Eartha Kitt was a pioneering legend of music, stage and screen. The icon influenced generations of singers and performers, from Diana Ross and the Supremes to Madonna. The daughter of a black Cherokee sharecropper mother and a white father, in South Carolina, Eartha Kitt learned to pick cotton as a child. She was sent to New York City at a young age to live with an aunt. She began her career in the 1940s as a dancer and became, along with Lena Horne, one of the first African-American female sex symbols.

She conquered every entertainment media, from dance to cabaret to theater to television and film. Even her portrayal of Catwoman in the 1960s TV series “Batman” was groundbreaking, as recurring roles for African-American actresses in 1960s TV were rare. In later years, her career showed no signs of slowing down; she performed cabaret as recently as 2007 when she was eighty.

Ms. Kitt’s career-long persona, that of the seen-it-all sybarite, was set when she performed in Paris cabarets in her early 20s, singing songs that became her signatures, like “C’est Si Bon” and “Love for Sale.”

Eartha Kitt in 1960

Returning to New York, she was cast on Broadway in “New Faces of 1952” and added another jewel to her vocal crown, “Monotonous” (“Traffic has been known to stop for me/Prices even rise and drop for me/Harry S. Truman plays bop for me/Monotonous, monotone-ous”). Brooks Atkinson wrote in The New York Times in May 1952, “Eartha Kitt not only looks incendiary, but she can make a song burst into flame.

Eartha Kitt with Nat King Cole in “St. Louis Blues” (1958)

Shortly after that run, Ms. Kitt had her first best-selling albums and recorded her biggest hit, “Santa Baby,” whose precise, come-hither diction and vaguely foreign inflections (Ms. Kitt, a native of South Carolina, spoke four languages and sang in seven) proved that a vocal sizzle could be just as powerful as a bonfire. Though her record sales fell after the rise of rhythm and blues and rock ’n’ roll in the mid- and late ’50s, her singing style would later be the template for other singers with pillow-talky voices like Diana Ross (who has said she patterned her Supremes sound and look largely after Ms. Kitt), Janet Jackson and Madonna (who recorded a cover version of “Santa Baby” in 1987).

Eartha Kitt as Catwoman in the 1960s TV series Batman

Ms. Kitt would later call herself “the original material girl,” a reference not only to her stage creation and to Madonna but also to her string of romances with rich or famous men, including Orson Welles, the cosmetics magnate Charles Revson and the banking heir John Barry Ryan 3rd. She was married to her one husband, Bill McDonald, a real-estate developer, from 1960 to 1965; their daughter, Kitt Shapiro, survives her, as do two grandchildren. [...]

Eartha Kitt in 2006

In 1968 she was invited to a White House luncheon and was asked by Lady Bird Johnson about the Vietnam War. She replied: “You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed. No wonder the kids rebel and take pot.” The remark reportedly caused Mrs. Johnson to burst into tears and led to a derailment in Ms. Kitt’s career.

As bookings dried up, she was exiled in Europe for almost a decade. But President Jimmy Carter invited her back to the White House in 1978, and that year she earned her first Tony nomination for her work in “Timbuktu!,” an all-black remake of “Kismet.”

Source and image source: New York Times: Eartha Kitt, a Seducer of Audiences, Dies at 81 Additional image sources: UPI and Rap-Up.com

Top photo: Eartha Kitt in 1960 on British television
See also: Washington Post, Reuters (via BoingBoing.net

Eartha Kitt – Santa Baby



YouTube Link

Eartha Kitt – I Want To Be Evil (Live Kaskad 1962)



YouTube Link

Eartha Kitt – C’est Si Bon (Live Kaskad 1962)



YouTube Link

Eartha Kitt Today Show Interview and performance of a song from her show Mimi Le Duck.



YouTube Link

Legendary Eartha Kitt (1927-2008) Video, Photo Tribute pics pictures

As the New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood puts it, in a review of Broadway play “Thurgood” a one-man play staring celebrated actor Laurence Fishburne as the legendary Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, “It’s a safe bet that “Thurgood” is the only play on Broadway at which the announcement of a famous legal verdict is greeted by a burst of heartfelt applause.”

