Eloise at 55

On Monday, Knight, who turned 83 last weekend, will receive a significant birthday present—he is being honored by the New York Public Library in a gala celebration for his entire body of work. Though the award is certainly focused on Eloise, Knight gently mentions that he has done much more than create a tiny, cosmopolitan Frankenstein. “Oh, I am proud of a great many other things,” he says. “I worked in the theater, illustrating for Broadway. I did 50 books, I have done murals and fashion drawings for Saks Fifth Avenue. I have done thousands of drawings for magazines—and now, I even have a blog.”

For his blog, which began on Vanity Fair’s Web site this fall, Knight is intent on capturing the city’s institutions that he loves, but feels are fast disappearing. “I am doing a project to draw all these old restaurants that have endured, inspired by Café Des Artistes closing,” he says. “My favorite so far is Le Veau D’Or, over by Bergdorf Goodman. They used to serve tête de veau, which as you know is the entire head of a calf, and children would squeal when it would come out. So I have drawn an elegant French woman very pleased with this order, and her little ones, not so much.”

“You’d never see Eloise with a cellphone,” he jokes. “Not in my lifetime”

Knight is also working on a new book with June Havoc, the 97-year-old sister of Gypsy Rose Lee (“Baby June” from the musical), creating an “adult graphic novel about her life in vaudeville in the 1920s when she was a huge star. It’s quite grim.”

Knight met Havoc through Kay Thompson, as they both were married to the same man, Bill Spier (“separately, of course”). “They are totally connected,” says Knight. “They are both Scorpios. And Eloise is a Scorpio, and I am too. I’ve always been drawn to these strong, captivating women.

Knight met Thompson through his neighbor, socialite D.D. Ryan, who used to wake up with drawings slipped under her door, and who met Thompson on a photo shoot with Richard Avedon. The author and illustrator immediately bonded after meeting and with only a few phrases to start with (“I have a dog that looks like a cat.”), Knight started drawing. Less than a year after meeting, the pair published the first Eloise book. “From there, the demand exploded,” explains Knight. “But Kay went off to make Funny Face, because everyone then wanted her for movies. She was miserable on that set; the only one she liked was Audrey Hepburn. So she invited me to Paris and we did that, and Christmas, and Moscow, because it was very hip back then, with all the Cold War talk and spies.”

And then, as quickly as the phenomenon started, it was over. “She just stopped wanting to do Eloise,” says Knight. “It was done for her, and that’s always her way. She cut things off, she molted. She was a jazz singer, then a voice coach, then a cabaret singer, then an author, and she had to keep moving. But four years later, from Rome, she called me and said, ‘We have to do another book. Eloise Takes A Bawth.’”