Trivia for
Hello, Dolly! (1969) More at IMDbPro »

• The original design of Barbra Streisand's gold-beaded gown shown in the Harmonia Gardens scene weighed 40 pounds and cost $8,000. Twice during rehearsals, she tripped over its 2.5-foot train. Other dancers also tripped over it during rehearsal, so the train was taken off the dress. The train is shown intact when Streisand starts down the stairs, but later it disappears.
  
  
• Michael Kidd (choreographer) broke his leg during rehearsal while showing a routine to dancers.
  
  
• Louis Armstrong was only on set for a half-day and did his shots in one take.
  
  
• The Harmonia Gardens sequence (where the song "Hello Dolly" is performed) took an entire month to shoot.
  
  
• The set for the Harmonia Gardens filled an entire sound stage at Fox Studios and occupied three levels: a dance floor, a main section that surrounded the dance floor and an upper mezzanine. The Harmonia Gardens sequence took an entire month to shoot.
  
  
• During filming, Barbra Streisand and Walter Matthau fought bitterly. 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 Barbra that she "had no more talent than a butterfly's fart". Interestingly, he is clearly seen in the audience at Barbra's One Voice (1986) (TV) concert at her Malibu ranch, where invitation-only guests paid $5,000 per couple to help establish the Streisand Foundation, which supports numerous charitable organizations. Apparently, Walter Matthau did not hold grudges.
  
  
• On a break from filming, Walter 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 Barbra 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.
  
  
• In the parade scene, the YWCA marching unit was the award-winning California High School Drill Team, under the direction of Ms. Jackie McCauley. The group was selected by Twentieth Century Fox based on their performance in the Hollywood Santa Claus Lane Parade on the Wednesday evening before Thanksgiving Day, 1967. The marching band in white uniforms was the UCLA Marching Band. The band in red and black uniforms was the San Fernando Valley Youth Band.
  
  
• The scenes set in turn-of-the-last-century Yonkers, New York, were actually filmed a few miles up the Hudson River, in Garrison New York. 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.
  
  
• Among those who originally tested for the role of Gussie Grainger/Ernestina Simple were Jo Anne Worley and Peg Murray. Among those who tested for Ambrose Kemper was Ron Rifkin.
  
  
• Ann-Margret made a screen test for the role of Irene Molloy.
  
  
• Pat Finley and Sandy Duncan made a screen test for the role of Minnie.
  
  
• The train shown in the final shot is from the Strasburg Rail Road, an active steam museum short line still in existence today. The "Hello Dolly" car is open to the public.
  
  
• The film grew out of a massive attempt by Twentieth Century-Fox to duplicate its earlier, unprecedented success with The Sound of Music (1965) by producing three expensive, large-scale musicals over a period of three years, Doctor Dolittle (1967) and Star! (1968) being the others. Unfortunately, film attendance as a whole was down and all three films' box-office performance reflected this. All were released amid massive pre-release publicity and all lost equally massive amounts of money for the studio (though "Dolly" was in the box office top 5 for the year of its release). The result was that several top studio executives lost their jobs, and the studio itself went into such dire financial straits that it only produced one picture for the entire calendar year of 1970. In truth, Fox would never recoup its losses until a highly successful theatrical reissue of "The Sound of Music" in early 1973.
  
  
• Also considered for the role of Dolly was Elizabeth Taylor, who was passed on because she couldn't sing. Doris Day and Shirley MacLaine were both briefly considered as well. Carol Channing was never considered for the role because it was felt, despite her Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress in the musical Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967), that she could not carry a film of this stature despite being one of Broadway's top leading ladies.
  
  
• The fifth-highest grossing film of 1969.
  
  
• When director George Roy Hill heard about the turn-of-the-century New York set constructed for the film, he wanted to use the set to film a brief sequence in which Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and Etta Place visit the Big Apple. The producers were proprietary about the set, and didn't want it to appear in another movie. 20th Century Fox, however, allowed Hill to take still photographs of his stars Paul Newman, Robert Redford and Katharine Ross on the set, surrounded by the extras (who appear it the old-time, tinted photos as city crowds) which were used in a montage sequence that served as a transition between the U.S. West and Bolivia sections of the movie.
  
  
• 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 (1965).
  
  
• Many of the massive fake buildings constructed on the outdoor back-lot sets in California to stand-in for turn-of-the-century New York City concealed working oil wells.
  
  
• None of the original Broadway cast appeared in the film version.
  
  
• In the original musical, Vandergelder was supposed to crash a dance number called "Be My Butterfly," after which he was arrested and charged with disturbing the peace. Dolly visits him in his holding cell at the courthouse, and this is where she sings "So Long, Dearie." For the movie, that number was dropped, and Dolly sings "So Long, Dearie" at the train station.
  
  
• Also in the original musical, Cornelius Hackl and the Widow Molloy sing "It Only Takes a Moment" in the courtroom during Horace Vandergelder's trial; in the movie, however, they sing "It Only Takes a Moment" in Central Park. The entire arrest and trial sequence was dropped for the movie version.
  
  
• The original Broadway production of "Hello Dolly!" opened at the St. James Theater on January 16, 1964 and ran for 2844 performances, setting a Broadway longevity record. "Hello Dolly!" also won the 1964 Tony Awards for the Best Musical and Best Score.
  
  
• Tommy Tune's movie debut.
  
  
• In the final shot Horace kisses Dolly in front of the church. Walter Matthau detested Barbra Streisand so much that he refused to kiss her. To get around this he leaned near her and the camera was positioned so that the angle makes it appear that he kisses her when, in reality, his face was several inches from hers
  
  
• The song "Love Is Only Love", which Barbra Streisand as Dolly sings in her bedroom before the Harmonia Gardens scene, was not in the stage production of "Hello, Dolly". "Love Is Only Love" was written by Jerry Herman for the Broadway musical "Mame" but cut before that show's opening. The song occurred in the story as Mame Dennis tries to explain falling in love to her pre-teen nephew Patrick.
  
  
• Leading UK DVD retailer HMV noted during an analysis of its 3rd quarter figures (July-September) for 2008 that "Hello, Dolly!" had sold more copies in this period than in the all the quarters combined for the previous 10 years. This was put down to the popularity of WALL·E (2008) which features clips from "Hello, Dolly!" at several key points.
  
  
• The singing voice of Irene Molloy was provided by Gilda Maiken and Melissa Stafford.
  
  
• The large fountain in the Harmonia Gardens set was reused in The Towering Inferno (1974). It can be seen in the top floor restaurant. It gets knock over by the water and kills the bartender played by Gregory Sierra.
  
  

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