Carol Channing

Michael Kantor: We’re just talking about commercial theater. What do you like about commercial?

Carol Channing: Are we on camera now? Thank you, I need to know that. We’re rolling. Okay, what’s the difference between commercial theater?

Michael Kantor: What do you love about commercial theater?

Carol Channing: Is there a non-commercial theater? There’s the regional theater and… Oh, that’s great.

Michael Kantor: Okay so you don’t draw a big

Carol Channing: No, it doesn’t matter, you’re reaching an audience.

Michael Kantor: What do you like best about Broadway?

Carol Channing: Best about Broadway. It’s alive. That performer standing there in front of me is working on my metabolism. And I am responding. And then he senses how I respond and how the whole audience responds. It’s alive, but that goes on all over the world, in regional theater, in any theater. It doesn’t matter to me where the theater is as long as it’s live. At least that’s what I like best, being live. See, there are anodes and cathodes between people and with a whole audience. When you send out the anodes and they send back the cathodes, it’s electricity. That’s what you have when you put a plug in the wall. It’s electricity. And it’s really electricity. It’s not just like it. It is what happens between people. It’s a madness.

Michael Kantor: Oh, great answer. Do you remember the first Broadway show you saw and did it make a big impression?

Carol Channing: Oh, yes, I remember. First, my grandmother took me to see the opera Karma, and that was pretty exciting. I was very little, though. And then I saw Ethel Waters in her thousandth chair, and I was too small. My parents had gone to the show at night. I listened to all about the show and how wonderful it was. I thought, I’ve got to see this show. So I got 50 cents a week allowance. I saved it. It only cost $2.50 to sit and see Ethel waters. It was Irving Berlin, yes, wrote the music. Ethel Wa- There, it was at the Curran Theater in San Francisco, the perfect place to raise a child if they wanna go into the arts. Because it’s such a beautiful city, San Francisco. I remember it was my first true crush and love. And I didn’t know what to do about the city of San Francisco it invites people who love beauty and the cobblestone streets and all. So these people have made it a metropolitan art colony. It is a city, it’s a major city, but it’s an art colony. And the current theater is still there. And I went there from the time I was a little girl, but there were lots of theaters and there are now.

Michael Kantor: Remember that in New York City?

Carol Channing: I wasn’t here until I went to Bennington College.

Michael Kantor: So after college, you came to New York City.

Carol Channing: Yeah, during, before college, yeah, it’s weekends.

Michael Kantor: Do you remember coming to New York and seeing one particular show that you remember now?

Carol Channing: Not like Ethel Waters did in As Thousand’s Cheer because I was only little. It was my first impression of live theater, not like that. This was a Broadway show. This was As Thousands Cheer. This was a major Broadway show so that it could tour all over. Well, it had many stars in it and one, the brick wall on the back of the theater was the first set. The entrance of Ethel Waters, this monumental woman had a bandana on her head. She had an apron on. She walked forward from the brick wall. You see, the theater, a stage is built in five, usually. It goes five, close the curtains, and you’re in four. Close this next set of curtains, and you are in three. And close the next set of curtains you’re two. She walked forward, the music went, boom, boom, four, three, two, one. She’s down in one. The curtain closes behind her. Behind her was the silhouette of a man hanging from a tree with his head on the side, with the rope around his neck. We didn’t know in those days about lynchings in the South. Nobody in the North knew. They never put it in the papers, but my father told me about it. And my father, because he came from Augusta, Georgia, he said, nobody knows these things go on, Carol, but I’m telling you, just to teach people a lesson, they do that. And this man is hanging there, and she came forward with the beat of that orchestra, this funk of hers. Oh, and an outspout, and then she went into it, and this woman went, slap a time! I should set the table, because it’s supper time. Somehow I’m not able, because that man of mine ain’t coming home no more. And she sang about this lynching. And I thought, oh my god, this is what my father told me about. This is what I know about. And people, my heart started to pound. This woman grabbed a hold of my emotions. And I was too little to see everything. And a total stranger, a lady next to me said, you can’t see, let me put you on my lap. So I sat on her lap and saw the great Ethel Waters. And I thought, when I grow up, I wanna be Ethel waters. I wanna just turn into her. And isn’t that funny? My father said, there’s an adage that says, be careful what you set your heart upon for you shall surely get it. Oh, I’ll never come near her. But my gosh. She was hair-raising and I looked around and my heart was pounding and I was shaking. I couldn’t even get the program and I look around and I thought, that’s funny, nobody else is terribly, they weren’t that devastated by her. So then I thought what’s the matter with me, you know, but that was my first experience with live theater.

