Eartha Kitt: Phenomenal woman

by Wanda Sabir

Last Friday afternoon, I had a brief phone conversation between classes with Ms. Eartha Kitt - goddess, woman, artist extraordinaire - and I found her remarks frank and instructive, especially her political views and those on the role of artists. Our talk came to a conclusion all too soon, but not before she shared a few comments on the importance of family and friends, the writing life and why stage is her favorite canvas.

In her 79th year now, the artist known for her numerous roles on Broadway and television - most notably the "Batman" series in the '60s - is also known to fans who attend her annual New Year's Eve show in New York at Café Carlyle. This is a wonderful opportunity to see Kitt's famed cabaret show in an intimate setting, quite a different venue from the big Masonic Center - know for its bad acoustics - on Nob Hill, 1111 California St., in San Francisco, where she performs this Saturday, March 18 at 8 p.m. Since Kitt's visit is such a rare treat, I'll be optimistic and say the sound will be great, so get your tickets early, preferably on the first floor and prepare to enjoy. Visit www.sfjazz.org or call (800) 225-2277.

Eartha Kitt's recent autobiography published six years ago, "Rejuvenate: It's Never Too Late," offers practical advice on how to enjoy one's life and grow older with grace and style. The nine chapters have space for reflection and assignments; however, what makes the compact book such a joy are the anecdotes Kitt sprinkles liberally throughout the text - a quality I enjoyed most about speaking to her also.

Wanda Sabir: Your prose is so poetic, so beautifully written. How do you remember all the great details you share?

Eartha Kitt: "How did I remember them?"

WS: Yes, did you keep a notebook or something?

EK: She laughs. "No, I just sat down to write and things came to me. I've been writing all my life, not that I've been published all my life. 1954 was the first book, 'Thursday's Child,' but I'm always writing; there is a lot of writing on my desk (which) hasn't been put into place yet. I either didn't have the time or I didn't think that it was ….

"Take for instance a story (about) a girlfriend of mine (who) disappeared in London, whom I never saw again (after she stole checks, sold them to the Mafia ….) She was supposed to meet me in Paris and she never did, just disappeared. That's a story that doesn't have an ending; (this is) the reason why it hasn't been sent to a publisher.

"There are things like that - stories on cats I've had all my life. I don't have them now. My son-in-law is allergic to them. Things like that. I just sit down and start writing, and experiences come back to me, the way I feel about life in general. It's a wonderful journey, a wonderful experience to enjoy life, and I don't think many people are enjoying their life as I think they should in general."

"We depend too much on material things; we want too much, we never - not that we 'never' - I'm exaggerating of course…. We don't think in terms of enough being enough. Very few people think that way. I always thought in terms of 'I want to be comfortable.' I don't want to be a multi-millionairess. I just want to have enough money in the bank through my own efforts to be ahead of paying the bills situation. I don't want to worry about it.

"If I didn't care about doing things for myself, having my self-value, I would have married (one of the) very rich (men) who've been in my life so many times, and lived on whatever it is these men would have given me. But I never believed or wanted to be owned by anybody. I have a free spirit and I want to be free myself. My life is free.

"I have no burdens so to speak …. I think through those. Even the burdens were not, when I think back on them, were not that much of burden because it made me think (about) what I could do to get out of it, get it off my back, rather than going crazy depending on someone else to get me out of it."

WS: When I was reading the introductory chapter of "Rejuvenate," and you wrote about being given away, being an orphan and coming to New York to live with an aunt, and your career launched professionally at 20, I thought about the terms "choice," "heredity" and "destiny" and how you actually shaped your path. Can you talk about having that kind or control, or do you think you have that kind of control over your life?

EK: "I think I have control as long as I'm not depending on someone else to guide me. (When) you get off your own path, you realize that it is not where you want to go, not what you feel comfortable at doing, not where (you) want to be, so you have to find your way back to your path. And when you feel comfortable there, you should stay there.

