Ms. Channing: All smiles, all the time.

I’ve always regarded Carol Channing as a walking alarm clock—tall, cherry-lipped and dinner-plate-eyed with a head as big and yellow as a sunflower—tick tock, tick tock. But according to director Dori Berinstein’s new documentary, Carol Channing: Larger Than Life, the frazzled dodo captured best in legendary caricatures by her friend Al Hirschfeld was a superficial image she cultivated for the entirety of her professional life, aided enormously in the effort by the only two famous and important roles of her career—gold digger Lorelei Lee in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and meddling matchmaker Dolly Levi in Hello, Dolly! She invented them both, but her greatest invention has always been herself. Offstage, out of makeup and eyelashes and wigs like 20-pound piles of white farmhouse insulation, she was about as dumb as a brain surgeon turned rocket scientist, with a roaring IQ and a humanitarian heart as big as her bustier. Real life, as it turns out, was not always a turkey dinner. Like Judy Garland, she was no stranger to tears. Director Berinstein is too much of a fan to reveal it all. The result is cinematic Botox—a puff piece masquerading as a biopic, designed and edited for fans, drag queens and loyal chorus boys she always treated like family members because in reality she had none of her own. As a serious documentary, it is charming, sycophantic, peppy, endearing and, it must be admitted in all honesty, ultimately one-dimensional.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Carol Channing. The movie is almost totally made up of stock footage and posed photo ops—Carol and Miss Piggy, Carol and Louis Armstrong, Carol marching to “Before the Parade Passes By,” Carol stopping the show with Angela Lansbury and Chita Rivera at the Kennedy Center Honors for Jerry Herman, Carol on the cover of Life, Carol reducing Gene Shalit to hysterics on the Today show, Carol in London, Carol on tour with her worshipful gypsy dancers, Carol kissed and celebrated by every star in the world and every president in the White House except Richard Nixon, who put her on his infamous “enemies list,” probably for throwing him a Woolworth rhinestone instead of a Tiffany diamond. Old pals like Marge Champion, Lily Tomlin, Rich Little, Betty Garrett, Bob Mackie, Tommy Tune and Phyllis Diller drop in to add flavor. The visuals are a joy. But a good documentary should not show only the footlights but illuminate the shadows behind the stage as well. There isn’t one shot of Carol intimately unloading the dark corners of her heart in moments of heartbreaking intimacy or candor. (The same problem weakened the recent biopic about Joan Rivers.) Three failed marriages before her fourth and final one to her seventh-grade sweetheart, Harry Kullijian, do not add up to a bed of tulips. But she never comments, and the director makes no attempt to invade her privacy to reveal any of her true feelings.

What does she really think about Charles Lowe, the gay husband-manager she depended on 24 hours a day for 42 years before she sued him in an ugly divorce scandal? He was a power freak—cold, distant and controlling. Unfortunately, one of the things he controlled was her money. But did he really steal everything, including the millions she earned, then sell off her scrapbooks, etchings, photos and memories, leaving her bankrupt and desperate? We get Debbie Reynolds, always good for a pithy quote, calling him a crook and a thief and jokingly comparing him to her own disastrous husbands, but we get nothing from Carol, licking her wounds. Charles Lowe died before the divorce was final, unable to answer the charges or defend himself. Like any amateur Sherlock, I smell smoke, but nobody in this movie makes a move to cool the embers. Why else has Carol’s only son, Chan, fathered by her second husband, football player Alexander Carson and then adopted by Lowe, refused to speak to his mother for the past 15 years? Now a prize-winning political cartoonist in Palm Beach, his own biographical info on the Internet makes no mention of his mother at all. What’s the story, morning glory? There were years of success, followed by huge absences and lapses of work. But you gotta applaud her passion, dedication and discipline in keeping the legend alive. The curtain went up more than 5,000 times on Hello, Dolly! and she never missed a performance except for half of a show one night when she was felled by food poisoning in Kalamazoo. When she was battling ovarian cancer she would fly to New York every Saturday night, sleeping on wooden airport benches waiting for her plane to take off, undergo painful and grueling treatments all weekend, then return to the town where she was on tour in time for the Tuesday night show. Always the consummate trouper, she told her understudies, “Don’t worry about learning the part—you’ll never have to go on,” and she meant it. She survived every setback with the rabbit’s foot that had stuck by her side from her stage debut at the age of 7, which is why she named her 2002 autobiography Just Lucky I Guess. “It’s funny creating a part,” she says. “It’s yours for eternity.” Well, that was not exactly true with Lorelei. When Marilyn Monroe shimmied into Carol’s role in the legendary movie musical of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, everybody forgot the original. But Hello, Dolly! was another story. (Just ask Barbra Streisand.) The timing for Dolly, according to Jerry Herman, was different. It was written for Ethel Merman, who turned it down, but when it opened in 1964, Carol didn’t just lease the stage. She owned it. It opened on Broadway after the assassination of President Kennedy, when America was ready for two hours of fun, frolic and farce, and eager, as the old song goes, to “forget your troubles and just get happy.” She’s been playing it ever since. Now that she’s 90 years old, she’ll probably play it for eight more bars and out—in a wheelchair.

After 70 years, her childhood flame, Harry Kullijian, read a kind mention of his name in her book, and materialized, like Banquo’s ghost. Depressed and broke, she needed another man to manage her life. He married her, moved her to Modesto and gave her a future by forming a partnership to bring the arts to public schools. Harry is as much a part of this movie as Carol. The scenes where she takes him on a tour of her Broadway haunts during the years when their paths came close to crossing but didn’t, he accompanies her to unveil her star on the Palm Springs sidewalk of fame, and they revisit their old childhood neighborhood in San Francisco, are genuinely touching. The movie is full of gaps, but what you get is the sense that the real person behind the willowy blonde from Bennington College with a voice like a Greyhound bus with a faulty carburetor has always been a conundrum: push-pull, secure-insecure, superior-inferior. At the heart of her emotional stress was the feeling that the theater was her only home. You get the sense that in the past brief period of all that, Harry gave her a new definition of security. Then, just as Carol Channing: Larger Than Life was completed and ready for release, another misfortune: Harry died just before Christmas, on the eve of his 92^nd birthday, and a grief-stricken Carol has gone into seclusion, unable to do any of the requisite publicity to promote the film. “The safest place in the world to be,” she says, “is center stage.”

