Celebrated for her performances in Gentlemen
Prefer Blondes and Hello, Dolly! Channing also earned an Oscar nomination for
Thoroughly Modern Millie
Carol Channing, the American actor who
originated the roles of Lorelei Lee in Gentlemen
Prefer Blondes and the eponymous heroine of Hello, Dolly! on
Broadway, has died aged 97, her publicist has announced.
Channing played the matchmaking widow Dolly Levi more
than 5,000 times across three Broadway runs
from the 1960s to the 1990s and on tours around the world. The part had been
turned down by Ethel Merman but Channing made it her own, donning a hat as
feathery as her eyelashes and a red sequinned gown. The musical, based on a
Thornton Wilder play and written by Michael Stewart and Jerry Herman, won
several Tony awards upon its premiere including best actress in a musical for
Channing. She claimed to have missed only one performance as Dolly, after a
bout of food poisoning in Kalamazoo, Michigan. When she returned to the role in
her mid-70s, in the 1995 revival, the New York Times critic Vincent Canby
concluded: “World, beware: it’s possible this woman is a substance that should
be legally controlled.”
A sparkling entertainer with bright eyes, a megawatt
smile, a gorgeously gravelly voice and, frequently, a platinum bob wig,
Channing was a natural performer. The only child of George Channing, a
journalist, and Adelaide (née Glaser), she was born in Seattle in 1921 and
loved to sing as a child. Channing excelled at imitating her teachers and
fellow students at school in San Francisco (she remained a fine impersonator)
and later attended Bennington College in Vermont. She was raised as a Christian
Scientist and was entranced by the magic of the theatre when she delivered
copies of The Christian Science Monitor newspaper to the stage door of a local
playhouse.
Inspired by Ethel Waters, she set out to become a performer. “There wasn’t an inch of
the entertainment field I didn’t investigate,” she wrote in her memoir Just
Lucky I Guess. “I auditioned for anyone who would look.” She was accepted into
the San Francisco Ballet as a teenager, performed comedy at the Borscht Belt
summer resorts in upstate New York’s Catskill mountains, and began to get roles
on Broadway after understudying Eve Arden in the musical comedy Let’s Face It!
co-starring Danny Kaye.
Anita Loos, the author of the 1925 comic novel
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, saw her on stage in the satirical revue Lend An Ear
and proclaimed: “There’s my Lorelei.” Channing was swiftly cast in her first
leading role as the gleeful, gold-digging Lorelei Lee, the Little Rock flapper
who believes diamonds are a girl’s best friend, in the musical based on the
novel. After it opened in 1949, she became an instant star and Time magazine
put her on its cover. When the musical became a movie in 1953, Marilyn
Monroe was given the role of Lorelei.
Channing said that Noël Coward once
offered her a role but she turned it down; he later told her she was a “silly
ox” for not accepting. But after her run as Lorelei she appeared in more
Broadway musicals – Wonderful Town, The Vamp and Show Girl – and also had film
roles, including the 1956 movie The First Traveling Saleslady which
cast her and a young Clint
Eastwood as a couple. It also gave Channing a song, A Corset Can Do a Lot for a Lady.
Her most successful film role was as the
nightclub singer Muzzy Van Hossmere, fond of quaffing champagne and proclaiming
“raspberries!” in Thoroughly
Modern Millie, which brought her an Oscar nomination in 1968 (she
lost to Estelle Parsons for Bonnie and Clyde). Channing was furious to find Barbra
Streisand cast in the film version of Hello, Dolly! – she said
it was “like somebody had kidnapped my baby” – but was glad to play the part
over many decades on stage. She also returned to her other signature theatre
role in a 1974 Broadway sequel to Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, entitled Lorelei.
Following the 30th anniversary tour of Hello, Dolly!, in
1995 she received a lifetime achievement Tony award. Her memoir was published in 2002. Channing was married four
times and had a son, the cartoonist Channing Lowe.
Hugh Hefner, American founder of the international adult
magazine Playboy, has died at the age of 91.
Playboy Enterprises Inc said he passed away
peacefully at home in Los Angeles, from natural causes.
