Show Boat (1936)

• Year: 1936
• Released: 17 May 1936
• Country: United States
• Adwords: 1 win & 1 nomination
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0028249/
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/show_boat
• Metacritics:
• Available in: 720p, 1080p,
• Language: English
• MPA Rating: Approved
• Genre: Comedy, Drama, Musical
• Runtime: 113 min
• Writer: Edna Ferber, Oscar Hammerstein II, Zoe Akins
• Director: James Whale
• Cast: Irene Dunne, Allan Jones, Charles Winninger
• Keywords: new year’s eve, mississippi river, musical, showboat,

	7.4/10
	88/100
	83% – Critics
	70% – Audience

Show Boat Storyline

This film of “Show Boat” is more faithful to the original stage musical than any of the other films of it, except for the 1989 videotaped production presented on PBS.As the film begins, the Cotton Palace, a show boat on the Mississippi River, pulls into port. On board are the owner Cap’n Andy Hawks, his nagging, disapproving wife Parthy, and their eighteen-year old daughter Magnolia, along with their troupe of actors, singers, and dancers. Pete, the rough, coarse engineer of the towboat Mollie Able, which pushes the Cotton Palace, notices Queenie, the show boat’s African-American cook, wearing a brooch that he had sent to the Cotton Palace’s leading lady, Julie la Verne, in the hopes of seducing her away from her husband, Steve Baker, leading man of the company. Julie wants nothing to do with Pete and has given Queenie the brooch. Pete threatens Julie in front of her husband. A fistfight breaks out between Steve and Pete on the levee, just as Cap’n Andy is introducing his actors to the assembled crowd. Andy quickly pretends that Steve and Pete were merely acting out a scene from one of the plays performed by the company. Windy McLain, the pilot of the Mollie Able, notices that Pete has stolen Julie’s photo out of its frame on the levee, where photos of the acting troupe are posted. The angry Parthy warns Julie to stay away from Magnolia, whom Julie loves as if she were a younger sister. Sadly, Julie tells Cap’n Andy that if she cannot see Magnolia, she cannot stay on the boat, but she does not resign or leave.After everyone exits, riverboat gambler Gaylord Ravenal passes by and sees Magnolia on the upper deck of the show boat. The two are instantly romantically attracted to each other. However, Ravenal must shortly leave to speak to the town judge about a personal matter.Later that day, the company is rehearsing the play they are to perform that night, when they are alerted by Ellie, the comedienne of the boat, that Pete is returning with the Sheriff. Windy also warns them that Pete has stolen Julie’s picture and is up to something. Instantly, Steve, Julie’s husband, takes out a menacing switchblade knife and makes a cut on the back of her hand, sucking the blood. The Sheriff enters and announces that Julie is a half-black woman married to a white man, which is illegal. Steve, who is the white man, says that he is also part-black. Because he has sucked in some of Julie’s blood, the troupe, especially Windy, a boyhood friend of the Sheriff’s, backs Steve up, preventing the Sheriff from arresting Steve and Julie. But the couple, now that Julie’s mixed blood has been revealed, can no longer act with the rest of the company, so they must leave. At this, Gaylord Ravenal, who also has been ordered to leave town, reappears and asks for passage on the boat. Cap’n Andy, realizing the handsome Ravenal’s potential as an actor, hires him as leading man, and over Parthy’s objections, makes Magnolia the new leading lady. Magnolia tearfully says goodbye to Julie, who sadly leaves with her husband, but not before hearing Cap’n Andy make Magnolia the new leading lady and Ravenal the new leading man. Pete is fired offscreen.Weeks pass, and by now, Magnolia and Ravenal have fallen in love. Parthy is determined to get the goods on Ravenal, and temporarily leaves town. While she is gone, Ravenal proposes to Magnolia and the two make plans to marry. Just as they are about to enter the church, Parthy returns and announces that Ravenal killed a man years ago – this is why he can never stay in town for very long – but the Sheriff says that it was self-defense, so Parthy is powerless to do anything. Magnolia and Ravenal are married.More time passes, and the happy couple has a baby daughter, whom they name Kim. They leave the boat and go to live in Chicago, where they are alternately rich and broke, depending on Ravenal’s luck at gambling (he does not work). One day, while they are living in a second rate boarding house, Magnolia runs into Ellie and her husband Frank Shultz, who have left the show boat and have been booked into the Trocadero, a Chicago nightclub. Then someone brings a letter, which turns out to be a farewell note from Ravenal, who has decided to leave Magnolia out of guilt for his inability to support her. Frank and Ellie take the devastated Magnolia to the Trocadero, where Magnolia hopes to find a job. But she does not know that the featured singer is Julie, the same Julie from the show boat, who has become an alcoholic now that Steve has left her. From her dressing room, Julie overhears Magnolia audition, and realizing that she needs the job, abruptly quits so that the manager will have no choice but to hire Magnolia, who never learns of Julie’s generous sacrifice, or even that she once worked there.On New Year’s Eve, Cap’n Andy and Parthy arrive in Chicago for a surprise visit, but are unable to find Magnolia and Ravenal because they are no longer living in a fancy hotel. Andy decides to go celebrate New Year’s Eve alone and ends up (a little tipsy) at the Trocadero, where he discovers Magnolia singing. When she falters due to stage fright, he encourages her and she becomes a hit and goes on to a successful international career. She raises her daughter all alone.More time passes and we see Ravenal’s hands pasting newspaper clippings about Magnolia into a scrapbook. He is either living or staying in another second-rate boarding house. It is now about thirty years later. Magnolia, now about sixty, is retiring from the stage. Her daughter Kim has become a musical star and is about to play her first leading role on Broadway. She does not realize that the shabbily dressed theatre doorman, whom she knows only as “Pop”, is in reality her own father, Gaylord Ravenal. He is fired for trying to watch the performance just as Magnolia, Cap’n Andy, and Parthy arrive (they have come all the way from Mississippi to see Kim’s starring debut). Magnolia sees Ravenal and invites him to sit with them, and the theatre manager, who has learned the truth, allows him to do so. After the show ends, Kim asks her mother to sing an encore. Ravenal joins her in song, Kim is moved to tears, and Magnolia and Ravenal are reconciled.