Flawed but bittersweet and enjoyable, this film may be the final chapter in a colorful and illustrious life. Frail and exhausted, her voice unsteady and scarcely able to carry a tune, Carol Channing is bent, but her spirit is indomitable, her throaty laugh buoyant as always. Wow, oh, wow, fellas. Look at the old girl now, fellas. Let’s hope Dolly finds her way back to center stage and never goes away again.

rreed@observer.com

CAROL CHANNING: LARGER THAN LIFE

Running Time 87 minutes

Written by Dori Berinstein and Adam Zucker

Directed by Dori Berinstein

Starring Carol Channing, Loni Anderson and Mary Jo Catlett

3/4

The documentary's premiere was set to draw the likes of Chita Rivera, Whoopi Goldberg and Tyne Daly, though as of April 15, the film hadn't been completed. As for the flu, "That's the trouble with making a documentary about a nonagenarian," a Rubenstein flack explained. We have since been told that Ms. Channing is "feeling much better." We wish her well.

ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_

That’s how we first see her in North Country, playing an abused wife named Josey Ames who sports the kind of split lip and swollen shiner usually reserved for bare-knuckle heavyweights. This time, Josey fights back. She wipes off the blood, scoops up her two kids and flees to her parents back in the snowy, burned-out butt end of northern Minnesota, where she left home in disgrace as a rape victim and unwed mother years ago.

Although her long-suffering mother (another deeply honest and riveting performance by Sissy Spacek) feels compassion for Josey’s hardscrabble life, her father (Richard Jenkins, the funeral-director patriarch from Six Feet Under) has never forgiven the daughter he regards as a slut. Josey doesn’t waste much time seeking approval or licking her wounds. She’s got to get a job, rebuild her life and support her kids, and the only game in town that pays real wages is the filthy, dangerous mines where local fathers, husbands and sons who have broken their backs for generations are now being forced to endure the sudden invasion of women on the work force.

This is a real hell, where female miners are exposed to the harsh and rugged labor of a male-dominated world, resented and ridiculed, and subjected to shocking and even life-threatening ordeals, both physical and emotional. From their humiliating medical exams to their punishing assignments hauling rocks from the quarries, driving trucks, lifting heavy machinery and inhaling fumes that lead to crippling diseases, Josey and a handful of desperate women take whatever the men dish out. Scraping toxic grease and oil from huge engines and grinding machines, being subjected to daily sexual advances, meeting hostility and hate in every dark hole in the mine, their only escape from the dirt and dreariness of their lives is sex, alcohol and violent ice-hockey games. When Josey takes her grievances to the president of the company, instead of sympathy, she’s offered a choice: worsened conditions or instant resignation. Resenting her first sign of strength, the men increase the hardships against Josey’s friends and co-workers—leaving dildoes in their lunch boxes, destroying their locker room, smearing the walls with excrement—until Josey finally declares war. When she quits, it’s not because she’s taken all she can, but because she’s given all she’s got. The result is a class-action lawsuit that changed the laws protecting women against sexual harassment in the American workplace, and a compelling issue-empowered movie in the tradition of Silkwood, Norma Rae and Erin Brockovich.

The film is “inspired by” the true story of Lois Jenson, who sued the Eveleth Mines in the Mesabi Iron Range in 1988, and adapted from the book Class Action, by Clara Bingham and Laura Leedy Gansler, who, for reasons that have never been explained, were halfway through their research when the subject of their story washed her hands of the project and has since refused to cooperate with the publication of the book, the paperback edition or the movie. Names have been changed and some of the plot points fictionalized, but nothing can dilute the impact of a story with this much courage and humanity.

It’s a rich, complex experience, informed and elevated by an exemplary band of dedicated artists on every level. In her first American film, acclaimed New Zealand director Niki Caro brings the disenfranchised, granite-faced Minnesota miners to life with the same dignity and quality as the misunderstood Maoris in her acclaimed Whale Rider. The great cinematographer Chris Menges has captured the psychic and physical desolation of the Iron Range’s ravaged industrial landscape with a wintry chill that is almost beautiful, like the optimism beneath the small town’s surface ugliness. Michael Seitzman’s script provides a valiant look at a certain kind of working-class woman and derives its strengths from closely observed details and emotions instead of the obvious movie clichés of action, sex and violence.

And the impeccable cast grabs your heart through sensitivity to the human condition, not aggression: Woody Harrelson is surprisingly understated as the reluctant lawyer who defends one vulnerable woman against a corporate Goliath; Frances McDormand is heartbreaking as the friend who has given her life for the mines and now enters the courtroom at the eleventh hour to change the outcome of the trial from her deathbed; and Ms. Spacek, in a small but pivotal role, is dynamic as a mother torn between two loyalties who finds the inner conviction to stand up and be counted on her own terms.

But it is really Charlize Theron whose triumphant performance gives the film its thunderous center. From her hangdog introduction to her final assertiveness, she demonstrates every nuance, every frailty, every exhaustion and every hope of a loser who redefines herself. From the slope of her shoulders to the proud lift of her chin, she moves into the mind and soul of Josey Ames the way Sally Field established squatter’s rights on the persona and spirit of Norma Rae. It’s a memorable and touching portrayal of a certain kind of woman who is vital and determined instead of neurotic and victimized. Hers is a trenchant portrait of a degraded footnote to gender politics, raised up and transformed by the soaring power of the uncrushable human spirit. And let’s face it: She’s still something to marvel at, even in overalls.

