Show Boat (1929 film)
Encyclopedia
Show Boat is a film based on the novel by Edna Ferber
. This version was released by Universal
in two editions, one a silent film
for movie theatres still not equipped for sound, and one a part-talkie
with a sound
prologue. The storyline follows the novel rather closely, with the significant exception of the racial angle present in the novel and in virtually all other adaptations of it, including the famous 1927 Broadway musical version and the film versions of the musical, made in 1936
and 1951
. (Some live radio
adaptations of the musical would also omit or heavily alter the racial angle.)
The film was long believed to be lost, but most of it has been found and released on laserdisc and shown on Turner Classic Movies
. A number of sections of the soundtrack were found in the mid-1990s on Vitaphone
records, although the film was made with a Movietone
soundtrack. Two more records were discovered in 2005, and it was said these elements would be used for a 2007 DVD, but more than five years after that announcement, it has yet to appear.
–Hammerstein
Broadway musical Show Boat
, which was based on the same novel. Its plot line sticks much closer to the novel than to the stage production, but avoids the racial controversy that plays a prominent role in both Ferber's novel and the Kern-Hammerstein Broadway show. On the other hand, it features risqué material related in the book but completely omitted from the Broadway musical adaptation, such as the depiction of a Chicago
bordello.
Following the novel, the film starts when Magnolia, the daughter of Captain Andy Hawks and his wife Parthy, is still a little girl. (Magnolia is aged 18 at the start of the musical.) In both the novel and in the 1929 film, Cap'n Andy and Parthy die, whereas in the musical and the subsequent film versions based on it, all of the characters remain alive, despite the fact that the story spans forty years (in the novel, the span is a decade longer). However, in a nod to the stage musical, Magnolia and her gambler husband Gaylord Ravenal are reunited on the show boat at the end of the 1929 film, whereas in the novel, Ravenal not only never returns to Magnolia, but dies in San Francisco, and Magnolia returns to Mississippi to run the show boat alone after Parthy's death from a stroke.
The interracial marriage between the mulatto
actress Julie and her white husband Steve, the section of Ferber's novel that made the stage musical so unusual for its time, was completely dropped from the 1929 film to appease censors and Southern audiences, and Julie in this version was not only made a white woman, but was evicted from the boat not because of her illegal marriage to a white man, but because of Parthy's jealousy over her relationship with Magnolia (to whom Julie is a sort of surrogate mother and confidante). Years later, Julie becomes the madam of that Chicago bordello, not an alcoholic as in the musical, and the disappearance of her husband is left unexplained.
The story was adapted from Edna Ferber
's novel by Charles Kenyon
, Harry A. Pollard
, and Tom Reed. The film was directed by Pollard and produced by Carl Laemmle
.
s to sound film
s and this version of Show Boat was made as a silent film. (One must keep in mind that it was not intended to be a film version of the musical, but of the novel.) But the studio panicked when they realized that audiences might be expecting a talking picture version of Show Boat now that sound films had become so popular, and the film was temporarily withheld from release.
Subsequently, several scenes were then reshot to include about thirty minutes of dialogue and singing. At first, the songs recorded for the film had nothing to do with the Broadway score. However, Universal began to fear that audiences might instead be expecting, rather than just the Ferber novel, a film version of the stage musical, which was still playing on Broadway
at the same time that the 1929 film premiered. So, a two-reel sound prologue
, featuring original Broadway cast members Helen Morgan
(Julie), Jules Bledsoe
(Joe), Tess Gardella
(Queenie) and the Jubilee Singers singing five songs from the show, was also added, and the movie was released both as a part-talkie
and as a silent film without the prologue. Otis Harlan, who played Cap'n Andy in the film, served as Master of Ceremonies in the prologue, which also featured legendary impresario Florenz Ziegfeld
, producer of the stage musical version of Show Boat, and Carl Laemmle
, the producer of the film, as themselves. Three of the songs heard in the prologue were not heard in the film proper. In the actual storyline of the film, Laura la Plante, with a dubbed singing voice, performs five songs, two of them from the stage musical - Ol' Man River
(which Magnolia does not sing at all in any other version of "Show Boat"), and Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man
. Both of these songs were sung in circumstances entirely different from any version of the musical. The other songs that Ms. La Plante sang in the film were traditional spirituals such as "I Got Shoes" and (it is believed) Deep River
, as well as an outrageously racist coon song
of the early 1900s entitled (what else?) "Coon Coon Coon". Her singing voice was dubbed by soprano Eva Olivetti.
