Star of stage and screen, Kitty Carlisle Hart dies
Kitty Carlisle Hart, whose career extended from the Broadway stage to television and film, has died at age 96.
Her son, Christopher Hart, confirmed his mother “passed away peacefully” at home, after struggling with pneumonia, which she contracted during Christmas.
Kitty Carlisle Hart, seen here celebrating her 94th birthday in New York in 2004, has died at age 96.
(Richard Drew/Associated Press)
“She had such a wonderful life, and a great long run. It was a blessing,” he said.
Hart appeared for many years on the popular game show To Tell the Truth.
She starred in numerous movies including A Night at the Opera (1935), She Loves Me Not and Here Is My Heart, both opposite Bing Crosby, as well as Woody Allen’s Radio Days. Her Broadway productions included Champagne Sec and the 1984 revival of On Your Toes.
Her operatic career included a debut at the Metropolitan Opera in 1967 in Die Fledermaus and the title role in the American premiere of Benjamin Britten’s Rape of Lucretia.
Hart was born in New Orleans on Sept. 3, 1910. She went on to attend the Sorbonne in Paris, the London School of Economics and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.
Many may recall her stint, from 1956 to 1967, as a celebrity panelist on the prime-time game show To Tell the Truth, in which three contestants would claim to be the same person and the panelists would have to determine which one was telling the truth.
Hart’s late husband was the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Moss Hart, known for You Can’t Take It With You and The Man Who Came to Dinner. Moss Hart, who died in 1961, won a Tony for directing My Fair Lady on Broadway.
Received National Medal of Arts in 1991
Kitty Hart continued to lead a robust life through her senior years, starting each day with an exercise routine.
“I can do things a woman a fifth my age can’t do.Ö I do 40 leg lifts without stopping, and then I take my legs, I put them over my head, and I touch the floor behind me with my toes, and then very slowly I let myself down, touching every vertebrae as I go,” Hart told 60 Minutes when she was 90.
Hart served 20 years on the New York State Council on the Arts and in 1991, received the National Medal of Arts.
Besides her son, she is survived by her daughter, Catherine, and three grandchildren.
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