Many people ask me, "Carol, how did you get into the theatre?" I never mind being asked that question because I do so dearly love to hear my own answer. So, during my winter period from Bennington I went first to the William Morris Agency. I was warming the bench outside Mr. Lastfogel's (the president's) office waiting to go in. On my right were Betty Comden and Adolph Green, two members of the Revuers who had appeared at the Village Vanguard just once, and I saw them. They were an innovation! Judy Holliday was one of their group. No one had heard of the Revuers yet or any of their names.

On my left was Alfred Drake, who wasn't the great Alfred Drake at all yet. Mr. Lastfogel's door finally opened. His secretary pointed at us and said, "You! Come in." Betty said to me, "She pointed at you, Carol." I said, "I could swear she pointed at you and Adolph." "No! Go in. Go!" Betty said.

I picked up my little Haitian drum, went through the door, and began my first audition. Years later I opened my Carol Channing and Her Ten Stout-Hearted Men show at the Drury Lane Theatre in London with that story.

Mr. Lastfogel was a man who was known as having a touch of genius, and so of course as a result he never saw anyone, excepting occasionally Katharine Hepburn, or John Wayne, or Mrs. Lastfogel - he saw a lot of her. But now, there I was face to face with the great man himself. He was a rugged tycoon who could make or break anyone's career with a single bite on his cigar. I swung right into my first number - something I was sure of because it was a big hit with the girls at Bennington - a simple ancient Gallic dirge, in obsolete Vercingetorix French. Vercingetorix was a conqueror before all Gaul was hauled together. This dirge was adapted from the original Greek tragedy, Orestes, and this was the most thrilling part of the whole thing, the Orestes Funeral Chant.

I remember how Mr. Lastfogel's eyes filled with wonderment as I showed him how the women of the Greek chorus lamented the ravages of war and the shortage of men. As I say, I had my little drum, this was in 9/5 time, very difficult. I chanted in obsolete French. Then, while beating my breasts, I swung into the rousing finale, "Oo - oo - oo."

Well, Mr. Lastfogel thought I should do someone better known than Orestes, like Sophie Tucker. I sensed I was losing the great man's attention, so I said, "Wait, Mr. Lastfogel, please. I have another song here that the girls at Bennington just love. It's a Haitian corn-grinding song rendered by the natives as they stomp out the kernels with their feet. They sing of their lost youth and pray for rain." The lyrics were in patois, a Haitian bastard form of French.

Mr. Lastfogel thought he could see some signs of improvement but that perhaps it would be wiser for me to get out of ethnic music and into the straight classics, like Ethel Merman. As he was ushering me to the door and telling me not to phone him that he would phone me, I said, "Wait, Mr. Lastfogel, please. I have one more song here that I ran across in my studies on Mittel European cultures." And before he could close the door in my face I sang it. I sang from the middle to the end of "Roumania" here in Galitzianer Yiddish.

"Wait," Mr. Lastfogel said, "I think I see a glimmer of talent in this girl." He said his grandmother used to sing songs like this to him when he was a little boy. And, do you know, Abe Lastfogel and I sang this song together. He was my agent all my working life.

From there he sent me over to Marc Blitzstein, who was writing modern American operas: The Cradle Will Rock and this new No for an Answer. I got the job, my first job on Broadway, and then I thought I was on my way. Well that's what lots of people think, but I learned. After Blitzstein, I used to do free benefits for the Knights of Columbus, the Shakespeare Club, the Elks, the Shriners, the Hadassah, and bingo games for the Catholics. But that's how I got into the theatre.

Now once Mr. Lastfogel arranged a meeting for me with Marc Blitzstein, Marc treated me as if I were dear and tender. I was so grateful I talked, sang, and danced for him everybody that I had seen on Broadway, mostly because he seemed delighted with my renditions and I enjoyed making him happy. He was trying to find a girl to do his one comedy song in No for an Answer. The song he handed me was to be sung by a young girl at a roadside bar, who didn't know who she was yet. Perfect! Well, I still don't know, but I was nineteen then so I had a good excuse. The name of the song was "I'm Simply Fraught About You" - very subtle and sophisticated lyrics, but I threw everything but the kitchen sink into it, which Marc said was just the right thing to do.

