Enchanted Evenings:The Broadway Musical from 'Show Boat' to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber

by Block, Geoffrey

  In 1988 John McGlinn (1953–2009), who had served as a music editor for the Houston Opera, conducted a recording of Show Boat on EMI/Angel that incorporated Bennett’s 1927 orchestrations and restored tryout material. McGlinn’s recording offered a significant amount of dialogue with musical underscoring. It even included an appendix containing longer versions of several scenes (shortened for the New York opening) and songs that Kern composed for the 1928 London engagement, the 1936 Universal film (with a screenplay by Hammerstein and new songs by Kern), and the New York revival in 1946.6

  Critics who attended the opening night on December 27, 1927, at the Ziegfeld sensed that Show Boat was not only a hit but a show of originality and significance. Robert Coleman, for example, described Show Boat in the Daily Mirror as “a work of genius” and a show which demonstrated the sad fact that “managers have not until now realized the tremendous possibilities of the musical comedy as an art form.”7 Coleman’s review is also representative in its praise of the original run’s exceptional production values, including “fourteen glorious settings” and a superb cast. Although Show Boat, in contrast to other Ziegfeld productions, did not open with a lineup of scantily clad chorus girls, Coleman thought he saw “a chorus of 150 of the most beautiful girls ever glorified by Mr. Ziegfeld.”8

  Within a few days after its opening Percy Hammond wrote that Show Boat was “the most distinguished light opera of its generation,” and Brooks Atkinson described it as “one of those epochal works about which garrulous old men gabble for twenty-five years after the scenery has rattled off to the storehouse.”9 Nearly every critic described Kern’s score either as his best or at least his recent best. Surveys of the American musical as far back as Cecil Smith’s Musical Comedy in America (1950) support these original assessments and single out Show Boat as the only musical of its time “to achieve a dramatic verisimilitude that seemed comparable to that of the speaking stage.”10 Beginning in the late 1960s historians would almost invariably emphasize Show Boat’s unprecedented integration of music and drama, its three-dimensional characters, and its bold and serious subject matter, including miscegenation and unhappy marriages.

  Although critics for the most part found silver linings nearly everywhere, they also freely voiced their discontent with one aspect of the work: the libretto. Show Boat might give the highly respected (albeit somewhat curmudgeonly) critic George Jean Nathan “a welcome holiday from the usual grumbling,” but most critics felt that the libretto, while vastly superior to other books of the time, did not demonstrate the same perfection as Jerome Kern’s music and Florenz Ziegfeld’s production.11 In particular, critics voiced their displeasure with the final scene. Robert Garland, who described Show Boat as “an American masterpiece,” noted some “faltering, like many another offering, only when it approaches the end,” and Alexander Woollcott wrote that “until the last scene, when it all goes gaudy and empty and routine, it is a fine and distinguished achievement.”12

  More recent historians continued to view Show Boat as a refreshing but flawed departure from other shows of its day. Richard Traubner, for example, who praised Show Boat as “the greatest of all American operettas,” attributed this greatness to its triumph over “libretto problems.”13 Even Show Boat aficionado Kreuger corroborates the verdict of earlier complaints: “As a concession to theatrical conventions of the time, Hammerstein kept everyone alive to the end and even arranged a happy reunion for the long-parted lovers, decisions, he revealed to this writer, that he came to regret.”14

  Despite these reservations, only Lehman Engel, the distinguished Broadway conductor and the first writer to establish canonical criteria for the American musical (see the “Coda” to chapter 1), would banish Show Boat from this elite group. Although Engel acknowledges that Show Boat’s “score and lyrics are among the best ever written in our theater,” he tempers this praise by his assessment of “serious weaknesses.”15 For Engel, Show Boat’s “characters are two-dimensional, its proportions are outrageous, its plot development predictable and corny, and its ending unbearably sweet.”16 Engel is particularly perturbed by six “not only silly but sloppy” coincidences that take place in Chicago within a three-week period in 1904 (significantly all in the second act), coincidences that are comically improbable, even in a city with half its present population.17

  Of the two principal collaborators, Hammerstein (1895–1960) had far more experience with operetta-type musicals as well as recent successes. Wild-flower (1923), created with co-librettist Otto Harbach and composers Herbert Stothart and Vincent Youmans, launched a phenomenally successful decade for Hammerstein as librettist, lyricist, and director for many of Broadway’s most popular operettas and musical comedies: Rose-Marie (1924) and The Wild Rose (1926) with Rudolf Friml and Stothart; Song of the Flame (1925) with George Gershwin and Stothart; and the still-revived The Desert Song (1926) with Sigmund Romberg. Two years before Show Boat Hammerstein had also collaborated with Harbach and Kern on the latter’s most recent success, Sunny.

