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 autumn 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 Oper>.

Baby boomers may know her best as a long-time panelist on the television game show “To Tell the Truth,” popular in the 1950s.