I asked him if I could make parts of it Merman, parts Gertrude Lawrence, others Bea Lillie or Sophie Tucker. He said, "Absolutely! That's why I want you to do this song." He was right. We did the show in a huge theatre that was then called Mecca Temple or the Shrine Auditorium. Now it's the City Center Theatre on Fifty-sixth Street west of Avenue of the Americas, but they've cut it up or done something to it. It's not as big. However, the distinguished classical music critic Virgil Thomson on The New Yorker magazine gave me one encouraging sentence in his good review of Marc's work. "You will surely hear more about a satirical chanteuse named Carol Channing." I'll never forget that sentence. Of course he was "distinguished." He was to me, anyway.

But let me back up. During rehearsals the company constantly told me to write to my congressman and complain about something. I could never remember what. I'd get to Mecca Temple the next day and they'd say, "Well? Did you write to your congressman?" I finally said, "Look. I was nailing my lyrics and rehearsing them all last evening. I can't do two things at once. Let me get this song right first." I never got off the song. I don't when I have a performance to do. Who does? Sometime later, the McCarthy era began. I used to read some of their names in the daily papers.

Why didn't the hearings ever call on me? How did those unconstitutional, undemocratic McCarthyites know I was always busy with my fabulously funny lyrics? I was in the same show as these accused people. No for an Answer was about the formation of a labor union. Apparently being any part of singing the story of building the labor unions automatically labeled you a Communist. But then, why did I come out smelling like a rose? Almost all the actors I knew lived in terror they'd be called in and suddenly labeled Communists, which as we know ended their careers. I was even worried for myself. There must have been a spy or spies in that company who knew I was too obsessed with my own performance to think of anything else.

I just looked it up on the Internet. Marc Blitzstein openly declared himself a card-holding member of the Communist party at the McCarthy hearings in 1958. I never knew that! No wonder everyone wanted me to write my congressman and complain. They took it for granted I shared their political views if I was in the show. Most of the company seemed to be Russian Jews whose parents were still celebrating having a congressman to write to and not being executed for it. They couldn't stop writing to him they were so happy to be Americans. It never occurred to me there was anything un-American about forming a labor union. I still don't see that there is. Do you? Equity, SAG, and AGVA are surely sustaining me now, and they were never Communists. Ronald Reagan was president of SAG for years, and you know to him Russia was the Evil Empire, so he wasn't either a Communist...or a card holder...or anything...and we love him.

After No for an Answer a group of very good young male country singers and songwriters asked me to be their only girl and vocalist. I was happy to be working some more. I sang:

Franklin Roosevelt

Told the people how he felt

We damn near believed

What he said

He said "I hate war

And so does Eleanor

But we won't be safe

Till everbody's dead"

We sang a lot more, for benefits and group meetings all over Manhattan. Then Mildred Weber, the great organizer of the New and Unknown Talent Department of William Morris, put me on the Borscht Circuit for one summer at Camp Tamiment in the Catskills, pronounced by the clientele "Cahmb Dowmnt" in the "Kedzgls." Betty Garrett and I were assigned as roommates, only tentmates is what we were. We lived in a tent with a wooden roof over it and Betty's twelve cats and a drawing of Ethel Waters that Betty did for me. I framed it and hung it above my cot.

Most of the cats were housebroken, but we got used to the cat litter within twenty-four hours and it never bothered me, mostly because Betty was the best roommate and friend anyone could have. She was so in love with Larry Parks, later her husband and father of her two sons. He was just great starring in the movie The Jolson Story. Then the House Un-American Activities Committee axed his career, and no movie people dared touch him again. He died young. Who could live through that? If he wanted to overthrow democracy, Betty would have known it, I swear. I mean, even I wrote a paper at Bennington called "The Difference Between Communism, Socialism, and Democracy," figuring I would therefore know all this for the rest of my life. All I can remember now is communism and socialism didn't work and democracy did; I could tell that just from researching the facts.

I was fired shortly before the end of the season for having no talent and after much degrading name-calling from Max Liebman, our director, always in front of the entire company. I don't remember doing a bad show there. Actually, I was in my element...revues.