Carol the Clown

Tick. Tock. Carol Channing has always reminded me of a walking alarm clock. And during a career playing Lorelei Lee, Dolly Levi and a cartoon alley cat named Mehitabel, she developed a reputation for being one of the world’s most delectable dumb blondes. She is none of those things, as you will quickly learn if you are lucky and wise enough to hitch, hike, cab or grift your way over to Feinstein’s at the Regency, where she is singing, clowning and otherwise strutting her stuff (through Oct. 22) in a rare nightclub act that she calls The First 80 Years Are the Hardest. I guess you could call it a “cabaret comeback,” since she hasn’t appeared in an intimate setting in more years than the Hilton sisters can count. Some people were born to make comebacks. If they stay away too long, the public demands their return to the center spot. The indefinable and indestructible Carol Channing, I am happy to say, is one of them. She is, I am even happier to say, in terrific shape. And the welcome applause on her opening night was louder than anything they’ve heard over at the U.N. all year.

The first time I ever saw Carol Channing, I was 16 years old, on a family vacation and sitting at my first ringside table in the show room of the old Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas. The drums rolled, the trumpets blared, the pinspot lit her exploding lemon-pudding wig, and my contact lenses fell out of my eyes and onto the floor. I was on my hands and knees, blindly feeling the carpet. My relatives were on their hands and knees, the people at the next table were on their hands and knees, and before I could whisper “Let me die right here, under a table in Vegas, before this embarrassment ends,” Carol Channing was on her hands and knees, calling for a flashlight and milking the applause. My lobster-faced predicament, and the way she shaped my mortification into improvised comic genius, turned into … material! It gives me great pleasure to report that, at the Regency, she hasn’t changed at all.

The marshmallow fluff has been replaced by a sensible and attractive silver bob, the rolling eyes once made up for target practice are softer and friendlier now, and at an age when most showbiz veterans fall asleep after the 6 o’clock news and a snifter of Ovaltine (she’ll be 85 in January), Carol Channing is just getting her second wind.

The evening is unplugged from start to finish. I wish I could tell you what I saw and what it’s all about, but I know when I’m licked. In a fire-engine red double-breasted tuxedo with rhinestone buttons and a sequined vest, she talks about her first audition for the legendary Abe Lastfogel at the William Morris Agency, when she came down from Bennington College and performed a Haitian corn-grinding chant praying for rain. (I couldn’t make this stuff up.) Doing her best Sophie Tucker imitation, she quotes the best advice that old trout gave her about what to wear when she opened in Vegas: “To the boys around the crap table, a low-cut dress is just another place to lose the dice.” Then she rhapsodizes about some of the traffic that has paraded through the dressing rooms of her career: Tallulah, Merman, a flotilla of visiting royalty from every nation, and the Queen Mother, to whom she once tossed a diamond during a command performance, and then wanted 12 more for the children of her chimney sweep.

In a voice that sounds like a cross between Ernest Borgnine and a foghorn on Frisco Bay, she sang her trademark songs: “Little Rock” and “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” and “Hello, Dolly!”, with the audience singing along. People shouted out favorites, and sometimes she even remembered them. She dazzled with the same old “Cecilia Sisson” routine she performed when I was 16—the specialty routine about a failed star who couldn’t survive talking pictures because she whistled through her teeth like a wind through the Grand Canyon. It brought down the house. O.K., the act isn’t really much more than a long, rambling monologue that takes on the style of a ditzy stream-of-consciousness that is positively Faulknerian. The structure is as disorganized as Fibber McGee’s closet.

The show is called The First 80 Years Are The Hardest, and there are times when it might possibly be best enjoyed if you are in your 80’s, too. Still, a genuinely happy time full of fun, amazement and charm is guaranteed. Is she giving up and giving in? Are you crazy? A new doctorate degree from Cal State now entitles her to be addressed as “Dr. Channing,” she’s an honorary member of an Indian tribe in Oklahoma, she recently married a junior high-school sweetheart she hadn’t seen for 70 years named Harry Kullijian (whom she drags to the stage for a soft-shoe duet), and Michele Lee and Celeste Holm surprised her with new restorations of all of her Tonys, Golden Globes, and lifetime-achievement awards, which were stolen last year in a robbery. She deserves all the attention, accolades and applause she can get. The first 80 years may have been the hardest, but Carol Channing is finally living on Easy Street.

That’s how we first see her in North Country, playing an abused wife named Josey Ames who sports the kind of split lip and swollen shiner usually reserved for bare-knuckle heavyweights. This time, Josey fights back. She wipes off the blood, scoops up her two kids and flees to her parents back in the snowy, burned-out butt end of northern Minnesota, where she left home in disgrace as a rape victim and unwed mother years ago.

Although her long-suffering mother (another deeply honest and riveting performance by Sissy Spacek) feels compassion for Josey’s hardscrabble life, her father (Richard Jenkins, the funeral-director patriarch from Six Feet Under) has never forgiven the daughter he regards as a slut. Josey doesn’t waste much time seeking approval or licking her wounds. She’s got to get a job, rebuild her life and support her kids, and the only game in town that pays real wages is the filthy, dangerous mines where local fathers, husbands and sons who have broken their backs for generations are now being forced to endure the sudden invasion of women on the work force.

