Hello, Dolly!
Opened December 1969
In 1964, when Barbra Streisand was photographed with producer David Merrick, who was shaking hands with Carol Channing, dressed in her Broadway Dolly costume, no one knew that Streisand would eventually star in the motion picture version of the musical.
Years later, Channing told a newspaper about the movie casting:
No one even called me and told me. I remember I was in Montreal doing 'Dolly' and I read about the casting in the newspaper. Well, of course I felt suicidal; I felt like jumping out a window. I felt like someone had kidnapped my part. Eventually, everything worked out. Barbra has a tremendous creative force—she is so good - but that movie flopped. In hindsight, I was better off not doing it.
Fox acquired the rights to Hello, Dolly! in 1965. Broadway producer David Merrick put a clause in the contract that said Fox could not release the film so long as the play was still being performed on Broadway (Merrick wanted to break the record for longest running Broadway show). Filming was completed in July 1968 and editing began. Unfortunately for Fox, Dolly was still running on Broadway! They negotiated with Merrick to release the film. Fox agreed to pay Merrick for any lost income that the Broadway show would incur, and released Hello, Dolly! in December, 1969.
In 1967, when Streisand was in Hollywood rehearsing for the Funny Girl movie, she spoke [somewhat optimistically] to columnist Charles Champlin about doing the Dolly film:
... it's not just a filming of the stage version. That's not the way it was presented to me and I wouldn't have done it. I wouldn't have done it on stage, wouldn't have wanted to. It wouldn't have been right for me. But this movie as I get it is going back closer to the original (Thornton Wilder's The Matchmaker).
Dolly was budgeted at $20 million, but ended up costing the studio $26,400,000—a huge amount in 1968. The exteriors for Yonkers were filmed in Garrison, New York. The New York 14th Street set was constructed on the Fox backlot (and was actually used again in Up the Sandbox.)
(Above) Streisand poses for a “Hello, Dolly!” publicity shot, towering over the model of the New York set that Fox Studios built full-size for the film at great expense.
Dolly Casting, Screen Tests, Costume Tests
20th Century Fox, about to spend millions on the production of Hello, Dolly!, did many screen tests, makeup, costume, and set tests before beginning principle photography. Director Gene Kelly also tested many character actors for the supporting parts, including Trisha Noble and Sandy Duncan as Irene and Minnie, and Laugh In funny lady Jo Anne Worley as Gussie Granger.
Streisand was filmed in numerous screen tests that tested her makeup, wig, and costumes as Dolly Levi. Some of the different looks were quite interesting!
Barbra participated in the tests on February 20, April 12 and 19, 1968.
My characterization of Dolly Levi in ‘Hello, Dolly!’ is something realized after much sould-searching of my own private impression of that incredible Yonkers matchmaker. When I did my first film, ‘Funny Girl’, I was recreating a part I had played for months on Broadway and in London. Hello, Dolly! required an entirely different approach.
I searched for the parts in myself that were right for Dolly and that's what I used. There was a big struggle in the beginning. I didn't want to play this role because the part of Dolly that is me I don't like to be shown. But once I accepted the fact that I was going to do it, from then on, it was fun.
— Barbra Streisand
Jerry Herman & “Dolly”
Jerry Herman, the show's composer, culled "Love Is Only Love"—Barbra's big ballad following “Elegance”— from his collection of "trunk" songs. It was an unused song for Herman's musical Mame. The sentiment of the song, however, also applied to Dolly's character, so Herman altered it slightly so Barbra could sing it in the film. He added the "Mrs. Horace Vandergelder" introduction to make it Dolly-specific.
"Just Leave Everything To Me"—the song which opened the movie and replaced “I Put My Hand In” from the Broadway show — was written specifically for Barbra for the film. Herman recounted his experience with that song and director Gene Kelly in his autobiography:
"Gene Kelly, who directed, did not want to have anything to do with me. It wasn't that he hated me personally, he just didn't want his movie to be contaminated by anyone from Broadway. Gene Kelly wasn't the only one who had that old anti-Broadway bias. So many of these movie people are like that. I am not the kind of person who generally gets a cold reception, because the smart ones know that I can be very helpful. But these Hollywood types didn't like any theatre people. They considered us the enemy--and that's the God's truth. On one of the few occasions when Gene Kelly would even let me speak with him, I tried to tell him something about 'Just Leave Everything to Me,' which was the opening song that I wrote for Barbra Streisand. I had written it for a specific place, very early in the movie. But instead of using it where it belonged, he put it in the main titles. I was very polite and did not lose my temper, but I quietly pointed out to Mr. Kelly that if he took that song out of the scene I wrote it for, there would be no music for the first half hour of the movie. He gave me the could shoulder, which offended me deeply, because I was giving good advice and I knew it. Gene Kelly knew it, too. But he wouldn't admit it until we were sitting together at the Hollywood premiere in the Rialto Theater. It was a wonderful opening sequence--beautiful titles, gorgeous photography, and a grand entrance from Barbra--followed by a solid half-hour of talk. I sat there fuming. He had the gall to turn to me and say, 'You know, I should have put the song there.' I wanted to kill him."
In 1997 Jerry Herman reflected on the film version of Hello, Dolly!:
"I like the film more every time I see it. And it's a great credit to Barbra because she knew she was too young. She's a smart cookie. She knew she was 27 years old playing a 60 year old woman. And she devised a way to do it that works today, that's lasted. She used that kind of pseudo Mae West, you know, whatever she devised. She's just so clever. And my God, she sang the hell out of it. I love the film much more than I did when it was released."
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