Hello, Dolly!

Hello, Dolly! (1969) is a lavish Hollywood musical directed by Gene Kelly — watch it online on iFILM. Barbra Streisand plays Dolly Levi, a fast-talking New York matchmaker who heads to Yonkers to fix up the wealthy, tight-fisted merchant Horace Vandergelder, played by Walter Matthau, while quietly maneuvering him into her own hands.

Dolly juggles several romances at once: she nudges Horace's niece toward an artist, steers his two bumbling clerks into a New York adventure with a pair of hat-shop girls, and orchestrates the whole thing from the middle of the Harmonia Gardens dining room in a show-stopping parade number. Streisand was just twenty-seven when the film was shot, and her energy carries every scene past the production's enormous scale.

Based on Jerry Herman's long-running Broadway show, the film picked up three Oscars at the 1970 ceremony — for sound, art direction, and scoring adaptation. Louis Armstrong appears in the finale to sing the title song alongside Streisand, a moment that has stuck in American popular memory ever since. Stream Hello, Dolly! (1969) on iFILM.