Eartha Kitt 1927-2008

With her curvaceous frame and unabashed vocal come-ons, she was also ... among the first widely known African-American sex symbols. Orson Welles famously proclaimed her “the most exciting woman alive” in the early ’50s, apparently just after that excitement prompted him to bite her onstage during a performance of “Time Runs,” an adaptation of “Faust” in which Ms. Kitt played Helen of Troy.

Ms. Kitt’s career-long persona, that of the seen-it-all sybarite, was set when she performed in Paris cabarets in her early 20s, singing songs that became her signatures, like “C’est Si Bon” and “Love for Sale.” ...

(In 1952), Ms. Kitt had her first best-selling albums and recorded her biggest hit, “Santa Baby,” whose precise, come-hither diction and vaguely foreign inflections (Ms. Kitt, a native of South Carolina, spoke four languages and sang in seven) proved that a vocal sizzle could be just as powerful as a bonfire. Though her record sales fell after the rise of rhythm and blues and rock ’n’ roll in the mid- and late ’50s, her singing style would later be the template for other singers with pillow-talky voices like Diana Ross (who has said she patterned her Supremes sound and look largely after Ms. Kitt), Janet Jackson and Madonna (who recorded a cover version of “Santa Baby” in 1987).

Ms. Kitt would later call herself “the original material girl,” a reference not only to her stage creation and to Madonna but also to her string of romances with rich or famous men, including Welles, the cosmetics magnate Charles Revson and the banking heir John Barry Ryan 3rd. She was married to her one husband, Bill McDonald, a real-estate developer, from 1960 to 1965; their daughter, Kitt Shapiro, survives her, as do two grandchildren.

From practically the beginning of her career, as critics gushed over Ms. Kitt, they also began to describe her in every feline term imaginable: her voice “purred” or “was like catnip”; she was a “sex kitten” who “slinked” or was “on the prowl” across the stage, sometimes “flashing her claws.” Her career has often been said to have had “nine lives.” Appropriately, she was tapped to play Catwoman in the 1960s TV series “Batman,” taking over the role from the leggier, lynx-like Julie Newmar and bringing to it a more feral, compact energy.

Yet for all the camp appeal and sexually charged hauteur of Ms. Kitt’s cabaret act, she also played serious roles, appearing in the films “The Mark of the Hawk” with Sidney Poitier (1957) and “Anna Lucasta” (1959) with Sammy Davis Jr. She made numerous television appearances, including a guest spot on “I Spy” in 1965, which brought her her first Emmy nomination.

For these performances Ms. Kitt likely drew on the hardship of her early life. She was born Eartha Mae Keith in North, S.C., on Jan. 17, 1927, a date she did not know until about 10 years ago, when she challenged students at Benedict College in Columbia, S.C., to find her birth certificate, and they did. She was the illegitimate child of a black Cherokee sharecropper mother and a white man about whom Ms. Kitt knew little. She worked in cotton fields and lived with a black family who, she said, abused her because she looked too white. “They called me yella gal,” Ms. Kitt said.

At 8 she was sent to live in Harlem with an aunt, Marnie Kitt, who Ms. Kitt came to believe was really her biological mother. Though she was given piano and dance lessons, a pattern of abuse developed there as well: Ms. Kitt would be beaten, she would run away and then she would return. By her early teenage years she was working in a factory and sleeping in subways and on the roofs of unlocked buildings. (She would later become an advocate, through Unicef, on behalf of homeless children.)

Her show-business break came on a lark, when a friend dared her to audition for the Katherine Dunham Dance Company. She passed the audition and permanently escaped the cycle of poverty and abuse that defined her life till then.

But she took the steeliness with her, in a willful, outspoken manner that mostly served her career, except once. In 1968 she was invited to a White House luncheon and was asked by Lady Bird Johnson about the Vietnam War. She replied: “You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed. No wonder the kids rebel and take pot.” The remark reportedly caused Mrs. Johnson to burst into tears and led to a derailment in Ms. Kitt’s career.

As bookings dried up, she was exiled in Europe for almost a decade. But President Jimmy Carter invited her back to the White House in 1978, and that year she earned her first Tony nomination for her work in “Timbuktu!,” an all-black remake of “Kismet.” ...

(T)hough Ms. Kitt still seemed to have men of all ages wrapped around her finger (she would often toy with younger worshipers at her shows by suggesting they introduce her to their fathers), the years had given her perspective. “I’m a dirt person,” she told Ebony magazine in 1993. “I trust the dirt. I don’t trust diamonds and gold.”

