Posted on 04/20/2007 6:44:39 AM PDT by Grendel9
Kitty Carlisle’s career embraced Broadway, opera and the Marx Brothers film, A Night at the Opera, while her marriage to the Pulitzer prize-winning playwright Moss Hart created one of Broadway’s most glamorous couples.
A woman of forceful opinions, which she did not hesitate to air, Carlisle never minded who she offended, a character trait which later proved useful in her 20 years as chairwoman of the New York State Council on the Arts.
(Excerpt) Read more at entertainment.timesonline.co.uk ...
I remember her on To Tell the Truth and The Match Game. Wow, do I feel old.
This one goes into the “I thought she was already dead” category. I also don’t remember her for “forceful opinions,” but maybe I’m confusing her with Arlene Francis.
I’l take dead celebs for $100, ALex.........
I remember her on “To Tell the Truth”....methinks she was to pick some scientist out of the three...she voted for the voice of Bullwinkle, Bill Scott, instead.
Does anybody remember this? I was quite young then.
Well, that’s one for the “Didn’t Know They Were Alive Until They Were Dead” file. I always enjoyed her.
April 19, 2007
Kitty Carlisle Hart, a New York Blend of Actress, Singer and Arts Advocate, Dies at 96
By MARILYN BERGER
Correction Appended
Kitty Carlisle Hart, a doyenne of New York culture and society and a perennial entertainer who appeared on Broadway and in films and was still singing on the stage as recently as last fall, well into her 10th decade, died Tuesday at her home in Manhattan. She was 96.
The cause was heart failure, her daughter, Catherine Hart, said.
Outgoing and energetic, Miss Carlisle became a visible champion of the arts in her middle years, lobbying Congress and the New York State Legislature for financing. For 25 years, first as a member and later as chairman of the New York Council on the Arts, she crisscrossed the state to support rural string quartets, small theater groups and urban dance troupes.
At other moments she could be found performing, as she did on a cruise ship plying the Greek islands during her 90th year. Just last November she sang the George Gershwin song “The Man I Love” at the annual gala fund-raiser for Jazz at Lincoln Center. That followed a series of engagements in New York and other cities celebrating her 96th birthday. Miss Carlisle, as she was known professionally, also became a favorite of the first television generation as a regular on the game show “To Tell the Truth” and a guest on “What’s My Line?”
As a young girl she was taken around the capitals of Europe by her mother, Hortense Conn, whose ambition was to establish her daughter in a “brilliant” marriage, preferably to a prince. There were piano lessons, voice lessons and a grounding in the dramatic arts.
When a royal husband did not materialize, Miss Carlisle recalled, her mother would tell her, “You’re not the prettiest girl I ever saw, and you’re not the best singer I ever heard, and you’re certainly not the best actress I ever hoped to see, but if we put them all together, we’ll find the husband we’re looking for on the stage.”
She found that husband in the celebrated dramatist Moss Hart. They were married in 1946. In the years before he died, in 1961, they were at the center of New York’s glittering theatrical life.
The 1932 revue in which she broke into show business, “Rio Rita,” played the Capitol Theater on Broadway four or five times a day as the stage show between movies. She also played the “subway circuit” for one-week stands in Brooklyn and the Bronx. The show then went on the road for eight months.
snip
Same gal.
Last time I heard of Mrs. Hart was in the Simpsons episode Bart gets famous as the I Didn’t Do It Boy.
He dreams about appearing as a panelist on “Match Game 2034” along with Billy Crystal, Farrah Fawcett-Majors O’Neal Varney, ventriloquist Loni Anderson, Spike Lee, and “the lovely and vivacious head of Kitty Carlisle.”
I used to see Kitty Carlisle arriving at the opera. She was well into her eighties and came alone, looking beautiful in a dark-lilac colored coat and black high heeled shoes. Her posture would have done credit to a woman of twenty. A lovely and very intelligent lady.
She looked old back then!
“one of Broadway’s most glamorous couples”
Oh, barf.
You’re right, however - she had a great sense of humor.
She was the one with dark hair.
This one goes into the “I thought she was already dead” category. I also don’t remember her for “forceful opinions,” but maybe I’m confusing her with Arlene Francis.
Same here.
Is Orson Bean alive?
yep, it appears so.
She was a class act all the way.
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