Back in May, just after our 31st anniversary, I asked readers which of four classic cover interviews from our early years they’d like to see in print again: Greg Louganis (March 9, 1995), Sir Ian McKellen (Jan. 25, 1996), Camille Paglia (Feb. 1, 1996), or Eartha Kitt (Nov. 14, 1996). None of these conversations exist online, and they haven’t been seen since their original print dates.

Out of more than 200 responses, 8% chose Paglia, 27% picked Louganis, 29% went for McKellen, and an impressive 36% cast their vote for Kitt.

Kitt, who passed away in December 2008, seemed a fitting choice to revisit. A pop culture icon for her turn as the second Catwoman (following Julie Newmar) on the late-1960s, camp-classic TV series Batman, she was slated to appear at Washington’s legendary jazz nightclub Blues Alley when we spoke.

I remember our time on the phone vividly. Kitt talked for nearly three hours, making it one of my longest interviews up to that point. Our conversation was spirited, free-flowing, friendly, and warm. That distinctive staccato speaking voice of hers was a tonic.

Revisiting the finished piece startled me at points, as Kitt straddled both a moral high ground and a breezy “What the hell” demeanor. Her views on same-sex marriage and sex work were especially eyebrow-raising, but we never stayed on one topic for too long. Kitt reveled in sharing opinions and stories about fellow stars — some her friends — Elizabeth Taylor, James Dean, Madonna, Paul Lynde, and Judy Garland, as well as a claws-out swipe at Batman‘s Adam West.

In republishing the interview, I’ve made only a few minor edits. Otherwise it appears exactly as it originally ran — unfiltered and unadulterated. The cover and interior illustrations were by the late, extraordinarily gifted Paul Myatt, our own personal Hirschfeld during the magazine’s first decade.

My eventually goal is to get all of our older Metro Weekly interviews online. They capture a slice of LGBTQ history, revealing the differing views of 30 years ago while also showing how little has truly changed.

That may offer some comfort — cold though it may be — in these maddening days of Donald Trump. But it also reminds us that, politically and societally, we will persevere and come through it, if not unscathed, then at least ready for the next round. —Randy Shulman, Editor-in-Chief

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There are few performers in this world who transcend themselves. Eartha Kitt is such a performer.

In a career spanning over fifty years, Kitt has done just about everything — from film and television to theatre and dance to recording and cabaret work. Ironically, she is most often recognized for her work on the Batman TV series, on which she played Catwoman.

Her recordings are rare gems — as is her distinctive voice: soft and sensual, it’s bolstered by sharp staccato phrasing. And her latest record, Back in Business, released in 1994, is one for stoking the embers of romance — something that Kitt, a self-avowed “sex kitten” is hardly a stranger to.

Though playful and feisty, Eartha Kitt is not afraid to bare her claws when necessary.

She is a lady whom one could easily call purrrrrfect.

METRO WEEKLY: To prepare for this interview, I went to the library to get your third autobiography, Confessions of a Sex Kitten, and all four copies were checked out.

EARTHA KITT: [Laughs.] How lovely! I love to hear things like that.

MW: Well, anyway, I got the second one, Alone With Me, published in 1976. But I was surprised to find there was one published twenty years before — Thursday’s Child, now out of print. How old were you when you wrote it?

EARTHA: Since I myself don’t know how old I am, I can’t really tell you. But it was written in 1954. And at the moment, according to my Green Card — and I say that because I don’t have a birth certificate — I’m supposed to be 69-years-old in January. So you figure it out.

MW: Three autobiographies — one roughly every twenty years! Clearly you have a lot to say about your own life.

EARTHA: My life has been extremely interesting. Never a dull moment. And even the dull moments have been very interesting.

MW: You were raised Eartha Mae Kitt in South Carolina by a surrogate family and are still uncertain who your birth parents are.

EARTHA: I don’t know who my father was, and I really don’t know who my mother was. Except for the lady whom they told me was my mother. And I was given away by her because she wanted to marry a Black man. And I say a Black man because it was a Black man who told her that he didn’t want me in her house because I was a “yella gal.” That’s worse than being called a n*****. It means you’re nothing, you’re a mixture, you’re illegitimate.

MW: In your book, you often refer to Eartha Mae as a separate entity, as though you have a split personality.

