The
mere thought
of pulling a caper without your masked meddling would be most purrrrrturbing to me !!
Catwoman, she showed her claws more than once to Batman and Robin. She drove a cool Catmobile and was a villain that always seemed to purrrrrfect the art of stealing.
In the series, during the third season Julie Newmar decided to film a movie, McKenna's Gold so she was unavailable to be in the series. In steps Eartha Kitt to take the role of the feline foe.
She appeared in three episodes.
Alan Napier on Catwoman, " Julie Newmar was the best Catwoman, but Eartha Kitt was kind of marvelous. She did complain a lot on the set though."
South
Carolina
plantation, then Kitt's mother gave her to an aunt in New York when she was eight
. She moved to Harlem, in New York City. At 16 she joined Katherine Dunham's
dance troupe, touring overseas . The troupe came back to the states and Eartha
stayed in Paris where she performed as a nightclub singer. She made her acting
debut as Helen of Troy in Time Runs, an Orson Welles
film in 1950. She appeared
in Batman in 1967. Thing were going great for her until
a Kitt went to a luncheon
at the 
White
House in 1968. There she told Lady Bird Johnson what she thought
of young American people losing their lives in Vietnam. This was to be a noose
around her neck, as the work she was doing dried up. She was blacklisted, no one
wanted to work with her . She performed solely overseas from 1968 until 1974.
"It wasn't that the American public didn't want me. It
was that I couldn't get work anywhere. Even people I had contracted with wouldn't
work with me," Kitt said. She was watched by the C I A , which for
years kept a thick file on her.
"I was rejected artistically, emotionally and personally.
I remember thinking, my own mother had given me away and now my country didn't
want me either," She was one of only a handful of performers to
be nominated for an Emmy, a Tony, two Grammys and an Academy Award.
