Dolly Rediviva

Pearl Bailey is back and Dolly has got her. Or vice versa. Either way the jaunty matchmaker from Yonkers and the sly, ironic, purring Pearl suit each other perfectly. Although Hello, Dolly!

has been running in Manhattan for almost four years, she and an all-Negro cast had lines forming at the box office last week.

Decked out in dazzling exaggerations of turn-of-the-century elegance, topped off with such hats as dreams are made of, she struts and swaggers new pizazz into the undistinguished material that Carol Channing, Betty Grable, Martha Raye and Ginger Rogers have done so well by. The Bailey way with a wink or a wiggle or a throwaway line is pure pleasure, and the rich, round raunchy Bailey voice can wrap up and deliver anything singable.

Pearl has help of a high order--an exuberant cast of dancers that prances up a tropical storm with Gower Champion's expert choreography. Cab Calloway is first-rate as the well-heeled hay and feed man for whom Dolly Levi sets her ostrich plumes; the only pity is that he has so little to do.

Any temptation there may have been to turn the production into a blackface romp has been successfully resisted; the company plays as if no one had ever heard of a colored entertainer. In fact, David Merrick's Negro Dolly comes off so well that other producers may soon be using black power to pump new life into other hits that have gone the distance. Louis Armstrong as Teyve? Diahann Carroll as Mame?

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