Eartha Kitt and the economy of desire
Martha Ullman West reminded us below in the comment section that Harold Pinter wasn’t the only death of a prominent artist over the holidays. Eartha Kitt departed, too. I imagine her in a heaven populated by Wall Street plutocrats, seducing a healthy portion of their ill-gotten gains out of them, though how the plutocrats got there in the first place, I have no idea — maybe they were just placed there to please Eartha. That’s not an electrical storm in the sky, that’s just Eartha Kitt sizzling.
When Ms. Kitt (to adopt New York Times formality for once, because frankly, it just feels right) was in the fullness of her celebrity-hood, in the ’50s and early ’60s, I didn’t quite get it. I was just too young. So yes, I remember her Catwoman turn on the old TV Batman and occasional turns on the variety shows of the time, to which my parents were addicted — the Dean Martin show maybe? Andy Williams? Or was she too hot for Andy? Probably. Because I followed politics and the Vietnam War, I remember her protest in LBJ’s White House. Her honesty extended beyond her frankness about all things sexual, apparently.
The New York Times obituary by Stephen Holden this morning connected a lot of the dots, or at least suggested what a lot of the dots were — Mae West on one end of her life and Madonna on the other, and then mostly European (or Europe-based) chanteuses, Josephine Baker and Edith Piaf, in the middle. I liked his description of sitting a little too close to the stage one night and falling under Ms. Kitt’s gaze — intense, frightening, captivating.
How much of this was representation, an elaborate and effective role-playing game, and how much was real? I suspect it was mostly enacted, the specifics anyway, though not the edge, the anger, the idea that “you have made me into this and now you will pay” she conveyed between such lines as “Give me a frank account/How is your bank account?”. We all have that edge somewhere, don’t we? We just don’t have Ms. Kitt’s legs or laser-beam eyes (well, I certainly don’t; I wouldn’t want to speak for the appendages of our well-proportioned Art Scatter readers!).
Golddigger. In the West it goes back to commedia dell’arte, yes? The rich old man marries the young fetching woman. And then she ignores him for a string of younger men, or if we’re feeling sentimental, for one true love. In short, he doesn’t get what he paid for. The Golddigger herself, we are mixed about, right? We don’t like the, um, naked desire, on the one hand, or the obscene gesture tossed at the Romantic Ideal of Love. On the other hand, though, we like the self-reliance, the moxie, the determination, maybe even admire the sheer cold-bloodedness of the exchange. During the ’50s, Marilyn Monroe made the Golddigger cute; Jane Russell reminded us that it wasn’t so easy.
The male version is the gigolo, who has turned into the pimp, I suppose, in these times, in the same way that entrepreneurial golddiggers turn into madams. This is what is below the tightrope that Eartha Kitt walked or rather vamped on until she died on Christmas day. She never fell off.
December 27th, 2008 at 11:26 am
As my wife pointed out immediately on learning of Eartha’s death, how appropriate that she died on Christmas Day. We’ll always remember her for her sublime delivery of “Santa Baby,” one that many have tried and all have failed to match. Harold Pinter dying the day BEFORE Christmas seems appropriate, too. This was not a man who believed in the great ho-ho-ho of life, and perhaps he decided to check out before having to fasce one more day of forced good will to men (although he seemed keenly disappointed by the lack of peace on earth).
December 27th, 2008 at 11:33 am
That sounds about right. It’s hard to imagine Pinter involved in much elfen magic around Xmas. And I expect Eartha Kitt did QUITE well around Christmastime…
December 27th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
I too thought of how appropriate it was that Ms. Kitt (as opposed to Miss Kitty on Gunsmoke, but let’s not go there) made her departure on Christmas Day. As for her being surrounded by plutocrats in heaven–don’t you think she might find heaven a bit of a bore, plutocrats or not? Anyway, if I’m the person who got all this going, I’m damned glad I did! Santa Baby, indeed!
December 27th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
One more thing: I just read Hoden’s elegant obit, but he omitted one important detail–Ms. Kitt danced briefly with Katherine Dunham and there she learned I’m pretty sure to use her body as cats do–with unconsciously sensuous elegance. I am now going downstairs to play my 45 of Santa Baby!
December 27th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Re: Miss Dunham. Eartha was dancing with her in Paris in about 1954 when my gigolo hero Porfirio Rubirosa turned his attention from the teacher to the pupil and began ‘dating’ Eartha. At the same time, Orson Welles was courting her. Pretty heady stuff.
Also dead on Christmas: Charlie Chaplin, Dean Martin.
December 27th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
Shawn wrote the book on Rubirosa. I like the idea of Porfirio and Orson courting or “dating” Eartha Kitt. It says something about her “taste” in men and just how large the menu might have been…
December 27th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
It’s often said that Beckett died on Christmas, but much as he would have liked the chance to editorialize till the end, he actually checked on on December 22. In 1989, that is. Which makes this comment totally irrelevant.
December 27th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
Come now, Mr Mead… is Mr. Beckett ever truly irrelevant? We must ask Shawn and Martha if Ms. Kitt and Mr. Beckett ever danced together or “dated”… and if they had, how might that have changed world literature?
December 27th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
Don’t know about Eartha and Beckett, but I do know that Orson Welles cast her in a play and called her the sexiest woman alive or some such. People really ought not to die on holidays, but they do insist. Edith Piaf and Jean Cocteau died on the 4th of July I believe, the same year. I think it was 1964. And no, I am not confusing them with Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, thanks very much.
December 28th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
Thanks so much for the link to the NYT article. I was glad to see Madonna’s cover of “Santa Baby” mentioned, since for me it captures the difference between contemporary ‘golddiggers’ and women of Kitt’s generation. Madonna is nothing if she is not ironic, embodying and satirizing the role simultaneously. Kitt was deadly serious, and so much more disturbing.
December 28th, 2008 at 10:21 pm
Yes. I could almost see Holden trembling in his boots. I’ve always thought that Madonna’s shtick was a form of performance art — that’s the world she came of age in, at least. At some point, though, personality and performance have a way of merging, and so I wonder how ironic at this point Madonna really is. I remember her first visit to Portland in the old Paramount in the early ’80s. Tickets were cheap — a special promotional deal with a radio station — and after her encore she said that the next time she came back, it was going to cost a lot more to see her. Somehow she pulled it off: she didn’t offend that audience and she became a much bigger star. I don’t know enough about Eartha Kitt to add much — was she a cat torturing mice? Or did she play a cat torturing mice?
December 31st, 2008 at 11:59 am
Two more Christmas Day deaths (had to look these up): W. C. Fields, James Brown, Tristan Tzara and Karel Capek: awesome.
December 31st, 2008 at 11:59 am
(obviously that’s more than two: overcome w/awesomeness)
December 31st, 2008 at 1:50 pm
Have yourself a Surreal Little Christmas… never thought of Christmas as an auspicious day to die, but there you go! Thanks for research…