Born on January 17, 1927as Eartha Mae Kitt, actress/singer Eartha Kitt got her start as a member of the Katherine Dunham Company and made her film debut with them in Casbah (1948). In 1950, Orson Welles gave her her first starring role: as Helen of Troy in his staging of Dr. Faust. She came to Broadway in the musical revue New Faces of 1952 in which she stopped the show on a nightly basis with her sensuous rendition of C'est Si Bon. In 1958, Kitt made her feature film debut opposite Sidney Poitier in The Mark of the Hawk. Throughout the rest of the 1950s and early 1960s, Kitt would work on and off in film, television and on nightclub stages. In the late 1960's television series Batman, she played Catwoman in succession to Julie Newmar. This role would be the role she would best be remembered for, due to her purring drawl.

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