Richard Skipper

There’s Nothing Like This Minute

July 23, 2019

By Richard Skipper in conversation with Peter Haas

August 5, 2019 marks a major milestone in the life of Richard Skipper. He has been a constant presence on the cabaret scene for many years, both on stage and in the audience supporting his fellow cabaret artists. He is best known for is long-running gig embodying the one-of-a-kind Carol Channing. But, before and after that period, he performed as himself in a variety of venues. And, it is as himself that he will take the stage of St. Luke’s Theatre in Manhattan on August 5 to celebrate his 40 years in NYC in An Evening with Richard: From Conway to Broadway, directed by Jay Rogers, with music direction by Bryon Sommers.

Here, in his own words, is the story of those 40 years, how they began and how he plans to fill the next 40!

In the Beginning
As a kid, I grew up on a tobacco farm in South Carolina, watching television variety shows and old MGM movies—Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, Ann Miller. Entertainers always seemed happy, and I wanted to be part of that world, to be in show business, before I even knew what show business was. I created my own stages; my first was the front porch of our house. It was next door to a church cemetery; its tombstones were my first audience.

When I was 13, I made up my mind that, five years from that day, August 5th, I’d go to New York. When I told my parents, they thought I was speaking a foreign language. But at 18 on that hot, summer day, August 5, 1979, with $500 in my pocket that I had saved up, I arrived in NYC. A grade-school teacher ha mentioned someone we both knew who was now living in New York. I contacted him; he told me I could stay with him and that I could also work in his office. I was off and running.

Once I got to New York, and got my first job as a messenger, I began looking for acting work. I would get a copy of Backstage each week, went to auditions I thought I was right for and, within three weeks, got my first acting job: a hillbilly from the sticks. Talk about type-casting! 

In those first years, I answered a lot of audition calls, got parts in show after show, and got to read parts where writers were auditioning their scripts.  

When I was 19, I discovered The Piano Bar at 67th Street and Broadway, where Houston Alred played piano. In addition to the opportunity to perform each week, they also provided a free buffet, and I went there often to sing—and eat.

Becoming Channing
One of the questions most often asked of me is how I came to perform as Carol Channing. 

I first became aware of her back home when Lucille Ball did an impression of her on television. I didn’t know then that Channing was a real person. Once I discovered she was, I became a real fan and devoured everything I could find about her from television appearances. I also began to mimic her voice, and did lunchtime concerts on the front steps of my high school! 

Getting back to The Piano Bar: One night, I sang there as myself and then, at the urging of high school friends who were visiting me, as “Channing,” with the waiters joining in as the waiters did in the Hello, Dolly! title number. A woman in the audience, Leola Harlow, who was an actress, former showgirl, and costumer, rushed up to me and offered to dress me as Carol. I told her it would never happen! However, for many months, I’d come back to The Piano Bar and “do Channing,” always sans costume. People loved it! But every Halloween, I would dress as Carol and perform as her at every piano bar in town.

Discovering Cabaret
After several years of doing the piano bar circuit, I started to learn about the world of cabaret and felt that I wanted to be part of it. I’d go to see shows, studying the various artists. I wanted to be the best I could possibly be! I performed at every opportunity I could get. In between, to make a living, I worked at a telephone answering service, I waited tables, I did singing telegrams, and telemarketing. If “no experience necessary” was part of the job description, I did it!

Meeting Carol
All this was in the 1980s and early 1990s. Jump ahead to 1994, and it was announced that Carol Channing was coming back to Broadway in what would be her last revival of Hello, Dolly! I had developed a reputation imitating her voice, and a friend suggested I do a show as Channing to tie in with her coming to Broadway. I found out that she was being honored at an event, and another friend invited me to perform my own “Channing” for her there. I did; I was introduced to her, and we talked—all the while with my doing my Carol Channing voice. She asked me, “How long have you been impersonating me?” I answered, “Who’s to say that you’re not impersonating me?” She laughed, sat me down, and began interviewing me! Later, I performed my show for her—all 60 minutes. When I was done, she told the people there, “This is not an impersonation; it’s a valentine!”

I took my Channing show to Don’t Tell Mama, where it got rave reviews. A producer invited me to headline in Atlantic City, and it clicked. The outcome: I performed for 20 years as Carol. During all that time, Carol was very supportive. I was invited to stay with her and her Harry when she received her Palm Springs Walk of Fame Star. My husband Danny and I visited them on more than one occasion. At one point, she took my hand and said to me, “You are a great musical comedy artist—but no one will ever know it because you’re hiding behind me.” She was absolutely right, but every time I started to focus on something else, on Richard and on moving on, something would pull me back to being Carol— a great gig I couldn’t turn down, or a long run. Strangely, the closer I got to Carol as a friend, the less I wanted to perform as her. I never felt I could do her justice.

It has now been 10 years since I’ve appeared as Carol. But in the minds of many people, that’s who I am. I realize that I have been very, very fortunate, but there’s more to me than performing as Carol Channing. And that’s essentially where I am at this point in my life. I hope to change that perception.

Richard Skipper Today
Who am I today? I guess I’m a combination of all the people I aspired to be—a little bit Merv Griffin, a little bit Ed Sullivan, a supporter and advocate for other artists. I try to be in the audience for as many shows as I can, to support other performers.

I also do PR and publicity for performers, selectively. Entertaining will always be my first love. As an entertainer myself, I know what their needs are before they tell me. I try to think outside the box, to attract an audience beyond the “three Fs”—family, friends, and fellow performers—and I try to accomplish that for others as well.

My PR work is part of figuring out the next steps in my own life. I’m returning to performing with a new show. It’s a chance to tell my story, with the help of Jay Rogers, who is a brilliant director, and with a new song called “This Minute,” written for me by Michael Colby and Alex Rybeck. I hope to bring to the stage all that I have learned up to this point, especially the life lessons I have learned along the way. I really want the audience to have a sense of this amazing journey I have experienced. I hope to achieve the intimacy of my living room.

What’s more, I’ll be taking this show back home to South Carolina, to my hometown theater. I’ve performed there as Carol, but this is the first time I’ll be there as myself. And the audience will be real: no tombstones this time.

I hope people will be inspired by the show, and by my story—the story of a kid from South Carolina who had a dream and went after it and who’s been very, very fortunate with the people he’s met along the way, and who’s still dreaming!