Carol Channing, the indomitable personality who electrified Broadway audiences with her energetic performances in the original musical comedies Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Hello, Dolly!, has died. She was 97.
The three-time Tony Award winner, who also earned an Oscar nomination for her role in Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967), died at 12:31 a.m. Tuesday of natural causes at her home in Rancho Mirage, California, publicist Harlan Boll announced.
With her husky voice — one of the most easily recognized and most imitated in the world — and gigantic saucer eyes, poofy platinum bob and ear-to-ear, pearly white grin, Channing was a larger-than-life luminary. Fans could not resist this daffy blonde.
In Hello, Dolly!, which opened at the St. James Theatre on Broadway in January 1964 and ran through December 1970, Channing crackled as meddling matchmaker Dolly Gallagher Levi. The role was written for Ethel Merman, but she was too busy and turned it down.
Featuring a score by Jerry Herman and book by Michael Stewart and based on Thornton Wilder’s 1954 stage play The Matchmaker, Hello, Dolly!, produced by David Merrick, amassed 10 Tonys, including one for best musical and another for Channing as best actress in a musical.
Channing would play Dolly more than 5,000 times on Broadway (she also starred in revivals that opened in 1978 and 1995) and on the road, never needing a stand-in except once — when she missed half a performance in Kalamazoo, Michigan, because of food poisoning.
The actress was devastated when 20th Century Fox chose Barbra Streisand — then shooting Funny Girl, which would earn her an Oscar for best actress — to portray Dolly in the 1969 film version, directed by Gene Kelly.
(Excerpt) Read more in: The Hollywood Reporter