Kitty Carlisle Hart

NEW YORK - Kitty Carlisle Hart, whose career spanned Broadway, opera, television and film, including the classic Marx Brothers movie "A Night at the Opera," died after a battle with pneumonia, her son said yesterday. She was 96.

"She passed away peacefully" Tuesday night in her Manhattan apartment, said Christopher Hart, a director-writer-producer who was at her side. "She had such a wonderful life and a great long run. It was a blessing."

Hart was touring the country in her autobiographical one-woman show, "Here's to Life," until pneumonia struck her around Christmas, her son said.

Well-known for her starring role as Rosa Castaldi in the 1935 comedy "A Night at the Opera," her other film credits included "She Loves Me Not" and "Here Is My Heart," both opposite Bing Crosby; Woody Allen's "Radio Days"; and "Six Degrees of Separation."

But she was probably best- known as one of the celebrity panelists on the popular game show "To Tell the Truth." She appeared on the CBS prime-time program from 1956 to 1967 with host Bud Collyer and fellow panelists such as Polly Bergen, Johnny Carson, Bill Cullen and Don Ameche.

She began her acting career on Broadway in "Champagne Sec" and went on to appear in many other Broadway productions. In 1967 she made her operatic debut at the Metropolitan Opera in "Die Fledermaus."

Hart's late husband was Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Moss Hart.

Discipline ruled Hart's success. She began every day with an exercise routine, even after turning 90.

Hart was born in New Orleans on Sept. 3, 1910. She attended the Sorbonne, the London School of Economics and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.

She and Hart married in 1946 and had two children: Christopher and daughter Catherine. Her husband died in 1961 at 57. *