Kitt, Eartha

in full Eartha Mae Kitt

(born Jan. 26, 1927, North, S.C., U.S.) American singer and dancer noted for her sultry vocal style and slinky beauty who also achieved success as a dramatic stage and film actress.

The daughter of impoverished sharecroppers, Kitt from the age of eight grew up in an ethnically diverse section of Harlem, New York City. At 16 she joined Katherine Dunham's dance troupe, touring the United States, Mexico, South America, and Europe. When the Dunham company returned to the United States, the multilingual Kitt stayed in Paris, where she won immediate popularity as a nightclub singer. She made her acting debut as Helen of Troy in Time Runs, an Orson Welles adaptation of Faust, in 1950. With her appearance in the Broadway revue New Faces of 1952 and with early 1950s recordings such as “C'est Si Bon,” “Santa Baby,” and “I Want to Be Evil,” Kitt became a star.

Kitt's success continued in nightclubs, theatre works such as Mrs. Patterson (1954) and Shinbone Alley (1957), films including St. Louis Blues (1958) and Anna Lucasta (1959), and television appearances, including the role of Catwoman in the late 1960s series Batman. After she publicly criticized the Vietnam War at a White House luncheon in the presence of the first lady, Lady Bird (Claudia) Johnson, Kitt's career went into a severe decline; in the 1970s it began to recover after it was revealed that she had been subjected to U.S. Secret Service surveillance. She continued to appear in nightclubs, theatres, and films and on recordings into the 1990s. She wrote the autobiographies Thursday's Child (1956), Alone With Me (1976), and I'm Still Here (1989).