Thrice Told Tales: Show Boat (A Nightmare for ‘Modern Audiences’)

("Thrice Told Tales" is a randomly recurring series that presents three film theatrical adaptations of a source material.)

According to the Educational Theater Association (EdTA), the ten most popular plays for high school productions in the school year 2022/23 were:

• The Addams Family
• Mamma Mia!
• Into the Woods
• Little Shop of Horrors
• Disney’s Beauty and the Beast
• Disney’s The Little Mermaid
• The SpongeBob Musical
• Chicago: Teen Edition
• Legally Blonde: The Musical
• Mean Girls: High School Version.

If you expected to see Oklahoma!, Brigadoon, or Annie Get Your Gun, you’re living in the past. If you expected to see the first great American musical (the show that made modern American musical theater possible), Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein’s Show Boat – well, that’s just not happening ever again at an American high school.

Sure, a production of The Sound of Music will crop up here and there at a high school near you. But Show Boat? That’s probably radioactive to any high school, college, or community theater. Today’s Thrice Told Tales will make it clear why that’s the case.

As always, Thrice Told Tales looks at a story that has been brought to the screen at least three times. Sometimes that requires choosing three works out of many, but with Show Boat, there have been only three major screen adaptations.

We’ll start with a film that was beset with challenges from the beginning.

Show Boat (1929)

In 1926, Edna Ferber’s novel Show Boat, which followed three generations of show people, became a bestseller. Carl Laemmle, the founder of Universal Pictures, bought the property and envisioned a blockbuster. It would be a silent movie, of course, since at the time all movies were.

Even as this version of the story went into production, two things happened that changed all expectations for the film. First, the 1927 release of The Jazz Singer. Sound – dialogue, music, and singing – was now expected in major releases, especially in a film with a show business theme. Second, the Broadway musical Show Boat debuted in 1927. Produced by Florenz Ziegfeld, it was a bold new step for American theater, combining drama, spectacle, and music all working together to tell a story in a style very different from the light operetta and follies that came before. It was a huge hit. There was an expectation that the film Show Boat would be the same as the musical Show Boat, but Universal didn’t have the rights to the musical, only the novel.

The studio panicked and delayed the film’s release. Several scenes were re-shot to add dialogue and music. A two-reel prologue with songs from the musical sung by the original Broadway cast was added. It was sound only, accompanied by a picture of a showboat. Otis Harlan (who played Cap’n Andy in the film) acted as Master of Ceremonies for the prologue.

The story of the film uses just a short part of the novel, featuring Magnolia, Cap’n Andy’s daughter, and her romance with Gaylord Ravenal, a rapscallion gambler. Magnolia leaves her parents and the showboat to marry Gaylord, who eventually gambles away their future — as well as the future of their daughter, Kim. Gaylord abandons Magnolia, believing he has failed them, so Magnolia must return to the stage, making her own fortune (she sings “Negro music” as a “Coon Shouter”). In the end, all are reunited, and all is well.

In every other version of the story, race is a large part of the story. Julie, the showboat’s star, is married to Steve. She befriends young Magnolia, though Magnolia’s mother discourages the relationship. When a crewman, Pete, makes advances on Julie, Steve beats him up. Pete vows revenge.

When the boat stops in a Mississippi town, Pete goes to the local sheriff, accusing Julie of being half black and married to a white husband. Such a relationship is illegal in the town. Steve hears about the plot. In front of others on the boat, he cuts Julie’s hand and sucks her blood. When the sheriff boards the ship, Steve calls everyone to testify that he has “negro blood” inside him. Which everyone confirms. Nonetheless, Steve and Julie are asked to leave the ship.

In the 1929 film version, this whole subplot about miscegenation is removed from the story. Magnolia’s friendship with Julie is discouraged because (in the words of Magnolia’s mother) Julie is a “trollop.” There are black characters in the 1929 version, Joe and Queenie, but their roles are much smaller than in any other version of the story. Joe is played by Stepin Fetchit, a black actor who specialized in portraying exaggerated stereotypes, leading to him being shamed and ostracized. Gertrude Howard, who played Queenie, would die at the age of 41 in 1934.

The film was released both in wholly silent versions and versions with a partial soundtrack. It did moderate business.

For decades, the film was believed lost, but eventually most of the footage was retrieved. However, large sections of the soundtrack are still missing, leading to strange footage of musical numbers without music and sequences of musicians playing and singers singing silently. It doesn’t make for enthralling viewing.

I can’t fairly evaluate the film because of the missing material. Turner Classic Movies has put together the most complete version of the film from a variety of sources, but we still don’t know how close the version we have is to the one released on July 29, 1929.

What we do have really isn’t a very good show.

Show Boat (1936)

Carl Laemmle, the head of Universal Pictures, wasn’t pleased with the 1929 version, either. He wanted another shot at it, this time basing the film on the Broadway musical. In 1934, he planned to make the film with Russ Columbo, a musical star of the day, as Gaylord Ravenal (the gambler). He may have gotten his way, but Columbo was killed in a shotgun accident.

It was directed by James Whale, a director mostly remembered for his work in horror films, including Frankenstein (1931), The Old Dark House (1932), The Invisible Man (1933), and The Bride of Frankenstein (1935).

