GOODBYE, DOLLY
Carol Channing dies at 98
Tributes are flowing in for larger-than-life Broadway legend Carol Channing, who passed away just 16 days shy of her 98th birthday.
The sunny comedy queen was an unstoppable force of nature who successfully toured her one-woman show The First 80 Years Are the Hardest as an octogenarian and married her childhood sweetheart in 2003.
In her heyday, she delighted audiences with nearly 5000 performances as the scheming matchmaker Dolly Levi in Hello, Dolly. She considered the role to be as deep as Lady Macbeth. “The essence of her character was her unquenchable thirst for life,” she once said.
Carol was also famous for her portrayal of gold-digger Lorelei Lee in the stage version of
Gentleman Prefer Blondes
and the song Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend became her signature number.
She lived for the audience’s chuckles. “Laughter is much more important than applause," she said. “Applause is almost a duty. Laughter is a reward.”
Despite resounding theatrical success, Carol had a harder time in Hollywood and wasn’t offered roles in the movie versions of either of her biggest stage hits.
However, she made her film debut in the 1956 comedy
The First Travelling Saleslady,
opposite Clint Eastwood and Ginger Rogers, and achieved her greatest screen success in 1967’s Thoroughly
Modern Millie, which also starred Julie Andrews and Mary Tyler Moore.
Carol had three failed marriages and one child, her son Channing Carson, now 66.
At 82, Carol reunited with her first love, Harry
Kullijian. After 70 years apart, they were engaged within two weeks and remained together until his death in 2011.
When asked how she continued to play Dolly so many times, she said, “You’ve got to go out there and paint a new picture every single night, to make them believe it’s actually happening for the first time in front of their eyes, or you’ll empty the theatre.”
And Carol never emptied a theatre..