|
 Channing died of natural causes in Rancho Mirage after having
suffered multiple strokes last year, publicist Harlan Boll said.
In a career that spanned seven decades, the saucer-eyed,
raspy-voiced musical-comedy star never shook her association
with the role of matchmaker Dolly Levi in the 1964 musical
"Hello Dolly!" or gold digger Lorelei Lee in Anita Loos'
"Gentlemen Prefer Blondes."
Still, Channing embraced being identified with Lorelei, as well
as Dolly, a role that won her a Tony Award.
"Audiences expect and demand I sing these songs," she once told
a reporter of her signature tunes, "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best
Friend" and "Hello Dolly." "I'm lucky to be so closely
associated with both 'Diamonds' and 'Dolly.' ... I'm luckier
than most - I have two identity songs."
Channing played each role for years on Broadway and on tours
around the world, taking the stage as Dolly more than 3,000
times. As recently as 1996, at age 75, she returned to Broadway
following a national and world tour of "Dolly."
"One of Broadway's greatest lights, Carol Channing, has passed
on," wrote "Star Trek" actor George Takei on Twitter. "She
rejoins the heavens as a new diamond in the night sky, and as
she famously sang, they are a girl's best friend."
Channing was born in Seattle on Jan. 31, 1921, and got her first
taste of the theatrical life as a small child at public speaking
engagements of her father, a journalist.
After a brief time at Bennington College, Channing had small
parts in "No, No, Nanette" and a Broadway failure called "I'm
Simply Fraught About You," and also did a small revue.
She worked at resorts in the Catskill Mountains in New York and
at Macy's department store before landing the role of the
fortune-hunting Lorelei Lee in the 1949 musical "Gentlemen
Prefer Blondes." She was an unlikely choice for the role.
"Everybody was saying, 'She's not 5-foot-2, eyes of blue. She's
over 6 feet tall and has muddy brown eyes,'" Channing said. "But
Anita (Loos) stuck to it."
In 1964, Channing found a role equal to Lorelei Lee in Jerry
Herman's "Hello Dolly," which became a Broadway classic.
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She saw both of her signature stage roles go to younger Hollywood
actresses when film versions of the plays were made. Marilyn Monroe
played Lorelei Lee and Barbara Streisand had the title role in the
1969 film "Hello Dolly," a colossal flop often blamed for ending the
classic era of Hollywood musicals.
Channing won an Emmy and several nominations for television variety
specials but her film career was sporadic at best, although she
received an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe for her part in the
Julie Andrews musical "Thoroughly Modern Millie" in 1967.
In 1968, she was given a Tony special award and in 1995, accepted a
Tony for lifetime achievement.
Channing sang a rewritten version of "Hello Dolly" in 1964 titled
"Hello Lyndon" that President Lyndon Johnson played at campaign
stops. Channing and the Johnson family then became close friends.
The star and her second husband, Canadian football player Alexander
Carson, had a son, Channing, who is a newspaper cartoonist.
She married her third husband, producer-writer Charles Lowe, in
1956, and he guided her career for 40 years. The couple separated in
1997 and she accused Lowe of emotional abuse and mishandling her
finances, leaving her practically broke. Channing said the couple's
marriage was a sham, with only two sexual encounters in 40 years,
leading Lowe to countersue for defamation. He died in September
1999.
In 2003, Channing married her junior high school sweetheart, Harry
Kullijian, a California developer, who contacted Channing after
learning that she had written fondly about him in her autobiography.
He died in 2011.
She was still taking the stage in her 90s with a 2014 show to talk
about her career.
(Reporting by Gina Cherelus in New York and Scott Malone in Boston;
Editing by Bill Trott and Bernadette Baum)
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