jackhutchinsongallery

I agree with the post above. This entire series of the "compleat" Gilbert and Sullivan should be shown in opera production grad schools to make sure that NO ONE ever conceives theirs like this. I remember getting very excited at the time these were done, with a partnership between the BBC and Judith DePaul in Boston, WGBH. Someone really got it wrong. Opera in a TV studio never works anyway but these were particularly awful. Casting Price was a brilliant idea but it looked like they tried to video these shows in a day and a half. One of the problems was that they wanted ONE American star in each light opera. In the case of "Ruddigore", Price was a good choice. Some of the others are just terrible. But having really slammed this, I would say, if you have never seen "Ruddigore", you ought to because it has some of Sullivan's very best music. The ghost scene in Act II is one of my personal favorite choruses in all G+S.

I have always loved the "straight play" version of the Dolly story. Actually Thornton Wilder's play had a previous incarnation set in Austria, in the German language. He had written it for Broadway in the fifties, it was filmed in 58 in this version, and Jerry Herman must have seen it and fallen in love with it for the musical "Hello, Dolly!". Parts of this are superior to the original stage version of the musical. The film version of the musical is dreadfully over danced and Streisand was way too young for the lead role. Shirley Booth, here in this "Matchmaker", is much closer, in a way to Channing's Dolly of Broadway. I have often wished that SOMEONE would re-do the musical for either video or film. I saw the 1964 Channing production and it was magical. Hollywood so often trashes these brilliant stage works. Anyway, rent this film when you can and compare it to the Streisand "Dolly".

I remember seeing this film as a college freshman and falling in love with Dame Maggie (she was MBE'd much later). A good friend of mine had seen the Broadway production and told me that the film version, unusually, was actually a better performance. I recently rented the DVD from Netflix and saw it again for the first time in 35 years. It has some quirks but Smith just holds up awfully well. For those of you younger than forty, this should be in your top 100 collection. There were many such films and plays at the emergence of the women's movement. I have often wondered if Wende Wasserstein was inspired by this movie.