It was long-believed that an entirely new score was written by Billy Rose
for the film, but according to Miles Kreuger in his book Show Boat: The Story of a Classic American Musical, this turns out to not be true. Rose wrote only one new song for the film, and the Broadway score was not dropped because of any suggestion by him, as is often claimed.
The singing voice of Stepin Fetchit, who played Joe in the film, was provided by Jules Bledsoe, the original Joe of the 1927 stage production of the musical
. Fetchit mouthed the lyrics to a popular song of the time entitled The Lonesome Road
, which, as sung on the soundtrack by Bledsoe, served as the film's finale instead of a final reprise
of Ol' Man River, as in the show.
The entire stage score, except for Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man, Bill
, Ol' Man River, as well as the little-known songs C'mon Folks! (Queenie's Ballyhoo) and Hey Feller!, was replaced in the 1929 film by several spirituals and popular songs written by other songwriters, and largely because of this, the movie was not a success. It is likely, though, that the fact that it was a part-talkie may have played a part in its failure. The then-recent 1929 film version of The Desert Song
, an all-sound film almost literally faithful to the stage musical of the same name, had been a huge success, and audiences were no longer willing to accept part-talking musical films.
Several of the extant parts of the 1929 Show Boat have been combined and occasionally shown on Turner Classic Movies
. Fragments of the prologue not included in the TCM showings - both sound and picture - were shown as part of the A&E's
biography of Florenz Ziegfeld, and have also turned up on YouTube
. However, in the TCM version, the visual print of the Prologue sequence has been replaced with an "Overture" card.
presentation, and the only one of the three film versions to run over two hours (the stage musical ran three hours originally, and was filmed in 1936 and 1951 at a length of slightly less than two hours).
Edna Ferber
Edna Ferber was an American novelist, short story writer and playwright. Her novels were especially popular and included the Pulitzer Prize-winning So Big , Show Boat , and Giant .-Early years:Ferber was born August 15, 1885, in Kalamazoo, Michigan,...
. This version was released by Universal
Universal Studios
Universal Pictures , a subsidiary of NBCUniversal, is one of the six major movie studios....
in two editions, one a silent film
Silent film
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...
for movie theatres still not equipped for sound, and one a part-talkie
Part-talkie
A part-talkie is a partly, and most often primarily, silent film which includes one or more synchronous sound sequences with audible dialog or singing. During the silent portions lines of dialog are presented as "titles" -- printed text briefly filling the screen -- and the soundtrack is used only...
with a sound
Sound
Sound is a mechanical wave that is an oscillation of pressure transmitted through a solid, liquid, or gas, composed of frequencies within the range of hearing and of a level sufficiently strong to be heard, or the sensation stimulated in organs of hearing by such vibrations.-Propagation of...
prologue. The storyline follows the novel rather closely, with the significant exception of the racial angle present in the novel and in virtually all other adaptations of it, including the famous 1927 Broadway musical version and the film versions of the musical, made in 1936
Show Boat (1936 film)
Show Boat is a 1936 film based on the musical play by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II , which the team adapted from the novel by Edna Ferber....
and 1951
Show Boat (1951 film)
Show Boat is a 1951 Technicolor film based on the musical by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II and the novel by Edna Ferber....
