Kitten Natividad, who brought audacity and ample physical character to some of Russ Meyer’s last films, earned particular fame in several areas for his extreme sexploitation films, and John Waters, Quentin Tarantino and other inspired directors.24th Los Angeles. She was 74 years old.
Her sister, Eva Natividad Garcia, said the cause was a complication of kidney failure.
Natividad had little film experience and met Meyer, who was nearing the end of his infamous filmmaking career, while working as a go-go dancer and stripper in the mid-1970s.
In the 1960s, Mr. Mayer, who died in 2004, said, “Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!” I was doing it.
According to Jimmy McDonough’s “Big Bosoms and Square Jaws: The Biography of Russ Meyer, King of the Sex Film” (2005), Meyer, while editing the 1976 feature “Up!” He commissioned film critic Roger Ebert, who was one of the screenwriters for Up!, to perform the dialogue for a character he named the Greek Choir. I had you put together.
“I don’t care what she says,” Mr. Ebert recalled Mr. Meyer. “She just has to say something, and it should sound kind of poetic.
The newcomer was Ms. Natividad, and what Mr. Ebert had written for her was a paraphrase of the Imagist poet Hilda Doolittle.
“Meyer took New Girl out into the woods, stripped her clothes, and had her recite all this complex and arcane narration while hanging from a tree and hiding in the bushes,” McDonough wrote.
Mr. Meyer also fell in love with Mr. Natividad, who was married at the time, and began a relationship that lasted for the rest of the 1970s. And he made her the star of his next movie. This would be his last feature film: “Under the Valley of Ultra Vixen” (1979).
The film is often described as Mr. Meyer’s riff on “Our Town”. For example, a narrator named “Man from Small Town USA” appears on screen. Ms. Natividad plays a sexually frustrated woman whose husband is immersed in anal sex.
Critics didn’t have very good things to say about the film Meyer wrote with Ebert.
Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune, Ebert’s television partner on the movie review show then known as “Sneak Preview,” said Meyer’s “Vixen,” released in 1968, “featured the first nudity. So it was a fun nudity movie.” She’s the kind of fun, aggressive woman you see on Skinflicks. ’ But he added: If anything, he’s getting worse.
“Beneath the Valley” was Meyer’s final hooray, but it held a special place in his heart.of 1999 interview In Pop Cult Magazine, he called Ms. Natividad his favorite leading lady.
“She could just come and go,” he said. “It was just amazing. You really had to fit in with this girl or you’d be in hell.
McDonough said Meyer “came across his match at Kitten Natividad.”
“Mayer’s work was a mercenary boot camp, in which women inevitably took on antagonistic roles,” McDonough said in an email. “And in 1979’s Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens, Meyer subjects kittens to their usual insane tasks, squatting naked on top of mountains, rivers at the bottom of canyons, and metal Shot from underneath the bed frame (no mattress) while she bounces hard on the metal bed springs.
“She blasted away Meyer’s challenges like a marathon runner, always with a big smile on her face, and no matter how hard she tried, Meyer couldn’t beat her. is.”
Francisca Isabel Natividad (later she used her first name Francesca) was born on February 13, 1948 in Chihuahua, Mexico to Juan and Delia Davalos Natividad. In 2018, when she received the Legend of the Year Award from the Las Vegas Burlesque Hall of Fame, she told the audience When she grew up along the U.S. border, she gathered other children and secretly traveled to the infamous road to spy on striptease.
“When I looked out there, when I saw these beautiful women with big breasts, red lipstick, and big hairstyles, I wanted to grow up like them.
Her mother later moved the family to the United States, and at the age of 14, Natividad got a taste of the Hollywood crowd when she got a job cleaning the house of actress Stella Stevens.
She got a job as a key punch operator, but when she found out that her neighbor, who was working as a stripper, was earning twice as much as her, she changed careers and got her first job as a go-go dancer in 1969. I got a job and moved immediately. to stripping. When her agency urged her to adopt her stage name, she chose her “kitten,” she said.
In 1973, she won the title of Miss Nude Universe in San Bernardino, California.
While she was dancing at the Hollywood club Classic Cat, Shari Eubank, a fellow dancer in Meyer’s 1975 film Super Vixens, suggested she introduce herself to the director. She is said to have done so by poking him on the back with her bare chest.
That led her to “Up!” explained once Like this: “Skip the plot that has to do with Hitler’s daughter and sadomasochism. The film begins with me sitting in a tree, naked.”
Mr. Meyer paid her for the breast implants to replace the previous ones. He also paid a voice coach to help her lose her Mexican accent.
When she and Mr. Meyer were together, he greatly enjoyed the attention her body and her vivacious personality brought. In 2004, Natividad joined Meyer’s three favorite girlfriends at a New York Times roundtable. One of them, “Vixen” star Erica Gavin, recalled the couple’s entrance at her birthday party.
“Kittens came in first,” she said. “Russ loved walking behind the kitten because she could see all the reactions after she passed people. , she had no underwear at all.
After Meyer’s career came to an end, Natividad appeared in many other films, including hardcore porn, and even had a small role in Airplane! (1980), “My Tutor” (1983), and several other mainstream films.she had a double mastectomy As part of breast cancer treatment in 1999.
At a 2004 roundtable, Natividad reflected on her career.
“I’m proud to be a Russ Meyer girl,” she said. I couldn’t be that girl. We are very, very special.”
Natividad has been married and divorced three times. In addition to her sister and her mother, she has six half-brothers: Teresa Natividad, Amelia Natividad, Diana Ramirez, Victor Ramirez, John Natividad, and Estella Ramirez.
In an email, McDonagh said he first saw Natividad at Manhattan’s Show World. Her act involved hopping naked in a baby pool while the song “Rubber Ducky” blared from the speakers. Then, for a few dollars more, she was posing for a Polaroid.
“Somehow the kitten made everything look harmless,” he said.