[Dixielandjazz] Eartha Kitt book reviewed - London Observer, December 15, 2014

[Marek Boym]

Not even a mention of her part in the film "St/ Louis Blues!"
Cheers

On 17 December 2014 at 15:10, Robert Ringwald <rsr at ringwald.com> wrote:
>
> The Unusual Life of Eartha Kitt
> by Nicholas Clee
> London Observer, December 15, 2014
> Eartha Kitt is probably best known today as the performer of an enduring
> Christmas
> hit, Santa Baby. To those of an older generation, she was Catwoman from
> the enjoyably
> camp TV version of Batman. She was not cool: neither a jazz singer like
> Sarah Vaughan
> nor a soul singer like Aretha Franklin, she haunted the (then unhip)
> cabaret circuit,
> and in the UK was a regular on variety shows such as Sunday Night at the
> London Palladium.
> Nowadays, when Tony Bennett is lionised, we might give her proper credit
> for her
> smoky, feline (the adjective is unavoidable) and extraordinarily versatile
> voice.
> In America’s Mistress, John L Williams makes an excellent case for her
> rehabilitation.
> Kitt was born to a white father and black mother, in a small town amid the
> cotton
> fields of South Carolina. Aged eight, she joined her aunt in New York, and
> a few
> years later won a place at the Metropolitan high school, learning speech
> and deportment
> along with academic subjects. She got lessons in table manners at a
> restaurant that
> would have barred her, had not her teacher simply ignored the ruling --
> this was
> the early 40s, with the repeal of segregationist laws some way in the
> future. It
> was always part of Kitt’s later appeal that she seemed to transcend
> matters of race
> and class.
> Her break came when she joined the Katherine Dunham company, the first
> black modern
> dance company in the US. There followed cabaret spots, hit records, and
> acting roles
> on stage, screen and TV -- most of them, Catwoman being an exception,
> forgotten.
> Her love life was largely hopeless. Her significant lovers tended to be
> white, and
> to see her as mistress rather than wife material; her one marriage was
> brief, though
> with the happy issue of a daughter, to whom Kitt was devoted. A background
> as a mixed-race
> girl from the South was not so easy to transcend, after all.
> It is in her striving to make her background irrelevant, Williams argues,
> that Kitt
> was notable. It may also be why, at times in the book, the reader loses a
> sense of
> her personality. But Williams -- who has steered through Kitt’s own
> unreliable memoirs,
> interviewed many people who knew her, and apparently listened to every
> record and
> seen every film and video -- presents a fluent and involving account of
> her life.
> -30
>
> -Bob Ringwald
> Bob Ringwald Solo Piano, duo, Trio, Quartet
> Fulton Street Jazz Band
> 916/ 806-9551
> Amateur (ham) Radio K 6 Y B V
>
> "There ought to be one day -- just one -- when there is open season on
> Congressmen."
> -Will Rogers
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