EARTHA KITT (ca. 1960s) Talent agency photo

[Los Angeles, Shiffrin Agency, ca. 1960s] Vintage original 8 x 10″ (20 x 25 cm.) black-and-white single weight glossy silver gelatin photo, fine.

Born in poverty, Eartha Kitt used her natural talent and was accepted to Katharine Dunham’s dance group as a young woman. Her career took off from there and she appeared on Broadway by the early-1950s, then movies, TV, recordings and nightclubs.

When she spoke out about the U.S. involvement in Vietnam at a White House dinner, she was blacklisted from working in the country and went to Europe.

This portrait, with her Los Angeles agency stamp and her name typed on the label on verso, is from a time during which she was popular for playing Catwoman on the hit TV series Batman, and precedes the time when she left the U.S.