Show Boat

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," the lyrics of which were written by P. G. Wodehouse). It is based on a 1926 book of the same name by Edna Ferber, and is generally considered to be one of the first popular American "musical", as a dramatic form with popular music, separate both from operetta and from the "Follies"-type musical comedies that preceded it. In many ways, it took the plot and character-centered "Princess Musicals" that Kern had developed with Bolton and Wodehouse the previous decade and broadened the scope. However, George S. Kaufman and the Gershwins' Strike Up the Band, which previewed earlier that year, clearly made similar leaps.

Plot Synopsis

The story spans about 40 years, beginning aboard the showboat Cotton Blossom in the 1880s, on the Mississippi River near Natchez, Mississippi. A riverboat gambler, Gaylord Ravenal, comes aboard and is taken with Magnolia, an aspiring performer and daughter of the ship's captain and owner, "Cap'n Andy". Magnolia (aka Nolie) is smitten with Ravenal as well, and seeks advice from Joe, one of the workers aboard the boat.

A local sheriff comes aboard and insists that the show not go on, because the star of the show, Julie, is a mulatto woman married to a white man, and local laws prohibit miscegenation. With the star gone, Magnolia and Gaylord fill in. He later confesses his love for her and proposes.

Years later, Gaylord and Magnolia are married and living in Chicago. Gaylord's gambling debts get out of control, they move to a very poor apartment. Nolie's old friends Frank and Ellie (two other performers from the Cotton Blossom) come to see her apartment to rent it out, and to their surprise find her there. Nolie, excited, knocks on Ravenal's door to show them who has popped in, only to find a note, saying he's leaving her. Ravenal does not know that Magnolia is pregnant. Frank and Ellie seek a singing job for Nolie at the same club where Frank and Ellie are working for New Year's. Unbeknownst to Magnolia, Julie, now a drunk showgirl left by her husband, hears Magnolia's song, the same song she taught her years ago Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man, and abandons her position so that Magnolia can fill it.

On New Year's Eve, Andy comes to the club, unaware of Magnolia's troubles, only to discover her nearly being booed off stage. He rallies the crowd to her defense in a grand sing-along of an old song After the Ball is Over. He brings her back to the Cotton Blossom.

A couple of months later, Ravenal and Julie, who have never met, are on the same boat on the way to New Orleans. Julie, angered at the fact that Ravenal left the innocent Magnolia with a child, starts to chide and hit him for his horrible acts. Up until this point, however, Ravenal had never known about his daughter, Kim. Before Julie disembarks, she hands Ravenal a newspaper article, complete with picture, showing Captain Andy, Magnolia, and Kim, and the Cotton' Blossom's next stop.

Ravenal goes to where the Cotton Blossom is docked, and sees his daughter, Kim, playing with a doll. He asks her who the male doll is supposed to be, and she responds that she is make believing it is her father, who she has never met. Touched, Ravenal asks if he can "make believe" that he is her father, while singing the song "Make Believe," that he had sung with her mother so many years ago. Magnolia comes out of the ship, surprised, filled with emotion, and chooses to take back Ravenal; this entire time, Julie watches on as the Cotton Blossom leaves the shore.

Songs

A definitive list of songs, per se, is somewhat pointless since the original production ran nearly four hours and thus is almost never performed in its original form. Confounding the situation further are new songs written for revivals. Typically, productions pick and choose from the original material to fashion a distinct version of Show Boat. Nevertheless, the key songs from the show include the following:

• Overture; after a brief introduction, orchestral excerpts from "Ol' Man River", "Why Do I Love You", "Make Believe", and "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man".
• "Cotton Blossom" — The notes in the phrase "Cotton Blossom, Cotton Blossom" are the same notes as those in the phrase "Old Man River, Old Man River," but sung in reverse order. According to Hammerstein and Kern, this was intentional symbolism.
• "Where's The Mate For Me?"
• "Make Believe"
• "Ol' Man River"
• "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" — Queenie's surprise at the apparently white Julie's knowledge of a "black folks'" song foreshadows the discovery of Julie's mixed origins.
• "Life Upon the Wicked Stage"
• "Till Good Luck Comes My Way"
• "You Are Love" (considered by Jerome Kern to be his worst-ever song.)
• "I Might Fall Back On You"
• "Queenie's Ballyhoo"
• "Why Do I Love You?"
• "Bill"
• "After The Ball" a song by Charles K. Harris from 1892

The instrumentation for the show according to the original orchestrations by Robert Russell Bennett is one flute (doubling as piccolo), one oboe (doubling as English horn) , 2 clarinets, one bassoon, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, one trombone, percussion, one banjo, and strings.

