After Leaving Paris as a Star, Eartha Kitt Recorded "Santa Baby"

 

South Carolina native Eartha Kitt grew up in Harlem during the latter years of its renaissance. While a teenager she won a scholarship to study at the Katherine Dunham School of Dance.  By 1946, Kitt was performing in Dunham's dance troupe, the most prestigious dance troupe of that time. In the late 1940s she toured with them across the United States and to Mexico. 

In 1948, Eartha Kitt traveled to Europe with the Katherine Dunham dance troupe.  While they were in Paris, Eartha was offered a singing job in a nightclub, where she would earn much more money than she'd been making as a member of the dance troupe.  With that offer and other opportunities she was enticed to stay in Paris.  She made a life and early career for herself and eventually left Paris as a star.

In 1953, Eartha Kitt recorded the song "Santa Baby" for the first time with Henri René and his orchestra, in New York City.

About the Movie 'Midnight in Paris'

A few years ago, I wrote the following piece about my experience getting to a local theater and viewing the film Midnight in Paris. The piece was well received at a previous blog site, so I've decided to share it with my Paris Related Pieces readers.  Also, I want to say here that in Midnight in Paris, Josephine Baker was played by French actor Sonia Rolland, who is of African and French parents.  Rolland was born in Kigali, Rwanda, from a Rwandese mother, Landrada, and a French father, Jacques.

 

   

       

                                          GIVING MIDNIGHT IN PARIS A CHANCE

When the new Woody Allen film Midnight in Paris opened in Washington, DC, on the last Friday in May, I headed downtown to catch the E Street Cinema's earliest showing of it for that day: 12Noon. Since the theatre's doors were not open at 11:30, I went to purchase a bite to eat at AuBon Pain, a nearby café. I ordered a croissant and a cup of coffee, which I enjoyed very much, especially since I had not taken time to have breakfast at home.

After leaving the café a few minutes before Noon, I walked a couple of blocks to the theatre. The dim auditorium was less than half full, but I wasn't surprised: It was Noon and a work day for many people. The evening and nighttime audiences would probably fill the place if the patrons turned out to be both Francophiles and fans of actor-writer-director Woody Allen.

Although I was not a fan of previous films made by Woody Allen, I wanted to give Midnight in Paris a chance for two reasons: (1) I had enjoyed some older movies in which I'd seen this movie's stars, namely Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, and Marion Cotillard, and I wanted to see if I would enjoy their work just as much in this one; and (2) I wanted to find out if "Midnight in Paris" really puts the viewer in Paris. Following is what I found out.

Midnight in Paris puts the viewer in Paris from the start of the film, as images of the city amble across the screen behind beginning credits, and while jazz trumpeter Sidney Bechet is playing "Si Tu Vois Ma Mere;" And it keeps the viewer in Paris throughout the story, so much so that the city itself becomes a character.

Other outstanding characters in the film are Gil (Owen Wilson), a disenchanted Hollywood screenwriter-turned-novelist, and Adriana (Marion Cotillard), Picasso's mistress and one of many people Gil encounters during his nightly jaunts to his favorite golden era, the 1920s.

In the present, Gil is in Paris with his girlfriend Inez (Rachel McAdams) and her parents, conservative Republicans in Paris on business. At night while Inez is dining, dancing, and otherwise hanging out with her parents and a couple of old friends she bumps into, Gil is traveling back in time to the 1920s and hanging out with Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and others of the so called Lost Generation during the time known as The Jazz Age. Gil also enjoys Cole Porter's music and he encounters Josephine Baker and other extraordinarily talented expatriates.

Midnight in Paris, the 2011 Cannes Film Festival opener is sometimes light and breezy, other times gray and melancholy, but it's almost always romantic, and it ends as it probably should: Gil finds real love with a girl in present-day Paris; and after breaking up with Inez and her parents permanently, he remains in the City of Light and starts living his dream in the 21st Century.

Celebrating Gwendolyn Bennett's Birthday

Writer, poet, and artist Gwendolyn Bennett's birthday is July 8th.  But since I believe a person's birthday celebration should not be limited to just one day in the month, I'm starting the celebration  early with this piece about Bennett's Paris-connected moment in time.

Gwendolyn Bennett was one of the literary lights of the Harlem Renaissance.  The Columbia U. and Pratt Institute graduate became a professor of art at Howard University in 1924.  In 1925 she received a $1,000 fellowship from the Sigma Alpha Theta sorority to study in Paris, and she arrived in the French capital in June of the same year.

During her year in the City of Light, she met writer Gertrude Stein, singer and activist Paul Robeson, poet and novelist René Maran, and other writers and performers.  She carved a place for herself in the African American Community there.

As she did not have a lot of money, Bennett spent many of her days painting and writing poetry,  and recording her observations in a journal.

About the City, she wrote in her journal:

            “There never was a more beautiful city than Paris… there couldn’t be.  On every hand are works of art and beautiful vistas. . . one has the impression of looking through at fairy-worlds as one sees gorgeous buildings, arches and towers rising from among mounds of trees from afar.”

While living in Paris, Bennett saw Josephine Baker perform, and met musicians, singers, and dancers.  She dated Louis Jones, a violinist, and she enjoyed dancing at Bricktop’s nightclub, and experienced nights on the town in Montmartre.

After the year ended, Gwendolyn Bennett returned to New York.  Although she never lived in Paris again, she paid homage to that great city in short stories that she wrote, such as “Wedding Day” and “Tokens.”   Her time in Paris had surely broadened her literary horizons,  just as it had done for other important African American writers of the 1920s,