Broadway actress Channing dies at age of 97
BROADWAY STAR Carol Channing, who delighted audiences over almost 5,000 performances as the scheming Dolly Levi in Hello, Dolly, has died aged 97.
Publicist B Harlan Boll said Channing died of natural causes yesterday in Rancho Mirage, California. He said she had twice suffered strokes in the last year.
Besides Hello, Dolly, Channing starred in other Broadway shows, but none with equal magnetism. She often appeared on television and in nightclubs, for a time partnering with George Burns in Las Vegas and a national tour.
Her outsized personality seemed too much for the screen, and she made only a few movies, notably The First Travelling Saleslady with Ginger Rogers and Thoroughly Modern Millie with Julie Andrews.
Carol Channing is the ninth wonder of the world.
Tom Shales of
The Washington Post
Over the years, Channing continued as Dolly in national tours, the last in 1996, when she was in her 70s. Tom Shales of The Washington Post called her “the ninth wonder of the world”.
Channing was not the immediate choice to play Dolly, a matchmaker who receives her toughest challenge yet when a rich grump seeks a suitable wife.
The show, which features a rousing score by Jerry Herman that’s bursting with joy and tunes like Put On Your Sunday Clothes, Before The Parade Passes By and It Only Takes A Moment , is a musical version of Thornton Wilder’s play The Matchmaker.
Channing was born in 1921, in Seattle, where her father, George Channing, was a newspaper editor.
At the age of seven, she decided she wanted to become an entertainer.