Hefner began publishing Playboy in his
kitchen in 1953. It became the largest-selling men's magazine in the world,
shifting seven million copies a month at its peak.
Cooper Hefner, his son, said he would be
"greatly missed by many".
He paid tribute to his father's
"exceptional and impactful life as a media and cultural pioneer," and
called him an advocate for free speech, civil rights and sexual freedom.
Hefner's trailblazing magazine helped make nudity more
acceptable in mainstream publications, despite emerging at a time when US
states could legally ban contraceptives.
It also made him a multi-millionaire,
spawning a business empire that included casinos and nightclubs.
The first edition featured a set of nude photographs of
Marilyn Monroe originally shot for a 1949 calendar that Hefner had bought for
$200.
The silk pyjama-clad mogul became famous for
his hedonism, dating and marrying Playboy models, and throwing decadent parties
at the luxurious Playboy mansion in Los Angeles.
Sexual revolutionary or dirty old man?
By James Cook, BBC Los Angeles Correspondent
Hugh Hefner - silk pyjamas and
all - was a character who divided America.
Was he really the godfather of
the sexual revolution, or just a dirty old man?
A louche purveyor of
corrupting smut, or an enlightened publisher of contemporary literature?
Feminists, and others, accused
him of reducing women to sexual objects - if not de facto prostitutes - at the
Playboy mansion.
But then there was also his
support for racial integration and gay rights, along with a hefty dollop of
great writing and agenda-setting interviews.
In short, he was a character
more complex than tabloid editors allowed.
And in terms of sexual mores
his early permissiveness - daring or shocking depending on your taste - now
seems, if not quite quaint, then certainly not unusual.
In that respect Hugh Hefner
was ahead of his time, for good or ill.
He claimed to have slept with
more than 1,000 women, and credited the impotence drug Viagra with maintaining
his libido.
"I am a kid in a candy
store," Hefner famously said. "I dreamed impossible dreams, and the
dreams turned out beyond anything I could possibly imagine. I'm the luckiest
cat on the planet."
From 2005-10, a reality TV
show called "The Girls Next Door" showcased Hefner's libertine
lifestyle - and the harem of young blonde women who shared it.
Friends of Hefner and former
Playboy models have been paying tribute to him.
Pamela Anderson, who appeared
on the cover of Playboy 15 times, said on Instagram: "You gave me my
life... I'm in such deep shock."
Civil rights figure Rev Jesse
Jackson tweeted: "Hugh Hefner was a strong supporter of the civil rights
movement. We shall never forget him."
In 2012, aged 86, Hefner married his third wife Crystal
Harris - who was 60 years his junior.
Though critics saw Playboy as a byword for
sleaze, its founder - who was born into a strict Methodist family - never
shared that view.
"I've never thought of Playboy quite
frankly as a sex magazine," Hefner told CNN in 2002. "I always
thought of it as a lifestyle magazine in which sex was one important
ingredient."
Hefner faced obscenity charges in 1963 for publishing and
distributing Playboy, but the jury was unable to reach a verdict.
Its huge sales were certainly driven by
glossy colour pictures of nude "playmates", but it also developed a reputation for fine writing,
with Norman Mailer, Kingsley Amis, Kurt Vonnegut, James Baldwin, Vladimir
Nabokov, Margaret Atwood and Ray Bradbury among its contributors.
Their contributions allowed men to say they
did not buy the magazine only for the pictures.
In the 1980s, competition from publications carrying more
explicit photos saw Playboy's circulation decline, and Hefner himself suffered
a stroke in 1985.
His daughter Christie took over Playboy
Enterprises four years later, and Hefner retreated to his mansion, living with
a bevy of women. Cooper Hefner took on a major role in the company in 2014
after Christie stepped down in 2009.
The magazine decided to scrap nudity in March
2016, but reversed its decision earlier this year.
A neighbour of Hefner's in August last year
bought the Playboy mansion for $100m, but agreed Hefner could continue to live
there until he died.
