The Orlando Sentinel from Orlando, Florida • Page 68

0 i I i Enchanting Channing 'Oh, oh, oh, fellas; look at the old girl now, fellas' many other entertainers (including female impersonators) imitate. She was Lorelei in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes." And she's been herself in revues and concerts. And "herself" doesn't appear to be Dolly Gallagher Levi. Channing calls Dolly a meddler and says she doesn't admire meddlers. "What da they get out of it?" she asks.

Carol Channing is the type of star other celebrities admire, clamor to meet, slammer around. But that starstruckness has to disappear a minute into a conversation with her. It's doubtful you could be bored around Carol Channing. It's doubtful she ever gets bored. Well actually, she says she does get bored "with finances, budgets and sometimes with about the Mideast or Panama." Mostly, you would guess, there have been thrills.

Exciting encounters. And Carol Channing, when she shares (be moments she's had wife presidents and playwrights, well, it's as if she's representing all of us. She is WE talking to THEM. When "Hello, Dolly" opened in New York in January 1964, one the people who fell in love with it was the late Thornton Wilder (who wrote 'The Matchmaker," on which "DoDy" is based). "He came once a week," Channing says.

"He was my babykin. He said 'Dolly' was just the way to do bis story. Later he wanted to rewrite The Skin oi Our Teeth' for me, so that I would be playing both Mrs. Antrobus and Sabina, but he died before he could finish it" During her current "Dolly" tour (which began in June 1977), Channing hit Washington. As a birthday present for Amy, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter attended a performance.

'Miss Channing, I enjoyed your Amy told me. 'Now I'd like to invite you to my house." Which of course, was the White House. I went for an intimate Halloween party for fee White House staff 700 people." Channing laughs. She says she was impressed with the Carte fine grained people," she says. Most folks would remember Channing 's association with another president better.

Remember when she sang "Hello, Lyndon" at the 1964 Democratic convention? And later "Dolly" was presented in the While House. "When I'd finished my last note," Channing says, "President Johnson come up to the stage and offered me a glass of champagne. I said 'No, Mr. President, I can't drink that You won't understand this, but tomorrow eight I have to open in Dayton and face a battery of He went around the rest of the evening saying, "What does this girl mean I wouldn't understand? I face a battery of critics all the The LBJ anecdote also says something in particular about Carol Channing. She's very serious about the "DoDy" role.

She asks her husband if he doesn't think the Miami Beach audience that night missed some of the funny lines. She asks if her Orlando audiences will be hip. She suggests that audiences in Miami Beach may be older. She asks if you understand why older people always seem to retire to By DEAN JOHNSON EimnjwinmiK Edrtof isL uniformed doorman steers visitors into the marbled lobby oi Sea Coast Towers, an elegant residence-hotel in Miami Beach. From the lobby, it's a winding stroll through plushy halls and cushy dining alcoves into the most way-back dining nook oi them all It is midnight and An Entrance is expected momentarily.

And when Carol Channing makes that entrance, the diners in an adjoining alcove ooh and ah and someone says, inevitably, Hello, Dolly." Without making an effort, Carol Chanting does a star entrance. She is dressed in white, a pants outfit, and her banged blonde wig fits as naturally as just-the-right-size gloves. She is so identifiable, she looks like she's doing an imitation of herself. The waiter is nervous. He dribbles col-lee onto the tablecloth.

Before Chan-ning's arrival for the after-theater supper, the waiter has confidentially said to Charming 's husband (producer Charles Lowe) that fee restaurant manager would insist on providing wine for the party. Lowe says he doesn't want wine and Channing won't want wine either. "Miss Charming will be bringing her cwn food and drink," Lowe tells the waiter. Aiier Ehe sits down, exchanges greetings in thai rolling voice and fixes her companions with stares from those enormous unblinking eyes (jp close, they seem as big as hockey pucks), she orders "an empty plate and an empty class." She does not eat restaurant food, hasn't lor 15 years. Carol Channing eats organically.

She has several thermos-like containers one with zucchini, another with chopped celery. For dessert, she eats feeds. She has a health food glow. Her thirst lor work is well-known. Her energy remarkable.

On this day, she has done two shows (and has been fighting a bug of some kind besides). Yet she still looks iresh. Partly maybe, it's just that she loots childlike, mercurial, the luck of nature's draw. You feel you could tell her anything and she'd believe she doesn't seem like a mother figure but a friend figure. She thin, lanky, kind of marionette-like in her movements.

During her "Dolly'' performance at the Miami Beach Theater of the Performing Arts, a woman in ftie audience had said, when Channing hiked her skirt up a bit, "Look how skinny her legs are." Carol Channing will be 56 on Jan. 31. She could pass for 40. Because oi her association with "Hello, Dolly," mere is going to be a basic assumption, when you meet Carol Chancing, that she is a Dolly Gallagher Levi. Well in the sense that Dolly is a dramatic, exaggerated, warm character, yes, Charming and Dolly are alike.

But, of course, it isn't only the Dolly role (hat has made Carol Channing the type star who, compliment of compliments, 4-E Carol Channing in "Hello, Carr Auditorium will host eight shows (he same areas like Miami Beach and St Petersburg. "When I get old, I don't want to be with other old people," she says. Of course, the Peter Pan in Carol Channing makes it doubtful she'll ever be old. Besides she's a curious sort she has other questions about Orlando. She appeared here once before in 1962 but in concert not in You tell her, yes, (be Howard Johnson's shell be staying at is close to the theater.

And, yes, Orlando has drag (female impersonator) shows. Channing says she likes drag shows because she gets ideas for material and costumes. It is pleasant being with Carol Channing and Charles Lowe, a we're-aD-just-old-friends type of encounter. They are easy people to be with; there's an ease between the two oi them. They have been married 22 years and have one son, Channing, a TV critic-political cartoonist for a newspaper in Oklahoma.

During the 1950s, Charles Lowe produced the George Bums and Gracie Allen television show. When Gracie had to leave the show because of heart trouble, Lowe says she asked Channing to work with Bums. "He lives to work," Gracie told the Lowes. And, since the late '50s, Channing has worked off and on with Burns. After this tour of "Dolly" ends in December, Channing will do some TV specials with Bums.

And then, next fall, she'll do a new Broadway show written by Jerry Herman, who did me music and lyrics for "Dolly." "Jerry says the new show is the easiest writing he's done," Channing says. The show, tentatively called "Mother of Burlesque," is based on the life of Lydia Thompson, a Civil War-era entertainer, "the first American superstar," Channing says. And what of Dolly? Will the original Dolly ever do a repeat Dolly again? "Maybe every 15 years I'll do it," Channing says. "John Geilgud told me he likes to do Hamlet every 15 years; maybe that's how I'll do DoDy." It is almost 2 a.m. and Carol Channing has eaten her last seed.

She does hot terminate the party. Bui much as you'd like to stay around for a couple more hours, you allow as how she must be tired and that perhaps you'U run along. "And when we come to Orlando, you must have supper with us again some evening," she tells you. And the nervous waiter comes by one more time and says what he's wanted to say since The Entrance: "May God bless you. Miss Channing.

You have given US little people much happiness." It is a sweet moment and Carol Channing, who has heard compliments from presidents, accepts it graciously and says "But we are aU little people." But, oi course then, there are some big little people. Carol Channing, for one. Sentinel SlarAfter Hours.