Eartha Kitt
From Philosopedia
Eartha Kitt (17 January 1927 - 25 December 2008)
Kitt, who became an actress, singer, and cabaret star, was born on a cotton plantation in North, South Carolina.
She told James Bone of the London Times that her father was of German and Dutch descent and that her mother, of Cherokee and African-American descent, was
- "taken advantage of" by the son of a white plantation owner in South Carolina. Kitt was raised by a woman named Anna Mae [Riley], who had a second daughter with a much darker complexion. For most of her life, Kitt believed Anna Mae to be her mother.
When her mother died, Kitt was sent to New York City to live with Mamie Kitt and learned that she, not Anna Mae, was her biological mother and that she had no knowledge of her father.
Kitt studied at the New York School of the Performing Arts and in 1945 made her New York debut as a member of Katherine Dunham's dance troupe. She toured throughout Europe and was cast by Orson Welles in his production of Dr. Faustus (1951). Her vocal vibrancy, fiery personality, and cat-like singing voice made her a top international cabaret attraction and recording artiste.
Since her debut in Casbah (1948, she appeared in such films as St. Louis Blues (1957) and the documentary All By Myself (1982).
On television from 1953, she received the Golden Rose of Montreux for "Kaskade (1962). Appropriately cast as Catwoman in the series Batman (1966), she returned to the theater, was in Leonard Sillman's New Faces of 1952, and had a show-stopping appearance in Follies (1988-1999).
In 1968 during a White House luncheon, she surprised Lady Bird Johnson, telling her
- "Boys I know across the nation feel it doesn't pay to be a good guy." She moved in closer to the First Lady and said that boys don't want to behave for fear of being sent to Vietnam saying, "You are a mother too though you have had daughters and not sons. I am a mother and I know the feeling of having a baby come out of my guts. I have a baby and then you send him off to war. No wonder the kids rebel and take pot. And Mrs. Johnson, in case you don't understand the lingo, that's marijuana."
She confronted President Lyndon Johnson the same day about our being at war in Vietnam, also, saying,
- Mr. President, what do you do about delinquent parents, those who have to work and are too busy to look after their children?
He told her that Social Security legislation was just passed that provided millions of dollars for daycare centers. Kitt was not pleased but Johnson told her those were issues for the women to discuss at the lunch.
The confrontation made it difficult for her to obtain bookings, so she worked primarily in Europe. The CIA maintained files on her, implying that she was a nymphomaniac, She said in 1998, "I was thrown out of the country, practically. . . ."Johnson put out the news that I was a 'bad girl' by being rude and all that. And it wasn't true. It was his way of defacing me in the eyes of the American people. He put me out of work."
In 1978, she was a nominee for a Tony Award Best Actress in a Musical, Timbuktu!.
Kitt received a nomination for a 2000 Tony Award as Best Featured Actress in a Musical, The Wild Party. For the same work, she was nominated for a 2000 Drama Desk Award Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical.
For a time, her name was linked romantically with cosmetics magnate Charles Revson and banking heir John Barry Ryan III. But she was married from 6 June 1960 to 1965 John William McDonald, a real estate investment company associate. They had a daughter, Kitt Kitt.
After romances with the cosmetics magnate Charles Revson and banking heir John Barry Ryan III, she was married to John William McDonald, an associate of a real-estate investment company, from June 6, 1960, to 1965.[9] They had one child, a daughter, Kitt, in 1962.
Kitt wrote three autobiographies: Thursday's Child (1956), Alone with Me (1976), and I'm Still Here: Confessions of a Sex Kitten (1989).
She died after a long battle against colon cancer on Christmas Day, 2008, in Weston, Connecticut, at the age of 81.
A humanities humanist, Kitt was not a member of any of the organized religions.
