This has, through no fault of its own, become a bit of a curiosity. Long ago eclipsed by it's musical version "Hello, Dolly!", the film seems like an introduction to the songs (particularly in the earlier part) which never come. This is largely due to the fact that the musical picked up many of the song titles from lines in the play. ("Put On Your Sunday Clothes", "Ribbons Down My Back" etc.) There are many more differences from, at least, the film version of "Dolly". In the Harmonia Gardens scene, Dolly is hardly the celebrated personage of the musical but just another guest. As played by Shirley Booth, she is hardly the miscast young diva Barbra Streisand was.
The character of Malachi Stack, perhaps a sort of cousin of Alfred P. Doolittle of Shaw's "Pygmalion" or the musical "My Fair Lady", played by Wallace Ford, doesn't exist in the musical. There is no one posing as Ernestina Simple here; she "Simply" doesn't show at the Harmonia Gardens! And Ambrose and Ermengarde are also nowhere to be found.
The play by Thornton Wilder is itself based on his own "The Merchant of Yonkers" which itself was based on earlier (early to mid-19th century) plays by the Austrian Johann Nestroy and the, even earlier, British John Oxenford.
The film, I think unwisely, has many of the characters directly addressing the audience and no doubt this worked better in the theater. And I think the story and settings cried out for color but, of course, Paramount was clearly too cheap.
How would these stars have done in the musical? Perkins, here a considerable improvement over Michael Crawford as Cornelius, could have done the songs not much worse (He did sing on the Broadway stage in the short-running 1960 musical "Greenwillow", but none too well.). Robert Morse would have been more than passable as Barnaby (He sang in "How to Succeed" of course.) and Shirley MacLaine could obviously sing well enough but Miss Booth was not known as a vocalist, at least to my recollection. But Babs' acting ability at the time "Dolly" was made was pretty non-existent and she couldn't sing a single note without milking it for all it was worth. I think Marianne McAndrew and Danny Lockin were fine as Irene and Barnaby.
I think this film, for all its problems, is a considerable improvement over that of "Hello, Dolly!" but it is hoped that a decent version of the musical becomes available in the not-too-distant future.
The character of Malachi Stack, perhaps a sort of cousin of Alfred P. Doolittle of Shaw's "Pygmalion" or the musical "My Fair Lady", played by Wallace Ford, doesn't exist in the musical. There is no one posing as Ernestina Simple here; she "Simply" doesn't show at the Harmonia Gardens! And Ambrose and Ermengarde are also nowhere to be found.
The play by Thornton Wilder is itself based on his own "The Merchant of Yonkers" which itself was based on earlier (early to mid-19th century) plays by the Austrian Johann Nestroy and the, even earlier, British John Oxenford.
The film, I think unwisely, has many of the characters directly addressing the audience and no doubt this worked better in the theater. And I think the story and settings cried out for color but, of course, Paramount was clearly too cheap.
How would these stars have done in the musical? Perkins, here a considerable improvement over Michael Crawford as Cornelius, could have done the songs not much worse (He did sing on the Broadway stage in the short-running 1960 musical "Greenwillow", but none too well.). Robert Morse would have been more than passable as Barnaby (He sang in "How to Succeed" of course.) and Shirley MacLaine could obviously sing well enough but Miss Booth was not known as a vocalist, at least to my recollection. But Babs' acting ability at the time "Dolly" was made was pretty non-existent and she couldn't sing a single note without milking it for all it was worth. I think Marianne McAndrew and Danny Lockin were fine as Irene and Barnaby.
I think this film, for all its problems, is a considerable improvement over that of "Hello, Dolly!" but it is hoped that a decent version of the musical becomes available in the not-too-distant future.