{"id":2730,"date":"2017-04-24T06:44:07","date_gmt":"2017-04-24T13:44:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/?p=2730"},"modified":"2017-04-24T06:44:07","modified_gmt":"2017-04-24T13:44:07","slug":"dollys-coast-to-coast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/blog\/2017\/04\/24\/dollys-coast-to-coast\/","title":{"rendered":"Dollys Coast to Coast"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Bette Midler<\/strong>-led production of Hello, Dolly! <\/em><\/strong>finally opened on Broadway<\/em>.\u00a0 And, no surprise, the critics were dutifully impressed.\u00a0 Amidst all the plaudits, there was some disappointment for Bette – the absence of Carol Channing <\/strong>and Jerry Herman<\/strong>.\u00a0 Of course, if she were keeping up with BillyMasters.com<\/a><\/strong>, she would have known weeks ago that these two would be unable to attend.\u00a0 The composer of Dolly<\/em> said he hoped to travel from Miami for the opening – perhaps by train since he hates planes.\u00a0 But his health has been up and down, so he declined.<\/p>\n

As for the original Dolly<\/em>, Channing decided months ago that she wouldn’t be there.\u00a0 “Dolly <\/em>is Bette’s, now.\u00a0 I’m not going to take away from that.”\u00a0 Altruistic as those sentiments are, she, too, was not well enough for the trip.\u00a0 Several sources tell me that Carol is under hospice care and has been intubated.\u00a0 Not so, say her people.\u00a0 “She’s at home in bed recovering but no means is she on death’s door or connected to anything.\u00a0 She just had a small fall, but that’s nothing.”\u00a0 I suspect the truth is somewhere in the middle.\u00a0 We send our best wishes to Carol and hope, whatever is going on, that she’s not in any pain.<\/p>\n

\"colorbar1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Because of her fall, Carol wasn’t able to attend two local events.\u00a0 One of them was an award from the Professional Dancers Society <\/em>on April 23rd at the Beverly Hilton Hotel<\/em>.\u00a0 Due to Carol’s indisposition, Lily Tomlin <\/strong>graciously stepped in.\u00a0 Because when I think of professional dancers, I think of Lily Tomlin.<\/p>\n

The second event was Hello, Jerry!<\/em><\/strong>, a musical tribute to Jerry Herman which was produced by Michael Childers <\/strong>at the McCallum Theatre <\/em>in Palm Springs and raised money for Jewish Family Service<\/em>.\u00a0 The show, under the direction of Jason Graae<\/strong>, featured many luminaries giving voice to Jerry Herman songs.\u00a0 Folks like Lucie Arnaz Jr<\/strong>., Faith Prince<\/strong>, Hunter Ryan Herdlicka<\/strong>, Lee Roy Reams<\/strong>, Liz Callaway<\/strong>, David Burnham<\/strong>, Vicki Lewis<\/strong>, Davis Gaines<\/strong>, Gary Beach<\/strong>, Ruta Lee<\/strong>, and the indefatigable Carole Cook<\/strong>!\u00a0 There were many stars in attendance as well, such as Mimi Hines<\/strong>, Kaye Ballard<\/strong>, Sal Mistretta<\/strong>, and Peter Marshall<\/strong>.\u00a0 Were it not for the traffic driving to Palm Springs (damn you, Coachella<\/em>), it would have been a perfect trip.\u00a0 That mar was made up for by the terrific food courtesy of Lulu California Bistro <\/em>– the short ribs, in particular, were spectacular.\u00a0 And the event raised a ton of money.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Bette Midler-led production of Hello, Dolly! finally opened on Broadway.\u00a0 And, no surprise, the critics were dutifully impressed.\u00a0 Amidst all the plaudits, there was some disappointment for Bette – the absence of Carol Channing and Jerry Herman.\u00a0 Of course, if she were keeping up with BillyMasters.com, she would have known weeks ago that these<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breaking"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2730"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2735,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2730\/revisions\/2735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}