Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
Audience Rating: Unrated
Binding: DVD
EAN: 9781415706633
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DTS Surround Sound, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
ISBN: 1415706638
Label: Paramount
Manufacturer: Paramount
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Paramount
Region Code: 1
Release Date: January 18, 2005
Running Time: 100 minutes
Sales Rank: 49833
Studio: Paramount
Theatrical Release Date: 1958
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Editorial Review:
Description:
Based on Thornton Wilder's 1955 play, THE MATCHMAKER features Shirley Booth playing Dolly Levi, a young matchmaker determined to find a wife for a widowed millionaire. After finding potential wives for him, Dolly discovers that she's fallen in love with him and does all that she can to ensure he doesn't fall in love with any of the women she's set him up with.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - "Money, pardon the expression, is like manure. It's not worth a thing unless it's spread around..."
Thornton Wilder's 1955 Broadway play THE MATCHMAKER was one of his most celebrated efforts, starring Ruth Gordon as the meddling matchmaker Dolly Gallagher-Levi. Paramount snatched up the film rights, and three years later it became a box office sensation with stage/screen actress Shirley Booth (an Oscar winner for 1952's "Come Back Little Sheba") in the title role.
Set in turn-of-the-century Yonkers and New York, the story spins around Mrs Dolly Gallagher-Levi (Shirley Booth), a widow who dabbles in matchmaking. Her most influential client is Mr Horace Vandergelder (Paul Ford), a half-millionaire and the owner of the Yonkers general-store. Having arranged a marriage for Horace with lovely New York milliner Irene Molloy (Shirley MacLaine), Dolly has a last-minute change of heart when she decides that she wishes to marry the crusty old widower herself! Adding to the romantic hijnks are Vandergelder's two young store clerks, Cornelius (Anthony Perkins) and Barnaby (Robert Morse reprising his original Broadway role), intent on having just one romantic night in New York with Irene and her assistant Minnie (Perry Wilson).
Wilder's dizzy romantic comedy romp later formed the basis for Jerry Herman's smash-hit Broadway musical "Hello, Dolly!" in 1965. The story is full of fast-moving farce situations and zesty dialogue. Shirley Booth provides an effortless balance between high comedy and heartfelt sentiment in her performance as Dolly. The supporting cast is sublime, headed ... Read More
Rating:  - Fantastic !
I thought this film is just as good as hello dolly great acting and just a great movie.
Rating: - Wonderful old Classic
I love the old classics and this is one of my favorites. I love Shirley Booth and remember her fondly as Hazel. Matchmaker was the movie that inspired the musical Hello Dolly-which I also enjoy.
Rating: - Memorable Performances and Tremendous Charm
The history of THE MATCHMAKER is quite interesting from an academic point of view. In 1835 English playwright and drama critic created a one-act play titled A DAY WELL SPENT, a lightweight comedy of mismatched lovers, mistaken identities, and foolish misbehavior. In 1842 Austrian playwright and actor Johann Nestroy developed Oxenford's work into a full-length comedy titled EINEN JUX WILL ER SICH MACHEN, which was (and remains) very popular in German-language theatre. American writer and scholar Thornton Wilder came to the material in the 1930s--and in 1938 returned the story to the English language under the title THE MERCHANT OF YONKERS. It was an instant disaster, receiving incredibly dire reviews and running all of 39 performances in its New York debut.
It was quite a setback for Wilder, who had previously won Pulitzers for the novel THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY and the play OUR TOWN. Even so, actress Ruth Gordon and Tyrone Guthrie strongly felt the play was sound, and in the 1950s both began to pressure Wilder to rework his script. With Gordon starring and Guthrie directing, and with the title changed to THE MATCHMAKER, it opened on Broadway in 1955--and was a smash hit. It attracted the attention of Hollywood, and in 1958 it became a vehicle for Tony and Academy Award-winning actress Shirley Booth.
The film version alters Wilder's script quite a bit, and not always for the better, occasionally over-reaching itself in a grab for broad farce; all the same, it does manage ... Read More
Rating: - LIVELY COMEDY SET IN 19th CENTURY OLD NEW YORK
The wonderful stage actress Shirley Booth (later the star of Tv's HAZEL) became a late blooming movie star in the 1950's, winning the Best Actress Oscar for 1952's COME BACK LITTLE SHEBA in her film debut at age 54 (although even at her "authorized" age of 45 she was a good bit past most actresses of the period in the first films). Legendary film producer Hal B. Wallis produced three additional film vehicles for Miss Booth but while ABOUT MRS. LESLIE (1954) was quite good and THE HOT SPELL (1958) was somewhat uneven, the final Wallis/Booth movie THE MATCHMAKER (1958) hit the bullseye.
Based on Thornton Wilder's famous stage comedy that in a few years that would be musicalized as HELLO DOLLY, THE MATCHMAKER stars Booth as Dolly Levi, a middle-aged butt-in-ski who earns a little extra coin trying to arrange romances for the wealthiest man in Yonkers, cross general store owner Paul Ford. Ford's current fancying young hatmaker Shirley MacLaine of New York seems to throw a wrench into Miss Booth's services so she concocts one Ernestine Simple, a young woman in a photograph with the body of a showgirl and the soul of Betty Crocker, with frugality to match Ford ("why all she ever eats is apples and lettuce," Dolly chimes laying on the hard sell in a hilarious sequence.) Ford is off in a heartbeat to meet this phanthom pinup with Dolly as his escort, leaving overworked sales clerks Anthony Perkins and Robert Morse to run the store. Perkins and Morse decide instead to close shop and sneak ... Read More
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