Show Boat (film)
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Show Boat is the name of a musical film based on the stage musical of the same name by Oscar Hammerstein II, which was adapted from the novel by Edna Ferber. The music was by Hammerstein and Jerome Kern. For more about the musical and the plot see: Show Boat.
Musical numbers
Show Boat is a cornucopia of famous, favorite songs -- songs that many people today do not realize first appeared in this musical. The score includes:- Cotton Blossom
- Where's the Mate For Me
- Make Believe
- Ol' Man River
- Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man
- Mis'ry's Comin' Round (only partially sung, until the 1988 3-CD set and the 1994 stage revival restored the whole song)
- Till Good Luck Comes My Way
- Life Upon The Wicked Stage
- You Are Love
- Why Do I Love You?
- Bill
- Goodbye, My Lady Love (by Joseph Howard)
- After The Ball (by Charles K. Harris)
There are also three songs written by Kern and Hammerstein for the 1936 film version:
- I Have The Room Above Her (a duet for Magnolia and Ravenal)
- Gallivantin' Around (a blackface number sung onstage by Magnolia)
- Ah Still Suits Me (a duet for Joe and Queenie, written especially to expand both their roles)
Film versions (spoiler included)
Show Boat has been made into a movie three times, unless one counts the mini-version seen in Till the Clouds Roll By as a film version of the show.1929 Version
Edna Ferber's novel Show Boat was filmed in 1929 by Universal Pictures, with a censored story line. It is not really a version of the musical at all; its plot line sticks much closer to the novel than to the stage production. The interracial love story between Julie and her husband Steve, the same subject matter that made the musical version so unusual for its time, was dropped to appease censors and Southern audiences in the 1929 film. Both Cap'n Andy and Parthy die in this version, something that does not happen at all in the musical, in which no one dies. This version stars Laura La Plante, Joseph Schildkraut, Otis Harlan, Emily Fitzroy, Alma Rubens, Elise Bartlett, and Jack McDonald. It was adapted by Charles Kenyon, Harry A. Pollard, and Tom Reed and was directed by Pollard. It was made as a silent film, but the studio panicked when they realized that because of the coming of sound to film, audiences might be expecting a talking picture version of the novel. To safeguard against this, several scenes were then reshot to include about thirty minutes of dialogue and singing. Because of the success of the stage musical, which was playing on Broadway at the same time that the film was being shot, a two-reel sound prologue, featuring members of the stage cast singing five songs from the stage production, was also added. Most of the original stage score was scrapped for this version, and it was not a success. This was the only film version of Show Boat to be given a road show presentation, and the only one of the three film versions to run over two hours (the stage version ran three hours originally, and was filmed in 1936 and 1951 at a length of slightly less than two hours). The 1929 movie was long considered a lost film, but most of the film has since been recovered, although large portions of the sound track are still missing as of 2006. What has so far been recovered of the film turns up on television very occasionally, on Turner Classic Movies.1936 Version
The 1936 film version of the famed Broadway musical, also from Universal. Magnolia Hawks has grown up on her family's musical-show boat the Cotton Blossom, which travels the Mississippi River putting on shows. She meets Gaylord Ravenal, a charming gambler and marries him. Together with their baby daughter, the couple leaves the boat and moves to Chicago, where they live off Gaylord's gambling winnings. After about ten years, he experiences an especially bad losing streak and leaves Magnolia, out of a sense of guilt that he is ruining her life because of his losses. Magnolia is forced to bring up her young daughter alone, but is reunited with the repentant Ravenal after twenty-three years. In a parallel plot, Julie LaVerne (the showboat's leading actress, who is also a white woman with African-American blood) is forced to leave the boat because of her background, taking Steve Baker (her husband, to whom, under the state's law, she is illegally married) with her. Julie is also abandoned by her husband, and she consequently becomes an alcoholic, from which she presumably never recovers. The 1936 film version of "Show Boat" stars Irene Dunne, Allan Jones, Charles Winninger, Paul Robeson, Helen Morgan, Helen Westley, Queenie Smith, Sammy White, Donald Cook, and Hattie McDaniel, and was directed by James Whale, who tried to bring as many people from the stage production as he could to work on the film. Winninger, Morgan and White had all appeared in both the original 1927 stage production and the 1932 stage revival. Robeson, for whom the role of Joe was actually written, had appeared in the show onstage in 1928 and 1932, and Dunne had toured the U.S. in the role of Magnolia. The 1936 film enlisted the services of the show's original orchestrator, Robert Russell Bennett, and its original conductor, Victor Baravalle.The 1936 version of "Show Boat" is considered by nearly all film critics to be one of the classic film musicals of all time, and one of the best stage-to-film adaptations ever made. Ten numbers from the stage score are actually sung (with three others heard only as background music). Except for the final sequence and three additional songs written especially for the film by Kern and Hammerstein, it follows the stage musical extremely closely, unlike the 1951 version released by MGM. It also retains much of the comedy in the show. Due to time constraints, Whale was forced to delete much of his ending sequence, including a "modern" dance number to contrast with the romantic, "Old South" production number we see Kim starring in, and which was intended to highlight African-American contributions to dance and music. The film has been deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. It was successful at the box office, but was withdrawn from circulation after MGM bought the rights so that they could film their own remake. The controversy surrounding Paul Robeson's supposed Communist leanings further assured that the film would not be seen for a long time, and it was not widely seen again until after Robeson's death in 1976. In 1983 it made its debut on cable television, and it now turns up from time to time on Turner Classic Movies, though not as often as the 1951 remake.