"I know there are little paths that lead off … and you have to get back on it. You have to have the experience realizing that taking a chance can be a wonderful experience. With me going around the world on one ticket all by myself, not realizing I could get into a lot of trouble (she laughs again), I took my chances.

"I wanted to have world knowledge. I wanted to have that kind of cognizance of what was on the other side. I kept going, but I always ended up back home because I never wanted to be a displaced citizen, a displaced person in somebody else's country, trade my country's problem for somebody else's problem.

"I happen to like this country. Whatever problems we have in the United States of America we can always eradicate. We can get rid of it. We change our president, but you can't change a dictator or a monarch."

WS: It's kind of hard - we've had Bush for two terms now. He can't run again; however ….

EK: "That's only two terms, that's eight years and you've seen what someone does in eight years. … It's one party against another party. They are always so busy fighting each other that nothing ever gets done. At least Bush did something. You might not like what he did or is doing or not (doing); the point (is) we can change things in our own country."

WS: Okay. I'll hold onto that thought (I comment as we both laugh). Can you speak about art and politics and the important role of the artist in the healing of the world, the healing of this nation? Artists have a huge impact on society, and you have had a huge impact on society here and elsewhere. Can you talk about this and the responsibility of artists?

EK: "The responsibility of the artist? The responsibility of the artist is to do your work as best you can and hope the audience gets whatever message you are sending. Some of us are out there just playing a game for money and not saying anything. I have always wanted to not preach, but there is always a message in my act: don't worry about getting old; there is nothing you can do about it, so you might as well enjoy it.

"And don't complain about everything. One of the most horrendous things about us as Americans, in general, that is we complain about just about everything, and all of this negativism is surrounding our 'ism' of power, making it easy for the enemy to look at us and say, 'Those Americans are crazy, they don't even like themselves.'

"We should always be thinking positive thoughts in general to take care of that which we can take care of and to not worry about those things we can't take care of, that we can't do anything about. There is always something positive we can do to nudge things into a more positive direction. But as long as we're negative about everything, believe me, the news - we see enough negativity on the news, without our getting up in arms among ourselves, shouting down the country, shouting down the president. What good is that doing?

"It makes the enemy look at us and say, 'Look at them. They do not even like their own country. They don't even like themselves.'

"It weakens us even more than we have been weakened by whatever actions the government has taken. We're helping whatever it is we are complaining about; we're helping that complaint get stronger in its weakness than we are at making it stronger in a positive way.

"As artists, we should do the best we can and hope for the best. If someone asks me a question like you, I would give you my opinion. I don't believe in getting up on a soapbox against my government or against the president or against …. When I was against Vietnam, I was invited to the White House, and they sat me down at a luncheon with about 49 other women and they asked me asked questions and I gave them my opinion."

Needless-to-say, Kitt's response to the query about the war was met with surprise and disdain, ostracizing her from the government and endearing her to the public for her vocal stand for justice.

EK: "I always speak the truth, even to the newspapers, but I'm not going to shout down my government or my president 'cause we are defeating out own purposes in many ways."

WS: How is that?

EK: Her voice gets stronger and perhaps exasperated. "I just told you, we are helping the enemy. If we want to have some complaint, why not go talk to, what is it, our congressmen - one of these people who represent us. If we complain to them enough, personally, through phone calls and letters and what not, I think we'll get much further.

"We can alienate a president to such an extent by shouting out loud, getting on a soapbox, you defeat your purpose with him or her because (the leader could) and most often responds: 'I'm not going to go in the direction they want me to go in; I am going to go in the direction I want to go - like Johnson, who said, 'I'll not be the first president to lose a war.'

"So the more we shouted against the Vietnam War, the longer he wanted it to go on and he did keep it going. There are ways of doing things without getting on a soapbox and shouting out loud and telling the enemy we don't like ourselves."

WS: You have to be strategic and smart.

EK: "Yeah. There is always a way of being diplomatic about everything to get whatever it is you want to get down done. Look at Martin Luther King; he didn't shout. He was very silent. Mahatma Gandhi, he didn't shout and get a stick and start beating people over the head. All he did was go sit down to defy that which was wrong. Gandhi did the same thing."

