[Dixielandjazz] Eartha Kitt Obit

[Ron Wheeler]

What a day to say goodbye to Miss "Santa Baby"

Ron Wheeler

NEW YORK (AP) - Eartha Kitt, a sultry singer, dancer and actress who rose
from South Carolina cotton fields to become an international symbol of
elegance and sensuality, has died, a family spokesman said. She was 81.

Andrew Freedman said Kitt, who was recently treated at Columbia Presbyterian
Hospital, died Thursday in Connecticut of colon cancer.

Kitt, a self-proclaimed "sex kitten" famous for her catlike purr, was one of
America's most versatile performers, winning two Emmys and nabbing a third
nomination. She also was nominated for several Tonys and two Grammys.

Her career spanned six decades, from her start as a dancer with the famed
Katherine Dunham troupe to cabarets and acting and singing on stage, in
movies and on television. She persevered through an unhappy childhood as a
mixed-race daughter of the South and made headlines in the 1960s for
denouncing the Vietnam War during a visit to the White House.


Through the years, Kitt remained a picture of vitality and attracted fans
less than half her age even as she neared 80.

When her book "Rejuvenate," a guide to staying physically fit, was published
in 2001, Kitt was featured on the cover in a long, curve-hugging black dress
with a figure that some 20-year-old women would envy. Kitt also wrote three
autobiographies.

Once dubbed the "most exciting woman in the world" by Orson Welles, she
spent much of her life single, though brief romances with the rich and
famous peppered her younger years.

After becoming a hit singing "Monotonous" in the Broadway revue "New Faces
of 1952," Kitt appeared in "Mrs. Patterson" in 1954-55. (Some references say
she earned a Tony nomination for "Mrs. Patterson," but only winners were
publicly announced at that time.) She also made appearances in "Shinbone
Alley" and "The Owl and the Pussycat."

Her first album, "RCA Victor Presents Eartha Kitt," came out in 1954,
featuring such songs as "I Want to Be Evil," "C'est Si Bon" and the saucy
gold digger's theme song "Santa Baby," which is revived on radio each
Christmas.

The next year, the record company released follow-up album "That Bad
Eartha," which featured "Let's Do It," "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" and "My
Heart Belongs to Daddy."

In 1996, she was nominated for a Grammy in the category of traditional pop
vocal performance for her album "Back in Business." She also had been
nominated in the children's recording category for the 1969 record "Folk
Tales of the Tribes of Africa."

Kitt also acted in movies, playing the lead female role opposite Nat King
Cole in "St. Louis Blues" in 1958 and more recently appearing in "Boomerang"
and "Harriet the Spy" in the 1990s.

On television, she was the sexy Catwoman on the popular "Batman" series in
1967-68, replacing Julie Newmar who originated the role. A guest appearance
on an episode of "I Spy" brought Kitt an Emmy nomination in 1966.

"Generally the whole entertainment business now is bland," she said in a
1996 Associated Press interview. "It depends so much on gadgetry and flash
now. You don't have to have talent to be in the business today.

"I think we had to have something to offer, if you wanted to be recognized
as worth paying for."

Kitt was plainspoken about causes she believed in. Her anti-war comments at
the White House came as she attended a White House luncheon hosted by Lady
Bird Johnson.

"You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed," she told the
group of about 50 women. "They rebel in the street. They don't want to go to
school because they're going to be snatched off from their mothers to be
shot in Vietnam."

For four years afterward, Kitt performed almost exclusively overseas. She
was investigated by the FBI and CIA, which allegedly found her to be
foul-mouthed and promiscuous.

"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.

In 1978, Kitt returned to Broadway in the musical "Timbuktu!" - which
brought her a Tony nomination - and was invited back to the White House by
President Jimmy Carter.

In 2000, Kitt earned another Tony nod for "The Wild Party." She played the
fairy godmother in Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Cinderella" in 2002.

As recently as October 2003, she was on Broadway after replacing Chita
Rivera in a revival of "Nine."

She also gained new fans as the voice of Yzma in the 2000 Disney animated
feature "The Emperor's New Groove.'"

In an online discussion at Washingtonpost.com in March 2005, shortly after
Jamie Foxx and Morgan Freeman won Oscars, she expressed satisfaction that
black performers "have more of a chance now than we did then to play larger
parts."

But she also said: "I don't carry myself as a black person but as a woman
that belongs to everybody. After all, it's the general public that made (me)
- not any one particular group. So I don't think of myself as belonging to
any particular group and never have."

Kitt was born in North, S.C., and her road to fame was the stuff of
storybooks. In her autobiography, she wrote that her mother was black and
Cherokee while her father was white, and she was left to live with relatives
after her mother's new husband objected to taking in a mixed-race girl.

An aunt eventually brought her to live in New York, where she attended the
High School of Performing Arts, later dropping out to take various odd jobs.

By chance, she dropped by an audition for the dance group run by Dunham, a
pioneering African-American dancer. In 1946, Kitt was one of the Sans-Souci
Singers in Dunham's Broadway production "Bal Negre."

Kitt's travels with the Dunham troupe landed her a gig in a Paris nightclub
in the early 1950s. Kitt was spotted by Welles, who cast her in his Paris
stage production of "Faust."

That led to a role in "New Faces of 1952," which featured such other
stars-to-be as Carol Lawrence, Paul Lynde and, as a writer, Mel Brooks.

While traveling the world as a dancer and singer in the 1950s, Kitt learned
to perform in nearly a dozen languages and, over time, added songs in
French, Spanish and even Turkish to her repertoire.

"Usku Dara," a song Kitt said was taught to her by the wife of a Turkish
admiral, was one of her first hits, though Kitt says her record company
feared it too remote for American audiences to appreciate.

Song titles such as "I Want to be Evil" and "Just an Old Fashioned Girl"
seem to reflect the paradoxes in Kitt's private life.

Over the years, Kitt had liaisons with wealthy men, including Revlon founder
Charles Revson, who showered her with lavish gifts.

In 1960, she married Bill McDonald but divorced him after the birth of their
daughter, Kitt.

While on stage, she was daringly sexy and always flirtatious. Offstage,
however, Kitt described herself as shy and almost reclusive, remnants of
feeling unwanted and unloved as a child. She referred to herself as "that
little urchin cotton-picker from the South, Eartha Mae."

For years, Kitt was unsure of her birthplace or birth date. In 1997, a group
of students at historically black Benedict College in Columbia, S.C.,
located her birth certificate, which verified her birth date as Jan. 17,
1927. Kitt had previously celebrated on Jan. 26.

The research into her background also showed Kitt was the daughter of a
white man, a poor cotton farmer.

"I'm an orphan. But the public has adopted me and that has been my only
family," she told the Post online. "The biggest family in the world is my
fans."