Eartha Kitt at Home: The Singer, Actor, and Iconic Catwoman’s Domestic Life in Photos
In the US and in "exile" in London, the celebrated entertainer filled her rooms with art and books
“Overall, I’ve had a very good life, a life of cotton and caviar,” Eartha Kitt wrote in 1976. “And the cotton years have made the caviar years far more savory than they would have been had my early life been an easy one.” The singer, dancer, and actor was born in 1927 into poverty, abandoned by her mother, and sent to live with an abusive family on a cotton plantation. But by age 16, Kitt was dancing professionally in New York and well on her way to becoming a world-famous icon. Today, she is still well-known for her inimitable rendition of “Santa Baby,” her portrayal of Catwoman in the 1960s Batman television series, a memorable turn as Madame Zeroni in Holes, and a take on love and compromise that has enjoyed a viral afterlife in the four decades since it was first captured—amongst other performances.
Perhaps due in part to her humble upbringing, the late star spent much of her time at home more simply than her fabulous public persona might suggest; she loved working in her garden, raising chickens, and reading in her days off-duty. Read on to take a peek into the charismatic performer’s charming domestic life.
Photo: Bettmann / Contributor / Getty Images1/20A rising star in Chicago
In the summer of 1953, Kitt was on the Chicago leg of her tour with the musical revue New Faces of 1952 following a yearlong run on Broadway. This image shows the 25-year-old in her Windy City apartment in between performances. Her first album, RCA Victor Presents Eartha Kitt, was also released that year, and Kitt’s fame began to skyrocket as her rendition of the song “C’est Si Bon” became a hit. “I had had to hire a secretary the last month in Chicago because my fan mail had piled up and I could not catch up with it by myself,” Kitt wrote in her 1956 autobiography, Thursday’s Child.
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Photo: CBS via Getty Images2/20Upper West Side apartment
Kitt is shown here in her Manhattan penthouse in 1954. In her 1976 memoir, Alone With Me, the performer wrote that she was the first Black tenant in the Upper West Side building when she began subleasing an apartment on the ground floor through friends of a friend in 1952. “I bought their furniture from them, a studio bed and one chair. Period,” she wrote. “I slept in the nearly empty apartment until I could find time to buy furniture.”
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- CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images3/20
Moving up
The singer, shown here prepping for an interview on CBS’s celebrity interview program Person to Person, said she had to convince the building manager to let her stay in the ground floor apartment. But it turned out to be just the first of her homes in the building; she soon moved up to new heights. “I never knew exactly what changed his mind,” she wrote. “It wasn’t the fact that I was an entertainer. He knew my name, but he didn’t know I was on Broadway or at the Blue Angel [cabaret club] until three months later, when he came and offered me the penthouse, where I was to live for four years.”
Photo: CBS via Getty Images4/20Penthouse perch
This 1954 still shows the “Santa Baby” singer through a doorway in her New York City home during the filming of Person to Person. Kitt’s penthouse was situated atop a circa 1910 Renaissance Revival–style structure at 270 Riverside Drive. The limestone-faced building stretched 12 stories high and was designed by architects Rouse & Goldstone.
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Pretty as a picture
Kitt gets her makeup done ahead of her 1954 Person to Person appearance. Behind her hangs a portrait by American painter Lady Bird Cleveland. “She brought it to me about two or three weeks ago, and she did it all from a couple of photographs that she had of me,” the singer told news host Edward R. Murrow. “She had never met me before and I think she did a pretty good job,” Kitt explained, before showing off another painting in her budding collection.
Photo: Ben Martin/Getty Images6/20LA living
Kitt is pictured here in front of her Beverly Hills home in 1957. According to the performer’s daughter, Kitt Shapiro, her mother bought the two-and-a-half-acre property at 1230 La Collina Drive that same year. Built in 1924, the dwelling was made up of converted horse stables and a livery room from an old estate. “Someone had joined the two structures by adding a kitchen, family room, and bedrooms at one end and a bar, dressing room, master bedroom, basement office, and pool dressing room at the other,” the memoirist wrote in Alone With Me. The residence featured Spanish-style touches, including terra-cotta roof tiles and mosaic tiled floors.
Photo: Ben Martin/Getty Images7/20Beverly Hills bookworm
The Batman actor lounges in her California abode with a book in 1957. Kitt was an avid reader and a well-stocked bookshelf was a common theme throughout her living spaces. “I went nowhere, saw no one, and stayed in my room with my books and my thoughts,” she once wrote of her two-month run performing in Mrs. Patterson in Chicago.
Photo: Ben Martin/Getty Images8/20A menagerie of pets
Though she was single at the time of this photo series, the triple-threat entertainer didn’t exactly live alone. “I had no sooner moved into my new home when I installed an assortment of dogs and cats, some doves, and about 25 chickens,” Kitt wrote in Alone With Me.
