From the August 4th, 1952 Life Magazine issue:
"Eartha Kitt, who is swinging from a maple tree for fun in New York's Central Park on the previous page, is the girl who swung suddenly into prominence on Broadway this summer in a revue, New Faces (Life June 2). For Eartha, who is now also a nightclub star, it was the long way round to success. Her recent route is shown in pictures from her album with captions she wrote herself.
They show her progress when she went abroad four years ago with a Katherine Dunham dance group, then traveled about on her own, admiring Europe from Paris to Istanbul to Stockholm. Europe, in turn, admired Eartha for her elflike beauty and her ability, as the New York Times critic, Brooks Atkinson, put it, "to make a song burst into flames." The album is pretty impressive for a 24-year-old girl who at the age of 8 was picking cotton in North Carolina.
After her nightly stint in New Faces, Eartha goes over to the Blue Angel, best of New York's intimate nightclubs, and makes two after-midnight appearances. She sings in English, French, and Turkish (she can also sing in German, Italian, Spanish, Creole patois), running the gamut between purring love serenades, Holy Roller shouting, innocent folk songs and sexy ditties that ululates with Bacchic abandon. Eartha does not dance much now, but when she sings every muscle in her lithe, feline body sways and ripples in a ballet of its own.