Production History

Before the Broadway premiere of Show Boat, Ziegfeld produced tryouts in Washington, D.C., the Nixon Theatre in Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Philadelphia ^[1]. The show opened on Broadway at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York on December 27, 1927, where it ran for a year and a half. Show Boat, with its serious and dramatic nature, was considered a turning point for producer Florenz Ziegfeld, who had previously been best known for revues such as the Follies.

After its closing in 1929, the show was revived in 1932, 1946, 1983 and 1994, and has been produced on multiple occassions in West End and repertory theatres in London, including once by the Royal Shakespeare Company ^[2]. It was also adapted as a movie on at least four occasions, in 1929, 1936, 1946 (as a mini-show inside the movie Till the Clouds Roll By), and 1951. (See Show Boat (film)).

Racism and Controversy

Integration

Show Boat boldly portrayed racial difficulties, and for a 1927 show it was quite progressive in doing so. It was the first racially integrated musical, in that both black and white performers appeared on-stage together ^[3]. Ziegfeld’s Follies allowed single African American performers like Bert Williams, but would never have had an African American woman in the chorus. However, Showboat had two choruses--a black chorus and a white chorus, and it has been perceived that "Hammerstein uses the African-American chorus as essentially a Greek chorus, providing clear commentary on the proceedings, whereas the white choruses sing of the not-quite-real" ^[4]. However, some assert that the simple fact that Show Boat contains numbers with blacks and whites on stage singing together does not mean it deserves to be credited as the "first racially integrated musical". According to a theatre studies graduate student at Cornell University,

Historians of American musical theater usually describe Show Boat as the first "integrated" musical without considering its complicated politics of race. Such assessments privilege Show Boat’s book and score while failing to situate these scenes and songs in theatrical performance or within the wider culture of the United States in 1927. When read in the context of its original Broadway production and reception, Show Boat begs the question of whether its integration – of book and numbers, of black and white characters and actors – can function apart from its politics and theatrics of segregation... the musical numbers in which black and white characters dance and sing in unison or in harmony, or those in which the performance of individual black characters (Julie, Joe, and Queenie) complicates cross-racial relationships and forms raced audiences. At the same time, the numbers limit the possibilities for black characters by denying them interiority and deploying them as spectacle for the sensory experience of the audience. Ultimately, Ziegfeld’s Show Boat thrives in memory on a myth of integration, gesturing toward exploding the integration/segregation dichotomy while cooperating in the racist politics that informs it ^[5].

It was not until 1947's Finian's Rainbow that a Broadway musical was truly racially integrated ^[6].

Language and Stereotypes

The show has also come under much attack, primarily because of the use of 'Nigger" in the lyrics in the first scene, in addition to the historical portrayal of blacks serving as passive laborers and servants. The show opened with the black chorus trudging:

Niggers all work on the Mississippi.

Niggers all work while the white folks play-

Loadin' up boats wid de bales of cotton,

Gittin' no rest till de Judgement Day ^[7].

In subsequent productions, "nigger" has been changed to "colored folk," to "darkies" and in one bizarre choice, "Here we all," as in "Here we all work on the Mississippi. Here we all work while the white folk play." The 1988 CD for EMI restored the original lyric, while the 1994 production chose "Colored Folk."

Those that consider Show Boat racially insensitive also often note that the dialogue and lyrics of the black characters and choruses use various forms of African American Vernacular English. An effective example of this is shown in the following text:

Hey!

Where yo' think you're goin'?

Don't yo' know dis show is startin' soon?

Hey!

Jes' a few seats left yere!

It's light inside an' outside dere's no moon

What fo' you gals dressed up dicty?

Where's yo' all gwine?

Tell dose stingy men o' yourn

To step up here in line! ^[8]

Many critics would either respond that such language is not an accurate reflection of the vernacular of blacks in Mississippi at the time, or that it is in fact linguistically correct but that the overall effect of its usage, especially in light of prejudiced historically-white audiences in past productions, results in a potentially harmful racial stereotype. In addition, some believe that the attempts of non-black writers to imitate black language stereotypically in songs like "Ol' Man River" and allege authenticity is offensive, a claim that was repeated eight years later by evaluators of Porgy and Bess.

"Ol' Man River" is not a Negro spiritual. It's a show tune cooked up in 1927 by a couple of middle-class honkies who needed something for a spot in the first act. Yes, Oscar Hammerstein's lyric is full of "dat" and "dese" (obviously, he was self-taught at Ebonics)... Hammerstein's is an unobtrusive craft, an artless art" ^[9].

