Yes, very underrated. The furors over Streisand’s age (irrelevant) and the bitterness of critics who would have loved to see Carole Channing in the role, just killed it for no good reason. But it’s a joy, amdBS is amazing.
It ages well too. The choice of Barbra Streisand was apropos for obvious reasons. BS was hot, current and good at everything she did. Channing was all about the young people coming up in the ranks, she knew it wasn’t her time this time. This all couldn’t have happened if it weren’t for the grueling training of the old Studio System that Gene Kelly and many others down to the grips were trained in. The Showcasing here of Tommy Tune and many others is reliquary of talent never to be seen again. Ann Miller said it best about old Hollywood and it’s fixation on the best and the rigorous training to be the best. Her vids are on here too and her interviews.
I always find this film wonderful in chunks. Streisand is great, she is undoubtedly miscast because there is no urgency to her parade passing by when she is so young and attractive but she’s still a hoot and sings the score like nobody. However, I struggle to sit through the entire thing. It’s been made so gigantic that it loses all the charm off the show. The show is more intimate and the original l production never relied on spectacle in the choreography but pushed character quirk and charm to the forefront. Michael Kidds choreography is undoubtedly incredible in the movie but it lacks the simplicity of Gower Champion. The show really focussed on the oddness of all the couples, and how Dolly strong armed mismatched pairs together who ended up being totally perfect together. Close ups in soft focus and huge numbers over blow something that was originally meant to be heartfelt and not bombastic
don't mean to rain on your parade but every minute? couldn't disagree with you more. i thought it was pretty dreadful. thank God Barbra saved it from becoming unwatchable. too big, too splashy, overblown, over stuffed- you name it and Gene Kelly squeezed it in - couldn't save it from becoming a box-office bomb.
Barbra was so beautiful here. I listen to her sing "Before the parade passes by" whenever I feel down and life seems to have passed me by. Then I feel better again and life is not that bad. " With the rest of them, with the best of them, I can hold my head up high." The best lyrics of a song.
❤I dissolved in tears. People creating something that will live on ...the magnificent life and talent of our Barbra. She is a complete success story in every way.
Every time I see this I can't help but realize this type of thing will NEVER happen again - it will always be a handful of people and CGI to fill in the background.
It was my father, John De Cuir's idea to cover the exiting Fox backlt with the 5th Avenue set, when they wouldn't let him build it from scratch! A visual and marketing concept. His design and construction of 1890s New York was a sight to behold. A real elevated train; steam coming out of the cobblestone vents .. amazing.
Such a light-hearted, sumptuous, total escape, pick-me-up, wonderful movie. Gene Kelly, Barbra Streisand, New York, music, laughter, parades-- what's not to like?! 🏆👏🎶😀🎈
It has aged really well. Up until a few years ago, only the scenes with Streisand interested me: she's onscreen only about a third of the time, and you can't take your eyes off her. That's the hallmark of a star. But the script if well-constructed, the songs are wonderful, and the movie really has legs. Wish they had used more of the dialogue from the play in the movie's restaurant scene, which gives Dolly more lines. $65 million smackeroos was a LOT of money back then. But it did recoup the cost eventually, and turned a profit when it played on TV. Don't know where Barbra got those gestures, but she is a wonder to behold.
I was just a kid when I saw this picture in the theater. It was quite an extravaganza! I’ve heard that Streisand never liked it, but I think it’s a great movie that’s held up very well over 50 years.
She didn’t like it afterward due to the criticism because they found her too young to play dolly levi who is a middle aged matchmaker plus Walter Matthau was rude to her and found her talentless
@ACinemafanatic wow what a bad take by Walter matthau. I'm not a huge fan of Barbra Streisand but her Talent as a performer and a singer are undeniable. And on top of that she brought plentiful skill and a tremendous work ethic to all of her jobs.
i worked at 20th century-fox in licensing & merchandising from 1991-1997. seeing the parade street as it was for HD versus working there is such a tremendous treat! thank you for posting this!! i have so many fond memories of my days on the lot (and up in the fox plaza tower)!! heavy sigh....
