Eartha Kitt

Eartha Kitt has been the ne plus ultra of exotic vamps for more than half a century, and shows no signs of slowing down. Her Venus-flytrap persona can still flip from inviting glances to forbidding stares in the blink of a campily long eyelash; and her drolly perverse voice–a tangy contralto with an untraceable Pan-Continental accent and fiercely trilled rs–is delightfully intact. A hybrid of Mae West and jungle cat, she keeps the Carlyle feeling hot, hot, hot.