Matt Reeves’s ‘The Batman” debuted earlier this month and quickly racked in strong reviews and the pandemic’s second-largest box office earnings. A film that was defined by expectation-defying performance was Zoë Kravitz’s Catwoman. She made headlines by confirming in interviews that she ‘interpreted’ her Selina Kyle as bisexual. This marked the first time that the character has even tangentially been confirmed LGTBQ+ in film (although the comics are half a decade ahead with that storyline).
Even though the implied nature of Kravitz’s Catwoman has garnered well-deserved criticism for refusing to make the lesbian relationship explicitly canon, Kravitz steps into a long legacy of Catwoman pushing the boundaries of mainstream female sexuality on-screen. In 1967, Eartha Kitt became the first Black Catwoman in a short-lived but ultimately character-defining stint on the classically campy Adam West TV show. On the show, she not only set the standards by which future Catwomen would be measured, but she also continued years of trail-blazing work for Black women on screen.
THE BIRTH OF A NEW KIND OF (CAT)WOMAN ON SCREEN
Eartha Kitt joined The Batman cast for its third and final season, replacing the white actress Julie Newmar, who had left for a role as an Apache woman in a film (which is a whole other conversation). Despite only appearing in 5 episodes, Kitt embodied Catwoman as if she had been deveined for her, imbuing the character with truly cat-like cunning, arrogance, and skill.
Kitt became Catwoman at a time when JET magazine ran a weekly feature that published a rundown of every black person that appeared on Radio and TV in the back pages, and there were never many. Interracial marriage was only just decriminalized that same year and here was Kitt, stepping into a role that had so long been defined by her romantic intrigue for Batman.
“We felt it was a very provocative idea,” Charles Fitzsimons, a producer on the Batman series, said of casting Kitt on the show. “She was a Catwoman before we ever cast her as Catwoman. She had a cat-like style. Her eyes were cat-like and her singing was like a meow. This came as a wonderful off-beat idea to do it with a black woman.”
Of course, Fitzsimmons and his fellows would allow themselves to be only so ‘provocative’. While Kitt played Catwoman, the romance between her character and Batman was reduced to mere playful flirtation. As Deborah Whally writes in her article “Catwoman, blackness and the alchemy of post-racialism” the lack of the long-established romance demonstrated how TV producers still shied away from depicting interracial relationships.
However, Whally continues, Kitt’s Catwoman remained revolutionary for its stereotypical depiction of a Black woman. Also, free of serving as the love interest, Catwoman was allowed to become a more interesting and conniving villain. Catwoman became someone who was not only worthy of Batman’s love but also his respect as a worthy opponent, right up there with the Joker and Two-Face.
Over the decades, Catwoman has become an increasingly Robin Hood type figure stealing from the rich and giving back to the poor. Often coming from a tragic background, Catwoman is a femme fatale who never really needs saving, but who Batman madly tries to bring to the light anyway. But Catwoman has a clear idea of who she is and she is not willing to change her beliefs or compromise herself, even for the man she loves. What is so incredible about Eartha Kitt, is how well she represents the real-life version of that story. As Fitzsimmons said, she was Catwoman long before she was ever cast.
A LEGEND IN HER OWN RIGHT
To say Kitt’s life was a difficult one would feel like a gross understatement. It was harrowing.
Eartha Mae Kitt was born on a cotton plantation in South Carolina in 1927. She was born out of wedlock and suspected rape to Annie Marie Kitt and an unknown white man, a fact that would haunt Kitt until her death. Kitt’s mixed parentage meant she was rejected by her step-father and siblings when her mother remarried. Kitt’s mother gave her up for adoption when she was only five years old.
Kitt’s adoptive family physically and sexually abused her until someone reached out to Kitt’s extended family concerned she may die due to her extremly abusive circumstances. Eventually, she was taken in by an aunt, who Kitt believed took her in out of a sense of ‘Christian duty’ rather than familial affection. In New York with her aunt, Kitt spent her nights riding the Subway from one end to another trying to avoid her aunt, who she was terrified of. And yet, Kitt refused to be cowed.
At 16 years old, she joined Kathrine Dunham’s trailblazing dance troupe. Kitt graced stages around the world with the troupe until she met famous director Orson Welles. Welles quickly recruited her to play Helen of Troy in his staging of “Dr. Faustus” after which he declared she was the “most interesting woman in the world”.
In 1953, Kitt released her debut album RCA Victor Presents Eartha Kitt with hits like “I Want to Be Evil” and “Santa Baby” which helped cultivate her reputation as a sultry seductress which stuck with her throughout her career. Her songs were on constant rotation on the radio and her performances onstage won her international acclaim. Just seven years after her first album, Kitt was given a star on the Hollywood walk of fame. Eartha Kitt won the first of many accolades when she was awarded an Emmy for her guest spot on the show I Spy. Two years later, as aforementioned, Kitt was asked to play Catwoman for Batman’s final season.
