Down to Eartha

You climb the iron stair the stage door man points out and walk along the paint peeling corridor until you come to the second door. There is a little piece of shiny paper taped on the door that says, "Eartha Kitt."

You imagine she hears you stop, but you knock anyway and you can't tell about the voice that answers, so you push the door and sidle into a little room. You suppose it is a dirty room, like the rest of the theatre, and old, but you don't look. It is very small because she is leaning into a mirror almost in front of you. Then she turns around and you notice for a minute that she is wearing a little house-coat like your aunt buys in Woolworth's and she has makeup on.

You take out some paper and push Across the River and Into the Trees and Time away so you can lean on the table to write. And then you start the usual questions and try not to look up too much.

"I more or less always wanted to go into show business. I was in high school plays. Someone dared me to see Katherine Dunham for an audition, so I did it for fun on the dare, but it turned out not to be so funny because I got a complete scholarship and I had never done much of any dancing before."

"You know how dreams are. You never really believe they will come true. I worked hard, from ten in the morning until eleven at night for many months, then I was out in a show, Blue Holiday, but it only ran five days and I went back to studying."

"Finally I joined the Katherine Dunham regular company and we went on tour. There was Carib Song, which took place in Haiti or someplace like that, and other shows, and we toured all of Mexico, too. Then we went to Hollywood where I had a little bit of a part in Casbah, that awful thing with Tony Martin. I was the dancer who said, "Come on, Pepe," She snapped her fingers and wiggled in her chair.

"Then it was Europe. All over Europe. But finally I quit Katherine Dunham. I had been there for a long time and I was getting stagnant. I wanted to go on my own. So I got a job singing at 'Carroll's' which is a cabaret. That's where Orson Welles saw me." He was strange. I met him at the bar upstairs. You know, there are two bars at 'Carroll's,' one upstairs and one downstairs, and he said very formally, 'Hello, my dear, I certainly enjoyed your performance this evening.' A record across the room was playing the Third Man Theme. He walked over, took the record, and slowly broke it over his knee until it was in little pieces. Then he just walked out."

Orson's Faust

She was still looking at the light. You ask her about the play, about Welles' Faust.

"It was a marvelous play. I have never enjoyed anything so much. I loved doing it. I was out of town for a while, but when I came back, some friends told me Orson was looking for me for a part in it. I was Helen of Troy, the most beautiful woman in the world, and I made him immortal with a kiss. It was sort of a melange of all the Fausts everybody has ever written, with some of Orson's own ideas in it. It was in modern dress, and on a deserted stage. It was wonderful."

"Strange? Of course it was strange, and so was he, but fascinating. The critics don't like him because he is too far ahead of them. He is too genius, and besides, they don't understand him. I was quite fond of him. Was he taken with me? I suppose so. Once he bit me during a performance."

She stops talking and you notice she has been telling you about the play for a long time, and you have not been writing anything, only watching her talk. You pick up the pencil again, and begin the usual questions again. Her favorite composers are Debussy and Villa Lobos. "I like music I can feel." Depending on her mood, she likes to sing, dance, or act. "It's all dramatics, you know, on the stage. I like dramatic acting very much."

"It was when I came back from Europe to sing in New York. I had been away four years. They told me to be continental. I can sing in seven different languages, and I did. But it didn't go over. The people in New York could not understand. So I act my singing too, and then they understand. They always like accents, and French, because it is a romantic language."

She points to the wall and you see the Jacques Fath label in a dress there. Then you say you hope she has good fortune in her career and she thanks you and you decide to go. It is noisy in the hall and all the New Faces are passing up and down. You hope you didn't leave too suddenly. Outside the stage door there is man asking the stage door man to get him some autographs. He names some he wants. "Don't you want Eartha Kitt's?" the stage door man asks. "Does she give autographs?" the man says, and you put the paper you have been writing on in your pocket and go toward the subway.