Show Boat (1951 Film) - Adaptation

Adaptation

For the 1951 Show Boat, Oscar Hammerstein II's dialogue was almost completely thrown out and new dialogue written by John Lee Mahin. The only two scenes to retain more than a tiny bit of Hammerstein's dialogue were the early scene in which Cap'n Andy introduces the show boat actors to the crowd, and the miscegenation scene, in which Julie (Ava Gardner) is revealed to be of mixed blood and therefore illegally married to a white man.

The story was given a major overhaul near the end of the film and the changes are considered to make this version of the story quite distinct from 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. In all stage productions as well as the 1936 film version, Julie disappears completely from the story after overhearing Magnolia audition at the Trocadero nightclub in Chicago. In the 1951 version, Julie is the one who motivates Ravenal to return to Magnolia, and she is also the very last character we see: she is shown watching the show boat as it pulls away from the dock, with Magnolia and Ravenal onboard and back together; they are unaware of her presence on the dock, and she blows them a kiss. Kim (Magnolia and Ravenal's daughter) appears only as a baby and a little girl in this version.

Nearly all of the purely comic scenes, retained in the 1936 film version, were removed in the 1951 film, as much of the comedy in the show has no direct bearing on the plot, and according to the book The Great Movies by William Bayer, producer Arthur Freed maintained a strict policy of removing everything in the musicals that he produced if it did not advance the storyline. Two additional comic moments not in the show, both involving the African-American characters Joe and Queenie, had been added to the 1936 film and might be considered politically incorrect today. They were not used in the 1951 film. This pruning left Joe E. Brown (as Cap'n Andy) and Agnes Moorehead (as Parthy) with far less to do than they would otherwise have had, and turned the characters of Frank and Ellie (played by Gower and Marge Champion) into a relatively serious song-and-dance team rather than a comic team who happened to dance. Frank and Ellie, rather than being portrayed as unsophisticated, barely talented "hoofers" as in the show, were made into a rather debonair, sophisticated, and extremely talented couple in the style of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

The role of ship's pilot Windy McClain, already brief to begin with, was reduced to just three lines in the film. (In the 1951 Show Boat, it is Magnolia, not Windy, who defends Julie and her husband Steve when the sheriff arrives to arrest them.)

The character "Rubber Face" Smith, a comic stagehand, was eliminated from the 1951 film.

The role of Sheriff Ike Vallon, already a small one, is even further reduced. In the 1951 film, he appears only in the miscegenation sequence, while in the original stage production, and especially in the 1936 film, he appears several times: he is among the crowd at the beginning when Cap'n Andy introduces his troupe of actors to them, he returns to escort Ravenal to see the town judge, he is seen relaxing inside a saloon where he is informed of Julie's mixed blood, he appears during the miscegenation sequence when he tries to arrest Julie and Steve, and he appears again when Parthy tries to stop the wedding of her daughter Magnolia to Ravenal.

The version of "Ol' Man River" heard here, and sung by William Warfield, is considered by film historians to be by far the best moment, both musically and pictorially, in the film. Musical theatre historian Miles Kreuger, who had many harsh words for the 1951 Show Boat in his 1977 book Show Boat: The History of a Classic American Musical nevertheless had nothing but high praise for this sequence. It was staged and directed by an uncredited Roger Edens during an illness of George Sidney, who directed the rest of the film. However, the "Ol' Man River" sequence in the 1936 film version of the show, with its tracking pan around the seated, singing figure of Paul Robeson, and its expressionistic montages of field and dock workers performing their tasks, is perhaps even more highly regarded.

The aspects of the original stage version dealing with racial inequality, especially the story line concerning miscegenation, were highly "sanitized" and deemphasized in the 1951 film, although the interracial subplot was retained:

• During the miscegenation scene (in which Julie's husband is supposed to suck blood from her hand so that he can truthfully claim that he has "Negro" blood in him), he is seen pricking her finger with what looks like a sewing pin, rather than using an ominous-looking switchblade, as in the play and the 1936 film, to cut her hand with.
• The role of Queenie, the black cook (an uncredited Frances E. Williams), has been reduced to literally a bit part, and she practically disappears from the story after the first ten minutes, unlike the character in all stage versions and Hattie McDaniel in the 1936 film version. The role of Joe the stevedore (played by the then-unknown William Warfield) is also substantially reduced in the 1951 film, especially in comparison to Paul Robeson, whose screen time playing the same role in the 1936 film had been markedly increased because he was now a major star.
• In the 1936 version of Show Boat, as well as the stage version, Queenie remarks that it is strange to hear Julie singing "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" because only black people know the song, thereby foreshadowing the revelation of Julie's mixed blood. This remark is completely left out of the MGM version, as is the term colored folks, which Queenie uses.
• Some of the more controversial lines of the song "Ol' Man River" (one of them being "Don't look up and don't look down; you don't dast make the white boss frown") 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. An offscreen, "disembodied" chorus is heard during "Ol' Man River", instead of the usual group of dock workers who are supposed to accompany stevedore Joe in the song. The same type of chorus is heard later, in a choral reprise of "Make Believe" accompanying a montage which shows the increasing success of Magnolia and Ravenal as actors on the boat, and again at the end of the movie, in Warfield's final reprise of "Ol' Man River".