Lord, help me be the person my dog believes I am

No one expected to find Donna Molnar alive.

Searchers had combed the brutal backcountry of rural Ontario for the housewife from the city of Hamilton, who had left her home three days earlier in the middle of a blizzard to grocery shop.

Alongside his search-and-rescue dog Ace, Ray Lau on Monday tramped through the thick, ice-covered brush of a farmer's field, not far from where Molnar's van had been found a day earlier.

He kept thinking: Negative-20 winds? This is a search for a body.

"Then, oh, all of a sudden, Ace bolted off," said Lau. "He stooped and looked down at the snow and just barked, barked, barked."

Lau rushed to his Dutch shepherd's side.

"There she was, there was Donna, her face was almost totally covered except for one eye staring back at me!" he said. "That was, 'Wow!' There was a thousand thoughts going through my head. It was over the top."

With one ungloved hand near her neck, Molnar, 55, mumbled and tried to scream as Lau yelled to other rescuers. Dressed in a leather coat, sweater, slacks and winter boots, Molnar was carefully extracted from a 3-foot-deep mound of snow that had apparently helped to insulate her.

[...]

As for Ace, he's still awaiting his reward: a T-bone steak. It's the least that can be done for a dog who, in his own way, paid it forward.

"A while ago, Ace was rescued from a home where he didn't belong, and now he got to rescue someone. I can't describe the magnitude of that, what that means to me," Lau said.

"He's definitely getting his steak. I'm grocery shopping right now."

Here's a picture of our Teddi, masquerading as the puppy from Grinch:



And here's what happened to ten of Michael Vick's dogs.

Pre-Christmas Wrangle

T'was the Monday before Christmas, and all through the 'sphere,
all the bloggers weren't posting about female reindeer.

Time once more for the Texas Progressive Alliance's Weekly Blog Round-Up. This week's wrangle -- the last regular-edition one of the year -- is compiled by Vince from Capitol Annex. Next week the TPA will bring you its "Best of 2008", a compilation of the best posts from member blogs and bloggers from the historic year past.

At TruthHugger the crystal ball in BossKitty's head has instructed him/her to share its opinion on how the final month of a pretentious Bush Administration contributes to the destruction of the America we knew: Bush wondered aloud, “How did we get here?”

The Texas Cloverleaf looks, ever so briefly, at Governor 39%'s longevity record.

This week CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme offers unsolicited advice to Democrats: Texas may follow the rest of the country and turn blue, but only if we truly are inclusive and offer value for taxpayer dollars.

Donna at Happinessanyway talks about defending her uber-liberal job to putative uber-liberals.

John Coby at Bay Area Houston details how much money Bob Perry has donated to the members of the Sunset Commission that shockingly spared his home builder commission from being abolished.

Vince at Capitol Annex notes that the United Auto Workers are going to be chasing some jobs to Texas -- which were lured from another state by Rick Perry and millions from his personal slush fund, the Texas Enterprise Fund.

jobsanger looks to the future and wonders Who's the Dem in the 2010 Governor Race? There is a dearth of well-known candidates with both Bill White and John Sharp opting to run for the Senate, but he has a suggestion -- although that suggestion may not be well-received by some TPA members.

Neil at Texas Liberal says there is no such thing as a bridge to nowhere. Everything in life connects. Neil also says have a happy holiday.

Off the Kuff considers the possibilities for 2010 if neither White nor Sharp runs for Governor.

Devon Energy says they are "passionate" about clean air. TXsharon says: Okay, Devon: Here is your opportunity to prove it. Spend that $60 million -- 2 percent of your last quarter's profits -- and help Wise County stay off non-attainment list.

This week, McBlogger's kinda irritated at the President-elect over his decision to have Rick Warren lead the invocation at the inauguration.

WhosPlayin published what may be the first quantitative statistical analysis of pipeline incidents -- by Jerry J. Lobdill. Hey Fort Worth, are you ready for a significant "incident" with gas pipelines every 6 months?

Dallas-area auto dealers who took out credit life insurance policies with Texas Congressional Republicans have suddenly figured out that they wasted their money. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs has it.

All they want for Christmas is to keep jailing innocent children. The Williamson county commissioner's court is set to vote Tuesday, just in time for Christmas, on two more years of jail time for immigrant families awaiting hearings. Wcnews at Eye On Williamson reports that the court has rescheduled a vote to renew its contract with Corrections Corporation of America to operate the T. Don Hutto immigrant detention center for Tuesday, December 23, in order to avoid publicity. In addition to the distractions of the holidays, commissioners are counting that voters will have forgotten about it by the next election, 22 months away.