It’s exciting to see an excellent one-person show with an actor who is ideally suited for the role. One-person plays are sadly much too rare. Finding an outstanding drama and exactly the right actor is even more rare. Hal Holbrook’s “Mark Twain Tonight” and Sam Waterston’s “Abe Lincoln in Illinois” and Lonette McKee as Billie Holiday in “‘Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill’‘ come to mind. Now we can add Laurence Fishburne to that roster. The New York Times reviewer continues:

Does that make it sound less than thrilling? Well, yes, this solo show starring Laurence Fishburne as the venerated Thurgood Marshall is a no-frills documentary in the first person, essentially an opportunity to watch a movie star deliver a history lecture. But since Mr. Fishburne is an effortlessly compelling actor, and the history in question is charged with a moral urgency that still resonates today, “Thurgood,” which opened Wednesday night at the Booth Theater, is surprisingly absorbing, at times even stirring.

For audiences nostalgic for the progressive era in American history in which Marshall played a crucial role, the show may actually feel like a sweet escape to happier times, every bit as cheering (and a whole lot more edifying) than the giddiest of Broadway musicals. At the end of the play Marshall recites from a Langston Hughes poem opening with the following line: “Oh, let America be America again.” If those words elicit either a sorrowful sigh or a stirring of fierce hope in your heart, you may find this superficially dry evening of theater as restorative as a long soak in a bubble bath.

Source: Thurgood Review – New York Times

Photo credit: New York Times, New York Newsday

In a recent interview, Laurence Fishburne discussed “Thurgood”

See also:

• Laurence Fishburne is ‘Thurgood’ on Broadway Spring 2008
• Next on His Docket: A Supreme Challenge
• Fishburne Does Thurgood Justice
• Variety: Thurgood
• Laurence Fishburne Celebrates Thurgood Marshall on Stage
• Portraying Thurgood Marshall: Tonys bait for Fishburne?

Tricia Walsh-Smith, actress and playwright, gave us a new phrase and a new phenomena; the “YouTube divorce.”

Well, somehow we did not think she would be a one-hit wonder.

As she divorces her multimillionaire husband, Philip Smith, president of the Shubert Organization which owns seventeen Broadway theaters, she continues to turn a legal proceeding into a viral video phenomena with her second video, “YouTube Superstar Tricia Walsh-Smith”… “a response to the responses.”

“How dare you! I am speaking my truth!” she says, and quite a bit more….

Tricia Walsh-Smith and her YouTube divorce saga were recently featured on ABC’s Good Morning America.

While some believe Walsh-Smith’s video was a stunt designed to put pressure on her husband during their divorce proceedings, the actress said that sentiment is untrue.

“I don’t think lawyers and eviction papers — being thrown out with debt is a stunt,” said Walsh-Smith, who began to cry as she described the situation with her husband. “That’s kind of a really stupid thing for anybody to think I’d do this as a stunt. It was either me or him.”

Walsh-Smith said she needed to make sure people knew she needed help.

“What was I going to do? Go live in the park?”

She did admit the video and its public showing was theatrical.

“I knew that I had to get attention,” she said. “This was my survival. And I know that to get attention you are sensational and funny. I wasn’t mean and I edited it. I got the woman with the camera; I edited and I was careful.”

Source: Mr. & Mrs. Smith’s Divorce Goes to ‘YouTube’

Will playwright and actress Tricia Walsh-Smith’s tirade against her multi-millionaire husband, Philip Smith, president of the Schubert Organization which owns most of Broadway’s theaters, spawn a new category of YouTube Awards?

Some prominent New York divorce lawyers couldn’t think of another case where a spouse _ in this instance, the wife of a major Broadway theater operator _ had taken to YouTube to spill the secrets of a marriage in an apparent effort to gain leverage and humiliate the other side.

“This is absolutely a new step, and I think it’s scary,” said Bonnie Rabin, a divorce lawyer who has handled high-profile cases. “People used to worry about getting on Page Six (the gossip page of the New York Post). But this? It brings the concept of humiliation to a whole new level.”

In a tearful and furious YouTube video with close to 150,000 hits to date, former actress and playwright (”Bonkers”) Tricia Walsh-Smith lashes out against her husband, Philip Smith, president of the Shubert Organization, the largest theater owner on Broadway.