. (Some live radio
Live radio
Live radio is radio broadcast without delay. Before the days of television, audiences listened to live dramas, comedies, quiz shows, and concerts on the radio much the same way that they now do on TV. Most talk radio is live radio where people can speak about their opinions/lives....
adaptations of the musical would also omit or heavily alter the racial angle.)
The film was long believed to be lost, but most of it has been found and released on laserdisc and shown on Turner Classic Movies
Turner Classic Movies
Turner Classic Movies is a movie-oriented cable television channel, owned by the Turner Broadcasting System subsidiary of Time Warner, featuring commercial-free classic movies, mostly from the Turner Entertainment and MGM, United Artists, RKO and Warner Bros. film libraries...
. A number of sections of the soundtrack were found in the mid-1990s on Vitaphone
Vitaphone
Vitaphone was a sound film process used on feature films and nearly 1,000 short subjects produced by Warner Bros. and its sister studio First National from 1926 to 1930. Vitaphone was the last, but most successful, of the sound-on-disc processes...
records, although the film was made with a Movietone
Movietone sound system
The Movietone sound system is a sound-on-film method of recording sound for motion pictures that guarantees synchronization between sound and picture. It achieves this by recording the sound as a variable-density optical track on the same strip of film that records the pictures...
soundtrack. Two more records were discovered in 2005, and it was said these elements would be used for a 2007 DVD, but more than five years after that announcement, it has yet to appear.
Storyline
Contrary to what is often claimed, the 1929 film is not really an adaptation of the classic 1927 KernJerome Kern
Jerome David Kern was an American composer of musical theatre and popular music. One of the most important American theatre composers of the early 20th century, he wrote more than 700 songs, used in over 100 stage works, including such classics as "Ol' Man River", "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man", "A...
–Hammerstein
Oscar Hammerstein II
Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein II was an American librettist, theatrical producer, and theatre director of musicals for almost forty years. Hammerstein won eight Tony Awards and was twice awarded an Academy Award for "Best Original Song". Many of his songs are standard repertoire for...
Broadway musical Show Boat
Show Boat
Show Boat is a musical in two acts with music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. It was originally produced in New York in 1927 and in London in 1928, and was based on the 1926 novel of the same name by Edna Ferber. The plot chronicles the lives of those living and working...
, which was based on the same novel. Its plot line sticks much closer to the novel than to the stage production, but avoids the racial controversy that plays a prominent role in both Ferber's novel and the Kern-Hammerstein Broadway show. On the other hand, it features risqué material related in the book but completely omitted from the Broadway musical adaptation, such as the depiction of a Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
bordello.
Following the novel, the film starts when Magnolia, the daughter of Captain Andy Hawks and his wife Parthy, is still a little girl. (Magnolia is aged 18 at the start of the musical.) In both the novel and in the 1929 film, Cap'n Andy and Parthy die, whereas in the musical and the subsequent film versions based on it, all of the characters remain alive, despite the fact that the story spans forty years (in the novel, the span is a decade longer). However, in a nod to the stage musical, Magnolia and her gambler husband Gaylord Ravenal are reunited on the show boat at the end of the 1929 film, whereas in the novel, Ravenal not only never returns to Magnolia, but dies in San Francisco, and Magnolia returns to Mississippi to run the show boat alone after Parthy's death from a stroke.
The interracial marriage between the mulatto
Mulatto
Mulatto denotes a person with one white parent and one black parent, or more broadly, a person of mixed black and white ancestry. Contemporary usage of the term varies greatly, and the broader sense of the term makes its application rather subjective, as not all people of mixed white and black...
actress Julie and her white husband Steve, the section of Ferber's novel that made the stage musical so unusual for its time, was completely dropped from the 1929 film to appease censors and Southern audiences, and Julie in this version was not only made a white woman, but was evicted from the boat not because of her illegal marriage to a white man, but because of Parthy's jealousy over her relationship with Magnolia (to whom Julie is a sort of surrogate mother and confidante). Years later, Julie becomes the madam of that Chicago bordello, not an alcoholic as in the musical, and the disappearance of her husband is left unexplained.