  Kern (1885–1945), whose mother was a musician, “had some European training in a small town outside of Heidelberg” when he was seventeen and studied piano, counterpoint, harmony, and composition the following year at the New York College of Music.18 Ten years before Show Boat, Kern stated in interviews that “songs must be suited to the action and the mood of the play.”19 At the same time he also considered devoting his full attention to composing symphonies.

  Although there is no reason to doubt Kern’s aspiration “to apply modern art to light music as Debussy and those men have done to more serious work,”20 it was not until Show Boat that Kern was able to fully realize these goals. Kern had, of course, previously created complete scores for an impressive series of precocious integrated musicals during the Princess Theatre years (1915–1918), at least two of which, Very Good Eddie and Leave It to Jane, have been successfully revived in recent decades. For the earlier years of his career, however, Kern had been confined mainly to composing interpolated songs to augment the music of others. Two of these, “How’d You Like to Spoon with Me?” interpolated into The Earl and the Girl (1905), and “They Didn’t Believe Me” from The Girl from Utah (1914), remain among his best known. Similarly, Sally (1920) and Sunny (1925), two vehicles for the superstar Marilyn Miller and his most popular shows composed during the years between the intimate Princess Theatre productions and the grandiose Show Boat, are remembered primarily for their respective songs “Look for the Silver Lining” and “Who?” and have not fared well in staged revivals.

  Before 1924, Edna Ferber had never even heard of the once-popular traveling river productions that made their home on show boats. By the following summer she had begun the novel Show Boat, which was published serially in Woman’s Home Companion between April and September 1926 and in its entirety in August by Doubleday. Early in October, Kern, who had read half of Ferber’s new book, phoned Woollcott to ask for a letter of introduction to its author and met her at a performance of Kern’s latest musical, Criss Cross, that same evening. Even before Ferber had signed a contract on November 17 giving Kern and Hammerstein “dramatico-musical” rights to her hot property, the co-conspirators had already completed enough material to impress Follies impresario Ziegfeld nine days later.21 On December 11 Kern and Hammerstein signed their contracts, according to which a script was to be delivered by January 1 and the play was to appear “on or before the first day of April 1927.”22

  By 1927, Kern had long since earned the mantle allegedly bestowed on him by Victor Herbert (1859–1924), the composer of Naughty Marietta (1910) and dozens of other Broadway shows, as the most distinguished American-born theater composer. For more than a decade Kern had been the model and envy of Porter, Gershwin, and Rodgers, who were embarking on their careers during the Princess Theatre years. But it was not until Show Boat that Kern had the opportunity to create a more ambitious species of Broadway musical. The care which he lavished on the score is conspicuously evident from the numerous extant pr
e-tryout drafts on deposit at the Library of Congress (see “Manuscript Sources for Ravenal’s Entrance and Meeting with Magnolia” no. 1 in the online website) and by an unprecedentedly long gestation period from November 1926 to November 1927 that included numerous and lengthy discussions with librettist and lyricist Hammerstein. Many other changes were made during the out-of-town tryouts.

  Reconstructing Show Boat (1927–1994)

  In order to provide a framework for discussing Show Boat it will be useful to distinguish among its various stage and film versions. Although the vocal score of the 1927 production, published by T. B. Harms in April 1928, has been out of print for decades, much of this original Broadway version was retained in the still-available London vocal score published by Chappell & Co. (also 1928). It is also fortunate that much of the Convent Scene and two brief passages absent from the Chappell score—the parade music in act I, scene 1, and the “Happy New Year” music (“Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight”) in act II, scene 6—can be found in a third vocal score, published by the Welk Music Group, that also corresponds reasonably well to the 1946 touring production.23

  McGlinn’s 1988 recording is an indispensable starting point for anyone interested in exploring a compendium of the versions produced between 1927 and 1946 (as well as the 1936 film).24 All of these versions incorporate new ideas and usually new songs by the original creators. Even if one does not agree with all of McGlinn’s artistic and editorial decisions, especially his decision to include in the main body of the recording (rather than in the appendix) material that Kern and Hammerstein had agreed to cut from the production during tryouts, the performances are impressive and the notes by Kreuger and McGlinn carefully researched.

