Why did the President of the United States order a CIA smear campaign against actress
and singer Eartha Kitt?
And how did she get embroiled in a controversy over apartheid?
Keep watching to find out!
Eartha Kitt had anything but a happy childhood.
Her mother, Annie Mae Keith, gave birth to her on a cotton plantation in South Carolina
but abandoned her at a young age.
Kitt was the result of an affair between her mother and an unknown white man, and her mother's
new husband refused to raise Kitt due to her lighter complexion.
She was given away to her Aunt Rosa, who made her work in cotton fields before shipping
her off to a different relative in New York when she was around 8 years old.
Eartha Kitt never met her biological father.
Her daughter, Kitt Shapiro, told The Guardian that this missing piece of her identity was
a great source of pain and shaped her connection with the South.
"In 1927, to be a light-skinned Black person in the South was just as horrible as being
a Black person in the white South.
My mother was not accepted by the Black community."
In 1997, Kitt began petitioning the courts for access to her birth certificate.
But when she finally did obtain the document after six months of legal battle, she was
dismayed to find that his name was redacted.
She died 10 years later without ever discovering his true identity.
"You are not wanted by this group or that group and you are considered a nothing, and
nobody thinks of you as a human being, you just want to disappear."
After making a name for herself in the 1940s with the Kathrine Dunham dance troupe, Eartha
Kitt branched out on her own.
While performing at a popular Paris nightclub, she was discovered by legendary director Orson
Welles.
Welles cast her as Helen of Troy in his 1950 stage production, "An Evening with Orson Welles,"
and she stole the show, earning rave reviews.
The two stars would grow close during their time performing together –- but it was strictly
a platonic romance.
In her autobiography, "Confessions of a Sex Kitten," she wrote about how Welles would
recite Shakespeare to her while spoiling her with lavish dinners.
But according to Kitt it never became physical.
She said,
"Maybe this is why Orson said I was the most exciting woman in the world, as he was never
given a chance to find out how unexciting I might have been in bed."
"I never wanted to move, I was like a fly on the wall.
That's why I think he called me the most exciting woman in the world, because I knew when to
talk and when not to."
Legendary film icon James Dean was a magnetic personality much like Eartha Kitt, and the
two bonded over their mutual feelings of being out of place in Hollywood.
Kitt told Larry King that their relationship blossomed at a dance studio in New York.
She also recalled in the 1996 documentary, "James Dean and Me,"
"He wanted to move like me.
He wanted me to teach him stage presence, [he asked] 'How do I move my body in a chord,
to the rhythm of how I'm speaking?'"
The two grew extremely close.
They often confided in each other, went out dancing, or rode around on his motorcycle.
She affectionately called him "Jamie" and even went so far as to say they were soulmates.
Kitt's connection to him was so deep and spiritual, she claimed to have premonitions of Dean dying
in the weeks leading up to his fatal accident.
She said that at their last meeting, she gave him a long hug and could no longer feel his
spirit.
"The Sunday before, when I had hugged him.
And he wasn't there."
From her sultry singing voice to her confident displays of sensuality, Eartha Kitt embodied
the life of a truly sexually liberated woman in roles like Catwoman in the 1960s "Batman"
series with Adam West.
Kitt Shapiro said of her mother in Closer Weekly,
"This was 1967, and there were no women of color at that time wearing skintight bodysuits,
playing opposite a white male with sexual tension between them!
She knew the importance of the role and she was proud of it."
Off-screen, Kitt famously had several high-profile lovers.
Among them was the founder of Revlon cosmetics, Charlie Revson, who named a shade of lipstick
after her called "Fire and Ice."
She also reportedly had a fling with singer Harry Belafonte, among others.
But in 1989 she told "60 Minutes" that the true love of her life was movie producer Arthur
Loew, who was also romantically linked to Natalie Wood.
His mother forced him to break things off with Kitt, though, because she was Black.
"Arthur Loew.
I've never gotten over it."
Another romantic partner was allegedly Nat King Cole, who was her co-star in the 1958
film, "St. Louis Blues," though Kitt claimed it was an emotional affair and not a physical
one.
While she did not think much of their affair, Cole reportedly sent her dozens of flowers
afterward — much to the chagrin of his wife, Maria, who sent her a scathing letter.
In hindsight, Kitt's subversive sexual persona stood out as culturally significant in an
era where many states still outlawed relationships between Black and white Americans.
One state where such relationships were legal, though, was California.
And in 1960, Kitt caused another scandal when she married a white Korean War veteran named
William MacDonald.
MacDonald was a real estate investor from a wealthy Los Angeles family.
According to AmoMama, the pair met in Las Vegas a few years earlier through a mutual
friend — a man named Bob Dix.
Kitt and MacDonald were married at a small ceremony hosted at her home in Beverly Hills.
Their only daughter, named Kitt after her mother, was born the following year.
One of the reasons Eartha Kitt loved MacDonald was because he never forced her to choose
to be a mother or a wife over her career.
However, her husband had become addicted to painkillers, and problems began to rise.
In 1963, they separated, and a year later, she filed for divorce; according to the New
York Times, she cited "mental cruelty" as the reason.
Kitt received full custody of their daughter and $100 for child support.
Picture this: It's 1968, and Eartha Kitt was enchanting audiences clad in her sexy leather
costume as Catwoman in the hit series "Batman."
Her flirty Christmas classic "Santa Baby" had been playing on the holiday airwaves for
over a decade.
She had also founded a charity working with underprivileged kids, all of which caught
the attention of the first lady, who invited her to the White House.
So what does a successful Black woman do when given a chance to speak truth to power?