Photo: Ben Martin/Getty Images9/20An AD-featured dwelling
The songstress is pictured here selecting a record from her vast collection in 1957. Three years later, the renovated dwelling was featured in Architectural Digest. As photos of Kitt’s abode are largely in black-and-white, the piece lends some clarity to her palette preferences: “Original wood from [the] old stable has been stained a celadon color and waxed,” the 1960 story details. “Curtains and carpet are dyed to match this wood. All upholstery is either a pale citron or a faded pumpkin color.”
Photo: Ben Martin/Getty Images10/20Decades of decorating
Kitt’s Beverly Hills home continued to evolve in the three decades she spent there before departing for Connecticut in 1986. “I have been decorating it and modifying it to suit my own taste for more than 18 years, and I’m still not finished,” the singer wrote in 1976. “For, unless I force myself to take a vacation, I’m seldom home more than three or four weeks at a time.”
Photo: Ben Martin/Getty Images11/20Eartha the art collector
One consistent element in Kitt’s ever-evolving living spaces: a good gallery wall. In a 2022 TikTok, Shapiro revealed that she still owns the portrait pictured hanging here in the background above her mother’s head. “I grew up looking at this painting in my house in Los Angeles,” she says in the video, before turning the piece around to show that Kitt had made a lengthy inscription on the back, describing how she had found the artwork while in Cuba.
Photo: Ben Martin/Getty Images12/20In the heart of the home
Kitt is shown here making a coffee at her stove. According to her daughter, the singer had an affinity for a certain cookware brand that remains quite trendy today. “She always used the heavy Le Creuset pots. The colorful cast iron cookware that required two hands to lift it from the stove. Dark green. With wood handles,” Shapiro said of her mother’s cookware preferences in a 2015 blog post.
Photo: Bettmann / Contributor / Getty Images13/20Tying the knot
On June 9, 1960, Kitt married real estate investor William McDonald. The duo is shown in a wedding photo here at her Beverly Hills abode. She gave birth to their daughter, Kitt, in 1961. The couple divorced several years later.
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Cozy downtime
Kitt and a baby Shapiro lounge in bed in this 1962 snapshot. “I loved spending time in that bedroom,” Shapiro later reflected on her mother’s room in their Beverly Hills home. “The rich fabric walls in cream and burgundy colors were made more intense by the warmth of my mother’s scent. I would lie in her bed and take in the sights, the cool satin sheets draped over me. Her bedroom was open, yet cozy with a balcony on one side of the room overlooking the pool, poolhouse, and garden.
- Joe Bangay/Getty Images15/20
Life abroad
In January 1968, Kitt attended a luncheon that changed her life. During the event, hosted by Lady Bird Johnson, she criticized the ongoing Vietnam War. For the next four years, the singer was largely exiled from working in the States. “To make a living for us, I was forced to work abroad whether I liked it or not,” she wrote in Alone With Me. It was during that time period that this October 1968 photo—wherein the former Catwoman shows off her collection of fur coats—was taken in her room at London’s Carlton Towers Hotel.
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Kitt and Little Kitt
Kitt and a six-year-old Shapiro share a tender moment in the same London hotel room. Despite the fact that Kitt often brought her daughter with her on her travels, she “would try to maintain a sense of normalcy by creating daily rituals,” Shapiro wrote in 2021. “Bedtime and playtime, in particular, were moments she always carved out in her day, no matter where we were. Even when she had a performance, getting me ready for bed was a priority, a time when the door was closed and the rest of the world was cut off. This allowed her to focus solely on me and whatever stories I had to tell from my day. During that time, we would read storybooks and sometimes do fun tongue-twister exercises. But mostly we laughed. A lot!”
Photo: Paul Harris/Getty Images )17/20Hard-earned haven
In this 1982 shot, Kitt poses in her garden overlooking the pool and poolhouse in her Beverly Hills home. In the documentary All by Myself: The Eartha Kitt Story released that same year, the star likens her dwelling to a person. “She’s a very comforting person, this house. I like her very much,” the iconic performer says at one point in the film. “This is my home, this is what I’ve paid my dues for. My guts are here.”
Photo: Paul Harris/Getty Images18/20Showing off her harvest
Kitt proudly holds up some citrus fruits grown on her property in 1982. “I planted a large garden, which I keep planted the year around—collard greens, beans, and all the good stuff,” she wrote in Alone With Me. “I’m a nut on organically grown vegetables and seldom buy canned or frozen.”
Photo: Paul Harris/Getty Images19/20At home in the kitchen
The Emperor’s New Groove actor is pictured here in her kitchen in 1982. The cheery space features a bright red vent hood and decorative straw mats, baskets, hats, and brooms. “If my mother couldn’t be found in the vegetable garden, where she was the most at home, then she was probably in the kitchen, prepping and cooking her harvest,” Shapiro wrote on her blog.
Photo: Paul Harris/Getty Images20/20Relaxing in the garden
The Holes actor poses with her St. Bernard dog in 1982. The grounds of her estate featured lush landscaping, mature trees, and “meandering little paths up and down the hills,” per Shapiro. “I love my home, with its garden and chickens and pets and friends and books,” Kitt wrote in her autobiography.
Four years after this photo was taken, Kitt relocated to Connecticut. She stayed in the area for the rest of her life, until she died in 2008 at the age of 81.