  In the introduction to his monograph Kreuger notes that “one fascinating aspect of Show Boat is that, unlike most major musicals, it has never had an official script or score.”25 The lack of the former did not pose a problem to Kreuger, who had obtained the 1927 libretto directly from Hammerstein himself a few days before his death in August 1960.26 Its absence has proven, however, to be an enormous headache for historians and, conversely, a source of opportunity for some directors (for example, Hal Prince), who have been given a free hand to decipher and interpret the complicated evolution and varied documentary legacy of this musical according to their personal visions.

  One extended number published by Harms, “Mis’ry’s Comin’ Aroun,’” had been dropped from the production in Washington, D.C., as early as November 15 after the very first evening of the tryouts. Because Kern “insisted that the number be published in the complete vocal score,” McGlinn argued, not without justification, that Kern “hoped the sequence would have an afterlife in a more enlightened theatrical world.”27 For this reason McGlinn includes “Mis’ry” into the body of his recording rather than in an appendix.

  McGlinn’s other “restorations and re-evaluations” are less convincing on historical grounds. Dropped from both the Harms score and the 1927 production were two numbers, “I Would Like to Play a Lover’s Part” (originally placed at the beginning of act I, scene 5) and “It’s Getting Hotter in the North” (act II, scene 9). The latter song was replaced by a reprise of “Why Do I Love You?” called “Kim’s Imitations,” performed by the original Magnolia, Norma Terris, who was made up to look like her daughter Kim and performed impressions of famous vaudeville stars. Since Kern did not wish to include this discarded material in the vocal score (and it was in response to Kern’s wishes that McGlinn reinserted “Mis’ry”), its presence in the body of McGlinn’s recording is questionable. One other number deleted before the December premiere, “Trocadero Opening Chorus” (at one time in act II, scene 6), was placed in the main portion of McGlinn’s recording for “technical reasons.”28

  For the first London production in 1928—which premiered after the New York version had been playing for a little more than four months—Kern and Hammerstein wrote “Dance Away the Night” (replacing Kim’s reprise of “Why Do I Love You?,” itself a replacement of “Kim’s Imitations”). Also in this production Kern’s 1905 London hit, “How’d You Like to Spoon with Me?” replaced the non-Kern interpolation, “Good-bye, Ma Lady Love.” Two scenes were entirely omitted, the Convent Scene (act II, scene 4) and the scene in the Sherman Hotel Lobby (act II, scene 5), along with the song, “Hey, Feller!” (act II, scene 7). Another song, “Me and My Boss,” composed especially for Paul Robeson, who sang the role of Joe, was not used and is presumed lost.29

  After returning to Broadway in 1932 for 181 performances (with several members of the 1927 cast and Robeson), the next major Broadway revival, with extensive changes by Kern and Hammerstein, arrived on January 5, 1946.30 Even the overture was new, a more traditional medley-type version to replace the “Mis’ry”-dominated overture of the 1927 production. The first word heard in the original 1927 New York production, “niggers,” had already been replaced by “coloured folks” in the 1928 London production. For the 1946 revival Hammerstein removed other references to this offensive word and rewrote a quatrain in the opening chorus in which “Coal Black Rose or High Brown Sal” was replaced by the less racially tinted phrase in dialect, “Y’work all day, y’git no fun.”

  “Show Boat, the marriage of Magnolia and Ravenal at the end of act I (1946).” Photograph: Graphic House. Museum of the City of New York. Theater Collection. For a film still of this scene see p. 159.

