Carol Channing in Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967) - Supporting Actress Sundays

A few To Dos Days ago, I posed a challenge to you, lovely reader: nominate your choice for "worst" supporting actress nomination. I confess to being somewhat startled by the blazing fury registered against this week's nominee. True, I have always been mildly alarmed by this legendary performer, her willing self-caricature seemingly always on the precipice of collapsing upon itself into some negative vortex, some actorly black hole of self-referential suckage. (And, yes, any performer who makes Miss Piggy seem well-balanced and sane, well...) But, in spite of all that, I do have a soft spot for the sublimely implausibly nomination awarded to the utterly crackers work of...

...Carol Channing in Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967).

approximately 19 minutes and 34 seconds
14 scenes
roughly 15% of film's total running time

Carol Channing plays Muzzy, the absurdly wealthy "jazz baby" who becomes a "thoroughly modern" role model for the titular Millie (Julie Andrews in a competent but leaden performance).

Thoroughly Modern Millie is a most unfortunate creature. The 1967 film seems poised to be a buoyant, whimsical spoof of 1920s cultural quirks, a giddy riff perhaps on the inadvertent silliness of culturally turbulent times. What emerges, however, is a lugubrious trudge of a film, an oozing syrupy glop lacking the effervescence to make it pop. For the most part, the film becomes an utterly humorless conglomeration of painfully unfunny slapstick and dreadfully miscast icons (the torture of sitting through the film seems only slightly less than the misery Beatrice Lillie appears to have experienced actually making it), ostensibly "organized" around an incoherent "white slavery panic" narrative offensive both for its casual racism as well as its insipid gonging execution. Only one aspect of the entire film comes anywhere close to working: Carol Channing's performance.

In crafting Muzzy, Channing draws effectively upon her peculiar skill set as a performer. Her breakneck jibjabbery line readings. Her masklike grin complicated by her astonishingly expressive eyes. Her indomitable verve. All the aspects that must have made her stage version of Dolly Levi such a legendary, formidable success appear on display here.

For indeed, Channing's Muzzy is a force/freak of nature, able to do whatever's required of her with an unconcerned willingness that's at once glib and infectious. In Millie, Channing is required to perform as the film's recurring non-sequitur, infusing energy and focus whenever she appears. (I daresay the film would have died the slow death of a dinosaur stuck in sludge had Channing's Muzzy not popped up periodically to goose it along.)

And whatever the role obliges, Channing does it with a wide grin, always apparently impelled by the trouper's mantra: "Faster! Louder! Funnier!" (Click pics above to enlarge and see just a few of Channing's adventures.) Whether drinking champagne during a high flying dogfight. Whether being hurled about by a band of merry circus acrobats while singing a song that sounds to be about date rape. Whether hurtling through the air as a human cannonball. Whether delivering the insipid, tripartite moral of the film's story. Whatever wherever whenever, Channing's always apparently having the time of her life. (Itself a formidable accomplishment in a project that seems so palpably depressed.)

Perhaps most curiously, Channing seems to be the only principal performer to "get" the ostensible joke of the film and have the comic chops to deliver on it. Furthermore, Channing breaks ranks and actually LISTENS to her scene partners, even when she's deliriously spinning her own schticky webs.

Muzzy is perhaps Millie's most "active" character, but Channing's performance is the film's most effectively "reactive." Throughout, Channing's wide eyes express the film's only emotional intelligence and subtext, an essential contribution in charting the plausibility of the film's main comic conceit, revealed only in the film's penultimate moments.

All of which is to say: Good for you, Ms. Channing. You withstood the gale force of soul-sucking banality that is Thoroughly Modern Millie. I remain uncertain how the hell this performance snagged a nomination, but I am duly impressed by your peculiar fortitude within it...

Now, if someone can just explain to me: what the hell is "Raspberries!" actually supposed to mean?