Theater History, According to Hart

In Kitty Carlisle Hart’s “My Life on the Wicked Stage,” a solo show she performed Friday at UCLA’s Schoenberg Hall, no wickedness was apparent.

The evening began as a once-over-lightly lecture on the history of American musical theater. Hart read from a script mounted on a music stand, though she also managed to smile frequently at her audience.

The script evolved into more personal reminiscences when her chronology hit the 1930s--the decade when actress and singer Kitty Carlisle became part of the history she described.

She knew just about every great Broadway figure of that era and later married one of them, playwright and director Moss Hart. Her stories about them were gently amusing and totally benign.

A press release promoting the program had referred to a proposal of marriage from George Gershwin, but Hart didn’t mention it, saying only that she was among the young women for whom Gershwin would play the same “mating call” tune. He would fill in a blank in the lyrics with the name of whatever woman he was with. This was Hart’s most provocative story.

Accompanied by a pianist, Hart punctuated her accounts of encounters with Broadway composers with performances of some of their songs. At 82, Hart is not in top vocal shape, but her lower register still sounded warm.

The display of legs was essential in the Broadway shows from her salad days, she said, and--as if to illustrate the point--Hart wore a black sequined dress that allowed a good view of her own shapely limbs.

She returned to a history lecture as her chronology entered the ‘60s--sorry, she sang no tunes from “Hair” or “Rent.” She closed with a Katherine Anne Porter quote about the importance of the arts; it sounded like something she probably cited often in her 20 years chairing the New York State Council on the Arts. The program lasted less than an hour.