Gary Merrill on July 28, 1950. That same day, he married Bette Davis, his co-star from "All About Eve", and adopted her daughter Barbara from a previous marriage. He and Davis adopted two more children, Margo and Michael, but they had a bitter divorce in 1960. Often politically active, he campaigned in 1958 to elect the Democrat, Edmund Sixtus Muskie, as governor of Maine. Merrill also took part in the Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965 to promote Black voter registration. In response to U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson's Vietnam War policy, he unsuccessfully sought nomination to the Maine legislature as an
Carol Channing uninspired, says columnist Dick Kleiner: The show had first opened on Broadway on January 16, 1964, and by the time the show closed in late December 1970, it had become the longest-running musical in Broadway history, with nearly 3,000 performances. Besides Channing, six other stars played the title role during those seven years: Ginger Rogers, Martha Raye, Betty Grable, Pearl Bailey, Phyllis Diller and Ethel Merman. Al Hirschfeld's illustration of her was printed on the front page of the "Sunday Theatre" section of the "New York Times", which she feels captured the essence of her character: "How did the great