Hello, Dolly Understudy

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 14:23:00 -0400

Creating Hello Dolly!

Hello, Dolly! opened in New York in January of 1964, and its enthusiastic, and somewhat unexpected, reception soon made it clear that "Dolly will never go away again." It became for a while the longest running musical in Broadway history, and it has has three main stem revivals--two of them with its original star, Carol Channing, and one with the leading role played by one of her successors in the original run, Pearl Bailey. The show remains a perrennial favorite with regional and community theaters.

Set at the turn of the twentieth century, Hello, Dolly! concerns the eponymous character, Dolly Levy--a widow who barters marriages, and who sets her sights on one of her clients who has hired her to find him a wife. Through a series of slapstick situations, mistaken identities, and even a trip to night court, Dolly manages to bring about the perfect pairing of all the principal characters.

Somehow it seems odd that this joyous, life-affirming story was a product of the sixties--an era now remembered as a time of civil unrest, political violence, and an unpopular war. The critic John Lahr wrote of the musical theater of the sixties and seventies: "The musical has not been able to adapt to the changing social and psychological mood of America. . .The musical's comforting faith in the nation's goodness has been betrayed by public events and it has found itself with nothing to sing about. . .the American Dream became increasingly threadbare, and so has the art form that promoted it." The success of Hello, Dolly! Lahr attributed to the fact that it was "set in the past, where the complications of contemporary life can't shake an implacable hopefulness" and to "a nostalgia for the elegance, innocence, lavishness and values of an earlier time."

In rebuttal, even one whose knowledge of American social history is derived entirely from musicals might argue that turn-of-the-century New York was hardly an uncomplicated place of hopefulness (Ragtime and the lesser known Rags have shown us that). And a yearning foe elegance, innocence and enduring values is not necessarily a myopic or backward-looking view--that is what audiences continue to find appealing, if only for the duration of a stage musical like Dolly.

If the effect of Hello, Dolly! was remarkably elating, the creation of it was not a joyous experience. The show was originally entitled Dolly: A Damned Exasperating Woman, and it completely exasperated its production team for a long time, even though the raw material of the musical had a long theatrical history. Hello, Dolly! is based on a successful play by Thornton Wilder called The Matchmaker, produced by David Merrick on Broadway in 1955. That show was a reworking of Wilder's 1938 flop, The Merchant of Yonkers, which in turn was derived from Austrian playwright Johann Nostroy's 1842 play Einen Jux Willer Sich Machen, which was an extended version of a British one-act of 1835 by John Oxenford called A Day WEll Spent. In spite of the theatrical pedigree, putting together a production team proved difficult. Carol Channing may forever be identified with the starring role, but she was not anyone's first choice for the part, which was turned down by Ethel Merman, Mary Martin and Nancy Walker. Gower Champion may be hailed for his genius as director/choreographer, but he was brought in only after Hal Prince and Joe Layton had passed on the project. Composer Jerry Herman was still little known, having to his credit only one modestly successful full-scale show(Milk and Honey) and a couple of revues, and he was in terror of Champion, book-writer Michael Stewart, and especially Merrick, who kept bringing in his former collaborators to "mentor" the composer." Herman later remarked that "it was like being tossed into a pool of show business sharks."

After weeks of cutting songs, firing cast members, and adding new material ("Before the Parade Passes By" was a late entry), the show which had sputtered through out-of-town tryouts was ready to open. The jazz showman extrordinaire Louis Armstrong decided to record the song "Hello Dolly." His rendition knocked the Beatles out of the number one spot in the charts, perhaps the last time a show song held that position, and the song's success led to changing the name of the show from that damned exasperating title. But the success of the song led to new problems too: composer Mack David sued, saying the song was based on his own song "Sunflower." About two bars are similar, but Herman had to settle the matter out of court.

But all these production troubles ultimately led to triumph. Reviews were ecstatic. Walter Kerr called it a "musical comedy dream" with "an apparently inexhaustible supply of what may be the most exhileratingly straight-forward, head-on old-fashioned rabble-rousing numbers." And the New York Times' Howard Taubman raved: "It transmutes the broadly stylized mood of a mettlesome farce into the gusto and colors of the musical stage. . .what was larger and droller than life has been puffed up and gaily tinted. . .Hello, Dolly! is the best musical of the season."

Dolly went on to collect ten Tony Awards--a record that held until The Producers nearly forty years later, and a remarkable achievement in a season that also included Funny Girl, She Loves Me, High Spirits, 110 in the SHade and Anyone Can Whistle.

A Staircase full of Dollies: Carol and Ethel and Pearl. . .and Jack?

Carol Channing was the first Dolly Levy in the musical Hello, Dolly!, but she was not Broadway's first Dolly. Ruth Gordon has that distinction, having starred in Thornton Wilder's play The Matchmaker in a 1955 production. The only real similarity between the two actresses is that neither was allowed to repeat her role on film. Shirley Booth played the title role in the celluloid Matchmaker, and Channing, of course was replaced by a much-too-young Barbra Streisand.

