- From one thing or another,
everyone knows Eartha Kitt. Regardless of when you were a child, something she did likely
impacted your childhood. From Cat Woman in the
1960's "Batman Show." - You foolish prattle. How can Bat Girl be the best anything when Cat Woman is around? - To Isma from the "Emperors new Groove." - Hold the lever, Hunk. - To Madame Zoroni in "Holes." - You and your family will be
cursed for always in eternity. - Vexes from "My Life As A Teenage Robot." Old lady Hackmore in
"Earnest Scared Stupid." Tina Amara on "Mission Impossible." Alga the K Plumber in "Harriet the Spy," and much, much, much more. Or maybe you know her from
her music and there's a lot of that because if you haven't
already picked up on this, Eartha Kitt was blessed with an incredibly distinctive voice. In the realm of music,
she gave us classics like "Santa Baby," "I wanna Be Evil," "Sissy
Ball," and "Where is My man?" But it's more than likely
that you don't know much, if anything, about the
woman behind the voice and the incredibly interesting
life that she lived. Maybe you've heard about how
she was stalked by the CIA after she challenged Lady Bird Johnson during the Vietnam War, or maybe you know about
her deep friendships with Orson Wells and James Dean. These are only the tip of the iceberg. I've loved Eartha Kitt ever
since I was first exposed to her as Isma and honestly, she's easily one of my all
time favorite entertainers. Like any great star, she used her platform and
influence to try and help people in need best she could
and never shied away from saying what needed to be said. She was brutally honest from
her early years besieged by pain and suffering until
her final days in 2008 when she left this Eartha
still kicking and swinging. Please join me for a journey
through the life of Eartha Kitt and the immense impact she left behind. Please note that Eartha experienced a lot of traumatic hardship in her life, in particular in her early
years, including physical abuse. Please be aware of that
when we go into this video as I'll need to cover it. So what that said, come along with me, but first let's hear a quick
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free for Windows or Mac to see if you like it. Thank you so much to Wondershare Filmora for sponsoring this video. And now let's get back to learning about the life of Eartha Kitt. Eartha Mae Kitt was born
in a town called North in South Carolina on January 17th, 1927. Though she wouldn't know
officially what year or day until much later in her life, her last name spelled Keith, but pronounced Kee would
later evolve into Kitt. The name Keith was taken
from the Swiss German family who owned the plantation that Eartha's family was sharecroppers on, as was a common remnant
of the era of slavery. Her earliest memory would set
the scene of her childhood as she would recall in her 1956 autobiography
"Thursday's Child." My first scene in life was
a long, dark dusty road. I could not see the end of it for it just went down, down, down to end and what to me seemed like hell. I hung onto my mother's
hand as though life or death depended upon it. My sister Pearl was in her arms. Mama began to hum as the sun sank into the ground ahead of us after what seemed like years
of walking with the spirits, mama stopped. I could see her tall and
thin like a pine tree as she stood among the pines. She laid my sister down
on the ground and looked around for me, I was there
glaring at her in wonderment. Let's see if any spirit comes after us, I'll dig a hole and bury myself. No, that won't be quick enough. I'll hide behind that big pine tree. No, it can see me. I'll get on my knees and pray so that God will give
me wings to fly away. No, God may not hear me. If I go to sleep, will mama
go off and leave me alone? Will she remember that I'm with her too? Eartha's mother, Anna Mae
Kitt told her to stay there and watch Pearl and then left. Eartha sat there in fear, desperately wondering if
her mother would ever return and thankfully, she did. She reappeared a few hours
later with fruit in hand that she'd stolen from a field. Mama was back, but this would not be the first time that Eartha would be abandoned. At the end of their journey, they reached Eartha's great uncle's house where Eartha's mother plead
for him to let them stay there but he wouldn't have it. "I don't want that yellow girl
in my house," he kept saying. At this time in the south, yellow was a typical derogatory descriptor for mixed white and Black folks. Eartha never knew who
her father was in part due to a coverup by officials that she would
discover later in life. Her mother was a mixed Black
and native American woman who worked on a plantation, and the common belief was
that she had been assaulted by the white plantation
owner's son resulting in Eartha's birth. This meant that Eartha's
childhood was riddled by rejection on all sides, affected by unbelievable racism
as a mixed woman of color, but still unwanted also by
most of the Black family in her life as well. As a result, Eartha
believed from an early age, not only that she was wholly unwanted, but that she needed to find
some way to make herself wanted because that love wouldn't
come to her otherwise. Eartha and her mother and
