SHOW BOAT (1936; 1951)

In the popular arts, ‘progressive’ is a relative term.  And so it’s proved to be in the Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein 1927 musical breakthru, from Edna Ferber’s multi-generation tale of showbiz & heartache around a theatrical Mississippi riverboat.  You only need to look at how the opening verse of Flo Ziegfeld’s legendary show was altered over the years.  Meant to shock in ‘27, the first thing heard in the show was an all-Black chorus singing: ‘Niggers all work on the Mississippi; Niggers all work while the White folk play.’  (Yikes!  Ziegfeld productions always opened with a chorus line of pretty girls.)  But by the time this 1936 film came out, the verse had changed to: ‘Darkies all work . . . ‘  For the 1946 B’way revival it was ‘Colored folk work . . . ‘, and post mid-‘60s revisions got by with ‘Here we all work . . . ‘  American race attitudes in a nutshell.  And M-G-M in 1951?  They skip the verse entirely.  It’s changes like that in this ultra-lux iteration that turn a once purposefully tough show anodyne.  And while 1936 can be awkward and a little bumpy, it sees director James Whale working out of his fach, but often doing impressive things, generally sticking close to the original script, it's helped rather than hurt by rough moments, with real texture to the thing.  George Sidney in the remake very much in his lane, but unwilling to change gears and break out.  (In different ways, both versions make a mess of the end.)  Of course, 1936 has a dream cast of real SHOW BOAT stage vets: Helen Morgan’s Julie (with her wistful soprano) & Charles Winninger’s Capt. Andy (fighting himself to a draw on stage) from the original cast (so too Sammy White’s Frank & Francis X. Mahoney’s Rubber Face); Paul Robeson’s Joe from London; Irene Dunne who toured extensively as Magnolia.  (What a shame Edna May Oliver, the original Mother Parthy, had just left Universal for M-G-M.)   For 1951, gorgeous Ava Gardner*, Joe E. Brown, William Warfield’s impossibly smooth-voiced Joe in ‘Old Man River’, flutter-prone Kathryn Grayson, all completely outclassed.  Even solid Howard Keel’s riverboat gambler loses to Allan Jones whose voice & lightweight character are a much better fit for weak Gaylord Ravenal.  You get the idea of what’s consistently lost simply by comparing the full Oscar Hammerstein scena he turns out for the 1936 ‘Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man’ sequence: lifelong bond between Magnolia & Julie; foreshadow of the miscegenation storyline, startling frank sexuality between Robeson & Hattie McDaniels' Queenie unheard of from a Black couple on screen at the time (with more to come in “I Still Suits Me’ a duet added for the film); Magnolia showing latent talent as a performer (Dunne, nearing 40, twerking!), and Parthy’s intolerance.  While the same song in 1951 delivers nothing but the girl bonding.*  Of course, not everything favors the older film, 1936 does give us Dunne as a ‘pickaninny’ (Four-star BlackFace ALERT!), but most of the missteps you find smoothed over in the 1951 remake are exactly what George Cukor knew to avoid when he made DAVID COPPERFIELD the year before, later saying, he ‘discovered my own rule in doing adaptations.  You must get the essence of the original which may involve accepting some of the weaknesses . . . I don’t believe in ‘correcting’ Dickens, ‘saving’ him and all that. I just had to go with the vitality of the thing.’  That’s what Hammerstein & Whale got so right in this remarkable 1936 document.

DOUBLE-BILL: This double-bill’s self-evident.  But watch the 1936 version first.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *And Ava really is unusually gorgeous lensed by Charles Rosher, though famously unhappy after her own vocals were eventually dubbed by Annette Warren for theaters.  Hers wound up only on the soundtrack album.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Or simply compare and contrast the comic pair of dancers on the show boat in the two films.  These two are meant to be nice second-raters.  Exactly how they are cast in 1936, while 1951 sees Marge & Gower Champions, the top swanky nightclub dance act in the country at the time, their steely perfection (and Gower’s glamor) useless to the story.