Rivermaya's Coffee Corner

>Eartha Kitt (81), a sultry singer, dancer and actress who rose from South Carolina cotton fields to become an international symbol of elegance and sensuality, has died of colon cancer on Christmas Day, December 25, 2008. Eartha Kitt, a self-proclaimed “sex kitten” famous for her catlike purr, was one of America’s most versatile performers, winning two Emmys and nabbing a third nomination. She also was nominated for several Tonys and two Grammys.

Her career spanned six decades, from her start as a dancer with the famed Katherine Dunham troupe to cabarets and acting and singing on stage, in movies and on television. She persevered through an unhappy childhood as a mixed-race daughter of the South.

Kitt was born Eartha Mae Keith on a cotton plantation in the tiny town of North, South Carolina. She said her mother was of Cherokee and African-American descent and her father of German and Dutch descent. She also claimed she was conceived by rape.

After romances with the cosmetics magnate Charles Revson and banking heir John Barry Ryan III, she was married to John William McDonald, an associate of a real-estate investment company, from June 6, 1960, to 1965.[8] They had one child, a daughter, Kitt (b. 1962, married Charles Lawrence Shapiro).[9] Eartha had two grandchildren, Jason and Rachel Shapiro. Kitt lived in the Merryall section of New Milford, Connecticut for many years as well as Pound Ridge, New York, then in 2002[10] moved to Weston, Connecticut to be near her daughter’s family.

Kitt wrote three autobiographies – Thursday’s Child (1956), Alone with Me (1976), and I’m Still Here: Confessions of a Sex Kitten (1989). Kitt was the spokesperson for MAC Cosmetics Smoke Signals collection in August 2007. She re-recorded “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” for the occasion, was showcased on the MAC website and the song was played at all MAC locations carrying the collection for the month.

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