Michael Kantor: Tell me about the first Broadway show you were in. What did it feel like to be performing on Broadway?

Carol Channing: Not that different from performing in school from the time I was seven years old on the school auditorium stage. An audience is an audience. Anodes and cathodes are still anodes and Cathodes. It didn’t feel that different. I was very lucky. Somebody nominated me for Secretary of the Student Body in the fourth grade. I was 7 years old. The procedure was you were to get up on the school auditorium stage from the audience and tell your fellow students why they should vote for you. Well, naturally, I couldn’t think of one reason, but I was an only child and many only children tell me they do this. They talk to wonderful people. People they imagine and people that they met that day and people who were funny or eccentric or adorable or kissable. Or sexy or something, but they smack of something that you can’t forget. So you turn into them and you do them as an only child. So you have tea parties and you have a cup of tea here for the principal of the school, because she was fascinating, Ms. Burrard, and you a cup a tea for yourself, and you sit there and you talk to Ms.Burrard. Then you get over to the other, you have nobody to talk to, you’re an only-child. So, and my mother’s friends used to say, who is, where is, who is Carol talking to? She said, oh, pay no attention, she’s all alone. Pay no attention. They said, she is not all alone! Well, I thought, I don’t know what to do, so all of a sudden I thought I’ll do the only thing I know how to do. So I turned into Miss Burrard, the principal of the school. And at Commodore Sloan Grammar School, it’s still there. So I said, go to the… Go to the polls and vote for Carol. She was apparently the Julia Childs, the forerunner of Julia Child, you see. And I used to be fascinated. Is that adenoids? I don’t know what it is, but it was her own voice. And she spoke that way. And they recognized Ms. Berard and they laughed. And then I did Mr. Swartz, the chemistry teacher who blew up the chemistry class on an average of once a term. And they all recognized Mr. Schwartz, and he loved it. Mr. Swartz, they all did. And I did Ms. Weaver, the social studies teacher who came from the Bronx. And I didn’t anybody, whoever they might know, I did Marjorie Gould, the cutest girl in school and switched my little panting around and all. And they knew and they laughed. And I thought what I laugh at, that’s what everybody else laughs at. All my fellow students feel the same way. What I go toward… That’s what we all go toward. Suddenly, in the middle of that stage, I was no longer an only child. We’re all alike. We go toward the same things, away from the same thing. We’re ALL exactly alike when it comes to crying, or laughing, or any of the normal emotions. And I ran off the stage and I thought, oh God, I hid behind the coats in the cloakroom and cried and I will do anything to get back on that stage again. Well, thank God, I was elected secretary because, well, there was no choice, it was holy mayhem. So I waited till my father got home from the office that night, he was my confidant, and I said, Daddy, a tremendous thing happened to me today. I was soaring. The knowledge that we’re all together here, the safest place in the world is the middle of the stage. And I told him all about it, and that’s when he listened to the whole thing and he said. There’s an adage that says, be careful what you set your heart upon for you shall surely get it. So I said, you mean to say I can lay down my life right now? And he said, you can lay it down your life at seven as you are now, or you can let it down at 97, it doesn’t matter. But these are the people that are happier.

Michael Kantor: We’re rolling? Tell me about, sorry, tell me about your first big break. How were you discovered?

Carol Channing: Oh, I don’t remember being discovered.

Michael Kantor: I have a story that Al Hirschfeld told about when you were in Lend-a-Near, he did a drawing and you were somehow picked out of the crowd. Tell me about that.

Carol Channing: Yes, did he tell you about that too? Briefly. He drew.

Michael Kantor: Give me who, just for the time.

