Trailer
Plot summary
Dolly Levi, the widow of a dry-goods merchant, works as a matchmaker in New York City. She travels to Yonkers to arrange a second marriage for Horace Vandergelder, a hay and feed merchant reputed to be worth half a million dollars. Horace has been courting the milliner Irene Molloy, and his niece Ermengarde wants to marry the artist Ambrose Kemper, whom Horace considers unable to support her. Dolly promises Horace an introduction to an heiress, Ernestina Semple, after he marches in the 14th Street Parade. His clerks, Cornelius Hackl and Barnaby Tucker, set out for New York as well, and Dolly arranges for them to meet Irene and her assistant Minnie Fay.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Hello, Dolly! (1969)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Barbra Streisand clashed with co-star Walter Matthau and director Gene Kelly during the shoot, and choreographer Michael Kidd stopped speaking to Kelly. Tension peaked in a heated Streisand-Matthau argument on June 6, 1968, in Garrison, New York, the day after Robert F. Kennedy's assassination.
- Because Hello, Dolly!'s Broadway show was still running in 1969, Fox paid an estimated $1-2 million "early release" escape payment to get the film into theaters and recoup its cost.
- Songs and footage from "Put on Your Sunday Clothes" and "It Only Takes a Moment", plus stills from Hello, Dolly!, appear in Pixar's 2008 WALL-E, whose robot hero learns about love from a Betamax tape of the film.
- Jerry Herman wrote "Just Leave Everything to Me" especially for Barbra Streisand, and the new number effectively replaced "I Put My Hand In" from the Broadway production of Hello, Dolly!
- Hello, Dolly! was one of the first theatrical films released on the new VHS and Betamax home-video formats, in the fall of 1978.
- The train in the film, provided by the Strasburg Rail Road, was pulled by Pennsylvania Railroad 1223, a locomotive restored specifically for the film and retrofitted to resemble a New York Central & Hudson River engine.
- The church scene was shot on the grounds of the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, with the church facade built specifically for Hello, Dolly!
