Carol Elaine Channing American singer and actress Date of Birth: 31.01.1921 Country: USA

1. Biography of Carol Channing
2. Early Life and Education
3. Early Stage Career
4. Hello, Dolly! and Later Career
5. Legacy and Personal Life

Biography of Carol Channing

Carol Elaine Channing was born on January 31, 1921, in Seattle, Washington, USA. She was the only child in her family, the daughter of her father, George Channing, a journalist whose career led the family to move to San Francisco when Carol was just two weeks old. Her mother was Carol Glaser.

Early Life and Education

Carol Elaine attended Aptos Junior High School, where she met and fell in love with an Armenian-American boy named Harry Kullijian. However, they lost touch when Carol transferred to Lowell High School in San Francisco. In school, she became a member of the famous Lowell Forensic Society, the oldest national high school speech and debate club. According to Carol's memoir, when she left to attend Bennington College in Vermont, her mother revealed the truth about her father, who was actually from Augusta, Georgia, and was of German and African American descent. Her mother didn't want her daughter to be surprised "if she ever had a black baby." Carol kept this secret, wanting to avoid problems on Broadway and in Hollywood, only revealing the truth much later in her autobiography, "Just Lucky I Guess," published in 2002 when she was 81 years old. The book mentioned that her father's birth certificate was destroyed in a fire.

Early Stage Career

Carol Channing's first stage work in New York was in Mark Blitzstein's "No For an Answer." She then appeared on Broadway in "Let's Face It" and understudied the lead role of Eve Arden in case of a replacement. After five years, she landed a leading role in the revue "Lend an Ear." Playwright Anita Loos discovered her and invited her to play the role of Lorelei Lee in the stage adaptation of her famous comedy "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes." This role elevated Carol Channing to a prominent position among other stars. The character seemed tailor-made for her – smart yet perpetually absent-minded, naive yet practical in every way.

Hello, Dolly! and Later Career

Carol Channing gained worldwide fame as the star of Jerry Herman's musical "Hello, Dolly!" She never missed a performance and attributed her good health to her faith in Christian Science. She won a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical for her role. Although she didn't appear in the film adaptation of "Hello, Dolly!," she was disappointed by it. Many believed that actress Barbra Streisand, who was considered too young for the role of Dolly Levi, was cast instead. Carol reprised her role as Lorelei Lee in the musical "Lorelei" and also appeared in two New York revivals of "Hello, Dolly!" before taking it on a national tour.

Carol Channing also had a fruitful film career, including roles in the cult film "Thoroughly Modern Millie" with Julie Andrews and Mary Tyler Moore. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in "Millie" and was also nominated for a Golden Globe in the same category. In 1966, she received the Sarah Siddons Award for her work in the Chicago theater.

Throughout her film career, she made guest appearances in TV series and provided voices for animated characters. She voiced the character of Kanina Lafur in Disney's animated series "Chip 'n' Dale Rescue Rangers." Her voice can also be heard in TV shows such as "Where's Waldo?," "The Addams Family," and "The Magic School Bus," as well as in animated films such as "The New Adventures of Snow White," "Thumbelina," and "The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars."

Legacy and Personal Life

In 1995, Carol Channing received a Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement. In 2004, she was awarded an honorary doctorate in fine arts from California State University, Stanislaus. That same year, she received the Oscar Hammerstein Award for Lifetime Achievement in Musical Theatre. She and her husband, Harry Kullijian, are activists for arts education in California schools. The couple resides in Central Valley, Modesto, California.

Carol Channing was married four times. Her first husband, Theodore Naidish, was a writer. Her second husband, Alexander Carson, was a Canadian football player for the Ottawa Rough Riders. They had a son, Channing, who took his stepfather's last name and is now a Pulitzer Prize-nominated cartoonist known as Chan Lowe. In 1956, she married her manager and publicist, Charles Lowe. This marriage lasted 42 years until Carol filed for divorce in 1998, but her third husband passed away before the divorce was finalized. On May 10, 2003, she married her first love from junior high school, Harry Kullijian, after fondly describing him in her memoirs.