Authors: Boze Hadleigh
D
OLLY
!
OF COURSE RESURRECTED
and expanded Carol Channing’s stardom and gave her a signature role she could and would return to again and again—
ye-es!
Unfortunately, she wasn’t lucky or versatile enough to follow it up with another hit, unlike Angela Lansbury after Jerry Herman’s subsequent megahit
Mame
. Following assorted showbiz efforts, Channing in later years did a sequel of sorts to
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
, titled
Lorelei
, besides touring extensively as Dolly.
Once Channing made a hit as Dolly, everyone wanted to play her, it was so clearly a star vehicle and so easily adjusted to the personality of its diva-of-the-month’s run. Ginger Rogers was flashy and arrogant. Martha Raye was droll but not enough in character. Betty Grable was charming and eager to please—some said too sweet to play the conniving widow. Pearl Bailey got away with stereotyping the first black Dolly. Phyllis Diller tried to shake her standup-comedy image by playing it relatively straight.
Ethel Merman was Ethel Merman, and that was enough. She agreed to return for three months only, to close the run. It turned out to be her Broadway swansong.
“Dolly is a star herself,” David Merrick had proclaimed, “and she needs a star to play a star.” He foresaw an endless procession of Dollys after the formula proved viable.
Expectations were high when Ginger Rogers took over the role, but her swanking and attitude soon turned many in the company off, and she began missing several performances, in contrast to the very professional Channing. At that time, Actors’ Equity required posting a notice in the lobby or making a pre-performance announcement if a performer was not going on. Merrick opted for the latter, with the announcer welcoming the audience and stating that the role of Mrs. Levi—the word “Dolly” was not used—would tonight be performed by Bibi Osterwald. Just as Bibi’s last name was starting to be said, the conductor gave the downbeat and the box-office window slammed shut.
This became known as The Ginger Rogers Cue. Although patrons who’d come to see Rogers were at first disappointed, Osterwald’s performance was said by many aficionados to be the best of all stage Dollys. (She eventually got to star regularly in the show.) Alas, via a non-collision of talent and timing, the singer-actress never became a star. It was Osterwald who complained to Equity about Merrick’s ruse, and henceforth a performer’s absence had to be made clear both from the stage and in the lobby.
“When Ginger left,” recalled a backstage insider, “she was relieved. By then, it was too much for her. And we, the crew and cast, were also relieved.… She made some of us homesick for Carol!”
Another ex-movie star, and a much more comedic one, was brought in: Martha Raye, aka The Big Mouth. “Perfect show for me,” she cracked. “Set in the 1890s—when I was an ingénue.”
Raye’s jollity was mostly for show, as Melodye—her only child (who so far hasn’t written a book)—could attest. Martha was the only Dolly with whom the affable, almost fatuous Jerry Herman did not get along. When she took over Dolly, he was in hospital with hepatitis. He’d routinely worked on the score with each new actress, rehearsing and changing keys, etc. Herman described himself as “sick as a dog;” he was unable to meet with Raye but sent a “gorgeous telegram” proffering an apology. On her opening, he sent “a magnificent bouquet of flowers” to her dressing room.
Neither the telegram nor flowers were acknowledged, and during her run Raye made no attempt to contact Herman, who when let out of hospital recuperated at his summer home on Fire Island. Still weak and confined to a wheelchair, Jerry was taken to lunch at a local restaurant where sat Martha Raye with three gay friends or associates (her final husband was openly gay and decades her junior).
In his wheelchair, Herman rolled over to Raye’s table to introduce himself. She gave him an icy stare, then pouted, “You’ve never been to see me.” He explained, “I just got out of the hospital,” where he had been for months. He wondered if Raye had received his wire and flowers, and asked, “Didn’t you know that I was very, very ill?”
She snapped, “Well, I thought you could have spared
one
evening.”
The amazed and deflated composer wrote, “After that, I
never
went to the St. James Theatre to see her.”
