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Hello, Dolly! (film)

1969 American musical romantic comedy film directed by Gene Kelly

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 22, 2026
Entity authorityQ475293 ↗
Source-derived summary

Hello, Dolly! is a 1969 American musical romantic comedy film based on the 1964 Broadway musical by Michael Stewart, which was based on Thornton Wilder's 1954 Broadway play The Matchmaker. Directed by Gene Kelly and written and produced by Ernest Lehman, the film stars Barbra Streisand, Walter Matthau, Michael Crawford, and Louis Armstrong (whose recording of the title tune had been a number-one hit in May 1964), with Marianne McAndrew, Danny Lockin, E. J. Peaker, Tommy Tune, and Fritz Feld.

The film follows the story of Dolly Levi, a strong-willed matchmaker who travels to Yonkers, New York, to find a match for the miserly "well-known unmarried half-a-millionaire" Horace Vandergelder. In doing so, she convinces his niece, his niece's intended, and Horace's two clerks to travel to New York City.

The film won three Academy Awards: for Best Art Direction, Best Score of a Musical Picture and Best Sound, and was nominated for four other Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Hello, Dolly! was one of the highest-grossing films of 1969 in the United States.

Plot

In 1890, well-known widowed matchmaker Dolly Levi plans to travel to Yonkers, New York. She seeks a wife for Horace Vandergelder, an unmarried "half-a-millionaire".

Editorial summary

“Hello, Dolly! (film)” enters the record as 1969 American musical romantic comedy film directed by Gene Kelly. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Hello, Dolly and film can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA useful identification and reception guide that helps separate the work itself from editions, performances, ownership and later interpretation. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1969, 1964, 1954, 1890—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1969-12-16. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Hello, Dolly and film.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Hello, Dolly! (film)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Hello, Dolly and film provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q475293. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1969, 1964, 1954 and 1890.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Hello, Dolly! (film)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Hello, Dolly! (film) primary sources, Hello, Dolly! (film) archive and Hello research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Hello, Dolly! (film)”?
  2. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
  3. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Hello, Dolly! (film)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.