Carol Elaine Channing was an American actress, singer, dancer and comedian who starred in Broadway and film musicals.
46 Facts About Carol Channing
2.
Carol Channing revived both roles several times throughout her career, playing Dolly on Broadway for the final time in 1995.
3.
Carol Channing was nominated for her first Tony Award in 1956 for The Vamp, followed by a nomination in 1961 for Show Girl.
4.
Carol Channing received her fourth Tony Award nomination for the musical Lorelei in 1974.
5.
Carol Channing performed The White Queen in the TV production of Alice in Wonderland, and she had the first of many TV specials in 1966, titled An Evening with Carol Channing.
6.
Carol Channing was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1981 and received a Lifetime Achievement Tony Award in 1995.
7.
Carol Channing continued to perform and make appearances well into her 90s, singing songs from her repertoire and sharing stories with fans, cabaret-style.
8.
Carol Channing was one of the "legends" interviewed in the award-winning documentary, Broadway: The Golden Age, by the Legends Who Were There.
9.
Carol Channing released her autobiography Just Lucky I Guess in 2002, and Larger Than Life was released in 2012, a documentary film about her career.
10.
Carol Channing was born in Seattle, Washington, on January 31,1921, the only child of Adelaide and George Carol Channing.
11.
Carol Channing's father, who was born George Christian Stucker, was multiracial and changed his surname due to religious reasons before Carol's birth.
12.
Carol Channing became a Christian Science practitioner, editor, and teacher.
13.
Carol Channing attended Aptos Junior High School and Lowell High School in San Francisco, graduating in 1938.
14.
Carol Channing won the Crusaders' Oratorical Contest and a free trip to Hawaii with her mother in June 1937.
15.
Carol Channing's mother felt that the time was right to tell her since now that she was going off to college and would be on her own, she didn't want her to be surprised if she ever had a Black baby.
16.
Carol Channing majored in drama at Bennington and during an interview in 1994 revealed that she first wanted to perform on stage as a singer when she was in the fourth grade.
17.
Carol Channing recalled being emotionally drawn to the stage after seeing Ethel Waters perform.
18.
Carol Channing considers the fact that she was able to see plays while very young to have been an important inspiration:.
19.
Carol Channing was introduced to the stage while helping her mother deliver newspapers to the backstage of theatres.
20.
Carol Channing won the Sarah Siddons Award for her work in Chicago's theatres in 1966.
21.
Five years later, Carol Channing had a featured role in Lend an Ear, for which she received her Theatre World Award and launched her as a star performer.
22.
Carol Channing credited illustrator Al Hirschfeld for helping make her a star when he put her image in his widely published illustrations.
23.
Carol Channing said that his drawing of her as a flapper was what helped her get the lead in her next play, the Jule Styne and Anita Loos musical Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
24.
In 1956, Carol Channing married her manager and publicist Charles Lowe.
25.
Carol Channing remembered that Channing, like she, had one of the most distinctive and recognizable voices in show business, and Lowe asked Channing if she would perform with Burns during his shows.
26.
Carol Channing accepted immediately, and Channing worked on and off with Burns through the late 1950s.
27.
In 1961, Carol Channing became one of the few performers nominated for a Tony Award for work in a revue ; she was nominated for Best Actress in a Musical for the short-lived revue Show Girl.
28.
Carol Channing recalled that playwright Thornton Wilder so loved the musical, which was based on his play, The Matchmaker, that he came once a week.
29.
Carol Channing planned to rewrite his 1942 play The Skin of Our Teeth, with Channing playing the parts of both Mrs Antrobus and Sabina but died before he could finish it.
30.
Carol Channing was a favorite of Lady Bird Johnson, who once gave her a huge bouquet after a show.
31.
Carol Channing is that human curio, the born female comic.
32.
Carol Channing later appeared in the movie biography about his life, The Line King, in 1996.
33.
Carol Channing reprised her role of Lorelei Lee when the musical Lorelei, directed by Robert Moore and choreographed by Ernest O Flatt, premiered in 1973 at the Oklahoma City Civic Center Music Hall and broke all box office records after six days' worth of performances sold out within 24 hours.
34.
Carol Channing performed songs from Hello, Dolly during a special television show in London in 1979.
35.
Carol Channing appeared in a number of films, including The First Traveling Saleslady, in which she gave future star Clint Eastwood his first onscreen kiss; the cult film Skidoo; and Thoroughly Modern Millie.
36.
Carol Channing said she was especially grateful to Andrews for helping her develop her character: "She will forever be my angel," she says.
37.
Carol Channing did voice-over work in cartoons, most notably as Grandmama in an animated version of The Addams Family from 1992 to 1995.
38.
The episode "Smoke Gets in Your Lies" shows the producer auditioning for a new musical, and Carol Channing, playing herself, is trying out.
39.
In January 2003, Carol Channing recorded the audiobook of her best-selling autobiography Just Lucky, I Guess: A Memoir of Sorts, directed and produced by Steve Garrin at VideoActive Productions in New York City.
40.
Carol Channing remembered his grandfather Sam Cohen introducing her to some of his neighborhood friends, who were amazed that she enjoyed hearing their funny stories.
41.
Carol Channing's second husband Alexander F Carson, known as Axe, or "The Murderous Ax", played center for the Ottawa Rough Riders Canadian football team and was a private detective.
42.
In September 1956, "Immediately following the entry of the divorce decree" from Carson, Carol Channing married her manager and publicist Charles Lowe.
43.
In 1960, Carson's parental rights were severed due to his abandonment, and his and Carol Channing's son took his stepfather's surname.
44.
Carol Channing filed for divorce from Lowe in 1998, but her estranged husband died before the divorce was finalized.
45.
Carol Channing died from natural causes on January 15,2019, at her home in Rancho Mirage, California, at the age of 97.
46.
Carol Channing's ashes were sprinkled between the Curran Theatre and the Geary Theater in San Francisco.