Show Boat is the name of a musical film based on the stage musical of the same name by Oscar Hammerstein II, which was adapted from the novel by Edna Ferber. The music was by Hammerstein and Jerome Kern. For more about the musical and the plot see: Show Boat. The musical film is a film genre in which several songs sung by the characters are interwoven into the narrative. ... Musical theatre (sometimes spelled theater) is a form of theatre combining music, songs, dance, and spoken dialogue. ... For work done with Richard Rodgers, see Rodgers and Hammerstein Oscar Hammerstein II (July 12, 1895 – August 23, 1960) was a New-York born writer, producer, and (usually uncredited) director of musicals for almost forty years. ... Edna Ferber (August 15, 1885 - April 16, 1968), Jewish-American novelist, author, and playwright. ... Jerome David Kern (January 27, 1885 – November 11, 1945) was an American popular composer. ... Show Boat is a musical in two acts with music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II (with the notable exception of Bill, which was originally written for Kern in 1918 by P. G. Wodehouse but reworked by Hammerstein for Show Boat). ...

Musical numbers

Show Boat is a cornucopia of famous, favorite songs -- songs that many people today do not realize first appeared in this musical. The score includes:

• Cotton Blossom
• Wheres the Mate For Me
• Make Believe
• Ol' Man River
• Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man
• Mis'ry's Comin' Round (only partially sung, until the 1988 3-CD set and the 1994 stage revival restored the whole song)
• Till Good Luck Comes My Way
• Life Upon The Wicked Stage
• You Are Love
• Why Do I Love You?
• Bill
• Goodbye, My Lady Love
• After The Ball

There are also three songs written by Kern and Hammerstein for the 1936 film version: Ol Man River (music by Jerome Kern, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II) is a song in the 1927 musical Show Boat that tells the story of African American hardship and struggles of the time. ...

• I Have The Room Above Her (a duet for Magnolia and Ravenal)
• Gallivantin' Around (a blackface number sung onstage by Magnolia)
• Ah Still Suits Me (a duet for Joe and Queenie, written especially to expand both their roles)

And there is a song written especially by Kern and Hammerstein for the 1946 Broadway revival, "Nobody Else But Me", written for Kim (Magnolia's daughter). It is the last song Kern ever wrote.

Film versions (spoiler included)

Show Boat has been made into a movie three times, unless one counts the mini-version seen in Till the Clouds Roll By as a film version of the show. Film refers to the celluloid media on which movies are printed. ... Till The Clouds Roll By is an American musical-biographical film released by MGM in 1946. ...

1929 Version

Edna Ferber's novel Show Boat was filmed in 1929 by Universal Pictures, with a censored story line. It is not really a version of the musical at all; its plot line sticks much closer to the novel than to the stage production. The interracial love story between Julie and her husband Steve, the same subject matter that made the musical version so unusual for its time, was dropped in the 1929 film. Both Cap'n Andy and Parthy die in this version, something that does not happen at all in the musical, in which no one dies. This version stars Laura La Plante, Joseph Schildkraut, Otis Harlan, Emily Fitzroy, Alma Rubens, Elise Bartlett, and Jack McDonald. It was adapted by Charles Kenyon, Harry A. Pollard, and Tom Reed and was directed by Pollard. It was made as a silent film, but several scenes were then reshot to include about thirty minutes of dialogue and singing. A two-reel sound prologue, featuring members of the stage cast singing five songs from the stage production, was also added. Most of the original stage score was scrapped for this version, and it was not a success. 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 version ran three hours originally, and was filmed in 1936 and 1951 at a length of slightly less than two hours). The 1929 movie was long considered a lost film, but most of the film has since been recovered, although large portions of the sound track are still missing as of 2006. 1929 (MCMXXIX) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... Laura La Plante (born Laura La Plant on November 1, 1904 in St. ... Joseph Schildkraut (March 22, 1896 – January 21, 1964) was a film actor. ... Alma Rubens Alma Rubens (February 19, 1897 - January 22, 1931) is an american silent film actress. ... Show Boat is a musical in two acts with music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II (with the notable exception of Bill, which was originally written for Kern in 1918 by P. G. Wodehouse but reworked by Hammerstein for Show Boat). ... Many of the most spectacular films ever made were shown as road show attractions. ...

