Carol Channing, the American actor who originated the roles of Lorelei Lee in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and the eponymous heroine of Hello, Dolly! on Broadway, has died aged 97, her publicist has announced.
She also returned to her other signature theatre role in a 1974 Broadway sequel to Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, entitled Lorelei.
She claimed to have missed only one performance as Dolly, after a bout of food poisoning in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Channing played the matchmaking widow Dolly Levi more than 5,000 times across three Broadway runs from the 1960s to the 1990s and on tours around the world.