From the S&S archives:
Still the greatest show on Eartha

THERE SHE LURKS, sleekish legs crossed, purring to herself, quinces-and-cucumbers mouth lisping into a feline pucker, assuming the look of a cat that has just swallowed a Lady Bird.

Dressing gown cleaving sexily, nibbling on a kibble, then getting up and moving on the apricot-colored balls of her Size 4 feet, grinding out zap-waves of ecstatic electricity, sublimating you into jaguar Kilimanjaro fantasies, impelling you — as your fingernails distend and your whiskers twitch — to break into a half-strangled parody of her most famous song, "C'est Ci Bon" ...

"... Sexy bones; lovers say that in France..."

Eartha Kitt, Miss Eartha Kitt, ladies and gentlemen, daubs out her tongue which is small and pink and hints of ocelot coquetery and warm milk, then (as a gesture affirming that jungle drums speak "Phantom say this white man honest") pulls in the nails she has been silvering with a polish applicator the size of a shaving brush and beckons you down onto a velour cushion that is only slightly smaller than the Isle of Man.

Miss Eartha Kitt is electric, tiny and black, a black that is more than just beautiful; an ebon silkiness, preened to a catamount gloss of self-assurance and warmth. Her whole being suggests the feline, but she is candid, not catty.

Eartha Kitt, who speaks six languages, is only five-feet-two in her golden-toed feet, but she emanates super-sexy vibes that have to come from a soul that is 12 feet tall.

Vibes — and occasionally jibes — are Miss Kitt's thing.

"I operate on vibrations," she is saying in her slightly nasal, Persian sex-kitten voice. "During a show my antennae are always out, feeling around. for mood and reaction — especially from the men.

"I play to the men because the women, at least those with hangups and insecurities, aren't quite ready to go along with my act. Some of them feel threatened, some offended. I see them kicking their husbands under the table, hitting them over the heads with handbags, poking them in the ribs. They take me seriously and I'm just putting them on.

"I can tell from the stage which women are happily married, which are the ruling hen in the roost and which are allowing their men to be men. Mostly the men come to be entertained and the women to show they're good sports or because they're curious. I'm not the most beautiful or attractive woman in the world and they wonder, 'What's she got, anyway?"'

What's she got! Lithe as a snow leopard, Miss Earths Kitt pulls up a zebra-striped hassock and slithers down into its downy contours, ready to spring, basking in the Siamese shafts of light sifting through the windows of her 18th-floor flat. It isn't even close to being dark, but my eyes have begun to glow, reddishly. Miss Kitt throws me a rubber ball. I playfully leap after it, pursuing it under a nearby chair and snagging my left claw on the drapes.

"I'm not really sexy," she is saying...

.. Meeee-owwwww, Owwwww-rrrrrrr! "

. . . All I've got — all any woman — needs is an awareness that she is a woman. That's what being sexy is all about. Being sexy is not what Playboy Magazine tells us it is. If you have a big bosom and show it off, this doesn't make you sexy. Neither do contrivances like false eyelashes and padded bras. It's all in the way you feel about yourself. Sensuality works for itself and when it's forced it's ugly.

"We American women have a hard time being feminine and sensual. Our fathers taught us to be Puritans about sex and our mothers warned us not to show weakness. That's stupid. Women are supposed to be weak and men are supposed to take care of them. It's a beautiful game between two opposites.

"Your man is your center of attraction. He's the king of your life and you should make him know it. We American women are awfully spoiled. Everything's been bought for us and now we expect our men to buy us, rather than earn us. Too many wives think all they have to do is be married and have sex once in a while with their husbands and they're doing them a great big favor. We demand rewards in return for love and the payments never end."

Uh, Eartha ... uh, Miss Kitt, is it true that black women are sexier than white women?

"I think white women have more hangups about sex. Black women have their share of hangups, too, but not about sex. They're less inhibited."

"The whites have been so busy making money they haven't had time to be uninhibited. Me, I'm basically shy. And if an audience is uptight I can feel it. That's the only time my work seems like work.

"Every audience is different so every act is different. I play to their mood and it's got to be natural vibrations. Sometimes the audience will strike me as funny. As the evening wears on the alcohol breaks down their mental chastity belts and they are there to enjoy."

Miss Kitt stirred, yawning like a pampered panther on the cushion. My broken record started scratching again ...

"... Sexy bones, sexy bones, uh, dah, dah DAH!"

"America?" she asks rhetorically, arching her trig and very sensual back. "America is the greatest country in the world. I know. I've lived in many and been in most. America is the best. It's what's being done to America that I hate. We're too great a nation to allow ourselves to be afraid of things like freedom of speech. And we shouldn't allow ourselves to be duped into paying for things like wars we don't believe in.

"The kids are the real patriots today. They're really in love with America. The older ones who pay the taxes are the angriest men in the world but they do nothing about their anger. They feel helpless to change things. But if they don't, nobody else will. Wars won't end by themselves — race relations won't improve by themselves. And violence and building burning won't help either. The militants who burn aren't the kind of people who build. They're the kids who listened to their angry parents.

"We're supposed to love each other and if we do what do we need guns for? War is an economic thing. It needs taxes to pay for itself. That's a very tangible way for a citizen to protest — not pay his taxes. He can write letters, too, he can call his congressman and he can march. So far only small groups have marched and they don't make a big impression on anybody. But if the whole damned country got up and marched somebody would notice! They can't put the whole nation in jail.

"I see my role in the effort as an agitator. And I'll keep writing and speaking and harassing the Establishment as long as I can."

Yeah, swell, but Miss Kitt, doesn't all that sometimes get a girl like you in trouble. I mean, that thing with Lady Bird when you ...

Meeee-owwww-urrrr! Out come the fangs and the split marbles flash in the depths of her brown, oval eyes.

"OK, I made some waves at a White House tea party when I spoke out to Lady Bird Johnson on the Vietnam war issue. Well, my nightclub act was cancelled right after it happened. And several more cancellations followed. It's kept me off television talk shows for more than a year, too. They're afraid of what I might say, I guess.

"But as far as the White House incident goes, I said what I believe, which is what the invitation had said they wanted me to do. But the newspapers made it seem as though I'd been rude and I wasn't.

"I said what I thought and I didn't shout. And I'd say it all again."

Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Eartha Kitt!