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Hello, Dolly! is a 1964 musical that follows the story of Dolly Gallagher Levi, a strong-willed matchmaker, as she travels to Yonkers, NY, to find a match for the miserly “well-known unmarried half-a-millionaire” Horace Vandergelder.
The lyrics and music were written by Jerry Herman and the book by Michael Stewart. It is based on Thornton Wilder’s 1938 farce, The Merchant of Yonkers, which Wilder revised and retitled The Matchmaker in 1954.
The plot of Hello, Dolly! originated in the 1835 English play A Day Well Spent by John Oxenford, which Johann Nestroy adapted into the farce Einen Jux will er sich machen (He Will Go on a Spree or He’ll Have Himself a Good Time) in 1842. Thornton Wilder adapted Nestroy’s play into his 1938 farcical play The Merchant of Yonkers. That play was a flop, so he revised it and retitled it as The Matchmaker in 1954, expanding the role of Dolly (played by Ruth Gordon).
Hello, Dolly! the musical debuted at the Fisher Theater in Detroit on November 18, 1963, directed and choreographed by Gower Champion and produced by David Merrick. It starred stage performer Carol Channing as Dolly Gallagher Levi, a role theatrical audiences of the world would forever associate with her. The role of Dolly Gallagher Levi was originally written for Ethel Merman but she turned it down, as did Mary Martin—although both eventually played it. Merrick then auditioned Nancy Walker, but he hired Carol Channing, who then went on to originate the role of Dolly.
Hello, Dolly! had rocky tryouts in Detroit, Michigan, and Washington, D.C. After receiving the reviews, the creators made major changes to the script and score, including the addition of the song “Before the Parade Passes By”.
Initially called Dolly, A Damned Exasperating Woman, then Call on Dolly, Merrick revised the show’s title after hearing Louis Armstrong’s version of “Hello, Dolly”.
The show moved to Broadway in 1964, winning 10 Tony Awards, including Best Musical and Best Actress in a Musical for Channing. The awards earned set a record which the play held for 37 years. The show album Hello, Dolly! An Original Cast Recording was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2002. The album reached number one on the Billboard album chart on June 6, 1964, and was replaced the next week by Louis Armstrong’s album Hello, Dolly!.
It won 10 Tony Awards, including Best Musical, a record unbroken for 37 years. According to MovieDiva: It ran 2,844 performances, and seemingly every Broadway diva took her turn as Dolly, including but not only Ginger Rogers, Martha Raye, Phyllis Diller, Betty Grable, Pearl Bailey (in an all African American cast) and finally, Ethel Merman. The part had been written with her in mind, but she did not want a lengthy Broadway run after her marathon as the star of Gypsy.
Since then, the show has become one of the most enduring musical theater hits, with four Broadway revivals and international success. It was also made into the 1969 film Hello Dolly! by 20th Century Fox, starring Barbara Streisand as Dolly, Walther Matthau as Horace Vandergelder, Michael Crawford as Cornelius Hackl, and Tommy Tune as Ambrose Kemper.
Released on December 16, 1969, by 20th Century Fox, the film won three Academy Awards: for Best Art Direction, Best Score of a Musical Picture and Best Sound, and was nominated for four other Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Although the film eventually broke even financially, it was not a contemporary commercial success but remained a standard in musical theatre for decades.
This season, the Annisquam Village Players will produce their version of the historic musical, featuring Cape Ann talent of all ages. Shows run Aug. 5-10, 2025.
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