Show Boat (1929 film)
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| Directed by | Harry A. Pollard |
| Produced by | Carl Laemmle |
| Written by | Edna Ferber (novel) Charles Kenyon (continuity) |
| Starring | Laura La Plante Joseph Schildkraut Emily Fitzroy Otis Harlan |
| Music by | Joseph Cherniavsky Jerome Kern |
| Cinematography | Gilbert Warrenton |
| Editing by | Daniel Mandell |
| Distributed by | Universal |
| Release date(s) | 17 April 1929 |
| Running time | 129 minutes without prologue, approx. 146 minutes with prologue, approx. 114 minutes without sound sequences |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Show Boat (1929) 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 1929 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[1], although the film was made with a Movietone soundtrack. Two more records were discovered in 2005[2], 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.
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[edit] Storyline
Contrary to what is often claimed, the 1929 film is not really an adaptation of the classic 1927 Kern–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.
[edit] Cast and crew
The film stars:
- Laura La Plante as Magnolia Hawks
- Joseph Schildkraut as Gaylord Ravenal
- Emily Fitzroy as Parthenia 'Parthy' Ann Hawks
- Otis Harlan as Capt'n Andy Hawks and the Master of Ceremonies in Prologue
- Alma Rubens as Julie Dozier
- Jack McDonald as Windy
- Jane La Verne as Magnolia as a Child/Kim
- Neely Edwards as Schultzy
- Elise Bartlett as Elly
- Stepin Fetchit as Joe
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.
[edit] Sound adaptation
These were the years in which film studios were making a transition from silent films to sound films 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.
[edit] Other information
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 musical ran three hours originally, and was filmed in 1936 and 1951 at a length of slightly less than two hours).