Born in 1926 in Chicago, Hefner served in the
US Army in the mid-1940s. He graduated with a degree in psychology and worked
as a copywriter for men's magazine Esquire before borrowing $8,000 to start
Playboy in 1953.
Hugh Hefner created a fantasy world for millions of men
but unlike most of his readers, actually got to live the dream.
He successfully tapped into a new generation
of Americans who were enjoying rising standards of living in the boom years of
the 1950s and 60s.
A political activist and philanthropist, he
produced not just a magazine, but a whole lifestyle.
And in Playboy's famous bow-tie-wearing
rabbit he launched one of the most recognised brands of the 20th Century.
Hugh Marston Hefner was born in Chicago on 9
April 1926, the son of two teachers with strong religious views.
After serving in the US Army as a writer, he graduated
with a degree in psychology before going to work as a copywriter for the men's
magazine, Esquire.
In 1953 he borrowed $8,000 to produce the
first issue of Playboy. Hefner was so worried that the magazine would not sell
that he left the date off the cover.
Photographs
His mother contributed $1,000. "Not
because she believed in the venture," Hefner later said, "but because
she believed in her son."
He'd originally planned to name the new
publication Stag Party, but changed his mind at the last minute.
"Can you imagine a chain of clubs
staffed by girls wearing antlers."
The first edition featured a set of nude photographs of
Marilyn Monroe that Hefner had bought for $200. They had originally been shot
for a 1949 calendar.
Whether by luck or judgement, Hefner's timing
was just right. The launch of Alfred Kinsey's reports on human sexual behaviour
challenged conventional beliefs about sexuality and raised subjects that, until
then, had been taboo.
Kinsey was the researcher," Hefner later
remarked, "I was the pamphleteer."
Rabbit
Middle-class American society in the 1950s
was notoriously strait-laced and the combination of tastefully photographed
women and intellectually stimulating articles appealed to the post-war urban
male.
"I never thought of it as a sex
magazine," Hefner later recalled. "I always thought of it as a
lifestyle magazine in which sex was one important ingredient."
It was an unqualified success, selling more
than 50,000 copies within weeks. Hefner had found a niche in the market for
men's publications, which was then dominated by hunting, shooting and fishing
periodicals.
The second issue saw the appearance of the
bow-tie-wearing rabbit, which was designed by the magazine's art director Art
Paul. It would appear on a host of products over the following decades.
In 1955 Hefner published a short story by the
writer Charles Beaumont, about straight men facing persecution in a world where
homosexuals were the majority.
Finest contemporary writing
In response to a flood of angry letters,
Hefner replied: "If it was wrong to persecute heterosexuals in a
homosexual society then the reverse is wrong too."
In later years he would become an advocate
for same-sex marriage describing it as "a fight for all our rights".
Hefner's editorial stance was in tune with
the changes in society as the magazine campaigned for liberal drugs laws and
the right to abortion.
For the next 20 years, Playboy dominated its market, with
circulation peaking at over seven million in the early 1970s, when a survey
suggested that a quarter of all male college students in America were buying
the magazine.
At the time it contained some of the finest
contemporary writing in the magazine market, with Saul Bellow, Arthur C Clarke,
Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal among the regular contributors.
Luxury and indulgence
The articles appeared sandwiched between the
obligatory photographs of beautiful women, although far more tastefully shot
than many of Playboy's more downmarket competitors.
The centre spread entitled Playmate of the
Month featured some famous names including Jayne Mansfield and Pamela Anderson,
while other celebrities, including Bo Derek, Kim Basinger, Farrah Fawcett and
Madonna, have been happy to pose for the magazine.
The photographs of Jayne Mansfield provoked
Hefner's arrest and a prosecution for obscenity in 1963 but the jury was unable
to reach a verdict.
Hefner set out to exploit the success of his magazine
with the opening of the first Playboy club in Chicago in 1960, which introduced
the Playboy bunny waitresses.
The relaxation of gaming laws in the UK
opened up another opportunity and Hefner opened three casinos in the UK. By
1981 they were contributing all of Playboy's worldwide profits.