Anyway, Jerome Robbins was our choreographer. The steps he gave me I wallowed in, so he'd give me more. They required a body elasticity that I knew I could give them as soon as he demonstrated them to me. I was crazy about those steps! I can't say I was crazy about Jerry because I never got to even talk with him, just to say "uh huh" and "I see what you want." I knew him only through the dances he gave me. He paid no attention to me as I remember. He was hell-bent on trying out the extent of his own choreography. I certainly don't blame him. He was on a divine mission. He was also living with a girl who was one of his dancers, and that took up the rest of each day. He rehearsed all day Saturdays and Sundays, though. Her husband and little boy arrived every weekend.

We did three shows a week, all different and never repeated. Betty and I did one sketch I remember. We played switchboard operators for a legal firm. We'd answer, "Beaton Barton Batten and Button, good morning." It got more and more complicated. We adored the way we did it. So did the cats and the audience.

Some of the musicians said, "Why don't you yell back at Max Liebman? He has to have a 'patsy.' He dishes it out to anyone who'll take it." Finally, Max screamed at me rehearsing onstage, "You're nothing but a dirty chozzer [pig]. You're fired!" Betty and one of the musicians took me for a walk along the lake until I could breathe again. They must have had humanitarian natures. I asked them what I had done wrong. "Nothing!" Betty kept saying. It's one thing to be fired from the Bake Shop at Macy's, which I had been because I ate the blueberries that had fallen out of the blueberry muffins into the pan. Then there were the blueberries that almost fell out, and the next one that could have fallen out. And finally I was fired because there were holes in the blueberry muffins, though I was their fastest helper because I made the work into a piece of choreography, so the hours flew by. To be fired from the Bake Shop at Macy's is bad enough, but to be fired for the one excuse for your existence is numbing.

The reason Max had such an indentation on me was because he was the producer and director of the biggest TV musical and sketch show for years, Your Show of Shows, starring Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, and Marguerite Piazza. So I felt he had to be a man to be respected. He wasn't. Well, he hated me, didn't he?

When the dinner gong rang and everyone went to the dining room, I began walking down the road to Unity House, the summer camp place for the ILGWU - the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union.

There was a big wave coming up over the lake. I thought, How convenient. I could accidentally drown. But, better yet, a truck was coming toward me down the road. That would really look like an accident. I tried to get in its way, because this pain would all be over if I could get in front of it. But as in the nightmare of not having a voice to yell back at Max, my legs wouldn't take me to the front of the truck. Of course I wouldn't have done it, but it was slightly comforting to realize there is another way out.

Mr. and Mrs. Dubinsky were sitting in rocking chairs on the wooden front porch at Unity House (Dave Dubinsky was the president and organizer of the ILGWU). As they rocked Mrs. Dubinsky said, "You look like death, Carol. What is it?" I told them I just got fired. Dave said, "Your only cure is to get right up on our stage here and do the best performance you can. Someone, get Perry Bruskin to come and rehearse the piano with her." Perry rehearsed a samba for my Carmen Miranda with me and "Happy Birthday" for my Tallulah. He knew "Mama Goes Where Papa Goes" for my Sophie Tucker and got the drummer for Ethel Waters's auschpannens. We did a show that went over like knishes at Coney Island. I always liked Perry Bruskin (you don't know him, I'm sure), but that night I was devoted to him. I decided Dave Dubinsky had a touch of greatness. What a remarkable man to take such an attitude toward someone who wasn't even a member of his union (me). His nature was simply like that, and so was his wife's. I wish I had told him what he had done for me. He was right. When one is thrown from a horse, get right back on it and keep riding. Don't wait, or you'll never get back on.

It was necessary for me to tell you my Max Liebman experience because only a few years later, just as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes opened on Broadway, Time magazine put me on their cover. They had to interview Max for the story. He came into my dressing room at the Ziegfeld raging angry. "Why did you tell them I fired you? I discovered you! How dare you say that?" I answered him, "Because, Max, it proves something important in the arts. The reaction to an artist's work is all in the eye of the beholder. It's only a matter of opinion. People who fail at any time could remember that." And that is true, isn't it?

Speaking of that Time cover, there used to be a newsstand on the corner of Commonwealth and Mass Avenues in Boston.

Continue...

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Excerpted from Just Lucky I Guess by Carol Channing Copyright © 2002 by Carol Channing
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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