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Show Boat Movie Reviews

“The Kind of Gentlemen It’s A Pleasure to Wait on.”

When we talk about adaptions of Show Boat for the screen, we talk first about this one and then the others. If for no other reason than it gives us a chance to see three of the original performers from the original Broadway cast, Charles Winninger, Helen Morgan, and Francis X. Mahoney. Their performances on stage and on the screen became career roles for each.

Also Allan Jones and Irene Dunne are as perfect a Gaylord Ravenal and Magnolia Hawkes as you’ll ever find. Irene was THE Jerome Kern girl on the silver screen, she was lucky to be in three musical adaptions of his shows, this one and Roberta and Sweet Adeline. His songs and her voice seem to be made for each other.

Ravenal’s part is one of the most difficult to do in musicals. In the 1951 Show Boat Howard Keel sang wonderfully, but he projects too strong an image for the part. Gaylord Ravenal is a charming, but a very weak character. Allan Jones was the one who really got it right and it’s on Ravenal’s performance that the whole plot of the show turns on. He really rings true in Hattie McDaniel’s assessment of him as the kind of gentlemen it’s a pleasure to wait on.

James Whale as director really captures the spirit of 20 years on each side of the turn of the last century with warts and all. Show Boat as a play was bold in its day in tackling racism and miscegenation. Even when this was produced first in 1927 there were still miscegenation laws on the books. He gave Helen Morgan the career role she was most identified with.

Helen Morgan personified the phrase torch singer. From 1927 until this film she had descended into alcoholism and five years from this film she would have passed away from the effects of same. She had a career in Hollywood as well as Broadway and this was her final effort. How fortunate we are to have a filmed record of her performance and her singing of Can’t Help Lovin’ That Man and Bill.

Ravenal and Magnolia are given three great ballads to sing, classics all, Make Believe and You Are Love and Why Do I Love You. The first two are sung by Jones and Dunne and the third was eliminated from the film although it is heard on the soundtrack. Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein wrote another song I Have the Room Above which is also a most charming duet.

Of course no discussion of Show Boat is complete without Paul Robeson and Ol’ Man River. Believe it or not Robeson wasn’t in the original Broadway cast. The Broadway opening was delayed and Robeson had some other contractual commitments in 1927. Another black baritone concert singer named Jules Bledsoe introduced Ol’ Man River, arguably the greatest song Jerome Kern ever wrote. It became a signature song for Paul Robeson in both stage performances of Show Boat and in this film. His presence in singing Ol’ Man River is another reason for this being the greatest Show Boat of all.

Robeson also has a duet with Hattie McDaniel in I Still Suits Me another song Kern and Hammerstein wrote for this film. It’s a nice comedy duet. In fact I would say that Show Boat and Annie Get Your Gun are the two shows with the most hit songs in them ever written.

