Just now, Loew’s Regency on Park Avenue is famed as the pied a terre of in-it-up-to-his-neck Trump minion Michael Cohen. For Keith McCullar and me, this present scandal is an aside from one of our favorite features of Loew’s Regency, its basement serving as it once did as the venue for Michael Feinstein’s cabaret. An extraordinary talent himself, he booked in some great performers during times he himself was not onstage. I don’t think I am going out on any kind, for the benefit of the cognoscenti, an ‘outing’ limb, but a fair old number of the performers were if not divas then at least ladies part of a grand Broadway tradition, and one of these was Carol Channing.
As luck sometimes has it, we happened to be in New York and staying at Loew’s Regency, as I had been invited to speak at an interior design conference at the nearby D & D Building. We were unaware that Carol Channing was performing literally under our noses until we checked in, and I have to admit, it was Keith who insisted we change our evening plans to take in her show. What we would have missed had Keith not prevailed! A sidebar- Keith has had me under his thumb for the last 38 years, so for those of you interested in these kinds of things, he has long since prevailed.
To start with, Feinstein’s in that location was intimacy itself- a real cabaret, dark, and painted a deep red, and seating at most 60 people- virtually all ringside. We booked on the day but nevertheless had a great table the two of us, good food and plenty to drink. For me, sluggard that I am, this is usually enough to guarantee a satisfactory night out. Well, hold on- then there was Carol herself.
What a performer. I am bankrupted for superlatives. She came on stage and her friendliness was a perfect match for the intimacy of the room. We felt as though we’d gone to an afterhours mixer. She sang, she danced, she told jokes, she told stories. Her show was themed ‘The First 80 Years are the Hardest’, and despite the fact that Miss Channing was then 84, the show was a tour de force. A funny aspect, though, as an octogenarian she could recount stories of fabled performers that predated her and one of these was Tallulah Bankhead. As Miss Channing told it, in her early days on Broadway she was so keyed up after performing she’d have trouble sleeping at night. Once Miss Bankhead came back stage, and Miss Channing confided this to her. ‘Dahling, do as I do, and just pop a tablet or two of phenobarbital’. ‘But Miss Bankhead, aren’t they terribly addictive?’ ‘Nonsense, dahling- I’ve been using them every day for nearly 30 years.’
Seated behind us at a table alone was a small, dark man of a certain age who, from time to time, would shout something or other to the stage, and we initially thought he was a heckler. In the fulness of time, though, Miss Channing had the spotlight turned on this gentleman who she introduced as her husband, and childhood sweetheart, Harry Kullijian. What we took to be heckling was actually just throwing Miss Channing the occasional line- and the doing of this, as far as we were concerned, was the only indication that perhaps she was not as young as she once was. We chatted with Harry at the end of the show and he asked me how I liked my entrée, which happened to be braised lamb shank. When I said I did he told me that the inclusion of this Armenian specialty on the menu was, recognizing his own heritage, his real contribution to the show.
In short order, Miss Channing was there, and the four of us chatted for barely a minute and the two of them were off. ‘Selfies’ I’ve always considered very, very common, and they were not then ubiquitous, but were I possessed of an iPhone and the presence of mind I would have overlooked my scruples and taken a snap of the four of us.
Miss Channing is now gone, and even Michael Feinstein’s cabaret has moved, now to be found in the basement of the old Studio 54. Many of the divas are now gone- the performer who followed Miss Channing was none other than Kitty Carlisle. But if Keith and I live as long as Carol Channing, neither of us will forget a moment of the fabulous evening we spent watching the fabulous Carol Channing.