Despite these objections, however, others believe that the song was written by Kern and Hammerstein to give a sympathetic voice to an oppressed people through the ironic use of a word often used derogatorily against them, and that the word was used to dramatically alert the audience to the realities of racism:

Show Boat begins with the singing of that most reprehensible word – nigger – yet this is no coon song... [it] immediately establishes race as one of the central themes of the play. This is a protest song, more ironic than angry perhaps, but a protest nonetheless. In the singers hands, the word nigger has a sardonic tone... in the very opening, Hammerstein has established the gulf between the races, the privilege accorded the white folks and denied the black, and a flavor of the contempt built into the very language that whites used about African-Americans. This is a very effective scene... These are not caricature roles; they are wise, if uneducated, people capable of seeing and feeling more than some of the white folk around them ^[10].

The racial situations in the play provoke thoughts of how hard it must have been to be black in the South. In the dialogue, some of the black slaves are called "niggers" by the white characters in the story. At first, it is shocking to believe they are allowed to use a word that negative at all in a play... But in the context in which it is used, it is appropriate due to the impact it makes. It reinforces how much of a derogatory term "nigger" was then and still is today ^[11].

Furthermore, even many of those who denounce the stereotyping of blacks and black language admit that the intentions of Hammerstein were noble, since "'Ol' Man River' was the song in which he first found his lyrical voice, compressing the suffering, resignation, and anger of an entire race into 24 taut lines and doing it so naturally that it's no wonder folks assume the song's a Negro spiritual" ^[12].

Many writers have also conceded that the novel contains caricatures of blacks, but believe that they were used by the author to scrutinize and criticize racism in the United States, since "cringe-worthy caricatures like Show Boat's 'black men...with rolling eyes and great lips' exist alongside some very thoughtful explorations of American racism, including Show Boat's sympathetic treatment of a mixed-race couple" ^[13].

The theatre critics and veterans Richard Eyre and Nicholas Wright believe that Show Boat was revolutionary, not only because it was a radical departure from the previous style of plotless revues but becuase it was a show written by non-blacks that portrayed blacks sympathetically rather than condescendingly:

Instead of a line of chorus girls showing their legs in the opening number singing that they were happy, happy, happy, the curtain rose on black dock-hands lifting bales of cotton, and singing about the hardness of their lives. Here was a musical that showed poverty, suffering, bitterness, racial prejudice, a sexual relationship between black and white, a love story which ended unhappily--and of course show business. In "Ol' Man River" the black race was given an anthem to honor its misery that had the authority of an authentic spiritual ^[14].

Revisions and Cancellations

Since the musical's 1927 premiere, Show Boat has both been condemned as a prejudiced show based on racial caricatures and championed as a breakthrough work that opened the door for public discourse in the arts about racism in America. In some occasions productions have been cancelled because of objections ^[15]. In addition, as attitudes toward race relations changed in later years, producers and directors often altered some content in order to make the musical more politically correct:

...Show Boat, more than many musicals, was subject to cuts and revisions within a handful of years after its first performance, all of which altered the dramatic balance of the play... ^[16]

1994 Revival

Harold Prince's 1994 revival (opening in Toronto in 1993, and on Broadway in 1994) revitalized interest in the show by tightening the book, dropping and adding songs and highlighting the racial elements of the show. Throughout the production African-Americans constantly cleaned up the mess, moved the sets (even when hydraulics actually moved them), with their presence constantly commenting on the racial disparities ^[17]. After a New Year's Eve ball, all the streamers fell on the floor and we saw African Americans busy sweeping them away. A brilliant montage in the second act showed time passing with the revolving door of the Palmer House in Chicago, and headlines going by in quick motion and then little snippets of slow motion to highlight a specific moment. African American dancers portrayed street dancers doing a dance and then time would pass and the fashionable white dancers had taken the dance.

During the production's stay in Toronto, many black community leaders and their supporters launched a massive opposition to the show, often mobilizing "black hecklers shouting insults and waving placards reading SHOW BOAT SPREADS LIES AND HATE and SHOW BOAT = CULTURAL GENOCIDE" in front of the theatre ^[18]. Some sympathetic to the cause of those against the production also thought that it was ironic that a supposedly anti-black show was receiving attention and support while the actual black community in Toronto was facing economic and social problems, and that

[the] conclusion that the protest was "misguided" reveals [the] total lack of understanding of the social and political cleavages in North York. It suggests that those blacks protesting Show Boat are wasting their time, when they should be engaged in more pressing struggles for equality in education, employment and housing. The fact is these people are working toward those goals every day. The protesters are trustees, teachers, lawyers, social service workers, and, dare I say it, leaders in their community ^[19].

