Kitty Carlisle Hart, 1910 - 2007.

Kitty Carlisle Hart, whose long career spanned Broadway, opera, television and film, including the classic Marx Brothers movie A Night at the Opera, has died at age 96, her son said Wednesday.... [H]er other film credits included: She Loves Me Not and Here Is My Heart, both opposite Bing Crosby; Woody Allen's Radio Days; and Six Degrees of Separation....

Hart's late husband [Moss Hart] was a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright who wrote You Can't Take It With You and The Man Who Came to Dinner with George S Kaufman and won a Tony for directing My Fair Lady on Broadway....

Updated through 4/19.

She attended the Sorbonne, the London School of Economics and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.... She served on the board of Empire State College in New York and was an honorary trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art.

Ula Ilnytzky for the AP, also mentioning that Hart served 20 years on the New York State Council on the Arts and received the National Medal of Arts from Bush I.

Until the end of her life, Miss Carlisle remained a svelte, attractive woman with dark, neatly coiffed hair that she said she colored herself. With a full mouth outlined in bright red lipstick, she burst easily into warm laughter. She was known for her grace and charm, but by her own account she was slightly eccentric, a trait she treasured because she believed it gave her a lot of leeway.

Marilyn Berger in the New York Times.

See also: the official site; Gary Brumburgh's bio at the IMDb; the Wikipedia entry.

Update, 4/19: Richard Wolinsky conducted a telephone interview with Kitty Carlisle Hart in January 2006. The first question in the 13 and a half minute or so conversation is about dating George Gershwin. "He was a charmer." Also, a few stories about the Marx Brothers.

Posted by dwhudson at April 18, 2007 1:39 PM