The Matchmaker

Plot synopsis:
Marcy Tizard (Janeane Garofalo) is assistant to Senator John McGlory (Jay O. Sanders) from Boston, Massachusetts. In an attempt to court the Irish-American vote in a tough reelection battle, the bumbling senator's chief of staff, Nick (Denis Leary), sends Marcy to Ireland to find McGlory's relatives or ancestors.
Marcy arrives at the fictional village of Ballinagra (Irish: Baile na Grá, literally the Town of Love) as it is preparing for the annual matchmaking festival. She attracts the attention of two rival professional matchmakers, Dermot (Milo O'Shea) and Millie (Rosaleen Linehan), as well as roguish bartender Sean (David O'Hara).
The locals tolerate her genealogical search while trying to match her with various bachelors. Sean tries to woo Marcy despite her resistance to his boorish manners. After they have begun their romance, they return home to Sean's house one afternoon to find his estranged wife Moira (Saffron Burrows) waiting for them. Marcy leaves Sean, upset that he did not disclose his marriage to her.
McGlory and Nick arrive in Ballinagra, although Marcy's been unable to locate any McGlory relatives. McGlory discovers Sean's wife's maiden name is Kennedy and brings her back to Boston as his fiancée just in time for the election, and wins by a small margin. While at the victory party, McGlory's father (Robert Mandan) reveals privately to Marcy that the family is Hungarian, not Irish. The family name had been changed at Ellis Island when they immigrated, but as they settled in Boston with its large Irish population, he never told his son their true lineage.
Sean follows Marcy to Boston, and they reconcile.

Tags: romantic

Review:
What to do, especially since his young clerk Cornelius Hackl has eyes for her also.Shirley Booth who originated many parts on the Broadway stage, but had few screen credits up to that time takes over the role that Ruth Gordon played on stage in the 1955-1957 season for 481 performances.
Another Shirley named MacLaine with few screen credits at that point to her name plays young Irene.
He looked a lot like Edgar Kennedy, but his boiling point was always quickly reached.Anthony Perkins who really did other things besides Norman Bates in Psycho is just fine as the wistful young clerk at Ford's mercantile and he's partnered in his adventures by young Robert Morse who repeated his stage role as Barnaby Tucker.Of course most know The Matchmaker as the basis for Hello Dolly and seeing it now is like seeing Shaw's Pygmalion which for better or worse is now known as My Fair Lady without the songs.
The picture is perfectly cast, with the peerless (though by now, nearly forgotten) Shirley Booth as a sly but gentle, voracious but sweet, determined yet vulnerable Dolly.
Everything about this film is so sweet and Shirley Booth gives a performance that is just hilarious.
I wonder what "Hello Dolly" would have been like if they gave the part to Shirley Booth?.
"Hello, Dolly!", that marvelously overblown, elephantine 1969 movie musical starring Barbra Streisand, can trace its cinematic origins to this charming film, which, in its stage incarnation, had enjoyed a successful Broadway run a few years before.Paramount wisely employed the inimitable Shirley Booth to head the cast and, perhaps since she was no guarantee of big box office, despite her Academy Award for "Come Back, Little Sheba" (1952), they filmed it in VistaVision but not Technicolor.
His wonderfully humorous Horace Vandergelder makes one wish he'd been allowed to play the role again opposite Streisand (though, to be sure, he would have appeared to be much too old for Barbra, who was only twenty-seven years old when Twentieth practically bankrupted itself filming that monumentally successful Broadway bonanza.)Anyway, this version is genuinely charming and always repays a re-viewing.
The costumes are superb, the timing is excellent.One thing I must mention here though is, that although I also consider Barbra Streisand a great talent, she seemed to be more or less mis-cast in the role in "Hello Dolly." She merely played herself.
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!".
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.
Some of Thornton Wilder's ironies about love and money get mangled in the dumbing-down of his stage material, and the theatrical conceits (characters constantly breaking down the fourth wall) probably worked better in the legit theater.
Anthony Perkins and Shirley MacLaine are young love personified; I'm not sure either of them was ever this appealing again.
"Matchmaker" is a good enough movie, but "Dolly" really sings (even when there's no music)..
