Kitty Carlisle Hart

Remember back to a time when television was in black and white. Every Monday evening, a panel of witty and urbane celebrities delighted audiences on the game show, “To Tell The Truth”. It was perhaps as close as most of America would ever come to the Algonquin Roundtable.

Now, remember the elegant woman, always dressed to the nines, with the infectious laugh. For 17 years, Kitty Carlisle Hart modeled evening gowns and matched wits with Bill Cullen, Orson Bean and Peggy Cass. She was, for most of us, a pure celebrity. We knew she was famous, but we didn’t know why.

In fact, before Kitty Carlisle became an intrepid game show panelist, she’d had a brief fling at movie stardom, as a singer in the Marx Brothers’ 1935 “A Night At The Opera” and opposite Bing Crosby in “Here Is My Heart.” She’d gone on to a lucrative career as a New York nightclub diva, and later became a tireless champion for the arts. But her place in the celebrity pantheon was sealed in more than 17 years on “To Tell The Truth.”

Born Catherine Conn in New Orleans, her father died when she was 10. Her mother, by all accounts a willful woman, took her only daughter and a small insurance settlement, and moved to Europe, where Kitty studied music, dance and theater. By her early 20s she had landed a Hollywood contract and spent her off time in New York within a rarefied social circle that included George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter and Bernard M. Baruch.

Many asked her to marry, but she demurred until she wed Moss Hart in 1946. A huge force in the theater, Hart had worked with George S. Kaufman to write such Broadway classics as “You Can’t Take It With You” and “The Man Who Came to Dinner.” Hart, most often described as “dashing,” went on to write screenplays, including Judy Garland’s “A Star Is Born,” and to direct “My Fair Lady,” the biggest Broadway hit of its day. He died in 1961, leaving Kitty with two young children. She had plenty of suitors, but never remarried.

Instead, she invented a new career as a politician, becoming the highly visible chairman of the New York State Council on the Arts. During her 20-year tenure, she served under five governors--Democrats and Republicans--employing her considerable charm and energy in a successful crusade to establish and maintain state funding for the arts in her adopted home, New York.

As elegant as ever, she is now 87, and has resumed performing, hosting a review of the great songs of the American musical theater. In Los Angeles to visit her son, a writer and producer, talked about her sometimes tyrannical mother; the man she married and the men she didn’t, and lessons learned from a life well lived.

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Question: Your mother was quite extraordinary, and not terribly easy to please. How did you manage to come out so sweet, when your mother was often such a terror?

Answer: After I wrote about her in my autobiography, it was some sort of catharsis, because there was no more resentment toward her. It gave me a chance to examine her, and what she did for me from the vantage point of age, and I discovered that what I became, and what I am today, I owe all to her.

I had “come out” in Rome and Paris. The whole idea was that I was to make a brilliant marriage. And when I didn’t, she came to me, a woman of lightning decisions, and said, “Now you’ve got to go to work.” She said I could be a model, because I wore clothes well. But even then, I knew that was a dead end. So she said, “Well, you’re not the prettiest girl I ever saw, you’re not best actress I ever hope to see, and you’re certainly not the best singer I hope to hear, but if we put them all together, we’ll find the husband we’re looking for on the stage. I’ll send you to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts with my few remaining pennies.”

Meanwhile, she had a beau--mother always had a beau--and this one was a rather well-known lawyer in New York, and he came to Paris. He fancied himself as something of an impresario, and had some experience negotiating contracts with Hollywood studios. I was about 19 at the time. He took me to lunch and told me, “If you follow me, I will make you a star, but you must do everything I tell you to do.” I felt a bit as if I had sold my soul to the devil, but I agreed.

So, I was enrolled in the Royal Academy, and got the lead in the school play. My mother came from Paris to see me, and I waited backstage after my performance with baited breath, because a lot hinged on this. This was our future. Finally, she came backstage and said, “My dear, we’ve made a ghastly mistake.” But there was nowhere to go but up, so we persevered. Mother’s beau got me a contract and the next thing I knew, I was in Hollywood.

Q: That would have been the early ‘30s. What was Hollywood like then?

A: It was very strange for me, because I had been in Paris and Rome, and I had traveled alone throughout Europe and had been very independent. But my mother’s beau had seen some bad things in Hollywood, so he told my mother she had to come with me, and I wasn’t allowed to go out. So I saw nothing of Hollywood social life. All I saw was the Beverly Wilshire Hotel and the studio. I didn’t even have a car to begin with, then finally I got a little two-seater Pierce Arrow. Well, the first thing I did was take the gates off at Metro. I was a very bad driver, and I banged into one gate, and then both gates fell on top of the car. I also once ran into Groucho Marx’s car, but that’s another story.

But Hollywood at the time was beautiful. Sunset Boulevard was all poinsettias, it was gorgeous. Before I got my car, I used to ride a little bicycle all over Beverly Hills. I had a very pretty brown dress, with a little mink jacket, and I rode my bicycle, and there were not very many cars, and it was lovely. I also remember a terrible earthquake, though I can’t remember what year that was.

Q: But you did meet your husband, Moss Hart, in Hollywood, although it took him almost a decade to ask you to marry him.

A: Nine years. He was very busy. He didn’t have matrimony on his mind.

Q: But you did. How did you know that this was the man for you?

A: I thought it would be so suitable. He’s a distinguished writer, and I’d seen virtually all of his plays. I knew he had a beautiful house in the country, because I’d been brought there by a different fellow who wanted to marry me, the writer Norman Krasner. He’d brought me out to have Moss look me over--they were friends, you see. Moss Hart took one look at me and said to Norman, “That’s not the girl for you. You see her coming down a great staircase in your house, dressed in a velvet negligee. Well, that’s not that girl at all.”

