Kitty Carlisle Hart (born Catherine Conn; September 3, 1910 – April 17, 2007)[1][2] was an American stage and screen actress, opera singer, television personality and spokesperson for the arts.

She was the leading lady in the Marx Brothers movie A Night at the Opera (1935) and was a regular panelist on the television game show To Tell the Truth (1956–1978).

[6] After returning to New York in 1932 with her mother, she appeared, billed as Kitty Carlisle, on Broadway in several operettas and musical comedies, and in the American premiere of Benjamin Britten's The Rape of Lucretia.

[7] 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).

Carlisle resumed her film career later in life, appearing in Woody Allen's Radio Days (1987) and in Six Degrees of Separation (1993), as well as on stage in a revival of On Your Toes, replacing Dina Merrill.

[13] Carlisle was known for her gracious manner and personal elegance, and she became prominent in New York City social circles as she crusaded for financial support of the arts.

One of the two state theaters housed at The Egg performing arts venue in Albany is named the Kitty Carlisle Hart Theatre.

[14] She also served on the boards of various New York City cultural institutions and made an appearance at the annual CIBC World Markets Miracle Day, a children's charity event.

[15] Carlisle also widely performed her one-woman show, in which she told anecdotes about the great men of American musical theater she had known, notably George Gershwin (who had proposed marriage),[16] Irving Berlin, Kurt Weill, Oscar Hammerstein, Alan Jay Lerner, and Frederick Loewe, and interspersed with songs that had made each of them famous.

While chair of the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), from 1976 to 1996, she directed many millions of dollars in support to preservation projects, from the Niagara Frontier to Staten Island.