Eartha Kitt, the striking cabaret singer and actress whose lithe grace and purring diction fueled her image as a sophisticated sex-kitten, died on Christmas day in Connecticut of colon cancer. She was 81.

She was born Eartha Mae Brown on January 17, 1927 in North, South Carolina. The daughter of a white farmer and a black Cherokee mother who were not married, Kitt's early childhood memory was one of abandonment; her father left her almost from infancy and her mother married a man who did not care for her biracial status. Eventually when she was eight, she was sent to live with an aunt in Harlem.

Although still poor, she did get the necessary exposure to the arts and culture of New York City that would make her thrive. Kitt was admitted to New York's High School for the Performing Arts, and earnestly took dancing and singing lessons. Sadly, her home life was still not a stable one and after her aunt threw her out of her home, Kitt was forced to drop out of school, find odd jobs and had to sleep in the subway just to survive.

On a lark, she auditioned for Katherine Dunham's dance school at age 16 and when she won a scholarship. it gave Kitt the lifeline she needed. She soon toured with the dance company all over Europe and during a tour stop in Paris, Kitt found work as a singer. She soon found herself performing in nightclubs all over the city. In 1950, she came to the attention of Orson Welles, who cast her as Helen of Troy in his stage production Time Runs, an adaptation of Faust. It was a sensation.

By the early '50s, Kitt returned to the United States and after successful bookings in New York City, made her Broadway debut in New Faces of 1952. She was a standout, and by 1953, she landed a contract with RCA Victor. For the next few years she scored a string of top ten singles such as the French-language C'est Si Bon, I Want to Be Evil, and of course, her zesty, inimitable reading of the eventual Christmas classic Santa Baby. Around this time, Kitt made her first forays into television, giving terrific performances of her songs on shows such as Toast of the Town, The Colgate Comedy Hour and The Nat King Cole Show.

A black actress of her calibur and sexuality would find her way to the big screen and in the late '50s, that's exactly what happened. She made her film debut opposite Sidney Poitier in the African colonial drama The Mark of the Hawk (1957); and then a much stronger display of her acting skills with Nat King Cole in W.C. Handy biography St. Louis Blues (1958). She also played a complex prostitute in the leading role of Anna Lucasta (1959).

Good film roles became more scarce by the '60s, but Kitt found more work than ever as a guest performer on guest spots to several hit shows of the day: Ben Casey, I Spy, Mission: Impossible and an unforgettable turn as a riveting Catwoman on the Batman series. Her career, and life for that matter, took a heavy dip in popularity when in 1968, as a guest to a White House luncheon on inner-city youth arranged by Lady Bird Johnson, she brazenly criticized the Vietnam War and the impact it had on minorities. Severely insulted, President Johnson criticized Kitt in public and she became the subject of an FBI watch that prevented her from getting any bookings in the United States for 10 years. Kitt was forced into exile in Europe, where she worked on British productions such as the Frankie Howard farce Up the Chastity Belt (1971) and the teleseries The Protectors.

Kitt returned stateside in 1978 as a cast member of the Broadway show Timbuktu, an all-black adaptation of Kismet. She garnered a Tony nomination and her career in America was back on form. She returned to the cabaret circuit where throughout the '80s and '90s, she was the marquee headliner. It was this time that Kitt returned to the big screen in a string of pleasant, even self-deprecating parts in Boomerang (1992) with Eddie Murphy; a hilarious cameo as a trial judge in the bawdy farce Fatal Instinct (1993); the popular children's hit Harriet the Spy (1996); and a stellar cameo as a brooding fortune teller in the hit film Holes (2003). Most impressively, Kitt was active up until her recent passing, earning two daytime Emmy awards in the last two years for her vocal work in the animated series The Emperor's New School. Her final film appearance was in the Vanessa Williams comedy And Then Came Love (2007). She is survived by her daughter, Kitt; and two grandchildren.

by Michael T. Toole