Eartha Kitt

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Birthday:

17 January 1927, North, South Carolina, USA

Birth Name:

Eartha Mae Keith

Height:

157 cm

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 who became pregnant after being raped by a white plantation owner. 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. Show less «

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 o...Show more »

[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. Show less «

[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 relatio...Show more »

[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. Show less «

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 o...Show more »

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. Show less «

I'm an orphan. But the public has adopted me and that has been my only family. The biggest family in the world is my fans.

[in an Essence magazine interview regarding her anti-war statements to Lady Bird Johnson and her subsequent loss of work because of them] Th...Show more »

[in an Essence magazine interview regarding her anti-war statements to Lady Bird Johnson and her subsequent loss of work because of them] The thing that hurts, that became anger, was when I realized that if you tell the truth -- in a country that says you're entitled to tell the truth -- you get your face slapped and you get put out of work. Show less «

A man has always wanted to lay me down but he never wanted to pick me up.

[on Orson Welles] Orson spent most of his money on women. That's why he didn't have the money to make films.

If someone would even suggest such a vulgar thing as a goodbye-themed event for me, I would pretend I didn't hear it. Goodbye to what? My wh...Show more »

If someone would even suggest such a vulgar thing as a goodbye-themed event for me, I would pretend I didn't hear it. Goodbye to what? My whole life? Show less «