Eartha Kitt

Eartha Mae Kitt, born Eartha Mae Keith on January 17, 1927, in North, South Carolina, was an American singer, songwriter, and actress whose Broadway career spanned from 1945 to 2003. Her mother, Annie Mae Keith, was of Cherokee and African descent, and Kitt was raised by a relative known as Aunt Rosa before being sent to live with a woman named Mamie Kitt in Harlem, New York City, whom she later came to believe was her biological mother. In Harlem, she attended the Metropolitan Vocational High School, later renamed the High School of Performing Arts.

Kitt launched her professional career in 1943 as a member of the Katherine Dunham Company, remaining with the troupe until 1948. Her Broadway debut came in 1945 with the original production of the musical Carib Song. In 1950, Orson Welles cast her in the starring role of Helen of Troy in his staging of Dr. Faustus, and two years later she appeared in the revue New Faces of 1952, where she introduced the songs "Monotonous" and "Bal, Petit Bal." A film adaptation of that revue, distributed by 20th Century-Fox in 1954, featured her performing several numbers including "Uska Dara," "C'est si bon," and "Santa Baby."

Her recording career produced six US Top 30 entries in the early 1950s, among them "Uska Dara" and "I Want to Be Evil," both from 1953, as well as the widely recognized holiday song "Santa Baby," also released that year. Additional recordings included the UK Top 10 entry "Under the Bridges of Paris" in 1954, "Just an Old Fashioned Girl" in 1956, and "Where Is My Man" in 1983. Kitt spoke four languages and sang in eleven, a range she demonstrated across numerous cabaret performances throughout her career.

Her Broadway work during the 1950s included Mrs. Patterson during the 1954–1955 season, Shinbone Alley in 1957, and the short-lived play Jolly's Progress in 1959. On television, she took on the role of Catwoman in the third and final season of Batman in 1967, following Julie Newmar's departure from the series. That same year she also appeared in a Mission: Impossible episode titled "The Traitor," playing a character named Tina Mara.

On January 18, 1968, Kitt's career in the United States suffered a significant setback when she made anti-Vietnam War statements at a White House luncheon hosted by First Lady Lady Bird Johnson. In the aftermath, she was characterized in a CIA dossier that journalist Seymour Hersh discovered and published in The New York Times in 1975. Following the incident, Kitt redirected her professional activities to Europe and Asia for much of the following decade.

Kitt made a successful return to Broadway in 1978 with the original production of the musical Timbuktu!, a credit that earned her a Tony Award nomination for Best Actress in a Musical. Twenty-two years later, she received a second Tony nomination, this time for Best Featured Actress in a Musical, for her role in the 2000 original production of The Wild Party. Those two nominations bookended a Broadway career that extended to 2003.

In the final decade of her life, Kitt reached a new generation of audiences through voice acting, providing the voice of the villain Yzma in The Emperor's New Groove franchise, work that earned her two Daytime Emmy Awards, and the voice of Vexus in My Life as a Teenage Robot. She posthumously received a third Emmy in 2010 for a guest performance on Wonder Pets. Kitt also authored three autobiographies, the first of which, Thursday's Child, was published in 1956. She died on December 25, 2008.