Social Diary 11/23/04 - An evening honoring Kitty Carlisle Hart

An evening honoring Kitty Carlisle and Moss Hart

Central Park. Sunday at 2:45 PM. Photo: JH.

Sunday night at Lincoln Center, over at Avery Fisher Hall, the Metropolitan Opera Guild hosted an evening, “Hart to Hart,” honoring Kitty Carlisle Hart and her late husband, the distinguished playwright/ screenwriter/director/producer who died young (at fifty-seven) in 1961. This year is Moss Hart’s centenary. His widow, long famous in the world and now long beloved as a New York figure, was ninety-four last September 3rd. Everyone marvels at Kitty Hart who is still out there, still working and still taking in life, looking years and years younger than most people’s concept of 94.

Kitty Carlisle Hart

The black tie gala was staged to benefit the Guild that does so much to support the Met, and they raised about $500,000. The Met Opera Guild supporters have a lunch every year which I always cover (last year’s was in honor of Pavarotti) because the Guild members enthusiasm is contagious. That enthusiasm delivers and the Hart To Hart evening was no exception.

The show began at six p.m. and the hall was filled to capacity. Julie Andrews and Beverly Sills emceed. The first half was devoted to Moss Hart. Brooklyn-born, he grew up in a poor family. On an old kinescope clip of Edward R. Murrow’s “Person To Person” Friday night TV interview show in the 1950s, he explained that he had an unhappy childhood, the kind that fosters dreams of a better life. His, he knew, would be in the theatre, although in the earliest days he had no idea he’d be a playwright. He had an amazing career that began with a hit show “Once In A Lifetime,” a collaboration with George S. Kaufman when he was 26.

This show put Hart on the high road of Broadway success and was followed by further collaborations with Kaufman including “You Can’t Take It With You,” which won a Pulitzer in 1936 and “The Man Who Came To Dinner” in 1939. He also wrote several other shows including “George Washington Slept Here,” “The Great Waltz,” “Merrily We Roll Along,” which Hal Prince and Stephen Sondheim made into a musical almost fifty years later; “The Fabulous Invalid, “Light Up the Sky,” and “The Climate of Eden.” In the meantime he also wrote books for musical revues (including “Face the Music” and “As Thousands Cheer” with Irving Berlin, “Jubilee” with Cole Porter – with a score that included “Begin The Beguine,” – and sketches for “Seven Lively Arts,” along with “I’d Rather Be Right” with Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart). He also wrote the very successful patriotic Air Force show, “Winged Victory” and the revolutionary (for its day) “Lady In the Dark” with Words and Music by Ira Gershwin and Kurt Weill.

An old kinescope clip of Moss Hart on Edward R. Murrow’s “Person To Person”

His screen credits include “Broadway Melody of 1936,” “Gentleman’s Agreement,” Hans Christian Anderson,” “A Star Is Born,” and “Prince of Players.” He started his directing in 1941 with “Lady in the Dark” and directed and/or produced eleven other shows including “My Fair Lady” and “Camelot.” Forty-three years after his death, Moss Hart’s body of work still produces enormous royalties for his heir.

Julie Andrews recalled working with Moss Hart on “My Fair Lady.” She said that it has now become well known that during those early days of rehearsals, her future in the show was very “iffy.” Finally one weekend, Hart dismissed everyone from rehearsals and set down to work with the actress on the part of Eliza Doolittle. “That weekend, he laid the role on me,” she said, in relating the transformation.

Later Celeste Holm, who knew him in the late 1930s, reported the same generosity of spirit in helping her career. Rosemary Harris, who was discovered in London by Hart, related a similar story, as he brought her to America in 1952 to star in his “The Climate of Eden.” As did Robert Goulet, who also performed one of his favorite songs from “Camelot,” “How to Handle A Woman ... There’s a way said the wise old man ..." Dina Merrill again recalled a similar experience with him when he chose her for a role because she “looked like everybody’s idea of the girl next door.”

All of these stories were told as the principal stood on stage underneath a giant screen filled with an image of that earlier self. The anecdotes were interspersed with singing performances by Sylvia McNair, Denyce Graves, Robert Goulet, Michael Feinstein, Thomas Hampson (who sang “Begin the Beguine”), the young people’s chorus from the NYU Tisch School of Theatre (a brilliant group of kids) and Audra McDonald who sang the famous Judy Garland song, “The Man That Got Away” which unfortunately is impossible to hear without thinking of the Garland rendition stored permanently in my mind’s ear.