Carol Channing: Al Hirschfeld was always the great chronicler of Broadway theater. Now he since has branched out into movies and lots of other things, but the chronicler of actors really, of faces that you recognize. And it’s funny and it’s accurate. Oh, and it a commentary. As the years go on, I’m convinced Al Hirschfeld will be like Toulouse-Lautrec. We only know Jane Avril because Toulousse-Laultrec did a poster of her. You know, we only know La Goulou because Lautrec did it. Well, anyway, so we’ll all go down in history, I hope, because of Al Hirshfeld. The thing is, he came to a little reveal called Lend-a-Near. I was one of 20 unknowns in this little review. Al came and saw it. I didn’t know he was there. On the Sunday New York Times front page of the theater section, he did a drawing of me as the gladiola, it was a sketch, it a review. One of the sketches was the gladiolla girl and we satirized the 20s. We were the first to ever think of satirizing the 20’s. And after that, there was a big wave of it. Well, we satireized the twenty’s. And Al did this drawing of me in a, what it is is the Lost Road Company. They’ve been lost now for 10 years on the road. But just tonight they turned up and we’re so happy. Well, the chorus was Sulu, Peru and Boo. I was Prudence. I was over six feet tall in heels. The other girls came up to my shoulder or below. They were, well, they were tough chorus girls, but I was the littlest. And the the cutest and the most adorable of any of them. And I thought I was, what I decided in my mind was during those 10 years, I had grown up and didn’t realize I was over six feet tall. So there I was. And we were all with our knees together and we had close hats on. Al drew a close hat on me and he put two buttons on the end of the brim. The bottom of the brim, and they just looked like two black buttons sewn to the brimm of the closed hat. And I had a veil with just the eyes out. And it was a dress that was, and then around the hips. Who is that? It looks just like my father in a clothes hat. You know, I didn’t know who, at that age you don’t know what you look like. But I knew the character. How does he know what we’re thinking? I was thinking little bitty. I was think feminine. Kissable. I was thinking all these wonderful things and he knew just what I was thinking. How did this man has a divining right? Well it landed on the front page of the New York Times and Anita Luce, Julie Stein, Oliver Smith, Herman Levin, everybody who were producing Gentleman Prefer Blondes came and said, Anita said, there’s my Lorelei Lee for Gentleman Prefer Blond. She wrote it. She’s the great writer. It’s a classic now Many people feel it’s the great American novel. It was the funniest girl that was written. It was her diary. Julie Stein, she came back with Julie Stein and he looked at the whole thing and said, went home and wrote my Battle Hymn of the Republic, Diamond’s Our Girl’s Best Friend. Just from seeing it, that character, she said, that’s my character, Lorelei Lee. Well, the next thing I knew, but Al Hirschfeld did that for me. Everybody came to see it. Suddenly the box office went up. They thought, well, who’s that? We better go see it if Al Hirschfeld thinks that much of it. So they did. Wasn’t I fortunate? I mean, imagine the great Hirschfield. And I still don’t see where it looks like me, but it does look like my father.

Michael Kantor: Yeah. Al Hirschfeld said of the theatrical performers earlier in the century that they were larger than life, that when they didn’t close a door, they slammed it, that they had to be seen in the back row of the balcony. How do you think your work represents that type of theatricality?

Carol Channing: Oh, I have, I’ve never seen myself from the front. I mean, I never seen from the audience.

Michael Kantor: Do you ever feel like you’re making something larger than life?

Carol Channing: The audience is four balconies up and they’re up in the last row and they’ve plastered on the ceiling some of them and There are huge theaters. That’s what makes a show You can’t play a theater that’s just normal size when you go on tour because the show can’t break even not a musical show It’s too expensive for the producers and the backers. So they have to get the biggest places there are Well, you can’t stand there and be normal. I mean you can just say Well, good evening. Like Lynn Fontana used to say, if they can’t hear you and they can see you, you’re fired. It’s as simple as that. So everybody says, oh my, you are bigger than life. Well, you better be.

Michael Kantor: Without referencing any specific roles, how do you go about creating a character?

Carol Channing: Oh, that’s just like being pregnant. There’s a blessing on your head, especially if you’re in love with the character, and I’ve been fortunate. I never had to play any character I wasn’t madly in love. How do you go about it? First of all, you have to be in love with the character, as I say, which proves to me. You see, if you do a character you don’t love dearly, nobody recognizes it. Isn’t that interesting? But if you somebody that you’re crazy about, that you just can’t live without your comment on them, without turning into them. You want to be them, like I wanted to be Ethel Waters. You want be that person. Then it’s very accurate. People recognize her, which makes me realize there is no creation without loving it. You’ve got to love it an awful lot until you’ve got paint the picture of it or do the music about it or whatever form, art form it takes. There is no creation without love. Nobody knows who it is otherwise. You wouldn’t know that was Van Gogh’s Cypress tree if he didn’t adore it. You’d just say, I wonder what that is. If he painted something he didn’t love. So we all had to be created with love and no holes barred. I mean, we had to, there’s a force that created us or we wouldn’t get created. And that’s what you find out in the creative arts. It doesn’t get done if you don’t adore it. Isn’t that wonderful? Some force just thought we were the cutest things that ever happened.

Michael Kantor: You’ve performed all over the country, all over the world. What’s different or special about performing right here on Broadway?