EARTHA: Well, it’s tremendously confusing to me. The only person I know is Eartha Kitt, because the public made me. But as far as Eartha Mae is concerned, I have no idea who she is. Eartha Mae is a tremendously shy person because she’s a reject. Nobody wanted her. She was hiding all the time in the woods, under the house, wherever she could find a place that she could not be seen, because she was told that she was an ugly duckling, because she was told she was a nothing.

MW: But she transformed herself from nothing to something, from Eartha Mae to Eartha Kitt.

EARTHA: Because of the public.

MW: Aren’t you responsible for your own success?

EARTHA: Obviously God gave me enough tools to survive. But I had to earn my success.

MW: How important do you think our past is in defining who we are as people? For instance, how does it affect you not to fully know your hereditary origins?

EARTHA: You walk through life feeling lost, like you don’t really connect or identify with any group. But I don’t know if I even want to at this point. Because I became who I am with the help of the public.

MW: So the public has become your surrogate family.

EARTHA: Exactly. I was thinking exactly what you just said. When I walk out onto stage, that whole audience becomes my parent and I want to please them. I want to earn their affection.

MW: Which you do, night after night.

EARTHA: Yes, but you’re walking on tenterhooks, too. Because you never know if you have sung the right song, or if a song touches them, or if they’ll say, “That song she should not be singing because it does not fit her.”

MW: And at that point they send you back to your dressing room without any cookies and milk.

EARTHA: [Laughs.] Yes. They give feelings of rejection which makes me go back to my dressing room shamefaced.

MW: I cannot imagine a performance of yours bombing. Ever.

EARTHA: Sometimes I’ve gone off stage feeling I didn’t earn my bottle of Dom Perignon or my Beluga Caviar or, as you say, my saucer of milk.

MW: How, as an adult, did you overcome your feelings of pain and rejection?

EARTHA: By becoming constructive about it. I’d always felt that if I took care of myself, I’d be okay. In order to survive, you have to earn the helping hand. When people find out that you want to help yourself rather than depend on someone else, then people give you a helping hand. But you’ve gotta earn that hand.

A few people have taken a chance on me. [In the ’50s] agents would say, “She’s a beautiful girl, a tremendous talent, but we don’t know what to do with her. She’s not the right color.” [Laughs.] Even in show business, it was, “She’s not the right color.” [I] did not fit the general concept of what a brown-skinned person should look like.

MW: Do you think if you were starting your career today you would face similar obstacles?

EARTHA: I don’t know. But I’m very anxious to see what they’re going to do with someone like Halle Berry. Have they yet gotten to a point where they will cast a person of my color or Halle Berry’s color as Cleopatra? I’m waiting to see, because Cleopatra was certainly not an Anglo-Saxon.

MW: Actually, you were called in for the Cleopatra role.

EARTHA: Yes. When Elizabeth Taylor got sick. But her contract was so tight that something drastic had to happen to her in order for me to take her place.

MW: Do you think you would have made a better Cleopatra than Taylor?

EARTHA: Of course.

MW: What would you have brought to the role?

EARTHA: More Cleopatra than what Elizabeth Taylor brought to her.

MW: I wonder what Elizabeth Taylor would have been like as Catwoman?

EARTHA: [Laughs.] Look, I don’t say that I would have been better than her, but I would have been more interesting. But in Hollywood I was treated as though there were no parts for me. I did Anna Lucasta [in 1958] with Sammy Davis, Jr. — he played my lover in the film — but because I don’t look black and I was making love to a black man, 2,500 cinemas in this country did not play the film. So even choosing me to play a part with an all-black cast was a threat. “She’s beautiful, she’s sensuous, and she’s the wrong color.”

Things are slightly better today in Hollywood. But it’s a little late for me, because I’m too old now to do anything but character parts.

MW: Throughout your life, you’ve always been outspoken about social causes, sometimes, in the case of the White House incident of 1968, to the detriment of your career.

EARTHA: If I feel strongly about something, I have to say something about it.

MW: Can you recount in brief what happened that day? As I understand it, you were invited to the White House for a luncheon to discuss why there’s so much juvenile delinquency in America and wound up speaking your mind about the war in Vietnam, which greatly upset Ladybird Johnson.

EARTHA: All I said was that our involvement in Vietnam…was not honorable to our country. But [Ladybird] only wanted to throw flower seeds along Route 66. Beautify America. And I would love to see America beautified, with flowers growing everywhere. But if you’re gonna plant flowers and trees in the middle embankment of Seventh Avenue in Harlem, where people needed jobs — well, I don’t think that can work.