1936 Version

The 1936 film version of the famed Broadway musical, also from Universal. Magnolia Hawks has grown up on her family's musical-show boat the Cotton Blossom, which travels the Mississippi River putting on shows. She meets Gaylord Ravenal, a charming gambler and marries him. Together with their baby daughter, the couple leaves the boat and moves to Chicago, where they live off Gaylord's gambling winnings. After about ten years, he experiences an especially bad losing streak and leaves Magnolia, out of a sense of guilt that he is ruining her life because of his losses. Magnolia is forced to bring up her young daughter alone, but is reunited with the repentant Ravenal after twenty-three years. In a parallel plot, Julie LaVerne (the showboat's leading actress, who is also a white woman with African-American blood) is forced to leave the boat because of her background, taking Steve Baker (her husband, to whom, under the state's law, she is illegally married) with her. Julie is also abandoned by her husband, and she consequently becomes an alcoholic, from which she presumably never recovers. The 1936 film version of "Show Boat" stars Irene Dunne, Allan Jones, Charles Winninger, Paul Robeson, Helen Morgan, Helen Westley, Queenie Smith, Sammy White, Donald Cook, and Hattie McDaniel, and was directed by James Whale, who tried to bring as many people from the stage production as he could to work on the film. Winninger, Morgan and White had all appeared in both the original 1927 stage production and the 1932 stage revival. Robeson, for whom the role of Joe was actually written, had appeared in the show onstage in 1928 and 1932, and Dunne had toured the U.S. in the role of Magnolia. The 1936 film enlisted the services of the show's original orchestrator, Robert Russell Bennett, and its original conductor, Victor Baravalle. 1936 (MCMXXXVI) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). ... This article is about the river in the United States. ... Irene Dunne in Love Affair (1939) Irene Dunne (December 20, 1898 - September 4, 1990), was born Irene Marie Dunn in Louisville, Kentucky. ... Allan Jones (October 14, 1907 – January 27, 1992) was an American actor and singer. ... USPS Black Heritage stamp Paul Robeson (April 9, 1898 – January 23, 1976) was a multi-lingual American actor, athlete, bass-baritone concert singer, writer, and radical civil rights activist. ... Helen Morgan was an born 2 August 1900 in rural Danville, Illinois. ... Hattie McDaniel (June 10, 1895 – October 26, 1952) was the first African American to be nominated and to win an Oscar for her supporting role of Mammy in the 1939 epic movie Gone with the Wind. ... This is a page about the film director James Whale. ...

The 1936 version of "Show Boat" is considered by nearly all film critics to be one of the classic film musicals of all time, and one of the best stage-to-film adaptations ever made. Ten numbers from the stage score are actually sung (with three others heard only as background music). Except for the final sequence and three additional songs written especially for the film by Kern and Hammerstein, it follows the stage musical extremely closely, unlike MGM 's 1951 version. Due to time constraints, Whale was forced to delete much of his ending sequence, include a "modern" dance number to contrast with the romantic, "Old South" production number we see Kim starring in, and which was intended to highlight African-American contributions to dance and music. The film has been deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. It was successful at the box office, but was withdrawn from circulation after MGM bought the rights so that they could film their own remake. The controversy surrounding Paul Robeson's supposed Communist leanings further assured that the film would not be seen for a long time, and it was not widely seen again until after Robeson's death in 1976. In 1983 it made its debut on cable television, and it now turns up from time to time on Turner Classic Movies, though not as often as the 1951 remake. The Great Hall interior. ... The National Film Registry is the registry of films selected by the United States National Film Preservation Board for preservation in the Library of Congress. ... 1983 (MCMLXXXIII) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Coaxial cable is often used to transmit cable television into the house. ... Turner Classic Movies (TCM) is a cable television channel similar to American Movie Classics (AMC) featuring classic movies from the Turner Entertainment and Warner Bros. ...

1946 - The Version Seen in "Till the Clouds Roll By"

A significant but miniaturized rendition of the show has been included in MGM 's 1946 movie Till the Clouds Roll By, which tells a fictional story of Jerome Kern's life. The "Show Boat" segment, which takes up the first fifteen minutes of the film, is more a medley of several of the songs than an actual film version of the show. The mulatto Julie character was played by Lena Horne, while Kathryn Grayson did Magnolia and Tony Martin did Gaylord. African-American actor and baritone Caleb Peterson sang "Ol' Man River" in the "Show Boat' sequence, but Frank Sinatra reprised it in the movie's finale. Parts of this mini-rendition were later included into one of the That's Entertainment! compilation movies. 1946 (MCMXLVI) was a common year starting on Tuesday. ... Till The Clouds Roll By is an American musical-biographical film released by MGM in 1946. ... Lena Horne photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1941 Lena Mary Calhoun Horne (born June 30, 1917 in Brooklyn, New York) is an American popular singer. ... Kathryn Grayson (born February 9, 1922) is an American actress and singer who was born Zelma Kathryn Elisabeth Hedrick in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. ... There are several notable people named Tony Martin: There is an English farmer named Tony Martin who was imprisoned for fatally shooting a burglar. ... Francis Albert Sinatra (December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998) was an American singer who is one of the highest acclaimed male popular song vocalists of all time. ... 2004 DVD release Thats Entertainment! is a 1974 documentary film released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to celebrate its 50th anniversary. ...