Carol Channing: Well, as I said before, it’s an audience. It’s a platform. It’s stage. There’s nothing different about it at all, especially in my books. It makes no difference, except they make, no. I’ve just, we’ve just a few days ago closed the United States tour of Hello Dolly. We’re negotiating going all over the world with it. Beijing, Tokyo, all over the world. But I find they’re just as sophisticated in many cities. I mean, a city like Lubbock, Texas suddenly is just as enthusiastic and sophisticated about reacting in an audience as a Broadway audience. One thing about a Broadway Audience, what’s dear about them when you open on Broadway after you’ve lived as long as I have is that they missed you. Oh, that’s sweet. They carry on before they know if you’re any good or not in this show, just because you’re there. You walked out and they go on and on and because they missed you. Oh, well, that the only difference.

Michael Kantor: Why is touring so important to a Broadway show?

Carol Channing: Well, it isn’t so much to people nowadays, but it was. I’ll tell you one reason. Now, to drop two names, Lynn Fontaine and Alfred Lund told me that when you tour, your Broadway audience is really Omaha, Ottawa, you know, it’s the road. It’s every place they’ve been. And they appeared on Broadway in a Noah Coward play called Point Valaine. It was a flop, Lynn said, a flop. And she said, they couldn’t get the thing to stop running because, and it was frustrating to them because they knew it wasn’t a good show really once they got it in front of an audience. But everybody kept coming because people came into New York and they wanted to see Broadway shows and they said, oh, there’s Lynn and Alfred. The day we’re are. In our hometown, they were house guests, they feel. That when you tour, you’ve been in their home, you’ve be in their house guest. I know television and movies are supposed to do the same thing, but not exactly. When you go to the bother of coming to their hometown, being there alive, they’re sitting there, you’re breathing on them and all that, they feel you’re their friend. And they kept going to see this lousy show. Because it was old friends. Well, that’s your Broadway audience. The first three months, they told me, of a run on Broadway is New Yorkers. After that, it’s wherever they’ve played, and they just keep coming, and it’s true. They do. But touring is important. I’ll tell you, you mentioned that some people feel that a Broadway audience is so much more I mean that it’s just the biggest thing, you don’t know. There’s no difference, no difference. The world over, there’s no different in an audience unless they either are… When I was in Istanbul and I saw the belly dancers, I thought, well, this is a religious experience. I had no idea that this was a work of art. I wanted to stand up and cheer to the heavens. And I thought I don’t wanna be a stupid American who doesn’t know you don’t do that in Istanbul. I didn’t know what they did. So I didn’t stand up and cheer because I was frightened I’d do the wrong thing. That’s what an unsophisticated theater audience does. They’re frightened. Don’t laugh. Maybe they won’t hear the next line. Laugh for heaven’s sakes if it’s funny. Clap if you feel like clapping. That’s a sophisticated theater audience. We give to one another. It’s a tennis match back and forth and if we hit the ball just right, you get it. You get that response from the audience or if it demands BAM like a tennis match you get your laugh but whatever it is get it just right that’s discipline that’s when you don’t just ad-lib you know like we’re doing now but but that’s terribly important that you know see people don’t tour anymore as much as they get somebody else to do it well that’s not what made it a hit on Broadway. But it has to be a hit on Broadway first in order to warrant the theater owners investing in bringing that show to their town, to their city, and they take, they gamble on it. Will it work? It worked on Broadway, they’ll do it, but if it doesn’t work on Broadway you never get on tour.

Michael Kantor: Let’s regroup for a second and move on to Hello, Dollar.

Carol Channing: All right, before that, can I tell you about touring? It is the most thrilling, it’s the essence of theater. You hit, say, Cincinnati. Well, talking to people like you, Michael Cantor, talking to who interview you in that town, we need each other. It’s a 50-50 thing, we exist on one another. This is what we do on touring. There are five shows back to back. Friday night, Saturday matinee, Saturday night, Sunday matinee. Sunday night, jump into a Learjet. The moment that curtain goes down, get to the next town. Get on AM Cincinnati, wherever you’re going. Get on that at the 6 AM show. Let them know you’re in town. That’s half the job, the responsibility of if you have billing over the title. That’s half your responsibility to let people know they’re in town now, with what, what is it, and then tweak their interests. Well, the fun is that my husband and I travel together, he’s my manager, he calls the box office after that a.m. Cincinnati and says, what happened? And they either say, we just sold out the fourth balcony, the switchboard is all lit up, or they say. Well, I don’t know, it was a little bit, then we know, don’t do that kind of an interview again, or do that kinda of an interviewed. Then I know, you go from there to the city hall, have your picture taken with the mayor, he gives you some kind of a plaque that you can put on your mantelpiece, and then you go to do the weather report at 11 o’clock and the 12 noon news and so on, and it’s like the siege of Oral Am. You take over the doggone town, and they all know you’re there, and it’s a civic event. Joel Brenner and I used to talk about it. He was in love with theater, too. And he said, it’s civic event, isn’t it? It’s not just a show. It’s terrible. The whole gaudy circus of show business is involved in letting people know that you brought the circus, and it there. And the producer backs you in the back. And then, finally, The next day is opening night and my dresser always says to me, relax, it’s all right. All you’ve got is two shows to do today. You’re much, you don’t have nearly as much work to do, but it’s the, then they take the center pole out of the center of the tent. Each man, every man to his own post, take the pole out, you’re on to the next town. That’s show business. Don’t, you can’t say that Broadway is more thrilling.

