The Merchant of Yonkers
Encyclopedia
Thornton Wilder
Thornton Niven Wilder was an American playwright and novelist. He received three Pulitzer Prizes, one for his novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey and two for his plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth, and a National Book Award for his novel The Eighth Day.-Early years:Wilder was born in Madison,...
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Hilary Daniels 1835 one-act farce
Farce
In theatre, a farce is a comedy which aims at entertaining the audience by means of unlikely, extravagant, and improbable situations, disguise and mistaken identity, verbal humour of varying degrees of sophistication, which may include word play, and a fast-paced plot whose speed usually increases,...
A Day Well Spent had been extended into a full-length play entitled Einen Jux will er sich machen
Einen Jux will er sich machen
Einen Jux will er sich machen , , is a three-act musical play, designated as a Posse mit Gesang, by Austrian playwright Johann Nestroy first performed at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna on 10 March 1842...
by Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
n playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
Johann Nestroy
Johann Nestroy
Johann Nepomuk Eduard Ambrosius Nestroy was a singer, actor and playwright in the popular Austrian tradition of the Biedermeier period and its immediate aftermath...
in 1842. Wilder adapted Nestroy's version into an Americanized
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
comedy
Comedy
Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...
entitled The Merchant of Yonkers, which revolves around Horace Vandergelder, a wealthy Yonkers, New York
Yonkers, New York
Yonkers is the fourth most populous city in the state of New York , and the most populous city in Westchester County, with a population of 195,976...
businessman in the market for a wife.
The Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
production, directed by Max Reinhardt
Max Reinhardt
----Max Reinhardt was an Austrian theater and film director and actor.-Biography:...
, opened on December 28, 1938 at the Guild Theatre
August Wilson Theatre
The August Wilson Theatre, located at 245 West 52nd Street in New York City, is a Broadway theatre.Designed by architects C. Howard Crane and Kenneth Franzheim and constructed by the Theatre Guild, it opened as the Guild Theatre in 1925 with a revival of George Bernard Shaw's Caesar and...
, where it ran for 39 performances. The cast included Jane Cowl
Jane Cowl
Jane Cowl was an American film and stage actress and playwright "notorious for playing lacrymose parts". Actress Jane Russell was named in Cowl's honor.-Biography:...
and Tom Ewell
Tom Ewell
Tom Ewell was an American actor.-Early life and career:Born Samuel Yewell Tompkins in Owensboro, Kentucky, where his family expected him to follow in their footsteps as lawyers or whiskey and tobacco dealers....
.
In 1955, Wilder considerably rewrote the play, greatly expanding a previously minor character into the lead role of Dolly Gallagher Levi, and rechristened the piece The Matchmaker
The Matchmaker
The Matchmaker is a play by Thornton Wilder.The play has a long and colorful history. John Oxenford's 1835 one-act farce A Day Well Spent had been extended into a full-length play entitled Einen Jux will er sich machen by Austrian playwright Johann Nestroy in 1842...
, under which title it was far more successful, running for 486 performances with Ruth Gordon
Ruth Gordon
Ruth Gordon Jones , better known as Ruth Gordon, was an American actress and writer. She was perhaps best known for her film roles such as Minnie Castevet, Rosemary's overly solicitous neighbor in Rosemary's Baby, as the eccentric Maude in Harold and Maude and as the mother of Orville Boggs in the...
as Dolly Levi. It later served as the basis for Jerry Herman
Jerry Herman
Jerry Herman is an American composer and lyricist, known for his work in Broadway musical theater. He composed the scores for the hit Broadway musicals Hello, Dolly!, Mame, and La Cage aux Folles. He has been nominated for the Tony Award five times, and won twice, for Hello, Dolly! and La Cage...
's 1964 musical hit Hello, Dolly!
Hello, Dolly! (musical)
Hello, Dolly! is a musical with lyrics and music by Jerry Herman and a book by Michael Stewart, based on Thornton Wilder's 1938 farce The Merchant of Yonkers, which Wilder revised and retitled The Matchmaker in 1955....
, running for 2,844 performances.