So Long, Dearie: Barbra Gets "Dolly"
Dec 1, 2005 - This month marks the 36th anniversary of Hello, Dolly! - that is, the Barbra Streisand movie version. Amazingly, controversy still hovers around the casting of Barbra as Dolly, the most coveted movie role at the time. Some critics thought Barbra was too young. Others just didn't think Barbra, who had yet to actually appear in a movie, deserved the part. But the largest contingent of skeptics criticized the film simply because Carol Channing wasn't cast.

Channing, who originated Dolly on the stage and won a Tony award as Best Actress in a Musical (over Barbra's Funny Girl in 1964), has managed to keep the debate alive for decades. Sour grapes? Perhaps. At a 2002 New York Times sponsored appearance to promote her memoirs, Just Lucky I Guess, Channing railed on Barbra's performance in the film, saying, "A barrel of laughs she ain't." Channing went on to say, "Thornton Wilder thought he wrote a comedy. There isn't a laugh [in the film]. But it's beautiful singing!"

Despite her very impressive stage credentials (and even though she received an Oscar nomination for Thoroughly Modern Millie in 1967), Hollywood must have felt that Channing's persona was just too quirky to carry a leading lady role on the silver screen. With an enormous shooting budget hanging in the balance, Channing was probably considered too much of a risk to be cast in this movie musical extravaganza.

Carol Channing might very well have been able to pull it off as a screen Dolly. But however she and other skeptics spin it, the fact remains: Barbra got the part, did a damn good job and the film won three Oscars. It's time to say "So Long, Dearie" to this decades old controversy.