Hello Dolly! (DVD)

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Once upon a time playwright Thornton Wilder wrote a sweet, innocent little romantic-comedy farce set in the 1880s called "The Merchant of Yonkers" (1938), which he later revised and retitled "The Matchmaker" (1954). It was a modest stage success, followed by a charming motion picture version in 1958 with Shirley Booth, Anthony Perkins, Shirley MacLaine, Paul Ford, and Robert Morse.

In 1963 the play's title was changed to "Hello, Dolly!" and along with the addition of lavish sets, costumes, music, and lyrics, it became the longest-running Broadway musical up until that time. It was a smash hit.

Then, in 1969 Hollywood got hold of the musical, added even more performers, bigger sets, fancier costumes, and in what had to be one of the biggest casting blunders in the history of cinema (on a scale with putting Lucille Ball in "Mame" a few years later) signed a young Barbra Streisand to play the leading role. Why was that a mistake? Because the leading character in the story, Dolly Levi, is intended to be a much older woman, presumably in her fifties or so, whose husband of many years has died and left her penniless. She supports herself as, among other things, a matchmaker, a woman who arranges marriages for people; and who at the moment is attempting to arrange a marriage for herself to the town's richest citizen, the grumpy Horace Vandergelder, a fifty-something local merchant. Ms. Streisand was in her mid twenties at the time of the production. The movie bombed.

If one looks hard enough and listens long enough, one can still discern a few faint echoes of the sweet, innocent little romantic-comedy farce Wilder originally wrote, but such remnants are far and few between. Mainly, in "Hello, Dolly!" one gets to witness a huge, bloated, overly extravagant, big-screen spectacular and ponder the reasons why a young, attractive, and highly marriageable Dolly Levi would be chasing a middle-aged Walter Matthau as Vandergelder, unless she was only after his money. The mind boggles as the whole point of Wilder's tale is lost.

So why was Streisand miscast in a part so obviously unsuited to her age when Carol Channing, who had played Dolly on the stage, was so good and available, and others, like Elizabeth Taylor and Julie Andrews, were considered for the role? At the time, Streisand was the biggest singing star in the world. The thought of box-office receipts will do that to filmmakers.

The time setting for the movie is 1890 and the locales are Yonkers, New York, and New York City. The primary plot involves Dolly's attempts to insinuate herself into Vandergelder's life; and the subplots involve Vandergelder's attempts to keep his niece Ermangarde (Joyce Ames) from eloping with an artist, Ambrose Kemper (Tommy Tune); and Vandergelder's clerks, Cornelius Hackl (Michael Crawford) and Barnaby Tucker (Danny Lockin), pursuing their own romantic adventures with a milliner, Irene Molloy (Marianne McAndrew) and her assistant, Minnie Fay (E.J. Peaker). I was disappointed that "pudding" did not come in the script.

Needless to say, a plenitude of songs and dances populate the proceedings, most of Jerry Herman's tunes being quite less than memorable. They include, in chronological order, "Just Leave Everything to Me," "It Takes a Woman," "Out There," "Put on Your Sunday Clothes," "Ribbons Down My Back," "Dancing," "Before the Parade Passes By," "Yes, New York," "Elegance," "Love Is Only Love," "Hello, Dolly," "It Only Takes a Moment," "So Long, Dearie," and a finale that reprises practically everything. Fortunately, Ms. Streisand is in resplendent voice for her numbers.

The showstopper, of course, is "Hello, Dolly," which the filmmakers milk for everything it's worth, extending it for almost a dozen minutes. It's sung at the Harmonia Gardens Restaurant, in the play a modestly fashionable place but in the movie a veritable palace. Everything in this movie is bigger than life. When Dolly enters the restaurant, she's given a welcome that would have been the envy of the Queen of Sheba. In the middle of the big number, Louis Armstrong makes an appearance as a bandleader and sings along with Streisand, but a moment later he's gone from the scene. Why? First, because he had made a hit single of the tune in 1964 and the filmmakers wanted to capitalize on it, and, second, because he signed on for only his part of the song, finished it in less than a day's shooting, and left.