Hello, Indeed

When you see a good documentary, you are liable to be leaving the theater a little bit angry. Or a little bit more educated. Or a little bit more impassioned about an issue.

It's the rare documentary where you leave the cinema a whole lot happier than when you walked in. That's what happened to me when I saw "Carol Channing - Larger Than Life" last weekend.

Now, granted I was a sucker for this movie as soon as I heard about it.  There's the whole Broadway thing.  And I always make it a policy to see a documentary if its subject is someone I almost worked for.  If you don't remember that particular saga, simply go back to this blog on the date of Sunday, November 14, 2010 and you'll read the whole grizzly tale.  Yes, I had a job interview with Carol Channing cancelled by a hotel fire.  Doesn't everybody?

Well, any snootch, if a documentary filmmaker like Dori Berinstein  follows the legendary Carol Channing around for a year, how can that not be even remotely interesting?  To Dori's credit, it is a whole bunch interesting.  And funny.  And heartwarming.  And, because of what I know happened several weeks back, heartbreaking.

In some circles, Carol Channing is really nothing more than a two-trick pony.  Singing about diamonds in one show and then dancing with the Harmonia Garden waiters in another.  That's almost the sum total of her career.  But I dare you to try and look away from any TV screen that is showing either of those miraculous Broadway moments.  Tell me that, whenever you saw Carol turn up on a game show like Password, you could easily flip the channel.  It's impossible.  She grabs you in like a magnet.  There is something so real and infectious about every single move she makes and every single word she utters.

Filmmaker Dori Berinstein is fast becoming one of this country's best documentarians, especially when it comes to capturing the world of Broadway.  Her paean to the Great White Way was spectacular in "Show Business - The Road to Broadway" where she followed the development of three new Broadway productions.  And then there was "Gotta Dance," which gave us the delightful tale of that senior citizen hip hop dance team that the New Jersey Nets used at their games.

"Carol Channing - Larger Than Life" is even better.  Because its focus is one person who is still performing (well, sort of) at the young age of 90.   And when that person is one Carol Channing, your subject is gift wrapped with a ribbon for your audience.

Sure, there is the requisite life history you always get in a documentary like this.  The childhood.  The mystical force pulling someone into show business.  And the eye popping success of a magnificent career on the stage.  The cameras follow Carol for a year as she toddles from one event to another.  The annual Broadway Gypsy charity event.  The Kennedy Center where "Hello, Dolly" composer Jerry Herman is honored.  Even a junior high school seminar.  Both old and new stories are juxtaposed seamlessly. 

And yet there is something else that is connecting all the pieces.  The plasma of a film.

Carol talks about it herself.  When "Hello, Dolly" was in its pre-Broadway tryouts, there was something missing in the show.  Another showstopping number was sorely needed.  In the middle of a midnight hour, Jerry Herman sat down and composed "Before The Parade Passes By."  He then roused Carol out of her hotel bed to hear it.  The show's star relates the "a-ha"
moment.  At that instant, "Hello, Dolly" had found its spine.

Indeed, this documentary itself has a spine.  You see it clearly as Carol bounces from current day to current day.  Walking the streets of her old hometown San Francisco or her adopted hometown Broadway or her current hometown Palm Springs, she is never alone.

Harry is with her. 

Because, at the core of this movie, is a beautiful love story.   Carol and Harry were sweethearts as teenagers.  He gives her the very first kiss.  Shuttled off to high school and then the military, the young lovers are separated.  For decades and decades and decades.  He has a long marriage to somebody else.  Carol has a long and ultimately unhappy marriage to somebody else. 

About twelve years ago, Carol writes an autobiography and talks fondly about Harry in the second chapter.  Word gets back to him and, as only storybooks could imagine, they are married shortly after.  It took only about sixty or seventy years for them to find their soul mates.

There is a moment in the movie where Carol and Harry are sharing a cab ride around Broadway.  He spots a theater she was appearing in while he was on leave from the Korean War.  Having not seen her for years, he tells her, perhaps for the first time, he waited outside her stage door for a reunion that was not to come.  He wishes he had made more of an effort to connect that evening.  When Carol hears the story, her reaction is raw, organic, and emotional.

"I wish you had, too."

Simply stated.  Sentiments that could not be crafted by the most adept of all screenwriters. 

You can almost touch the love between these two as they share one golden moment after another.  As the movie ends and the credits roll, I waited for the postscript which never came.  I had just read in Variety that Harry had passed away last December 26.  Perhaps too late for the filmmaker to even include its mention. 

I wondered how many of the other folks in the audience knew what I did.  Did they know that the happy ending was certainly and most recently not one?  Did it matter?

Probably not. 

Because, for ninety minutes on the screen, the love of Carol and Harry was alive for all to enjoy.  A movie about a big and incredibly brassy broad reduced to the most intimate and touching of all love stories. 

So, yes, despite it all, I left with a grin that reached all the way across Santa Monica Boulevard.  As it always does when a movie is that good.

Dinner last night:  Pasta shells with sausage, red pepper flakes, and tomatoes.