This is a real hell, where female miners are exposed to the harsh and rugged labor of a male-dominated world, resented and ridiculed, and subjected to shocking and even life-threatening ordeals, both physical and emotional. From their humiliating medical exams to their punishing assignments hauling rocks from the quarries, driving trucks, lifting heavy machinery and inhaling fumes that lead to crippling diseases, Josey and a handful of desperate women take whatever the men dish out. Scraping toxic grease and oil from huge engines and grinding machines, being subjected to daily sexual advances, meeting hostility and hate in every dark hole in the mine, their only escape from the dirt and dreariness of their lives is sex, alcohol and violent ice-hockey games. When Josey takes her grievances to the president of the company, instead of sympathy, she’s offered a choice: worsened conditions or instant resignation. Resenting her first sign of strength, the men increase the hardships against Josey’s friends and co-workers—leaving dildoes in their lunch boxes, destroying their locker room, smearing the walls with excrement—until Josey finally declares war. When she quits, it’s not because she’s taken all she can, but because she’s given all she’s got. The result is a class-action lawsuit that changed the laws protecting women against sexual harassment in the American workplace, and a compelling issue-empowered movie in the tradition of Silkwood, Norma Rae and Erin Brockovich.

The film is “inspired by” the true story of Lois Jenson, who sued the Eveleth Mines in the Mesabi Iron Range in 1988, and adapted from the book Class Action, by Clara Bingham and Laura Leedy Gansler, who, for reasons that have never been explained, were halfway through their research when the subject of their story washed her hands of the project and has since refused to cooperate with the publication of the book, the paperback edition or the movie. Names have been changed and some of the plot points fictionalized, but nothing can dilute the impact of a story with this much courage and humanity.

It’s a rich, complex experience, informed and elevated by an exemplary band of dedicated artists on every level. In her first American film, acclaimed New Zealand director Niki Caro brings the disenfranchised, granite-faced Minnesota miners to life with the same dignity and quality as the misunderstood Maoris in her acclaimed Whale Rider. The great cinematographer Chris Menges has captured the psychic and physical desolation of the Iron Range’s ravaged industrial landscape with a wintry chill that is almost beautiful, like the optimism beneath the small town’s surface ugliness. Michael Seitzman’s script provides a valiant look at a certain kind of working-class woman and derives its strengths from closely observed details and emotions instead of the obvious movie clichés of action, sex and violence.

And the impeccable cast grabs your heart through sensitivity to the human condition, not aggression: Woody Harrelson is surprisingly understated as the reluctant lawyer who defends one vulnerable woman against a corporate Goliath; Frances McDormand is heartbreaking as the friend who has given her life for the mines and now enters the courtroom at the eleventh hour to change the outcome of the trial from her deathbed; and Ms. Spacek, in a small but pivotal role, is dynamic as a mother torn between two loyalties who finds the inner conviction to stand up and be counted on her own terms.

But it is really Charlize Theron whose triumphant performance gives the film its thunderous center. From her hangdog introduction to her final assertiveness, she demonstrates every nuance, every frailty, every exhaustion and every hope of a loser who redefines herself. From the slope of her shoulders to the proud lift of her chin, she moves into the mind and soul of Josey Ames the way Sally Field established squatter’s rights on the persona and spirit of Norma Rae. It’s a memorable and touching portrayal of a certain kind of woman who is vital and determined instead of neurotic and victimized. Hers is a trenchant portrait of a degraded footnote to gender politics, raised up and transformed by the soaring power of the uncrushable human spirit. And let’s face it: She’s still something to marvel at, even in overalls.

Carol the Clown

Tick. Tock. Carol Channing has always reminded me of a walking alarm clock. And during a career playing Lorelei Lee, Dolly Levi and a cartoon alley cat named Mehitabel, she developed a reputation for being one of the world’s most delectable dumb blondes. She is none of those things, as you will quickly learn if you are lucky and wise enough to hitch, hike, cab or grift your way over to Feinstein’s at the Regency, where she is singing, clowning and otherwise strutting her stuff (through Oct. 22) in a rare nightclub act that she calls The First 80 Years Are the Hardest. I guess you could call it a “cabaret comeback,” since she hasn’t appeared in an intimate setting in more years than the Hilton sisters can count. Some people were born to make comebacks. If they stay away too long, the public demands their return to the center spot. The indefinable and indestructible Carol Channing, I am happy to say, is one of them. She is, I am even happier to say, in terrific shape. And the welcome applause on her opening night was louder than anything they’ve heard over at the U.N. all year.

The first time I ever saw Carol Channing, I was 16 years old, on a family vacation and sitting at my first ringside table in the show room of the old Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas. The drums rolled, the trumpets blared, the pinspot lit her exploding lemon-pudding wig, and my contact lenses fell out of my eyes and onto the floor. I was on my hands and knees, blindly feeling the carpet. My relatives were on their hands and knees, the people at the next table were on their hands and knees, and before I could whisper “Let me die right here, under a table in Vegas, before this embarrassment ends,” Carol Channing was on her hands and knees, calling for a flashlight and milking the applause. My lobster-faced predicament, and the way she shaped my mortification into improvised comic genius, turned into … material! It gives me great pleasure to report that, at the Regency, she hasn’t changed at all.

The marshmallow fluff has been replaced by a sensible and attractive silver bob, the rolling eyes once made up for target practice are softer and friendlier now, and at an age when most showbiz veterans fall asleep after the 6 o’clock news and a snifter of Ovaltine (she’ll be 85 in January), Carol Channing is just getting her second wind.

The evening is unplugged from start to finish. I wish I could tell you what I saw and what it’s all about, but I know when I’m licked. In a fire-engine red double-breasted tuxedo with rhinestone buttons and a sequined vest, she talks about her first audition for the legendary Abe Lastfogel at the William Morris Agency, when she came down from Bennington College and performed a Haitian corn-grinding chant praying for rain. (I couldn’t make this stuff up.) Doing her best Sophie Tucker imitation, she quotes the best advice that old trout gave her about what to wear when she opened in Vegas: “To the boys around the crap table, a low-cut dress is just another place to lose the dice.” Then she rhapsodizes about some of the traffic that has paraded through the dressing rooms of her career: Tallulah, Merman, a flotilla of visiting royalty from every nation, and the Queen Mother, to whom she once tossed a diamond during a command performance, and then wanted 12 more for the children of her chimney sweep.

