January 16, 2019
Dolly Bids Adieu: Remembering Carol Channing
Robert Nesti READ TIME: 5 MIN.
Carol Channing spoke with her eyes -- those saucer-like features that beamed like spotlights to the last rows of the theater. It was in such a location that I first saw her perform live in an amiable mess of a show called "Lorelei" in the 1970s at Boston's Shubert Theatre. It was a not-very-good, revamped version of "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes' that toured the country and played Broadway, but what made it watchable was the irrepressible Channing.
It brought to mind what critic Walter Kerr wrote about Channing when he reviewed "Hello, Dolly!," her biggest hit, when it opened on Broadway in 1964. "'Hello, Dolly!' is a musical comedy dream, with Carol Channing as the girl of it. Almost literally, it's a dream, a drunken carnival, a happy nightmare, a wayward circus in which the mistress of ceremonies opens wide her big-as-millstones eyes, spreads her white-gloved arms in ecstatic abandon, trots out onto a circular runway that surrounds the orchestra and proceeds to dance rings around the conductor."
Channing had that ability, which she shared with other superstars of her generation -- Ethel Merman, Elaine Stritch and, to a lesser degree, Mary Martin: an oversized talent that was galvanizing inside a theater. It is a quality that didn't transfer to other mediums: none had great success in films (though Channing did get an Oscar nomination for "Thoroughly Modern Millie") and pretty much played themselves on television. The idiosyncrasies of their talents made them perfect for the theater, where they anchored whatever production they were in. Her death is really an end to an era and the kind of Broadway star that could carry a show through the sheer weight of her personality.
In Channing's case her shining glory was "Hello, Dolly!," the role she introduced on Broadway and played thousands of times over the years, returning to Broadway in a revival in 1995 when she was 74. Those who may never have seen her in the role will never quite understand the genius of her performance. When she looked up to heaven to speak to her dead husband, she became the vulnerable, big-hearted widow that book writer Michael Stewart (and her original creator, Thornton Wilder) wished her to be. It was a musical theater moment to cherish.
And one that was not repeated by her on film – that went to Barbra Streisand in the 1969 film version. Not getting cast in the film devastated Channing. "It was suicidal for me," Channing told the Miami Herald in 1994. "It's like somebody taking your baby. I was there when it was created. . . . I've never really dwelled on it; it's painful to me."
That she looked like an Al Hirschfeld drawing come-to-life was not only due to those big eyes, but also her wide mouth often exaggerated with lipstick. (To view Hirschfeld's drawing, As it was pointed out in her
She also spoke and sang with a warm, distinctive rasp that added to her unique charm. Channing was never known as a vocal stylist, rather a comic talent that could persuade with song. She couldn't have wished for a better role than Dolly Levi, which she was said to have performed more than 4,500 hundred times from the 1960s to the 1990s, missing only one in order to attend the 1995 Tony Awards in which she was given a career achievement award. (It was her second Tony Award. She won her first in 1965 for "Hello, Dolly!", ironically winning over Streisand nominated for "Funny Girl." )
In 2004 she appeared at Boston's Berklee Performance Center in a rambling, entertaining one-person show she called "The First 80 Years Are the Hardest" where she told many anecdotes from her long career and brought the house down with performances of "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" (from "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes") and, of course, "Hello, Dolly!" Watching her bask in her fans' adoration was memorable.
In reviewing the performance at the time, I wrote: "The best part of the evening came when she regaled the audience with stories about some her more famous friends replete with dead-on vocal impersonations of them. The best and most focused stories concerned Tallulah Bankhead, whom she got to know a half-century ago when she landed on the cover of Time for her portrayal of Lorelei (Lorelei Lee, her character from "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes). She was quite funny slipping into Bankhead's legendary basso drawl to quote one of her Tallulahisms about taking sleeping pills: "They're not addictive. I've been taking them every night of my life for the last 36 years." Those who know Bankhead will likely realize that Channing appropriated that quote from a famous one the actress said about cocaine; but, no matter, it, and the delivery, were right on target."
At the end of the show, she brought up onto the stage her fourth husband, Harry Kullijian, her junior high school sweetheart whom she married in 2003 after not seeing each other since the 1930s. (Kullijian passed in 2011.) They beamed before doing a soft-shoe together, which received a thunderous ovation from the sold-out audience.
Her last New York appearance was at a special birthday tribute for her 94th birthday held at Town Hall on January 20, 2014, in which she appeared with Justin Vivien Bond. As reported on the website tmagazine.com, Channing received a 10-minute standing ovation before being interviewed by Bond. When asked where she wanted to be buried, Channing said: "Right between the Curran and Geary Theaters." (Theaters in San Francisco where she grew up.) "There's a fire escape, but they'll have to take that down," she cracked, bringing down the house for the first of many times. To which Bond rejoined: "You might need that fire escape, depending on which direction you're going."
Watch the short video of Bond and Channing sing "Hello, Dolly!" from that tribute.
Perhaps Sandra Bernhard tweeted it best this morning when hearing of Channing's death: "I am so sad just lost my incredible original inspiration #carolchanning I saw her in Hello Dolly when I was 8 and she changed my DNA love you lady forever one of the greatest entertainers of all times."
Watch this rare archival footage of Channing performing "Hello, Dolly!" in the 1964 Broadway production:
.</p>
<p class=){kind=link}