Michael Kantor: We got three minutes left. Tell us how you got the role of Dolly. Wasn’t the show written for Ethel Merman? No. Sorry. Wasn´t the show, wasn´t it written for the Ethel merman?

Carol Channing: Well, I knew Ethel. I worshiped her as we all did. And everybody that, see, Ethel doesn’t like hit shows that she’s not in. So, and she just liked that. But that’s a form of insecurity. Did you know that George Burns told me that Al Jolson used to have to turn the faucets on in the sink? When other people in his show were getting applause? That’s insecurity. How can the great Al Jolson have to turn faucets on, not to hear other? I guess we’re, you know, it’s, well, anyway, that’s the way actors are built. Very often, in Hello Dolly, actors come up and say, they love everybody but Vandergelder. Well, of course they love you, for heaven’s sakes, they don’t can’t like, no, they like the whole show, they liked everybody, but they just don’t like me. Well, that the way the actors are, we’re built that way. Maybe it’s something that puts the fire under us and makes us keep reaching and keep trying to communicate. We’re in love with this character. We want them to see the character. We want to see where it fits in this wonderful script. We think it’s a great show. They’ve got to see it, you know? They’ve go to, and if they don’t, it’s suicidal.

Michael Kantor: What was Gower champion like as a director?

Carol Channing: I mean, Gower Champion. Bought what he saw up there on the stage. I was in love with Dolly. Gower Champion had already directed L’Indonier, that little review. I did 12 different characters in L’indonier. He bought, the Marge Champion came to him and said, you’ve got to see this girl. He said, but we’ve cast this L’indenier. She said, just the same, I want you to see these girl, Carol Channing. She came to see my audition for an agent. The agent said, Marge might be interested. Marge has a strange antenna. So did Anita Luce. Something, I said, well, how do you know? How did you know when Liza Minnelli was growing up that she was going to be a great star? And they said, she gets a light around her. Just like what they put around Jesus Christ Almighty and Christmas cards. Well, she get a light a round her. So Anita Luse and Marge Champion said, You gotta see this girl, Carol Channing. Well, naturally, I think they’re infallible. I think that they have a great, I think astute and penetrating minds, both of them. So, the thing is, they saw this and they said, Anita said, and Marge said, Gower, you gotta see these girls. Now, this is before, gentlemen, from a, he said, we’re all cast. She said, just the same, just look at her. We got a little Las Palmas theater that’s still there in Los Angeles. I got up on the stage, Gauer said, I can give her. One minute, because we got to get back to rehearsal and we’re in it now and I can’t see her anyway. It’ll have to be for some other show. So Marge said, okay, do Ethel Waters. I did Ethel waters. He said, she saw Gower losing interest. Then she’d say, okay do Gertrude Lawrence. I did everybody on Broadway. Uta Hagen, Lynn Fontaine. I did it everybody that was, B Lily. You know, all the great Broadway stars in that day. So I did them all. Slowly, slowly, Gar began to watch. And he watched, and I did 12 numbers. He said, what else have you got? And I said, that’s all. That’s all I can do, and that’s what I’ve got. So he said, well, then go back and start again. So I did, which made Marge very happy.

