Kitty Carlisle

Kitty Carlisle was an American singer, actress and spokeswoman for the arts. She is best remembered as a regular panelist on the television game show To Tell the Truth. Carlisle servedyears on the New York State Council on the Arts. In 1991, she received the National Medal of Arts from President George H. W. Bush. Eight years later, in 1999, she was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.

Kitty Carlisle was born as Catherine Conn in New Orleans, Louisiana. Her family was of German Jewish heritage. Her grandfather, Ben Holtzman, was the mayor of Shreveport, Louisiana. A Confederate veteran of the American Civil War, Holtzman had been a gunner on the CSS Virginia, perhaps better known by its previous Union name of USS Merrimack, the famous Confederate ironclad warship that fought the USS Monitor. Carlisles father, Dr. Joseph Conn, was a gynecologist who died when his daughter wasyears old. Her mother, Hortense Holtzman Conn, was a woman obsessed with breaking into the prevailing Gentile society

Source: Wikipedia