1951 Version

"Show Boat" was remade in 1951 by MGM, starring Kathryn Grayson, Ava Gardner, Howard Keel, Joe E. Brown, Marge Champion, Gower Champion, William Warfield, Robert Sterling, and Agnes Moorehead. It was adapted by John Lee Mahin, J.P. McGowan (uncredited), and George Wells (uncredited) and was directed by George Sidney. Filmed in MGM 's typical, lavish style, this version is the most financially successful of the film adaptations of the play, and is one of MGM's most popular musicals, though arguably one of the studio's less inventive ones. It was the one of the first American productions of "Show Boat" to not feature Robert Russell Bennett's orchestrations (the orchestrations in this film were done by Conrad Salinger). Oscar Hammerstein II's dialogue was almost completely rewritten (by John Lee Mahin), the story was given a major overhaul near the end of the film and the changes are considered by some (though definitely not everyone) to make this version of the story superior to other versions. Changes included keeping the characters of Magnolia and Gaylord significantly younger at the end than in the play and the expansion of the role of Julie to give her character greater depth. The racial element was somewhat watered down as well; in this version, Queenie (an uncredited Frances E. Williams) is virtually a bit part, unlike the role played by Hattie McDaniel in the 1936 film, practically disappearing from the story after the first ten minutes. (In this version, Queenie does not remark that it is strange to hear Julie singing "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" because only black people know the song.) Some of the more controversial lines of the song Ol' Man River are no longer heard, and Queenie and Joe do not sing their section of "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man", as they do in all stage versions and in the 1936 film. There is no African-American chorus in the 1951 version, and the levee workers are not seen nearly as much in the 1951 film as in the 1936 one. The 1951 movie is also extremely glossy, smoothing over the poverty depicted more tellingly in the 1936 version, and despite some (brief) actual location shooting (primarily in the opening shots of townspeople reacting to the Showboat's arrival), the film does not give a very strong feeling of authenticity. Lena Horne was originally to have played Julie (after Dinah Shore and Judy Garland were passed over) as she had in the brief segment of the play in the 1946 Jerome Kern biopic Till the Clouds Roll By. but studio executives were nervous about casting a black actress in one of the lead roles, so Gardner was chosen instead. Gardner's singing voice was later dubbed by vocalist Annette Warren; her original rendition of one of the musical numbers appeared in the compilation film That's Entertainment III and is considered by some to be superior to the version used in the film. Gardner's vocals were included on the soundtrack album for the movie, and in an autobiography written not long before her death, Gardner reported she was still receiving royalties from the release. videotape cover of show boat File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... In film, a remake is a newer version of a previously released film or a newer version of the source (play, novel, story, etc. ... 1951 (MCMLI) was a common year starting on Monday; see its calendar. ... Kathryn Grayson (born February 9, 1922) is an American actress and singer who was born Zelma Kathryn Elisabeth Hedrick in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. ... Ava Gardner (December 24, 1922 – January 25, 1990) was an American actress. ... Howard Keel on the tv show dallas Howard Keel, born Harry Clifford Keel (April 13, 1919–November 7, 2004) was an American actor who starred in many of the classic film musicals of the 1950s. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... Marge Champion (September 2, 1919, Los Angeles, California) became a legend in Hollywood with her ex-husband, Gower Champion (June 22, 1921. ... Gower Champion was an American theatre director, choreographer, and dancer. ... Portrait of William Warfield by Carl Van Vechten, Feb. ... Moorehead as Endora on Bewitched Agnes Robertson Moorehead (December 6, 1900 – April 30, 1974) was an Oscar-nominated American character actress. ... John Lee Mahin, (August 23, 1902 - April 18, 1984) was a prolific screenwriter and producer. ... John Paterson McGowan (February 24, 1880 – March 26, 1952) was an Australian-born actor, screenwriter and film director in the United States. ... Geoge Sidney ( October 4, 1916 - May 5, 2002) was a prolific American film director, who directed many notable films, mostly for the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio. ... MGM logo Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer or MGM, is a large media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of cinema and television programs. ... Ol Man River (music by Jerome Kern, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II) is a song in the 1927 musical Show Boat that tells the story of African American hardship and struggles of the time. ... Lena Horne photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1941 Lena Mary Calhoun Horne (born June 30, 1917 in Brooklyn, New York) is an American popular singer. ... Dinah Shore (born Frances Rose Shore, February 29, 1916 – February 24, 1994) was an American singer, actress and talk show host. ... Judy Garland (June 10, 1922 – June 22, 1969), born Frances Ethel Gumm, was an American film actress considered by many to be one of the greatest singing stars of Hollywoods Golden Era of musical film. ... 1946 (MCMXLVI) was a common year starting on Tuesday. ... Jerome David Kern (January 27, 1885 – November 11, 1945) was an American popular composer. ... Till The Clouds Roll By is an American musical-biographical film released by MGM in 1946. ... In filmmaking, dubbing refers to the recording of voices for a movie. ... 2004 DVD release Thats Entertainment! is a 1974 documentary released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to celebrate its 50th anniversary. ... Soundtrack refers to the recorded sound accompanying a visual medium such as a motion picture, television show, or video game. ...