Hello, Dolly!

I'm a bit behind with talking about the Best Picture nominees of 1969. The worst of them is Hello, Dolly!, which was one of those lush adaptations of a Broadway musical that seemed like a dinosaur even then. Directed by Gene Kelly, it is soggy affair, with miscast leads and uninspired musical numbers.

Based on the Broadway musical by Jerry Herman and Michael Stewart, and in turn based on the play The Matchmaker by Thornton Wilder, Hello, Dolly! is set in New York in 1890. Dolly Levi (Barbra Streisand) is a matchmaker. One of her clients is Horace Vandergelder (Walter Matthau) an irascible rich man from Yonkers. Matthau is all set to marry Irene Molloy (Marianne McAndrew), who owns a milliner shop in the city, but Streisand wants him to herself, so connives to break up that relationship, using Matthau's two hayseed clerks (Michael Crawford and Danny Lockin).

Hello, Dolly! (the comma and exclamation point seem to be part of the title) won three Oscars, including Best Art Direction, and that was certainly deserved, as the sets are tremendous (even though New York is remarkably clean for 1890). The costumes are also lavish. But the film itself is deadly boring. Except for one, the production numbers are completely forgettable. The only time the movie comes to life is during the title number, perhaps because almost everyone knows that song, whether they've seen the musical or not. Even Louis Armstrong shows up for a verse (he had a hit with it in the otherwise rock and roll heavy summer of '69).

Streisand is miscast. She was only 26 at the time, much too young to play a crafty widow. Matthau blusters his way through the role, even singing a song, which seems like torture to him and definitely is to us. Crawford, who twenty years later would become a legend on stage in The Phantom of the Opera, is trapped in an aw, shucks role that doesn't do him any favors. Also in the film is Tommy Tune, playing a young man who wants to marry Matthau's niece.

The film wasn't a box office or critical hit, so one wonders how it got nominated for Best Picture. I suppose it was like Doctor Dolittle a few years before--perhaps it was 20th Century Fox's only shot and they pushed the hell out of it.