Source: Michael Bezjian/Getty Images for Entertainment Studios and Bryan Bedde / Getty
Archive this one in little-known and very crazy Hollywood history facts.
Jackée Harry, former star of 227, revealed on Twitter on Wednesday that she had a less than pleasant encounter at one time with the late acting and singing legend, Eartha Kitt. She didn’t say when, but shared that the greatest Catwoman of all pulled out her claws, or make that her hand, and slapped Harry. It was all over a cheating man.
She recounted the story after writer Michael Segalov asked people what their most surreal encounter was with someone famous. Harry said Kitt “slapped the f%#!” out of her because she was messing around with Kitt’s man, not knowing that the guy and the icon were in a relationship:
We can’t imagine how crazy of a scene that was, but we are glad that Harry didn’t mind sharing.
Interesting enough, Kitt had her own less than pleasant encounter with another woman, pertaining to a man. She said in historian Donald Bogle’s book, Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams, that Nat King Cole’s wife, Maria (Natalie’s mother), wrote her a letter telling her to watch herself with Nat. Even though he and Kitt weren’t involved, she claims he sent her some flowers after they wrapped up working on the film St. Louis Blues. The note with the flowers read, “Handy misses Go-Go,” which were the names of their characters. She sent a note back reading “Go-Go also misses Handy.” Maria caught wind of it and made her displeasure with their friendship known.
“She [Maria] sent me a beaded cashmere sweater as a thank-you gift with a note pinned to it that must have poisoned the pen that wrote it,” Kitt said in the book. According to her, the note read, “I don’t know if you think of yourself as some kind of temptress siren but the film is over and Go-Go (you) is gone, let’s leave it that way.”
It sounds like Kitt certainly heeded that warning, and Harry likely learned a lesson from the star’s hard hand…