OMG! What a surprise that this showed up on my RU-vid! It was summer of 1968 I believe, and I was in the UCLA Marching Band, which had been contracted to march in the parade sequence at the 20th Century Fox lot in Culver City. What a thrill it was to "hang out" and then perform with Barbra Streisand, Walter Matthau and director Gene Kelly! We're the ones in the white uniforms with the red trim near the end of the parade. Seeing this video really made my day!
@@TheXnyr Thanks for your reply, TheXnyr! As for the location of the 20th Century Fox lot, it was in Century City (just west of Beverly Hills), not Culver City. My bad! I keep playing the parade music on RU-vid, and it still gives me goose bumps!
Having spent 25 years working at 20th CENTURY-FOX, but after the filming of HELLO DOLLY... I remember that great exterior sprawling 15 acre set that was still mostly intact up to the early 1990's. Some of those years I was among other things their 'unofficial' studio historian... I saw the changes and the end of the great studio system era. This behind-the-scenes featurette which the studios used to impress the potential exhibitors looks great re-mastered like the movie itself. Unfortunately the movie bombed despite some iconic musical numbers... but then so many movie musicals failed with the public during the 1960's and early 70's... STAR, DARLING LILI, PAINT YOUR WAGON, CAMELOT, LOST HORIZON and SWEET CHARITY. With Vietnam and the whole counter-culture Hippie scene, the timing was way off - Broadway hits don't necessarily guarantee HOLLYWOOD blockbusters, specially in this case when fans demanded Carol Channing for the lead she played on stage. "Before The Parade Passes By" number featured the largest physical exterior set ever constructed on a HOLLYWOOD studio lot, and in this case the front lot! Staggering numbers -most expensive musical at the time, over 3,000 extras plus marching bands etc., Streisand and Matthau didn't get along at all... director Gene Kelly did a great job, but again the timing was off! Great posting - I have the original movie souvenir program, back when these movies played the big city flagship theaters.
I worked at Fox for 30 years, remembering when i worked in the mailroom, i would take my golf cart, ride to the storage stages on the back lot (where century city is now) and rummage through the Dolly sets... since then i've been carrying around the Vandergelder's door... i remember the studio saying they were going to be dismantling the NY train station... took my golf cart, took many pictures b4 demolition !
@@donchey51 Some of the backlot facades caught fire sometime in the 80's. A bit of New York street remains and appears from time to time in tv sitcoms. That lot, what remains of it, holds magic still. I worked there for years.
@Ed Miller You have a good memory Ed... Barb was on a roll for a short while moviewise, but no matter if Carol Channing played the part somehow the timing for grand musicals was off, specially at the height of the Vietnam war. The fans were star crazy at premieres and award ceremonies back then, and like you said they rocked the limos the stars arrived in... that is until the stars got their own bodyguards... Barb's 'face' today looks more like Miss Piggy unfortunately, but then we'll always have her fabulous voice and remember her when she was young and attractive. Ahh for the days of the old Road Shows... now that was showmanship for sure!
Yes, complete entertainment. I enjoy everything I See it. The cast, greatest for each role. Funny, Barbra, Walter, and Michael, each so young. We all grow older. But still doing young at heart. Thanks for sharing
I think I can tell which movie is good and which is bad. This version of HELLO, DOLLY! should have earned Streisand another Oscar, and should have made a lot more money at the Box Office. I don't care what other people think --- I regard this one as an equivalent to THE SOUND OF MUSIC. The Oscar Academy of that year was both blind and deaf, or what?
Talk about grand parade. They outdid themselves. Even our real parades are not as good as these. Superb. Best directing, cinematography, musical, choreography. Oscar academy awards for best film, music, director, etc. Etc. Should get it all.
