You can watch episode 1 of Voice Over Histories (Behind the Mic with Eartha Kitt) here! The transcript of the episode is below (without transcription of footage of interviews/clips that feature in the episode).
Transcript of Behind the Mic with Eartha Kitt
Welcome to episode 1 of Voice Over Histories, I’m Katie Aitken and this is a docu-series will shine a light on the people, the projects and the stories from the voice over industry of times past.
In this episode, we’re looking behind the mic to celebrate the life and the voice - of Eartha Kitt.
You might know Eartha Kitt as the singer of hits such as the 1953 Christmas classic, Santa Baby
- or perhaps as the 1960’s vixen who portrayed Cat Woman.
In holding such incredible credits that are still considered contemporary even by younger audiences today, you would be forgiven for not immediately knowing about her contributions and credits as a voiceover artist. However, with an impressive list of characters and productions that she lent her voice to - and quite the armful of Annie and Daytime Emmy Awards to show for it, her voiceover work was undoubtedly an important part of her career.
The extraordinary tales of Kitt’s life are a colourful mix of exciting career highs, bravery and deep hardship. Her legacy on the whole is framed differently depending on who you ask or what you read.
In her obituaries, she was noted for her “difficult reputation”, being a “force of nature” and a “seducer of audiences”. The New York Times recorded that she was among the first widely known African-American sex symbols - something that Kitt clearly reveled in as a self-professed “sex-kitten” and referred to herself as “the original material girl”.
But one of the greatest - and often referenced endorsements of Kitt was from Orson Wells, who in the 1950s declared her to be:
“the most exciting woman in the world.”
Kitt’s childhood years were loaded with hardship. She was born in South Carolina in 1927. Her mother was African American and Cherokee, and she never knew her father (but understood him to be the white son of the owner of the cotton plantation that she was born on.) At the age of about 3 or 4, she was rejected and abandoned by her mother who had taken up with a man who was said to have had little time for the light-skinned Eartha.
Eartha Kitt’s daughter, Kitt Shapiro, puts this into some context, saying:
"In 1927, to be a light- skinned black person in the South was just as horrible as being a black person in the white South. My mother was not accepted by the black community.”
So much of Eartha Kitt’s childhood was spent moving from abusive foster homes to abusive relatives homes, forced to earn her keep from a young age by picking cotton.
It wasn’t until Eartha Kitt was 71 years old that she discovered her actual date of birth - spending most of her life convinced that her birthday was 26th January 1926, when it was actually 17th January 1927.
Kitt began her career in the 1940s and was a rising star as an actress and singing sensation through the 1950s. Her singing style and overall vibe was something that future icons would strive to emulate, including Madonna (who covered Santa Baby) and Diana Ross (who said that Eartha Kitt’s influence was massive in how she created her sound and look in The Supremes).
In 1966, Eartha Kitt played the iconic role of Catwoman in the 3rd and final season of the TV show, Batman.
However, her career experienced quite the blip that started in the late 1960’s, and lasted almost a decade. This was as a result of 'The White House Incident'.
The incident took place at a luncheon of leading women, invited by Lady Bird Johnson in 1968, to discuss the subject of ‘Why is there so much juvenile delinquency in the streets of America?’
Now, at the time, protesters were raging against the Vietnam war and 1968 did in fact prove to end up being the deadliest year of the war for the Americans. President Lyndon B. Johnson made a brief appearance at the luncheon, where he addressed the room of women, stating that preventing youth crime started at home with the mothers and also called for more police support. Kitt had some questions…
After this rather floundering response about new social security funding for daycares - and then suggesting that the answer to her question was something for the women at the luncheon to figure out, the President made a speedy exit.
After that, Kitt recalled growing increasingly frustrated at the luncheon, feeling that the women were losing sight of the discussion at hand. When her time came to speak, she ensured that the conversation was refocused and took the opportunity to let her opinions be known - and she didn’t hold back.
“You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed. They rebel in the street. They will take pot … and they will get high. They don’t want to go to school because they’re going to be snatched off from their mothers to be shot in Vietnam.”
It was claimed that Lady Bird was reduced to tears and when it was time to leave, there was no car to take Eartha Kitt back to her hotel. When asked just after the incident if she felt bad about what had happened, having clearly upset both the president and his wife, Kitt maintained her stance.
Shortly after, Kitt’s bookings for entertainment appearances were cancelled and work offers in America dried up. It was a smear campaign. The CIA produced an extensive report about her - full of gossip and wild accusations… and lacking any evidence. In a later interview, Kitt called the report purely political and proof that she was blackballed by President Lyndon B. Johnson and Lady Bird Johnson.
In the late 1970’s, Eartha Kitt’s career was reignited back in America when she starred in Broadway hit, Timbuktu, which earned her a Tony Award.
Her ventures into voice acting came later in her career - really kicking off in the 1990’s.
So it seems she did try to dip her toe into the world of voice overs in the 1960s, but there were too many obstacles. [In the video, an interview clip plays where Eartha Kitt explains that she was told that her voice was too sensuous and that she wouldn’t be able to sell a product because audiences would only remember her voice and want to buy a record instead.]
But fast forward three decades to the late 90s and Kitt was doing commercial voice over work, for big brands such as Milky Way and Skippy Peanut Butter.
But commercial retail brands were not the only ones opening the voice over doors to Eartha Kitt though. Disney was not far behind. Perhaps Kitt’s best known voice over role is as Yzma in The Emperor’s New Groove. But this was not actually her only, or even first Disney character.
In 1998, she voiced Bagheera in Disney’s largely forgotten third adaptation of the Mowgli stories from the Jungle Book, the live action straight to video film. It was a couple of years later that she would use her distinctive voice to breathe life into the hilarious, evil villain, Yzma.
The success of The Emperor’s New Groove, thanks in part to the characters and performances, meant that it turned into an entire franchise, with a sequel film as well as a video game and subsequent TV show.
Between 2003 - 2007, Kitt provided the voice for Queen Vexus in the Nickelodeon show, My Life as a Teenage Robot.
And then, one of the final productions she would guest star in seems almost predetermined - after a career of being defined with every feline reference imaginable - a voice that “purred”, being a “sex-kitten” who “prowled” across the stage, even having a career that had “nine lives”. The production was Wonder Pets, in which Kitt lent her voice to Cool Cat. For this role, she posthumously won her final Daytime Emmy Award.
Eartha Kitt is truly incomparable - and spectacular though her career was, she is remembered for so much more than that. In terms of her voice, she used hers for so many purposes, being a real inspiration as both a voice actor and in life. As a voice over artist, she portrayed characters for Disney and Nickelodeon (as well as guest appearances in The Simpsons and American Dad). As a singer, she impacted and influenced music and musicians through the generations with her distinctive style and sound. But perhaps most inspiringly of all, she used her voice to speak up for what she believed in, with raw honesty and integrity, fighting for what she felt was right and not allowing herself to ever be held back for fear of the consequences.
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