sister went on to stay with an old woman nearby who
they dubbed The Stern Woman or Aunt Rosa where her mother
worked to earn her keep and eventually, soon enough
became infatuated with, as Eartha said, "A man that seemed to
have come out of nowhere." The man courted Eartha's
mother and was kind to Pearl but noticeably ignored Eartha. And so in order to run
away with this new man, Eartha and Pearl were
dropped off at the home of a different old woman who lived with her two grandchildren. Once again, Eartha heard the
same refrain from the man, "I don't want that
yellow girl in my house." Eartha was given many
chores to do every day and was often bullied by
the stern woman's grandson into doing his chores too. One day he tied Eartha to a peach tree and whipped her bare skin for hours. Oftentimes when a child
is subjected to physical and emotional abuse like this, they might start developing
unusual coping behaviors. Eartha began coping by
eating sand and clay and sucking on her tongue and later by stealing
and smoking cigarettes. One day news came that
Eartha's mother had given birth to a beautiful baby girl, but shortly after became deathly ill. She had become sick one
night after eating dinner, which had been sprinkled
with a red seasoning. Her stepdaughters who
cooked the meal assured her that it was just a new seasoning. And after a few weeks of
screaming and convulsing, Eartha's mother passed
away having been poisoned. She was buried a few
days later and her baby was passed over her grave several times in order to break the bond that might 'cause her mother's spirit to come claim her next. After months of working in
cotton fields to earn her keep, Eartha was finally sent for by her Aunt Mae Kitt
who lived in New York City along with a box of new clothes. Apparently someone had
written to her aunt saying, "If you don't get this girl out of here, they're going to kill her." And Eartha was excited to leave obviously, even though the family she lived
with tried to scare her out of going so that they
wouldn't lose their workhorse as she recalled, "Then
they began to talk to me, 'What do you wanna go up north for? It gets so cold up there,
people freeze to death. The buildings are so tall
they sometimes collapse and tumble down on on you. The train's right in the air and they're always falling
down on the ground. People live on top of each other. You never have enough
room to move around in. You don't know when you are well off. Why don't you tell her
you don't wanna come?' They washed me in a tub of hot water, combed my hair and made
me clean as a whistle. All this was done in
front of the fireplace and I was as happy as a bluebird because I was going away,
never to come back." And so Eartha hopped on a train northward and for the very first time, saw a city and more people in one place than she'd ever thought possible. Her aunt picked her up
from the train station and took her to her apartment
on West 143rd Street and everything was brand new to her. The stairs, the buildings,
the light switches, the bathroom, the gas
stove, the radio, friends. Although she started
getting bullied at school, it quickly passed when she
learned how to fight back. And Eartha also learned for the first time that she had a power. People were enraptured by her when she read aloud to the class, she also learned that she had
a natural talent for music. Many nights she would hang
out with the Cuban kids in her new neighborhood and play songs on scavenge instruments, and later began to learn how
to dance slowly coming out of her shell and
experiencing true community. But unfortunately, the joy wouldn't last. Over time, as Eartha grew older, her aunt began to resent
the responsibility of caring for her. She stopped leaving her money for food or restocking the pantry accused
her of stealing her things and wouldn't let her iron
her already worn out clothes. Whenever Eartha got a
job to support herself, she was chewed out for not
turning the money over. So she began staying out longer and later, attending every Cuban
dance that she could. Eventually, because of this,
her aunt kicked her out, calling her a tramp and a no good worried that she was gonna get pregnant, nevermind that she'd never
even been kissed before. Eartha was now homeless, but too proud to tell her
friends or ask for help. So she got a job as a
seamstress at a factory sewing army clothes and
gained friends there by singing songs while she sewed. After a back and forth
crisis of her aunt making her come home only to beat
and neglect her again, Eartha finally left for good. It was after this that one
of her teachers noticing that something was wrong, encouraged her to join the
theater and sent her to a showing of Serrano de Jerak starring Jose Ferre. Eartha was enthralled by his
performance suddenly filled with a drive to follow in his footsteps. I looked out of my eyes with a new light. I saw the world in a different color. Everything was rosy,
lavender gray and alive. The people were alive, the
buildings swayed to and fro. The skies moved about, but I stood still in a days of warmth. If I could do this, do
the same thing he did. If I could give the feeling
of happiness to people or to anyone for that
matter that he gave to me. If I only knew how, if only I