MW: The end result was that you were essentially blacklisted from working in this country for more than a decade. Meanwhile, the CIA assembled a dossier on you.

EARTHA: And what does the dossier say? Nothing. It’s nothing but backyard gossip. “It is rumored that she is a sadistic sex nymphomaniac.” Even if I was, what does it have to do with the government? Does that sound like something the CIA should be using your tax money to find out about somebody? [Laughs.]

MW: It seems incredible to be punished for patriotism.

EARTHA: I was lucratively punished, and I still can’t get over it. They didn’t put a bullet through my head, but I didn’t do anything, really, except tell the truth and be a true American citizen because I do love this country. But one of the things wrong with this country is that if you upset the apple cart, particularly those who are in power, you’re ostracized.

MW: If you could go back in time to that day, knowing everything that you know now about the aftermath, would you remain silent?

EARTHA: No. Not if they asked me a question. And that was the point: They asked me a question. I didn’t just get up and blurt out whatever it is that the newspaper said that I did. And it’s not the fault of the newspapers for interpreting it that way: President Johnson wanted them to think I was a naughty girl. Ill-mannered. Rude. That was not the case. I was born in the South. I know good manners. And when I’m asked a question I should be able to say “No,” “Yes,” or whatever, without being punished.

If I had gotten up at that luncheon and ranted and raved and screamed I don’t think they would have paid any attention to what I said around the world. I still have mail in boxes in my garage from the women of the world — there were 5,000 names on one big letter that read “Eartha, you were right. Thank God somebody out there is telling the truth and saying what we all want to say.” [The Johnson administration] knew I was telling the truth. But they didn’t want to hear that, because business is business in this country and business was booming when we were in Vietnam.

MW: It always boils down to economics.

EARTHA: Always money. Always. And it’s wonderful to have money. But when you have to be abusive in order to obtain it, something’s wrong. When money becomes more powerful than your soul, then the devil must be running this world rather than the spirits that are supposed to be guiding us into heaven.

MW: What do you think about Clinton winning his second term?

EARTHA: I don’t know what to think about it. I don’t think it matters who is president. Our politicians have to be much more cognizant of the minds of the country and what the people of this country’s desires are.

MW: Unfortunately, I think too many politicians are concerned with getting reelected and maintaining a lavish lifestyle.

EARTHA: That seems to be the case. And that’s the message that they have passed to the American people. And that’s one of the main reasons why we had such a low voter turnout this year. People don’t care anymore. They know the government is going to run itself the way it wants to run itself and not pay attention to the American people in the manner in which it should.

But then you could say that it’s the people’s fault, too, because the people are not paying attention to what’s going on — or, if they are paying attention to what’s going on, they don’t do anything. They’re lethargic and afraid. Look at what happened to me [in 1968]. Look at Martin Luther King. He got shot down. Look at Bobby Kennedy. He got shot down. John Kennedy. He got shot down. Malcolm X. He got shot down. Anybody who wants to stand up and be counted better stand up as over 250,000 people together. Not just as one person.

MW: What’s your feeling about gays?

EARTHA: I feel a kinship with gays. I know the feeling of not being wanted. Gays know what rejection means — and they have to work a little harder in order to be accepted.

MW: Do you have any views on same sex marriage?

EARTHA: If gay people want to get married, who the hell’s gonna stop them? My only problem is if you guys are going to be marrying each other, then there’s no place for us girls to go! [Laughs.] And this is one of my cries — “I can’t find a good guy because you guys have them all!”

MW: We’ll make a few available to you. What do you find attractive in a man?

EARTHA: I don’t really go for men because they’re handsome. I like a gentleman. Somebody who’s considerate and is thinking all the time as to how everything he does is going to affect me. And I have to think about the same thing: How everything I do is going to affect him. Our relationship should be a partnership.

MW: Are you aware that within the gay community you are a living legend?

EARTHA: I asked one of my gay friends why that was, because this question’s constantly being asked of me. And he said it’s because gay men like strong women, because they themselves feel that through their own strength they can survive.

MW: Well, you’re in very good company: Judy Garland, Barbra Streisand, Liza Minnelli. The women gay men hold dear is very small but significant. How does it feel to be included in that elite group?

