“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 known for her singularly charismatic presence, from her inimitable rendition of “Santa Baby,” 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.
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.