Credo: Carol Channing
By Tiffany Maleshefski
Special to The Examiner 10/5/08
You’ve famously sung “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend.” Is that true?
Carol Channing poses for a picture for the Actors Fund 12th Annual Tony Awards Bash. Getty Images
It’s not true. What I think is a girl’s best friend is true friendship. It’s just a complete approval of one another, caring about one another; it’s love.
What do you consider to be your greatest achievement so far?
I made up my mind that what I wanted to do was to lift people’s lives, in the fourth grade, in Commodore Sloat Elementary School. It was my first time on a stage and I felt a pull from my fellow students. “They need me! I want to lift their lives!”
If you found $100,000 in a paper bag tomorrow, what would you do with it?
Oh, give it to our foundation [Dr. Carol Channing & Harry Kullikian Foundation for the Arts] without a doubt. The foundation is really a dream of Harry’s and mine together. I was 12 and he was 13 when we met at Aptos Middle School. It was the tail end of the Depression, no one had any money, but we were exposed to the arts. We want to launch this campaign to bring arts back into public schools, to purchase musical instruments for students who can’t afford them, and to give scholarships to young people who have aspirations of the arts.
Who has left the biggest impression on you as you’ve gone through life? Why?
My father. I was an only child, and if a girl likes her father at all she makes a deity out of him. My father said to me: “Be careful what you set your heart upon, for you’ll surely get it.” And oh, did I get it!
What is the hardest lesson you have learned?
Every single show, I’m ashamed to admit it, but I get stage fright. It’s agony. Stage fright is agony. And somebody asked Helen Hayes about it, and she said, “Thank God for the agony of stage fright — it makes your brain sharp.” It makes you do a sharp
performance.
Is there anything that you regret?
Yes. I was doing eight shows a week and in order to keep the show going, you’re doing television, radio. It left so little time for my family. I had a son and I didn’t have enough time to spend with him, and he wanted it. He needed it.
What do you hope will be your lasting legacy for the world?
“She lifted people’s lives” — I’d like that on my tombstone. And I never missed a show of “Hello Dolly.” I did over 5,000 shows, over the span of 30 years. Never missed a show.
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