It would be hard to top any event that climaxes with Kristi Rose recreating Jayne Mansfield’s eye-popping stroll in The Girl Can’t Help It and photographer Jim Herrington doing a pole dance in a Nehru jacket. Somehow, though, vintage clothier Katy Kattelman has managed the impossible. Invitations went out last week to Katy K’s Second Anniversary Fashion Show, to be held Sunday night at The Gas Lite Lounge, and already eyes are snapping open like window blinds.
The last show drew hundreds of local scene-sters to the Showtime runway, where a parade of Nashville musicians and clubhoppers modeled vintage Nudie suits and Shaft-cool fashions from decades past. This year, the proprietress of Katy K’s Ranch Dressing has invited several celebrity friends to attend or participate, including world-class gender bender and male model Joey Arias—who does a wicked Billie Holiday, we hear—and Gunilla Hutton, the lovely Nurse Goodbody from Hee Haw. The floor show can only be described as a head-on collision between Manhattan and Music City.
The performer who seems to be creating the most excitement, however, is headliner Kitten Natividad, a voluptuous Mexican spitfire and cult-movie phenomenon who first came to prominence as Miss Nude Universe in 1973 at age 25. Her career skyrocketed when filmmaker Russ Meyer featured her in two bra-busting mid-’70s epics, Up! and Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens, and throughout the 1980s she appeared in a succession of horny-teenager comedies, including My Tutor and The Wild Life. She remains active today as a stage and cinema performer at the unheard-of age of 48—a triumph in a youth-oriented industry that shoves aside established stars for the next flavor of the month.
Natividad and Katy K have been friends since the 1980s, when the clothier designed and created wardrobes for her in New York. When Katy K asked her to participate in the fashion show, Natividad says she readily agreed. In a recent telephone interview from her home in Southern California, she expressed great delight in returning to Nashville.
“I’ve been to Nashville plenty of times over the years,” Natividad recalls. As a stripper, in the 1970s, she performed to enthusiastic crowds at The Pink Poodle and The Carousel Club in Printer’s Alley; she calls Skull’s Rainbow owner Skull Schulman “my buddy” and fondly remembers visiting him and his poodles. “I used to stay at the Noel Hotel at the corner of Church and Fourth Streets,” she remembers, “but unfortunately, it’s an office building now.”
Nonetheless, Natividad says her memories of Nashville are extremely pleasant. She also declares herself “a big-time fan” of country music, particularly Willie Nelson and Loretta Lynn. “I had a huge crush on Randy Travis, that tall guy who married his much-older manager,” she confesses. “I like his cool, calm voice.”
Born Francesca Natividad in Juarez, Mexico, Kitten and her family moved to El Paso when she was 8 years old. As the first of nine children, she helped raise her siblings in a traditional Catholic household. Her desire, though, was to be in show business, and when she was 16, during a visit with her grandmother in Los Angeles, she accepted a job as actress Stella Stevens’ housekeeper.
After graduating from high school, Natividad returned to work for Stevens again but was soon asked to leave when she couldn’t keep Stella’s 12-year-old son, Andrew, out of trouble. (According to Kitten, young Andrew, who would later become both an actor and director, once accidentally set Coldwater Canyon on fire.) She briefly worked as a keypunch operator for IBM, but office life did not suit her God-given talents. Kitten premiered as a go-go dancer in Pasadena in 1969. The money and hours were much better, and Kitten’s career as an exotic entertainer began in earnest.
Although Natividad rose to prominence in Russ Meyer’s films—which in turn launched her phenomenal secondary career as a photographer’s model—the pair’s professional and personal relationship deteriorated by the early 1980s. “I have a lot of respect for Russ, but he made a lot of promises he didn’t keep, which kind of put me at a disadvantage,” she says. “But I doubt I would have done the other film projects without the adversity our breakup caused.” Today, her career continues unabated. She recently completed United Thrash, a strange German horror story filmed in Zimbabwe with cult actor Udo Kier (Andy Warhol’s Dracula).
The recent renaissance in vintage pinup, cheesecake, and nude models has renewed interest in Kitten and her intriguing career. She considers herself fortunate to remain an object of desire, despite the expected protests from those who consider her work purely exploitative. “As an adult performer, I always chose to do what I did willingly,” she insists. “No one ever forced me to take my clothes off, and I always have fun doing it. I’ll never understand why the most natural thing in the world has always been tarnished by those who are just too uptight to accept the fact that we are all sexual creatures. I still feel and look great at 48 and plan on staying in the public eye for as long as they’ll have me.”
Natividad will be signing videos and photographs in addition to performing at the fashion show Sunday night. No one will be admitted without an invitation, but limited invitations may be obtained by calling Katy K’s Ranch Dressing at 259-4163. Believe us, it’s worth a call.