Thornton Wilder's play about a matchmaking busy-body named Dolly Levi in 1880s Yonkers, New York who has been hired to find a mate for a wealthy, grumpy business owner; she comically attempts to keep him for herself, while the gal he admires is quickly falling for one of his own employees.
The later stage (and film) musical "Hello, Dolly!" actually improved upon this scenario--there are pauses here which practically call out for a song--but there's evident charm in Shirley Booth's lead portrayal; at times addressing the audience directly (with many of the players following suit), Booth sounds a lot like Thelma Ritter (and has some of Ritter's spunk), but she doesn't get her share of the good lines.
Scenes of Dolly getting a wedding ring stuck on her finger or delightedly finding men hiding in Shirley MacLaine's hat shop don't really come off.
Booth is friendly but frivolous, and we never quite become involved in her quest to have a man--this man--in her life (in the film-version of "Hello, Dolly!", Barbra Streisand was much more persuasive about her need to share her life with a mate--even if it was Walter Matthau!).
The film flutters about in a jolly, folksy way, but some of its gags (such as Anthony Perkins and Robert Morse having to dress in drag) are just silly.
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 to capture the innate charm of the original.
Memorable character actors Paul Ford, Perry Wilson, and Wallace Ford; rising stars Anthony Perkins and Shirley MacLaine; and even a very young Robert Morse.
Miserly businessman Horace Vandergelder (Paul Ford) is eager to marry and employs professional busy-body Dolly Levi (Shirley Booth) to fix him up--but when he takes the day off to visit prospective bride Irene Malloy (MacLaine) his two clerks (Perkins and Morse) follow suit.
A series of chance encounters bring all concerned together--and with a little not-so-gentle nudging from Dolly, Vandergelder makes the discovery that the matchmaker herself is his own perfect match.
If all this sounds a bit familiar, it should, for THE MATCHMAKER had yet another, slightly later incarnation: with music by Jerry Herman and book by Michael Stewart, it became HELLO, DOLLY!, one of Broadway's most celebrated musicals, which itself reached the screen in 1969.There is nothing in the way of bonus materials--a tremendous pity given the astonishing cast--but the DVD does offer the film in near-pristine transfer, and while THE MATCHMAKER doesn't quite rise to the level of the stage play's spark, it is nonetheless a gentle, amusing, and extremely well performed film, an overlooked gem from late-1950s Hollywood.GFT, Amazon Reviewer.
This a great film with outstanding actors and is a take off on, "Hello Dolly".
Shirley Booth, (Dolly Gallgher Levi) plays the role as a matchmaker who is always broke but manages to get by one way or the other.
Dolly has her eyes set on Horace Vandergelder, (Paul Ford) who is a very rich man and is very tight with his money and pays horrible wages to his employees at his General Store.
This story takes place in Yonkers, N.Y. in the 1800's, and one day, Dolly decides to find a young girl for Horace in New York City who sells ladies hats and is very pretty.
This is a very romantic and great comedy from 1958 and Paul Ford and Shirley Booth give outstanding performances, don't miss seeing this film..
The entire cast is great, particularly Shirley Booth and Anthony Perkins.
The basic premise: Shirley Booth is a professional matchmaker who decides she wants to marry her latest client (Paul Ford) herself.
Meanwhile, Anthony Perkins is interested in Shirley MacLaine, who is simply interested in getting married.
I loved the way Dolly Levi was such a fun persuading money loving woman who you can't resist to like.
One of my favorite Shirley Booth films and it has several other favorite stars of mine including Anthony Perkins and the GREAT Shirley MacLaine!
The film is the original story which the famous musical Hello Dolly!
The young couple is played by Shirley MacLaine and a pre-Psycho Anthony Perkins.
They're both adorable and perfect as the proverbial "romantic leads" in a theatrical (The Matchmaker was first produced on the stage, just like the musical).Yes, it doesn't have the dancing and splendor of a colorized film, but I like it much better than the musical.
Paul Ford provides a fine "old geezer" foil, and a young Shirley MacLaine matches the men gag for gag.Director Anthony's early career as a dancer/choreographer and his extensive credits as a Broadway director have prepared him well to handle the farcical demands of this stylish screenplay.
When I saw Hello Dolly, it was love at first sight, along with a lot of other people.
If you're going to pick on age, I think it's more like Shirley Booth seemed too old for the part.
