User:Mind meal/Sandbox18

Known for:
 * Santa, Baby
 * Human rights activism
 * "Sex kitten", i.e. sex symbol
 * 'C'est Si Bon' (hit record)
 * Bi-racial
 * Once called the “most exciting woman in the world” by Orson Welles
 * Most notable for her sultry, housecat-purr of a voice and indomitable, lioness-tough spirit.
 * Won two Emmy awards
 * She remained a fixture on the cabaret circuit, having maintained her figure through a vigorous fitness regimen
 * Catwoman

Love life:
 * Love affair with Orson Welles
 * Miss Kitt had a string of romances with rich or famous men, including Welles, the cosmetics magnate Charles Revson and banking heir John Barry Ryan III, Sammy Davis, Jr., Louis Dominguin

Notes:
 * Mrs. Patterson
 * Wild Party
 * Performed at Manhattan's Cafe Carlyle regularly in her 70s (last recording is Eartha Kitt, Live at the Carlyle
 * Film: "The Mark of the Hawk"
 * Film: "Harriet the Spy"

Timeline
*1954 Stars in the Broadway musical "Mrs. Patterson"
 * January 17, 1927 born as Eartha May Keith of an African-American and Cherokee woman who had been raped by the white owner of a plantation
 * 1946 Became one of the Sans-Souci Singers in the Katherine Dunham Company's Broadway production "Bal Negre"
 * Paris 1949 cabaret debut
 * 1950 cast as Helen of Troy in Orson Welles' staging of Christopher Marlowe's "Dr. Faustus"
 * 1952 Broadway debut at age 18 in the musical New Faces of 1952
 * 1953 Sings Santa, Baby

*1956 Wrote the autobiography "Thursday's Child"

*1958 Stars in the film St. Louis Blues (1958 film) *1965 Television guest spot on "I Spy" in 1965, which brought her first Emmy nomination
 * 1959 Stars in the film Anna Lucasta
 * 1960 Gives birth to a daughter (Kitt Shapiro) with William O. McDonald, who she is married to from 1960 to 1965 (an interracial marriage)
 * 1960 Received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
 * 1967 Plays the role of Catwoman, replacing Julie Newmar and appears in 3 episodes
 * 1968 She drew a torrent of criticism for condemning the Vietnam War during a stage performance attended by President Lyndon Johnson's wife, Lady Bird; Kitt was blacklisted. She was investigated by the FBI and the CIA and ended up on the "enemies list" of Johnson's successor, Richard Nixon; for a time she lived in Istanbul, Turkey
 * 1976 Wrote the autobiography, "Alone With Me"
 * 1978 Stars in the Broadway musical Timbuktu!, where she purred a song about a recipe whose main ingredient was cannabis; nominated for a Tony award that year; is welcomed back to the states by Jimmy Carter
 * 1979 Wrote an autobiography, "Confessions of a Sex Kitten"
 * 1984 Toured South Africa
 * 1986 she moved into a converted 1773 barn on a secluded 80-acre property in the Merryall section of New Milford, Connecticut
 * 1989 Wrote an autobiography "I'm Still Here: Confessions of a Sex Kitten"
 * 1992 Stars in the film Boomerang (1992 film)
 * 1994 Won a Grammy nomination for "Back in Business," a collection of cabaret songs released in 1994.
 * 2000 Received her second Tony nomination, for best featured actress in a musical in "The Wild Party."
 * 2002 moved in with daughter in Weston, Connecticut (Kitt Shapiro)
 * 2006 She helped the President and Laura Bush light the National Christmas Tree
 * 2007 Signed on as the spokesperson for MAC Cosmetics’ Smoke Signals collection; she re-recorded “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” for the occasion, which was showcased on the MAC website, and the song was played at all MAC locations carrying the collection for a month.
 * December 25, 2008 - died of colon cancer in New York at age 81 with her daughter at her side
 * 2007 and 2008 won two daytime Emmy awards for her role as the scheming empress-wannabe Yzma in "The Emperor's New School"

Career

 * Kitt's career began in late 1946 when she starred as one of the Sans-Souci Singers in the Katherine Dunham Company's Broadway production of "Bal Negre." This performance attracted the attention of Orson Welles.


 * From 1954 to 1955 Kitt starred as the 15 year old character (Teddy) in the Broadway musical Mrs. Patterson, a role for which she was nominated for a Tony award in 1954. The show lasted for 101 performances.


 * In 1956 she published her first autobiography for Duell, Sloan and Pearce titled Thursday's Child.


 * Kitt also starred in the 1958 film St. Louis Blues, a film which fictionalized the life of the jazz composer W.C. Handy. Despite an all-star cast which included Nat "King" Cole, Cab Calloway, Ella Fitzgerald, Ruby Dee, Pearl Bailey, Juano Hernandez and Mahalia Jackson, the film garnered lackluster reviews. Author Donald Bogle has written of her performance in this and other films in the following way: "A terribly affected and studied actress with too many self-conscious kinks and quirks and in need of a strong director to break down the defenses she had built up for herself, Eartha Kitt had an arch independence and what some saw as an underlying bitchiness that antagonized filmgoers. Physically, she lacked the conventional good looks that could make an audience take an interest in her no matter what she did. Easily intimidated audiences may have found her demonic and dangerous."


 * She starred in the 1959 film Anna Lucasta, playing the lead role of Anna (a prostitute).


 * In 1965 she guest starred in an Episode of 'I Spy' as Angel, a nightclub singer and drug addict in a relationship with a Latin-American drug smuggler named Ramon. Kitt was nominated for an Emmy award in 1966 for her performance in the episode.

Filmography

 * 1948: Casbah
 * 1952: New Faces
 * 1958: St. Louis Blues (1958 film)
 * 1958: The Mark of the Hawk
 * 1958: Anna Lucasta
 * 1961: The Saint of Devil's Island
 * 1965: Synanon (film)
 * 1959: Uncle Tom's Cabin/White Trash Woman
 * 1971: Up the Chastity Belt
 * 1975: Friday Foster
 * 1982: All By Myself (film)
 * 1983: Serpent Warriors
 * 1986: The Pink Chiquitas
 * 1987: Dragonard
 * 1987: The Master of Dragonard Hill
 * 1989: Living Doll
 * 1989: Erik the Viking
 * 1991: Ernest Scared Stupid
 * 1992: Boomerang (1992 film)
 * 1993: Fatal Instinct
 * 1995: Unzipped (film)
 * 1996: Harriet the Spy
 * 1997: Ill Gotten Gains
 * 1999: I Woke Up Early the Day I Died
 * 2000: The Emperor's New Groove