At this time Hefner was living a life of
luxury and indulgence in his two Playboy mansions, accompanied by an
ever-changing cast of celebrities and pneumatic girlfriends, and shuttling
between them in his personalised DC9, the Big Bunny.
Sexually explicit
Hefner's fortunes went into a major decline
during the 1980s. The British authorities shut down the UK casinos following a
series of irregularities, effectively cutting Playboy's income.
A year later a casino in Atlantic City, New
Jersey, was closed after Hefner was judged by the state gaming board to be an
unsuitable person to hold a licence.
Playboy magazine too was failing as more sexually
explicit competitors competed for space on the newsstands and traditional
Playboy readers got older and moved on.
In a further personal blow Hefner suffered a
stroke in 1985 and four years later passed the daily control of Playboy
Enterprises to his daughter Christie.
In 1989, at the age of 63, Hefner married one
of his playmates, 27-year-old Kimberley Conrad. The marriage lasted for 10
years and produced two children.
Libertarian
The 90s saw a revival in Playboy's fortunes
as Christie Hefner took the company into new and more profitable areas
including cable TV.
Hefner, meanwhile, had - in his own words -
discovered Viagra, and spent his days in his mansion, dressed in silk pyjamas
and surrounded by a half-dozen or so live-in female companions.
In 2012 he married his third wife, Crystal Harris, when
he was 86 - 60 years older than his bride.
A libertarian by nature, Hefner's Playboy
Foundation continued to support freedom of expression and First Amendment
rights. He also donated large sums of money to the Democratic Party, including
Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.
He was a keen supporter of conservation
organisations and, perhaps appropriately, had a species of rabbit, Sylvilagus palustris hefneri, named
in his honour.
In his later years Hugh Hefner was much
ridiculed as the elderly man who still surrounded himself with beautiful young
women.
But in Playboy he created a lifestyle which
was in tune with the aspirations of a large section of post-war American
society. The feminist Camille Paglia called him "one of the principal
architects of the social revolution".
"I am a kid in a candy store,"
Hefner famously said. "I dreamed impossible dreams, and the dreams turned
out beyond anything I could possibly imagine. I'm the luckiest cat on the
planet."
SEE PLAYBOY’S MOVING TRIBUTE TO ITS ICONIC FOUNDER, HUGH
HEFNER
There were no links or articles. Instead, the website paid tribute to
its larger-than-life founder with an oversized image of “Hef” and a single
quote that perhaps summed up his life better than any other:
Many people paid tribute mentioning Marilyn Monroe, who
famously appeared on the very first cover of the first issue of Playboy magazine in
December 1953.
However, a picture circulating on social media allegedly showing Hefner
lighting a cigarette for Monroe in 1957 is a fake:
LGBT
RIGHTS/ CIVIL RIGHTS : For Hugh Hefner, gay rights were part of the sexual
revolution
Hefner responded to the backlash to the ‘Crooked Man’
controversy in a defiant note. “If it was wrong to persecute heterosexuals in a
homosexual society,” he wrote, “then the reverse
was wrong, too.”
The move would serve to represent an early example of Hefner’s
lifelong commitment to gay rights, and civil rights in general. Hefner,
who died Wednesday at 91, prided himself as an advocate for the LGBT community,
taking public stands on high-profile issues such as sodomy laws, same-sex
marriage and transgender rights well into his later years.
HOLLYWOOD
REMEMBERS ‘LEGEND,’ ‘REVOLUTIONARY’ HUGH HEFNER
Hefner’s son, Cooper, released a statement after Playboy
announced his death.
“My father lived an exceptional and impactful life as a media and
cultural pioneer and a leading voice behind some of the most significant social
and cultural movements of our time in advocating free speech, civil rights and
sexual freedom,” he said. “He defined a lifestyle and ethos that lie at the
heart of the Playboy brand, one of the most recognizable and enduring in
history.He will be greatly missed by many, including his wife Crystal, my
sister Christie and my brothers David and Marston, and all of us at Playboy
Enterprises.”
