The Matchmaker

The Matchmaker is a play by Thornton Wilder based on an 1842 play by the Austrian playwright Johann Nestroy[?] titled Einen Jux will er sich machen. The Matchmaker was itself the basis for the musical Hello, Dolly!, which was made into a 1969 movie.

The Matchmaker is also a 1958 movie of Wilder's play, directed by Joseph Anthony[?] and starring Shirley Booth, Anthony Perkins, Shirley MacLaine, Paul Ford[?], and Robert Morse[?].

The play is a comedy about a widow who brokers marriages, and many other kinds of transactions, in Yonkers, New York (U.S.A.), around the turn of the 19th century. She sets her cap for a local tradesman who has hired her to find him a wife, and at the end of the play he finally does ask her to marry him.