The casting of Miss Channing in the stage musical was initially met with some puzzlement. The role was written with Ethel Merman in mind, but Merman did not want to commit to an extended run or to the trials of creating a new musical. Next the part was offered to Mary Martin, another sure-fire box-office star, but she also passed on the role. Martin sometimes had peculiar notions of what roles to accept--she also rejected the role of Eliza in My Fair Lady (after hearing Lerner and Loewe play the score, she told her husband "Those boys have lost all their talent.") Both Merman and Martin would eventually play Dolly; Martin took out the first road company, which played 11 U. S. cities, Japan and Korea, and was the first company to play in London.

Nancy Walker was considered for the role, but eventually Carol Channing, who had worked many years earlier with Gower Champion in a revue, won the part. . .and a Tony Award, and a lifetime career. There were plenty of doubters when she was first chosen. Although she had worked steadily for years in musical theater (replacing Rosilind Russell in Wonderful Town), playing Shaw, and creating a brilliant audio portrayal of an amoral cat in the back-alley closet opera Archie and Mehitabel, she was best known as the creator of Lorelei Lee, the gold-digging showgirl of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (another role she didn't get the film of--it went to Marilyn Monroe). In simple terms, she hadn't had a major hit in 15 years, and some thought the stretch from platinum blonde ditziness to a busybody "of a certain age" was against the odds. But she nailed the part, and became a show-biz legend.

When she left the original Broadway run, another legend seemed to be called for, and who was a bigger musical legend than Ginger Rogers? The movie icon had the sizeable personality and followin to keep the box-office humming, but she didn't have a sizeable voice, and had to be amplified (nowadays nobody thinks twice about performers wearing mikes). Rogers became something of a charm for Jerry Herman's musicals; she also replaced Angela Lansbury in Mame.

Yet another Hollywood musical star later took over the role. Betty Grable, who had famously posed for a World War II pinup photo, was perhaps better remembered for her gorgeous gams than for her musicals (like The Dolly Sisters). So her Dolly surprised theater audiences with a flash of legs as she descended the stairs.

When Grable's turn as Dolly was winding down, Merrick decided that a re-invention of the show was necessary to rejuvenate business. He opted for an all African-American staging headed by the redoubtable Pearl Bailey and the original Sportin' Life of Porgy and Bess, Cab Calloway. This was a controversial move at a time when the civil-rights movement was becoming increasingly aggressive. Some praised the idea for increasing opportunities; some condemned it as a throwback to minstrel shows. Miss Bailey's earthier, more robust Dolly was a revelation, proving Merrick's gamble had merit.

Other than Bailey's extravagant triumph, Merrick found several ways to give the show a new spin, turning to broadly comic players. Martha Raye, whose antic work had been seen in several films (notably Charlie Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux) and in an early television variety show(with boxer Rocky Grazziano as second-banana), placed her mark on Dolly with an especially poignant "Before the Parade Passes By." Miss Raye devoted most of the rest of her career to entertaining troops throughout Vietnam, and for her often couragegeous work was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She's certainly the only Dolly who upon der death was buried with full military honors at Fort Bragg. Another outrageous comedienne, Phyllis Diller, also played the role on Broadway.

One of the more surprising Dollies was Dorothy Lamour. This performer, who had somehow parlayed winning the 1931 Miss New Orleans title into a film career playing exotic temptresses from Bali, Morocco, and various South Sea islands, also brought her own touch. No, she didn't descend the stairs in a red sarong, but the orchestra did interpolate a short phrase from "Moon of Manakoora" before striking up the title song.

Merrick never stopped looking for new gimmicks and new stars to sell the show. He even considered a drag version, reportedly offering the role of Dolly to Liberace. An even more intriguing possibility was the idea of Jack Benny as Dolly, with George Burns as Horace. That concept never turned into reality on Broadway, but in London Danny LaRue did play the part for a while.

When the initial run of Hello, Dolly! was running out of steam, producer Merrick opted to return to the original concept to close the show. Ethel Merman was finally brought in to play the part that had been written for her. Merman being Merman, the star insisted on having two new numbers written especially for her added to the score. While she never recorded the entire score, she did release a recording of those two songs: "Love, Look in My Window" and "World Take Me Back."

Numerous other stars have taken the role of Dolly in touring and regional companies. One of the more interesting was Eve Arden. Ironically, Carol Channing's first job in professional theater was as Arden's understudy. While playing Dolly in Chicago, Miss Arden one evening experienced what is now called a "wardrobe malfunction" just as she started down the Harmonia Gardens stairway. With perfect aplomb and the dry delivery for which she was noted, Arden stopped, said "Waiter, bring me some pins," and after putting her dress back in order, continued her song.

The wide variety of players who have undertaken the role of Dolly does not mean that it is foolproof part. As John Kenrick says in Musical Theater: A History: "Over the years many ladies would star in Champion's staging, and the results would be amazingly consistent. . .It was perhaps the most sure-fire showstopper of all time, one that would work with any star so long as the choreography remained."

HELLO, DOLLY! Understudy

Hello, Dolly Understudy

Creating Hello Dolly!

A Staircase full of Dollies: Carol and Ethel and Pearl. . .and Jack?