THE MOST EXCITING WOMAN IN THE WORLD
I must say, Eartha, that I had not given you a thought since those 1950s and early 1960s listening as I did on my little blue radio--until today. You started to come into the celebrity business in a big way in those years when I began my association with the Baha’i Faith in that Ten Year Crusade, 1953-1963, when I was in my childhood and my teens a lifetime ago., Eartha. It was said, then, you were “the most exciting woman in the world.” American singer, actress and cabaret star that you were and you “never followed the herd,” as you put it.
You wrote your autobiography three times: 1956, 1976 and, finally, again, in 1989 just when I was starting out on my own autobiographical literary journey. You married the year I began my travelling-pioneering for the Canadian Baha’i community in 1962. It lasted, the marriage that is, until the very year I finally worked out a start to my own career as a teacher among the Inuit--in 1965. I heard a sound-bite of you three times today. Moved as I was by your words, I write this quasi-eulogy.-Ron Price, My Third Autobiography, 26 December 2008.
You made your film debut in 1948
after fifty years of Baha’i history in
Canada and became, by degrees, a
sex-kitten due to that sultriest of
Christmas songs ever, Santa Baby,
with your voice in 1953 stamping
your catlike image as Catwoman in
that TV series Batman while a new
Kingdom of God was just beginning
to put its own stamp on the earth---
You also turned into something very
naughty and nice---something we all
turn into, eh Eartha, eh? Salt of the
earth, eh, eartha, eartha, eartha.........
You were quite a talker, a good-looker,
as we used to say, Eartha and you made
your debut on Broadway the year I was
born, making my own debut on this mortal
coil a lifetime ago before a new generation
of prophets of doom and pundits of error
helped push humanity deeper into a slough
of despond with tangled fears and phantoms
of wrongly informed imaginations which
seized millions upon millions. I wish you
well Eartha in the new Land of Lights where
you may now be after so many worldly lights.
Ron Price
26 December 2008