She goes through their wedding album on camera, describing family members as “bad” or “evil” or “nasty,” and talks about how her husband is allegedly trying to evict her from their luxury apartment. She also makes embarrassing claims regarding their intimate life, and then calls his office on camera to repeat those claims to a stunned assistant.

Famed divorce attorney Raoul Felder, called for comment on the video, termed the whole thing “funny, but there’s also sadness. This is a victim who is holding her head up. I think she comes off well.”

Then again, Felder allowed that he is now representing Walsh-Smith _ though he wasn’t when she made the YouTube video.

As for Smith, his office said he had no comment and his lawyers said they didn’t, either _ “other than that we’re kind of appalled.” (More.)

Trica Walsh-Smith performing in her play, “Addictions” (2006)

Read more.

• Tricia Walsh-Smith: is revenge now a dish best served online?
• Rich Wife’s YouTube Sex Rant
• Actress Tricia Walsh-Smith in YouTube marriage explosion

Here is Tricia Walsh Smith’s YouTube video which, to date, has received more than 200,000 views and garnered more than 20 video responses.

UPDATE: Tricia Walsh Smith removed the original YouTube divorce video and replaced it with this updated one: “Tricia Walsh-Smith, the ORIGINAL Video plus NEW footage!”

British stage actor Paul Scofield, best known for his Oscar winning portrayal of Sir Thomas More in “A Man for All Seasons” (watch the trailer here), has died.

“Acting,” David Hare once said to me, “is a judgment of character.” That was amply borne out by Paul Scofield, who has just died at the age of 86. Scofield had a moral integrity and quiet authority that shone through everything he did. Even his choice of roles was exemplary: many actors trade fame for money, but I can’t think of a single meretricious piece of work Scofield ever did. But, like all great actors, he also had a rich sense of comedy that would often emerge unexpectedly.

A few years back I had the pleasure of presenting Scofield with a lifetime achievement award on behalf of the Critics’ Circle; and I remember saying at the time that I felt I’d measured out my life in Scofield performances. As an eight-year-old, I’d been taken on my first visit to Stratford to see him play Shakespeare’s Troilus. As a 20-year-old student, I’d been present at the first performance, at the Oxford New, of A Man For All Seasons: I still recall his modesty when pushed into taking a solo curtain-call by his fellow actors.

Paul Scofield and Susannah York in “A Man for All Seasons”

From the AP.

Scofield made few films even after the Oscar for his 1966 portrayal of Tudor statesman Sir Thomas More. He was a stage actor by inclination and by his gifts — a dramatic, craggy face and an unforgettable voice that was likened to a Rolls Royce starting up or the rumbling sound of low organ pipes.

Even his greatest screen role was a follow up to a play — the London stage production of “A Man for All Seasons,” in which he starred for nine months. Scofield also turned in a performance in the 1961 New York production that won him extraordinary reviews and a Tony Award.

“With a kind of weary magnificence, Scofield sinks himself into the part, studiously underplays it, and somehow displays the inner mind of a man destined for sainthood,” Time magazine’s said.

Actor Richard Burton, once regarded as the natural heir to Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud at the summit of British theater, said it was Scofield who deserved that place. “Of the 10 greatest moments in the theater, eight are Scofield’s,” he said.

Scofield was an unusual star — a family man who lived almost his entire life within a few miles of his birthplace in southern England and hurried home after work to his wife and children. He didn’t seek the spotlight, gave interviews sparingly, and at times seemed to need coaxing to venture out, even onto the stage he loved.

But, he insisted in The Sunday Times in 1992, “My reclusiveness is a myth…. Yes, I’ve turned down quite a lot of parts. At my age you need to weed things out, but the idea that I can’t be bothered anymore with acting — that’s quite absurd. Acting is all I can do. An actor: That’s what I am.”

Scofield reportedly had been offered a knighthood, but declined.

“It is just not an aspect of life that I would want,” he once said. “If you want a title, what’s wrong with Mr.?”

Trailer for Fred Zinneman’s 1966 film of “A Man For All Seasons” with Paul Scofield, Wendy Hiller, Susannah York, Orson Welles, Robert Shaw, John Hurt and Leo McKern.



A Man For All Seasons” – Clip “Give The Devil Benefit Of Law”

Although best known for his role as Kinchloe in “Hogan’s Heroes,” actor and director, Ivan Dixon ranks alongside Sidney Poitier as a trailblazer in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Upon learning of Dixon’s death, Poitier issued a statement.

