Carol Channing, who starred in “Hello, Dolly” on Broadway, where she had a career spanning decades, today turned her attention to natural causes at age 97, his agent, B.Harlan Boll.
The actress, who suffered two strokes last year, died in the town of Rancho Mirage, California.
Born in Seattle in 1921, Carol Channing debuted at age 19 in New York in a musical by Marc Blitzstein, before arriving on Broadway with the original stage version of “Men Prefer the Blondes” in 1949.
It would follow “The Vamp” in 1956, and “Show Girl” in 1961, who gave her the first nominations for the Tony Awards on Broadway, best actress of a musical, award that conquered in 1964, with the performance on “Hello, Dolly,” which celebrated before Bette Midler and Barbra Streisand.
Channing added more than 5,000 representations as Dolly Levi, the paper written by Jerry Herman and Michael Stewart, from the history of Thornton Wilder.
In 1968, it was the turn to conquer a Golden Globe, for the role in “Millie, Modern Girl”, musical in which also distinguished themselves, Julie Andrews and Mary Tyler Moore.
Channing entered the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1981 and received the Tony Award for Career in 1995.
When, in the midst of a Watergate investigation in 1973, Carol Channing’s name appeared on a list of “enemies to be killed” by US President Richard Nixon – who was to resign – the Broadway actress publicly stated that was one of his greatest distinctions.
In 2002, she published the autobiography “Just Lucky I Guess” and in 2012, the director Dori Berinstein dedicated her documentary “Larger Than Life”.