P
EARL
B
AILEY DELIBERATELY TRIED TO SLOW
Dolly’s pace. “She lazily led an all-black cast,” observed theater buff Ethan Mordden. She also had attitude to spare. “There’s a line in the show,” her leading man Cab Calloway later noted, “ ‘a damned exasperating woman.’ That is Pearl all over, except I might use a stronger word than ‘damned.’ ” A professional singer, Bailey took fewer liberties with the songs than, say, the offhand Rogers or the idiosyncratic Channing. But one of Pearl’s idiosyncracies was claiming that God was onstage with her during a given performance.
“She carried on as if she was preaching or giving you a revelation,” said Calloway assistant Cyril Jackson. “She’d go on at length, never coming to the point, except how she and God were close personal friends and She, He, or It was apparently an avid theatergoer who’d blessed Pearl’s interpretation [of Dolly].”
More effective than anticipated was Phyllis Diller. Herman had worried, once producer Merrick made the decision to cast most any female box-office
name between forty and death, that the comedienne in the fright wig might make a “wild, crazed” caricature of Dolly. “She could have made funny faces or slipped in a few of her raunchy stories.” Rather, she enacted Dolly simply and honestly, if unspectacularly.
Dolly had long since proven less a role than a performance, less a character than a force of nature. It’s almost impossible to believe she was ever a retiring, reclusive widow, at least since
The Matchmaker
was musicalized. Possibly the most convincing Dolly of all was Tony- and Oscar-winning actress Shirley Booth in the 1958
Matchmaker
film (costarring Shirley MacLaine and Anthony Perkins, who briefly donned drag, which he declined to do again in
Some Like It Hot
, thereby handing Jack Lemmon one of that actor’s biggest hits). Booth had the maturity, charm, push, and demureness to be credible as a personable (but non-diva) widow returning to life and romance. However, since the advent of
Hello, Dolly!
Wilder’s nonmusical play has remained dormant, unrevived due to comparison with its tuneful, exclamation-marked twin. Ironically, though, musical ability is not an absolute requirement for an actress-diva playing Dolly!
When Barbra Streisand nabbed the movie version that she’d gone after, she gave an over-the-top performance at times reminiscent of the ageless Mae West (who paranoiacally threatened to sue) that was widely criticized but now seems apt and inventive. How can you overdo Dolly? Besides, what a change to hear the beautiful music beautifully sung.
Another irony: although Carol Channing had beaten Streisand for the 1964 Best Actress (Musical) Tony, it was Barbra who got the rare chance to reprise her Broadway triumph on the screen, earning a Best Actress Academy Award (split with Katharine Hepburn) for
Funny Girl. Hello, Dolly!
’s record of ten Tony Award wins held until
The Producers
overtook it in 2001, winning 12 Tonys.
Other Dollys in varied venues and productions from London to Vietnam included Mary Martin, who proved typically uncomfortable with the character’s aggressive, self-starting qualities, and Eve Arden (
Our Miss Brooks, Grease
), who seemed a bit schoolmarmish and detached in the part. Additional Dollys were former B-movie stars Dorothy Lamour and Yvonne De Carlo, and Joanne Worley from TV’s
Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In
.
Assorted songs got dropped along the way. For the movie version, Streisand requested a new opening song, a “list song” with complicated, showy lyrics (“Just Leave Everything to Me”), to establish her hyperkinetic character. Babs also wanted a love song of sorts (“Love Is Only Love”) to sing in a romantically lit solo scene that featured her in sexy deshabille and firm young cleavage, which belied the widow’s claim that she’d been in seclusion lo these many years since the death of Ephraim Levi. But what Streisand wanted,
Streisand got—directed by Gene Kelly, who added yet more dancing to the lengthy musical film. David Merrick, who had a financial interest in the movie, reportedly agreed to pay big bucks at the last minute if Jerry Herman could quickly compose what became “Love Is Only Love.”