Cast and crew
The film stars:- Laura La PlanteLaura La PlanteLaura La Plante was an American actress, best-known for her roles in silent films.-Early acting career:...
as Magnolia Hawks - Joseph SchildkrautJoseph SchildkrautJoseph Schildkraut was an Austrian stage and film actor.-Early life:Born in Vienna, Austria, Schildkraut was the son of stage actor Rudolph Schildkraut. The younger Schildkraut moved to the United States in the early 1900s. He appeared in many Broadway productions...
as Gaylord Ravenal - Emily FitzroyEmily FitzroyEmily Fitzroy was a British film actress who eventually became an American citizen. She made her film debut in 1915 and retired in 1944, with exactly 100 films to her resume...
as Parthenia 'Parthy' Ann Hawks - Otis HarlanOtis Harlan-Biography:Harlan was born in Zanesville, Ohio in 1865. He married Nellie Harvey and had a daughter named Marion. Harlan was the uncle of silent actor Kenneth Harlan.-Career:...
as Capt'n Andy Hawks and the Master of Ceremonies in Prologue - Alma RubensAlma RubensAlma Rubens was an American silent film actress and stage performer.-Early life:Born to John B. and Theresa Hayes Rueben in San Francisco, California, she performed since youth and became a star at the age of 19. She was educated at the Sacred Heart Convent in San Francisco...
as Julie DozierJulie DozierJulie Dozier is a character in Edna Ferber's 1926 novel Show Boat. In Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II's classic musical version of it, which opened on Broadway on December 27, 1927, her stage name is Julie La Verne. She is exposed as Julie Dozier in Act I... - Jack McDonaldJack McDonald (actor)Jack McDonald was an American actor of the silent era. He appeared in 71 films between 1912 and 1930.He was born in San Francisco, California.-Selected filmography:* Show Boat * Don Q, Son of Zorro...
as Windy - Jane La Verne as Magnolia as a Child/Kim
- Neely EdwardsNeely EdwardsNeely Edwards was an American film actor of the silent era. He appeared in 174 films between 1915 and 1959...
as Schultzy - Elise Bartlett as Elly
- Stepin FetchitStepin FetchitStepin Fetchit was the stage name of American comedian and film actor Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry....
as Joe
The story was adapted from Edna Ferber
Edna Ferber
Edna Ferber was an American novelist, short story writer and playwright. Her novels were especially popular and included the Pulitzer Prize-winning So Big , Show Boat , and Giant .-Early years:Ferber was born August 15, 1885, in Kalamazoo, Michigan,...
's novel by Charles Kenyon
Charles Kenyon
Charles Kenyon was an American screenwriter, who wrote or co-wrote the screenplays for 114 films between 1915 and 1946...
, Harry A. Pollard
Harry A. Pollard
Harry A. Pollard was an American silent film actor, director, and screenwriter who in total was involved in over 300 film productions...
, and Tom Reed. The film was directed by Pollard and produced by Carl Laemmle
Carl Laemmle
Carl Laemmle , born in Laupheim, Württemberg, Germany, was a pioneer in American film making and a founder of one of the original major Hollywood movie studios - Universal...
.
Sound adaptation
These were the years in which film studios were making a transition from silent filmSilent film
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...
s to sound film
Sound film
A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades would pass before sound motion pictures were made commercially...
s and this version of Show Boat was made as a silent film. (One must keep in mind that it was not intended to be a film version of the musical, but of the novel.) But the studio panicked when they realized that audiences might be expecting a talking picture version of Show Boat now that sound films had become so popular, and the film was temporarily withheld from release.