And indeed, after Moss and I were married, we had a wonderful apartment with a great staircase, and I have a picture of me coming down the stairs in a velvet negligee.

Q: Meanwhile, you’re being courted by a host of great creative names--writers and actors and business tycoons. Why did you keep turning them all down?

A: I knew I would never get married except for love. I was stubborn. I remember calling my mother and saying, “Uhh, I’m going to wind up like Sophie Tucker singing ‘Some Of These Days’ in some god-forsaken nightclub in Montana.”

Q: And didn’t George Gershwin propose?

A: Yes. He didn’t love me, but he asked me to marry him. He thought I would be eminently suitable as a wife. I knew he was seeing another girl, and I asked him why he didn’t marry her. And he said, “I would never marry her, she’s not Jewish.” So I fit the bill in every way. I could be with his chic New York friends; I admired and understood his music, and we danced very well together. But I was just beginning my career, and had put too much into it to give it up. I knew marriage would mean doing nothing but taking care of George. So I declined. And sadly, George died just six months later.

Q: If you were not ready to give up your career for George Gershwin, why were you ready to give it up for Moss Hart?

A: Oh, by that time the career had pretty much given me up. I was making money, but I didn’t think being queen of the nightclubs was going to be very suitable forever. So by the time Moss asked me to marry him, I was ready. But you see, he was so smart. He knew that you don’t take one kind of a woman, and try to turn her into another. If you do, the woman you loved disappears. And he knew I was a person who likes to work--I’m still working--so when “To Tell The Truth” came along, like a gift from God, he encouraged me to take it.

Q: Everyone was always so witty. It couldn’t have been scripted?

A: It was on the level. It was a special talent to be a good panelist. You had to have an enormous range of talent, and the ability to make a joke about virtually anything. And also, to not step on anyone else’s joke. I had a very good education, and I had a mind like a rat’s nest full of unrelated facts, which I could call up--in those days, anyway--at the drop of a hat.

There was Peggy Cass, who was very bright, quick and funny, and we were a beautiful contrast. I would trail around in these very elaborate evening dresses, jewelry and all, because I thought, don’t be a bore. You sit at a desk, they only see you from the waist up--give them something to look at. Now Peggy Cass is always dressed in little Peter Pan collars, little sweaters and loafers. One day I came out of the dressing room, all swathed in green chiffon, and there’s Peggy in her Peter Pan collar, and she looked at me and said, “Well, Madame Butterfly, it doesn’t look like we’re going to the party.”

Q: I have to ask you about the men in your life. You seem to have been surrounded by very creative, and often difficult men--

A: I’m very good with difficult men.

Q: Well, that’s my question. What is it that made you so attractive to powerful, creative men?

A: That I don’t know. I think what attracts anyone to me is that I want to please. You see, I had to please my mother, in order to turn her wrath aside. I learned that I could turn her anger by making her laugh.

I was also very interested. I could listen to a man talk for hours, and never be bored. That’s an important thing for a busy, important man--somebody who will listen. And, of course, I wasn’t bad looking.

Q: After your husband’s death, why did you never remarry?

A: My mother said you should be married once, and once is enough. I had lots of offers, but I married them all off to somebody else--I either married them off, or they died. But I was never tempted to marry anyone again, because I never loved anyone the way I loved Moss.

Q: And yet you did invent another career, as a “bureaucrat,” in your words. Did you surprise yourself with that transformation?

A: Oh yes, and I found I loved politics. I could go up to Albany and knock on doors, and I could almost always get in. One politician who didn’t let me in later told me his wife was furious with him. “She wanted to know what you were wearing!” So that was Open Sesame for me, and once I got in, then I could do my politicking. I served under five governors, and I called them all, “Governor, darling.”

Q: How do you feel about the current political climate, in which government arts funds are being cut to the bone, and politicians seem no longer interested in funding art projects?

A: What is it that makes us feel we don’t need the arts? I think the backlash against these cuts has already begun. People are being to understand again that children learn better and think better if they experience the arts. Otherwise, we end up with a country full of yahoos.

Q: You write about three ingredients to a long life: good genes, good diet and a good disposition. You inherited your genes and cultivated your disposition, so what about your diet?

A: Exercise, that’s another thing. I get on the floor in the morning and do things people my age would never dream of doing--but I’ve done them all my life. I swim. I get on the treadmill, but it bores me, and I walk in New York. I watch what I eat. And I’ve discovered, as I’ve gotten older, that I shouldn’t drink. I used to drink anything that came along. We all did. Now I don’t sleep well if I drink. And I’d rather have a good night’s sleep.

Another thing that keeps me going--I talk to everybody. In the streets, on trains and planes. I’m a friendly soul and I’m interested.

I’ve also had to overcome some terrible faults, like envy. When I was starting out in the theater and someone else would get the part, I would be just green. But I learned to curb that. I’ve tried hard to eradicate my faults because, you know, as you get older, they get worse.

Q: Do you think a writer even as talented as Moss Hart could have scripted out something like your life?

A: Never in their wildest dreams could anyone have thought of anything quite so wonderful. I remember thinking after Moss died that my life was over. I worried that no one would ever come to visit me, because everybody came for Moss--he was so attractive, so much larger than life. But slowly, I found, they would. And to think, I got to be chairman of the New York Council on the Arts, and the governors were all so nice to me! And to have this extra, added thing of being able to go out and entertain again. Marvelous!