The ageless Eartha Kitt exuded icy glamour in most of her stage, film and TV appearances, but offstage she was remarkably warm and down to earth.
The star who died yesterday at the age of 81 told me several years ago that she always thought pieces of property — and not diamonds — were a girl’s best friend. Kitt enjoyed nothing more than working in the garden she kept on her Fairfield County property, close to her beloved daughter.
The first time I interviewed Kitt I was intimidated by the legend and the history surrounding the star — friend of Orson Welles and James Dean, enemy of Lyndon Johnson — but after a few minutes, it was like talking to an old pal. A very funny and very honest pal.
“A woman of the earth,” was the way Kitt thought of herself, digging around in the garden between her Broadway and nightclub gigs.
She was nominated for a Tony three times — most recently in 2000 for “Wild Party” — and played the most fashionable clubs in New York City up until last year.
Online today, the New York cabaret star Justin Bond tipped his hat to Kitt, noting that she was always able to be “glamorous and political,” a reference to the star’s gutsy confrontation with President Lyndon Johnson (above) when she was invited to a celebrity women’s luncheon at the White House in 1968.
Kitt took the event seriously and told Johnson and his wife Lady Bird that she thought the Vietnam War was a terrible mistake and that it was decimating the young black male population in America’s inner cities.
For speaking her mind, the star was essentially blacklisted in this country, with most venues canceling her bookings. Kitt also was made the subject of a secret federal investigation that included having her house bugged and being tailed by Secret Service agents.
Kitt spent much of the following decade working in Europe before the fury died down and she was able to pick up where she left off.
Lots of people write about speaking “truth to power” but Eartha Kitt actually did it when she had the chance.
Joe's View
With Joe Meyers, entertainment writer
A few years back, not long after I moved to Fairfield County, I was in the market and saw a woman I thought looked like Eartha Kitt. She saw me looking – a little too long to be polite – and said hello and flashed that unmistakeable smile. In that moment, and just for an instant, she changed from a nice little grandmotherly figure into Ms. Kitt. I’m not much of a stargazer, but it was an extremely cool moment