wit and wisdom and published a collection of his sayings and writings.
The year after Churchill’s death, Halle published Irrepressible Churchill: A Treasury of Winston Churchill’s Wit (1966). It was one of the first of what has become a wide array of publications of his witticisms. False attribution and invented sayings are a major issue but Richard Langworth, a fact-checker in this area, describes Halle’s publication as being ‘highly reliable’.8 Langworth’s own publications track quotations to their source and have appendices of sayings that are falsely or unreliably attributed to Churchill (see ‘Further reading’).*
An example of a well-known but unreliable quote is a reply to Lady Astor, which is more likely to have been said by F.E. Smith (Lord Birkenhead), if the exchange occurred at all. Nancy Astor: ‘If I were married to you, I’d put poison in your coffee’ (sometimes ‘tea’). Churchill: ‘If I were married to you, I’d drink it.’9 Another is a supposed comment by Churchill about not ending sentences with a preposition: ‘This is the kind of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put.’10
However, many other well-known quotes have been validated, including a reply to George Bernard Shaw who wrote ‘Am reserving two tickets for you for my premiere. Come and bring a friend, if you have one’. Churchill’s response was ‘Impossible to be present for the first performance. Will attend the second – if there is one.’11
Churchill read widely and had a phenomenal memory but did not always give attribution to his borrowed or adapted sayings. Sometimes he indicated that they were not original but these disclaimers are often overlooked, such as ‘it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time’12 (italics added).
Some of Churchill’s quotes have been adapted by others or have become corrupted over time, such as his saying in 1954 that ‘Meeting jaw to jaw is better than war’.13 Harold Macmillan’s 1958 version, ‘Jaw, jaw is better than war, war’, is now more widely quoted than Churchill’s original.
* Langworth is Senior Fellow of the Churchill Project at Hillsdale College, Michigan. He is also complimentary about Winston Churchill, Maxims and Reflections of the Rt. Hon. Winston S. Churchill, ed. by Colin Coote (Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1947).
Halle’s shared interest in Winston’s fascination with Anglo-American relations prompted her to publish a second collection of his writings.
In Winston Churchill on America and Britain (1970), Halle highlights Churchill’s lifelong enchantment with Anglo-American relations, spurred from an early age by having an American mother. Even the theme of his funeral service, in which he was closely involved in the planning, was the UK-USA relationship. His biographer Martin Gilbert dedicated a book to the theme: Churchill and America (2005).
As well as writings and speeches about the UK-USA ‘special relationship’, Churchill also made some critiques about the USA, albeit rarely and some tongue-in-cheek. He told his brother Jack that the USA was ‘Not pretty or romantic but great and utilitarian. There seems to be no such thing as reverence or tradition.’14 US Prohibition, he said, was ‘an affront to the whole history of mankind’.15 At a 1944 news conference in Canada, he was asked if he had any complaints about the USA. He replied, ‘Toilet paper too thin, newspapers too fat’.16 About American newspapers, he said, ‘the essence of American journalism is vulgarity divested of truth’.17
‘You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else’ is a supposed Churchill comment about American lateness to join the World Wars but is unsubstantiated. Likewise, ‘Britain and America are two nations divided by a common language’ is not a documented Churchill quote.
A topic that brought about occasional tension with Americans was Churchill’s undying support for the British Empire. At a White House lunch, Roosevelt deliberately placed him next to Mary Reid, wife of politician and diplomat Ogden Reid and a campaigner for India’s independence. She asked what he was going to about the situation with the Indians. Churchill asked for clarification as to whether they were talking about those in India who had multiplied under benevolent British rule, or those in America who, he understood, were almost extinct.
On the day of Churchill’s funeral, 30 January 1965, the Liberty Bell in Middle Collegiate Church in New York tolled 91 times, one for each of Churchill’s years and once more for his close association with the USA. Although not as iconic as the cracked Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, it was rung at the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and for the inauguration and death of each US president since George Washington. The church was gutted by a fire on 5 December 2020 but the bell survived.
Halle worked on a third collation of Churchill’s writings, entitled Churchill Clairvoyant.
She made much progress but handed the task over to author and presidential speechwriter James C. Humes who wrote Churchill: The Prophetic Statesman (2012). Humes received a letter from former president Richard Nixon in 1992 which said, referring to Churchill, that ‘There’s only one political leader in history who had his own crystal ball’.18 Many of his foresights came from his study of history, with one of his maxims being, ‘The longer you can look back, the further you can look forward.’19
His more distant anticipations are contained mainly in his essay Fifty Years Hence (1931). Drawing partly on H.G. Wells, he anticipated nuclear energy, new materials, wireless phones, laboratory-created meat and armed drones. Other predictions included both world wars, the rise of air power, Nazi belligerence, the beginning and end of the Cold War, the creation of Israel and an oil crisis.
As a 16-year old in 1891, he wrote in a school essay that ‘This country will be subjected somehow, to a tremendous invasion […] London will be in danger and in the high position I shall occupy, it will fall to me to save the Capital and save the Empire.’20
In around 1953, Churchill was shaving one morning when he turned to his personal assistant Jock Colville, saying, ‘Today is the 24th of January. It’s the day my father died. It’s the day I shall die, too.’21 He repeated this to his son-in-law Christopher Soames in 1964. On 10 January 1965 Colville was given the news that Churchill had had a major stroke and would not survive. ‘He won’t die until the 24th’, said Colville.22 Churchill lay in a coma for 14 days and died on 24 January 1965, 70 years to the day after his father.