New York matchmaker Shirley Booth (as Dolly Gallagher Levi) is assigned to pick a mate for wealthy old gentleman Paul Ford (as Horace Vandergelder); but, Ms. Booth decides she wants him for herself.
Meanwhile, Anthony Perkins (as Cornelius Hackl), who works for Mr. Ford, falls for young Shirley MacLaine (as Irene Molloy).
For example, the characters "speaking to the camera" becomes tiresome, after Booth's charming opening.One thing filmmakers wisely kept was actor Robert Morse (as Barnaby Tucker), who essayed the role on stage, alongside Arthur Hill.
If the film were better received, Morse might have been considered for a "Best Supporting Actor" award."The Matchmaker" returned, to both stage and film, as "Hello, Dolly!".
It's the first time for me, and while watching it, I saw that it is almost the same script as Hello Dolly!
I don't like every musical either, but Hello Dolly!
Long ago eclipsed by it's musical version "Hello, Dolly!", the film seems like an introduction to the songs (particularly in the earlier part) which never come.
As played by Shirley Booth, she is hardly the miscast young diva Barbra Streisand was.The character of Malachi Stack, perhaps a sort of cousin of Alfred P.
And Ambrose and Ermengarde are also nowhere to be found.The play by Thornton Wilder is itself based on his own "The Merchant of Yonkers" which itself was based on earlier (early to mid-19th century) plays by the Austrian Johann Nestroy and the, even earlier, British John Oxenford.The film, I think unwisely, has many of the characters directly addressing the audience and no doubt this worked better in the theater.
Perkins, here a considerable improvement over Michael Crawford as Cornelius, could have done the songs not much worse (He did sing on the Broadway stage in the short-running 1960 musical "Greenwillow", but none too well.).
I think Marianne McAndrew and Danny Lockin were fine as Irene and Barnaby.I think this film, for all its problems, is a considerable improvement over that of "Hello, Dolly!" but it is hoped that a decent version of the musical becomes available in the not-too-distant future..
It is the first film version of the play by Thornton Wilder that was made into the musical smash HELLO, DOllY!.
It is also one of the too few movies made by Shirley Booth in the 1950s after she won the Oscar for Best Actress, and gives her versatility a chance to shine with COME BACK LITTLE SHEBA and ABOUT MRS.
Booth usually was in movie dramas, and this is a rare chance to see her handle a comedy.This version sticks closer to Wilder's original version of THE MATCHMAKER, for there were more "Strange Interlude" style asides by the various characters talking to the audience.
The only major change is in what would be the concluding act of the play: Wilder had Vandergelder's niece Ernestine run off with Ambrose (and followed by Cornelius, Irene, Barnaby, and Minnie - and then Dolly and Horace) from the Harmonium Gardens to Vandergelder's sister's home in Manhattan.
Her loss from the movie is no loss.Little bits of biography about Dolly and Horace are in this version and not in the musical.
Even at the end of the film he is telling the audience to save their money.Anthony Perkins normally did not appear in comedies, but he is Cornelius here - opposite Shirley MacLaine as Irene.
Ford makes us like this kindly wreck of a man, who ends up beating his new boss as well as the others do.Lines of dialog in the film make us realize we are hearing song cues (MacLaine mentioning how ribbons on a hat are the in-thing this year is an example).
I just love this movie, and especially Shirley Booth in the lead roll of Dolly Levi.
Once I saw "The Matchmaker", "Hello Dolly" took the backseat to the movie and has stayed there since.
Streisand was TOO YOUNG for the role of Dolly Levi.
But in "The Matchmaker" -- Shirley Booth is incredible as the constantly meddling, good hearted, slightly nosy, overbearing at times, loving widowed woman, trying to find a living for herself in an age where middle aged women really didn't have many options.
Filmed before either Shirley MacLaine or Anthony Perkins had become established, this film doesn't feature a really big star.
Simply put, I would have been more involved with the character of Dolly (and the other characters) had she been presented as "real" and not just a character within a play.Nonetheless, this is a highly entertaining film, superior to the succeeding musical versions of the story, and a better adaptation of Thornton Wilder than Our Town.
Shirley Booth makes and excellent Dolly, as does Shirley MacLaine as Irene.
Paul Ford, while he did a wonderful job as Horace, he will always be Mayor Shinn, from The Music Man, to me.Anyway, every Perkins fan needs to see this movie!