  Other changes in 1946 included a new emphasis on dance numbers, the composition of yet another song for Kim in the final scene, “Nobody Else but Me” (Kern’s final song before he died on November 11, 1945, during auditions), three major deletions (“Till Good Luck Comes My Way,” “I Might Fall Back on You,” and “Hey, Feller!” [dropped in London 1928]), an abbreviation (“C’Mon Folks”), a repositioning (“Life upon the Wicked Stage”), the deletion of two scenes (act I, scene 3, and act II, scene 5), and the rewriting of a third (act II, scene 7).31 Kreuger, who briefly discusses these changes, does not mention the elimination of local color (including banjos and tubas) and comedic elements such as Cap’n Andy Hawks’s introduction of Rubber-Face Smith in the opening scene. Although Kreuger regretted the absence of style in the stage performances, he unhesitatingly supported these revisions as improvements.32

  Theater historian and critic Ethan Mordden in a New Yorker essay on Show Boat published one year after the McGlinn reconstruction assesses the 1946 version far less favorably. Although, like Kreuger, Mordden recognizes the incalculable influence of Oklahoma! and Carousel, he regrets the alterations that “homogenized a timeless, diverse piece into a document of a specific place and time: Broadway mid-nineteen-forties.”33 Mordden continues:

  In 1927, “Ol’ Man River” and the miscegenation scene and “Bill” derived their power partly from a comparison with the musical-comedy elements dancing around them. Take the fun away, the apparently aimless vitality, and “Show Boat” loses its transcendence. The 1946 “Show Boat” is dated now, too consistent, too much of its day. The 1927 “Show Boat” is eclectic, of many days. Nevertheless, the revisions were locked in. American “Show Boat” revivals honored the 1946 version without question, and it became standard.34

  In contrast to most of the musicals discussed in subsequent chapters, Show Boat directors and their public can choose among two authentic stageworthy versions and one film version (considerably fewer, for instance, than the possibilities extant for Handel’s Messiah). More commonly, they have chosen to assemble a version of their own. Just as conductors have for two hundred years created their own Messiah hybrids, the 1971 London and 1994 Broadway revivals presented provocative conflations of several staged versions of Show Boat as well as the 1936 film.35 For example, two songs from the 1971 London revival that were part of the 1928 London version did not appear in the original 1927 New York production.36 Kern’s swan song and last attempt at a final song for the show, “Nobody Else but Me,” introduced in the 1946 New York revival (but not in the touring production), also appears, albeit sung out of con
text in 1971 by superstar Cleo Laine, who refused the role of Julie unless she was assigned a third song. From the 1936 Universal film the 1971 London revival recycled two of its three new songs, “Ah Still Suits Me” (for Paul Robeson’s Joe) and “I Have the Room above Her” (for Allan Jones’s Ravenal), sung by their rightful characters but in newly conceived dramatic contexts.37 Although critical assessments may vary, the 1971 London production provides an unmistakable example of the triumph of accessibility over authenticity.

  In director Hal Prince’s revival of Show Boat in 1994 (the first Broadway production to take full advantage of McGlinn’s research), “brothers” and later “coloreds” “all work on the Mississippi” and racial prejudice is acknowledged onstage throughout the evening.38 Blacks move scenery and pick up messes left by whites, whites steal the Charleston dance steps from black originators, and an endlessly reprised “Ol’ Man River” sung by Michel Bell looms larger than ever. In scenes depicting 1927 as well as the late 1880s, audiences could see conspicuous signs over drinking fountains and elsewhere marked “White Only” and “Colored Only.”39

  Prince and production designer Eugene Lee employed modern stagecraft “to create montages which integrate a leap of years, restore serious incidents and clarify plot and character motivations.”40 From the 1928 London version Prince borrowed “Dance Away the Night” when he needed some music for the radio. From the 1936 film he used Ravenal’s suggestive song, “I Have the Room above Her” and, more pervasively, “motion picture techniques such as cross-fades, dissolves and even close-ups.”41 As in the 1946 Broadway production, Frank and Ellie’s “I Might Fall Back on You” was dropped (although used as underscoring) and dance assumed a still more important role, especially in the montages staged by choreographer Susan Stroman.42 The powerful “Mis’ry’s Comin’ Aroun,’” restored for the Houston Opera production on Broadway in 1983, was again featured.