Kitty Carlisle Hart, a popular American singer and television personality whose best known film was the Marx Brothers' classic A Night at the Opera (1935) and who spent years as a popular panelist on the TV game show To Tell the Truth, died of heart failure on April 17 in her Manhattan apartment. She was 96.

She was born Catherine Conn in New Orleans on September 3, 1910. Groomed from the beginning to be a patron of the high arts by her mother, she began piano lessons when she was only six years old, and was fed on a diet of classical music concerts and opera. Her father died when she was only 10 years old, and she relocated to Europe with her mother, eventually attending a private school in Lausanne, Switzerland.

By her late teens, she chose a career in theatre and attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London (RADA) with training in voice and singing. She moved to New York in 1932 with her mother, changed her name to Kitty Carlisle (legend has it that she culled the name from a phone book, a story she never denied), and quickly found herself in some key Broadway musicals in the early '30s such as White Horse Inn, Three Waltzes and Champagne, Sec..

The young beauty eventually signed with Paramount studios, and was quickly cast in three musicals in 1934: Murder at the Vanities and two films with Bing Crosby She Loves Me Not and Here Is My Heart. Yet most films buffs treasure her wonderful voice and presence in the Marx Brothers' brilliant bit of insanity A Night at the Opera. On loan to MGM for the one picture, Carlisle made the most of it and the film and her performance were hits. Yet after the film, Paramount bought out the remainder of her contract and she moved back to New York, although she returned to Hollywood to make two films: the minor if appealing musical opposite Allen Jones Larceny With Music (1943) and appearing as herself in Warner Brothers star-studded WW II morale booster Hollywood Canteen (1944).

In 1946, her put her career on hold after she married Broadway playwright and director Moss Hart and took time off to raise two children. But she got back into the public spotlight when she became a much loved panelist on many game shows in the '50s and '60s: I've Got a Secret, What's My Line?, and To Tell the Truth.

Carlisle Hart was admirably active toward the end of her life. She acted in a few movies: Woody Allen's Radio Days (1987), Fred Schepisi's Six Degrees of Separation (1993), and Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can (2002); she was a delightful guest on talk shows ranging from Howard Stern and Larry King; and, phenomenally in 2002 at the age of 91, performed a one woman revue, My Life on the Wicked Stage, about her life told through songs and personal anecdotes. She is survived by her daughter, Catherine; son, Christopher; and three grandchildren.

by Michael T. Toole