American actress, dancer, singer and comedian with a foghorn voice and huge eyes in an elastic face with a scatterbrained manner, 5’6″ (168 cm) and 138 lbs (62.5 kg). She started in Hollywood in a revue called “Lend an Ear” in 1948, a revue that carried her to Broadway, where she perfected the dumb blonde role in such productions as “The Vamp” (1955), “Show Girl” (1961) and “Lorelei” (1973).
After a decade of bit parts on stage and film, she made an impact in 1949 as the coy, mincing gold digger in the stage production of “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.”
Her huge hit, “Hello Dolly,” won her the Tony in 1964, the first of several Tony awards she would receive. Stage was always her medium, her film career was secondary. At 73 she again picked up “Dolly” for a tour, giving an ageless performance in a superb production of a happy musical comedy. She was still a delight after playing Dolly over 5,000 times.
The daughter of a Christian Science lecturer and editor, Channing got her first taste of dramatics at Bennington College and made her Broadway debut in the Marc Blitzstein opera, “Not for an Answer.”
As a film actress, she won the Golden Globe Award and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Muzzy in “Thoroughly Modern Millie” (1967). Her other film appearances include “The First Traveling Saleslady” (1956) and “Skidoo” (1968). On television, she appeared as an entertainer on variety shows, from “The Ed Sullivan Show” in the 1950s to “Hollywood Squares.” She had a standout performance as The White Queen in the TV production of “Alice in Wonderland” (1985), and had the first of many TV specials in 1966, “An Evening with Carol Channing.”
Channing was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame in 1981 and received a Lifetime Achievement Tony Award in 1995. She continued to perform and make appearances well into her 90s, singing songs from her repertoire and sharing stories with fans, cabaret style. She released an autobiography, “Just Lucky I Guess,” in 2002, and “Larger Than Life,” a documentary film about her career, was released in 2012.
Channing was married four times. Her first husband was the writer Theodore Naidish, whom she married when she was 20 in 1941. They divorced in 1944. She married her second husband Alexander F. Carson, a football-player known as Axe, or “The Murderous Ax” in November 1948 and they divorced in September 1956. The only lapse in Channing’s career came with the birth of their son, Channing Carson (later Lowe), a syndicated political cartoonist in Florida, who today publishes his cartoons as Chan Lowe and has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for his work.
Channing made a third marriage in 1956, to her manager, Charles Lowe; they celebrated their 40th anniversary in 1996. A Christian Scientist, she had a home in Hollywood, California to enjoy in-between tours. “People feel so sorry for me, traveling all the time,” Channing said. “All those hotel rooms! I love it. I haven’t washed a dish in 15 years and I’m hoping to not break my record.”
After leaving her husband in December 1997, on 19 May 1998 Channing filed divorce papers from Charles Lowe, 86, along with bitter accusations. She claimed that she and Lowe made love no more than twice in 1956, the first year of their marriage, and never since because of his impotence, and also charged him with squandering her earnings and with emotional abuse. Recovering from a stroke he suffered the previous year, Lowe vehemently denied his wife’s charges. On 2 September 1999, Lowe, 87, died in Los Angeles.
After Lowe’s death and until shortly before her fourth marriage, the actress’s companion was Roger Denny, an interior decorator. In 2003, she rekindled her romance with her junior high school sweetheart, Harry Kullijian, and they married on 10 May that year. Kullijian died on 26 December 2011, the eve of his 92nd birthday.
Channing died on 15 January 2019 of natural causes at her home in Rancho Mirage, California, sixteen days shy of her 98th birthday.
Link to Wikipedia biography