Set in 1884, the story focuses on Dolly Gallagher Levi, a widow who supports herself by a variety of means, with matchmaking as her primary source of income.

Horace Vandergelder, a wealthy but miserly merchant from Yonkers, New York, has hired her to find him a wife, but unbeknownst to him Dolly is determined to fill the position herself.

When he expresses his intent to travel to New York City to woo milliner Irene Molloy, Dolly shows him the photograph of a woman she calls Miss Ernestina Simple and tells him the buxom beauty would be a far better choice for him.

Irene furiously demands that Cornelius and Barnaby repay her by taking her and the shop assistant Minnie out to a fancy restaurant for dinner (Dolly had led her to believe that the men were secretly members of high society).

[3] Stanley Kauffmann of The New Republic wrote- 'The film-script by John Michael Hayes condenses and alters the original but not in any outrageous fashion; it is the director and actors who fail it'.