Enchanted Evenings:The Broadway Musical from 'Show Boat' to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber by Block, Geoffrey (good story books to read .TXT) 📕

Goes, presented, in addition to a few songs from the 1940 stage production, other songs created only by the original composer-lyricists Rodgers and Hart. Unlike the film Anything Goes, however, the Pal Joey film takes extensive liberties with the stage plot and script and features no actors or actresses from the original Broadway production.

Unfortunately, the Show Boat and Anything Goes 1930s adaptations discussed here are often harder to find than their 1950s remakes, probably because they are shot (albeit gorgeously) on black and white film.7 The readily attainable 1951 Technicolor Show Boat followed the basic plot outline, at least for the portion that corresponds to act I, and most of the major songs from the original stage version. On the other hand, it removes most of Hammerstein’s dialogue and eliminates or greatly reduces the African-American themes and characters that gave the stage and first film so much meaning. Gone entirely is the black chorus, gone after ten minutes is Queenie, Julie no longer has a revealing kinship with “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man,” and the exchange of blood between Julie and Steve is so underplayed that it would go unnoticed unless one were expressly on the lookout for this potentially powerful moment. Even “Ol’ Man River” is heard only twice, which is perhaps a dozen fewer times than patrons of the Harold Prince 1994 revival would experience. Howard Keel (a baritone) as Ravenal, Joe E. Brown as Cap’n Andy Hawks, and William Warfield as Joe are excellent in their roles, but not enough to compensate for the film’s infelicities. Although the film has its entertaining moments, in the end it does disservice to the stage version we examined in chapter 2 and does not begin to measure up to the 1936 film directed by Whale, the version of Show Boat that will be discussed in this chapter.

Similarly, given a choice between using the 1956 remake of Anything Goes and nothing at all (assuming that the 1936 version cannot be located), the suggestion offered here is to try to wait until one of the various stage revivals arrives at a theater near you, which should happen soon. Aside from taking place on a boat, nearly all vestiges of the plot have vanished in this version. Although in vastly altered contexts, the 1956 version delivers a little more of Porter’s score than the 1936 original, including “All through the Night” and “Blow, Gabriel, Blow,” excised in the earlier film; the complete title song, “I Get a Kick Out of You”; “You’re the Top”; and a new Porter song, “It’s De-Lovely” six years before it would reappear in the 1962 Off-Broadway revival. It also offers Bing Crosby reprising his earlier film role under the assumed name of Bill Benson, joining co-star Donald O’Connor in two new songs by Jimmy Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn in addition to those by Porter. But the excessive liberties with plot disqualify the film from being a fair representation of any of the many possible stage versions.

Show Boat (1936)

The difficult-to-obtain Universal 1936 Show Boat, directed by the critically acclaimed James Whale, is almost without exception regarded as far superior to the 1929 sound-silent hybrid Show Boat of 1929 or the 1951 version. Stephen Banfield goes as far as to praise the 1936 film as the best of all possible Show Boats: “Shortened to less than two hours, the score, including three new songs (plus two more that were cut and are lost), and the new, tighter, closer-to-the novel screenplay provided by Hammerstein together offer the most satisfying, balanced, and compelling version of Show Boat as drama achieved up to the present day. In almost every way it is superior to the stage version and its variants.” For Banfield, the stage Show Boat of 1927 constitutes a rough draft and the 1936 film a finished and culminating destination.

Although the film added three new songs (“I Have the Room above Her,” “Gallivantin’ Aroun,’” and “Ah Still Suits Me”), time constraints required deletions or condensations of other songs and dialogue. Gone entirely are Ellie’s stage number “Life on the Wicked Stage” and Ellie’s duet with Frank, “I Might Fall Back on You”; Queenie’s ballyhoos in each act, “C’mon Folks” and “Hey Feller”; Ravenal’s “Till Good Luck Comes My Way” in act I; and three songs from the Chicago Fair scene that opens act II, “At the Fair,” “Why Do I Love You?,” and “In Dahomey.” Although this is a lot of songs at the expense of Queenie and Frank and Ellie, the latter relegated to singing non-Kern duets at the Trocadero, the new songs add considerable substance and nuance to the romantic principals and to Joe, now played by the iconic Paul Robeson, the 1928 London and 1932 New York Joe.

Show Boat, 1936 film. The marriage of Magnolia (Irene Dunne) and Ravenal (Allan Jones) (left) with Cap’n Andy (Charles Winninger) and Parthy (Helen Westley). For a stage photo of this scene see p. 25.

Even the canonic and complex opening scene, which introduced no less than five couples, was subjected to considerable pruning in the film. In the 1988 McGlinn recording, which includes both dialogue and music for the entire scene, it runs twenty-nine minutes; in the film, this scene runs a little over eighteen minutes. We will look at these eighteen minutes in greater detail, starting with the opening of “Cotton Blossom,” which offers new words to the verse, B section, and the inversion of “Ol’ Man River,” all appearing over the credits.8

While the film charmingly (and cinematically) shows the universal effect on humans and animals generated by the arrival of the show boat, it leaves out some of the meaningful underscoring that characterized the stage version. Also missing from the stage are the choruses of town beaux and belles and their counterpoint with the black chorus. During the opening conversation between Magnolia and Ravenal, for example, stage audiences heard the orchestra interrupt with Parthy’s theme (which had already clearly been associated with Parthy, Cap’n Andy Hawk’s