- Born
- Died
- Birth nameEartha Mae Keith
- Nicknames
- Kitty Charles
- Mother Eartha
- Miss Kitt
- Catwoman
- Height5′ 2″ (1.57 m)
- An out-of-wedlock child, Eartha Kitt was born in the cotton fields of South Carolina. Kitt's mother was a sharecropper of African-American and Cherokee Native American descent. Her father's identity is unknown. Given away by her mother, she arrived in Harlem at age nine. At 15, she quit high school to work in a Brooklyn factory. As a teenager, Kitt lived in friends' homes and in the subways. However, by the 1950s, she had sung and danced her way out of poverty and into the spotlight: performing with the Katherine Dunham Dance Troupe on a European tour, soloing at a Paris nightclub and becoming the toast of the Continent. Orson Welles called her "the most exciting girl in the world". She also spoke out on hard issues. She took over the role of Catwoman for the third and final season of the television series Batman (1966), replacing Julie Newmar. Eartha Kitt died of colon cancer in her home in Weston, Connecticut, on Christmas Day 2008.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Tom Weaver <TomWeavr@aol.com>
- SpouseWilliam O. McDonald(June 9, 1960 - March 26, 1964) (divorced, 1 child)
- Children
- ParentsAnnie Mae KeithMamie Kitt
- RelativesJason Shapiro(Grandchild)Nora Mae(Grandchild)
- Distinctive voice
- Kitt's age was a mystery until 1998, when a group of students from her hometown in South Carolina discovered her birth certificate. The document revealed that her true birthday is January 17, 1927.
- Was virtually exiled from the United States after making anti-war statements during a White House luncheon with Lady Bird Johnson in 1968. However, she was welcomed back to the White House in 1978 by Jimmy Carter, after a successful return to Broadway in the original production of the musical Timbuktu!.
- Well-known for her recordings of "Santa Baby" in the 1950s and 1960s. She died on Christmas Day 2008 at her home in Weston, Connecticut.
- Among her liaisons with wealthy men included Charles Revson, the Revlon cosmetics founder, and actor Orson Welles, who spotted her in a Paris nightclub and cast her in his Paris stage production of "Faust".
- Became fluent in French during her long years performing in Europe.
- I am the original Material Girl.
- I have a great need for affection from an audience. I don't know whether this is because I had such a tough life when I was a child.
- [at the White House in 1968] I am a mother and I know the feeling of having a baby come out of my gut. I have a baby and then you send him off to war. No wonder the kids rebel and take pot.
- [on her friendship with James Dean] Jamie and I were like brother and sister. He told me, in fact, he thought of me as a sister. Our relationship was strictly platonic and spiritual.
- 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.
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