In a voice that sounds like a cross between Ernest Borgnine and a foghorn on Frisco Bay, she sang her trademark songs: “Little Rock” and “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” and “Hello, Dolly!”, with the audience singing along. People shouted out favorites, and sometimes she even remembered them. She dazzled with the same old “Cecilia Sisson” routine she performed when I was 16—the specialty routine about a failed star who couldn’t survive talking pictures because she whistled through her teeth like a wind through the Grand Canyon. It brought down the house. O.K., the act isn’t really much more than a long, rambling monologue that takes on the style of a ditzy stream-of-consciousness that is positively Faulknerian. The structure is as disorganized as Fibber McGee’s closet.

The show is called The First 80 Years Are The Hardest, and there are times when it might possibly be best enjoyed if you are in your 80’s, too. Still, a genuinely happy time full of fun, amazement and charm is guaranteed. Is she giving up and giving in? Are you crazy? A new doctorate degree from Cal State now entitles her to be addressed as “Dr. Channing,” she’s an honorary member of an Indian tribe in Oklahoma, she recently married a junior high-school sweetheart she hadn’t seen for 70 years named Harry Kullijian (whom she drags to the stage for a soft-shoe duet), and Michele Lee and Celeste Holm surprised her with new restorations of all of her Tonys, Golden Globes, and lifetime-achievement awards, which were stolen last year in a robbery. She deserves all the attention, accolades and applause she can get. The first 80 years may have been the hardest, but Carol Channing is finally living on Easy Street.

Just when everyone had forgotten that fleeting rumor about John Kerry having an affair with a young woman named Alex Polier, the lady herself hops onto the cover of New York magazine. And by the way, how many Senators invite a pretty young thang to dinner and ply her with four mojitos -and "platters of skirt steak" ( yee-haw! )-just because he wants to talk policy? But we digress ! June is off to a tangy start: First, if you're in the market for some upscale bohemian art (really, what is life without a skull cube teapot?) or a downscale bohemian boyfriend, get a jump on things with tonight's gala preview of the Sculpture Objects and Functional Art show, with the theme "A Taste of New York" -munchies provided by David Burke & Donatella and Cafe Boulud . A few blocks west, the well-seasoned Central Park Conservancy one-ups them with a "Taste of Summer" benefit (chow from Jean George , SushiSamba , others) as jewelry heiress Coralie Charriol , Ottoman empire heir Eric Villency and P.R. princess Vanessa von Bismarck drink bevies and scrawl their sigs for the silent auction. On the block : a walk-on role in the musical Chicago ( stomp, stomp, stomp! ), a private tasting with Jean George ( burp! ), and a chance to bang hammers with Bob Vila on his show …. Guess what? We're naked right now ! Just trying to get in the mood for The Gay Naked Play . We found one of the directors, Christopher Borg , at his day job ("I'm disguised as a secretary at a law firm!"). "We have that typical Off Broadway bitterness that only crap is being done on Broadway and the exciting stuff is being done here on the street," he said. "We want to comment on the popularity of shows that capitalize on a thriving gay economy …. What's been the most difficult issue is: How do you make a serious commentary on producers who use nudity to sell a play when you want to stick a naked guy on a postcard to sell your play?" He and co-director Jason Bowcutt have been best friends since they were 18 and came out of the closet together while starring in a Mormon musical. (They've since left the church.) Have they ever been lovers? "There were moments. We tried it once or twice! We would look at each other and think, 'He's not so horrible-looking!' … We were better suited to be brothers, or sisters, rather- we're gonna be two old ladies sitting on the bus!"

[SOFA, Seventh Regiment Armory, 67th Street and Park Avenue, 5 to 10 p.m.,

212-956-3535, ext. 129; A Taste of Summer, Bethesda Terrace, Heart of Central Park, mid-park at 72nd Street, 7 to 11 p.m., 212-310-6619; The Gay Naked Play , Emerging Artists Theatre, 432 West 42nd Street, fourth floor, 8 p.m., 212-594-1404.]

Thursday 3rd

France, land of the bidet, throws a self-congratulatory juice on its bad self with an Apéritif à la Française ("The French Cocktail Hour") fête to remind everyone of the cultural influences it has spread throughout the world (food, wine, Napoleon complex … ) at the Bubble Lounge in Tribeca …. Meanwhile, we lost any ability to feel a long time ago (in Steel Magnolias , we were more distraught over JuliaRoberts choppingall herhairoff than SallyField pulling the plug on her), which is why we love Law & Order , with its ominous ka-chung sound and lack of emotional issues . So we were a little skeptical when Barry Levinson called his forthcoming courtroom drama, The Jury , "the opposite of Law & Order ," emphasizing the human-interest element over the legal issues. Hmmmm . See for yourself at today's premiere screening at the indefatigable Museum of Television and Radio, where the creators and cast (including impossibly thin yet chipmunk-cheeked model Shalom Harlow , who went the "career" route while her former MTV appendage, Amber Valleta, went the mommy route ) face the tribunal with one of those Q&A's where an audience member inevitably arrives with some "ideas" for the show and a script.

[Apéritif à la Française launch party, the Bubble Lounge, 228 West Broadway, 6 to 8 p.m., by invitation only; The Jury premiere screening, the Museum of Television and Radio, 25 West 52nd Street, 6 to 7:30 p.m.,

212-621-6600.]

Friday 4th

Hunter S. Thompson's literary cousin, Denis Johnson, takes the stage at Volume (art space!) with artist Sam Messer . We spoke to Mr. Messer about the reclusive author (currently on the move to Northern Idaho, and he told us that the two met in 1981 during a stint at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown (artists' colony!). "Denis actually made a book for my daughter Josephine, called Denis the Pirate ," said Mr. Messer, "and that's where most of this started." Tonight you'll find Mr. Messer's etchings decorating Mr. Johnson's poems, of which Mr. M. said, "They're like fragments: He saves them, forgets about them, sticks them in drawers and eventually retrieves them."

