Eartha Kitt 1927 - 2008

Eartha Kitt, who died of colon cancer in Connecticut yesterday, overcame a difficult childhood through talent and guts. The contradictory stories of her childhood that she heard took her a lifetime to unravel. At one point Kitt discovered that she was conceived out of a rape (he was the son of the owner of the farm where she was born). As a girl, she remembers being badly treated while under the care of different members of her family. The stage provided her with a way to change her life.

Orson Welles may have been the first to say she was "the most exciting woman in the world," but few would dispute that description. Kitt referred to herself as a “sex kitten,” and she succeeded in conveying that smoldering sensuousness through her voice and manner right up to the end at age 81. She was incredibly multi-talented, one of the few performers to be nominated for a Tony, Grammy and Emmy. She even won Daytime Emmy Awards this year and last year for her work on a children’s series. She also wrote three memoirs.

Here is the first of two clips I’m going to include in this posting. This is Eartha Kitt pitching for the March of Dimes and its fight against polio in 1957, singing “An Old-Fashioned Girl.” (The March of Dimes was the first modern charity, the first to recruit celebrities and to pitch for small donations. They ended polio with no government assistance.) How she manages to combine sexiness, elegance and social concern is just part of her magic.

Like many African-American and mixed-race entertainers of her generation, she got her start in Europe, where she not only polished her dancing and singing, but also her French. According to the New York Times, “Ms. Kitt, a native of South Carolina, spoke four languages and sang in seven.”

Eartha Kitt was courageous, speaking out against the Vietnam War during a 1968 visit at the White House for a luncheon Lady Bird Johnson was hosting. She is quoted as saying:

“You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed. No wonder the kids rebel and take pot.”

She was investigated by the FBI and CIA afterwards and found it hard to find work in the States until Jimmy Carter invited her back to the White House in 1978. It was a bitter lesson for her:

"The thing that hurts, that became anger, was when I realized that if you tell the truth - in a country that says you're entitled to tell the truth - you get your face slapped and you get put out of work," Kitt told Essence magazine two decades later.

Her support for gay rights stems back to when she was blacklisted. According to an interview she gave a gay paper in 2006, Kitt said,

“When I was in trouble with the government… it was the gay guys who kept my name alive because they kept looking for my records and they were imitating me… I’m very grateful for that. I feel very close to the gay crowd because we know what it feels like to be rejected.”

Here is a lovely clip that includes a career-long photo collage (I love the shot with Sammy Davis Jr.) as the backdrop for her performance of “Too Close for Comfort.”

And as is only right and proper, I leave the last line to Eartha Kitt, who never lost her perspective, despite six decades of astounding success:

“I’m a dirt person,” she told Ebony magazine in 1993. “I trust the dirt. I don’t trust diamonds and gold.”

Comments

[Mia]

Thanks for writing this tribute to Ms. Kitt. I used her photos for alot of D.K.S.G images because she definitely personified the glamourous and sexual woman. I always felt mixed about Ms. Kitt's personal politics feeling she was definitely of her era at a time when Black was quite not yet Beautiful. She was without a doubt a survivor.

[Ruth Deming]

Thanks for your tributes to two great artists, both minorities (one a multiracial female, the other an English Jew) both felled by cancer which knows no discrimination, who along with their unparalleled artistic gifts were outspoken advocates for social justice.

How ironic that they both died in the holiday season, that time of year when peace and harmony are loudly proclaimed even though across the sea "ignorant armies" continue to "clash by night." (Israel kills more than 200 Palestinians in retaliatory strike in Gaza oh when will the bloodshed ever end)

[Mike Evans]

I seem to remember that much more recently a band called the Dixie Chicks voiced an opinion regarding war which was at odds with the government of the United States - and were also reviled. As Ms Kitt might have said: Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose. Grrrr.