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Eartha
Kitt was born of mixed racial heritage and disowned
by the age of five. At 16
she was accepted into the Katherine Dunham School of Dance and toured
internationally with their dance troup. Singing and dancing in a
Paris nightclub, she caught the eye of Orson Welles, who called her
"the most exciting woman in the world" and cast her as Helen
of Troy in his Paris staging of Dr. Faust (1950). But
she really burst upon the scene in Leonard Sillman's New Faces of
1952 (alongside such soon-to-be Divas as Alice
Ghostley, Carol
Lawerence, and Paul Lynde). This 'Sex Kitten' next lived
up to her name in the flop Shinbone Alley (1957), playing
mehitabel the cat to Eddie Bracken's archie the cockroach. (A
sight-gag featuring Kitt rolled up in a ball before a giant fireplace--
sipping milk through a straw from out of a saucer-- had the
audience rolling in the aisles.) She triumphed as
Shaleem-La-Lume in Timbuktu! (1978), Geoffrey Holder's
all-black staging of the operetta Kismet, and after a 22-year
hiatus from the New York Stage, Kitt triumphantly returned as Delores
Montoya in Michael John LaChiusa's The Wild Party (2000), and
her performance earned her a Tony Award nomination. (Rumor has
it that co-star Mandy Patinkin constantly berated Kitt backstage
throughout the run, while she consistently received the biggest
ovations every night.) She has appeared as the Wicked Witch
of the West in a national tour of The Wizard of Oz and
as the Fairy Godmother in Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella
(both on tour and at New York City Opera) and in London, Eartha scored
big with her rendition of "I'm Still Here" in the Cameron
Mackintosh production of Sondheim's Follies (1987).
Recently, Ms. Kitt has won acclaim appearing in the workshop of
Kander & Ebb's last musical, Over & Over, and as
Liliane LeFleur in the recent Broadway revival of Nine.
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