["A Collaboration (Again)," Volume, 530 West 24th Street, 6 to 8 p.m., 212-989-8700.]

Saturday 5th

The Hamptons are the "adult swim" of the city -you know, when the lifeguard blows the whistle and all the annoying people clear out , leaving the rest of us to enjoy our calm pool of tranquillity. Today, that rollicking crowd includes erstwhile Canadian father figure Peter Jennings and Congressman Timothy Bishop , who are sloshing over to a Garden Gala being held at Jerry Della Femina and Judy Licht's quaint oceanfront home-so you can raise money for AIDS services while watching Mr. Jennings do some disco steps in his flip-flops …. Out in White Plains (the thinking person's Hamptons), you can meet naughty book writer Judy Blume …. If you're here in ole 'hattan, budding Buddhists bloom at the "Change Your Mind Day" basheroo in Central Park; you can toss a Frisbee as long as you remember it doesn't exist …. It's a free afternoon of meditation instruction, yoga poses and Laurie Anderson . Meanwhile: clip-clop, clip-clop-yes, it's the 136th running of the Belmont Stakes, where we would've won a honeypot last year if it weren't for that nag …. We asked Observer equinophile Jerome Keel about this year's favorite, Smarty Jones: "The horse is a freak! They brought him to the track one day for training, and when they put him in the gate, he reared up and fractured his skull! He had blood coming out of his ears; he almost lost an eye! They took him to a clinic, nursed him back to health for six months, and it's a miracle he's even alive, let alone racing. He's amazing. The only way he's going to lose is if he beats himself!"

[Belmont Stakes, Belmont Park, noon,

718-641-4700, www.nyra.com; Garden Gala, the home of Jerry Della Femina and Judy Licht, 5:30 to 8:30 p.m., 212-566-7333, www.bodypos.org; Meet Judy Blume, Barnes & Noble, 230 Main Street, White Plains, noon, 914-397-0428; Change Your Mind Day, Central Park, enter at 106th Street and Central Park West, 12:30 to 5:30 p.m., 800-950-7008.]

Sunday 6th

Is Broadway back? Considering they have to bring a rapper on board (P. Diddy) and poach from the silver screen (Hugh Jackman, Ashley Judd , Richard Dreyfuss) or canceled sitcoms (John Stamos , Elizabeth Berkley) just to put asses in the seats, that would be a 'No!' Nonetheless, Aussie jackeroo Hugh Jackman musters all he can to host the beleaguered Tony Awards, where Nicole Kidman , Scarlett Johansson - sooo destined for Broadway when her "It" Girl status burns off- L.L. Cool J and Jimmy Fallon will pop out of the jackeroo's pouch to act as presenters. Meanwhile, the American Museum of the Moving Image continues its Cary Grant retrospective, as the original George Clooney gets his crops dusted by Hitchcock blonde Eva Marie Saint in North by Northwest . The press release helpfully points out that the film "climaxes on the head of Mount Rushmore." Hee hee. Speaking of which, last week it was reported that Bill Clinton is looking for a f*ck pad on the Upper West Side . Though even that didn't beat the new revelation that one night in 1973, Richard Nixon was too loaded to talk to the British prime minister about the Arab-Israeli war ….

[Tony Awards, Radio City Music Hall, 51st Street and Sixth Avenue, 8 to 11 p.m., by invitation or nomination only; North by Northwest , the American Museum of the Moving Image, 35th Avenue at 36th Street, Astoria, Queens, 4 p.m., 718-784-4520.]

Monday 7th

Yo MoMA so shabby, she picked up and moved to Queens! But fear not-she'll be restored and back in Manhattan in November. Tonight, the museum throws its celebrated Party in a Garden -and it's neither in Queens nor at MoMA nor in a garden. Wacky! This year's celebrant is actor, author, art collector and silver fox Steve Martin (he decorates his pad with Roy Lichtenstein, Francis Bacon, Pablo Picasso, Edward Hopper and David Hockney ). The twinkly shindig calls for festive dress (shredded, asymmetrical hemline, ruffles) and benefits the restoration of the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden , so it's more of a party for a garden …. Further downtown, but not far enough to scare anyone, are the CFDA Awards (the Oscars of the fashion world). Threadmasters Narciso Rodriguez (always reliable), Donna Karan (touch-and-go) and Marc Jacobs (been coasting lately) split the hosting duties. Zac Posen , Vogue favorite Derek Lam and someone named Patrick Robinson throw elbows for the honor of "Best Emerging Talent." They pass a special Fashion Icon Award on to Sarah Jessica Parker , who will hopefully take the hint and go into seclusion the way all good icons do …. Meanwhile, Citigroup holds our friends hostage with BlackBerries and the promise of $20,000 bonuses , but it turns out they also have a swell auditorium! Tonight, testosterone and estrogen collide when the song-and-dance set invades, led by music man Jerry Herman and scrumptious scribbler Liz Smith, as Carol Channing picks up the Oscar Hammerstein Award for Lifetime Achievement in Musical Theater. We were in Virginia Beach consuming bad food, good booze and salty men when Madame Channing called from Modesto, Calif., where she was consumed by marital bliss (she married husband/manager Harry Kullijian a year ago-take that, Nick and Jessica!). "I've known Harry since we were 12 or 13-back then, we were going steady," she said. "Those were the happiest days of my life, and they're back again and as strong as ever! Oh, we don't care whether the world passes us by!" She was still giddy from receiving her honorary doctorate from California State University at Stanislaus. "I just finished doing it last night, so I'm still full of it!" she said. "We're going to have a great United States of America if these students are running it. They shook hands with the president of the university, and then they'd turn and give me a kiss! They gave me a standing ovation-I was the only one they stood up for! Once you're over 80, you're in the bracket of dogs and babies: Everyone loves you because you're not in competition with anyone." What did she say to the grads? "In 1937, I was one year from graduating high school when my father -he was a newspaper man, you know- gave a keynote address, so I just tried to recount everything he had said. He told the students that the way to succeed is to make whoever is above you in your business look good. If you're the city editor, put the managing editor before yourself. If you're the managing editor, put the editor in chief in front of you. If you make them look good, you'll come out smelling like a rose. They laughed when I said that last part. I don't know why- I didn't mean it to be funny."

