Personal Life
Carlisle married playwright and theatrical producer Moss Hart on August 10, 1946, the two having met as actors at the Bucks County Playhouse in New Hope, Pennsylvania. The couple had two children. Hart died on December 20, 1961. Carlisle never remarried, but briefly dated former governor and presidential candidate Thomas E. Dewey, after the death of his wife.
Known for her gracious manners and personal elegance, Carlisle became prominent in New York City social circles as she crusaded for financial support of the arts. She was appointed to various state-wide councils, and was chair of the New York State Council of the Arts from 1976 to 1996. The New York State Theater, in Albany, NY is named the Kitty Carlisle Hart Theatre in recognition of this. She also served on the boards of various New York City cultural institutions and additionally would make an appearance at the annual CIBC World Market's Miracle Day, a children's charity event at the former CIBC Center (300 Madison Avenue).
In her later years, she kept company with the financier and art collector Roy Neuberger. She also widely performed her one woman show in which she told anecdotes about the many great men in American musical theatre history whom she had personally known, notably George Gershwin who had proposed marriage (according to an interview in American Heritage magazine), Irving Berlin, Kurt Weill, Oscar Hammerstein, Alan Jay Lerner, and Frederick Loewe, interspersed with a few of the songs that made each of them famous.
In 2006, Carlisle performed at Feinstein's at the Regency in New York City, in St. Louis, Missouri, Phoenix, Arizona, Atlanta, Georgia, and at the famed Plush Room in San Francisco. According to her official website, her appearances in Atlanta in November 2006 were her last public performances. In December 2006, she made her final public appearance as the special celebrity guest for the annual Noel Coward Society birthday tribute in which she laid flowers in front of Coward's statue at The Gershwin Theatre in New York City.
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