had the gumption, the chance, the wonderment of this kind
of world began to haunt me, a world of giving and taking
a world of independence and fascination, I could do it. I kept telling myself I could do that. One day by chance, Eartha met a dancer from Catherine Dunham's dance troupe who was looking for the
Max factor makeup store. Eatha asked to meet Catherine Dunham, who happened to be
looking for a few dancers, and soon she arrived at
the school for auditions. Seeing the other dancers,
Eartha became nervous, realizing that she really knew nothing about professional dance,
but she auditioned anyway, figuring that she had nothing
to lose and went for it with everything she had though convinced that she was doing terribly. Afterwards, she soaked
in the corner of the room until a woman came up to
her telling her to be there on Monday at 10:00 AM she
had won a scholarship. Eartha trained with the
Dunhamm school for years, subsisting on $10 a week, which
is barely enough to survive. She trained as hard as she could, but over time it became apparent that Catherine Dunham sort of
resented her for some reason, the company spent a long
time performing in Mexico where Eatha had a passionate fling with a stage hand named Charlie, who later revealed that he was engaged, after which she took off to
Hollywood to set her sights on the silver screen. Unfortunately, Charlie
broke off his engagement and came to California too, where he promptly became
paranoid about people knowing that he was in love with a Black woman. Charlie was white by the way. To be clear, Eartha tried
to break things off, but he stalked her and harassed her into staying with him anyway, so Eartha made plans to go to
Europe with the Dunham team far away from him. She briefly stayed with her aunt again before leaving New York on the SS George Washington to Europe. And during that time, the two actually repaired
their relationship and at long last, Eatha felt accepted, like she finally, truly had a mother. This would also be the last time she would ever see her aunt alive. A week later, Eartha stepped
off the ship into England and her life would once
more change dramatically. (upbeat music) After touring all over Europe, Eartha found herself
in Paris in the company of a woman named Fred who
owned the famous nightclub Carols on (speaking in foreign language) And now Fred was actually an
extremely significant figure in the history of
Parisian queer nightlife. Fred was openly lesbian and
presented highly masculine and was well known to have a
rotating cast of girlfriends, including Marlene Dietrich. Before the war, she helped run the famous
lesbian nightclub Le Monocle. I'll talk more about
Fred in a future video on the subject of Paris queer nightlife of the '20s to '50s. So Fred had taken an interest
in Eartha's performances and the Dunhamm shows and asked her to perform solo at Carol's at a time when she could still continue
performing with the Dunham. True, overwhelmed, and excited
that someone so important had taken interest in her alone, she spoke with with the
agent of their tour only to get yelled at and threatened with deportation if she tried
taking on an outside gig. Eartha was furious and instantly left to write her two weeks notice. Fred assured her that she
would be fine and protected her from deportation and so Eartha was on her own and solo at last. On her first night, she was given a modest white gown to wear, which Fred balked at when
she saw and exclaimed, "My dear, where do you think
you are going like that?" And ripped slit in her
skirt right up to the thigh. Then she was pushed out on
stage and she did so well that night that Fred promised her a job for as long as she wanted it, and she was extremely successful, rapidly gaining a wide
new group of friends who cherished her. But then news came from New
York that her aunt had a tumor and wanted Eatha to come home. She would be dead before
Eartha could make it. Bringing her aunt's body back down south would be a surreal experience for Eartha who thought she would
never be there again. The last time she was there
she had nothing and no one and was seen as even less. But now she was returning wearing
beautiful Parisian clothes and having become a successful performer. The entire town came to greet
her when the train arrived, but Eartha still felt bitter remembering how they used to treat
her and after the funeral overcome with misery, Eartha
of fled back to Paris, it didn't take long for her to discover that while she was gone, Orson Wells had been
looking for her everywhere. Yes, none other than citizen Kain the third man touch of evil Orson Wells. He had been trying to cast
Eartha as Helen of Troy in his new play, Dr. Faust Opposite him, you this play Eartha and Orson
became very close friends and would remain so long after its run. And so after a highly successful
stint performing in Turkey with solo performances, Eartha returned to New York to continue her solo singing there with a widely advertised
show at LA Vier Hos. But for one reason or another,
it was not well received. Her confidence took a
major hit and within weeks, her contract was canceled. She began losing faith in her own skills and show business as a whole
