Nov 09, 2007  |  By: KATHERINE VOLIN  | COMMENTS     

At 80, Eartha Kitt is still most at home in front of an audience

When Extra! asked Janet Jackson last month whom she’d like to portray in a movie musical, she hesitated as  though she was reluctant to reveal a secret.

“I don’t know — I have this thing for Eartha Kitt,” she said. “I would love to.”

An Eartha Kitt musical biopic starring Jackson is the stuff of gay diva-worshipping fantasy, but this particular dream could come true. The Extra! interview was at least the second time in October that Jackson dropped a hint that she was interested in playing Kitt.
 
Kitt, who is scheduled to perform at the Warner Theatre in D.C. on Nov. 10, says the screenplay of her life’s story was written years ago. She’s only waiting for “somebody who is suitable for the character.” And if Jackson really wants the part, Kitt says she would support her playing the role.

“I think it would be wonderful. I’m very glad that she’s interested,” Kitt told the Blade. “Everything depends on the studio. If she’s interested, she should call them.”

Kitt’s is the kind of story that’s begging to be told. Born to racially diverse parents in a 1927 South Carolina world that rejected her for being neither white nor black, Kitt was eventually abandoned by both parents by age 8, when her mother sent her to Harlem to live with her aunt.

When she was still a teenager, Kitt auditioned for and won a spot dancing and singing in the Katherine Dunham Dance Troupe. One night while performing in Paris with the group, a nightclub owner noticed her and booked her to be his featured singer. It was in the audience’s adoration that she finally found acceptance.

“The audience has always been my real family, outside of my daughter and her children, of course,” Kitt says.

ALTHOUGH SHE’S NOW 80, Kitt is still performing and thrilling live audiences.

“I’m not afraid of exercising my artistry anymore,” she says. “I think in the beginning I was a bit afraid because I didn’t know what exactly I was doing. Not that I know what I’m doing today, but everything I do comes immediately from the audience.”

A large portion of that audience has always included gay people, whom Kitt says she connects with over their shared societal rejection.

“I know what the feeling is to be not wanted so you constantly have to prove yourself — to prove that even though your life may be different from someone else’s you still have to be appreciated for what you’ve become.”

Artistry isn’t something that’s always appreciated by the music industry, which tends to value sales figures over musical contributions.

“[Music is] too noisy now, too many mechanics, too much technology. You don’t have to be a singer anymore — you press a button and you’re in tune,” Kitt says with a laugh. “Now they’re using all sorts of mechanics and I don’t know who’s who anymore. That’s one of the main reasons why I love live performances. You don’t see any gimmicks on me.”

Some of the musical performances that she has recently attended as an audience member “haven’t impressed me at all,” she says.

“I could have stayed home and seen the same damn thing rather than spend $150 to look at a screen.”

Home for Kitt is not in any of the cities in which she performs, but in western Connecticut.

“I love working in the city and I love the city, but I have a psychological feeling that it’s difficult for me to find food [in the city]. But as long as I’m out in the woods, it’s always a spiritual feeling that there’s always food there, I can always survive on the land, in the dirt.”

During her impoverished childhood, Kitt and her family often lived off the land to survive. “It’s very interesting because when I was receiving all those diamonds and furs, nobody ever gave me land and that’s the one thing I always wanted.”

Kitt says a number of factors help keep her grounded: her family, her love of the land and the audiences, which drive her artistic ambition.

“I’m not into following the herd in order to make a lot of money,” she says. “Money does not come from the value of my creative ability. The satisfaction that ...