I've seen it many times and love it! In fact, when I was a little girl I toured 20th Century Fox Studios and all the streets and sets were there for Hello Dolly. I got to see the sound stage and the STAIRS where Dolly enters the Harmonia Gardens. Wow! I will always feel especially lucky that I got to see the sets first hand!
Say what you will about the old studio system, those talented people, and the shrewd producers who knew what the public liked, turned out films that always stand out to the test of time.
These were the days when you could buy a full color program in the lobby with pictures, stories and captions about the production. I poured over mine for hours. Wish I still had it.
As a 50+ years fan, i don't believe have seen this hi-res quality video of this behind the scenes making of HD. I'm pretty sure i have this on VHS tape, but in low quality, that was passed around by hardcore fans back in the 80's. They put a lot of the 24-million-dollar budget into the parade scene. As I recall, 20 Century Fox exces were very ticked off at director Gene Kelly at the poor filming of the parade scene. In some ways the true majesty of the event was not fully captured with the 2-3 static cameras used - and the one boom-lift. But back then, they didn't have the digital effects where they could do long shots of the parade and add digital old New York. They had to keep all shots tight on the Burbank New York Street set. There is a quick shot in that scene where a 60s car can be seen in the background. Just imagine if they had drones filming the scene in hi def Panavision! Just have to wait for the remake, starting Lady Gaga when she's in her 50s.
Weird Trivia : The Harmonia Gardens grand staircase/ set was demolished and re-dressed for the end scene of Beneath the Planet of the Apes !! (1970) . It looked melted!
Mary Poppins, Fiddler on the Roof, West Side Story, Sound of Music and Hello Dolly are my favorite musicals. Dolly and Poppins hold up best. The one minor thing that always took a little of the magic away from me from Dolly was the color of the spectacular outdoor day scenes. As a kid I couldn't figure it out. The beauty of the Sound of Music and the color magic that can only be achieved in an indoor studio like Poppins. Now as an adult I can see the LA smog of the 60's acting like a dulling filter from the California sun. To bad it couldn't have been made in the 40s or 50s but then there would be no Barbara. For her I'll take the smog!
Much of it was filmed in upstate New York and rained so much it made the cast & crew miserable, and, when it wasn't raining, the heat was nearly unbearable. Walter Matthau later said that the Bobby Kennedy assassination coupled with the heat led to his big blow-up with Ms. Streisand, whom he later praised to the skies for her tireless work ethic...
*Even Gene Kelley well understood the need for this picture to be shot in large format 70 mm. I would love to see the "Hello Dolly" scene in full screen Todd-AO 70 mm presentation. Those Mitchell BFC 65 mm studio motion picture cameras are extremely rare. There were only 8 of them world wide in use on various big budget extravaganzas, like "the Sound of Music," and "Hello Dolly," "South Pacific," "Porgy & Bess," "Star," for most of the late 1950's through to the early 1970's. One of the 8 original Mitchell BFC 65 mm studio cameras (No.4) was sold on Ebay last year, but it was not published for how much it's final selling price was.*
When I first came to Los Angeles in the early '80s, most of the outdoor set was still up at 20th Century Fox; bits of it are still there. The park where they filmed "Dancing," just to the right of where you drove up to enter the studio from Pico Boulevard, is an office building now. "Hello, Dolly!" was an underappreciated movie in its time (No nudity? No psychedelic drug sequence? No rock songs? What kind of 1969 movie is that?), but it's started to get its due in recent years. It's even in profit now.
Moved to Los Angeles at the same time you did, and also recall seeing the set virtually intact at that time. A peek was even visible from Avenue of the Stars. When the Park Hyatt Century City opened (currently the InterContinental), remnants of the set were still visible from the pool area in the back with only a high chain-link fence separating. Several soundstages have since replaced that section of the backlot.
This was probably the best production in the movie. A lot went into this and it has a great song to go with it. Not sure what band actually played the song. Also the closing scene is pretty well staged.
