GOODBYE KITTY (1910-2007). Every decade or so I visit the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA). Yesterday I made one of those visits. As I rode the elevator, I thought of Kitty Carlisle Hart, the longtime chair of NYSCA, and wondered how she was doing. Soon afterward, I learned she had died hours earlier. [Clarification: She died on Tuesday, April 17.]

I didn't know Kitty Carlisle myself, but I know people who knew her at NYSCA, where today there was sadness over her recent decline and passing after her decades of service to the arts. Everything I've heard about her indicates that she was very respected and well-liked.

Me, I remember Kitty Carlisle from her performance in the Marx Brothers movie A Night at the Opera, but mainly from her involvement in the game show To Tell the Truth. For decades she mixed with many of the city's arts luminaries--and she apparently claimed to have been courted by George Gershwin (though she married Moss Hart, who wrote Face the Music). She performed a nightclub act into her 90s.

Basically, this lady had one helluva career.

Let's see how she did on this segment of To Tell the Truth.



Source (9:02)