San Francisco Chronicle, CA
June 3 2006
WISHING ON A STAR
Channing brings melody, memories to severely ill Burlingame fan
Mike Weiss, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, June 3, 2006
After decades as a Broadway star, Carol Channing has transformed
herself into something of an old-fashioned doctor, the kind who makes
house calls. She does it because she believes that performance — not
least her own — has healing effects.
The star of “How to Marry a Millionaire” and “Hello, Dolly” and
recipient of three honorary doctorates dropped in Friday at the
Burlingame home of Gordon Cline, who is dying from chronic
obstructive pulmonary disease.
Cline, 77, who needs a constant supply of oxygen, and Channing, 85,
who was raised in San Francisco, traveled the world and now lives in
Modesto, immediately were on a first-name basis.
Channing was barely in the door of Gordon and Billi Cline’s yellow
frame cottage — wearing her signature oversize black-rimmed glasses
and a shiny fire-engine-red jacket — when she broke into her theme
song, adapted to the circumstances:
“Hell-o, Gordon, Hell-o, Gordon
“So nice to have you here where you belong
“You’re looking swell, Gordon … and you are.”
Beaming, Cline, who had shaved for the occasion — there are days
when he is too short of breath to make the effort — exclaimed: “I
didn’t even have to ask!”
Soon, to the delight of their adoring spouses — Harry Kullijian,
Channing’s junior high sweetheart, whom she married recently, and
Billi Cline, whom Cline met at a concert in 1995 after the deaths of
their spouses — the entertainer and the retired chemist were in a
full flirt.
“What’s that for?” Channing asked, pointing at the tank that feeds
Cline oxygen through a nasal tube.
“That’s my lifeblood,” he answered.
“I used to take oxygen between my afternoon and evening shows,”
Channing said.
And the mention of her shows reminded Cline what he wanted to see: “I
want to see you do Marlene Dietrich.”
The spirited get-together was arranged by Pathways, a nonprofit, San
Jose-based hospice that, since Cline’s hospitalization, has provided
the Clines with home nursing visits, spiritual counseling and a level
of caring that Gordon calls “a godsend.”
Channing began to work with organizations like Pathways while
recuperating from ovarian cancer when she discovered that performing
did her more good than resting.
“You reach to the heavens to get the show out,” she said in her
famously scratchy, baby-talk voice, “and the heavens somehow answer
us. It heals my fellow actors, heals the audience, and it heals me.”
Cline has needed oxygen for four years. But his health took a turn
for the worse in January, when he went out in a driving rain to sand
a sticky gate leading to Billi’s glory: a landscaped backyard, the
crowning achievement of which is a two-tier pool stocked with carp.
He was in an intensive-care unit for two weeks. Twice, Billi went to
the hospital thinking her husband was about to expire.
“He was so ill, it’s almost like I’ve gone through his death already.
And I don’t mean that tritely,” said Billi, a trim woman with a
down-home style who shares a love of travel with Gordon. Four times
they have hauled his oxygen to remote regions of Alaska that can be
reached only by bush plane.
In their own ways, and with help from Pathways, the Clines have come
to terms with the inevitable. Her husband may have months left, Billi
said, or he may have hours. Nonetheless, asked to sum up his life,
Gordon said one word: “Happy.”
Cline has left his funeral arrangements entirely in Billi’s hands.
When Billi picked out their burial plots, she said, the man from the
cemetery told her they were so full they had instituted a new system,
double dips. She found that funny and shared a laugh with Gordon
until she figured out the man had said double depths. And then they
had an even better laugh.
Billi sometimes cries when talking about what is coming. And she says
angrily about her husband’s lifelong smoking habit: “I have to admit
that sometimes I wish some of the CEOs of tobacco companies could be
hooked up to a respirator.”
After a while, the couples settled in the Clines’ sunroom overlooking
the pond. Channing and Gordon held hands. Her fingers are twisted
with arthritis, his discolored because the steroids he needs for his
illness also make him bruise easily.
Channing said her late father still comes to her when she needs him
most. “I know,” she said, making a dismissive backhand gesture, “this
is not the end of us. It is not.”
“We’ve been kind of wondering,” Gordon Cline said, “what’s going to
happen with our previous spouses?”
“Maybe we’ll swap, huh?” his wife said, mischievously.
Soon Cline needed a rest — his breath was coming in gasps — and
while he regathered himself, the honorary doctor who made 5,000
appearances in “Hello, Dolly” talked about why she likes to make
house calls.
“I want it on my tombstone: ‘She Lifted Lives,’ Channing said. “And
what about Gordon? He’s an inspiration. He knows he’s going soon, and
it doesn’t frighten him. He has every will to live. And he is so in
love with his wife.”
It is almost time to leave when the name of Marlene Dietrich, the
Hollywood star with the head-turning legs, came up again. Cline still
wanted to see the impersonation, so Channing lifted the leg of her
black slacks and showed a bit of ankle.
“Armenians are funny about their wives,” Channing said about her
watchful husband. “They won’t let them take their pants off for
friends.” Big laugh all around.
The goodbye took awhile, what with autographing photos and CDs, but
in the end, the 85-year old diva blew the dying man a kiss.
“You and I, Gordon, will be together again,” she said, and left.