Was HELLO, DOLLY originally a vechicle for Merman?

I've heard numerous people speak about HELLO, DOLLY and Carol Channing's Award-Winning performance. But, I was once told that DOLLY was originally intended to be another star vechicle for Ethel Merman, and that she pulled out because of health reasons.

Is there any truth to this?

With the infamous Merman story...

When Jerry Herman asked Merman if she wanted to do "World Take Me Back" originally written for her, or "Before the Parade Passes By" which replaced it, she said, "Put em all back, I'll do em all."

And so she did.

I'd never heard that EM was concerned about being compared to Ruth Gordon, but it sure is interesting. After all, every show Merman had been in was created just for her, no adaptations. In those days they wrote shows around a star (a show for Gertrude Lawrence, a show for Mary Martin and so on). The story related by Jerry Herman in his autobiography was that David Merrick phoned Merman while she was in San Francisco, touring in 'Gypsy', and never got past 'Ethel, I've got a great idea for a new show', before she cut him off, telling him she was not going to do any more Broadway shows. And, with the exception of the 'Annie' revival and nine months as 'Dolly', she never did.

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I was blessed to see Ethel Merman play Dolly twice. The show ran 12 minutes longer when she was in it because of the 2 added songs.

Yeah, when Merman turned down the part, the creators were looking for Nanette Fabray to play the role. Carol Channing was far from their first choice.

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I've always seen the "I'm tired and I don't want to do another show" explanation from Merman--BUT: In the David Merrick bio I just finished, Merrick claimed that Merman really didn't want to do it as the role of Dolly Levi was established as Booth's. Merman had never played a character that had been played by anyone else and she was reluctant to do try. They proceeded to consider a LOT of Broadway leading ladies before reluctantly casting Channing.

Personally, I wish they'd done a cast recording with her in the role. I've never been a fan of Channing.

In an interview we did with Miss Merman in 1979 she said: "I always say I didn't open DOLLY, but I closed it! .... Jerry Herman wrote two songs for me that no other Dolly before or since has sung..."

Does anyone know if that is true? Have these songs ever been done in a non-Merman staging?

The story I have heard was that Merman was tired by the end of the tour of GYPSY (and also upset that they didn't allow her to do the film.) Also her agent convinced her she could make really good money playing Vegas. When Merrick pitched her the idea of DOLLY she didn't even want to hear the score. She later told Johnny Carson that she knew if she had heard it she would have taken the part. Of course that was said some time after DOLLY had opened and become Broadway's biggest hit.

In that same radio show we also interviewed Stephen Sondheim and he said regarding GYPSY:

"We sat and talked to her and explained that this was going to be a monster of a woman and that we weren't going to make any compromises if we could help it... She said she understood that and she said, "I don't know if I'm going to do any more musicals ... what I would really like to do a straight play and this seems to me to be a wonderful way to make the transition." And it was such a disarmingly honest comment that we went ahead and wrote it... and I never heard one peep out of Ethel except I had written a line in "Some People" where she tells her father "You can go to hell" and she wouldn’t say it... Otherwise she never went "hmmm...I don't want to do that" or any of that kind of behaviour..."

The Merman desire to take on a non-musical seems to date back a ways. When approached about CALL ME MADAM (according to the liner notes on the Decca recording of songs from the show) Merman said then (1950) that she was looking for a "good solid dramatic part."

If she HAD taken DOLLY would it have run as long? Miss Merman was famous for staying with her shows throughout the run. Would this have prevented Pearl Bailey's cast from coming to Broadway?

One older book I have (BROADWAY'S GREATEST MUSICALS, pub 1975) mentions that Merman also turned down MAME. Yet no other book seems to indicate that she was even considered for the role. (In 1977 she did a pilot for a TV sitcom where she would play Dolly Rodgers, a big Broadway star embarking on a 7-month tour of MAME leaving her two grandkids in the care of her bachelor-son. I think that is as close to MAME as Miss Merman ever got.)

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I met Jerry Herman at Virgin Records, autographing 'Miss Spectacular' CDs. I had an old 'Hello, Dolly!' playbill with Merman on the cover. He graciously signed it for me and I asked him if Merman's two songs would ever be performed in another production of 'Dolly'. He said that he was working on a television production of 'Dolly' (similar to the Middler 'Gypsy' I would guess) and that, yes, he was hoping the songs would be added to the score. He also adamently refused to tell me who the star was as they had not signed contracts yet. Alas, since this was a couple of years ago, it looks like it never came to fruition.

frontrowcentre2: what was it like interviewing the great Merman? I got her autograph in San Francisco when she was on a book tour and she was very pleasant. Not terribly warm, but nice enough considering she had every gay man on the west coast gushing all over her.

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When the 2 interviews were done, Miss Merman was touring her concert show around and also promoting her recently published autobiography.

The first interview was done by telephone from her New York home a week before she came here to do her concert. It was shorter but she was enthusiastic and quite chatty. When the first radio announcer for her concert didn't work out she requested OUR announcer fill in which he gladly did. She was friendly and invited him to repeat the duties in a subsequent stop in Buffalo. After that we approached her about an in depth interview fof the weekly Broadway hour. We arranged for the show host to fly to NY and sit down with her for a chat in her apartment. She was funny, warm and honest. The ONLY time she asked to go off mic was when talking about her daughter's death which was often erroneously reported as a suicide. She talked privately about that but felt it wasn't a matter to be discussed on radio. The tape had to be stopped twice when phone calls came in. After the first she asked the hotel desk to hold all calls but then 5 min later the phone rang and you could hear her muttering through clenched teeth "I asked her NOT to put calls through..." and apparently she yelled at the hotel operator "Litsen we're trying to do a radio interview up here!!!"

There were some great clips best of all the end when asked "What have been some of your disappointments?" "Marriages!" she said but then added "We all make mistakes...and that's what I did I made a few Loo-loos!"

The weekly Broadway program was still on the air in Feb 1984 when I was in the radio station (I was music director then) and the news department brought down the item from the wire that "Singer Ethel Merman has died in her new York apartment." I pulled the scheduled program for that Sunday night and we re-ran the Merman tribute including excerpts from the interview. I still have that on tape (Reel to reel) an need to get it dubbed onto a CD.

It was a wonderful time for me - fresh out of high school - producing and writing this weekly Broadway program. It was on the air ONLY to fufill content regulations. THE CRTC in those days demanded all FM station devote a minimum of 9 hours a week to special interest music: Classical, Folk, Jazz..and Broadway show music came under that category. The station slotted it Sunday nights at 9 (Put it where it will do the least damage) and I recall it ran a full hour commercial free. Each week we did a full cast album telling the plot between cuts and in the "intermission" the host would interview local arts performers. It was on that program I did the broadcast premieres of the cast albums of SWEENEY TODD, 42ND STREET, EVITA, NINE, CATS, LA CAGE AUX FOLLES and many others. I was heartbroken when the station cancelled it in May of 1984 (they were switching from easy-listening to soft rock - and soon after I was switching to an all-Classical station.)

On that front I am in negotiations to launch a similar program this fall and if you know local radio stations that might like to carry it please let me know about them.

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