SHOW BOAT
UNIVERSAL, 1936 | BLACK AND WHITE, 113 MINUTES
DIRECTOR: JAMES WHALE PRODUCER: CARL LAEMMLE JR. SCREENPLAY: OSCAR HAMMERSTEIN II, BASED ON HIS MUSICAL PLAY, FROM THE NOVEL BY EDNA FERBER SONGS: JEROME KERN (MUSIC) AND OSCAR HAMMERSTEIN II (LYRICS) CHOREOGRAPHER: LEROY PRINZ STARRING: IRENE DUNNE (MAGNOLIA HAWKS), ALLAN JONES (GAYLORD RAVENAL), CHARLES WINNINGER (CAP’N ANDY HAWKS), PAUL ROBESON (JOE), HELEN MORGAN (JULIE LAVERNE), HELEN WESTLEY (PARTHY ANN HAWKS), QUEENIE SMITH (ELLY MAY SHIPLEY), SAMMY WHITE (FRANK SCHULTZ), DONALD COOK (STEVE BAKER), QUEENIE (HATTIE MCDANIEL)
On a Mississippi River showboat, the captain’s daughter falls in love with a gambler.
The first musical play to tackle genuinely big themes and serious situations, Show Boat is an authentic landmark. This second of three film versions is a lyrical and deeply felt classic.
Few people in 1927 would have thought of musicalizing Edna Ferber’s novel of love and life on the Mississippi. Fortunately, composer Jerome Kern and writer/lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II knew better, and the result was an instant Broadway hit, with more song standards than had ever come out of one show. Since the first film version, in 1929, was an awkward part-silent hybrid, the 1936 remake was a vast improvement. Hammerstein wrote the screenplay and collaborated with Kern on three new songs, and there was a most unexpected choice for director. James Whale was known mainly for great horror movies—Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, Bride of Frankenstein—and musicals were not his accustomed territory. His Show Boat, then, is not a typical Hollywood musical. Instead, it’s an intimate epic—a rich and poignant look at the lives, relationships, and customs that will survive and continue over time, and those that will change or pass away. Whale’s vision is both theatrical and humanist, giving full sway to both the music and the melodrama with an eye for detail matched by few musicals in any medium.
In addition to superlative material, Whale was blessed with a remarkable group of performers, most of whom had already played their roles onstage. Irene Dunne is a vibrant and affecting (if mature) Magnolia, Allan Jones is sturdy and believable, and Charles Winninger’s Cap’n Andy is happily free from excessive shtick. With his two legends, Paul Robeson and the tragic Helen Morgan, Whale is intensely respectful of the power and stature of the former and the wistful fragility of the latter. As sung by Morgan, “Bill” is a heartbreaking showstopper: you know you’re witnessing something extraordinary.
“Bill”: Helen Morgan
Irene Dunne, Allan Jones, Charles Winninger, Helen Westley
“Ol’ Man River”: Paul Robeson
Everything works marvelously until right near the end, a place where many productions of Show Boat can run off the rails. For all its daring, the show didn’t quite have the guts to follow Ferber’s book and its less-than-happy ending. Instead, here, there’s a dull production number followed by a contrived reunion between the long-separated lovers. Curiously enough, this is one place where the third Show Boat film (1951) is more convincing, and that version with its Technicolor pageantry, is, in fact, the preferred Show Boat for many viewers. While it lacks the depth and urgency of the earlier film, it does manage to make its final scenes and reconciliation more convincing. Even so, the Whale version contains far too much beauty and majesty to be marred by that one final smudge.
Vital and essential as it is, Show Boat is not easy to pull off, not in 1927 and not in the twenty-first century. In its script and its racial sensitivities, in its vocal demands and production values, it can be made to seem quaint, archaic, and false. For the treatment and care it demands and deserves, the right director and cast are crucial. Those circumstances don’t happen as often as they should. They certainly do here.
“Can’t Help Lovin’ That Man”: Helen Morgan, Hattie McDaniel, Irene Dunne
WHAT’S MORE
For the venerable Universal Pictures, this film marked the end of an era. The studio had suffered ill financial health for some time, and the high costs of Show Boat and another Irene Dunne film, Magnificent Obsession (1935), were the last straw for the money people. Shortly before Show Boat opened, Universal founder and head Carl Laemmle and his producer son Carl Jr. were forced out and replaced by a new regime with a vastly different (and cheaper) production style. Universal later sold the Show Boat rights to MGM for its remake, and instead of circulating a competing product, MGM kept this version on the shelf, unseen, for many years. Even today, it gets less attention than it deserves.
James Whale’s determination to bring his own interpretation to Show Boat did not sit well with either Irene Dunne or Allan Jones. Jones, in particular, remained hostile to Whale forever after. “It would have been a much better picture with a different director,” he commented late in his life, calling Whale “a very strange man.” The director forged a far sturdier bond with Paul Robeson and Hattie McDaniel, whose performances have warmth, humor, and far more dimension than many actors of color were permitted in 1930s Hollywood films.
MUSICALLY SPEAKING
There would be no Show Boat without “Ol’ Man River” and, as an actor and singer, Paul Robeson was already something of a mythic figure. With his staging, Whale is paying heartfelt tribute to both the song and the performer. The expressionistic vignettes and virtuoso 270-degree camera pan around the singing Robeson manage to be both strikingly stylized and movingly naturalistic. It helps, too, that the song isn’t taken at a funereal tempo and, well, keeps rolling along. Between that, the direction, and Robeson’s magnificent voice, this is a sequence for the ages.
Paul Robeson and director James Whale on the set