EARTHA: I love it. I really love it. And it was very fascinating to me that as I went around the world after I got into trouble in this country with President Johnson, it was the gay guys who were constantly supporting me. They kept my name alive.

MW: I’d like to address the subject of AIDS for a moment. We’ve lost so much talent in the entertainment field to the disease, and the losses continue.

EARTHA: But at the same time, darling, if they’re not taking care of themselves, such as using safe sex, then we’re all asking for trouble. And — whether you like me saying this or not — unless we all take care of ourselves in our relations, and have respect for the person with whom we have fallen in love, be it a he or a she, if we’re going to constantly be promiscuous — any of us — then we are asking for trouble. Those few who don’t care ruin it for everybody….

Even the guy who goes out with the prostitutes: If they’re not protecting themselves from the prostitutes or the prostitutes are not protecting themselves — well, that’s why I think prostitution should be legalized. You could legalize and bring the girls and boys in once in a while, have them all checked up, cleaned up, and give them a license. It’s just another job. Prostitution is going to be there no matter how much we want to eradicate it. It’s been there since the beginning of time.

MW: The world’s oldest profession…

EARTHA: Yes. So why not legalize it and clean the girls up and clean the boys up and let them go on with their profession? Then they would be much more respected, much more clean, and much more ladylike done and much more gentlemanly done.

MW: You’re right, in a sense.

EARTHA: Not in a sense. I’m right.

MW: And this is coming from a self-avowed sex kitten. Maybe we should have you write a column: The Sex Kitten Advisor. Tell me, what defines a sex kitten?

EARTHA: It’s what you make others feel like. And when you make other people feel happy, they call you by what you’ve made them feel. I play with the sex kitten [motif] because that’s what I’ve been called. And I think it’s a lot of fun to be called a sex kitten. But I don’t think anything like that about myself.

The audience makes me feel comfortable with myself because they feel comfortable with me. It’s a love affair going on between the audience and me. We’ve both made each other feel good. That’s a kind of sensuality. And that was the big thing with Marilyn Monroe. She was sexy to look at. At the same time she made you feel very sensuous; she made you feel that you wanted to go to bed with her.

MW: How well did you know Marilyn?

EARTHA: Not too. I met her at those affairs that we always have to be at, and somehow she got my phone number. She would call up in the middle of the night and sometimes I could understand her and sometimes I couldn’t. Judy Garland was the one I absolutely loved and adored.

MW: What was Judy like?

EARTHA: A feisty little thing.

MW: James Dean was another of your favorite people. In your book you call him a kindred spirit. Why?

EARTHA: Because he was as lonely in life as I am. He was a lost soul looking for someplace to land.

MW: What was he like?

EARTHA: Lonely. Very soulful. Spiritual. We had that contact that you have where you don’t have to talk but know what the other person is thinking all the time. That’s the way we were. We’d spend hours being alone and never talk. But we were talking. Without words.

MW: There are rumors that he was gay.

EARTHA: Who cares? I liked his work and I liked him as a person.

MW: Do you remember how you felt when you learned Judy Garland and James Dean had passed away?

EARTHA: It was like part of me going away because they were kindred spirits. They just wanted to be wanted without having to be nothing but business.

MW: But these people had great success and adoring fans. What is it they were lacking in their lives? What were they looking for?

EARTHA: A friend. Somebody who wanted them to be a human being. “I like you because of you, not because of what you are.”

MW: Didn’t they have that in you?

EARTHA: We were friends, and we understood each other. But when you get into that wheel of fortune thing, you don’t know who you are. All you know is that you are a thing. And you are treated as a thing. And all the money in the world is marvelous to have. But then you become enslaved to them and what have you got, really? Happiness is how you feel about yourself, not about how much money you’ve got in the bank.

MW: Some other names crop up in your books: Paul Lynde.

EARTHA: Oh! What a funny man he was! Paul was hysterical. Unfortunately, he drank too much — but when he drank he was funnier than he was when he was sober. He got funnier and funnier with every sip of brandy that he drank. I gave a party at my house and he stayed there until five o’clock in the morning. He drank a bottle of scotch and a bottle of brandy. And he drove home and a cop pulled him over, and he rolled down the window and said, “I’ll have a hamburger with onions.” [Laughs.] It was one of the funniest things he’d ever done.

MW: Cary Grant.

EARTHA: Lovely. Absolutely lovely. A gentleman all the way down the line.

MW: Again, rumors are circulating that he engaged in gay liaisons.