Legendary star Sydney Poitier has paid tribute to veteran actor Ivan Dixon, who has died at the age of 76.
Dixon, who appeared in TV shows including Hogan’s Heroes, died of kidney failure at the Presbyterian Hospital in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Sunday (16Mar08).

Fellow thespian Poitier became friends with Dixon when they worked together on 1958 movie The Defiant Ones and has praised the late star, insisting he was often the better actor.

Poitier says in a statement, “As an actor, you had to be careful. He was quite likely to walk off with the scene.”

From Variety,

Actor, director and producer Ivan Dixon, known for his role as Sgt. Kinchloe on “Hogan’s Heroes,” died in Charlotte, N.C. on March 16 after suffering a hemorrhage. He was 76.Dixon received an Emmy nom for the CBS Playhouse special “The Final War of Olly Winter” and appeared in films including “A Raisin in the Sun, “A Patch of Blue” and “Car Wash.”

His directorial credits include hundreds of episodic television shows such as “The Waltons,” “The Rockford Files,” “Magnum P.I.” and “Heat of the Night.” His theatrical film directing credits include “Trouble Man” and “The Spook Who Sat by the Door.”

Born in New York City, Dixon graduated North Carolina Central U. and studied drama at Western Reserve U., Karamu House in Cleveland, Ohio and the American Theater Wing in New York.

He began his career on Broadway in such plays as “The Cave Dwellers” and “A Raisin in the Sun.” In addition to roles in feature films “Something of Value” and “Nothing But a Man,” he appeared on TV shows such as “Perry Mason,” “The Twilight Zone,” “Outer Limits” and “The Mod Squad.”

He was honored with four NAACP Image Awards, the National Black Theater Award and the Paul Robeson Pioneer Award from the Black American Cinema Society. A member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, Directors Guild of America, Screen Actors Guild of America, and the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame, he served on numerous Directors Guild and Academy committees, boards and councils.

Trailer for “A Raisin in the Sun”

Trailer for “The Spook Who Sat By the Door”



Twilight Zone episode, “I Am the Night, Color Me Black”

It was just a few days ago that Robert Goulet, awaiting a lung transplant, uttered words of triumph and hope: “Hey, let,’s go, give me a new pair of lungs and I, I’ll hit the high notes till I’m 100.” He has died:

Robert Goulet, who marshaled his dark good looks and thundering baritone voice to play a dashing Lancelot in the original “Camelot” in 1960, then went on to a wide-ranging career as a singer and actor, winning a Tony, a Grammy and an Emmy, died today. He was 73.

The singer died in a Los Angeles hospital while awaiting a lung transplant, a Goulet spokesman said in an e-mail, according to the Associated Press.

In September, Mr. Goulet received a diagnosis of interstitial pulmonary fibrosis, a rapidly progressive, potentially fatal condition, his wife, Vera, said in a statement released on Oct. 25 on Mr. Goulet’s website. On Oct. 13, he was transferred from a hospital in Las Vegas, where he lived, to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles to await the transplant.

After the “Camelot” triumph, Mr. Goulet was called the next great matinee idol. Judy Garland described him as a living 8-by-10 glossy. He was swamped with offers to do movies, television shows and nightclub engagements. Few articles failed to mention his bedroom blue eyes, and many female fans tossed him room keys during performances. His hit song from the show, “If Ever I Would Leave You,” remains a romantic standard.

“Something in his voice evokes old times and romance,” Alex Witchel wrote in the New York Times Magazine in 1993. “He makes you remember corsages.”

Still, Mr. Goulet left a sense that he might have even been more than he was. For a suave musical theater performer, he arrived late, just after Elvis and just before the Beatles. In 1961, The New York Daily News Magazine called him “just the man to help stamp out rock ’n’ roll.” But it was an impossible assignment.

Moreover, the public had begun to lose its appetite for over-the-top entertainment deities. “We’re no longer something that’s on the dark side of the moon — unattainable,” Mr. Goulet told The Saturday Evening Post in 1963.

We pay tribute with a video: Robert Goulet and Barbara Cook’s “Salute to the 1962 Broadway Season. (A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Camelot, No Strings & Milk and Honey)