Show Boat (1936 film)

Show Boat (1936 film)
This film has been preserved in the National Film Registry in 1996.
Directed by: James Whale Produced by: Carl Laemmle Jr. Written by: Oscar Hammerstein II (also wrote lyrics) Based on: Show Boat 1926 novel by Edna Ferber Show Boat 1927 musical by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II Starring: Irene Dunne Allan Jones Charles Winninger Paul Robeson Helen Morgan Helen Westley Cinematography: John J. Mescall Production company: Universal Pictures Distributed by: Universal Pictures Release date: May 14, 1936 (New York City) May 17, 1936 (United States) Runtime: 113 minutes Country: United States Language: English Budget: $1,194,943

Show Boat is a 1936 American romantic musical film directed by James Whale, based on the 1927 musical of the same name by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II, which in turn was adapted from the 1926 novel of the same name by Edna Ferber.

Why It Rocks

1. As a landmark of American musical theater, Show Boat was one of the first Broadway musicals to deal seriously with issues like racism and miscegenation. In exposing the inner workings of show business, from touring companies not far removed from medicine shows to vaudeville and "legitimate" theater, it reveled in double meanings, mirrored roles, and the irony of performers posing as performers. The Broadway show also showcased some of the most enduring melodies and sophisticated lyrics of the 20th century. The Broadway show was based on a novel, but discarded some of the book's melodramatic turns and focused more on the antebellum plot than the contemporary material, in addition to bringing realistic characters and situations to the forefront. This film adaptation follows suit, as it's the rare film of Hollywood’s Golden Era that dared to show the uglier side of the late 19th century Dixie environment surrounding the Mississippi River communities. Racial segregation, normally a taboo subject for Hollywood, is clearly presented in the film.
   • Scenes where white and black audience members enter and exit the floating theater on parallel gangplanks and move to separate parts of the theater not only spoke of the ugliness of a bygone era, but also reflected the Jim Crow protocol that was still firmly in place in 1936 – and even if white audiences preferred not to acknowledge it, the black audiences of that day could not ignore the circumstances of their second class citizenship.
   • Likewise, the wedding of Irene Dunne’s Magnolia and Allan Jones’ Gaylord is marred (by contemporary standards) by having the show boat’s black crew stand outside of the church and look in at the ceremony, rather than be seated as part of the official wedding celebration. And the main plot twist that drove the story, the miscegenation between mixed-race Julie Laverne and her white leading man, broke a major taboo in the rigid Production Code that governed Hollywood’s screenplay.
2. Strong performances from Irene Dunne and especially Paul Robeson, and a lot charming focus for Charles Winninger and Helen Westley.
3. Wonderful contributions of Sammy White and Queenie Smith, who play the Cotton Palace’s comedy team and later rescue Magnolia from destitution in Chicago, and Clarence Muse, playing the janitor at the Trocadero.
4. This film marks Robeson's last Hollywood role before he went to England to make movies, and yet he provides a dignity and intelligence to a character some might have found demeaning. (With a subtle mix of sly humor and aching sincerity that elevates his role of Joe from broad caricature to genuine character.) Robeson understood the layers of the film, could see how Irene Dunne wearing blackface and imitating a "darky" cakewalk was commenting on racism, not condoning it.
5. The Kern-Hammerstein score, which soars effortlessly between hopeful love songs, ballads of great despair, richly comic interludes and the revolutionary rejection of the white-imposed status quo, the score encompassed the full spectrum of emotional power. Under Whale’s direction, the film captures each laugh and heartache created by the score, and then expands it further with a mature yet inventive visual style that frames Hammerstein’s wise lyrics and Kern’s timeless music.
   • Robeson's rendition of "Ol’ Man River" is especially noteworthy – his interpretation of Hammerstein’s lyrical contempt for the racist double standard and the promise of life away from “the white boss” planted the seeds for the black power movement that would blossom three decades later.
6. Helen Morgan gives a devastating performance as the actress/singer Julie LaVerne, whose life is ruined when it is revealed by a spurned lover that she is mixed race. Morgan performs two songs, the playful “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man of Mine” and melodramatic “Bill,” and her vocal grace was peerless in plumbing the frivolity of the first number and the anxiety of the latter tune.
7. Unique staging choices for some of the songs.
   • Robeson was associated with "Ol' Man River", and Whale's staging of the song was respectful to the performer, and also inventive. First, there's a 360-degree crane shot around Robeson, who was seated on a dock pier, ending with a tight closeup of the actor's face as he intoned the lyrics. German expressionism and Russian constructivism creep in when Whale cuts to an artificial cotton field in forced perspective, and to blacks pushing bales of cotton up a silhouetted diagonal.
   • “Bill” is staged more simply, but just as carefully. This was also Helen Morgan’s last Hollywood feature. Morgan’s florid, almost sobbing singing style had been out of fashion for some 75 years, as has her method of heavily emoting her lyrics. To convey her close connection to the song’s narrative without letting her sink into bathos, there's a sequence of twenty-seven shots, starting with a pan across a large theater set before narrowing in on the three main characters in the scene: Julie LaVerne (Morgan), a mixed-blood singer at the end of her career; Jim Green, a hard-bitten impresario; and Jake, a saloon pianist. By framing the song so carefully the director could showcase how powerful Morgan’s performance was. He even helped shape the emotional responses of filmgoers, by cutting away to the subdued onlookers during the entire second verse, for example.

Bad Qualities

1. While Helen Morgan had an emotional powerful performance with "Bill", she was lip-synching to a prerecorded music track, and the director simply didn’t have the patience or the authority to coax her acting to match the level of her vocals. In her close-ups, she doesn’t come close to her recorded breathing.
2. In the cutaways, some of the extras are listless, not paying attention. These imperfections wouldn't have been allowed on an Astaire set at RKO, or in an MGM or Warners musical.
3. While the film manages to cover most of the score, it couldn't accommodate the full score.