EARTHA: Oh, who cares if he was gay or not? The point is the man gave us a wonderful feeling about ourselves.

MW: Do you think it’s fair when biographers dredge up rumors on dead celebrities? Shouldn’t we try to preserve the mystique? Why do we have this need to uncover and to destroy?

EARTHA: Because it’s controversial and that’s what sells books. Controversy.

MW: What controversy will they find out about you fifty years from now?

EARTHA: That I drank a lot of champagne. But everybody knows that.

MW: Any others? Now’s your chance to tell all.

EARTHA: Okay. I was the girlfriend of Charlie Revson [owner of Revlon]. Nobody knows about that. And I can prove it because somebody who worked [with Revlon] wrote a book called Fire and Ice, and mentioned me in the book. He didn’t say too much about it because it was one of those things that was sort of shut up.

MW: Who’s been the greatest love of your life?

EARTHA: You mean somebody that I was pleased with sexually as well as being with?

MW: Yes.

EARTHA: Oh, some jackass who went back to Poland. [Laughs.] He was a Count. I really liked him because he was compatible in all areas. He was very intelligent. But one more sip on the vodka bottle and he was gone, and I couldn’t tolerate that. And he was verbally abusive. Once somebody abuses me, I’m “No thank you very much.” Besides, my daughter [Kitt] didn’t like him and I didn’t think that any man was more important in my life than my daughter.

MW: Another celebrity: Madonna.

EARTHA: I’m very proud of Madonna because she took what she had and built it into a big moneymaking factory, so to speak. I’m told that she is the ’90s Eartha Kitt — she took what she could get from watching me and then packaged it. And why not? I admire her.

I don’t like the idea, though, of her having a baby out of wedlock. I never did approve of that. When you’re in the public eye and have the knowledge or awareness that young kids are imitating you all the time, then you’re giving the wrong example for young girls. Kids are not going to think in terms of whether they themselves can support a child. And I just think it’s wrong to have a child out of wedlock.

Maybe that comes from me being illegitimate myself, but I don’t think it’s anything that I would have ever done. Otherwise, I would have done it. And I would have been a fabulously weallllthy woman. Because then I would have taken advantage of some of these rich guys who came into my life by getting pregnant — and I would have been taken care of for the rest of my life. But I always liked to play the game of life in a fair way: What I get out of life I must earn in the right way.

MW: Good philosophy to live by.

EARTHA: It doesn’t pay my bills, but what the hell? I can say I sleep very well at night and I like me because I know I’m an honest person and because I do unto others as I would like them to do unto me.

MW: Back to celebrities: Issac Mizrahi.

EARTHA: He’s adorable!

MW: You were wonderful in Unzipped.

EARTHA: Thank you. He came to me just to be interviewed for a documentary. But it turned out to be a major film. I wonder who got rich on that one? But it was fun working with Mizrahi because he’s a real down-to-earth person.

MW: Do you like his clothes?

EARTHA: They’re not for me. They’re all psychedelic.

MW: What about Adam West?

EARTHA: I know you’re gonna think this is funny, but I barely remember him. He came on the set, did his lines, and left. Both of them.

MW: So no fond memories of Burt Ward either?

EARTHA: I don’t even remember which played which. Who played Batman?

MW: Adam West.

EARTHA: Yeah, well, that’s what I thought. But that’s how much of an impression that they left on me.

MW: Do you still have the Catwoman costume?

EARTHA: No. And I don’t know how Julie Newmar got hers — she says she has hers — but mine was taken back by 20th Century Fox.

MW: Did you see Batman Returns with Michelle Pfeiffer?

EARTHA: I saw it on an airplane.

MW: And what did you think?

EARTHA: I went to sleep.

MW: You didn’t think she made a good Catwoman?

EARTHA: It doesn’t matter whether she was good, bad, or indifferent. She was there.

MW: Do you think you could play Catwoman today?

EARTHA: Of course I could. Cats have no age. Nine lives, remember?

MW: If your other eight lives are anything like your first… Do you think you could do eight more lives like this one?

EARTHA: Of course! I love life! I think life is the most marvelous adventure in the world.

MW: Where are you in your life right now?

EARTHA: I feel better about myself today, I think, than I ever have before because I have come to the point where I realize that life has been very good to me and I’ve been a very lucky person. And I’m not afraid of being Eartha Kitt.

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