Progress magazine
cover story
Cover head:
Carol Channing: Reminiscing with a Broadway Legend
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Story head:
At home with Carol Channing and Harry Kullijian
By Heidi Howell
Known
worldwide for her award-winning performances and unmistakable voice,
bigger-than-life stage and screen actress Carol Channing now calls
Modesto home.
Less than two years ago, she married her childhood
sweetheart, Modesto resident and former City Councilman Harry
Kullijian, 85. “She loves Modesto. She loves the climate, the people,
the city, and she tells everybody it’s her home,” Harry explains. “I
think most people don’t know that she’s never had a home — that the
dressing room and the hotel room were her abode. For years, she did
eight shows a week without any vacation, without any days off,” he says
of her more than 5,000 Broadway performances. She’s probably best known
for her role as Dolly Gallagher Levi in the Tony Award-winning musical,
“Hello, Dolly!”
“She’s been on stage for over 63 years and is
still going strong,” Harry notes of his sweetheart, who turns 84 January
31. “Carol provides wholesome entertainment. It’s something that people
enjoy universally. She still sings, she still dances; it’s a tribute to
hard work, and a tribute to all of us that have an opportunity to know
her.” Speaking of their connection, how did Harry meet Carol, and what
caused them to reunite after a 70-year separation?
It all started
decades ago in San Francisco. “I was 12 and Harry was 13,” says Carol.
“I was entering 7th grade at Aptos Junior High. Harry was the leader of
the school band, and I never got off the school auditorium stage,” she
explains. “When I saw Harry, I thought he was the most beautiful thing
I’d ever seen. And he truly was,” she says. “He’s still that beautiful
right now to me.”
Carol continues, “I decided I wanted to run for
vice president of the student body. I needed a campaign song.” At an
after-school dance in the cafeteria, she approached Harry for
assistance. “I was very shy at that age, but not with Harry, who was on
the stand leading the school orchestra,” Carol recalls. “I walked right
up to him (he didn’t know who I was), and said, ‘May I have this
dance?’” He replied that he had to stay and lead, that he couldn’t
dance, and didn’t know how. “I offered to teach him.” Although Harry
might disagree, Carol says, “He’s a beautiful dancer now.”
They
saw each other just one more time a few years later while Carol was
taking a course at the Martha Graham Dance Studio in San Francisco.
She’d been thinking about Harry, realizing that she missed him, when
suddenly he appeared at the studio. He invited Carol to his home, where
his mother was making baklava. “She had a pretty ring on her finger that
I noticed as she rolled out the dough,” says Carol. “That ring’s on my
finger now; I never dreamed it would be.” They finished the evening by
taking a walk across the new Golden Gate Bridge, “and we just went our
separate ways,” says Carol. “I didn’t know I wouldn’t be happy again
until now. Happiness is a strange thing.”
In 2003, Carol
published her memoirs, “Just Lucky I Guess,” in which she mentions her
first love, Harry Kullijan. While reading the book, family friend Mervin
Morris, of Mervyn’s Department Stores, realized that Carol was talking
about Mervyn’s landlord and business partner. Mervyn told Harry, “I’ve
got her number, you’ve got to call!” Carol remembers. “Harry called me.”
After a two-week courtship, they were engaged February 22, 2003 and
married at Mervyn’s house in Atherton, Calif. on May 10 of the same
year. “Some people say ‘God told you to write about Harry.’ It’s a
blessing, this marriage,” says Carol.
Harry had enjoyed a
“beautiful” 60-year marriage, while Carol endured 42 “miserable” years
of wedlock. She says of Harry, “If you don’t truly love each other, it’s
miserable. I so appreciate him,” says Carol. “We seem to fit like a
jigsaw puzzle.”
Since Carol became a Modesto resident, she’s
made appearances at community events, received an honorary Doctorate
from California State University, Stanislaus, and is establishing a
performing arts scholarship at CSUS. Harry notes, “We love Modesto
because of its environment, the people, the industriousness, the
progressiveness. At one time, it was voted an ‘All-American City,’” he
says.
Harry believes that, like other famous celebrities, Carol
is an ordinary person with extraordinary talent. “The greatest thing
about her career is that she’s always given a part of herself to the
audience, and the audience has responded in like manner,” he says. “If I
tried to tell you all the friends Carol has in the entertainment
industry, I’d have to list them all. She’s adored by her peers, by her
audience. It’s a wonderful thing to experience firsthand as I do, this
electric charge that goes back and forth from the audience to her.”
Carol
reminisces with her audiences during her current project, a one-woman
show (which Harry produces), called “The First Eighty Years are the
Hardest.” Near the end of the performance, Carol talks about her role as
Dolly Gallagher Levi, whose character falls in love and gets remarried.
“Carol invites the audience to sing the first chorus of ‘Hello, Dolly!’
to her,” says Harry. “Then she recalls the day when we were in school
at Aptos Junior High in San Francisco. And how I used to play in the
orchestra, and how I met her — and that I still don’t know how to
dance,” says Harry.
“I invite the audience to laugh all they
want. Then we do this soft-shoe dance at the end — the same number that
George Burns taught Carol years ago. People are very touched by it, to
see two octogenarians dancing on stage. And it closes the show — gets a
standing ovation every time.” Harry continues, “You’d be amazed the
number of people that say they cried, had tears in their eyes, the fact
that it restored hope in their lives. It’s the greatest thing you can
do.”
Heidi Howell, a Modesto copywriter with more than 10
years’ experience creating marketing, advertising and corporate text for
local and national clients, can be reached through her Web site at
www.heidihowell.com.
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Carol Channing at a glance
Achievements
• Academy Award nominee
• Best Nightclub Act of the Year Award
• Emmy Awards (2)
• Foreign Press Award
• Harvard University’s Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year Award
• Julie Harris Lifetime Achievement Award
• Lifetime Achievement Tony Award
• Oscar Hammerstein Award for Lifetime Achievement in Musical Theatre
• Pulitzer Prize finalist
• Theatre World Award
Broadway appearances
Carol
Channing and Her Ten Stout Hearted Men, Four on a Garden, Gentlemen
Prefer Blondes, Hello, Dolly!, Jerry’s Girls, Legends, Lend an Ear,
Let’s Face It, No for an Answer, Pygmalion, Show Girl, So Proudly We
Hail, The Millionairess, The Vamp, Wonderful Town
Films
Archie
and Mehitabel, Paid in Full, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,
Skidoo, The First Traveling Saleslady, Thoroughly Modern Millie,
Thumbelina
Television appearances
Hollywood Squares, I’ve Got a
Secret, Magnum, P.I., Password, The Dean Martin Show, The Drew Carey
Show, The Love Boat, The Milton Berle Show, The Nanny, The Red Skelton
Show, The Rose O’Donnell Show, Three Men on a Horse, Tony and Grammy
broadcasts, Touched by an Angel, What’s My Line?
Television specials
Alice
Through the Looking Glass, Broadway at the Hollywood Bowl, Carol
Channing and Pearl Bailey on Broadway, Carol Channing’s Los Angeles,
George Burns — His Wit and Wisdom
Voice characters and narratives
JFK:
The Day the Nation Cried, The Addam’s Family, Thumbelina, Free to be
You and Me, Space Ghost, Chip ’n Dale Rescue Rangers, The Brave Little
Toaster Goes to Mars
Miscellaneous
• Book: Just Lucky I Guess
• Recordings: 10 gold albums, including the original cast album of Hello, Dolly!
• Current project: The First Eighty Years are the Hardest
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© HHWS for Modesto Chamber of Commerce
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