WS: I hadn't thought about their strategy and our current situation. I just know that the shouting is not working at all.

EK: "It's because you're in a hurry. Everything takes time. You're trying to knock down a wall too quickly. It takes time before these walls can be knocked down, but as long as you're nudging at it your way, like we artists are nudging at it in our way, we have no race, creed, color as far as I'm concerned.

"We're artists. We belong to everyone, and we can communicate with everyone - such as in my shows; three, four, five, six different languages are spoken. That's why in my audiences three or five different nationalities that come can see my shows. The other night in Washington, I noticed that there were a lot of Japanese in the audience, so I started to sing in Japanese. Nothing in the world made those people happier.

"I've had occasions where I've been in nightclubs and someone was dancing with me, say an Englishman, who in this case happened to be Churchill. (I was in London.) Just before I went on stage I had to pass that table going on stage, big businessmen from America and Great Britain. Mr. Meadows, who was the owner of the club, was also at this table, and as I passed I heard someone say, 'Oh isn't that a beautiful woman? What nationality is she?' The American replied, 'Oh, she's just a nigger.'

"So now I go on stage and sing my songs as best I could because I'm so hurt. When I come off stage, Mr. Meadows says, 'They want to meet you at this table.'

"So I go and sit at the table and then they want to dance with me, and now the American and the (Brit) were dancing with me. The American said, 'I wouldn't have been able to dance with you in the United States, but you're different.

"Those words might have been insulting, but to me they weren't because as long as he thought that this brown-skinned woman was different, and I'm an American, maybe he would think another brown-skinned woman is different and want to dance with her and eventually he would realize, what's the point of us hating each other? It might not be a big thing insofar as getting things done … softly, softly, softly. It's like the tortoise and the hare. Who got there first?"

WS: Slow but steady.

EK: "Right, and we should go without hate, without these negative feelings. You know, Nat King Cole used to say - because people complained about his not getting up and being a spokesman for the civil rights - he said, 'In due time, everything will come around.'

"He sang his songs, and we recognize him as one of the greatest artists in the business who happened to be a Black man, but who gives a damn? When we hear his voice, we hear the artist, the artist expressing himself the way that we love that we feel. So we forget about what color it is; we don't even think about it."

WS: You perform in so many different genres, and I hadn't thought about it, but you are also a writer. Do you have a particular favorite genre? Do you enjoy singing more than dancing, acting?

EK: "Acting. You can have the greatest voice in the world, but if you're not a good interpreter, what point is it? The best for me is acting, because I love the songs that I choose, but it's getting more and more difficult for me to find (songs in a) particular style now that I'm almost 80 years old. … I don't believe in preaching; I believe in just telling you this is the way I feel about things.

"How old are you, Wanda?"

WS: I had to think a moment, then answered. The pause was cause for laughter for both of us.

EK: "Don't worry about a number after all. I don't know. I just found a birth certificate a few years ago. I was going all these years thinking I was Aquarian born in 1926, because I didn't have a birth certificate. Then I asked Benedict College students to look up Eartha Kitt, because I was doing a benefit for the (Columbia, South Carolina college. Kitt was born on a plantation in South Carolina.) They did, and they found a birth certificate stating I was born in 1927, Jan. 17, instead of 1926 (as) my aunt told me.

"I went to a doctor when I was coming back from Australia. I was in agony; everything ached. I went to the doctor, and he said, 'What do you do? Give me your daily routine.'

"I get up in the morning and I go down to the beach and I run three or four miles in the sand. I come back and I go across the pool for how many laps I can. I take a steam bath, and I'm ready for the world.

"He said, 'You're 40-some odd years old. You shouldn't be running in the sand as heavily as you do.'