Show Boat is a grand American classic. Somewhere as I write this review there is a company performing right now on this planet. It will be so for generations to come.

Excellent

The BEST version ever of the musical. It follows a show boat and the family that runs it through three generations concentrating on Magnolia (Irene Dunne) and her husband Ravenel (Allen Jones).

Some people have complained that Dunne’s high-pitched singing voice is TOO high-pitched…they’re not completely wrong. Still she sings in tune and her “Make Believe” duet with Jones is just great. Actually all the songs are great and belted out by the cast–highlights are “Can’t Help Lovin’ That Man”, “Bill” and the great Paul Robeson doing “Old Man River”. The movie also is very faithful to the stage play–it has almost all the songs and manages to fit a 3 hour play into a 2 hour film. The last section with Kim seems rushed but that’s understandable.

Dunne is just great as Magnolia–very sweet and lovable. The only strange point is her dancing to “Can’t Help…”–the dress is way too constricting and she has a strange look on her face. Jones is wooden but but has a wonderful singing voice. Helen Morgan was taken from the stage show to recreate Julie. She stops the movie TWICE with “Can’t Help…” and “Bill”. She has a beautiful voice and is a superb actress. Her character disappears completely halfway through…but it’s the same in the stage play. In the book her character ends up working in a house of prostitution–there was NO way they could have gotten that on the screen back in 1936! Everybody else is great and the movie moves very quickly.

It’s much better than the 1950s version. The 50s version IS in color and opens with a great number…but most of the singing is overdubbed, the story is brutally cut down and “Can’t Help…” is thrown away!

This has it all over that one. Also director James Whale reportedly liked this one above all his other films–he did a few other little films like “Frankenstein” and “Bride of Frankenstein”! Beautiful songs, some truly lovely photography (the moonlight scenes on top of the showboat are dreamlike) and a quick story. Just simply one of the great Hollywood musicals. A must see!

Seminal Musical Classic Well Worth Seeing Seventy Years Later

Sadly not available yet on DVD, the classic black-and-white 1936 version of the seminal 1927 Oscar Hammerstein-Jerome Kern musical is rarely seen these days since it’s been overshadowed by the far more elaborate 1951 MGM color remake (which is on DVD). That’s a shame since this one is like a piece of cameo jewelry from a bygone era, a sublimely entertaining piece of Americana so naïve in its approach that its pervasive use of racial stereotypes comes across more as quaint than demoralizing.

Directed by James Whale (the protagonist of 1998’s “Gods and Monsters” and most famous for his 1931 classic, “Frankenstein”), it’s a multi-generational story that starts with the Hawks family who runs a variety entertainment showboat in the 1880’s. The jovial Captain Andy is the boat’s impresario who is constantly goaded by his mean-spirited wife Parthy. They have a musically inclined daughter Magnolia who is best friends with the show’s star, mulatto chanteuse Julie LaVerne. The local sheriff forces Julie out of the show for being half-black. Andy has Magnolia take her place just as gambler Gaylord Ravenal comes to town and becomes recruited as the show’s leading man. Gaylord and Magnolia fall immediately in love, marry, move to Chicago and have a girl they named Kim. There, he gains and loses a fortune and then leaves Magnolia and Kim. Over the years, Magnolia becomes a big stage star and passes the torch to Kim.

The music, of course, is unbeatable with standards, chief among them “Make Believe”, “Can’t Help Lovin’ That Man” and “You Are Love”. Even though Irene Dunne was in her late thirties when she made this film, she amazingly gets away with the first half where she plays Magnolia as an ingénue. What’s more, she was the rare actress who could act and sing (quite beautifully) at the same time, even when she is required to perform in blackface in “Gallivantin’ Around”. Allan Jones is a fine singer as Gaylord, though not as interesting an actor especially in the second half when misfortune takes over. When they sing “You Are Love” together, it’s still quite magical.

What a treat to be able to see the redoubtable Paul Robeson as Joe singing “Ol’ Man River” so powerfully (and filmed with an intriguing montage of woeful images), as well as legendary torch singer Helen Morgan play Julie and perform her signature song, “Bill”, so touchingly. Familiar character actor Charles Winninger probably has his best role as Captain Andy, while Hattie McDaniel plays Joe’s forceful wife Queenie in a performance as good as her Mammy in “Gone With the Wind”. The film is really an intriguing mix of melodrama and great music with socially relevant observations regarding racism, alcoholism and gambling addiction.