With her sultry drawl and feline charisma, the singer and actor oozed sophistication. But Eartha Kitt, who was born on 17 January 1927, had the toughest of childhoods. In History looks at how she ...

as British journalist John Williams published a biography titled America's Mistress: Eartha Kitt, Her Life and Times. Shapiro chose not to cooperate with the 2013 book, in which John claimed that ...

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.” ...

Fewer knew of her being conceived by the rape of her mother and being rejected and abused throughout her childhood, nor as someone who has spent much of her adult life as an activist working on ...

But Eartha Kitt, who was born on 17 January 1927 ... Carolina cotton plantation on 17 January 1927, she had a start in life that could hardly have been more difficult. She never knew her father ...