"I was doing three-four miles a day. I wasn't feeling badly when I went into the office. I was just tired from the travel, and he wanted to stop me from doing the things I was doing. And I stopped for a while, and I was in more pain. When I went back to doing my own routine - running in the sand and doing my own physical calisthenics for a couple of hours a day - I was in fine shape.

"Doctors don't always know what they are talking about. Not that I don't believe in doctors - they are there for a purpose - but I don't believe in taking a pill when I think something is wrong with me unless it is something I have to have to have to do. And I don't believe in getting rid of a state of mind if you happen to be depressed; we all get depressed from time to time. You work it off instead of taking a pill, to say when I wake up, I'm going to feel better." (She laughed.)

WS: In "Rejuvenate," you spoke of how when you were disappointed over not getting a role you'd hoped for, you'd let yourself feel the emotion, in this case sadness. I agree it's really important to be in the moment. "Yes!" Miss Kitt responds as I continue.

If you act like such a feeling doesn't exist, it stays there and you have all the problems that develop when you push emotions down and don't address them.

EK: "Yes! You have to work it out both intellectually and physically."

WS: I used wash my car when I was upset or ride my bike for a few miles.

EK: "You see, things like that are wonderful. You have to stop thinking and asking advice: What do I do now? You know what you want to do. You know where you want to go. You can talk it out with friends, but you still know what you want to do about whatever situation you're in.

"I always say, 'Time cannot be rushed. In due time, like Nat King Cole said, 'Everything comes out the way it should.' It may take a little longer than you would like it to. We're all in a rush - where? What are you in a hurry for? Where are you going? Faster to your coffin?

"We don't realize that the faster we go, the less communication we really have with one another too. We don't stop and talk to one another anymore. We talk at each other."

WS: And we leave messages, I add with a laugh Ms. Kitt joins me in - lots of messages.

EK: "Right. Talk to my email."

WS: Or listen to my voice mail.

EK: "I can understand these things for business, but when you really want to communicate with your friends - I don't type letters to my friends, no matter how difficult it is for me. Sometimes it's difficult for me to write when the arthritis is acting up, (yet) I still sit down and do the longhand writing. It's in the handwriting I can see the picture forming as to what my thoughts are and how I feel about that person. The form, handwriting, is old fashioned, but I love it. And like my song goes, 'I'm just an old-fashioned girl with an old fashioned mind, not sophisticated. I'm the sweet and simple kind.'

"I love being old fashioned. I'm not interested in showing off. I'm not interested in showing off every time I walk out my door. That also makes me very comfortable about living out here with the birds and the bees and my little Mootsey, my dog, a miniature poodle, watching the river.

"I can come out here and look at the world, and for some reason or other, particularly when I see the water flowing - I never buy a house unless there is some water on it. This one I'm very lucky to have. The river is flowing from the north to the south, and it makes me feel very comfortable. It's therapeutic. It feels as though I'm being cleansed.

"Not only that, when the spring comes, the girls are going to come and plant my garden so I can just go out there and sit at a table with four chairs hoping that someone will come and say, 'Can I join you for breakfast?' have a cup of coffee and look around the world and see how lucky I am to have come as an orphan, to have never depended on anyone to pay my bills."

Visit http://www.earthakittfanclub.com/sheet_music/oldfashionedgirl_music.htm.

WS: Where do you live?

EK: "I live Western Connecticut. The people here are sane. Lots of people here go walking. We have woods and paths that we can walk whenever we want to, and it's absolutely marvelous."

"So Wanda, you say you're 47, so you're still in a hurry to go where?"

WS: I'm not exactly certain, yet I know I'd like to have enough so I don't have to work so hard so I can do more of what I want to do.

EK: "What do you think you want to do?"

WS: I know what I want to do: That is write, have time to write and think.

EK: "That is one of the things I love to do, is write. As I told you before, I don't always send out my writing to publishers, because I don't write 'you tell it all' books. As you can see, my books are thinking (books); they make you think about what I am saying, so you find out for yourself how you feel about things. I don't have to tell people how many men I've had in my life, even though (she laughs) it would probably be a best-seller, friends tell me, 'If only Kitt would tell ….'

