Broadway legend Channing dies at 97
Bubbly blond Hello Dolly actress called ‘a gift of inspiration to so many’
RANCHO MIRAGE, CALIF.— Carol Channing, the lanky, ebullient musical comedy star who delighted American audiences as the scheming Dolly Levi in Hello, Dolly on Broadway and beyond, has died. She was 97.
Channing died of natural causes at 12:31 a.m. Tuesday. Publicist B. Harlan Boll says she 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 Traveling Saleslady with Ginger Rogers and Thoroughly Modern Millie with Julie Andrews.
Over the years, Channing continued as Dolly in national tours, the last in 1996, when she was in her 70s.
Messages of love and appreciation lit up Twitter early Tuesday, with the League of Professional Theatre Women saying Channing “was a gift of inspiration to so many.”
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.
Theatre producer David Merrick told her: “I don’t want that silly grin with all those teeth that go back to your ears.” Even though director Gower Champion had worked on her first Broadway hit, Lend an Ear, he had doubts about Channing’s casting.
She wowed them in an audition and was hired on the spot. At opening night on Jan. 16, 1964, when Channing appeared at the top of the stairs in a red gown with feathers in her hair and walked down the red carpet to the Harmonia Gardens restaurant, the New York audience went crazy. The critics followed suit. Hello, Dolly collected 10 Tony Awards, including one for Channing as Best Actress in a Musical.