In addition to releasing a statement to media outlets, Playboy wrote on
Twitter, “American Icon and Playboy Founder, Hugh M. Hefner passed away today.
He was 91. #RIPHef.” Reverend Jesse Jackson Sr. lauded his social advocacy, writing, "Hugh Hefner was a strong supporter of the civil rights movement. We shall never forget him. May he REST IN PEACE."
HUGH HEFNER'S MOST ICONIC PLAYBOY FRONT COVERS IN PICTURES
In the current ultra-managed, publicist-controlled, sound-byte-driven media atmosphere, you don’t get to hear stars really speaking their minds anymore — at least, not about anything fun, like how they really feel about their fellow stars. But occasionally a little something sneaks through the PR wall, both now and back in Hollywood’s golden age, sometimes as whispers, sometimes as gossip, sometimes long after the fact. And thus, we present another, long-overdue installment of our ongoing series (following authors, filmmakers, and musicians) of really famous people really cutting each other down.
1. Bette Davis on Joan Crawford: “Joan Crawford — I wouldn’t sit on her toilet!” “I wouldn’t piss on Joan Crawford if she were on fire.” “Joan Crawford — Hollywood’s first case of syphilis.” “She has slept with every male star at MGM except Lassie.” “Why am I so good at playing bitches? I think it’s because I’m not a bitch. Maybe that’s why Miss Crawford always plays ladies.” “You should never say bad things about the dead, you should only say good… Joan Crawford is dead. Good.”2. Joan Crawford on Bette Davis: “Bette will play anything, so long as she thinks someone is watching. I’m a little more selective than that.” “She may have more Oscars… she’s also made herself into something of a joke.” “Miss Davis was always partial to covering up her face in motion pictures. She called it ‘art.’ Others might call it camouflage — a cover-up for the absence of any real beauty.” “I don’t hate Bette Davis, even though the press wants me to. I resent her — I don’t see how she built a career out of mannerisms instead of real acting ability. She’s a phony, but I guess the public likes that.” 3. Vivien Leigh on Bette Davis (after turning down Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte: “I could almost stand to look at Joan Crawford’s face at 6am, but not Bette Davis.” 4. Barbara Stanwyck on Marilyn Monroe: “Her body has gone to her head.” 5. Bette Davis on Cary Grant:“He needed willowy or boyish girls like Katharine Hepburn to make him look what they now call macho. If I’d co-starred with Grant or if Crawford had, we’d have eaten him for breakfast.” 6. Cary Grant on Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, James Dean: “I have no rapport with the new idols of the screen, and that includes Marlon Brando and his style of Method acting. It certainly includes Montgomery Clift and that God-awful James Dean. Some producer should cast all three of them in the same movie and let them duke it out. When they’ve finished each other off, James Stewart, Spencer Tracy and I will return and start making real movies again like we used to.” 7. Richard Burton on Marlon Brando:“Marlon has yet to learn to speak. He should have been born two generations before and acted in silent films.” 8. Marlon Brando on James Dean:“Mr. Dean appears to be wearing my last year’s wardrobe and using my last year’s talent.” 9. Richard Harris on Michael Caine:“An over-fat, flatulent, 62-year-old windbag. A master of inconsequence masquerading as a guru, passing off his vast limitations as pious virtues.” 10. Rex Harrison on Charlton Heston: “Charlton Heston is good at playing arrogance and ambition. But in the same way that a dwarf is good at being short.” 11. Harrison Ford on Shia LaBeouf: “I think he was a fucking idiot.” 12. Dean Martin on James Stewart:“There’s a statue of Jimmy Stewart in the Hollywood Wax Museum, and the statue talks better than he does.” 13. Sir John Gielgud on Ingrid Bergman: “Dear Ingrid — speaks five languages and can’t act in any of them.” 14. Frank Sinatra on Shelly Winters: “A bowlegged bitch of a Brooklyn blonde.” 15. Shelly Winters on Frank Sinatra: “A skinny, no-talent, stupid Hoboken bastard.”