Michael Kantor: Tell me about how you first connected with Jerry Herman on…

Carol Channing: The moment I met him, he had a little apartment that he kept himself. It was one room on West 9th Street, just off Fifth Avenue, that first block. It looked like a monastery. It was all white stucco walls and brown shutters, a brown piano, a brown counter paint on the bed, and that was it. It had a kitchen sink, and that I thought this, I said, why does it seem as if this is where the monks saved the Bible or something, you know? This is where, in the Renaissance, when the bubonic plague came along, this is where a few men got together and said, let’s save civilization with as much as we can. That’s what it looked like. Good work was done there. This place was a workplace, a monastery, a cathedral to Jerry’s talent almost. But it was just one room, a bedroom, and a kitchen sink in between. And there he was, that little man, and I walked in, and I looked, and I thought, there’s the monk. He’s the one keeping this, keeping the flame, you know, of civilization, of great, great work being done. And he said, I already had the part. Gower Champion gave it to me in Hello Doc, Mr. Merrick gave it me too. Mr. Merrick said, that’s it, I’m gonna have a show written for you and that’s, and then I suddenly, I said, but I can’t do it without Gower Champion. So Gower, he, they said, Mr. Marek said, Gower I have this show written for Carol Channing. He was busy working on Rodgers and Hammerstein and said, you have to turn it down. It’s, I I’m working with it. Suddenly Rodgers and Hammerstein did not do that show and he was free. And he said, okay, I can now direct Hello Dolly and choreograph it. So he said there’s only one thing, I don’t want Carol Channing. Now, I’d already done Lend and Ear for him. He said, I just don’t want him. Why is a long explanation. Oliver Smith caused that. But anyway, he’s gone now, so we don’t have to go into that. But just the same Gower said, I don’t wanna, so then they offered it to Ethel Merman. Ethel loved saying, yeah, I know that show. I turned that down. Which, God, I think she’s the funniest woman ever. She didn’t even know how funny she was. I adored her. I was with her on her deathbed. But anyway. Gower had already, I said, Gower, look, when I feel this way about a character, let me audition for you. I want to, he said, well, that’s demeaning to audition. I said no, I want you to see me, what I think of Dolly Gallagher Levi. This is who I think she is. So I took the original matchmaker that Thornton Wilder wrote. I did the money speech for him. I did that famous speeches that have gone on about what is marriage, what is love, all that. And I did those, we went through the book, I stood up on the stage and did it for him again, another audition, and he just stood there and watched, and at the end of the whole thing, it went on for three quarters of an hour. He said, I buy that. And Gower and I never wavered. We were like a ship in a storm with a rudder. The two of us were together. Every show goes through that. If you don’t go through that terrible storm period when everybody says, why did we ever get into this thing? Somehow you never seem to have a head, oddly enough. Every piece of creative work has to go through a time when, why did I ever start this terrible idea? And then slowly, you rally your forces together and make it work, you know? It’s got to go though that terrible stage. So we went through it, but Gower and I never. He bought what he saw at that audition. The ship almost capsized. We stayed together. He never questioned me. I never questioned him. I did blindly what he told me to do. The man had a peculiar talent. He knew how to frame what I thought of Dolly. He said, I’m not a great choreographer. I’m a great dancer. I’m great playwright. I’m no a great director. I’m showman. And that’s what he was. The finest, most aristocratic form of a showman. Truly a great artist. He had the same, Bob Mackey as a designer has the same thing. He looks at Cher and he sees the way God created her. And he puts a dress on her. He did a thing for Angela Lansbury, off the shoulder for the Tony Awards, blue of course, Anglo-Saxon blue, with white shoulders. And never did she look like that again. Because Bob Mackie saw her. He made my diamonds dress for me. He said, I prayed over that darn thing. And suddenly I burst into perspiration and I knew, put diamonds from earlobe to earlob, straight down, make her look like the