Trivia / Hello, Dolly!

• Beam Me Up, Scotty!: Unlike WALL•E's videotape, the actual movie doesn't close up on Cornelius' and Irene's clasped hands when they sing "It Only Takes a Moment", the Pixar animators just blew up the Stock Footage for plot reasons.
• Box Office Bomb: The film. Budget, $25 million. Box office, $26 million (rentals), $33.2 million (box office total). Ultimately lost $10 million.
• California Doubling: The scenes set in turn-of-the-last-century Yonkers, New York, were actually filmed a few miles up the Hudson River, in Garrison, NY. Yonkers was recreated by putting false fronts on the existing buildings of the small village. The final wedding scene and reprise were shot at the Trophy Point monument and overlook of the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York.
• Colbert Bump: Generally regarded as one of the lesser musicals of the period, but it was immortalized by its use in WALL•E. Incidentally, both songs used in the film were peformed by Michael Crawford.
• Creator Backlash: When Barbra Streisand appeared on Inside the Actors Studio, she was reluctant to discuss the film other than to acknowledge that she had been far too young for the part of Dolly and should never have accepted it.
• Creator Killer: After the theatrical adaptation bombed and The Cheyenne Social Club failed with critics, dancing great Gene Kelly never sat in the director's chair for another theatrical film for the rest of his life.
• Cut Song: "Penny in My Pocket," the original Act One closing number, sung by Horace; when Jerry Herman realized audiences cared more for Dolly than Horace at that point in the story, he replaced it with "Before the Parade Passes By." "Penny" was, however, restored in the revival, but this time as the Act Two opener.
• Fake American: English Michael Crawford as Yonkers New Yorker Cornelius.
• Genre-Killer: While the film eventually recouped its losses on home video, its failure was ultimately the final nail in the coffin for lavish, big-budget live-action Hollywood musicals, as film language was then being redefined as more gritty and literal, making campy musicals a harder sell. Movie musicals have since been few and far between.
• Hostility on the Set:
  • Barbra Streisand and Walter Matthau didn't get on at all. He disliked her so intensely that he refused to be around her except when required to do so by the script. He is famously quoted as telling Streisand that she "had no more talent than a butterfly's fart". He even refused to kiss her for the final scene, so a variation of clever angles and long distance camera shots were able to create a convincing kiss where their faces come close together without actually touching their lips. (Interestingly, Matthau is clearly in the audience at Streisand's One Voice concert at her Malibu ranch from 1986, where invitation-only guests paid $5,000 per couple to help establish the Streisand Foundation, which supports numerous charitable organizations. Apparently, he did not hold grudges... or, perhaps, was able to appreciate her talent from a safe distance.)
  • Streisand was also not shy about getting into arguments with director Gene Kelly.
  • On a break from filming, Matthau and Michael Crawford visited horse races nearby and saw a horse named Hello Dolly. Matthau refused to place a bet on it because it reminded him of Streisand, whom he detested. Crawford placed a bet on the horse. It won the race and Matthau would not speak to Crawford for the rest of the shoot unless absolutely necessary.
  • The tension extended off-camera. Choreographer Michael Kidd had issues and blowups with costume designer Irene Sharaff, and Kelly as well, to the point that as in so many of these stories the two weren't talking for much of the shoot.
• Movie Bonus Song: The List Song "Just Leave Everything To Me," which Jerry Herman wrote to replace "I Put My Hand In" when Barbra Streisand asked him for a new opening number.
• Prop Recycling: In the Harmonia Gardens, the back wall behind the hat-check girl is the wall from the ballroom of the Von Trapps Villa in The Sound of Music.
• Throw It In!: An alternate take of Dolly running off to the parade, in which Barbra Streisand holds onto her hat to keep it from falling off, made it into the 35mm prints, and the home video releases sourced from them. The 70mm prints, and the home video releases sourced from the 70mm negative, instead show Dolly holding onto her dress.
• Troubled Production: Filming was marred by strife between the cast and crew.
  • Walter Matthau and Barbra Streisand despised each other, with Matthau telling Streisand she had less talent "than a butterfly's fart", and eventually, after a bitter argument the day after Robert F. Kennedy's assassination, he refused to be around her unless the script required it, requiring creative use of camera angles for Horace and Dolly's Big Damn Kiss.^note  The fact that he can be seen in the invitation-only audience during Streisand's 1986 One Voice concert suggests they eventually buried the hatchet - or that Matthau liked Streisand as long as he didn't have to be too close to her.
  • When Matthau and Michael Crawford, who played Cornelius, went to a racetrack on a day off, a horse named Hello, Dolly! was scheduled to run in one of the races; Matthau reacted with disgust at the reminder of Streisand, while Crawford took it as a sign, bet on the horse, and won, leading Matthau to refuse to speak to him unless the script required it.
  • Gene Kelly didn't get along with Streisand either, and he also fought with choreographer Michael Kidd until they were no longer on speaking terms. The film's poor reception ended Kelly's career as a director of musicals.
  • The film was tepidly received by critics (many of whom felt that the 27-year-old Streisand was miscast as the middle-aged Dolly Levi, and that the film didn't do enough with the widescreen format) and, like Dolittle and Star! before it, received a double armload of Oscar nominations anyway (seven in all, including Best Picture) thanks to lavish dinners hosted by Fox for Academy voters.^note  It won three: Best Art Direction - Set Decoration, Best Original Score, and Best Sound. The studio did not recoup their losses on Dolittle, Star!, and Dolly until a 1973 re-release of The Sound of Music.
• Underage Casting: In the movie, 25-year-old Barbra Streisand plays middle-aged Dolly.
• What Could Have Been: An A&E Biography revealed a screen test where Ann-Margret could've played Irene. Elizabeth Taylor, Doris Day, Shirley MacLaine, and Julie Andrews were considered for the role of Dolly.

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