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

by Block, Geoffrey

  25. See Block, “The Broadway Canon.”

  26. Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1957), 4.

  Chapter 2: Show Boat

  1. Ronald Byrnside, Andrew Lamb, and Deane L. Root, “Jerome Kern,” The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan, 1980), vol. 10, 1–2; a slightly expanded version of this entry appeared in The New Grove Dictionary of American Music, ed. H. Wiley Hitchcock and Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan, 1985), vol. 2, 623–26.

  2. Byrnside, Lamb, and Root, “Jerome Kern,” 1.

  3. The New Grove authors do not mention that the New York City Opera selected Show Boat perhaps more for financial than artistic reasons. See Martin L. Sokol, The New York City Opera: An American Adventure (London: Collier Macmillan, 1981), 126.

  4. Miles Kreuger, “Show Boat.” Kreuger’s volume offers a comprehensive comparative survey of Edna Ferber’s novel, the New York 1927 premiere and revivals (1932 and 1946), and the three film versions (1929, 1936, and 1951).

  5. The Secaucus materials discussed later in this chapter are identified in “Manuscript Sources for Ravenal’s Entrance and Meeting with Magnolia” in the online website.

  6. Some reviewers of the album noted with admiration that the McGlinn reconstruction, which featured noted operatic crossover artists Frederica von Stade as Magnolia and Teresa Stratas as Julie, contained only ten minutes’ less music than Wagner’s Die Walküre.

  7. Robert Coleman, Daily Mirror, December 27, 1927. Quoted in Stanley Green, ed., Rodgers and Hammerstein Fact Book, 353.

  8. Ibid. According to Gerald Bordman, Show Boat opened with a cast of only ninety-six chorus members (fifty-two white and thirty-two black) and twelve black dancers. Bordman, Jerome Kern, 286.

  9. Percy Hammond, New York Herald Tribune, January 8, 1928; Brooks Atkinson, New York Times, January 8, 1928. Quoted in S. Green, Rodgers and Hammerstein Fact Book, 354–55.

  10. Cecil Smith and Glenn Litton, Musical Comedy in America, 158.

  11. George Jean Nathan, Judge, January 21, 1928. Quoted in S. Green, Rodgers and Hammerstein Fact Book, 355.

  12. Robert Garland, New York Telegram, n.d.; Alexander Woollcott, New York World, January 15, 1928. See also Robert Benchley, Life, January 12, 1928. Quoted in Green, Rodgers and Hammerstein Fact Book, 354–55.

  13. Richard Traubner, Operetta: A Theatrical History (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1983), 393.

  14. Kreuger, “Some Words about ‘Show Boat,’” 17. In Ferber’s novel Cap’n Andy becomes part of his beloved river when he is thrown overboard in a storm and drowns, Julie becomes a prostitute, and Ravenal and Magnolia are never reunited.

  15. Lehman Engel, The American Musical Theater, 13.

  16. Ibid., 13. Two pages later Engel asserts his view that only Porgy and Bess (1935) and The Boys from Syracuse (1938) before Pal Joey (1940) have revivable books.

  17. Ibid., 14. In a book published five years later Engel reiterates his 1967 perspective, but concedes Show Boat’s originality as well as the historical importance of its interweaving five couples: “Nothing as rich as this had happened before it in any other libretto, nothing as courageous in subject matter and nothing in America as opulent musically.” Engel, Words with Music, 70.

  18. Bordman, Jerome Kern, 23 and 25; Kern quotation on page 23.

  19. Ibid., 150.

  20. Ibid., 171.

  21. Kern was already a proven commodity to Ziegfeld, who had produced the hit Sally (570 performances) in 1920. Rumors of Ziegfeld’s lack of faith in Show Boat may be exaggerated.

  22. Kreuger, “Show Boat,” 26.

  23. The online website offers an outline of the 1927 Show Boat (scenes and songs) as listed in a souvenir program for the week beginning Monday, October 28, 1928, by which time changes had long since been consolidated (the program is reproduced in Kreuger, “Show Boat,” 68–69). For convenience, the outline is keyed to the show numbers as they appear in the original Harms vocal score. Songs listed in the Harms score (but not listed in the souvenir program) are placed in italics. The website also provides an encapsulated view of the most important subsequent productions.

  24. EMI/Angel CDS 7–49108–2.

  25. Kreuger, “Show Boat,” viii–ix.

  26. With the issuing of McGlinn’s reconstructed recording, a libretto that is virtually complete for those scenes where underscored dialogue plays an important role (act I, scenes 1, 2, 4, 7, 8) finally became widely available. Act II, scene 3, is also nearly complete and the text of act II, scenes 4 and 9, is well represented. The only previously published libretto is based on the 1928 London production (Chappell, 1934).

  27. John McGlinn, “Notes on ‘Show Boat,’” 28.

  28. McGlinn candidly concedes that his recording is not absolutely complete. He does not, for example, include the Entr’acte to act II or several “utility arrangements … which are in any case verbatim repeats of music recorded herein,” and he notes also the omission of underscoring in act II, scene 2. McGlinn leaves unmentioned the unfortunate absence of the interpolated “Good Morning, Carrie” from the same scene and Gustav Lange’s “Blumenlied” (“Flower Song”). The latter served Kern as the “Incidental Music, played on the Stage during the presentation of ‘The Parson’s Bride’” in act I, scene 6.

