Did You Hear About Kitty Karr? by Crystal Smith Paul

A multigenerational saga that traverses the glamour of old Hollywood and the seductive draw of modern-day showbiz.

When Kitty Karr Tate, a White icon of the silver screen, dies and bequeaths her multimillion-dollar estate to the St. John sisters, three young, wealthy Black women, it prompts questions. Lots of questions.

A celebrity in her own right, Elise St. John would rather focus on sorting out Kitty’s affairs than deal with the press. But what she discovers in one of Kitty’s journals rocks her world harder than any other brewing scandal could—and between a cheating fiancé and the fallout from a controversial social media post, there are plenty.

The truth behind Kitty’s ascent to stardom from her beginnings in the segregated South threatens to expose a web of unexpected family ties, debts owed, and debatable crimes that could, with one pull, unravel the all-American fabric of the St. John sisters and those closest to them.

As Elise digs deeper into Kitty’s past, she must also turn the lens upon herself, confronting the gifts and burdens of her own choices and the power that the secrets of the dead hold over the living. Did You Hear About Kitty Karr? is a sprawling page-turner set against the backdrop of the Hollywood machine, an insightful and nuanced look at the inheritances of family, race, and gender—and the choices some women make to break free of them.

Published by Henry Holt & Co
on May 2, 2023

Review:

In my opinion, one of the things working against the book is that it was often marketed as “For fans of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo”. I want to point out – the only thing this book has in common with Evelyn Hugo is the fact that the main characters in both books worked in Hollywood. I almost feel like marketing this book in that way might have hurt it because I didn’t feel as though they were anything alike – and I don’t mean that in a bad way. I feel like this book can stand perfectly on its own without that tag. I felt that the tone, the characters and the pace of both books were very different.

While Evelyn Hugo dealt with her career in Hollywood and being married to several men while hiding her love for a fellow actress, this book focuses on a biracial woman from the south who passes as white and is able to find great success because of it.

While reading the book it made me curious which stars from the past actually passed as white and I was surprised to learn that Carol Channing’s father was biracial but she said nothing until 2002 when at the age of 81 she released her memoir titled, “Just Lucky I Guess”.

On the flip side of that there was Fredi Washington who could easily pass as white and even played a light-skinned black woman posing as white in 1934’s “Imitation of Life”. However Fredi embraced her heritage and according to liveabout.com, the only time Fredi ever used her light skin to pass as white was when she would go into establishments to buy food for her husband and his bandmates who were all dark-skinned and not allowed in the establishments.

The book alternates between present and past. Present day is told from Elise St. John’s point of view. Elise is a Black actress (and the daughter of another famed actress) who has been nominated for an Academy Award. She is engaged to another very popular Hollywood actor and seems to live the dream, but what the public doesn’t know is that Elise’s fiancée has been having an affair and she knows it (and doesn’t really care). Elise recently dropped a controversial social media post and her publicist fears it may hurt her chances at the Oscar, so she’s lying low in LA at her parent’s house. Not only is the press on her for this, but they’re also curious why Kitty Karr – a very popular White starlet back in the day who recently passed away – has left her entire estate to Elise and her sisters. As Elise digs into Kitty’s past, we are taken back and learn about Kitty’s upbringing and how she was the product of a white man raping her mother, who was a housekeeper for a wealthy family. We learn about her upbringing and eventually how her mother sent her to LA to live with a friend so that she could live out her life as a white woman and enjoy the privileges of white life that she would never see as a Black woman in the south.

Once she gets to Hollywood and settles into her new identity, Kitty works her way up in the film industry, fighting misogyny and exploitation. She also meets several other light-skinned women who also pass as white and eventually joins their efforts in raising money and using it to help the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

While I enjoyed this book, and felt that it touched on some very interesting and important topics, I didn’t love it. I think it was mostly because of the pacing. Sometimes I felt the story dragged a bit and I found myself drifting off. I feel like some of Kitty’s early life could have been tightened – I felt the book picked up more when she headed to LA. I also would have liked to know a little more about Elise and her fiancée’s relationship. I didn’t really care that they were splitting up because I knew little about the two of them. In fact, that entire plot Point could have been left out and it wouldn’t have affected the book at all. I also felt like there were a bunch of characters that I didn’t get to know very well. They all seemed like they were important, but I didn’t really know them, so I didn’t feel the way I probably should have felt toward them.

While I felt the book could have been tighter in these areas, I still enjoyed it and it’s one I would probably recommend to friends who like historical fiction.