Churchill enjoyed witticisms about prediction. ‘I always avoid prophesying beforehand,’ he said, ‘because it is much better policy to prophesy after the event has already taken place.’23 He also said that a politician needs ‘the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year – and to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen’.24
3. Biographical overview
| Occupation | Writer, broadcaster and hostess |
| Country | USA |
| Career | Cleveland News column (London, early 1930s). Cleveland journalist and F.D. Roosevelt presidential campaigner (1930s). Radio series (1939). Executive in Office of Strategic Services (1943-47). Radio correspondent (1940s). Worldwide travel to interview celebrities (1950s). Democrat campaigner (1960). Involved in various Kennedy administration projects and civic organisations (1960s-80s). |
| Born | 1903 in Cleveland, Ohio (29 years younger than Churchill) |
| Father | Samuel Halle (1868-1954), co-founder of Halle Brothers department store in Cleveland, Ohio, with older brother Salmon (1866-1949) |
| Mother | Blanche Murphy (1874-1951) |
| Siblings | First of five children: 1. Katherine ‘Kay’ (1903-97) 2. Walter (1905-72), Halle Brothers CEO 3. Margaret (1906-93) 4. Jane (1909-63) 5. Ann (c.1915-2012), architect, biplane pilot |
| Education | Laurel School, Cleveland; Mary C. Wheeler School, Providence, Rhode Island; Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts; Cleveland Institute of Music |
| Spouse | – |
| Relationships | Randolph Churchill. Possibly: George Gershwin, Averell Harriman, Joe Kennedy, Walter Lippmann, Buckminster Fuller, Isamu Noguchi. |
| Children | – |
| Died | 1997 at home in Washington, D.C., aged 93, of pneumonia after a stroke (32 years after Churchill) |
| Buried | Oak Hill Cemetery, Washington D.C. |
| Chartwell | Recorded visits: |
| Other Club | – |
| Nickname | Kay (birth name Katherine) |
| Height | ‘Tall’ (description by Clementine Churchill who was 5’8” (1.73 m)) |
4. See also
Churchill and the USA
- Baruch, Bernard
- Chaplin, Charlie (Hollywood visit)
- Harriman, Averell
- Korda, Alexander (UK propaganda)
- Murrow, Ed (broadcasts from London)
- Roosevelt, Franklin D.
- Truman, Harry
Churchill and the Kennedys
- Onassis, Aristotle (John F. Kennedy)
- UK Fascist Groups (Joe Kennedy’s authorisation of a raid on a US citizen)
Churchill and predictions
- Wells, H.G.
5. Further reading
Kay Halle
Unfortunately there is no good biography of Kay Halle, despite her remarkable life.
- Smith, J. Y., ‘Kay Halle, Washington Grande Dame, Dies at 93’, Washington Post, 1997 (obituary)
Churchill and the USA
- Gilbert, Martin, Churchill and America (Simon & Schuster, 2005)[2]
- Maier, Thomas, When Lions Roar: The Churchills and the Kennedys (Crown, 2014) (features Halle as one of the characters)
Churchill’s sayings
- Churchill, Winston S., Churchill in His Own Words, ed. by Richard M. Langworth (Ebury, 2012)
- Churchill, Winston, Churchill’s Wit, ed. by Richard M. Langworth (Random House, 2009)
- Langworth, Richard M., Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality: What He Actually Did and Said (McFarland, 2017)
Churchill’s predictions
- Churchill, Winston S., Thoughts and Adventures, ed. by James W. Muller (Thornton Butterworth, 1932); see the chapter Fifty Years Hence
- Humes, James C., Churchill: The Prophetic Statesman (Regnery History, 2012)
Miscellaneous
- Halle, Kay, ed., Randolph Churchill, the Young Unpretender: Essays by His Friends (Heinemann, 1971)
6. References
1. Winston S. Churchill and Clementine Churchill, Speaking for Themselves: The Personal Letters of Winston and Clementine Churchill, ed. by Mary Soames (Black Swan, 1999), p. 352.
2. Randolph Churchill, the Young Unpretender: Essays by His Friends, ed. by Kay Halle (Heinemann, 1971), p. 3.
3. John F. Kennedy, The Letters of John F. Kennedy, ed. by Martin W. Sandler (Bloomsbury, 2013), p. 175.
4. Kennedy, p. 176.
5. Kennedy, p. 178.
6. English Speaking Union of the United States, ‘Washington D.C. Branch’, ESUUS, 2020.
7. SA Embassy, Washington DC, ‘Mandela Statue Unveiled in Washington’, Brand South Africa, 2013.
8. Richard M. Langworth, ‘Churchillian Fiction Continues to Roll off the Presses’, Richard M. Langworth, 2019
9. Richard M. Langworth, Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality: What He Actually Did and Said (McFarland, 2017), p. 216.
10. Michael Richards, ‘Red Herrings: Famous Quotes Churchill Never Said’, International Churchill Society, 2013.
11. Winston S. Churchill, Churchill’s Wit, ed. by Richard M. Langworth (Random House, 2009), p. 5.
12. Winston S. Churchill, ‘Parliament Bill’, Hansard, 1947.
13. Richards.
14. Martin Gilbert, Churchill and America (Simon & Schuster, 2005), p. 16.
15. Winston S Churchill, ‘The Shattered Cause of Temperance’, Collier’s, 13 August 1932, p. 21.
16. Churchill, Churchill’s Wit, p. 141.
17. Churchill, Churchill’s Wit, p. 139.
18. James C. Humes, Churchill: The Prophetic Statesman (Regnery History, 2012), p. 1.
19. Humes, p. 216.
20. Martin Gilbert, In Search of Churchill: A Historian’s Journey (John Wiley & Sons, 1994), p. 215.
21. Humes, p. 217.
22. John Colville, ‘Churchill’s England: He Had No Use for Second Best’, Finest Hour, 1983, 6–8 (p. 7).
23. Humes, p. 8.
24. Humes, p. 215.