In Her Fashion

NIGHTCLUBS In Her Fashion

Singer Lisa Kirk has spent 15 years becoming so skilled a pro that it is impossible for audiences to be anti. Gowned in clinging, strapless, white organza studded with sequins, perched atop a suitcase carried by four male dancers, auburn-haired Singer Kirk was spending her evenings last week being carried about the floor, belting out I'm Sitting on Top of the World at the top of her iron lungs. It was corny, it was stagy, and few entertainers could have got away with it. But at the plush Persian Room of Manhattan's Hotel Plaza, Lisa was getting away with it well enough to pack the house twice a night. Supplied with special material by Writer-Husband Bob Wells (a co-producer of Dinah Shore's TV show last season), Lisa presents the most elaborate nightclub act since Mae West lost Mickey Hargitay and his bar bells to Jayne Mansfield.

In a sense. Lisa has been preparing that act ever since she sang her way out of the chorus line and up to a mike at Manhattan's old Versailles club. Rodgers & Hammerstein spotted her there, signed her for Allegro (1947), outfitted her with a show-stopping song, The Gentleman Is a Dope. In Cole Porter's Kiss Me Kate (1949), she raised double-entendre to a fine art, singing I'm Always True to You, Darling, in My Fashion. Since then, she has concentrated on elegant watering holes in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles. As she became perhaps the most velvety fixture in the velvet reaches of the posh supper clubs, she also helped set a trend toward acts with gimmicks. In her present carefully written show, Lisa does not take a shower on the dance floor (as she managed to a couple of seasons ago), but she does just about everything else.

During 53 minutes, she somehow seems to use as many props as a juggler and wriggle through as many costume changes as Auntie Mame, comes out for the finale, Limehouse Blues, in an Oriental gown and Chinese makeup. She sings hot songs (Anything Goes) and cool (Why Can't You Behave), as well as specialty numbers, e.g., Good Little Girls Go to Heaven ("and smart little girls go to Bergdorf's"). Her primary gifts are a voice with volume where she wants it and a figure to match. She can be sultry and sexy, playful and cute, lonely and sad, all without losing her cultivated air of stylishness.

Lisa is only 33, and can presumably go on being sultry, cute and stylish for decades to come. But if she should ever lose her nightclub following, her energetic, silver-haired mother may point to new possibilities; at 66, Mrs. Kirk is a successful model impersonating happy, middle-aged matrons of the Serutan set.

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