PICK OF THE WEEK: NEW

CAROL CHANNING: LARGER THAN LIFE (Three Stars)

U.S.: Dori Berinstein, 2011 (eone)

I never saw Carol Channing perform live, but the new documentary Carol Channing: Larger Than Life convinced me I missed something very, very special — a great talent and a great lady and a great good time.

That’s one disadvantage of not living in New York City for a long time. You’re not exposed as much to the best Broadway or classical stage performers and performances — the ones that can honestly be called “legendary” — or, if you see them later, in a movie version of the play, or a TV version of a concert, you see them somewhat diminished, without the crackle, brio and excitement of a live audience responding to a live legend. And vice versa.

Take Channing — that terrific saucy stage grand dame, with her hair like a golden blondie crown, her voice like celestial gravel, her eyes like shining whirling saucers and her angelic show-girl timing and temperament. (Genius New York Times caricaturist Al Hirschfield said Channing and Zero Mostel were his two all-time favorite subjects.) I’ve heard about Channing and her shows — often in rhapsodic terms — all my life, but Dori Berinstein‘s documentary marks one of the only times (except for the movie Thoroughly Modern Millie back in 1967 — and also Otto Preminger‘s Skidoo, but we‘ll forget that) I‘ve actually seen her, heard her, experienced her in a complete role. (That wasn’t Carol’s fault by the way. The consummate trouper, she always went on her own road shows.)

She’s great, no doubt. (The movie proves it.) Even at 90, she has a presence and dynamism and a salty pizzazz-beyond pizzazz that makes it clear, very clear, how she could take over any stage every time, and why seeing Channing from the back of the balcony, was like getting a big closeup of almost anyone else, and why she conquered and killed the crowds over 5,000 times with “Hello, Dolly!” and why people — not just theatrical gays and show biz gals (her special posses) but everybody — just loved her to pieces.

But I’ve never really had a chance, more than a little (basically in that Oscar-nominated turn in Milly), to see what all the shouting was really about. Here is a stage superstar, who definitely is a superstar, a legend, whatever you want, but has made only a handful of films and is known mostly for TV and theater and for two performances, both in Broadway shows, for both of which she scored a critical-commercial triumph of gargantuan proportions, but for both of which she was passed over for the movie versions.

The first great Channing part was as blonde raspy-voiced bombshell and immortal “little girl from Little Rock” Lorelei Lee in the Leo Robin–Jule Styne musical of Anita Loos’ “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.” (Marilyn Monroe, of course, got the movie) And the second was that diva of superstar yentas and that yenta of superstar divas (and that superstar of yenta-divas) brassy, classy Yonkers matchmaker Dolly Levi in the Jerry Herman-out-of-Thornton Wilder stage musical classic Hello, Dolly! (Barbra Streisand got the movie — prompting a wry little hesitation from Channing here.) Now, I wouldn’t want to have missed either Monroe or Streisand in these roles — especially when Marilyn sings (partly dubbed) about the friendliness of diamonds, or when Barbra duets with the peerless Louis Armstrong on “Hello, Dolly” (“This is Louis, Dolly”) — the song and the Satchmo that finally toppled The Beatles from their seemingly permanent Top 40 Number One slot in 1964. But I’m sure Channing was better, especially live, and we deserve more than a memento of her Lorelei and her Dolly. We deserve the whole thing, dammit.

You see Carol doing a little of both of her signature roles here, but not enough. (Is there a Broadway archive tape of the full “Hello Dolly” Channing-starring performance, and if there is, could we get it released? Please?) And you also can see her in other performances, mostly on TV, and hear about what a great trouper and great person she was. (She’s missed only half of one performance in her entire career.) And you hear a little but not too much of her sometimes troubled life — bedeviled by an apparently spousally-deficient husband for 42 years (Charles Lowe, who apparently overly bossed her life and in the end apparently put her through the financial wringer), and blessed by a good one, whom she loved dearly, for most of the last few: her ex-San Francisco junior high sweetheart Harry Kullijian, with whom she reconnected in her 80s, and who died, sadly, just before this movie’s theatrical release.

It’s been said that Carol Channing was too big for the movies (“larger than life“ as the picture here would have it.) I don’t think that’s true. She looks as if she could still give a great movie performance, in a quieter, smaller, maybe dramatic or comedic film role. She was too big for Skidoo, it’s true. But who wasn’t? It’s also been complained by a few that Berinstein’s movie is too much of a valentine to Carol Channing — full of testimonials and funny, loving anecdotes from people who clearly adore her. (Among them: Chita Rivera, Lily Tomlin, Barbara Walters, Debbie Reynolds, Tommy Tune, Bob Mackie, Jerry Herman, Marge Champion, Betty Garrett, good hubby Harry Kullijian, and Jo Anne Worley, her “Hello, Dolly” understudy, who never got to go on.)

Well, maybe, true. But doesn’t she deserve a valentine? And more important, don’t we deserve Carol? Especially us  non-New Yorkers, who never caught her in a roadshow.

Extras: 15 Featurettes. (Well, they’e actually 15 sets of outtakes or extended scenes. But they’re really good outtakes.)

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