The Mother of Fierceness: Eartha Kitt Remembered by JustCircuit's Mickey Weems
from the February/March issue of JustCircuit.mag
Fierce means being the self you choose in the face of adversity, scorn and indifference. And the key to fierceness over time is the re-invention of that self, on your own terms.
The Mother of Fierceness is Eartha Kitt, the legendary singer, Broadway-Hollywood star, sex kitten, Catwoman, dance music diva and ardent supporter of Gay rights, who died on December 25, 2008.
Thursday’s Child
She was a woman with nine lives.
Eartha Mae Keith was born on January 17, 1927, neither one thing nor another, in a place that was neither here nor there, the town of North in South Carolina, a tiny village in the Low Country between the foothills and the coast. Her mother, a 14-year-old African American-Cherokee cotton picker, was raped by the European American son of the landowner. Eartha was the result.
Nobody wanted her. As a child, she was ridiculed for being too White, yet she was not White enough. "They called me yella gal," she said.
Eartha left North at the age of eight and went north, far from her previous life in South Carolina for a new existence in New York City. Her new family gave her piano lessons, dance instruction and beatings. She eventually fled to the street (she would later become an advocate for homeless children).
Her luck changed. While still a teenager, she was hired by the first African American modern dance troupe, the Katherine Dunham Company. This marked her third incarnation and a permanent departure from abject poverty.
Kitt hit Broadway in 1945, which ushered her into the starlight as a singer and actress of stage and film. Her fourth life began when she caught the attention of a nightclub owner while in Paris, and she was reborn European.
She soon gained international notoriety as a glamorous 1950s sex symbol. Men of wealth, fame and power found her irresistible, including the director-actor Orson Wells, who described her as “the most exciting woman alive.”
Eartha Kitt earned her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960. Ever the barrier-breaker in terms of interracial sex appeal, she appeared in 1967 as Catwoman on the TV series Batman, a role that fit her like a tight leather corset.
Her fame was enough in 1968 to get her invited to the White House by Lady Bird Johnson. In one of the great diva moments in American history, Ms. Kitt used the opportunity to read President Lyndon Baines Johnson to his face, and then throw Lady Bird’s polite society luncheon into a tizzy.
The gist of her statement was this: The best of our young men are smoking marijuana and dropping out of school because they are being sent to die in Vietnam. They have lost faith in our country. Supposedly, her condemnation of the war made the First Lady cry.
It also led to her fifth life as an outcast from the American entertainment world. Presidents do not like to be humbled in their own home; neither do they take kindly to anyone upsetting their spouses. The FBI and CIA discouraged people from hiring Kitt in the country of her birth, so she went to Europe yet again for la vie #6. She came home to 1970s America for her seventh life, more exotic and glamorous than ever.
Fashions changed, and so did she. With the help of some of her Gay fans, Eartha was reborn an eighth time as a dance music diva when she released her greatest hit, “Where Is My Man” in 1984. She was 57.
Eartha’s ninth incarnation in the ‘90s was basically a medley of the previous eight lives except one: her origins in the Carolina cotton fields. She took up part-time residence in the Carlyle in Manhattan, the same building where she gave cabaret performances.
The sui generis creation of Eartha Kitt came with hard work and diamond-like focus. She spoke at least 4 languages fluently and sang in seven. A daily workout kept Eartha incredibly fit.
Her Christmas performance for President Bush in 2006 is a study in fierceness. She still had beautiful legs at the age of 79, and she wasn’t afraid to flaunt them, regardless of the weather. She did her sexy holiday classic, “Santa Baby,” outdoors in freezing, windy conditions. Decked in an open full-length mink coat and red slinky dress with a split up one thigh, Eartha sizzled.
George Bush looked like he enjoyed the show. Laura, not so much.
C’est Si Bon
Eartha was born into a world that despised her for everything she was.
She chose never to revisit that first terrible life in South Carolina except to remind the media what kind of reality the world offered her as a bastard “yellow girl” who came from nothing, was given nothing, and was expected to be nothing, the easy target of psychotic rage that pitted Black and White against each other.
Eartha did what so many of us Gay folks do, especially those of us from the rural South. She got the hell out and didn’t turn back. She lost the drawl, glamorized her name from homespun “Eartha Mae Keith” to “Eartha Kitt,” and reinvented herself from yellow cotton-picking trash to feline femme fatale made of pure shiny gold. She possessed a luster that never tarnished, even as she entered her eighth decade.
Sepia drag beauties of my acquaintance agree with me wholeheartedly. Bianca Bouvier of the House of Bouvier said, “She was beautiful, absolutely beautiful. She was special to me—she was loved. She worked it all the way to the end.” Andria Michaels, a woman from Ohio “off 99 by the muck” with razor-sharp wit and tongue to match, concurred: “She made it possible for me to do what I do. I was a rural country girl, half Black and half White. The only options I had were to become a farmhand or drug dealer. She showed me the only limitations I had were between my ears.
“She also made it possible for Barack Obama to become president,” Andria added.
Eartha did indeed pave the way for Barack. When she started out as a dancer, the American public was just beginning to come to grips with racism. Women such as Kitt, Katherine Dunham, Dorothy Dandridge and Lena Horne strode out of the melting pot as women who were more beautiful, not less, because of their African American heritage. But they were able to do so because they were not too Black.
It is no stretch of the imagination to say the same for Obama.
