"I remit myself to your......muscular... custody, Batman...."
news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081225/ap_en_ce/obit_eartha_kitt
I met Eartha Kitt at a Batman convention in Harrisburg, PA. back in 1998, when I was still just twenty-seven years old and working the convention circuit across Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. I was selling comicbook merchandise (pens, posters, fanmags, masks etc...) for a measly 6% commission percentage plus minimum wage. I was at a Hyatt hotel somewhere near the airport (the one with the big parking lot shaped like the letter "W") and I saw Ms. Kitt walking into the hotel with a man who looked like her bodyguard/escort.
Later on, during the convention, I was able to have my friend cover for me at the table and I went out to snap pictures and look at memoribilia. I paid fifteen dollars for an autographed picture of Ms. Kitt dressed as Catwoman, and she ended up talking to me for about five or ten minutes. Mind you, I never cared much for Julie Newmar (the original) as Catwoman. I always thought her acting was shit, and she didn't do a very convincing Catwoman. Also, at conventions, Julie would not talk much to fans, as she preferred to stay in her little clique and count out the autograph signing money afterwards. Eartha was always a big fan of making polite conversation for all her fans, both before and after the show. She'd ask them interesting questions like where their accent was from, or what was it everybody was doing after the convention. She LOVED little children and would only do her trademark 'purr' for the little kids who would giggle when she did it.
She said something very sincere to me when I told her that I was just an aspiring writer who loved superheroes and wanted to eventually write for comics some day. She told me that in this world, the luckiest people are the ones who get to do what it is they love in life and get a paycheck out of it as well. "If you can do THAT," she told me, "...then you've already succeeded."
Later on, I found out about her infamous 'moment' and how Lady Bird Johnson called secret service to escort Eartha out of the White House for telling fifty women at a power luncheon that "You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed. They rebel in the street. They don't want to go to college because they're going to be snatched off from their families to be shot dead in Vietnam." She was blacklisted for four years, until Lyndon Johnson was out of office. She couldn't get a singing or acting contract with ANY stage or production company, not even a small one. To make ends meet she sang in Amsterdam, in various coffee bars and cozy nightclubs. She learned to sing in Finnish and drew record crowds there with her renditions of American classics.
Eartha Kitt died today, and I am sad. When Betty Page died I did not really feel anything because for me she was not a part of my life, so my personal connection was absent. I met Eartha Kitt, so for me this comes as a hard blow. She seemed like a very vibrant lady, and a very classy one at that. I still have her autographed picture, menacing ol' cheesy Adam West as he's strapped down to a conveyer belt . For someone like me, who has now made (for good or worse) a career out of schlock, it's more of a loss when we lose someone who formed and shaped us when we were little kids, like Eartha did. I think those are the people we'll miss the most when they're gone. The inspirationalists.
I met Eartha Kitt at a Batman convention in Harrisburg, PA. back in 1998, when I was still just twenty-seven years old and working the convention circuit across Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. I was selling comicbook merchandise (pens, posters, fanmags, masks etc...) for a measly 6% commission percentage plus minimum wage. I was at a Hyatt hotel somewhere near the airport (the one with the big parking lot shaped like the letter "W") and I saw Ms. Kitt walking into the hotel with a man who looked like her bodyguard/escort.
Later on, during the convention, I was able to have my friend cover for me at the table and I went out to snap pictures and look at memoribilia. I paid fifteen dollars for an autographed picture of Ms. Kitt dressed as Catwoman, and she ended up talking to me for about five or ten minutes. Mind you, I never cared much for Julie Newmar (the original) as Catwoman. I always thought her acting was shit, and she didn't do a very convincing Catwoman. Also, at conventions, Julie would not talk much to fans, as she preferred to stay in her little clique and count out the autograph signing money afterwards. Eartha was always a big fan of making polite conversation for all her fans, both before and after the show. She'd ask them interesting questions like where their accent was from, or what was it everybody was doing after the convention. She LOVED little children and would only do her trademark 'purr' for the little kids who would giggle when she did it.
She said something very sincere to me when I told her that I was just an aspiring writer who loved superheroes and wanted to eventually write for comics some day. She told me that in this world, the luckiest people are the ones who get to do what it is they love in life and get a paycheck out of it as well. "If you can do THAT," she told me, "...then you've already succeeded."
Later on, I found out about her infamous 'moment' and how Lady Bird Johnson called secret service to escort Eartha out of the White House for telling fifty women at a power luncheon that "You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed. They rebel in the street. They don't want to go to college because they're going to be snatched off from their families to be shot dead in Vietnam." She was blacklisted for four years, until Lyndon Johnson was out of office. She couldn't get a singing or acting contract with ANY stage or production company, not even a small one. To make ends meet she sang in Amsterdam, in various coffee bars and cozy nightclubs. She learned to sing in Finnish and drew record crowds there with her renditions of American classics.
Eartha Kitt died today, and I am sad. When Betty Page died I did not really feel anything because for me she was not a part of my life, so my personal connection was absent. I met Eartha Kitt, so for me this comes as a hard blow. She seemed like a very vibrant lady, and a very classy one at that. I still have her autographed picture, menacing ol' cheesy Adam West as he's strapped down to a conveyer belt . For someone like me, who has now made (for good or worse) a career out of schlock, it's more of a loss when we lose someone who formed and shaped us when we were little kids, like Eartha did. I think those are the people we'll miss the most when they're gone. The inspirationalists.