Looking Amazingly Swell

By William Tynan

When the announcement came early this year that Carol Channing would take to the road in a 30th anniversary tour of Hello, Dolly!, two questions sprang to mind: Just how ancient is Carol Channing, anyway? and Why would anyone want to see yet another version of that sappy, mediocre show? Here are the answers: 73, but capable of delivering an ageless performance that reminds theatergoers of what it means to see a star; and this particular Hello, Dolly! is a superb production of one of the happiest creations in all of musical comedy. In general, cross-country tours of old musicals featuring septuagenarians who have, let's say, fallen out of the public eye can be the dreariest events in all of show business. Not this time.

Dolly will visit more than 40 North American cities before the end of 1995, (it's in Pittsburgh this week) with Broadway and an international tour projected to follow. Staged and choreographed by veteran performer Lee Roy Reams under the supervision of composer Jerry Herman, the show has all the snap and style one remembers from Gower Champion's original production, which won a record 10 Tony Awards (Channing beat out Barbra Streisand's performance in Funny Girl). Exceptfor its confused and too hasty resolution, Michael Stewart's book -- about a meddlesome, matchmaking widow -- craftily melds song and dance. Corny? Sure, but also funny, and these days that's a rarity. Most important, Herman's infectious, toe-tapping score remains among the most melodious ever written for a musical.

This may be a road show, but the sets and costumes are Broadway quality -- and so is the supporting cast. As the curmudgeonly Yonkers merchant Horace Vandergelder, Jay Garner is a heavyweight foil for Channing. Michael DeVries, as chief clerk Cornelius Hackl, and Florence Lacey, his vis-a-vis as milliner Irene Molloy, are an especially appealing pair of singing comedians.

But it is Channing whom one comes to see, and she exceeds expectations. Though she has played Dolly more than 4,000 times, her gawky, over-the-top performance is still heartfelt and honest, and the audience cheers her for it. There's more gravel in her baritone, but she is pitch-perfect and a mistress of timing. She can build a laugh into a roar by simply chewing. And her disdain is magnificent, contemplating a gift of "chocolate-covered peanuts -- unshelled."

Her Dolly is different this time around. "She is bawdier, franker, sexier," says Channing in the gauzy drawl that has launched a thousand impersonators. Sitting in her hotel suite, wearing a navy blue Ralph Lauren military-style tunic and cream-colored slacks, she leans forward earnestly. Head atilt, unrelentingly wide-eyed, she explains: "The audience has changed and I've changed." If Channing has to work harder to achieve what she did more easily 30 years ago, then work she does. "I'll go to my grave remembering the tears and laughs I didn't get," she says. There were plans for the show to go to China, but they fell through. Even there Channing had intended to give it her all. "I had hired someone to teach me a curtain + speech in Mandarin Chinese," she says.

Channing and her husband of 38 years, Charles Lowe, have a home in Hollywood, but they're "never in it." A former television producer, Lowe manages his wife's career. The couple travel with 20 pieces of luggage, including a small case just for Channing's false eyelashes. They're accompanied by a factotum who shops and cooks for them and precedes them to each city to set up their rooms with the memorabilia that make life on the road more bearable: family photos, three original Al Hirschfeld drawings of Channing, Science and Health by Mary Baker Eddy (Channing is a Christian Scientist) and several cartoons by their son Channing, a syndicated political cartoonist. The fact that she has little time for anything but work doesn't faze her. "It's all a matter of how you've spent your life," she says. "I'm used to it. A lot of people complain that this is like being in jail, that they can't do anything else but the show. Well, yes."

Channing has rarely stopped working over the past 30 years, but the results have been mixed. Lorelei was a pallid sequel to Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, her first big hit, and Legends!, a comedy co-starring Mary Martin, was a critical disaster that never reached Broadway. In 1968 she was nominated for an Oscar for Thoroughly Modern Millie, but her movie career has been a disappointment. Recently she has been performing a one-woman show in which she does "a little of everything," as she puts it -- "singing, dancing, whistling, turning somersaults." If she has regrets that there has been no role to compare to Dolly or the original Lorelei, she doesn't reveal them. "Wasn't I fortunate?" she says. "Two crashing successes."