Fifty-five years ago today, "Hello, Dolly!" opened on Broadway.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Edited: "Hello, Dolly!", not "Hello, Dolly".

Hat tip, Wikipedia, On This Day.

Hello, Dolly! (musical)

Hello, Dolly! is a 1964 musical with lyrics and music by Jerry Herman and a book by Michael Stewart, based on Thornton Wilder's 1938 farce The Merchant of Yonkers, which Wilder revised and retitled The Matchmaker in 1955. The musical follows the story of Dolly Gallagher Levi, a strong-willed matchmaker, as she travels to Yonkers, New York to find a match for the miserly "well-known unmarried half-a-millionaire" Horace Vandergelder.

Hello, Dolly! was first produced on Broadway by David Merrick in 1964, winning 10 Tony Awards, including Best Musical.
....

History
....

Hello, Dolly! had rocky tryouts in Detroit, Michigan and Washington, D.C. After receiving the reviews, the creators made major changes to the script and score, including the addition of the song "Before the Parade Passes By". The show was originally entitled Dolly, A Damned Exasperating Woman, then Call on Dolly, but Merrick changed it upon hearing Louis Armstrong's version of "Hello, Dolly". The show became one of the most iconic Broadway shows of the latter half of the 1960s, running for 2,844 performances, and was the longest-running musical in Broadway history for a time.
....

Productions

Original Broadway production

The musical, directed and choreographed by Gower Champion and produced by David Merrick, opened on January 16, 1964, at the St. James Theatre and closed on December 27, 1970, after 2,844 performances. Carol Channing starred as Dolly, with a supporting cast that included David Burns as Horace, Charles Nelson Reilly as Cornelius, Eileen Brennan as Irene, Jerry Dodge as Barnaby, Sondra Lee as Minnie Fay, Alice Playten as Ermengarde, and Igors Gavon as Ambrose. Although facing competition from Funny Girl with Barbra Streisand, Hello, Dolly! swept the Tony Awards that year, winning awards in ten categories (out of eleven nominations) that tied the musical with the previous record keeper South Pacific, record that remained unbroken for 37 years until The Producers won twelve Tonys in 2001.

After Channing left the show, Merrick employed prominent actresses to play Dolly, including Ginger Rogers, who started on August 9, 1965; Martha Raye, starting on February 27, 1967; Betty Grable, from June 12, 1967 to November 5, 1967; Pearl Bailey (in an all-black version) starting on November 12, 1967; Phyllis Diller, as of December 26, 1969; and Ethel Merman (after having turned down the lead at the show's inception) from March 28, 1970 to December 27, 1970.

[regnaD kciN]

1. I remember it well...

We were in New York, preparing to leave for Europe. The morning after the premiere, the line for tickets extended for blocks. It was almost like an early glimpse of the “Star Wars” phenomenon.