Eartha Kitt, the inimitable and irrepressible triple threat singer, dancer and actress, has passed away at the age of 81.  Kitt was an entertainment dynamo in a career that stretched across six decades, with the performer still taking the stage to sing and dance at 80 years of age.  She spoke four languages and sang in seven, a skill that lent some sultry diction to her biggest hit song “Santa Baby”.

Kitt was born Eartha Keith in the confusingly named town of North, South Carolina on January 17, 1927, the exact date of which she did not know until a decade ago when a group of college students took up a challenge by the entertainer to find her birth certificate and succeeded in providing her with the document.  The daughter of an African-American/Cherokee sharecropper mother and a white father who she never knew, Kitt struggled with racial bigotry from both whites and blacks in her youth due to her mixed heritage. 

She moved to live with an Aunt in Harlem at age 8, then as a young woman auditioned, on a dare, for the Katherine Dunham Dance Company which launched her career in show business.  Kitt went on to ply her singing, dancing and acting trades on Broadway and both the small and big screens playing memorable rolls such as Catwoman on the original Batman TV show.  My favorite  Kitt bit however was her  feature voice work in NYC Taxi cabs which ended trademark, sex kitten “purr/growl”.

You can by checking out UNICEF which Eartha Kitt did strong advocacy work for.

LINKS:

WaPo: Seductive singer Eartha Kitt dies at 81

AP: Sultry “Santa Baby” singer Eartha Kitt dies at 81

Chicago Tribune: Versatile entertainer Eartha Kitt, TV’s Catwoman, dies at 81