The film also somewhat sanitized the character of Gaylord Ravenal, the riverboat gambler. In the Ferber novel, the original show, and the 1936 film, Ravenal can stay in town for only 24 hours because he once killed a man in self-defense — this is the reason that Vallon takes him to see the town judge, and it is the reason that Ravenal asks for passage on the show boat. This point was eliminated from the 1951 film, and the reason that Ravenal asks if the show boat will take him on is that he has lost his boat ticket through gambling. In the 1951 film, when Ravenal deserts Magnolia, he does not know she is pregnant, and returns when he finds out that she has had a child, while in the Ferber novel, the original show, the 1929 part-talkie film, and the 1936 film, he not only knows that she has had a baby, but deserts her several years after the baby has been born, knowing that she will probably have to raise the child alone.

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 shots of townspeople reacting to the show boat's arrival), the film does not give a very strong feeling of authenticity. The arrival of the boat was achieved by blending backlot footage showing the boat pulling in with location shots of crowds running along the river bank. (For backlot shooting, the lake used in filming MGM's Tarzan films stood in for the Mississippi River, while the real Mississippi was seen during the film's opening credits.) 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 featured in the 1946 Jerome Kern biopic Till the Clouds Roll By. But studio executives were nervous about casting a glamorous black actress in one of the lead roles, so Gardner was chosen instead. After some unfavorable sneak previews using her real voice in her songs, Gardner's singing voice was 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.

Eleven numbers from the stage score were sung in this film. As in all productions of the musical, the song "After the Ball" was again interpolated into the story, but "Goodbye My Lady Love", another regular interpolation into the show, was omitted from this film version. Although the songs "Why Do I Love You?" and "Life Upon the Wicked Stage" were actually performed in the 1951 film after having been heard only instrumentally in the 1936 film, there were still several major musical differences from the original play in this Technicolor version:

• The opening song, "Cotton Blossom", rather than being sung by the black chorus and by the townspeople who witness the show boat's arrival, was sung by a group of singers and dancers in flashy costumes dancing out of the boat. This required the omission of half the song, plus a small change in the song's remaining lyrics.

• "Ol' Man River", instead of being sung just a few minutes after "Make Believe", was moved to a later scene taking place in the pre-dawn early morning, in which Joe sadly watches Julie and her husband leave the boat because of their interracial marriage. Thus, the song became Joe's reaction to this event. In the 1951 version, it is sung only twice, rather than being sung complete once and then partially reprised several times throughout the story, as in the play and the 1936 film.

• Because of the reduction of both Joe and Queenie's roles, as well as the absence of an African-American chorus, "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" became a song for only Julie and Magnolia, while the deckhands relaxing on the boat provided their own instrumental accompaniment, but did not sing.

• "Life Upon the Wicked Stage", rather than being sung by Ellie to a group of worshipful fans curious about stage life, was moved to the New Year's Eve scene at the Trocadero nightclub, to be sung and danced by Ellie and Frank in the spot in which the two are originally supposed to sing "Goodbye My Lady Love".

• The little-known song "I Might Fall Back On You", another duet for Ellie and Frank, was sung as a number on the stage of the show boat, instead of as a "character song" for the two to sing outside the box office, as originally written.

• Another little-known song, "C'mon Folks", originally sung by Queenie in the stage version in order to get the dock workers and their girlfriends to buy tickets to the play being presented on the boat, was turned into instrumental music for acrobats, seen in the background while Cap'n Andy chats with the three "cuties" that have accompanied him to the Trocadero New Year's Eve celebration.

• "Make Believe" is reprised by Ravenal when he returns at the end, rather than when he is saying farewell to his daughter just before he deserts her and Magnolia.

• The "Cakewalk", usually performed at the end of Act I by the black workers and the townspeople as part of the wedding ceremony, was instead performed twice in this film - once by Frank and Ellie on the show boat's stage while the "miscegenation sequence" is taking place backstage, and near the end of the film as a dance on that same stage for Cap'n Andy and his four year old granddaughter, Kim Ravenal.

The three additional songs that Kern and Hammerstein wrote especially for the 1936 film version were not used in the 1951 movie.