Eartha Kitt, a sultry singer, dancer and actress who rose from South Carolina cotton fields to become an international symbol of elegance and sensuality, has died, a family spokesman said. She was 81.
Andrew Freedman said Kitt, who was recently treated at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, died Thursday in Connecticut of colon cancer.
The singer-actress was born on a cotton farm in North in 1927. Because the harvest was good that year, her father named her "Eartha." But the family was poor and when she was still quite young, her father left them. The family moved from place to place, trying to support themselves. Kitt was of mixed racial parentage, and her light skin made her unwelcome to some. When her mother met a man and decided to get married, he told her he would take her half-sister Pearl but not Eartha. Finally, her mother left the two children with a neighbor family, choosing not to separate them. The young Eartha Mae had to cook, clean, weed the garden, keep track of the cow, pick cotton, and do many other chores to cover her room and board. She recounts that she was not treated well in her new home. She saw her mother only a few times during the three years she lived there, once when she was taken to see her new half-sister, Almita. About six months later, her mother died.
Soon after, an aunt who lived in Harlem sent for Eartha. Kitt left South Carolina to live with her aunt when she was 8, losing touch with any family connections in the state. She attended school in New York, and started down the road that would eventually lead to a career in show business.
After winning a scholarship to the Katherine Dunham Dance School, she began to tour with the group and achieved her first professional success. As a member of the troupe, the sixteen year old Kitt toured in Mexico, Europe and South America as well as the U.S. Choosing to stay in Paris, she began to sing in nightclubs. Subsequently, Kitt became known as a singer and actress as well as a dancer. In 1950 she began her acting career as Helen of Troy in an Orson Welles production entitled Time Runs. In 1952 she starred in a Broadway musical, New Faces of 1952. She recorded a number of successful songs in the early 1950s as well. Kitt continued to act in both theater and on film, and to perform in nightclubs.Unwilling to contribute to the discrimination rampant in American society, Kitt decided that she would not perform before segregated audiences and included that requirement in her contracts. She appeared in several films, including St. Louis Blues in 1958 and Anna Lucasta in 1959. In the 1960s she played the role of Catwoman on the Batman television show. Kitt had seemingly achieved the American dream, and was a success in show business.
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