Carol Channing is winging it these days. When the 84-year-old star of "Hello Dolly!" performs Saturday at the Craterian Ginger Rogers Theater in Medford, she’ll mix her bits and respond to her audience like a jazz musician, improvising.

"I’m disorganized," she says in that famous voice. "I’ll ask, ‘Where was I?’ and the audience might say I was talking about Ethel Merman. And I’ll go back to it. They love it."

Whatever else Channing is, she’s a trooper. This is a woman who appeared as Dolly Levy more than 5,000 times without ever missing a performance.

When the nonprofit Tommy Foundation wanted to do a fund-raiser at the GRT, Channing was front and center. Her Rogue Valley connection is Shady Cove resi-dent Richard Long, Channing’s cousin and the father of the Tommy Foundation’s Vicki Kelly.

Kelly and her husband founded the group to aid parents of missing children after the death of their son, Tommy, who died after being injected with methamphetamine at a 1999 party.

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"We’ve always stayed in touch," Long says.

"We were raised together in Seattle and San Francisco until Dickie was 12," Channing says.

Long says his cousin was "a normal kid, but very smart."

Channing is enjoying a rare respite before Friday rehearsals with local musicians.

Unlike stars who have a love/hate relationship with roles for which they’re known, Channing has nothing but warmth for "Dolly!"

"I’m still in love with ‘Dolly,’ " she says. "I’m in love with the whole show."

The musical won Tony Awards in 1964 for Channing, writer Michael Stewart, director Gower Champion, producer David Merrick, composer Jerry Herman as well as for scenes and costume design, choreography and music direction.

Channing says the key for her was finding "the spine" of both the story and the character.

"I found her spine buried in her last soliloquy," she says. "It’s to rejoin the human race."

"I asked Thornton Wilder (who wrote "The Matchmaker," on which "Hello, Dolly!" was based), and he said, ‘I didn’t realize it, but it is.’"

"Everybody in it, at the end of the production number, she’s done it, they’ve rejoined the race."

Yet she says her favorite show is not "Dolly" but whatever she’s doing at the moment. A leggy blonde with big eyes and an unforgettable voice, she’s best known for her roles as Lorelei Lee in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" and, of course, as Dolly Levi.

She attended Bennington College, studied dance and drama and made her Broadway debut in 1941 in the chorus of "No for an Answer." She starred in "Dolly" for a year and a half, then toured it. In the 1970s she performed around the world in musicals, plays, and revues, including a revised version of "Blondes" titled "Lorelei," and revivals of "Dolly."

She believes playing New York cabarets made her a better performer on stage.

"If you can handle the drunks at a second show, you can handle anything," she says.

Except finding that Marilyn Monroe was picked to play Lorelei in the film version of her first big hit.

"I was suicidal," she says huskily. "We were staying on the 32nd floor of the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal. I thought if I just leaned a little farther out the window, the pain would be over."

In her 2002 memoir, "Just Lucky, I Guess," she wrote that her mother was told her father was a light-skinned African-American, and she concealed it for fear of being typecast.

"I don’t know if it’s true," she says. "I thought it was a strong story about a wonderful man."

She wrote about her 42-year marriage to Charles Lowe, her manager, saying that couple had sex only twice, and that she finally realized he was gay.

"I was so busy doing eight shows a week," she says, "I didn’t have time for anything, going from hotels to dressing rooms for 42 years."

She says she’s most proud of almost never missing a performance, despite a bout of ovarian cancer and "just about every virus."

The secret to connecting with an audience, she says, is simple.

"Put somebody you love in the audience in your mind and work for them," she says. "Noel Coward told me to do that.

"But it must be somebody who loves you. The best was my father, or Harry."

That would be Harry Killijian, her childhood sweetheart. The year before last, the two were married.

Reach reporter Bill Varble at 776-4478 or e-mail bvarble@mailtribune.com.

IF YOU GOWho: Carol Channing When: 8 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 13 Where: at the Craterian Ginger Rogers Theater in a benefit for missing children. Tickets: $50 Call: 779-3000 or visit www.craterian.org.