If you see Hello, Dolly! you will leave with an earworm – Hello Dolly. Try saying “hello dolly” in the voice of Leslie Phillips and you will be cured. Well, it worked for me.
It premiered in Detroit in 1963, transferred to Broadway the following year and ran until 1970 with some starry Dollys: Carol Channing, Ginger Rogers, Martha Raye (who she?), Betty Grable, Pearl Bailey, Phyllis Diller (who she, again) and Ethel Merman. It has been on in London – in 1965 (Mary Martin), 1975 (Carol Channing), 1984 (Danny La Rue) and at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in 2009. I had never seen it and until yesterday afternoon all I knew was the title song.
The eponymous Dolly is Dolly Levi, a marriage broker in New York. In 1964 Fiddler on the Roof opened on Broadway with a marriage broker in Eastern Europe in the lead role. Twenty years after the end of the war I sense that Jewish culture was being reasserted in the United States, where so many talented creatives were Jews. Fiddler is a dark musical and a long one. Dolly is crisp and funny. I know which one I prefer.
You probably don’t know the Hello, Dolly! story – in a nutshell it’s fiddler on the hoof. Imelda Staunton is excused the hoofing (she is two years younger than me) but it is an important part of the show. The London Palladium production has terrific sets, great singing and dancing and a star to pull it all together. The music and book are by Jerry Herman – some good numbers – but it’s as light as the Îles flottantes we had at Bellamy’s before the matinee. I like going to a restaurant when we both order the same; yesterday iced lobster soufflé and Dover Sole.
I don’t know Martha Raye but Phyllis Diller was a well known American comedian in the 1960’s best known for her crazy hair and cackling laugh. And her husband Fang. She might have made a rather jolly Dolly.
I was hoping to see this in July, whilst up in London from Cornwall, but their booking system insisted I could not buy a solo ticket.
I’d never come across this before, but apparently it’s a thing & R4 were discussing it last Wednesday.
‘Hello Dolly’ didn’t want my money but ‘Kiss Me Kate’ did & made me remember how brilliant Cole Porter was!
Martha Raye was well known is the ‘States, with a career starting in the 1930’s and lasting well into the 1980’s. With help from wiki: She began as a singer, but became famous as a comedienne, appearing with Crosby, Hope, W.C. Fields, Abbot and Costello, Jolson, Durante, and Chaplin. She had her own variety show for a brief period in the ’50’s, and In later years, she had recurring roles in various television series, and guest spots on others. As her nickname was “The Big Mouth,” she did a series of commercials for Polident denture cleaner, showing her large smile. I remember seeing her on television and hearing about her from my parents. I imagine she would have been a pretty funny Dolly Levi.
But she is perhaps most known for her USO work entertaining troops during WWII and later during the Korean and Vietnam conflicts, for which she was awarded a special Oscar and, eventually, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.