CAROL CHANNING Biography - Musicians

 
 

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CAROL CHANNING

Name: Carol Channing                                                             
Birth name: Carol Elaine Channing                                                 
Born: 31 January 1921 Seattle, Washington US                                     
                                                                                 
Carol Elaine Channing (born on January 31, 1921 in Seattle, Washington) is an     
American singer and actress. The winner of three Tony Awards (including a         
lifetime achievement award), a Golden Globe and an Academy Award nominee,         
Channing is best remembered for two roles: Lorelei Lee in Gentlemen Prefer       
Blondes and Dolly Gallagher Levi in Hello, Dolly!.                               
                                                                                 
She is easily recognized by her distinctive voice and wide eyes, and her unusual 
mannerisms and personality are frequently parodied.                               
                                                                                 
                                                                                 
An only child, Channing was born on January 31, 1921 in Seattle, Washington. Her 
father was George Channing, a journalist, whose newspaper career took the family 
to San Francisco when Channing was only two weeks old; her mother was the former 
Carol Glaser. She went to school at Aptos Junior High School, where she met an   
Armenian-American boy named Harry Kullijian with whom she fell in love. They     
lost touch when she went to Lowell High School in San Francisco. At Lowell,       
Channing was a member of its famed Lowell Forensic Society, the nation's oldest   
high school debate team.                                                         
                                                                                 
According to Channing's memoirs, when she left home to attend Bennington College 
in Vermont, her mother informed her that her father, a journalist whom she had   
believed was born in Rhode Island, was in fact born in Augusta, Georgia to a     
German American father and an African American mother. According to Channing's   
account, her mother didn't want her to be surprised "if she had a black baby".   
Channing kept her heritage secret so she would not be typecast on Broadway and   
in Hollywood, ultimately revealing it only in her autobiography, Just Lucky I     
Guess, published in 2002 when she was 81 years old. Channing's autobiography,     
although containing a photograph of her mother, displays none of her father or   
her son.