However, while Hal Prince's production of Show Boat was met by a storm of criticism in Toronto, various theatre critics in New York understood that Prince highlighted racial inequality in his production not to support it but rather to show its injustice, as well as the historical suffering of blacks. One way that this was done was

the inclusion of an absolutely beautiful piece of music cut from the original production and from the movie... a haunting gospel melody sung by the black chorus. The addition of this number is so successful because it salutes the dignity and the pure talent of the black workers and allows them to shine for a brief moment on the center stage of the showboat ^[20].

Furthermore, during the 1993 Toronto protests, other observers decried the show's opponents for their own prejudices and racist attitudes, for many had supposedly stated that they viewed the show as a Jewish attempt to bring down blacks (both Kern and Hammerstein, in addition to director Hal Prince, were Jewish New Yorkers), and to many it seemed apparent that by labelling ethnic groups as racist, the protesters were guilty of the very thing that they were complaining about ^[21].

Analysis

Many commentators, both black and non-black, view the show as an outdated and stereotypical commentary on race relations that portrays blacks in a negative or inferior position. Douglass K. Daniel of Kansas State University has commented that it is a "racially flawed story" ^[22], and the African-Canadian writer writer M. Nourbese Philip claims that

The affront at the heart of Show Boat is still very alive today. It begins with the book and its negative and one-dimensional images of Black people, and continues on through the colossal and deliberate omission of the Black experience, including the pain of a people traumatized by four centuries of attempted genocide and exploitation. Not to mention the appropriation of Black music for the profit of the very people who oppressed Blacks and Africans. All this continues to offend deeply. The 'ol' man river of racism continues to run through the history of these productions and is very much part of this (Toronto) production. It is part of the overwhelming need of white Americans and white Canadians to convince themselves of our inferiority -- that our demands don't represent a challenge to them, their privilege and their superiority^[23].

In general, many of the artistic and social supporters of the musical believe that the depictions of racism should be regarded not as stereotyping blacks but rather satirizing the common national attitudes that both held those stereotypes and reinforced them through discrimination. In other words, just as quoting an out-of-context line from a play and claiming that it is the view of the playwright is absurd and deceptive, in the view of many of Show Boat's defenders, the fact that a dramatic or literary work portrays racist attitudes and institutions does not mean that it endorses them. In addition, theatre history shows that leading Broadway writers had long used the musical as a medium to call for tolerance and racial harmony, such as in Finian's Rainbow and by Hammerstein himself in South Pacific. Those who attempt to understand works like Show Boat and Porgy and Bess through the eyes of their creators usually comprehend that the show

was a statement AGAINST racism. That was the point of Edna Ferber's novel. That was the point of the show. That's how Oscar wrote it ^[24].

Perhaps the strongest foundational argument in defense of Show Boat lies in an understanding of the socially concerned intentions, aims, and backgrounds of its authors. According to Rabbi Alan Berg, Kern and Hammerstein's score to Show Boat is "a tremendous expression of the ethics of tolerance and compassion" ^[25]. As Jerome Kern himself states in the original production notes,

Throughout pre-production and rehearsal, I was committed to eliminate any inadvertent stereotype in the original material, dialogue which may seem "Uncle Tom" today... However, I was determined not to rewrite history. The fact that during the 45-year period depicted in our musical there were lynchings, imprisonment and forced labor of the blacks in the United States is irrefutable. Indeed, the United States still cannot hold its head high with regard to racism ^[26].

Oscar Hammerstein's commitment to idealizing and encouraging tolerance theatrically started with his libretto to Show Boat and can be seen clearly in his later works, many of which were written by Richard Rodgers. For example, Oklahoma! included a subplot regarding the community's debate over whether to accept a Persian and its treatment of a victimized man seen as representing blacks ^[27]. Carmen Jones is an attempt to present a modern version of the classic French opera through the experiences of African-Americans during wartime, and South Pacific explores interracial marriage and prejudice. Finally, The King and I deals with different cultures' preconceived notions regarding each other and the possibility for cultural inclusiveness in societies. Regarding the original author of Show Boat, Ann Shapiro states that

...Edna Ferber was taunted for being Jewish; as a young woman eager to launch her career as a journalist, she was told that the Chicago Tribune did not hire women reporters. Despite her experience of antisemitism and sexism, she idealized America, creating in her novels an American myth where strong women and downtrodden men of any race prevail... [Show Boat] create[s] visions of racial harmony... in a fictional world that purported to be America but was more illusion than reality. Characters in Ferber's novels achieve assimilation and acceptance that was periodically denied Ferber herself throughout her life ^[28].