She allegedly brought Lady Bird Johnson to tears by dropping the ultimate truth bomb.
As The New Yorker details, Kitt was attending the 1968 Women Doers Luncheon hosted by the
first lady at the White House.
When it was Kitt's time to speak, she shared her opinion on why she believed the youth
of the nation were rebelling and protesting the Vietnam War.
She denounced the war, saying,
"They don't want to go to school, 'cause they're going to be snatched off from their mothers
to be shot in Vietnam [...] You send the best of the country off to be shot and maimed.
No wonder the kids rebel and take pot — and Mrs. Johnson, in case you don't understand
the lingo, that's marijuana."
Later at the luncheon, Kitt confronted the President himself.
The fallout was immediate.
The press and the public turned on her, she was blacklisted from Hollywood, and the President
ordered the CIA to destroy her reputation.
"What I said to Mrs. Johnson upset her?
I don't know why it should upset her, I was telling her the truth."
Though the CIA only actively began working to destroy Kitt's reputation and career in
1968, New York Times journalist Seymour Hersh later uncovered the fact that the organization
had actually begun collecting information on Kitt as early as 1956.
After the incident at the White House in 1968, the CIA began keeping a dossier on Eartha
Kitt and worked to defame her -– even calling her a, quote, "sadistic nymphomaniac."
As a result, she began to lose out on acting roles and had to find work abroad in Europe
where her reputation had not been sullied.
The Times reports that the CIA made all sorts of wild, dramatic claims about Kitt, including
referring to the entertainer as,
"a spoiled child, very crude and having a vile tongue."
Kitt herself was said to have fired back at those statements saying,
"As long as they're going to investigate any of us, they should at least come out with
the truth."
Inspired by the Los Angeles Watts race riots in the late 1960s, Eartha Kitt started the
Kittsville Youth Foundation along with co-founder Ella Mae Evans.
As mentioned on Kittsville.org, her mission was a simple one: to uplift struggling young
people through the power of dance.
Kitt understood the deep cultural significance, along with the discipline, focus, and self-esteem
boost that dance could provide for young Black children, so she sought to make it accessible
to everyone.
She served as one of the foundation's primary instructors for many years and periodically
returned to mentor at the facility all the way up to her death from colon cancer in 2008.
In addition to her charity work, she was also a vocal advocate for same-sex marriage and
LGBTQ rights.
Marie Clare reports that Kitt embraced the gay community and held benefits for HIV/AIDS.
She compared the discrimination faced by LGBTQ individuals to that of African Americans during
the Civil Rights era.
In an article for The Windy City Times, Kitt credited the gay community for keeping her
name alive after both the media and the CIA worked to smear her reputation.
She said,
"I feel very close to the gay crowd because we know what it feels like to be rejected."
"We know what it is to be oppressed, depressed, and then accused."
Eartha Kitt was no stranger to controversy, nor was she afraid to confront it.
In the 1980s, she went on a tour of South Africa, which was still racially segregated
under apartheid.
As a result, the United Nations had implemented a cultural boycott of the country, urging
stars not to perform in the nation.
Kitt chose to go anyway, leading to widespread condemnation.
But she was unapologetic, saying that she only played for desegregated audiences and
that she was using her earnings to help fund schools for Black students.
There was also an incident where she was rejected from an amusement park by an employee for
being non-white.
Her daughter, Kitt Shapiro, remembers how Eartha handled the situation with a calm sense
of grace.
Shapiro told "The Today Show" that the embarrassed park owner wanted to make amends, though Eartha
Kitt used the incident to make a point.
She relayed her mother's words:
"'We would like you to contribute to this charity that we're doing to build schools
for African children, as well as my daughter would love to come back with some of her friends.'"
They triumphantly returned later with an integrated group of children, plus a string of photographers
and journalists to publicize the situation.
Eartha Kitt’s most famous song is perhaps “Santa Baby,” but she has recorded many
tracks in seven languages and has at least 30 albums to her name.
Her first album was called "RCA Victor Presents Eartha Kitt," featuring the rather mischievous
track, "I Want to Be Evil," and the velvety seductive French tune "C'est Si Bon."
Music was not the only medium to which Kitt would lend her voice.
In 2000, she joined the ranks of famous Disney villains by voicing Yzma in "Emperor's New
Groove."
She also portrayed Yzma in two video games associated with the movie, as well as "The
Emperor's New School," which ran on the Disney Channel from 2006 to 2008.
Additionally, she provided numerous voice cameos for episodes of many other animated
shows, including "The Simpsons" among others.
These days it's commonplace for celebrities to have their own brands, and Eartha Kitt
is no different.
Not only was Kitt Shapiro Eartha Kitt's only child, but she was essentially her only family.
Naturally, the two were invariably intertwined.
As Shapiro said in her interview with Shondaland,
"She would introduce us that way and often say, 'I'm Eartha, and this is Kitt,' as if
I completed her in some way.
And I think, in many ways, I did."
Shapiro was deeply influenced by her mother's wisdom as she grew up touring the globe at
her side.
When Eartha Kitt passed away in 2008, she felt a profound sense of loss that would eventually
lead her to create "Simply Eartha": a lifestyle brand dedicated to her mother's legacy as
a person — not just a celebrity.
Shapiro states via SimplyEartha.com,
"I have taken her image, her writing, and her wisdom and created designs that I hope
will continue to inspire her fans, both old and new."
It features merchandise with Kitt's signature "Kittisms," which according to the official
Eartha Kitt website, are a collection of inspirational quotes the star would write down.
What a nice way for a daughter to keep her mother's legacy alive.
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