By KATHARINE RAMSDEN
On this day in 1910, Player Kitty Carlisle Hart was born Catherine Conn (pronounced Cohen) in New Orleans, LA. A stage and screen actress, opera singer, and popular television game show personality, she was also a spokesperson for the arts, serving for 20 years on the New York State Council on the Arts.
Carlisle's early movies included Murder at the Vanities (1934), A Night at the Opera (1935) with the Marx Brothers, and two films with Bing Crosby, She Loves Me Not (1934) and Here is My Heart (1934). Returning to her film career later in life, she appeared in Woody Allen’s Radio Days (1987) and Six Degrees of Separation (1993), as well as on stage in a revival of On Your Toes, replacing Dina Merrill. Her last movie appearance was in Catch Me If You Can (2002), in which she played herself in a dramatization of a 1970s To Tell the Truth episode.
In 1946, she married the renowned playwright and theatrical producer Moss Hart —a Player since the late 1930s—whom she had met at the Bucks County Playhouse in Pennsylvania. They had two children and were married until his death in December, 1961.
For her many contributions to the film industry, Carlisle was added to the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960. In 1991, she received the National Medal of Arts. She was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1999.
Carlisle died at her Manhattan home on April 17, 2007, after a prolonged bout of pneumonia.
Katharine Ramsden is a (semi-retired) former journalist and corporate communications executive. A graduate of Mount Holyoke College and Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, she is a recently new Player, avid reader and one time a cappella singer.
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