Christopher Hart, the couple’s son, now a director himself, spoke about the father who died when the boy was only twelve, and he read a letter that Hart had written to the legendary New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson (who reigned for more than thirty years as the premiere Broadway theatre critic), six months after Christopher was born, and in which he referred to the slow and subtle changes in development that the infant was demonstrating to his “impatient” father.

A clip from "To Tell the Truth" with Tom Poston, Peggy Cass, Orson Bean, Bud Collyer (standing), and Kitty Carlisle

Lonnie Price read a piece from the end of Hart’s best-selling memoir “Act One” (which was later made into a film with George Hamilton playing the leading role). It was about the day after the papers called “Once in a Lifetime” a smash and how he moved his family out of Brooklyn and into Manhattan – that day! Moss Hart’s was a rich life from very early adulthood on. He not only worked with many of the greats of his day but ranked alongside so many of them and among them.

During intermission, I ran into Jim Sheldon, the veteran television director who told me that he met Moss Hart in the early 1940s when he, Sheldon, was just a kid in his early 20s and dating Ann Kaufman, George Kaufman’s daughter. It was down in Bucks County which in those days was a country haven for the reigning Broadway crowd. Just a starstruck kid, he recalled seeing Tallulah Bankhead and Ethel Merman at the party, both entertaining, and Hart’s kindness toward him.

Kitty and Moss on Broadway

The second half of the show was devoted to Mrs. Hart. We saw the famous (and hilarious) clip of her and Allan Jones singing “Il Travatore” in the Marx Brother’s “A Night At the Opera.” The very droll Orson Bean, Kitty Carlisle Hart’s panel partner on “To Tell The Truth," introduced a series of clips of that show on which she appeared in each of the last six decades. Her success came circuitously. Her mother had taken her to Europe to study and when she came back to the States, she got a job in a touring company of “Rio Rita” playing several roles and 1000 performances in eight months. This led to Broadway in several shows, none memorable, and then to Hollywood where she made five films, one of which became a classic. It was during the shooting of “Night” that she met her husband to be, although as she related it, on her way across the set to shake his hand, she tripped over a cable and fell flat on her face at his feet. Their relationship didn’t begin for another ten years, and they married on August 10, 1946.

Scene from Night at the Opera

The Harts’ daughter, Dr. Catherine Hart spoke about life with Mother. One Thanksgiving the Harts decided they’d spend it alone with their children at their seaside home in New Jersey without staff, including the cook. The cook had prepared everything beforehand, including the turkey. Kitty was given instructions to simply put the bird in the oven and leave it for four and a half hours.

She did exactly as she was told and the family went out for a long leisurely stroll on the beach. When she returned to the house, Kitty went into the kitchen and within a moment, the rest of the family heard her loud yelping! Rushing in to see what happened, they learned that she’d forgot to turn the oven on. The cook’s directions, “put it in the oven for four and a half hours” not quite thorough enough for this Broadway lady.

Her husband very kindly remarked that he’d bet Howard Johnson had never sung “Carmen” either. And so they went off to Howard Johnson for their dinner.

On their wedding day, August 10, 1946.

After Denyce Graves sang an aria from “Carmen,” Susan Braddock, the president of the Met Opera Guild, presented Kitty Carlisle Hart with their special medal. She then took the stage, accompanied by her musical guide and accompaniest David Lewis, and sang: “Hey Old Friend,” from the Sondheim musical version of “Merrily,” and “Here’s To Life,” the brilliant song made famous a few years ago by Shirley Horne. When she finished, she got a standing ovation.

Then Andrews and Sills came out, and surrounding her, Julie Andrews started with a few bars of “I Could Have Danced All Night,” at which point the entire cast of the evening, including the kids from the Tisch School came on stage and filled the entire theatre with song. At which point, the audience stood and gave Kitty Carlisle Hart a second thunderous standing ovation while the little lady bathed in the love that enveloped her from both sides of the footlights. While the glamorous little lady, all in white beamed up at the balconies and patted her heart in thanks with both hands, I thought to myself: “this is what she came for; this is what we came for, this is what it’s all about. That’s Show Business.” It was one of those one-time-only-you-shudda-been-there-only-in-New York evenings! Brilliant.

Dina Merrill standing under a photograph of herself with Moss Hart

Celeste Holm standing under a clip of herself with Gregory Peck in Gentleman's Agreement

Lonnie Price reading

Chris and Dr. Catherine Hart

Alana and Lewis Frumkes

Arthur Altschul, Hunt Slonem, and Francine LeFrak

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