feeling for the first time in a long time that she had nothing. One day Walking miserably along Broadway, she was approached by a
man who introduced himself as Jose Ferrier, the very same that she had
seen all those years ago, and Sorano de Jurak the
actor who had inspired her to pursue a career in
performance in the first place. He told Arto that he
had seen her recent show and thought that she was wonderful. They walked some ways together, chatting, for a second time, he
inspired her to go on and thankfully she did, and soon enough she was
swinging back up again. In 1952, she would be
cast in Leonard Salman's, "New Faces of 1952," a
highly popular theater show. Eartha recalled her feelings after the show brought her fame at last. "Cest Ci Bon," people would say when they saw me walking on the street or into a restaurant, I felt wanted. I was getting the love
I had always wanted. Though the love was in a different form than the love of mother
and daughter or father. I was getting it the hard way for I had to constantly
prove myself in order to maintain it. It was the kind of love that
one could not take for granted. One night her success led
her to the Ambassador Hotel in Hollywood where she
was to perform alongside other stars for a benefit
with the king and queen of Greece in the audience, she was told to sing
whatever she was popular for, so she sang "Sessy Ball,"
"I Want to be Evil," "Santa Baby" and "Duke Ellington's Blues." A few days later, despite her performance being very, very well
received by the audience, Eartha was told that the mayor had said that she was un-American due
to her risque performance. Ironically, the media circus that followed this only caused Eartha to
become even more popular. As her stardom grew, her
health began to fail. She discovered that she was anemic and due to her people pleasing habits, still pushed herself too hard. All her life Earth Kitt
sort of saw herself as split between two
souls, that of Earth Kitt, the beloved star, and that of Eartha Mae the
rejected, abandoned, unwanted, and unhealed child inside of her, the child that she left behind the minute she became a performer. In her second autobiography
published in 1976 "Alone With Me," she says, "Ironically, I think of Earth a Kitt as practically nothing true. She is so very far removed
from the basic nature of Eartha Mae that I can and do think of her in the third person. She is she, not me. She's a name on a marque. I am constantly detached
from her and yet suspended within her and totally dependent
on her for any survival. She has some of my better
qualities as a loving mother and as a friend to those
who accept Eartha Mae, but I have none of hers. Eartha Mae psychs herself
up to become Eartha Kitt for public appearances. She wears an impenetrable mental armor. Through her failing health, the medical malpractice of her doctor, and a crumpling relationship
with a wealthy white man whose mother wouldn't allow
her son to marry a Black woman. Eartha suffered an emotional
and physical breakdown in the years following this time, she would reflect on it in
relation to two of her most beloved friendships that of
James Dean and Marilyn Monroe. Two friends that she cherished,
but long, long outlived due to their tragic untimely deaths. She knew James better than Marilyn. They had met in Hollywood sometime in 1953 when James was filming "East of Eden" and Eartha was filming the
movie "Rendition of New Faces." The moment they met, they felt like they'd
always known each other or that they'd been friends
in their past lives. They thought of each other, like siblings, often taking long walks
through Central Park and eating hot dogs and popcorn sometimes in complete silence because they understood
each other so well, they didn't need to say a word. Sometimes Jamie, as Eartha called him, would call her at 4:00 AM
to take a drive with him or just to talk. Unfortunately, James would be dead before the release of his third
and final film, "Giant." I'll cover this in their friendship more in my upcoming video on James Dean to accompany this one sometime next year. As for Marilyn, they met for
the first time at a party where they were drawn to each other because they could sense in each other a shy, kindred spirit. It's like Marilyn was
picking up on Eartha Mae instead of Eartha Kitt. From that day on, anytime they were at a
party at the same time, they would go find a quiet
corner and talk for hours. Like James Dean, Marilyn would frequently call Eartha at the early morning hours
around three or 4:00 AM in a moment of loneliness
seeking connection. Eartha figured that unlike herself, Marilyn could never differentiate
between her own spirit and as she puts it, the
name on the marquee, she remembers a story
where one day James Dean went into the studio commissary
and saw a large photo of him up on the wall and in a rage, he tore it down yelling
that this wasn't his home and they don't own him. Though at the time people
thought this was strange, Eartha could sympathize. She understood that his
rage came from him fighting to keep a grasp on his personal identity. From the late '50s to the '60s, Eartha became a stable presence
on American television, most famously starring as