16. Ava Gardner on Mia Farrow and Frank Sinatra: “I always knew Frank would end up in bed with a boy.” 17. Traci Lords on Johnny Depp:“He’s the kind of guy that would be really sweet to a girl and bring her flowers, but still take a pee in the alley.” 18. Bill Murray to Chevy Chase: “Medium talent!” 19. Julia Roberts on Nick Nolte: “A disgusting human being.” 20. Nick Nolte on Julia Roberts: “It’s not nice to call someone ‘disgusting’. But she’s not a nice person. Everyone knows that.”
21. Sharon Stone on Gwyneth Paltrow: “[She’s] very young and lives in rarefied air that’s a little thin. It’s like she’s not getting quite enough oxygen.” 22. Katherine Hepburn on Sharon Stone:“It’s a new low for actresses when you have to wonder what’s between her ears instead of her legs.” 23. Susan Sarandon on Mel Gibson:“Mel Gibson is somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun. He’s beautiful, but only on the outside.” 24. Walter Matthau to Barbara Streisand:“I have more talent in my smallest fart than you have in your entire body.” 25. Elliot Gould on Jerry Lewis:“This arrogant, sour, ceremonial, piously chauvinistic egomaniac.”
26. Graham Chapman on John Travolta: “How difficult can it be to fly an airplane? I mean, John Travolta learned how.” 27. W.C. Fields on Mae West: “A plumber’s idea of Cleopatra.” 28. W.C. Fields on Charlie Chaplin: “He’s a goddamned ballet dancer.” 29. Robert Downey Jr. on Hugh Grant:“A self-important, boring, flash-in-the-pan Brit.” 30. John Wayne on Clark Gable:“Gable’s an idiot. You know why he’s an actor? It’s the only thing he’s smart enough to do.”
Jessica Chastain is being lined up to play Marilyn Monroe in a new film biopic.
The 37-year-old red-headed actress is 'nearing a deal' to play the icon in a new adaptation of the 2000 historical novel Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates, according to The Wrap.
The project will be produced by Brad Pitt's production company Plan B, with the actor reported by a source to have been 'instrumental in convincing [Jessica] to tackle the challenging role of Marilyn Monroe.'
Pitt and Chastain co-starred in Terrence Malik's 2011 film The Tree Of Life.
Andrew Dominik, who directed Pitt in filmsThe Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford and Killing Them Softly, will helm the film from his own script.
'My heart belongs to Marilyn,' Dominik told IndieWire when quizzed about the project back in 2012. 'It's a really sprawling, emotional nightmare fairy-tale type movie, and I really want to do it real bad.
'It's a story about an abandoned orphan who gets lost in the woods.'
A Pulitzer Prize finalist, Blonde is a re-imagining of the life of Marilyn Monroe in novel form, with Oates drawing on biographical and historical sources for her portrait of the fragile icon who was born Norma Jean Mortenson.
Despite being a natural redhead, Chastain appeared as a blonde for 2011 film The Help which won her a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination.
Chastain's portrayal comes three years after Michelle Williams took on the role of the superstar in My Week With Marilyn which explored the troubled production of The Price And The Showgirl.
Madonna also played a version of Marilyn in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes in her 1984 Material Girl video.
However, The Wrap report that Chastain's portrayal is expected to be 'much different' with Blonde taking 'an unconventional approach to examining the Hollywood starlet's life and career.'
Blonde is slated to begin filming in August with a 2015 release date in mind.
Chastain has been particularly busy of late - she will star in a number of movies this year including Christopher Nolan sci-fi mystery Interstellar alongside Anne Hathaway and Matthew McConaughey and Miss Julie - based on the 1888 play - with Samantha Morton and Colin Farrell.
She is currently filming Guillermo del Toro's horror film Crimson Peake.
Marilyn Monroe in one of her earlier bit roles starred with Bette Davis & Celeste Holm in 'All About Eve' in 1950
Marilyn Monroe presents the Oscar for Sound Recording to 20th Century-Fox Studio Sound Department (Thomas T. Moulton, Sound Director) for "All about Eve" at the 23rd Academy Awards in 1951. Hosted by Fred Astaire.