The feather head dress in the "Hello, Dolly" number was not feathers. It was tiny beads attached to wires. Apparently, the feathers danced around too much. Beads was the solution. The head dress was 30 pounds and the gold dress was 40 pounds. There was an article in "Look" magazine which states this.
Mim fez chorar de emoção onde os filmes eram tão puro,de um esplendor de beleza de canas o vestuário,e tanta alegria que o mundo precisa nesse momento é tão difícil fazer o mundo mais feliz a vocês que mim trasporta onde era mais fácil viver com pouco mais com muito amor saúde paz no coração só fala uma palavra GRATIDÃO de coração
A true behind the scenes documentary might be interesting - the open hostility between the co-stars, the choreographer, the designers, the director has been documented elsewhere.
As a gay man, I'm embarrassed. Yes, always loved Barbara Streisand. It was a given at birth at the same time as the birth certificate was issued. But I always to this day, idolized Gene Kelly. I danced every step like him in my growing up years. How....HOW did I forget he was the master behind this classic. Shame. Thanks for the reminder.
I don’t think Barbra Streisand is miscast in this film, she’s not too young to play this kind of character and no one could sing it better but there should have been script and lyric changes to better suit her youth - “Look at the old girl now” etc. The main thing is the script is far too long and all over the place, the whole film is overblown, these huge scenes are impressive but they’re not charming or involving, the second rank of the cast lack star quality. At just the same time Oliver! was a tremendous smash hit because it’s very charming, the song sequences are staged inventively, you really feel you’re in Dickens’ Victorian London and the casting is spot on, one memorable character after another with great lines. Later a much smaller, more intimate musical like Cabaret was a smash hit too.
Agree totally. Oliver! like Dolly had an enormous cast in the street scenes but Carol Reed had directed the Third Man and was a master, the Oliver! ones brilliantly illustrated the social setting, the world Oliver Twist enters, showing all the working class jobs and the class differences. The Dolly scenes are big for bigness sake. Lionel Bart felt the Oliver! orchestration was overblown compared to the simple songs he wrote, but it wasn’t, it’s a beloved, beloved film of singalong songs. You can’t really singalong with Barbra, she’s a pyrotechnic virtuosic talent which creates problems of it’s own incorporating her with lesser players. Oliver! had the huge advantage of being inspired by Dickens who virtually always films brilliantly well and David Lean had created the masterpiece adaptation for the screen 20 years earlier, on which the stage musical was based, so it became an impeccably structured movie by a genius director based on a previous genius director. Cabaret was similar because it was the musical version of a well structured play and Fosse was a genius. Kelly is remembered as a triple threat movie star and one of the top 2 dancers ever, but not one of the great directors. You are right, the script needed major, major work and editing. However, it’s still a wonderfully enjoyable movie in clips!
It’s a marvel, but it’s also a shame. The song has such a gentle, heartwarming message and it was turned into this bombastic showpiece. Kind of a disconnect between the song’s intent and how it was produced.
Michael Crawford is a disaster. E.j. Peaker and the girl who played Malloy. The dance in the park didn’t help either. Streisand comes out saving this picture. Visit garrison on the Hudson if you can. Beautiful little enclave mostly unchanged. A few lucky residents.
Well Gene did do a magnificent job directing this bomb but it just wasn't right simply because Barbra at 27 was playing a woman of 58years. Carol Channing was outraged and let it be known. Sad seeing actor Danny Lockin who was murdered in 1977, played Barnaby. Great talent. Barbra was Barbra and her singing was superior but she just couldn't pull off Dolly.
i agree altho I don't think i could sit through 2 hours of Carol Channing. i think Gene made the mistake of making the film similar to his old films. that formula was wearing thin by 1969. a year earlier director Carol Reed got it right with Oliver! - a box office hit that did all the things Hello Dolly was supposed to do. the slow business at the box-office said it all with Dolly.
