Three Years ago a talented collection of new faces appeared on Broadway in a hit musical by that name. The very brightest countenance belonged to sinewy, sensuous Eartha Kitt who stopped the show singing the sophisticated Monotonous ("Jacques Fath made a new style for me, I even made Johnny Ray smile for me, a camel once walked a mile for me ...").
Earthy Eartha welcomed in last yuletide with a seductive song to Santa Claus in the movie version of "New Faces" ("Santa, baby, hurry down the chimney to me ...").
This Christmas found her back on Broadway in a new play, "Mrs. Patterson," with a part very different from the ones that have brought her fame. "Mrs. Patterson" is the story of a very poor, very sensitive fifteen-year-old who dreams of being rich and famous -- it could easily be the story of Eartha's own childhood. She has traded her tightfitting toreador and abbreviated mink costumes for a sack-shaped dress and she doesn't sing a sexy line in the entire show. She is excellent in the part, but the play itself never comes to life.
We visited her backstage a few evenings ago. She didn't want to see us, at first, but finally let us in. She said she was very, very tired, and when we looked at her, we believed what she said. The off-Broadway reviews had been critical and a lot of work had gone into revamping the show before it opened in New York. By then, she said, she didn't care whether it opened or not.
She was worried about her voice. She was hoarse and she thought she might be losing it the way Frankie Laine had for a while a couple of years ago. She sat at her dressing table in a drab robe and smoked a cigarette and sipped at a cup of tea as she talked.
It was a little difficult remembering this was the same girl we'd seen spread across a Technicolor CinemaScope screen in a half-nude harem costume singing Uska Dara. We remembered some of the wild parties in Chicago when "New Faces" was playing there, and the night she'd lost the top half of her dress during the finale. She'd looked down after a few moments and pulled it up with a shrug, as if it didn't really matter whether she was covered or not. Now she was pulling on a drab little dress with all the sex appeal of a flour sack.
"I'm tired of living in a fish bowl," she said. "I want to get away, to rest. I haven't had a vacation in three years. I was supposed to have six weeks last summer. It was all set, then I got a call from a guy in the east. His club was in bad shape and he said he needed a name attraction in a hurry or he'd be out of business. I played there three weeks and figured I'd still have three to myself. Then I got the same sort of call from a friend out west.
"This is a crazy business. I had a guy wanted to sell me a pink mink for $20,000 a few weeks back. 'What am I gonna do with a pink mink?' I asked him. 'Think of the publicity it'll give you,' he said. 'Think of the publicity it'll give you,' I said, so he offered it to me for $10,000. 'How long would it take this pink mink to fade?' I asked him. 'About five years,' he said. Now $2,000 a year, that's too much money, even for a mink that's pink.
"When I was earning $100 a week, I wanted to earn $1,000. When I was earning $1,000, I wanted more. There's no end to it. Now I can buy almost anything I want, and all I'd really like to have is a little peace and quiet. But I can still remember when I had nothing. I guess I really wouldn't trade it, even if I could."
Eartha had become absorbed in the conversation and lost track of the time. She was fifteen minutes late for the opening curtain.