[Party in the Garden, Roseland Ballroom, 239 West 52nd Street, 7 p.m., 212-708-9680; CDFA Awards, New York Public Library, Fifth Avenue and 41st Street, 6:30 p.m., by invitation only; Carol Channing receives Oscar Hammerstein Award, Citigroup

Executive Auditorium, 399 Park Avenue,

6 p.m., 212-935-5824, ext. 25.]

Tuesday 8th

Our green, spacey sister, Venus, will pass in front of the sun for the first time in 122 years tonight , so strap on some binoculars or go to this incomprehensible Web site- www.vt-2004.org -to see what the fuss is about. Before you check in with the solar system, journalist Ben Yagoda (writes treatises on The New Yorker ) instructs on developing a distinct personal style. From his offices at the University of Delaware (he's director of the undergraduate journalism program), he sayeth: "The 20th century-with its mass media and journalism as the model of efficiency-decreed a sort of salesman approach to literature: It has to be transparent and practical, and in no sense betray the author's identity." Unless the author happens to be one of the thousands of horrid bloggers who have decided they can inflict their rancid pensées on the rest of us ad nauseam …. Others lumber uptown to catch the 26th Annual Museum Mile Festival -you take your pick of the nine museums nestled between the Met on the southern end and El Museo del Barrio on the northern. Hey -in the mood for another ethnically themed Central Park celebutante benefit? The Volunteers of America's "Samba et Soleil" has moved to the Boathouse from Andre Balazs' Sunset Beach, so you don't even need to leave the city or buy a boat for a chance to show off your latest Herrera . Expect the usual double-barreled suspects en masse, some feather-clad entertainment and a bar than runs out of vodka at 11:10 p.m.

[Sound on the Page, Barnes & Noble, Union Square, 33 East 17th Street, 212-253-0810; 26th Annual Museum Mile Festival, the Jewish Museum, Fifth Avenue at 92nd Street, 5:45 p.m., 212-606-2296; Samba et Soleil, the Boathouse in Central Park, 7 p.m., 212-496-4311.]

Wednesday 9th

Fifi fo fum! The acronymed events just keep on coming (see: SOFA, MoMA, CFDA above) with tonight's vaporous FiFi Awards (the Oscars of the olfactory industry). The suddenly and suspiciously ubiquitous Sigourney Weaver hosts as "Mr. Anti-Big" Tom Florio , wedding-gown gal Vera Wang and Oscar DE LA Renta waft in …. Yikes, what's this? Celine Dion is up for the Popular Appeal Award? Next ! The Kitchen hosts conceptual landscape artistes Christo and ladyfriend Jeanne-Claude , who will be setting up 7,500 orange fabric gates in Central Park for 16 days in February. We made the mistake of pronouncing the lady's name Jean- Claude when on the phone with the publicist, who replied, " Christo has not been living with a man for ze past fortee-seven years, mon Dieu !" Speaking of Bonnie Fuller , she's just like the rest of us! Or not. First, she turned Us Weekly into an A.D.D.-inspiring cocktail of photos and charticles , making it a must-read for every 25-year-old with no hobbies and an eating disorder. Then she did the wash, rinse and repeat routine with Star magazine, so that now every supermarket tabloid has gone posh and scrunchie-sporting soccer moms in Cincinnati know who Anna Wintour is and we simply don't know whom to trust anymore …. Tonight, the Madison Square Boys and Girls Club honors Ms. Fuller . Mon Dieu!

[FiFi Awards, Hammerstein Ballroom, 311 West 34th Street, 5:30 p.m., 212-647-1828; the Kitchen, 512 West 19th Street, 7 p.m., 212-255-5793; Madison Square Boys and Girls Club Benefit, Mandarin Oriental, Time Warner Center, Columbus Circle, 6 p.m., 212-760-0073.]

The Brothers Grimm, it seems, got the story all wrong and it's up to the Grande Dame of France (played by the imperial Jeanne Moreau) to set the record of her great-grandmother straight. The tale, as she remembers it, is not the saga of a passive ragamuffin waiting for a strong, handsome prince. The real Cinderella, saddened by the death of her adored father (Jeroen Krabbé), was no abandoned orphan, but chose to live with her wicked stepmother (as teeth-gnashingly cruel a gorgon as Anjelica Huston can create) and two spoiled, selfish stepsisters who demanded four-minute eggs and forced her to do the housework. The way Ms. Huston plays her, matching the Barrymore legacy with the skill of the Huston dynasty, the Baroness Rodmilla is an upwardly mobile social climber with an agenda of her own ("Nothing's final until you're dead-even then, I'm sure God negotiates").

While Cinderella tends the beehives and hoes the leeks, one jealous stepsister schemes to win Prince Henry, a callow youth brawny of biceps but soft in the noodle, while the overweight stepsister heads for the ball just to sample the pastry buffet. There is a glass slipper, left over from Cinderella's squandered inheritance, but no mice sewing ball gowns, no pumpkin at midnight, and the fairy godmother turns out to be Leonardo da Vinci, clutching a copy of the Mona Lisa under his arm.

