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Flashback Friday: Broadway’s Carol Channing Kills It as Alice in Wonderland‘s The White Queen

The Tony Award winner’s performance in this TV movie will either give you nightmares or a much better Friday.

Bethany Rickwald
New York City
Carol Channing
Carol Channing

(© Harlan Boll)

In this YouTube clip, appropriately titled “Carol Channing Is Better Than You,” Tony and Golden Globe winner Channing (Hello, Dolly!) gives the made-for-TV performance of her lifetime. The movie is CBS’s 1985 two-part adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland books, and Channing’s role is the jam-loving, impossible-believing White Queen.

The film also starred Broadway veterans Red Buttons (Buttons on Broadway), Anthony Newley (Stop the World – I Want to Get Off), Jayne Meadows (Once in a Lifetime), Roddy McDowall (Camelot), Ann Jillian (Sugar Babies), and Robert Morley (Edward, My Son).

The clip’s highlights include an impeccably choreographed song about jam beginning at about the 1:45 minute mark, and Carol Channing turning into a sheep.

And since the White Queen lives backward, we didn’t even miss her birthday yesterday! Take that, planning ahead. Happy birthday, Carol!