{"id":4647,"date":"2019-01-21T04:11:15","date_gmt":"2019-01-21T12:11:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/?p=4647"},"modified":"2019-01-21T04:11:15","modified_gmt":"2019-01-21T12:11:15","slug":"rip-carol-channing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/blog\/2019\/01\/21\/rip-carol-channing\/","title":{"rendered":"RIP Carol Channing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s impossible for this column to not acknowledge the passing of&nbsp;<strong>Carol Channing<\/strong>.&nbsp; I came into her orbit many times over the years.&nbsp; Most recently, I interviewed her prior to an appearance she did with&nbsp;<strong>Tommy Tune&nbsp;<\/strong>at&nbsp;<em>Town Hall&nbsp;<\/em>in Provincetown in 2014.&nbsp; On&nbsp;<em>Facebook<\/em>, I wrote about that evening and posted a photo of Carol,&nbsp;<strong>Marilyn Maye&nbsp;<\/strong>and myself \u2013 because it\u2019s rare when I\u2019m the youngest person in a photo!&nbsp; For you, I have a different anecdote.&nbsp; In 1999, I was backstage at the re-opening of the&nbsp;<em>El Portal Theatre&nbsp;<\/em>in North Hollywood.&nbsp; Carol was 78 at the time and hadn\u2019t been well.&nbsp; She shuffled over to a chair in the wings all hunched over and waited for her cue.&nbsp; After a while, she was helped into position, all the while holding onto the curtain.&nbsp; She was introduced, more or less thrust into the spotlight, and suddenly she was perfectly erect \u2013 a word I try to work into every column.&nbsp; She sang, danced, and appeared full of life.&nbsp; When she was out of that spotlight and back in the wings, she immediately hunched over and was back to shuffling.&nbsp; That\u2019s when I realized that Channing was one of those people who lived to entertain, and lived for the stage.&nbsp; She never gave less than everything she had \u2013 and then some.&nbsp; Rest in peace, Carol.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s impossible for this column to not acknowledge the passing of&nbsp;Carol Channing.&nbsp; I came into her orbit many times over the years.&nbsp; Most recently, I interviewed her prior to an appearance she did with&nbsp;Tommy Tune&nbsp;at&nbsp;Town Hall&nbsp;in Provincetown in 2014.&nbsp; On&nbsp;Facebook, I wrote about that evening and posted a photo of Carol,&nbsp;Marilyn Maye&nbsp;and myself \u2013 because<\/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-4647","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\/4647","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=4647"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4648,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4647\/revisions\/4648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}