After Herman presented the song, everyone was happy. It was beautiful and it didn’t even sound rushed. Unbeknownst to Merrick and company, Herman had composed it but never used it for a prior musical. By the time of the 1969 Streisand movie Angela Lansbury was a close friend of Jerry’s via
Mame
, and was familiar with the song. She happened to sit next to David Merrick on a cross-country flight when he shared the “new” song and she innocently admitted having heard it some time before, much to Merrick’s fury.
I
N 1970, SEVEN YEARS
into
Hello, Dolly!
’s run, Ethel Merman took over the part that had been created with her in mind. Her three-month engagement stretched to nine, but she was delighted, even relieved, to be back where she belonged—starring on Broadway. When she’d declined Dolly, she’d apprised Merrick, “I have spent my entire life in a dressing room, and I have had it with that life.” She wanted freedom, for example, “to be able to go to dinner parties at eight o’clock at night, like everybody else does, instead of always eating in the middle of the night.” Eventually the inactivity had palled.
The two songs Herman had specifically tailored to Merman were finally publicly performed: “Love, Look in My Window” and “World, Take Me Back.” According to Jerry, Merman played Dolly as “tough and funny, but lovable underneath.” Her leading man, Jack Goode, felt, “Miss Merman is the perfect Dolly—a career girl who comes out of retirement and shakes up everybody around her.… She’s the most exciting thing to ever happen to this wonderful show.” Some less-partial observers believed that Merman, like Channing, more than made the role her own, trampling it with the force of her unrestrained persona. Either way, audiences came, eager to see and hear. Carol Channing later wrote of “Ethel’s greatness in my part.”
Merman revealed that the other reason she’d originally rejected Dolly was that she’d always created the roles she played and feared that if she did
Hello, Dolly!
she’d be viewed as following in Ruth Gordon’s
Matchmaker
footsteps. Ethel was well known for her competitiveness with other females. The night of Merman’s final performance, Carol Channing and accompanying photographers showed up at the theater for pictures of the first and last Dollys, together, as the record-breaking show came to a close.
“I knew you’d make certain to be here tonight, Carol,” glared Ethel before refusing to pose with her and shutting the door on her. (Carol later crowed that the
New York Times
instead ran a photo of her alone, the original Dolly.)
Even though Ethel had said no to Dolly, she resented Carol’s success in the part. Channing recalled that once she became Dolly, whenever she’d encounter Merman socially, “I would say, ‘Hello, Ethel.’ And she would look right and left of me, wondering where my voice came from.”
Of course, Carol had the last Dolly laugh, outliving Merman and repeating the role on and on. But at a price. Whereas the ghost of Ethel Merman has lingered over every
Gypsy
revival including that of 2003 with Bernadette Peters, Channing lingered in
Hello, Dolly!
—the only musical most people can associate with her. The inevitable comparisons with newer Roses invariably favor Merman, while each new Channing
Hello, Dolly!
has diminished in everything—including supporting casts (the original featured Eileen Brennan and Charles Nelson Reilly)—everything but chutzpah. Theatre historian Ethan Mordden has termed it “build[ing] an evening around the glamour of guts.” It became less about viewing a scintillating star in a dazzling musical than going to see—so you could say you had—Carol Channing in her signature role. Or
Hello, Dolly!
with its signature star.
Mordden, to name one, considered the re-stagings “good show biz, but bad musical comedy.” He decried the lack of a curtain fall after the show’s end. Rather, the musical reprises, the cast’s strutting and posing, and the calculated buildup to Carol’s/Dolly’s appearance in Her Song insures that the “audience rises in salute as if they, too, have been directed by Gower Champion.”
It remains to be seen if
Hello, Dolly!
will survive time and Carol Channing, whose final Broadway run in the part (see accompanying sidebar) didn’t last as long as expected.
Gypsy
survived Merman partly due to substance, partly because it challenges actresses and often elevates them to new thespic heights.
