Was there ever an actress so associated with a role as Carol Channing and Dolly Levi? Channing gleefully made the matchmaker her signature...so much so that it is hard to remember, now, that anyone else ever played Dolly, or that it was originally a play, not a musical.
What Wiki says:
The plot of Hello, Dolly! originated in an 1835 English play, A Day Well Spent by John Oxenford, which Johann Nestroy adapted into the farce Einen Jux will er sich machen. Wilder adapted Nestroy's play into his 1938 farcical play, The Merchant of Yonkers, a flop, which he revised and retitled The Matchmaker in 1955, expanding the role of Dolly, played by Ruth Gordon.[2] The Matchmaker became a hit and was much revived and made into a 1958 film of the same name starring Shirley Booth. The story of a meddlesome widow who strives to bring romance to several couples and herself in a big city restaurant also features prominently in the 1891 hit musical A Trip to Chinatown.[3]
The role of Dolly Levi in the musical was originally written for Ethel Merman, but Merman turned it down, as did Mary Martin (although each eventually played it).[2] Merrick then auditioned Nancy Walker. Eventually, he hired Carol Channing, who then created in Dolly her signature role.[4] Director Gower Champion was not the producer's first choice, as Hal Prince and others (among them Jerome Robbins and Joe Layton) all turned down the job of directing the musical.[5]
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Horace Vandergelder's two shop assistants plotting to get from Yonkers to the Big City for the weekend:
(Hey, Dumbo, poke 3CM & tell him that last clip's from the Proms.)
And here's Carol, I mean Dolly, deciding to come out of mourning for her deceased husband and rejoin the living:
If that doesn't give you a sniffle, then this is not the show for you.