Pope at the Vatican, come out there. And it made the lyrics of diamonds the funniest lyrics. Everyone, you think she’s gonna say something profound. And this idiot, Laura, I stand there and says, diamonds are a girl’s best friend. It’s, she, he brought out the different, I come out with the Pope’s hat on and, that’s what Gower did for me. I was, as I’ve said often, I felt like the statue of the thinker, and Gower was Rodin. And he would go back to the back of the theater, and he would, he, worked for two weeks, the first two weeks of rehearsal on the Hello Dolly number. He said, I gotta get the level of this show. And if I were Josh Logan, or if I was Robert Moore, I would, or Elia Kazan, we’d be on the script first. But he said I’m not. I see everything as it’s danced and sung. And so did I. But I did obediently what he wanted me to do. And he would say. Dolly up in this, Hello Dolly was supposed to be an intimate musical, a small musical with only 14 people. By the time the two weeks was over, he said get me more waiters, get me a bigger stairway. No, get more Dolly boys, get you more cooks, now I want 12 cooks singing Hello Dolli at the top of their lungs. And he said it got bigger and bigger and suddenly he knew the level of this show. For two weeks we watched Gower come down to the orchestra pit and say, all right, pick Dolly up and do this, do that with her and I’ll run back and look. And he ran back and he looked and he said, put her down, that isn’t right. Dolly’s feet are never off the ground. Her feet are firmly planted right there on the ground and she runs everybody else around. That’s her character. He set that character off. I trusted him with my soul. But if you can sing a character and dance a character rather than walk and talk the character, Gower and I felt you suddenly get in that rare realm, which is her soul. You’ve got her soul instead of just the way she walks and she talks, you haven’t got that then. But you’ve got it if you sing her and dance her. All of a sudden, she does a toujete like only Dolly Gallagher Levi does it, and she does a wind-up and a bump and lets him have it, you know? And she is the biggest little hadassalita from the battery to the Bronx because she was in love with her husband there from Levi. Her name was Gallaghe, her maiden name, but she was in-love with him and she turned into his ancestors and Gower and I dreamed her and loved her and caressed her. It was the greatest experience to work with Gower. He forgot all about any differences of opinion that we had in Lend and Ear. I forgot about them. We just adored each other. And he never said so. He never said, so he just, but we got this darn thing on. And he yelled across the stage. That night I said, I can’t go out. I can, I cannot face the newspapers, the reviews, the opening night. I can. And they still had the intercoms on and the microphone. For the show on opening night and I waited there, miserable, Richard L. Coe, the critic emeritus for the Washington Post was sitting with me and my beloved Anita Luce, my spiritual mother, sat with me in the dressing room. I had one on each side giving me strength and I said, I can’t face it. I can go into Sardis and listen to those reviews. We’ve dreamed about this woman and loved her so if somebody says I don’t get it, that’s it, I cant take it. So I held on to both of them and Gower, I heard his voice come through the intercom and he said, Carol, Carol we’re a smash hit. He finally got into the dressing room, but the intercom was still on and he didn’t know it and he couldn’t stop yelling. Oh, my dear Anita Luce was sitting right next to me and she was so happy for me and so, oh dear, you don’t know what it is. You just don’t to have a hit like that. And the whole world came through my dressing room. The traffic in my dressing, everybody from all over the world, wasn’t I fortunate? I was the luckiest person in the world. I had the great classic character, Lorelai Lee in Gentleman Preferred Blondes. Now, Anita Luce always said, that was my first starring part, Anita always said there are two ways of doing Lorela. One is to get the cutest, prettiest, sexiest, most adorable girl in town. The other is to a comedian’s comedy comment on the cutest littlest prettiest girl in And she said, this is a comedy, it’s satire. And she’s stuck by me, I want Carol. Everybody said, who’s Carol? You know, I won’t Carol Channing. I want her in that part. Do you know what happened in those days? Broadway people.