Dolly!
doesn’t so much challenge as accommodate, and though it’s a nostalgic, gaudy musical that serves as a holiday for the senses in an increasingly colorless and cookie-cutter time, much of its substance turns out to be image and public relations. As with the story behind Carol Channing’s plate, recounted by veteran columnist James Bacon:
“Do you know about Carol Channing’s famous silver plate? She once asked me if I had seen her ‘plate,’ and I stared at her teeth, then said no. She said, ‘My silver plate, diddums, from David Merrick.’ So she dragged out this famous plate that everyone had seen but me, and it was impressive, and engraved—‘Congratulations, Carol, on the $8 million gross for
Hello, Dolly!
David Merrick.’
“Years later, I’m talking with the producer himself, and I mention his gift to Carol, and he snorted, ‘Gift, my eye! I sent her the message, but it was Charles Lowe—her P.R. man and husband—who got the silver plate and had my message engraved onto it.’ Whatever that plate cost Lowe, he’s gotten over a million dollars in publicity out of it. Maybe $8 million.”
“There has never been anything like this before in human society.”—B
ROOKS
A
TKINSON
in 1949 on Carol Channing in
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
(though “mincing coyly in high-heel shoes,” she was also “husky enough to kick in the teeth of any gentleman on the stage”)
“Gentlemen Must Prefer Amazons”—a C
OLUMNIST
for the Hearst Syndicate
“Carol Channing is rather disconcerting. You’ll notice her looking at you with those big baby-stare eyes. Then eventually it dawns on you that the person behind those eyes is, in show business terms, about 200 years old.”—D
ANNY
L
OCKIN
, who played Barnaby Tucker in
Hello, Dolly!
on stage and screen
“I knew Carol before, during and after
Blondes
. Everyone assumed she would become, and remain, a big star. Well, she didn’t remain one … it so disappointed and so hardened her, inside. Until
Hello, Dolly!
finally came along, Carol was a bundle of restless, ruthless nerves. The woman, appearances to the contrary, is no dummy.”—director-choreographer G
OWER
C
HAMPION
“Perhaps once in a decade a nova explodes above the Great White Way with enough brilliance to reillumine the whole gaudy legend of show business.”—T
IME
magazine in 1949 on the new star
“Carol Channing is a closet intellectual.”—columnist L
IZ
S
MITH
“Carol is a theatre actress. I used to stand in the wings every night and watch her. She was like clockwork. Her closing nights were like her opening nights. I loved going to the theatre knowing that you were going to get the same performance every night.”—L
EE
R
OY
R
EAMS
“Carol Channing never really crossed over to doing straight plays. Her whole focus is much bigger. The fact that you have to fill a theatre creates a certain style that does become larger than life.”—actor J
OE
B
OVA
“Carol is nobody else, and she craves celebrity like chocoholics crave chocolate.”—R
OSS
H
UNTER
, who produced
Thoroughly Modern Millie
, for which Channing received a supporting-actress Oscar nomination
“Carol Channing has played Dolly over 5,000 times. She’s either done it to perfection by now, or it’s done in her ability to do any other, more down-to-earth roles.”—E
ILEEN
H
ECKART
“Carol was crushed when the movie of
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
went to Marilyn. Carol had so built up the character of Lorelei Lee in her mind and the interviews, as if it was one of the all-time roles, an American Anna Karenina or something. In the movie, Lorelei’s just a gold-digger. Well, in the play she’s also just a gold-digger. Carol’s one consolation was that Marilyn was second-billed to Jane Russell.”—J
ULE
S
TYNE
,
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
composer
“Gower Champion wanted to star Nanette Fabray as Dolly, and she would have been marvelous. But not being outlandish or freakish, she’d have made Dolly normal, as Shirley Booth did in the
Matchmaker
movie—for my money, the best and most lovable interpretation. Maybe Channing helped make the show bigger, more of a stage spectacle, by taking Dolly outside the realm of normalcy and reality.”—pop-culture historian M
ARTIN
G
REIF
“.… a part nobody wanted and everybody eventually played.”—David Merrick assistant-turned-company-business manager S
TEVEN
S
USKIN
on Dolly Gallagher Levi
“It’s funny. People think Ethel Merman has this deep, masculine voice. But she can sing two octaves higher than Carol Channing.”—critic W
YATT
C
OOPER
“Carol once said she knocked the Beatles off of the charts. I thought, with
that
voice? And actors do exaggerate so. But she did. The original cast album of
Hello, Dolly!
did knock the Beatles off the charts when it came out in 1964.”—record producer B
EN
B
AGLEY
“I once made the mistake of asking Carol to sing
Hello, Dolly!
