Good 50's Films: Show Boat

1951 Musical
From MGM
Directed by George Sidney

Starring
Kathryn Grayson
Ava Gardner
Howard Keel
Marge Champion
Gower Champion
Joe E. Brown
Agnes Moorehead
Robert Sterling
William Warfield

This colorful, heartfelt musical was a major financial success for MGM and came with quite a pedigree.  The book was written by Edna Ferber (famed for her stories of the long lives of her characters) that was turned into an immortal Broadway play that lasted through 572 performances and was adapted by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein.

It then became a silent film in 1929 which morphed into a popular 1936 version starring Irene Dunne, Allan Jones and Helen Morgan.  MGM had wanted to acquire the rights for a few years without success, unsurprisingly envisioning Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy as the leads.

By the time filming began on the 1951 version, the clear-cut choices for the leads were Kathryn Grayson and Howard Keel.  William Warfield, in his film debut as Joe, seemed to be a shoo-in for his role as well.  Most other roles had a swirl of people being considered before this cast was set.

At the heart of the story are Magnolia (Nolie) Hawks, the daughter of a riverboat captain, and Gaylord Ravenal, an actor-singer who considers himself first and foremost a gambler.  He tries to book passage on the boat, christened the Cotton Blossom, but is told it is full.  After the lead singer, Julie Laverne and her husband, are forced to leave when Julie's mulatto heritage is revealed, Ravenal is hired as the lead actor.  Nolie, who has longed for a showbiz career, replaces Julie as the troupe's lead singer.

After the pair marries, they leave the river for Chicago where they acquire some riches due to his good fortune at gambling.  But when he begins a serious losing streak (he hocks her valuables and they sneak out of their luxury hotel), he leaves her without saying goodbye, not knowing that she is pregnant.

Nolie gets a singing gig, opening on New Year's Eve, when her father, who knows nothing of her misfortunes, shows up to hear his daughter in not very good voice.  She tells him that she's expecting and says she wants to return to the riverboat life.

In the meantime, Ravenal's downward spiral continues and on board another riverboat, he runs into Julie, now a hopeless alcoholic, and she takes him to task when she realizes who he is (they'd never met) and what he's done to her best friend, Nolie.  She shows him a newspaper picture of Nolie and their child, both of whom perform on the Cotton Blossom

The uniting of father and daughter on a wharf next to the riverboat is one of the film's most touching scenes.  The family is happily back together (we never doubted it for a moment), Joe reprises his stirring Ol' Man River and we see a worn-out Julie on the wharf watching her friend kissing her husband on the upper deck of the boat as they drift down the river. 

All versions of this work differed in various ways.  This one threw out most of the dialogue and rewrote it.  The production code folks wanted to delete the racial themes altogether but it was eventually decided that since the 1936 version addressed them, then the 1951 version would too.  The racial scenes were a bit sugar-coated but  without them there'd be little use of the character of Julie at all, aside from helping to reunite the couple at the end.  Even as it is, Ava Gardner, isn't in the story for more than a total of 30 minutes or so.

This version, of course, was in glorious Technicolor from the studio
that loved and excelled at its colorful musicals.  It would have been one of the first musicals I ever saw.  While it does have that sentimental Americana feel, it is not told through the lens of musical-comedy but rather musical-drama because of its darker themes (miscegenation, addiction, the pain of tragedy, love and loss). 

Going back all the way to that initial viewing and right up to watching it again yesterday, I remember the opening scenes as the boat pulls into the dock.  We see the townsfolk rushing out of shops and homes and running down streets to meet it (exactly as it occurred it the actual times... it was an event) and all of sudden the camera whirls around to the boat and we see dozens of performers on both decks with their tambourines... a glorious moment. 

By and large, it was a big happy experience for everyone.  Grayson, Garder and Keel would become life-long friends.  George Sidney was one of the studio's most respected and reliable directors with films such as Anchors Aweigh, The Harvey Girls, Annie Get Your Gun, Kiss Me Kate, Pal Joey and Bye Bye Birdie on his musical side of the ledger.  Sydney was of a mind to give the story's weaker third act a bit of a nudge and it certainly seemed to work out.

