Two for the Show

Manhattan's nightclub world was under the spell of two visiting princesses last week, and their subjects hardly knew where to pay homage first. At the Waldorf-Astoria's Empire Room, demure Dorothy Dandridge rambled through her slinky-but-sweet songs about love and how to enjoy it. A few blocks away, in the downstairs den known as the Copacabana, petite Eartha Kitt took her listeners on a quadrilingual (English, French, Spanish, Turkish) tour over much the same ground, sticking mostly to its back alleys.

Resignation & Command. From bee-stung lips to white-sheathed hips, 32-year-old Dorothy personified topic A. Her warm brown eyes singled out two or three lucky males for what appeared to be a special invitation, and her long, discreetly undulating body lent emphasis to the looks. Some of her songs told a story--about Good for Nothing Joe or Just One of Those Things; some rekindled the old glories of such sentiments as I Got Rhythm and Easy to Love. Her voice was commonplace, but her poised and charming delivery had the customers holding their breath. Everyone was ready to follow her calypso invitation:

Never mind the noise in the market Only mind the price of the fish.

Remove your nose from the grindstone And do the things you wish.

Eartha Kitt, 27, did not seem the type to ask people to do what they wished--only what she wished. Where Dorothy shimmered in white satin, Eartha smoldered in red bugle beads. Where Dorothy swayed in sweet resignation, Eartha froze and darted her almond eyes. When Eartha sang, it was in a smoky, reedlike quaver. Most of the time she was the fervid, grasping female as she trumpeted C'est Si Bon, Apres Moi and The Heel. But at the end she often inserted a wistful and not very convincing twist--the manner of the little girl lost in the wicked world.

Freud & Voodoo. Dorothy grew up in a family of entertainers, bowed in Cleveland at the age of five in a family act. Eartha was a South Carolina farmer's daughter, and long before she reached Manhattan's Katherine Dunham dance school, at 16, she knew poverty and had a brush with voodoo (she still recalls how voodoo charms were found in the mattress after a relative died). Both Eartha and Dorothy made their way to the top through the nightclub circuit as singers, but think of themselves primarily as actresses. This season both made big acting hits, Dorothy as Carmen in the movie version of Carmen Jones (the singing was dubbed in by Marilynn Home), Eartha as the impish heroine of Broadway's Mrs. Patterson.

Behind the entertainment whirl, the girls hanker after some intellectual life. Dorothy Dandridge slips into a pink shirt and tight slacks and thinks seriously about her private personality. As a divorcee, she is faced with raising her nine-year-old daughter, has delved into Freud and Norman Vincent Peale to help herself understand the problem.

The offstage Eartha Kitt sits propped in the corner of a divan, buried in the folds of a quilted robe. Her brassy singing tones are softened to a husky speaking voice. Besides reading books, she is writing one--about her life up to 27. She is not, she decided, "aiming at any particular character. I may be one person today, another tomorrow. Whatever I feel psychologically is the way I sing my songs." She is pally with French art circles, and this year she visited the late great Albert Einstein (see SCIENCE). For the long run she plans to start a school "to teach entertainers how to present themselves."

In that school Eartha Kitt would be the president, all right, but Dorothy Dandridge would rate at least a full professorship.

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