1946 - The Version Seen in \"Till the Clouds Roll By\"
A significant but miniaturized rendition of the show has been included in MGM 's 1946 movie Till the Clouds Roll By, which tells a fictional story of Jerome Kern's life. The Show Boat segment, which takes up the first fifteen minutes of the film, is rather a medley of several of the songs, performed in costume and against stage sets, than an actual film version of the show. It is supposed to be a re-creation of the show's opening night on Broadway in 1927. The mulatto Julie character was played by Lena Horne, while Kathryn Grayson did Magnolia and Tony Martin did Gaylord. African-American actor and baritone Caleb Peterson sang "Ol' Man River" in the Show Boat sequence, but Frank Sinatra reprised it in the movie's finale. Parts of this mini-rendition were later included into one of the That's Entertainment! compilation movies.1951 Version
"Show Boat" was remade in 1951 by MGM, starring Kathryn Grayson, Ava Gardner, Howard Keel, Joe E. Brown, Marge Champion, Gower Champion, William Warfield, Robert Sterling, and Agnes Moorehead. It was adapted by John Lee Mahin, J.P. McGowan (uncredited), and George Wells (uncredited) and was directed by George Sidney. Filmed in MGM 's typical, lavish style, this version is the most financially successful of the film adaptations of the play, and is one of MGM's most popular musicals, though arguably one of the studio's less inventive ones. It was the one of the first American productions of "Show Boat" not to feature Robert Russell Bennett's orchestrations (the orchestrations in this film were done by Conrad Salinger). Oscar Hammerstein II's dialogue was almost completely rewritten (by John Lee Mahin), the story was given a major overhaul near the end of the film and the changes are considered by some (though definitely not everyone) to make this version of the story superior to other versions. Changes included keeping the characters of Magnolia and Gaylord significantly younger at the end than in the play, and the expansion of the role of Julie to give her character greater depth. Nearly all of the purely comic scenes were removed, as much of the comedy in the show has no direct bearing on the plot. This left Joe E. Brown (as Cap'n Andy) and Agnes Moorehead (as Parthy) with far less to do than they would otherwise have had, and turned the characters of Frank and Ellie (played by Gower and Marge Champion) into a dance team rather than a comic team who happened to dance.
The racial element was somewhat watered down as well; in this version, Queenie (an uncredited Frances E. Williams) is virtually a bit part, practically disappearing from the story after the first ten minutes, unlike Hattie McDaniel in the 1936 version. (In the 1936 "Show Boat", as well as the stage version, Queenie remarks that it is strange to hear Julie singing "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" because only black people know the song, thereby foreshadowing the revelation of Julie's mixed blood. This remark is completely left out of the MGM version.) Some of the more controversial lines of the song Ol' Man River are no longer heard, and Queenie and Joe do not sing their section of "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man", as they do in all stage versions and in the 1936 film. There is no African-American chorus in the 1951 version, and the levee workers are not seen nearly as much in the 1951 film as in the 1936 one. The 1951 movie is also extremely glossy, smoothing over the poverty depicted more tellingly in the 1936 version, and despite some (brief) actual location shooting (primarily in the opening shots of townspeople reacting to the Showboat's arrival), the film does not give a very strong feeling of authenticity. Lena Horne was originally to have played Julie (after Dinah Shore and Judy Garland were passed over) as she had in the brief segment of the play in the 1946 Jerome Kern biopic Till the Clouds Roll By. but studio executives were nervous about casting a glamorous black actress in one of the lead roles, so Gardner was chosen instead. Gardner's singing voice was later dubbed by vocalist Annette Warren; her original rendition of one of the musical numbers appeared in the compilation film That's Entertainment III and is considered by some to be superior to the version used in the film. Gardner's vocals were included on the soundtrack album for the movie, and in an autobiography written not long before her death, Gardner reported she was still receiving royalties from the release.
There were several major musical differences from the original play in this version:
- The opening song, "Cotton Blossom", rather than being sung by the black chorus and by the townspeople who witness the show boat's arrival, was sung by a group of singers and dancers in flashy costumes filing out of the boat. This required a small change in the song's lyrics.
- "Ol' Man River", instead of being sung right after "Make Believe", was moved to a scene taking place in the early morning, in which Joe sadly watches Julie and her husband leave the boat because of their interracial marriage. Thus, the song became Joe's reaction to this event.
- Because of the reduction of both Joe and Queenie's roles, as well as the absence of an African-American chorus, "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" became a song for only Julie and Magnolia, while the deckhands relaxing on the boat provided their own instrumental accompaniment, but did not sing.
- "Life Upon the Wicked Stage", rather than being sung by Ellie to a group of worshipful fans curious about stage life, was moved to the New Year's Eve scene at the Trocadero nightclub, to be sung and danced by Ellie and Frank in the spot in which the two are originally supposed to sing "Goodbye My Lady Love".
- The little-known song "I Might Fall Back On You", another duet for Ellie and Frank, was sung as a number on the stage of the show boat, instead of as a "character song" for the two to sing outside the box office, as originally written.
- "Make Believe" is reprised by Ravenal when he returns at the end, rather than when he is saying farewell to his daughter just before he deserts her and Magnolia.
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