Kitt toured for several years and then stayed in Paris to be a singer. She toured the world with Katherine Dunham, whose dance career focused on African American and Afro-Caribbean dance, according to her school’s website. Having lived in Harlem for a few years, Kitt joined a dance troupe at the age of 16. Her mother died when she was young, so she was sent to New York to be with relatives.
Her white father was gone, and she and her Black and Cherokee mother faced many hardships. Being mixed race in South Carolina gave her a troublesome childhood. According to The Guardian, when she found her birth certificate in her seventies, her father’s name was crossed out. From her early days in Harlem to her resurgence among young fans as conniving animated villain Yzma, Kitt spent decades in the cultural zeitgeist.īorn in South Carolina in 1927, Kitt did not know her exact birthday until later in life and never knew her father. While she was an accomplished recording artist, including the holiday classic “Santa Baby,” she was on Broadway and also appeared in movies and on television. While this series is called Matriarchs of Music, music only scratches the surface of her life. When she died at the age of 81 on Christmas Day 2008, there was practically nothing that Eartha Kitt hadn’t done.
0 kommentar(er)