Keel said in his autobiography that he and Grayson fell in love during the making of Show Boat.  She was in the middle of a divorce and he was married and about to have a second child, so they decided to put on the brakes.  Nonetheless, they would make two more films together (Lovely to Look At and the aforementioned Kiss Me Kate) and in later years would pair up for a nightclub act.

They are simply superb... their voices can certainly hit the high notes, they breathe life into their characters and their affection for one another is obvious.  At MGM at that point in time, no two could have done it any better.  Their first song together, Make Believe, became one of the standards from this film.

While Gardner had a good time with her new friends, she remembered the film with bitterness and it dealt with her singing voice.  She had sung in other films and her voice was not bad at all.  Certainly not on the level with Grayson, but so what?  She could carry a tune and one would have to think that with having been married to Mickey Rooney, Artie Shaw and at the time Sinatra, she knew something about music and singing.  She pre-recorded her two songs (Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man and Bill) and though she was nervous about the studio using her voice, she was assured it would happen.  When the studio reneged and substituted singer Annette Warren's voice at the last minute, Gardner was furious. 

Gardner was not the first one considered to play Julie.  Long part of Hollywood lore has been that Lena Horne had been up for the role.  She seems ideal for sure but the fact is she was never considered at all.  Also, though she had been an MGM contract player for years, she left before filming began.  The name most bandied about was Judy Garland but she, too, had left (in shambles).  Then Dinah Shore was brought up but ultimately it went to Gardner for her name value.

Director George Sidney with his two leading actresses

I loved the pairing of the two lead actresses, two beautiful brunettes born in the same year and at first glance as different as different can be.  Grayson with that gorgeous heart-shaped face usually displaying a whisper of sadness and Gardner with her raw sexuality and earthy beauty and readiness to stand toe-to-toe with any foe, real or perceived, greatly complemented one another.  Watching the two of them sing a juiced-up version of Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man is great fun.

While Show Boat has always been acknowledged for its great songs, the pièce de résistance is unquestionably Ol' Man River, sung as good as it gets by concert baritone William Warfield in his film debut.  Truthfully, the same could be said about Paul Robeson in the 1936 version.  A beautiful baritone voice and this song, a lament to lost hope, could never be anything less than thrilling.  I gets weary and sick a tryin', I'm tired a livin' and scared a dyin' but Ol' Man River he just keeps rollin' along.  I never just hear this song... it seems to invade me.  

It is also a superbly photographed sequence with its patchy fog, early morning stillness and the camera moving gracefully around Warfield time and again.  It was a wondrous sense of time and place and mood.  Interestingly, director Sidney became ill and this sequence was handled by Roger Edens, an MGM composer and arranger who worked a lot with Garland.

One extremely pleasant addition to this version are Marge and Gower Champion, dancers extraordinaire, as another part of the riverboat's troupe of entertainers.  While they do have occasional acting moments, it is that dancing in three glorious numbers (I Might Fall Back on You, Cakewalk and Life Upon the Wicked Stage) that impresses.  Real-life marrieds at the time, they knew one another well enough to tell stories while they danced.  Their chemistry, ability to predict what the other will do and their timing takes Show Boat another few wrungs up the ladder.

Joe E. Brown and Agnes Moorehead are sheer perfection as Nolie's parents, Cap'n Andy and Parthy.  He's is a happy-go-lucky, overgrown kid and she is comically an old stick-in-the-mud.  In some regional stage plays these parents become the focus and with name stars inhabiting the roles and all other roles filled by fledgling actors.

One day in the 60's I was at MGM on some job assignment and had a studio golf cart at my disposal.  I knew what I wanted to do.  I knew the Cotton Blossom was still on the lot.  The movie itself never got close to the Mississippi.  Instead it filmed on a lake built for the Tarzan series.  No doubt it would still be there.  I asked some employee where the lake was and soon I was looking at a pretty decrepit Cotton Blossom. 

MGM pulled out all the stops to bring its glossy, colorful (and so far final) third version for all to enjoy its sumptuousness.  It has  characters that are well-written and brought to life by actors who are ideally cast, eleven yummy songs and a beautiful score generously running in the background for so much of the film.  That Americana look at the Mississippi's past romantic charm is pretty irresistible for those rainy Sunday afternoons that I am so fond of mentioning.  

Here is that fabulous song...

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