(Considering that "The Matchmaker" was an updated variation of "A Trip to Chinatown").Like another Jerry Herman musical ("Mame"), "Hello, Dolly!" was based upon a hit Broadway play that was later musicalized.
And like the original "Auntie Mame", the movie version of "The Matchmaker" (the Thornton Wilder play upon which "Dolly" was based) was released in 1958.
And Cornelius Hackl (Anthony Perkins) says at the very beginning as he is planning a trip to Manhattan with Barnaby (Robert Morse) that even if they come back broke, at least they can remember that once they had a very good day, which in the musical Cornelius says later in the story.
Each of these incidents in the musical leads to a song, and if you know "Dolly" well, you might find yourself humming them at the non-musical version, a delightful comedy that shows Manhattan at a much different time when life may not have been totally smooth, but certainly not as complex as New York City is today."Auntie Mame", the movie, saluted its stage origins by having a blackout in between the important scenes to represent the end of an act.
In "The Matchmaker", the stage origins are saluted by having the characters break the third wall and talk to the audience directly.
While the basic structure is the same as the musical, there are some slight differences, changed for dramatic content when Michael Stewart wrote the book in the early 60's for the long-running Broadway version.Shirley Booth had been playing only dramatic parts in movies ("Come Back Little Sheba", "About Mrs. Leslie") when she made this, a pre-cursor to her television role as the housekeeper "Hazel".
While Ruth Gordon originated the role of Dolly in "The Matchmaker" on Broadway, Booth was a perfect choice for the movie, and I can't imagine it without her as wonderful and cheery as she is here.Shirley MacLaine, who would play Booth's daughter in the same year's "Hot Spell", brings in all her growing comic tricks as Irene Malloy, and steals the scene where Cornelius and Barnaby hide under the table and in the closet of her hat shop, as well as the later scene in the Harmonia Gardens restaurant.
Paul Ford, so utterly irascible as the mayor in "The Music Man", was a perfect Horace Vandergelder.
In an ironic twist of trivia, character actor David Burns, then on the Broadway as the mayor in "The Music Man", would later play Vandergelder in "Hello, Dolly!".Tall and lanky Anthony Perkins is handsome and graceful as the shy Cornelius who longs to come to life, while future Broadway leading man Robert Morse is perfect as his puppy like sidekick Barnaby.
Disappointing film despite the all-star cast of Shirley Booth, as Dolly Gallagher Levi, Paul Ford as Horace Vandergelder, Anthony Perkins, Shirley Mac Laine and Robert Morse in important supporting parts.Miss Booth acts more like she is getting prepared for her television role in "Hazel." I expected Mr. B and his family to appear at any moment.
She sheds her blouse wife image from her Oscar-winning performance in "Come Back, Little Sheba" and substitutes a match making woman who now wants to remarry and turns her attention to the tightwad Vandergelder, who is played well by Paul Ford.Coming off his Oscar nominated performance in "Friendly Persuasion," the year before, Perkins is charming but lacks the comic wit of the role.
This is the same year that MacLaine received a best actress nomination for "Some Came Running." She was fabulous there, but in this film she lacks comic timing.
The Matchmaker is an excellent play by a serious playwright; Hello, Dolly is a cheesy schtick, an excuse for a musical perpetrated by the felon also responsible for MAIM (oops, Mame).
Shirley Booth is a multiple Tony-winning stage actress and star who is marvelous as always; Barbra Streisand, years too young for this part, plays herself as she always does, speaking of unbearable schticks.
And, okay, maybe sometimes it's a little TOO cute but it's still an awful lot of family fun, filled to bursting with innocence and apothegms.Anthony Perkins and Robert Morse are two young clerks in the Yonkers store that belongs to Paul Ford in 1884.
This was before Son of Sam.He's a skinflint alright but, like Scrooge, he's completely undone and made to see the error of his ways in a kind of epiphany, by three agents: MacLaine, Perkins, and Shirley Booth as the matchmaker whom he winds up marrying.
The two most interesting characters are Paul Ford as Horace Vandergelder, who would be a Master of the Universe if the universe were limited to Yonkers in 1884, and Booth as the manipulative and sneaky, but very wise, middle-aged woman who holds the play together.