If ever a movie title was totally acccurate, it's "Carol Channing: Larger Than Life," which the 90-year-old actress-dancer-singer. Wait a minute. I take back the last part, maybe the last two parts. But she's irrepressible, a unique talent who has worked constantly throughout her life, scoring on stage, in films, as a cabaret performer and in any other form of show business she set her mind to.
Dori Berinstein's documentary film, which will screen at 1 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 19 at the Tivoli, is a delight, a well-frosted cupcake of song and dance, of stories and memories, as the Channing whose special voice and amazing eyes can dominate an ajudience.
An aside: I met her more than 20 years ago, when she was touring with Mary Martin in "The Legends," a show of stories and reminiscences that visited St. Louis. She lunched with a handful of the press, carrying her own meal because she was on a strict diet, plus the fact that she had several personal restrictions when it came to food. But she was friendly and charming, and she wrapped all of us around her little finger
Channing was born in Seattle but grew up in San Francisco, where her father was a newspaper editor. Despite our hopes, she was not "just a little girl from Little Rock, born on the wrong side of the tracks," though that number and "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" from "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes," were the springboards to a half-century career. She began as an understudy to Eve Arden in "Let's Face It," replaced Rosalind Russell in "Wonderful Town," and then struck gold as Dolly Levi, a matchmaker from Yonkers, married to Horace Vandergelder, that "well-known half-a-millionaire."
She never missed a performance as Dolly.
Berinstein obviously is a fan, as am I, and Channing's presence leaps from the screen and fills the theater. She's a delight, and so is her story.
Carol Channing: Larger Than Life plays at 1 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 19, at the Tivoli.
-- Joe
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