Broadway icon Carol Channing, star of ‘Hello, Dolly!’ and ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes’, dead at 97
- Carol Channing was forever associated with her two most famous stage roles – even though Marilyn Monroe and Barbra Streisand were cast in the screen versions
Carol Channing, who won over audiences with her giddy, guileless charm in signature roles in Broadway’s Hello, Dolly! and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, died in her California home on Tuesday at the age of 97, according to her publicist.
Channing died of natural causes in Rancho Mirage after having suffered multiple strokes last year, publicist Harlan Boll said.
In a career that spanned seven decades, the saucer-eyed, raspy-voiced musical-comedy star never shook her association with the role of matchmaker Dolly Levi in the 1964 musical Hello Dolly! or gold-digger Lorelei Lee in Anita Loos’ Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
Still, Channing embraced being identified with Lorelei, as well as Dolly, a role that won her a Tony Award.
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“Audiences expect and demand I sing these songs,” she once told a reporter of her signature tunes, Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend and Hello Dolly. “I’m lucky to be so closely associated with both Diamonds and Dolly … I’m luckier than most – I have two identity songs.”