All about Eartha Kitt

Kitt was born Eartha Mae Keith on a cotton plantation in the tiny town of North, South Carolina. She said her mother was of Cherokee and African-American descent and her father of German and Dutch descent. She also claimed she was conceived by rape.

Kitt was raised by Anna Mae Riley, an African American woman whom she believed was her mother. After Riley’s death, she was sent to live in New York City with Mamie Kitt, Riley’s sister. She later learned that Mamie Kitt was her biological mother; she had no knowledge of her father, except that his surname was Kitt and that he was supposedly a son of the owner of the farm she had been born on. Newspaper obituaries state that her white father was “a poor cotton farmer”.

Kitt claimed that she suffered abuse and neglect at the hands of a family to whom Anna Mae Riley entrusted her – “given away for slavery”, as she described it in many interviews.

In 1950, Orson Welles gave her her first starring role, as Helen of Troy in his staging of Dr. Faustus. A few years later, she was cast in the revue New Faces of 1952 introducing “Monotonous” and “Bal, Petit Bal,” two songs with which she continues to be identified. In 1954, 20th Century Fox filmed a version of the revue simply titled New Faces. Welles and Kitt allegedly had a torrid affair during her run in Shinbone Alley, which earned her the nickname by Welles as “the most exciting woman in the world.” In 1958, Kitt made her feature film debut opposite Sidney Poitier in The Mark of the Hawk. Throughout the rest of the 1950s and early 1960s, Kitt would work on and off in film, television and on nightclub stages. In 1964, Kitt helped open the Circle Star Theater in San Carlos, California. Also in the 1960s, the television series Batman, featured her as Catwoman after Julie Newmar left the role.

In 1968, however, Kitt encountered a substantial professional setback after she made anti-war statements during a White House luncheon. It was reported that she made First Lady Lady Bird Johnson cry. The public reaction to Kitt’s statements was much more extreme, both for and against her statements. Professionally exiled from the U.S., she devoted her energies to overseas performances.

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. They had one child, a daughter, Kitt (b. 1962, married Charles Lawrence Shapiro). Eartha had two grandchildren, Jason and Rachel Shapiro. Kitt lived in the Merryall section of New Milford, Connecticut for many years as well as Pound Ridge, New York, then in 2002 moved to Weston, Connecticut to be near her daughter’s family.

Kitt wrote three autobiographies – Thursday’s Child (1956), Alone with Me (1976), and I’m Still Here: Confessions of a Sex Kitten (1989).

Kitt was the spokesperson for MAC Cosmetics Smoke Signals collection in August 2007. She re-recorded “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” for the occasion, was showcased on the MAC website and the song was played at all MAC locations carrying the collection for the month.

Eartha Kitt died of colon cancer on Christmas Day, December 25, 2008.