Kitty Carlisle

Kitty Carlisle was born Catherine Conn (pronounced Cohen) in New Orleans, Louisiana, of German-Jewish heritage. Her grandfather, Ben Holzman, was a mayor of Shreveport, Louisiana, and a Confederate veteran of the American Civil War. He had been a gunner on the CSS Virginia, the Confederate ironclad warship that fought the USS Monitor at the Battle of Hampton Roads. Her father, Joseph Conn, MD, was a gynecologist who died when she was ten years old. Her mother, Hortense Holzman Conn, was eager for her daughter to be accepted by local society. A taxi driver once asked if her daughter was Jewish, and she answered, "She may be, but I'm not."[4]

Carlisle's mother took her to Europe in 1921, where she hoped Kitty would marry European royalty, believing nobility were more likely to marry a Jewish girl. They traveled around Europe and often lived in what Carlisle recalled as "the worst room of the best hotel". Kitty was educated at the Château Mont-Choisi in Lausanne, Switzerland, then at the Sorbonne and the London School of Economics. She studied acting in London at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.[5] She studied singing with Estelle Liebling, the teacher of Beverly Sills, in New York City.[6]

Carlisle in 2000

Carlisle dated George Gershwin in 1933 "until George went to California".[9] On August 10, 1946, she married playwright and theatrical producer Moss Hart, whom she met at the Bucks County Playhouse in New Hope, Pennsylvania.[10][11] They had two children. Hart died on December 20, 1961, at their home in Palm Springs, California.[12] She never remarried, although she briefly dated former governor and presidential candidate Thomas E. Dewey after the death of his wife. During the 1980s and 1990s, Carlisle was the partner of diplomatic historian Ivo John Lederer, a relationship that lasted 16 years until Lederer's death in 1998. In her later years, she kept company with financier and art collector Roy Neuberger.[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. She was appointed to various statewide councils, and was chairperson of the New York State Council on the Arts from 1976 to 1996. 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. She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1997.[15]

She 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.

Carlisle died on April 17, 2007, from congestive heart failure resulting from a prolonged bout of pneumonia.[19] She had been in and out of the hospital since she contracted pneumonia some time prior to November 2006. She died in her Upper East Side,[20] Manhattan apartment, with her son, Christopher Hart, at her bedside. She was interred in a crypt next to her husband, Moss Hart, at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.

• Champagne, Sec (1933)
• White Horse Inn (1936)
• French Without Tears (1936)
• Three Waltzes (1937)
• Night of January 16th (1938)
• Walk With Music (1940)
• Larceny with Music (1943)
• The Merry Widow (1943)
• Design for Living (1943)
• There's Always Juliet (1944)
• The Rape of Lucretia (1948)
• The Man Who Came to Dinner (1949)
• Anniversary Waltz (1954)
• Die Fledermaus (1967)
• You Never Know (1975)
• On Your Toes (1983)
• Wit & Wisdom (2003)[21]

• Murder at the Vanities (1934)
• She Loves Me Not (1934)
• Here Is My Heart (1934)
• A Night at the Opera (1935)
• Larceny with Music (1943)
• Hollywood Canteen (1944)
• Radio Days (1987)
• Six Degrees of Separation (1993)
• Catch Me If You Can (2002; cameo)

• Vice Chair of the New York State Council of the Arts 1971–1976
• Chair of the New York State Council of the Arts – 1976 – c. 1996
• Chair Emeritus of the New York State Council of the Arts
• Board member of Empire State College
• Honorary trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Honorary trustee of the Museum of Modern Art
• Board member Emeritus in Memoriam of The Center for Arts Education
• Chair of the New York Statewide Conference of Women
• Special consultant to Governor Nelson Rockefeller on Women's Opportunities.
• Honorary Life Director of the Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt Institute (FERI)
• Life Member of the Beaux Arts Society, Inc. (1980–2007)[22]
• Keynote speaker at the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) graduation ceremony, 1999
• Member of the Peabody Awards Board of Jurors from 1977 to 1983[23]

• Carlisle, Kitty (1988). Kitty: An Autobiography. New York: Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-24425-8. OCLC 18070708.
• Kennedy, Harold J. (1978). No Pickle, No Performance. An Irreverent Theatrical Excursion from Tallulah to Travolta. New York: Doubleday.

• Kitty Carlisle at the Internet Broadway Database
• Kitty Carlisle at Internet Off-Broadway Database
• Kitty Carlisle at IMDb
• Kitty Carlisle at the TCM Movie Database
• Moss Hart and Kitty Carlisle Hart Papers at the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research
• Review: Kitty Carlisle Hart's 95th-birthday show at Feinstein's at the Regency New York Times
• Carlisle, Kitty (Mezzo Soprano) Metropolitan Opera Association database
• Kitty Carlisle (1910 - 2007) Photographs, Magazines, Books Virtual History