  29. The dramatic changes are fully reflected in Chappell’s published libretto of 1934, but the published vocal score, while it contains “Dance Away the Night” and omits “Good-bye, Ma Lady Love” and “Hey, Feller,” does not include “How’d You Like to Spoon with Me?” and prints “Ol’ Man River” in the original C major (to better feature Robeson’s basso profundo; the London “Ol’ Man River” was transposed down a whole tone to B from its New York key of C major).

  30. After 418 performances the 1946 revival would spawn two phenomenal national tours (fourteen cities and forty-five cities, respectively) that would last the better part of the next two years.

  31. Kreuger, “Show Boat,” 160–63. The legacy of the 1946 production is largely preserved in the Welk vocal score and the unpublished libretto distributed by the Rodgers and Hammerstein Theatre Library for those who would produce Show Boat over the next five decades. Missing, however, from both the Welk score and the acting edition of the 1946 libretto is Kim as an adult and her song “Nobody Else but Me.” This was the song that replaced Norma Terris’s impersonations and Edith Day’s new song for the London production, “Dance Away the Night.” Although he acknowledges that it was made “to facilitate travel and trim the running time to avoid overtime fees for the stage hands,” Kreuger asserts that these changes “strengthen the reunion of Magnolia and Ravenal.” Ibid., 170.

  32. For Kreuger, the three scene cuts “were made to help trim the lengthy show to a more conventional running time,” and, since “developments in scenic technology permitted speedier set changes than were possible in the 1920s,” such “front” scenes (including act I, scene 3) were an unnecessary impediment to contemporary possibilities in stagecraft. Kreuger also defends another deletion when he writes that “although the replacement of one song for another in the same spot requires the sacrifice of ‘I Might Fall Back on You,’ the better of the two songs is retained; and the script probably benefits from far smoother action.” Ibid., 160 and 162.

  33. Ethan Mordden, “‘Show Boat,’” New Yorker, July 3, 1989, 83.

  34. Ibid.

  35. The London production that docked on July 29 at the Adelphi Theatre stayed afloat longer than any previous production, closing 910 performances later on September 29, 1973. Its legacy is preserved on a recording promoted somewhat inaccurately in the jacket notes as “the first and only complete recording containing all the lyrics and music.” Stanyon Records 10048 (two LPs).

  36. The first of these, “How’d You Like to Spoon with Me?” (Kern’s first London success of 1905 with lyrics by Edward Laska) served in the 1971 London production as an interpolation to replace “I Mig
ht Fall Back on You.” The second, “Dance Away the Night,” which Kern had written as a new last song for the London Magnolia, Edith Day, in 1928, was transferred to Frank Schultz.

  37. “Gallivantin’ Aroun’” (sung by Irene Dunne in the film) was not used.

  38. In both the Playbill (“Director’s Notes”) and in his Tony Award acceptance speech, Prince gratefully acknowledged McGlinn’s scholarship. Hal Prince, “Director’s Notes,” Playbill 95/11 (1994), n.p.

  39. Variety critic Jeremy Gerard noted that these signs were “just about the only things that remain unchanged over the show’s 40–year span”; reprinted in New York Theatre Critics’ Reviews 55/13 (1994): 262.

  40. Prince, “Director’s Notes,” n.p.

  41. Ibid., n.p. Robeson’s “Ah Still Suits Me” from the film was used as underscoring.

  42. Kim’s “It’s Getting Hotter in the North,” dropped after opening night in 1927, was restored as a dance number; Queenie’s “Hey, Feller!” (gone since the 1928 London production) and “How’d You Like to Spoon with Me?” from London 1971 were relegated to underscoring.

  43. Robert Simon, “Jerome Kern,” 24.

  44. A precedent for this technique can be found in 1916, when to accompany the silent film Gloria’s Romance, Kern had composed “fifteen themes for specific characters and situations.” Bordman, Jerome Kern, 128.

  45. Not only do these motives avoid notes outside the scale, but they also capture the openness of the river as well as its simplicity and purity by avoiding the tensions inherent in half steps.

  46. Bordman was perhaps the first to note “that the Cotton Blossom theme is essentially the beginning of the chorus of ‘Ol’ Man River’ played in reverse and accelerated.” Bordman, Jerome Kern, 290. The relationship between the “Cotton Blossom,” “Ol’ Man River,” and Cap’n Andy’s themes is also mentioned by Ethan Mordden (“‘Show Boat’”).

  47. Bordman writes that Kern “demonstrated the universality of some folk themes when he returned to his roots and used an old Bohemian melody for Cap’n Andy’s entrance.” Bordman, Jerome Kern, 291. Dvořák authority John Clapham notes a connection between Dvořák’s theme and the spiritual “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” Clapham, “The Evolution of Symphony ‘From the New World,’” Musical Quarterly 44 (April 1958): 175; see also Jean E. Snyder, “A Great and Noble School of Music: Dvořák” and “Harry T. Burleigh, and the African American Spiritual,” in Dvořák in America 1892–1895, ed. John C. Tibbetts (Portland, Ore: Amadeus Press, 1993), 123–48, especially 131–32. Three years before Show Boat Kern quoted the openings of both the first movement and the even more well-known slow movement from Dvořák’s symphony in the dance music of “Shufflin’ Sam” (from Sitting Pretty), perhaps as a musical pun to support Sam’s motto, “This old world’s no place to cry and be glum in.” Bordman attributes this last Dvořák reference to orchestrator Robert Russell Bennett. Bordman, Jerome Kern, 249.

  48. It is more difficult to offer an unequivocal identification of the theme associated with Sheriff Vallon. