Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Farewell to Hello, Dolly! star Carol, 97
BROADWAY theatre star Carol Channing has died aged 97.
The actress and singer was best known for starring in the musicals Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Hello, Dolly!
Her publicist B. Harlan Boll said the star died of natural causes at 12.31am yesterday in Rancho Mirage, California. She had twice suffered strokes in the past year.
Boll said: “It is so very hard to see the final curtain lower on a woman who has been a daily part of my life for more than a third of it. I admired her before I met her.”
Born in Seattle, Washington, in 1921, the platinum blonde got her start in New York’s theatre scene in 1941’s No for an Answer.
But her star-making role would come in 1949 when she played the gold-digging Lorelei Lee in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes – the role played by Marilyn Monroe in the film adaptation. Known for her wide smile, she played Dolly Levi in more than 5,000 performances during a 30-year period - even when injured.
In 1995 she received a Lifetime Achievement Tony Award.
Broadway star Bernadette Peters tweeted yesterday about the star: “She was showbusiness and love personified.”
Carol married four times with her first two – to writer Theodore Naidish and Canadian football player Alex Carson – ending in divorce after three years each.
She had a son from her second marriage, Channing Lowe.
Lowe took the last name of his mother’s third husband, Charles Lowe, whom she wed in 1956.
The pair were married for 42 years before a bitter split in 1998.
In 2003, she married her childhood sweetheart, Harry Kullijian, but he died in 2011. She is survived by her only son.