The Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of Eartha Kitt

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- 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 word from today's sponsor, Wondershare Filmora. Whether you make videos for your job like I do or just for fun, the most important thing in your tool belt is a reliable editing program with all the features you need to make a great video. It's extra important to me that the program I use is not only efficient and quick loading, but also easy to navigate and Wondershare Filmora 11 continues to surprise me with just how easy it is to use. 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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)
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Channel: Kaz Rowe
Views: 404,765
Rating: undefined out of 5
Keywords: eartha kitt, eartha kitt catwoman, eartha kitt cia, eartha kitt santa baby, eartha kitt vietnam, eartha kitt emperors new groove, eartha kitt batman, eartha kitt yzma, eartha kitt i want to be evil, lady bird, lyndon b johnson, holes, madame zeroni, orson welles, james dean, marilyn monroe, hollywood, cold war, vietnam war, red scare, wondershare, filmora, madewithfilmora, black history, civil rights
Id: PECF0ZupS28
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 38min 41sec (2321 seconds)
Published: Thu Nov 17 2022
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