To the objections of Philip in Showing Grit, therefore, a supporter of the production would answer that her statement is an incorrect analysis using inaccurate assumptions. For example, Philip's condemnation of the original book can be contrasted with Shapiro's commentary on Ferber's own experience of discrimination and how the books she authored, including Show Boat, addressed this sensitivity; that in opposition to the claim that the book and show omit the Black experience, they rather explore this experience in a way that audiences in 1927 were not prepared for. One could say that the analysis of Kern's score in the phrase "appropriation of Black music" is poor musicology that ignores the fact that all American music, even and especially including jazz forms and styles, is a fusion of always more than one musical influence. To the statement by Philip that the creators of the show are the "very people who oppressed Blacks" can be retorted the concrete fact that these people were in actuality of a distinct and seperate ethnic and cultural group that had its own experience with persecution and discrimination. One could say that what "continues to offend deeply" is in reality not Show Boat but the historical racial situation in North America, and that "shooting the messenger", especially one that attempts to alert mainstream America to the injustices of racial policies and realities at the time, is counterproductive. Finally, it would seem apparent to many that Philip's final psychological analysis of the show's creators and audiences is refuted by the facts concerning the show itself. In conclusion, a summary statement to the objection to Philip's commentary could therefore be "you picked the wrong enemy because you were looking for one".

Notes

1. ^ Vancheri, Barbara (August 23, 1998). "'Show Boat' continues successful voyage". Post-Gazette. Retrieved January 6, 2006.
2. ^ Ibid.
3. ^ Despite its technical correctness, that Show Boat deserves this title has been disputed by some. See note #5 and corresponding text.
4. ^ Keeling, Richard (a.k.a. musickna) (December 8, 2005). Music - "Show Boat". Blogger.com. Retrieved January 2, 2006.
5. ^ Holmes, Brian (2003). "Color by Numbers: Show Boat as Segregated Musical". American Society for Theatre Research. Retrieved January 5, 2006.
6. ^ Lane, John (2005). "John Lane's Notes on Music & Other Artistic Pleasures". Retrieved January 5, 2006.
7. ^ Hammerstein, Oscar II (1927). Show Boat (Original Libretto- Book and Lyrics). In "Collection of Musicals Lyrics and Libretti". Number 2 (Act One, Scene One).
8. ^ Ibid. Number 13 (Act One, Scene Five).
9. ^ Steyn, Mark (December 5, 1997). "Where Have You Gone, Oscar Hammerstein?". Slate. Retrieved January 5, 2006.
10. ^ See note #4.
11. ^ Cronin, Patricia (June 1997). "Timeless 'Show Boat' just keeps on rolling along". Retrieved January 5, 2006.
12. ^ See note #9.
13. ^ Wilson, Mollie (May 6, 2005). "So Big". Nextbook. Retrieved December 31, 2005.
14. ^ Eyre, Richard; & Wright, Nicholas. Changing Stages: A View of British and American Theater in the Twentieth Century. Random House. Retrieved December 31, 2005.
15. ^ Norvell, Scott; & S., Jon (March 18, 2002). "The Show Can't Go On". Fox News. Retrieved January 2, 2006.
16. ^ See note #4.
17. ^ Saviola, Gerard C. (April 1, 1997). "SHOW BOAT - Review of 1994 production". American Studies at University of Virginia. Retrieved January 5, 2006.
18. ^ William, Henry A. III (Nov. 01, 1993). "Rough Sailing for a New Show Boat". TIME.
19. ^ Anderson, Scott (Nov. 11, 1993). "SHOW COVERAGE IS MISSING THE BOAT". Eye.
20. ^ See note #17.
21. ^ Daniel, Douglass K. "They Just Keep Rolling Along: Images of Blacks in Film Versions of Show Boat". Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Minorities and Communication Division. Retrieved December 31, 2005.
22. ^ Philip, M. Nourbese (1993). Showing Grit: Showboating North of the 44th Parallel (2nd ed.). Out of print. pg. 59. Retrieved December 13, 2005.
23. ^ Briggs, Joe Bob (May 7, 1993). Joe Bob Goes to the Drive In. The Joe Bob Report.
24. ^ Laporte, Elaine (Feb. 9, 1996). Why do Jews sing the blues?. The Jewish News Weekly of Northern California.
25. ^ See note #1.
26. ^ Gomberg, Alan (February 16, 2004). Making Americans: Jews and the Broadway Musical - Book Review. What's New on the Rialto?. Retrieved January 6, 2006.
27. ^ Shapiro, Ann R (2001). "Edna Ferber, Jewish American Feminist". Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, vol. 20, #2, pp. 52-60.