Michael Kantor: Just ran out of film okay tell me about the night that hello dolly is on the road in detroit in trouble and at two in the morning jerry herman calls you down to his room he’s in his white bathrobe to hear a new song before the parade

Carol Channing: Well, he had to write that song. The problem was that Thornton Wilder, who wrote the original matchmaker, that’s what Hello Dolly’s adapted from. It never was a box office success until Hello Dolley and Thorntin Wilder was alive when we opened in New York. An adorable man. He said, how did you figure it out? I said, Jerry Herman. Jerry Herman figured it out. He said there are too many subplots in this. We’ve got to go straight for, we watch the audience. Jerry watched the audience, Mike Stewart, our champion. That’s why I think so much of these people. They didn’t watch the stage, they watched the audience, they lost interest. Once Dolly says, I’m gonna marry, harass me into Gelda for his money. They say, all right, I buy that. Anything off that track, they get up and go to the ladies’ room. They get up, and get involved in something else, start thumbing through their program. Jerry Herman, we were a flop on the pre-Broadway tour in Detroit because the reviewers never saw a show break in for a Broadway opening before. They thought we were gonna arrive like Carousel or Oklahoma touring for nine years, 15 years and all that and we’d be letter perfect, you see. Not a superfluous word in it. That isn’t the way it is. And suddenly a woman named Shirley Eder said, but that’s the way shows look when they’re trying out. Don’t you know that? No, they didn’t know that. It doesn’t look well rehearsed to me. Well, we were changing it every fourth night. They changed it every night. Some of the stuff. We stuck Davy Hartman in a barrel with a flashlight and the script. We had pregnant pauses between because we couldn’t learn it that fast. Something new. And he would whisper the next line to us. Whisper the next one. Jerry, we knew there was something wrong. It wasn’t following the line of Dolly. It started, it was a number that came after, after we introduced the characters, a number came, Penny in My Pocket, brilliant number. Gower’s choreography was, Jerry’s lyrics were heaven. It was for Vandergelder. It was called Penny in my Pocket. It was how he made his first half million dollars. But it was off the subject of, I’m gonna marry Harris B. And DeGelder for his money. It was off-the-subject. You can’t do that with a musical. So Jerry sat there. He thought, wait a minute, what was Thornton Wilder trying to say? What did he say in everything he wrote? In our town, Thorntin Wilder wrote, and he wrote our town. Don’t go to the grave with your lovely young bride who just died in childbirth with your first child. Don’t go to the grave with her, stay with us, stay with the living. In the skin of our teeth, he wrote that play, great plays, mankind can survive the ice age, the stone age, the dinosaur age, if we just stay together, forget our competitions, we’ll make it, we always do and we always will, if we’d just stay you together. What is he saying? What did he say in the eighth day? What did… Always, it was the same thing he said. He said, I’m gonna re… Dolly Gallagher Levi, stop talking to your dead husband and rejoin the human race. That’s what Jerry thought he said, so he realized, Jerry realized, this is what’s missing, not Penny in my pocket, not off the subject, great songs he had to cut from it. None of that’s what’s missing is what was Thornton Wilder trying to say, I’m gonna stop talking to Ephraim Levi, I will stop talking you, I will rejoin the human race before the parade passes by. I’m going to get in step while there’s still time left. And she sings, I am going to survive, I am gonna get everybody I know into this parade, I’ll get Barnaby and Cornelius out of that basement. I’ll get Mrs. Malloy out of her hat shop and her little assistant. I will get everybody initial into that parade. Vander Gelder, who is the richest and therefore the meanest man in Yonkers, is going to have friends. He’ll probably be the mayor of Yonker’s if he just gets into that parade and we stick together and we make it together. We will. So Jerry figured it out. It’s gotta be the parade of life. And he wrote before the parade passes by, in Detroit. He called up, there we were, terrible reviews, close the show, Mr. Merrick Wonder closed the show. At, was it three in the morning? Was it two thirty, two o’clock in the morning? Now, finally I got to sleep because I had to relearn lines every night in Detroit. And relearn, finally, I got to sleep and my husband said, Carol, you’ve got to wake up. Well, I had this granny’s nightgown, flannel nightgound. And he said, I’ve got on the phone. He said, it’s Jerry. He wants to talk to you. Carol, I think I’ve Not the song. We had Hello, Dolly, Now, but I’ve got it. What we’re trying to say in this thing. So I got out of bed, forgot to put a bathrobe on, flew down the hall to the elevator, didn’t care who was in it, didn’t matter, went to Jerry’s room, he played the parade number. And we said, call Gower. We got, imagine Jerry called me first. Because we were already blood relations, we had decided we were brother and sister. And we didn’t even decide it. It happened the moment I met him. I knew I understood this man. And you know, no composer wants his song sung in my key. I mean, that’s terrible. Hello, Harry. Nobody wants to hear that. Jerry insisted, that that’s the way he conceived it. He didn’t, he didn’t. But he said, I want it. I want Carol. I want that. Sound. Anyway, we called Gower. Gower came down, no bathrobe. He thought, what does Jerry want? Is the house on fire? What happened? So he ran in and he had his pajamas on. He listened to this number. We all three did ring around the rosies because we knew that was what Thornton Wilder had been trying to say. And Thorntons Wilder said, I rewrote The Matchmaker for 36 years. And I never realized that’s what I was trying to say. Who wrote this thing? I said, Jerry Herman. This adorable man looked like a Botticelli angel, this Thornton Wilder. He said, I thought I had to follow, he adapted it from the Viennese, you know. He thought he had to have all that, and the Vienne style was closet doors opening and closing just in time. I was there when Jerry wrote Motherhood March, when he wrote Parade. When he wrote, I was there watching him. He rewrote things. He realized nobody knows what Dolly does. So he wrote I put my hand in here. I put hand in. He wrote what she does, how she makes a living. All these, I there when he wrote every single one of the songs in Hello Dolly. And people try to say that he didn’t write every song. I was there when he hadn’t finished Hello Dolly yet. And he wrote it right in front of me. Please believe me. I was their. A lot of people who never wrote a great hit show like Hello Dolli maybe resent Jerry Herman a little. But don’t do it. Let’s just be grateful for him and know he had a, he has a brain on him. That little man has got an electric brain that goes right straight to what are we talking about here. Thornton Wilder said, how did you know what I was trying to say? I didn’t know what was trying say. I said, Jerry Herman figured out what you said and everything you ever wrote. And he said, he kissed us all on all four cheeks. He came backstage and he just kissed Jerry and all the creative forces. Isn’t that? I mean, the thrill of American musical comedy is the teamwork. If they don’t work together, it’s not there. But we did, we worked together.