Eartha Kitt A Cabaret Legend
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Eartha Kitt wearing a full length sable fur coat sings to Santa at Washington’s Lighting of the Christmas Tree in 2006
I had the pleasure of meeting Ms. Eartha Kitt at Carlyle two years ago. After her performance I introduced myself to her and asked, “Ms. Kitt give me that growl,” and she was happy to oblige by vocalizing her catlike purr!
Eartha Kitt, the seductress singer and cabaret entertainer whose sultry voice and sensuality made her an international star with a career spanning six decades, died on Christmas at age 81, her friend and publicist reported. Isn’t it uncanny that she died on Christmas after being best known for singing the hit song “Santa Baby.”
Ms. Kitt received two Emmy television awards and was nominated for numerous Tony awards and two Grammy awards, died of colon cancer. Ms. Kitt was being treated at New York Presbyterian Hospital in the state of Connecticut where she lived.
“She was certainly a legendary performer and while I think there may have been many imitations, she was an original,” Freedman her publicist reports. She was one of the few artists who have been nominated for Tony, Grammy and Emmy awards.
“I Want to Be Evil” and “Santa Baby,” still a Christmas favorite today, were among her best-selling songs.
Referred to as “sex kitten,” by herself and others, she famously was part of the 60’s ensemble of the TV Show “Batman” playing the sexy role of Catwoman. Her seductive growl and catlike purr won her many fans, among them Orson Welles, who called her “the most exciting woman in the world.”
She acted alongside Nat King Cole in the film “St. Louis Blues” (1958).
Ms. Kitt started from humble beginnings as a multi-racial child in the cotton fields of South Carolina.
In the late 1960s she was blacklisted in the this country after commenting against the Vietnam war during a luncheon at the White House. She worked abroad for years until her triumphant return to Broadway in 1974. She received her second Tony nomination in 1978 for her role in the musical “Timbuktu.”
One of her last recorded performances was in December 2006. Ms. Kitt returned to the White House to light the National Christmas Tree, performing for President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush.
Kitt launched her career as a dancer in Paris with the famed Katherine Dunham Dance Troupe and started touring the world as a dancer and vocalist before becoming an entertainment sensation.
“Paris was one of her great loves,” Freedman said. “One of her first big hits was ‘La Vie en Rose,’” the Edith Piaf original.
“Since that period in the early 40s and 50s, Europe has always held a special place in her heart, particularly Paris.”
Until my next celebrity profile,
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