Eartha Kitt was a singular figure in American entertainment in the course of a career of remarkable versatility and enviable stamina that spanned six decades. Whether she was singing, acting or dancing, she exuded a sensual, erotic magnetism that was often described as “feline” and led Orson Welles famously to describe her as “the most exciting woman in the world”.

Her husky, purring voice, sinuous moves, provocative sexuality and innate sense of timing made her a brilliant cabaret and nightclub singer and she enjoyed major hits with songs such as Let’s Do It, C’est Si Bon, Just an Old-Fashioned Girl and Santa Baby. As an actress she starred in a wide range of feature films but was perhaps best known for her appearance as Catwoman in the 1960s television series Batman. Many, however, believed that she was at her most charismatic on the stage and she appeared in a number of notable Broadway and touring productions.

Above all she was a personality, unpredictable, outspoken, sometimes outrageous, and she belonged to the handful of international artists immediately recognised by people who had never seen her perform. As the illegitimate child of mixed-race parents who was given away at birth, she also overcame considerable disadvantage to become one of the first artists to cross the racial divide at a time when the US was still a deeply segregated society. She courted controversy when she spoke out against the Vietnam War during a celebrity luncheon with President Johnson at the White House in 1968. Her career in America nose-dived as a result and she spent most of the next decade working abroad in Britain and Europe before she made a triumphant return to New York in the Broadway spectacle Timbuktu! in 1978.

In later life her energy and enthusiasm for performing remained undimmed and she revelled in the description of “the oldest sex kitten in the business”. In her mid-seventies she wrote a guide to staying physically fit, Rejuvenate (2001). The cover featured a picture of her in a curve-hugging black dress with a figure that would have been the envy of many women less than half her age. Her final performance, for a TV special, was recorded six weeks before her death.

Eartha Mae Kitt was born illegitimately in 1927 on a cotton plantation in South Carolina. Her mother, aged 14, half African-American and half Cherokee Indian, had been raped by Kitt’s white father, the son of the plantation owner, and she took her surname from the plantation. Abandoned shortly after her birth, she was brought up by a foster mother, Anna Mae Riley, whom she believed for a long time to be her biological mother. She had a harsh upbringing and as a child she picked cotton and fought with the animals in the backyard for scraps of food. At 9, after her foster mother died, she went to live with an aunt in Harlem, who abused her, and she regularly ran away and slept rough on rooftops or in the subway.

After working as a seamstress and singing in dance halls, she successfully auditioned for the Katherine Dunham dancing school and in her teens appeared with the troupe in Hollywood, Mexico City and London, making her film debut with them in Casbah (1948). After touring the Continent, she decided to stay in Paris and try her luck as a cabaret singer. While there, she was cast in 1951 by Orson Welles as Helen of Troy in his modern version of Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. The production was taken to Frankfurt, Hamburg and Munich. Welles, who was smitten with her, also became her lover for a time.

Back in New York she performed in the leading Manhattan clubs, including 25 consecutive weeks at the Angel, and pursued her career as an actress. She sealed her reputation in the Broadway revue New Faces of 1952, singing the hit Monotonous, and a film version followed two years later.

But she was ill-used by the cinema. An appearance opposite Sidney Poitier in The Mark of the Hawk (1958), St Louis Blues (1958), in which she played opposite Nat King Cole, and a black version of Philip Yordan’s play Anna Lucasta (1959) were the pick of her early films.

Her talents were better utilised on the Broadway stage in such productions as Mrs Patterson (1954) and Shinbone Alley (1957). She revived her portrayal in the former of a poor black girl dreaming of life as a lady in a BBC television production.

Even more extraordinary was her husky, purring voice. Her first album, RCA Victor Presents Eartha Kitt, appeared in 1954 and featured such songs as I Want to Be Evil, C’est Si Bon and the saucy Santa Baby, which is still heard on the radio each Christmas to this day. Playing heavily on her carnal image, her 1955 follow-up album was titled That Bad Eartha, and featured Let’s Do It, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and My Heart Belongs to Daddy.

She continued to work prolifically in film, TV and on nightclub stages throughout the 1960s, making her biggest impact when she replaced Julie Newmar as Catwoman in Batman.

Although she had never been noted for her political pronouncements, by 1968, with the civil rights movement reaching its peak, she was considered an important enough AfricanAmerican icon to be invited to a White House luncheon with Presdent Lyndon Johnson. During the meal she declared that the Vietnam War was responsible for drug addiction, truancy and rebellion among American youth. She reportedly reduced her embarrassed hostess, Lady Bird Johnson, the wife of the President, to tears.