Eartha Kitt - AIN'T MISBEHAVEN

Eartha Mae Kitt (born Eartha Mae Keith January 17, 1927) is an American actress, singer, and cabaret star. She is known for her role as Catwoman in the 1960s TV series Batman, and for her 1953 Christmas song "Santa Baby." Orson Welles once called her "the most exciting woman in the world."

In 1960, Kitt was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She has also received three Tony nominations, two Grammy nominations, and an Emmy win. She was profiled on the December 31, 2007 broadcast of NPR's Morning Edition.
Kitt has said that she is not certain of her parentage, beyond that she was born out of wedlock on a cotton plantation in the tiny town of St. Matthews, South Carolina and is African-American and perhaps Native American on one side and of German or Dutch ancestry on the other.
She was raised by Anna Mae Riley, a black woman whom she believed to be her mother, but after Riley's death, she was sent to live in New York City with Mamie Kitt, reportedly Riley's sister. Today Eartha Kitt believes that Mamie Kitt was her biological mother; she still has no knowledge of her father's identity, except that his surname was Kitt and that he was the son of the owner of the plantation on which she had been born.

Kitt got her start as a member of the Katherine Dunham Company and made her film debut with them in Casbah (1948). A talented singer with a distinctive voice, her hits include "Let's Do It", "C'est si bon", "Just an Old Fashioned Girl", "Monotonous", "Love for Sale", "I'd Rather Be Burned as a Witch", "Uska Dara", "Mink, Schmink", "Under the Bridges of Paris", and her most recognizable hit, "Santa Baby." Kitt's unique style was enhanced as she became fluent in the French language during her years performing in Europe. She dabbled in other languages as well, which she demonstrates with finesse in many of the live recordings of her cabaret performances.
In 1984, she returned to hit music with a disco song, Where Is My Man (UK #34); the first certified Gold record of her career. Kitt found new audiences in nightclubs across the country, including a whole new generation of gay male fans, and she responded by frequently giving benefit performances in support of HIV/AIDS organizations. Her 1989 follow-up hit "Cha-Cha Heels" (featuring Bronski Beat) received a positive response from UK dance clubs and reached #32 in the UK charts.

In recent years, Kitt's annual appearances in New York have made her a fixture of the Manhattan cabaret scene. She takes the stage at venues such as The Ballroom and, more recently, the Café Carlyle to explore and define her highly stylized image, alternating between signature songs (such as Old Fashioned Millionaire), which emphasize a witty, mercenary world-weariness, and less familiar repertoire, much of which she performs with an unexpected ferocity and bite that present her as a survivor with a seemingly bottomless reservoir of resilience — her version of Here's to Life, frequently used as a closing number, is a sterling example of the latter. This side of her later performances is reflected in at least one of her recordings, Thinking Jazz, which preserves a series of performances with a small jazz combo that took place in the early 1990s in Germany and which includes both standards (Smoke Gets in Your Eyes) and numbers (such as Something May Go Wrong) that seem more specifically tailored to her talents; one version of the CD includes as bonus performances a fierce, angry Yesterdays and a live rendering "C'est Si Bon" that good-humoredly satirizes her sex-kitten persona.
From October to early December, 2006, Kitt co-starred in the Off-Broadway musical Mimi Le Duck. She also appeared in the 2007 independent film And Then Came Love opposite Vanessa L. Williams.

Personal life
After romances with the cosmetics magnate Charles Revson and banking heir John Barry Ryan III, she was married to Bill McDonald from 1960 to 1965. They had one child, a daughter, Kitt Shapiro. Eartha has two grandchildren, Jason and Rachel. She lived for many years in Pound Ridge, NY, but recently moved to Westport, Connecticut to be near her daughter's family. In 2007, she performed at the Hotel Carlyle in New York.
Kitt was the spokesperson for MAC Cosmetics Smoke Signals collection in August 2007. She re-recorded Smoke Gets In Your Eyes for the occasion, was showcased on the MAC website and the song was played at all MAC locations carrying the collection for the month.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4aKBz5huZQ