It goes without saying that Kitt’s meteoric rise to fame defied every constraint put on black women in the day. Her undeniably sexual persona defied what most deemed appropriate for “decent” women at the time. In 1966, well into her career, polls found that most white Americans thought African Americans were moving “too quickly” in their pursuit of racial equality. And yet, in 1967, Kitt was onscreen as a black Catwoman in a sexually charged back and forth with a white Batman.
UNAPOLOGETIC AND UNCOMPROMISING
Just a year later, in 1968, her whole career came crashing down. Eartha Kitt was invited by Lady Bird Johnson to a White House luncheon on the subject of juvenile crime in America in light of her work with at-risk youth through inner youth organizations. While attending, however, Eartha became increasingly frustrated with the pontificating of the surrounding guests. She raised her hand to comment but was ignored. When she was finally allowed to speak, she had no patience left. She condemned the Vietnam war, connecting it to why so many youths refused to go to school in order to avoid the draft. She left no room for anyone in power to excuse themselves from responsibility. By the time she had finished the First Lady was in tears.
Unsurprisingly, the press did not react kindly to Kitt’s speech, calling her shrill and angry. Within days, the CIA had been instructed to compile a dossier on Kitt by President Johnson himself. The report dug into all of Kitt’s condemning forays against the society’s standards for a decent woman, calling her ‘loose’ and of ‘nasty deposition’. They even alleged she was “a sadistic nymphomaniac” (aka a woman with an excessive amount of sexual desire). Kitt was characteristically dismissive of the charge in a later interview saying, “What is it to the CIA if I was?”
After all the bad press and essentially being black-listed, Kitt’s career in the US was dead. It would take decades for her to recover, although when she did it was with great success.
Her speech at the White House is far from the only activism that Kitt did in her lifetime, it is indicative of Kitt’s bravery and uncompromising character.
Kitt never seemed concerned with pleasing anyone or making them comfortable, she’d quickly learned that there was no point in trying. In an interview on the Terry Wogan show (if you do nothing else today watch both parts of the interview), Wogan presses her on her ‘true’ character, asking her if she is truly that wicked woman so many claim her to be. “No, I’m not! But who would believe me?” Kitt says.
Rather than seeming tragically trapped in the role, however, Kitt seems to relish in it. She takes something that could’ve been limiting and turns it into something liberating. She shocks the audience and her interviewer by leaning into her blatant sexuality without flinching, teasing them for their conservative perceptions of appropriate female sexuality. She’s a real-life femme fatale who never concedes to allowing herself to become a damsel in distress.
In an iconic clip from her documentary “All By Myself: The Eartha Kitt Story ”, Kitt laughs at the question of whether she would compromise for a man’s love. As the interview rather carefully tries to tease a more conciliatory answer out of her, Kitt smiles indulgently with the knowing look of a woman who knows her own worth and is tired of waiting for her to ‘complete herself’ by finally settling down. She is unwilling to compromise herself for anyone because she already knows she is worth loving, she does not need any man to validate that fact. She did not care if it made anyone uncomfortable, she was not going to compromise or apologize for it. Not in her personal life or her career. It is that quality, along with her determination, which makes her a true hero by any standards.
HER LEGACY
Today, most of Gen Z are familiar with Eartha Kitt’s work without realizing they are. Every Christmas season, her voice slinks its way from our speakers as the original voice behind “Santa Baby”, a song from her debut album which helped cultivate the seductress and gold digger persona she’d become famous for. She’s also the woman behind the iconic villainess, Yzma, in the Emperor’s New Groove. And yet, somehow, most of Kitt’s life story and her incredible activism have been lost in the stream of popular culture. She died in 2008 after being treated for Colon cancer.
As another mixed-heritage Black woman again pushes the envelope of what female sexuality can look like on-screen, Kitt’s legacy has all the more resonance. She deserves not only admiration as an artist but also our applause for her uncompromising activism. She’s a hero more than worthy of the storylines of our popular comic characters for her unflinching heroism in her life.
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Sources not specifically linked in text:
Tirado, F. (2017, December 25). The enduring legacy of Eartha Kitt, a subversive icon targeted by the CIA. VICE. https://www.vice.com/en/article/8xvqbv/the-enduring-legacy-of-eartha-kitt-a-subversive-icon-targeted-by-the-cia
Hatchett, K. (2020, February 18). Eartha Kitt’s empowering performance as Catwoman turned a short-lived role into a lasting legacy. TVGuide.com. https://www.tvguide.com/news/features/eartha-kitt-tribute-catwoman-batman/
YouTube. (2020). Comparing Different Catwoman. YouTube. Retrieved March 17, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Si_cUcjGBKU&t=692s.
Cite used but couldn’t late be accessed: http://www.thegeektwins.com/2019/10/eartha-kitt-brief-history-of-first.html#:~:text=I%20loved%20doing%20Catwoman!%22%20Kitt,I%20love%20doing%20the%20character.