Subsequently, several scenes were then reshot to include about thirty minutes of dialogue and singing. At first, the songs recorded for the film had nothing to do with the Broadway score. However, Universal began to fear that audiences might instead be expecting, rather than just the Ferber novel, a film version of the stage musical, which was still playing on 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...
at the same time that the 1929 film premiered. So, a two-reel sound prologue
Prologue
A prologue is an opening to a story that establishes the setting and gives background details, often some earlier story that ties into the main one, and other miscellaneous information. The Greek prologos included the modern meaning of prologue, but was of wider significance...
, featuring original Broadway cast members Helen Morgan
Helen Morgan
Helen Morgan was an American singer and actress who worked in films and on the stage. A quintessential torch singer, she made a big splash in the Chicago club scene in the 1920s...
(Julie), Jules Bledsoe
Jules Bledsoe
Jules Bledsoe was a once renowned, but now semi-forgotten baritone, and the first African American artist to gain regular employment on Broadway, subsequent to Bert Williams, William Grant Still, Ford Dabney and others....
(Joe), Tess Gardella
Tess Gardella
Therese "Tess" Gardella was an Italian American performer whose stage persona was "Aunt Jemima".A native of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Gardella performed on both stage and screen, usually in blackface. In 1927, she originated the role of Queenie in the classic stage musical Show Boat...
(Queenie) and the Jubilee Singers singing five songs from the show, was also added, and the movie was released both as a part-talkie
Part-talkie
A part-talkie is a partly, and most often primarily, silent film which includes one or more synchronous sound sequences with audible dialog or singing. During the silent portions lines of dialog are presented as "titles" -- printed text briefly filling the screen -- and the soundtrack is used only...
and as a silent film without the prologue. Otis Harlan, who played Cap'n Andy in the film, served as Master of Ceremonies in the prologue, which also featured legendary impresario Florenz Ziegfeld
Florenz Ziegfeld
Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr. , , was an American Broadway impresario, notable for his series of theatrical revues, the Ziegfeld Follies , inspired by the Folies Bergère of Paris. He also produced the musical Show Boat...
, producer of the stage musical version of Show Boat, and Carl Laemmle
Carl Laemmle
Carl Laemmle , born in Laupheim, Württemberg, Germany, was a pioneer in American film making and a founder of one of the original major Hollywood movie studios - Universal...
, the producer of the film, as themselves. Three of the songs heard in the prologue were not heard in the film proper. In the actual storyline of the film, Laura la Plante, with a dubbed singing voice, performs five songs, two of them from the stage musical - Ol' Man River
Ol' Man River
"Ol' Man River" is a song in the 1927 musical Show Boat that expresses the African American hardship and struggles of the time with the endless, uncaring flow of the Mississippi River; it is sung from the point-of-view of a dock worker on a showboat, and is the most famous song from the show...
(which Magnolia does not sing at all in any other version of "Show Boat"), and Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man
Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man
"Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" with music by Jerome Kern, and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, is one of the most famous songs from their classic 1927 musical play Show Boat, adapted from Edna Ferber's novel.-Context:...
. Both of these songs were sung in circumstances entirely different from any version of the musical. The other songs that Ms. La Plante sang in the film were traditional spirituals such as "I Got Shoes" and (it is believed) Deep River
Deep River (song)
"Deep River" is an anonymous spiritual of African American origin. It has been sung in several films, including the 1929 film version of Show Boat, although it was not used in the original show...
, as well as an outrageously racist coon song
Coon song
Coon songs were a genre of music popular in the United States and around the English-speaking world from 1880 to 1920, that presented a racist and stereotyped image of blacks.-Rise and fall from popularity:...
of the early 1900s entitled (what else?) "Coon Coon Coon". Her singing voice was dubbed by soprano Eva Olivetti.