Catwoman on the Batman TV show. And please for the love of God, if you haven't seen her
episodes, please go watch them. She is absolutely incredible in this show and it kills me every time I watch it. - It'll take just 20
minutes to do the work cut out for it to cut you
into a perfect pinafore. - This is Batman Catwoman. - Oh, speak of the angel. - The entire show is a gold
mine of hilarious jokes and can't be goodness and
is well worth the watch. Even beyond Eartha's episodes,
I can't recommend it enough. Even if you hate superhero
stuff, it's a classic. So yeah, this time things seem
to be going great for Eatha. She got married and gave birth
to her daughter Kitt in 1961. Her daughter's first name is Kitt. Please don't get confused. Surely nothing could go wrong. Folks, it's time to address
the Vietnam shaped elephant in the room. Obviously by this point
the Vietnam War was raging and the US, as per usual, had decided to stick our
dumb asses over there to cause all sorts of problems and irreparably damaged
the country forever, yay. I literally don't even
remotely have the time to cover the whole Vietnam war today. So just know that it sucked
and was wildly unpopular with the American youth
at the time, obviously, like the student peace
protests were a huge deal. It was a crisis. Well, amidst the chaos in 1968, Eartha received an invitation to join the Women Doers luncheon organized by Lady Bird Johnson,
herself, the First Lady. - Crime is a gram subject for
a pleasant meeting like this. - The meeting subject of discussion was, why is there so much juvenile
delinquency on the streets of America? Hmm, anyone's guess. Well, Eartha thought this
could be a fruitful discussion and headed to DC, she
had a lot of thoughts on the matter due to her
on the ground activism and outreach work with youth groups such as Rebels With a Cause. She expected this meeting to be serious and with the intent to make a change. Unfortunately, she couldn't
have been more wrong. One thing on her mind
going into the luncheon was conversations she had with a group called Mothers of Watts who had expressed frustration
that the war in Vietnam was disproportionately affecting
youth from minority groups, taking children overseas to die
in an $80 billion a year war that shouldn't even be happening. As she entered the luncheon, she initially became frustrated
that the other guests weren't taking the topic seriously at all. Instead, taking menus as souvenirs and chatting about gossip. Then in the middle of the
first speaker's speech, president Lyndon Johnson
decides to make an appearance. He prodded on about how
crime starts at home and we need to fund the police. Look how great that's going. So Eartha stood and
asked about how parents could instead better
support their children. (audience clapping) - I wanted to ask about delinquency across the United States, which we interested in and that's why we're here today. But what do we do about
delinquent parents? The parents who have to
build to work for instance, who can't spend the time with their children that they should. This is I think is our main problem. What do we do with the
children then when the parents are off working? - The president replied
that they passed a bill to fund daycares. Weird, since the topic
was crime on the streets, not crime in the playpens, but okay. - Well, that social
security pass this year sets up millions and millions of dollars, for daycare centers that
comes from a bunch of men who are really not the best of judges of how to handle children. Otherwise, I think that'd
be a very good question. You ask yourself and other women
here, you all covered what. - Then he fled the room. The women in attendance
began their discussion, but none of the suggestions
for how to solve crime on the streets made any sense. One woman said, "We need to
collect clothes donations." Others discussed planting
flowers to beautify a highway. Some suggested better street lights. One woman bragged that she
fought crime by spotting a child on the street holding a
rock that might be thrown, and she took it from
him, scolding him saying, "No, no, you mustn't do
that, naughty, naughty." Every time Eartha raised her hand, Mrs. Johnson told her to wait her turn. In her own autobiography,
Lady Bird had a completely unasked obsession with hating Eartha Kitt. She writes that she was
surveilling Eartha's every move at the luncheon, expecting
her to do something wrong, judging her at all minutes
no matter what she did. Lord even knows how she was picking up on anything else happening in the room, given how much attention she
was paying to Eartha Kitt. Well, Eartha finally
had her chance to speak and she spoke out about how Vietnam was negatively affecting
the American youth. Enraged Ladybird stood up and exclaimed, "Miss Kitt, just because
there's a war going on doesn't mean we cannot be civilized." Eartha than understood
that many of these women never intended to have
a serious discussion. How could they? Their husbands worked in the
government and it's the 1960s. Women in the US couldn't even have their own credit cards until 1974. It wasn't long after the incident ended that it became clear
Eartha might be in danger. - [Interviewer] It was
apparently an embarrassing moment from Mrs. Johnson. Do you have any regrets about that? - No, I don't have any