"I make enough as it is, and I'm very happy with what I do. I don't have to be a sensationalist. I am sensational enough on stage."

WS: Do you have a fifth book planned in this series of books about your life?

EK: "I'm not thinking about that right now. I'm very busy with doing concerts. Thank God, now that I'm almost 80, I'm still in demand. That makes me very happy. Of course, now that I get rejected because they want younger people to play certain roles - what else - but they want younger people in general.

"I have to be seen constantly, because people like casting directors say, 'Oh, she's 80 years old or she's 79 or she's 75. And whatever age past 45, you're considered old, unless they see you and realize she may be that age, but she sure as hell has as much energy as any 45- or 35-year-old person just about. I can understand insurance-wise that they would want a younger person."

"It hurts, though," Kitt continues. "First, it hurts because you're rejected because of your color - you're not pretty enough. You're rejected because you're older. Whatever the reason is they can find to reject you, there is a rejection every step of the way (she laughs). But if you take these rejections seriously to the point you start hating, that's not going to help anything.

"You have to be positive as to the reasons and find out why. I was just rejected from a show called 'The Drowsy Shop Girl.' They thought I'd be great for it, and then the director came back and said, 'We're getting a younger person.' First, I'm wondering why I didn't get the part, and then when I ask why didn't I get the part, I'm given the answer. Then I understand. Whatever hurt feeling I had is gone."

WS: Because it wasn't for you, and something out there is for you?

EK: "Yes, now there are two shows I'm up for, and maybe I'll get one of them. Maybe fate doesn't want me to have these things right now because it would be a lot of work - eight shows a day. Like I just finished eight shows in Washington, two shows a night, and even though I'm 79, and it didn't affect me to the point I had to cancel because I was too tired."

WS: But you love what you do, so in a sense it's not work.

EK: "Right, it's not work. I love what I do. I can't always find the songs I'd like to sing or new songs. Even the old songs are new every time I walk out onto the stage. They never sound the same: the interpretation is different, the innuendo is different, the audience is different - and I'm different. Nothing is ever the same."

WS: I definitely feel in your writing the love you have for your daughter, Kitt, and your grandchildren and how important they are to you. Could you talk for a moment about the importance being a mother and a grandmother is to you?

EK: "It's very important. Kitt is a friend. I'm not much of a socializer, because I've been alone most of my life and I'm very comfortable being alone. And when I go out with people I realize are friends these days … (the ones I used to take care of and stopped when I realized I was) what do you call that: enabling them not to do much for themselves?"

WS: Facilitating their co-dependence?

EK; "Right. When I stopped it, they were the ones who started to give it to me in my derriere and call me names and say rude stuff, but the friends who are not there for anything except to be my friends are still there.

"To have someone who really - a blood relation like Kitt - is, is the most beautiful feeling in the world because it is carrying me on to another generation. And the values I have put into her she's now putting into her children, and she's a damn good mother. Of course, I'm a grandma, but I'm not fawning over the children. I'm six minutes away by car and I can walk to their house - they are only four or six miles from here - so when I want or need to get together for dinner or during summer times when we're sharing whatever it is we have to share, it's a beautiful feeling having a blood relation but not to be on top of all the time.

"Both children are absolutely marvelous."

WS: With my children I was hoping I was doing a good job, but until they were grown they were a 'work in progress.'

EK: "The values you put in have now paid off."

WS: Right. I am really happy that they are such lovely women and they still like me. We both laugh.

EK: "My daughter and I laugh all the time because she is a very funny woman - great sense of humor - which also makes me extremely happy, because with my sense of humor she has picked up on and likes one-liners. She really is funny."

WS: Thank you so much for this really wonderful conversation. I look forward to meeting you. And even if we aren't able to honor you as a community with a reception because of your tight schedule, we really love you here and appreciate all of the work you've done over the years here and hope you continue as long as you'd like to.

Email Wanda at wsab1@aol.com.