By the time all of the wrinkles are ironed out, the prince has fallen for Cinderella's passion, conviction and social consciousness, and the whimsical elements are explored in a wholly nonwhimsical way. With apple orchards at dawn, monasteries in the mist and Gregorian chants by Benedictine monks, a rich tapestry of the Dordogne region of France provides a lush, romantic fairy-tale background suitable for framing, while the pickle-faced Ms. Huston gets one last laugh. On the verge of landing in the gallows, she is asked by the King and Queen of France if there is anyone present to speak up in her defense. Ms. Huston screws up her arrogance even in the face of defeat and delivers one of the film's best lines: "A lot of people seem to be out of town." In the end, it can be taken on many levels, all equally enjoyable, but in spite of its lavish sets and costumes, its postcard views and its comedy bits (there's even a man named Cartier, who is on his way to America to open a jewelry store), Ever After is best described as a simple but very charming story about two kids trying to talk their families into getting hip to the 16th century.

Well, Hello, Jerry! You're Looking Swell

More simple pleasures await theatergoers desperate for an escape from the summer heat in an air-conditioned, trouble-free zone. I used to think the requirements for a Broadway musical were insurmountable. An Evening With Jerry Herman proves that all you need is a prolific composer who is not only a stagestruck ham but an accomplished pianist as well, two singers who can do a few simple dance steps, the logos from various shows lowered from the ceiling to change the scene, some colored gels to change the mood and, of course, a trunk full of hit tunes. The diminutive Mr. Herman provides them all. As prodigious and talented as he is, he would, by his own admission, agree that above all, he's a gushing fan with a golly-gee enthusiasm who still sees stars when the parade passes by. Seated at the piano bench in his boyish tux against a blue Al Hirschfeld caricature, he turns positively giddy at the mention of his leading ladies, while his performing alter egos, Lee Roy Reams and Florence Lacey, punch out the lyrics to the songs Carol Channing and Angela Lansbury made famous with boxing gloves. All three wear too much makeup for a theater as intimate as the Booth, and sometimes they look like waxed fruit. But no matter. The show itself is not exactly fresh from the market. Mr. Herman, Mr. Reams and Ms. Lacey have been touring this evening of rambunctious show tunes all the way from the cabaret floor at Rainbow and Stars to the barns of Maine. No matter. The audience at An Evening With Jerry Herman is ready and eager for some summer stock, and the cheers are well deserved.

The applause is as understandable as an uncritical mind can make it. This little revue with its mass middle-American musical appeal is as close to criticproof as a summer show can get in the sweltering heat of 45th Street in August. The proof of the pudding is in the songs themselves. Taken out of context, "Before the Parade Passes By"-which, Mr. Herman confides, was written in a panic one snowy night in a Detroit hotel room with Carol Channing and Gower Champion looming nervously nearby in white terrycloth bathrobes-works as well in concert as it did opening night in Hello, Dolly! A delightfully droll song called "Penny in My Pocket," deleted unwisely from the same score, works even better. Mr. Reams sings more assuredly than he dances, and he is an exceptionally gifted impersonator of famous voices. One of the highlights of this show is a clever demonstration of the various ways the "Hello, Dolly!" title song has been used and abused through the years, with Mr. Reams supplying the voices of Ms. Channing, Pearl Bailey, Ethel Merman and Louis Armstrong. It was even recruited to sell Oscar Meyer ("Hello, Deli!") and legitimize the Presidential campaign of Lyndon Johnson ("Hello, Lyndon!"). From 1961 to 1966, Jerry Herman was the golden boy of Broadway. Milk and Honey , Hello, Dolly! and Mame were such resounding hits that he seemed to have the Midas touch. Then, he informs us candidly, the 1970's began a downward spiral.

Dear World (1969), Mack & Mabel (1974) and The Grand Tour (1979) were unfortunate flops. It's a shame, really, because they produced solid scores with such great songs as "Time Heals Everything," "I Won't Send Roses" and "I Don't Want to Know" all lovingly dusted off and performed with passion and tenderness. I will personally never forget the way Lisa Kirk brought down the house with the show-stopping production number "Tap Your Troubles Away" from Mack & Mabel , despite the limited proscenium space for choreography. Mr. Reams, who directed Carol Channing in the last tour of Hello, Dolly! , has directed An Evening With Jerry Herman , too, giving himself some choice bits of terpsichore. The guy has been practicing his taps. He is not Ann Miller, but he's on his way.

The final section of the second act returns Mr. Herman to his throne with four songs from La Cage aux Folles , the 1983 hit that introduced "I Am What I Am" to the world as every drag queen's national anthem. La Cage is the show that revived Mr. Herman's career, and it now gives Mr. Reams a campy opportunity to stop the show by donning a red feather boa to affectionately roast such camp divas as Mae West, Tallulah Bankhead and Marlene Dietrich. If he ever decides to abandon Broadway, there's a second career awaiting him in Provincetown.

Although he says he no longer feels "obsolete in my prime," Jerry Herman now spends most of his time living in California, remotely detached from the Great White Way he obviously loves. He hasn't written a new show in 15 years, although his vibrant, melodic score for Angela Lansbury's TV special Mrs. Santa Claus proved beyond a doubt he still has the knack. Perhaps, in an age of rock screamers like Rent , he feels his time has passed. He is wrong. An Evening With Jerry Herman may not be the new show we need now, but it is a crowd-pleasing celebration of both the man and the audiences he has touched along the way. The songs are an established part of theater history. They are as tuneful, harmonic and thrilling as ever. You do not go away humming the scenery. You go away singing the songs, and wanting more. No doubt about it. It's time for a new Jerry Herman show. When he brings the audience to its feet with the closing number, they clap along in rhythm, singing "The best of times is now …" Mr. Herman should listen to the message his admirers are sending back across the footlights, and make these lyrics a talisman to live by.