regrets about it at all. Why should I be upset by the
fact that she was embarrassed? That's her problem. - She quickly flew home
amidst the media scandal that was erupting like god
damn mount for souvenirs, and soon enough she was
being tracked by the CIA. - I was on duty as an American citizen, as I feel I am always on
duty as an American citizen, and if I am asked, if I have an opinion about
what I have been involved with and I feel I have the right
then to cast those opinions. - As a result, she was dropped from all of
her contracts and engagements and found herself
completely unable to work. - A result, on the
bottom of the CIA dossier it says specifically
requested by Lady Bird and President Johnson deface
me in the United States so that I would be not seen
and therefore I'm out of work. - In later interviews,
she often likes to say- - He blacklisted you,
he made it difficult. - No, I wasn't blacklisted. - What would, what happened? - I was whitelisted. - And that's definitely what happened. If you read her CIA dossier, which describes her as
a sadistic sex maniac, it has a very similar tone
to every other CIA dossier that was following any Black activist or public figure at the time. In fact, it turns out the government had already been keeping tabs on her ever since she gained stardom in the '50s. Eartha Kitt wasn't just a threat because she spoke out against Vietnam. She was inherently a threat by being a successful Black woman. And so, Eartha and her
family fled back to Europe as it was now one of the only places she could have any semblance of a career. Despite how difficult her life had become, Eartha was still determined
to use her platform to make positive change. In 1974, she was asked to
perform in South Africa, which she only agreed to if the
audience was not segregated, something that was unheard
of during apartheid. She also intended to raise
money to help build schools there for the Black African children. It would be almost a decade before Eartha would be freed from her exile when in 1978 she was asked to appear on Broadway in Timbuktu. When she was subsequently
invited to the White House and welcomed personally
by President Jimmy Carter, she knew that she was free to come home. She returned to her career in the US, now divorced and living
alone with her daughter. They had a nice home in Beverly Hills with a beautiful garden, chickens,
pets, friends, and books. As she wrote in her later years, she would return to the
silver screen appearing in the films I mentioned
earlier in this video, most notably to me personally, Madame Zoroni and Holes and
Isma and Ember's New Groove, which she clearly had the time
of her life recording for. - Has but one punishment, death, death. - Despite the suffering, she maintained an extremely
positive outlook on life because she had no regrets. But if you watch any interview with her where she recounts her memories, it's visible just how
painful these things still were for her. Often getting choked
up and coming to tears when thinking about them again. Her daughter, Kitt Shapiro, reminisces on this in her own a biography, Eartha and Kitt, "Let go of it already," I would say to her,
especially as I got older, "That's enough. How long are you going to
hang onto this anger and pain, the mistreatment that you
suffered from this person or that person in the south?" I think the honest answer was that she couldn't let go of the past. I think she was afraid to, letting go would've meant
that she wouldn't be who she was anymore. "Why would I want to
forget?" she would ask, "Why would I want to let go of something that was such an integral
part of the foundation that made me who I am?" Yet she was not someone
who had been defeated by the adversity that she
had faced, not in the least. On the contrary, if anything, it actually gave her a sense of pride. It served as incontrovertible proof of how incredibly strong she was inside. She wasn't going to let them defeat her. She wasn't ever going to
let anyone do her in besides even though she held onto the pain and it was easy for her to
recall what it had been like back then as clearly as
if it were yesterday, she wasn't bitter, she
was never a bitter person. Kitt Shapiro has always put a big emphasis on just how good of a mother Eartha was even with her busy schedule and fame, she loved Kitt dearly more
than anything in the world. Her daughter became the most
important person to her, and all of her struggles only made her an ever more open
and accepting person. This could be as ground
level as her firm belief that all living creatures
are allowed to exist and deserve a place in this world. Bugs have a purpose just because you don't like how they look, doesn't give you the right
to kill them, she would say, and it also meant that
she was a staunch advocate for the LGBTQ community and Jewish folks. - [Eartha] I would think that
we are all rejected people. We know what it is to be refused. We know what it is to
be oppressed, depressed, and then accused. And I am very much
cognizant of that feeling. Nothing in the world is
more painful than rejection. I'm a rejected, oppressed person, and so I understand them as best I can. Even though I'm a heterosexual. - [Interviewer] Your sexuality