Like the musical (and unlike the previous film), this film tells the whole story of the novel, spanning forty years, from the Restoration Era of the 1880s through the Gilded Age through the Roaring ‘20s. This version also deals most bluntly with issues of race, in both positive and negative ways.

Two of the best performances are given by Hattie McDaniel as Queenie and Paul Robeson as Joe. McDaniel’s Queenie is fearless. When asked by Pete, the villain, where she got a showy piece of jewelry, she responds, “Ask me no questions, and I’ll tell you no lies.” Queenie and Joe demonstrate their loving relationship in various ways, including a duet written for the film: “Ah Still Suits Me.”

Some have complained about Joe being portrayed as lazy and shiftless, going along with certain stereotypes, but I think it’s entirely fair for Robeson to portray a character in this way. After all, he was a Communist.

There are hints that Julie (Helen Morgan) is of “mixed race” early in the film. Magnolia tells Queenie that Julie taught her the song “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man of Mine,” which Queenie recognizes as a “Negro” song. As Magnolia (Irene Dunne) sings the song with Queenie and a chorus of black people along the side of the river, she dances a “negro shuffle."

Julie’s secret is revealed in a dramatic fashion. Crewman Pete (Arthur Hohl) makes a pass at Julie, and Julie’s husband, Steve, gives Pete a thrashing. Pete goes ashore to tell the local sheriff that the star of the showboat, Julie La Verne, is half black and married to a white man. While waiting for the sheriff to arrive, as those on the boat watch in confusion, Steve quite dramatically cuts Julie’s hand with a knife and sucks her blood. As a result, everyone on the boat can testify he has “Negro blood” in him. Julie and Steve aren’t arrested, but are forced to leave the ship.

Probably the most uncomfortable scene for modern audiences is Magnolia’s blackface performance (with a white chorus supporting her – also in blackface). This wasn’t part of the Broadway musical, although at least one white actress portraying Queenie did perform in blackface.

The best musical number in the film is Robeson’s performance of “Old Man River.” His powerful voice brings out the pathos and majesty of the song, and we see a chorus of black men going about the hard work on the barges and in the fields as they sing. The performance is among the best to be found in any movie musical. Robeson would perform the song throughout his career, though in later years he changed the lyrics a bit. Instead of singing, “You get a little drunk and you land in jail” to “Show a little grit and you land in jail”. His performance is the definitive version of this great American showtune.

Like the musical, the film follows Magnolia and Gaylord (such a name) into their elder years when, after a long separation, they are brought together by their daughter Kim, who becomes a star of the musical theatre. (Irene Dunne’s old age make-up is rather good, but the old age make-up for Allan Jones is laughable.)

This is the best version of the film, but it disappeared from public view for several years for two reasons. One is that in the 1940s MGM was looking to do its own version of the film with Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy, so MGM bought up all available copies of the Universal film and kept it out of circulation.

The other reason was the blacklisting of Paul Robeson in 1950 for his communist sympathies. The film was rarely seen until after Robeson died in 1976. The film received screening on two of the late Ted Turner’s networks, TNT (which launched in 1988) and TCM (beginning in 1994). In 2020, the Criterion Collection released a 4K restoration of the film.

Show Boat (1951)

Though MGM wasn’t able to produce a version of the show with MacDonald and Eddy in the 1940s, the studio eventually managed to make its version in the next decade. This had a few advantages: the film was shot in Technicolor in the lush MGM style, and they were able to make a few nice step-ups in the casting.

In the first two film versions, Gaylord Ravenal is quite a bland and even prissy character. Howard Keel brings life to the role with his deep bass voice and hearty laugh. Another major upgrade is the casting of Joe E. Brown and Agnes Moorehead, two of MGM’s best character actors, as the showboat’s captain and his wife.

Sadly, though, Kathryn Grayson seems too old for Magnolia’s early scenes, where she’s a much more bland character than Irene Dunne’s take on the role. Julie’s background is much less emphasized, and there’s no note of “Can’t Help Lovin’ That Man of Mine” being a “Negro” song. And the scene where Steve helps Julie escape arrest for miscegenation is much less dramatic. Instead of using a knife, Steve pricks Julie’s finger with a pin before sucking a drop or two of blood.

The biggest downgrade is Frances E. Williams as Queenie, who barely makes an impression, and William Warfield as Joe (whose only notable moment is singing “Old Man River” in a manner much less impressive than Robeson’s performance).

The film compresses the story, ending with Gaylord and Magnolia reuniting while Kim is still a young child. In this version, Gaylord leaves Magnolia without knowing that she’s pregnant, greatly softening his character’s abandonment. Later, near the end of the film, when Gaylord meets his child for the first time, she’s playing alone on shore. He approaches and encourages her to “Make Believe” that he’s her father. Rather creepy.

This musical is quite different from the Kern/Hammerstein production because Arthur Freed, the film’s producer, threw out all of the play's dialogue and scrapped anything that didn’t advance the story, leaving out most of the comic moments and making the production more of a slog. Also left out: most of the elements of race dynamics that make the show challenging and interesting.

I think it’s unlikely, considering those elements of race, that anyone is ever going to make another major film production of Show Boat, but I’m glad the superior 1936 version has been preserved.