That is, the title song. She took about ten minutes to explain that she doesn’t sing it in the show. The waiters sing it to her, and she does an answering verse. Then I made the further mistake of saying that in the film version, Barbra Streisand does sing it—the entire song. I got what seemed like a ten-second glare.”—critic R
EX
R
EED
“Is this dud still running? Why?”—a D
ETROIT
C
RITIC
to Carol Channing in her New York dressing room during
Dolly!
’s second year
“When she comes out during the title number in the red dress and feathers, it is a breathtaking number and a real theatre moment. But over the years Carol has embellished it to the point where I think she almost believes her stories about people dying happy during the big ‘Dolly!’ number. She also says Lyndon Johnson requested that her recording of ‘Hello, Lyndon!’ for
the Democratic presidential convention be played in perpetuity—like an eternal flame—at his presidential library in Texas.”—G
WEN
V
ERDON
“One of Carol’s proudest memories is when Jackie Kennedy and her two children made their first public appearance after JFK’s assassination and funeral by going to see
Hello, Dolly!
and then visiting Carol backstage. Because that’s what Carol and that show represent: a coming to life again, a rejoining of the human race.”—
Hello, Dolly!
producer D
AVID
M
ERRICK
“She wants to be the only one in the show. She and Gower Champion, they were not nice people. You know the famous red dress? The dancers in the dressing room in the cellar had a doll with a black dress like the red dress, with the feathers and beads in black. Hanging by a noose.”—
Hello, Dolly!
costar C
HARLES
N
ELSON
R
EILLY
“Carol’s old-fashioned. She likes to give the impression she defers to her husband, that he’s in charge, whether it’s Charles Lowe or the new Armenian-American one that got her on the Larry King show [in 2003].”—an anonymous
FORMER FRIEND
of Carol and Charles
“She always has a lot to say and definite things she won’t do—like she won’t wear earrings because she thinks her face is busy enough.”—designer B
OB
M
ACKIE
“Carol Channing is now [the late ’90s] the last pure theatre star. This is the medium that made her, and she’s remained loyal to it.”—playwright J
EAN
K
ERR
“Believe it or not, the musicals with Mary Martin, Eddie Cantor, Ethel Merman, and Bert Lahr never got standing ovations. American show biz was then in its glory, and even the biggest talents were taken for granted.… It was the 1960s and shows such as
Hello, Dolly!
and
Mame
that created the audience-participation finale [epitomized by]
Dolly!
’s applause-athon.”—theater historian E
THAN
M
ORDDEN
“Watch Miss Channing as she descends that famous staircase in the title number: we applaud with relief, as we do when an old nag successfully negotiates a tricky course at a point-to-point.… Still, this [1996] production got great notices in New York, for drama critics are a sentimental crowd.”—theater columnist M
ARK
S
TEYN
“Last year [1998] Carol Channing told the press that the public’s been clamoring for yet another return as Dolly. You’d have to be very old and very nostalgic or very gay and very fond of musicals to still be clamoring. I
think where Carol’s concerned, they should rename it ‘Hello, Delusion!’—like, Dolly Levi meets Norma Desmond.”—H
ERB
R
ITTS
“Despite the fact that Carol’s theme song is ‘Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,’ she lost all of hers three years ago in her divorce.”—“Beverly Hills (213)” columnist C
ATHY
G
RIFFIN
in January 2002
“She’s Miss Channing to me and the world.”—manager and penultimate husband C
HARLES
L
OWE
in 1966
“Carol Channing certainly is.”—W
OODY
A
LLEN