doesn't threaten them? - [Eartha] No, neither does
their sexuality threaten me. - But her strength didn't
mean that she was immune from her pain spilling out. One night after performing
at Carnegie Hall, Eartha was signing autographs
when suddenly a woman got her attention yelling,
"Eartha Mae, do you remember me? Your mother married my father." At that moment when Eartha Mae was called on instead of Eartha Kitt, something inside of her snapped. She broke down in tears screaming, "What do you want from me?" Until her daughter pulled her
away and got her into a car, Eartha had never known how she would react when confronted by her past
in person until that moment. All of these years of strife, much of it at the hands of
men who wanted her sexually, but hardly respected her as a person, led her to finally realizing
that she's just fine on her own, even though her stage image
was still that of a sex kitten. And she played around jokingly
with the man eater image, including with her famous
'80s song, "Whereas My Man?" In real life, she couldn't care less what
men wanted from her anymore. Resulting in probably my favorite
interview clip of all time from this 1982 Christian
Blackwood documentary called "All By Myself,
the Eartha Kitt Story." - [Interviewer] If a
man came into your life, wouldn't you want to compromise? (Eartha laughing) - Stupid, a man comes into my
life and I have to compromise? You must think about that one again. (Eartha laughing) - In a way, while this attitude
certainly protected her from more pain and
abandonment and rightfully so, it also had the reverse
effect of causing her to overbearingly rely on her
daughter as the sole source of comfort in her life. At almost every event,
Kitt was her plus one. Well into adulthood, Kitt would travel with her all over the world for work. To this day, Kitt does a
massive amount of labor to keep Eartha's legacy alive
and I really respect that. I did try to get in
contact with her to chat for this video to no avail, but oh well, it was worth a shot. Kitt says in her book, "The result was that I didn't ever choose to go off on my own path. I always remained attached to my mother. I never lived more than
a few miles away from her and saw her almost daily
throughout my entire life. Which is ironic given that
I grew up with a woman whose main motto more or less was, 'Never be dependent on anyone,' but I felt that she somehow
needed me more than I needed her emotionally for sure. I wasn't ever going to go
very far away from her anyway, and I sure wasn't going
to pursue any career that was gonna take me away from her. That's how I finally
ended up with the one job that worked for us both,
being my mother's manager. And that was a career, one that brought us together even more." Though Eartha passed away 14 years ago, Kitt essentially is still
her mother's manager. In late 2008, the family discovered that Eartha had stage three colon cancer. If you saw her in her last
performances that September, you would never have guessed
she was that sick and dying. She had an immense level
of energy and spirit right until the very end. The moment she finally
accepted this disease was going to take her life,
she deteriorated quickly. It was like having realized that she couldn't perform anymore. The fight left her, as Kitt recalls, "Eartha Kitt was gone, and once again, she was simply Eartha Mae." The last few weeks of her life, she spent at home being cared for by Kitt and a hospice nurse. And then on Christmas Day 2008, she suddenly began screaming. She quite literally left
this Eartha screaming at the top of her lungs. Kitt screamed back telling
her, it's okay, she can go. And so, Eartha Kitt fell
silent and she was gone. On her rise to stardom, Eartha once said, "I did it with wit, grit
and a sense of humor, and I never took up a
stick to be anyone to get to where I wanted to go. And I think that sums it out pretty well. Eartha Kit's impact on
culture has been immeasurable in ways that I think most
people don't much realize. She has impacted people's
lives on the ground through her youth outreach
work and activism. She spoke out against the
Vietnam War at the height of her fame when it was still
wildly unpopular to do so. She utilized her power
as a famous Black woman to challenge racism both in and out of the entertainment industry. And she gave millennials and
Gen Z, some of the most iconic, fictional characters of our childhoods. Coming from absolutely nothing,
rejected and abandoned, to living a life where her biggest mission was love and giving is
incredibly inspirational and part of the reason why
I've loved her so much. As she once said in an interview... - The people adopted me, my
greatest family is other people. The people, the people. That's why I say, when anybody asks me what
do I think of myself? I think (speaking in foreign language) Thank you very much, you
adopted me when nobody else did. - Thank you for learning with me about Eartha Kitt's incredible life. She's one of my all time
favorite entertainers, and I hope that now you love
her even just a little bit, as much as I do. So until next time, wash
thy hands, wear thy mask. And as Eartha always said, don't panic. (upbeat music)
