January 11, 2007. Copyright 2007, Graphic News. All rights reserved

Feline femme fatale Eartha Kitt still on the prowl
By Joanna Griffin

LONDON, January 11, Graphic News:  ItÕs been some time since the sex kitten turned sultry older tigress, but singer and actress Eartha Kitt is still having fun with audiences enticed by the husky purr and witty delivery that have been trademarks of her half-century career. She turns 80 on January 17.

ÒIn many ways, IÕm still playing CatwomanÓ, Kitt said in a recent interview, referring to her most famous role in the 1960s Batman television series. But even though the sexy villain was the perfect match for her feline looks and tongue-in-cheek humour, itÕs doubtful that she could have lasted so long without a few more tricks up her sleeve.

That the artist is one of just a handful to receive nominations for Tony awards (three times), Grammys (twice), and an Emmy, points to the versatility behind her enduring success. The accolades are all the more impressive when you consider that Kitt  started life as an illegitimate, mixed race child in a society that was hostile to both.

Born Eartha Mae Keith on a cotton plantation in South Carolina in 1927, she never knew her white dirt farmer father and was given away by her African-American/Cherokee mother before being sent to New York at eight. At 15 she fled a miserable life with her aunt in Harlem, and was soon singing and dancing around the world after joining the Katherine Dunham Company.

An introduction to Orson Welles in 1950 led to a role as Helen of Troy in his production of Faust, and movie roles soon followed: she starred opposite Sidney Poitier in The Mark of the Hawk, and also appeared in St Louis Blues (1958) and Anna Lucasta (1959). In the late 1960s she took over the TV role of Catwoman and, many believe, made it forever hers.

At the same time, the hardworking Kitt continued to hone her persona as a gold-digging predator in cabaret appearances, where she was best known for her teasing renditions of CÕest Si Bon and Santa Baby. The same husky drawl has kept her in voiceover work throughout the years, including several Disney films and as python Kaa in The Jungle Book for BBC Radio.

But her career suffered a hiatus after a 1968 lunch at the White House hosted by First Lady Bird Johnson at which she commented that poor minorities were suffering because of the Vietnam War. Professionally blacklisted in the United States, she spent a decade in Europe, singing in nightclubs and perfecting the French that lent an even more exotic element to her performances. In 1974 she came under fire for singing for white audiences in apartheid South Africa. 

In 1978 Kitt was back on Broadway in the musical Timbuktu!, and she has returned to the stage again and again since, most notably in The Wild Party (2000) and as the Wicked Witch of the West in a production of the Wizard of Oz at the end of the 1990s. At the end of 2006 she played an ageing French chanteuse in the Broadway musical Mimi le Duck. 

Given her camped up style, itÕs no surprise that Kitt is a gay icon. Her 1980s songs Where is My Man? and Cha-Cha Heels were huge hits in dance clubs around the UK. She says her experience of racism made her sensitive to all forms of prejudice.

Eartha Kitt has a daughter, Kitt Shapiro, from her five-year marriage to Bill McDonald.
/ENDS