Actress Kitty Carlisle Hart dies at 96

NEW YORK, April 18 (UPI) -- Veteran actress Kitty Carlisle Hart, who visited American homes as a panelist on "What's My Line?" and "To Tell The Truth," has died in New York at 96.

The versatile Carlisle Hart, who died Tuesday of heart failure, began her career on Broadway, acted in films and opera, and was singing on stage as recently as last fall, The New York Times said Wednesday.

For two of her 10 decades of life in public, Carlisle Hart was an arts advocate, lobbying state and federal legislators for funding to support rural string quartets, theater groups and inner-city dance troupes.

She married Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Moss Hart in 1946, and the couple were often at the center of New York's theatrical community until his death in 1961, the Times said.

In later years, Carlisle Hart was popular on the lecture circuit.

She occasionally performed a one-woman show, "My Life on the Wicked Stage," an anecdotal performance about friends Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Jerome Robbins and George and Ira Gershwin.

She was in a Broadway revival of "On Your Toes" and appeared in the films "Six Degrees of Separation" with Will Smith, Woody Allen's "Radio Days" and the Marx Brothers "A Night at the Opera."