According to the biography, “Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams,” Eartha Kitt once talked about Mrs. Cole’s extreme possessiveness over her husband, when it came to other women.
Eartha and Nat had a purely platonic friendship while working together on their film, St. Louis Blues. They were portraying the characters, “Go-Go” and composer, “W.C. Handy.”
Once filming for the movie was wrapped, Nat simply showed his appreciation to Eartha by sending her some roses and a friendly thank-you note that stated “Handy misses Go-Go.” Eartha wrote a short friendly not back to thank him, which stated “Go-Go also misses Handy.”
When that note got into the hands of Mrs. Cole, she allegedly was not a happy camper. So she allegedly did what any woman wanting to put another woman in her place over her man, would do- she politely read Ms. Eartha like nobody’s business…LOL! Eartha Kitt said this about Maria Cole: “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.’
Maria Cole’s 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.”
As you can see, Mrs. Cole didn’t play that! It was a good thing there was no social media back then, because we probably would have been seeing plenty of celebrity women revealing their ‘inner NeNe Leakes’ attitudes back in the day. That just makes us love these Old School celebs even more though- it shows that they were real people, just like the rest of us.
-ILoveOldSchoolMusic, Old School news with a new point of view
