HELLO DOLLY 

HELLO DOLLY [Hello Dolly; 1963; music and lyrics by Jerry Herman] You might have expected this show-stopper to rank even higher on the list. Is there a more famous or iconic musical theatre song? Also, Louis Armstrong had a #1 hit with it, temporarily halting the Beatles’ 1964 run up the Billboard charts. So why is it at #22 instead of in the Top 10, perhaps even at #1? The late great Hal Prince would know the answer. When asked to direct Hello, Dolly, he had major qualms with the 10+ minute pageantry of the central song. “They played me this title song,” he once stated. “And I said, ‘This is for a scene where a woman who doesn’t go out visits a restaurant?'” It didn’t make sense in the confines of the show, so he opted to direct the smaller, nearly perfect She Loves Me instead. Hello, Dolly, with its infectious bigger-than-big, overdone-and-then-some title song, played forever and made lots and lots of money. She Loves Me lasted only 302 performances. But Prince wasn’t wrong.