NEW YORK: Singer and actress Kitty Carlisle Hart, whose credits stretched from Broadway musicals to a Marx Brothers movie hit and stints on TV game shows, died on Wednesday at 96, according to a local funeral home and her website.

Neither source disclosed the cause of death, but Hart had been suffering from pneumonia, according to local media. A grande dame of the New York performing arts, Hart last fall starred in a show, featuring stories from her colourful life, called: “I Walk with Music” at a New York cabaret club, to celebrate her 96th birthday.

“Singing has made my life, and now that I’m 96 I have had the most wonderful renaissance of my career,” she said last year in an interview. “I do gigs all over the place and they pay me a fortune.” In 1935, she appeared in the Marx Brothers’ comedy “A Night at the Opera”.

Baby boomers may know her best as a long-time panelist on the television game show “To Tell the Truth,” popular in the 1950s and 1960s. She also appeared as a panelist on the shows “What’s My Line?” and “I’ve Got a Secret”.In 1946, she married playwright Moss Hart, who wrote “You Can’t Take It With You” with George S. Kaufman. The play earned them a Pulitzer Prize in 1937. Her husband also wrote “Winged Victory,” “The Man Who Came to Dinner,” also with Kaufman, and won a Tony award for best director for “My Fair Lady” on Broadway. He died in 1961.—Reuters