It was long-believed that an entirely new score was written by Billy Rose
Billy Rose
William "Billy" Rose was an American impresario, theatrical showman and lyricist. He is credited with many famous songs, notably "Me and My Shadow" , "It Happened in Monterey" and "It's Only a Paper Moon"...
for the film, but according to Miles Kreuger in his book Show Boat: The Story of a Classic American Musical, this turns out to not be true. Rose wrote only one new song for the film, and the Broadway score was not dropped because of any suggestion by him, as is often claimed.
The singing voice of Stepin Fetchit, who played Joe in the film, was provided by Jules Bledsoe, the original Joe of the 1927 stage production of the musical
Show Boat
Show Boat is a musical in two acts with music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. It was originally produced in New York in 1927 and in London in 1928, and was based on the 1926 novel of the same name by Edna Ferber. The plot chronicles the lives of those living and working...
. Fetchit mouthed the lyrics to a popular song of the time entitled The Lonesome Road
The Lonesome Road
"The Lonesome Road" is a 1927 song with music by Nathaniel Shilkret and lyrics by Gene Austin, alternately titled "Lonesome Road", "Look Down that Lonesome Road" and "Lonesome Road Blues." It was written in the style of an African-American folk song....
, which, as sung on the soundtrack by Bledsoe, served as the film's finale instead of a final reprise
Reprise
Reprise is a fundamental device in the history of art. In literature, a reprise consists of the rewriting of another work; in music, a reprise is the repetition or reiteration of the opening material later in a composition as occurs in the recapitulation of sonata form, though—originally in the...
of Ol' Man River, as in the show.
The entire stage score, except for Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man, Bill
Bill (Show Boat)
"Bill" is a song heard in Act II of Kern and Hammerstein's classic 1927 musical Show Boat. The song was written for Kern and P.G. Wodehouse's 1917 musical Oh, Lady! Lady!! for Vivienne Segal to perform, but withdrawn because it was considered too melancholy for that show...
, Ol' Man River, as well as the little-known songs C'mon Folks! (Queenie's Ballyhoo) and Hey Feller!, was replaced in the 1929 film by several spirituals and popular songs written by other songwriters, and largely because of this, the movie was not a success. It is likely, though, that the fact that it was a part-talkie may have played a part in its failure. The then-recent 1929 film version of The Desert Song
The Desert Song
The Desert Song is an operetta with music by Sigmund Romberg and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, Otto Harbach and Frank Mandel. It was inspired by the 1925 uprising of the Riffs, a group of Moroccan fighters, against French colonial rule. It was also inspired by stories of Lawrence of...
, an all-sound film almost literally faithful to the stage musical of the same name, had been a huge success, and audiences were no longer willing to accept part-talking musical films.
Several of the extant parts of the 1929 Show Boat have been combined and occasionally shown on Turner Classic Movies
Turner Classic Movies
Turner Classic Movies is a movie-oriented cable television channel, owned by the Turner Broadcasting System subsidiary of Time Warner, featuring commercial-free classic movies, mostly from the Turner Entertainment and MGM, United Artists, RKO and Warner Bros. film libraries...
. Fragments of the prologue not included in the TCM showings - both sound and picture - were shown as part of the A&E's
A&E Network
The A&E Network is a United States-based cable and satellite television network with headquarters in New York City and offices in Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, London, Los Angeles and Stamford. A&E also airs in Canada and Latin America. Initially named the Arts & Entertainment Network, A&E launched...
biography of Florenz Ziegfeld, and have also turned up on YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
. However, in the TCM version, the visual print of the Prologue sequence has been replaced with an "Overture" card.
Other information
This was the only film version of Show Boat to be given a road showRoadshow theatrical release
A roadshow theatrical release was a term in the American motion picture industry for a practice in which a film opened in a limited number of theaters in large cities like Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Houston, Atlanta, Dallas, and San Francisco for a specific period of time before the...
presentation, and the only one of the three film versions to run over two hours (the stage musical ran three hours originally, and was filmed in 1936 and 1951 at a length of slightly less than two hours).