Because women like Eartha were lifetimes away from anything rural, and light years away from Jim Crow segregation within the social circles they frequented, they became glorious beacons to people of color around the world. It was only a matter of time before darker-hued stars with strong local accents from places like Savannah, Biloxi, Birmingham, Bogalusa and Knoxville made their presence known.
I Want to Be Evil
Eartha made her harsh anti-war remarks in 1968 for two reasons: if she didn’t speak her mind, nobody else would. And she was sick and tired of people tolerating her.
Think of it: a woman who brought herself out of the cotton fields of the Deep South and the mean streets of Gotham, sitting with the prim-and-proper White cream of society in the appropriately-named White House. Imagine how condescending some of those people were with her, rich matrons whose only contact with Black women consisted of giving orders to their maids.
Tolerance is never enough.
By all accounts, Lady Bird Johnson was a gracious woman. But the First Lady was always a second fiddle to her husband, and Eartha Kitt made it her life’s mission to establish equal footing with every man she met.
Along with whatever carefully-masked racism Kitt encountered at the luncheon, she also had to deal with the fact that these powerful women were threatened by her sexuality as they saw men’s heads (including their husbands’) turn toward Eartha so fast, it’s a wonder the fellows didn’t suffer from whiplash. "I love men and I like to get their attention,” she said. “Every time I see a man, I want to tease him.”
Eartha wasn’t a Marilyn Monroe, bubbly and slightly vacuous, neither was she an “Ooh, love to love you, baby” orgasmic seductress like Donna Summer. “Mystery is the greatest aphrodisiac,” Kitt is reported to have said, and she worked mystery on so many levels. Was she Black or White? European or American? Feminine or feminist? Kitten or tigress?
The answer is yes.
Toujour Gai
How could such a woman not be attractive to Gay men? My husband Kevin would lip-sync “Where Is My Man” in a tuxedo when he stripped professionally during the late 1990s.
Generations of queens have been doing Eartha Kitt in drag shows all over the world. Sissy boys bought her music so they could put on fabulous women’s clothing and parade about the stage like they were somebody. And it was Gay men’s devotion that saved her after her White House remarks inspired the government to cut the switch to her star power.
“They have the same problem I had,” she said. “That's why I have empathy for Gay people because we know the feeling of rejection.” Gay men kept her afloat financially and gave her moral support. Black men, White men, Asian men, Latino men, all kinds claimed her. She made them feel real when the world told them they were less than nothing.
Even today, her fifty year legacy as a Gay icon lives on. Eartha Kitt is especially loved in Ballroom culture. Jeremy A. Xtravaganza had nothing but praise: “She was the true art of being a diva, an icon of beauty, style and grace. Legend is her—she is legend.”
Eartha supported Gay rights, attended Gay events (including Circuit events), and cherished our company. She and Bronski Beat released the ultra-campy song “Cha-Cha Heels” in 1989, years before Rosabel concocted their own dance floor masterpiece. Remixes of her songs (and, in one memorable occasion in DC’s Nation nightclub, her voice saying, “Here kitty kitty kitty!”) have been played in Circuit parties for years.
Après Moi
People in the Circuit scene have nothing but praise for the Mother of Fierceness:
Kitty Meow: “I was shocked and saddened to hear she had passed. She made it okay for me to stand up tall. On her shoulders stands the President of the United States.”
Kat Coric, Montreal artist/activist: “I always thought she was so amazing. What a fabulous woman she was!”
Power Infiniti: “Before you can get to the Circuit as a performer, you get to the stage. And before you get to the stage as a little draglet, you emulate certain people such as Eartha Kitt. She was exactly the stuff that divas are made of.”
Hosh Gureli, NYC music industry mogul: “Eartha Kitt always had presence. Her unmistakable cat-like super-sexy voice impacted me most when “Where Is My Man” came out on Streetwise Records. It was a peak night record for my crowd at DV8/Axis Sunday nights in Boston. The out-chorus chant on the original 12’ vinyl “I want a billionaire with a big big big big yacht”—she knew how to sell it to the boys!”
Chris Davis, NYC choreographer: “Her body was snatched! She supported Gay people when it was not the thing to do. Her remixes permeated the disco era and beyond—they crossed over from the Circuit to Body & Soul to Black clubs because of her sense of style. She was a refined intellectual sex kitten who didn’t give it away. It was more of, “Baby, don’t you want this?” You can see her influence on Grace Jones and Madonna.”
Tony Moran: “Eartha Kitt was a classy lady. She is the quintessential diva without having to wail. She had the personality to give it to you, dahling, a cool, provocative approach that reflected her Catwomanness.”
Patrick Guay, Montreal DJ: “She was a multi-talented diva who will be sorely missed for all of the support she lent our community.”
Alan T: “I live for her.”
Lorenzo DeAlmeida, DC Calor/Bahia Productions: “She’s a well-respected diva in the Brazilian Gay community for years, and a favorite of mine.”
Ultra Naté: “Eartha Kitt will be remembered as an icon and a beautiful example to women, especially women of color, of how to be a true entertainer. On her own terms, she created a persona that knocked down doors and mesmerized everyone ... true star power.”
Johnny Chisholm: “Eartha Kitt stood for a selection of words: Timeless--she was always given admiration from musicians and performers in all genres of music; Eclectic--for her evolvement through the years that assisted in breaking the racial barriers with her diversity in music, and Soulsy--her raspy, bluesy sound seemed to flow effortlessly. She will be missed.”
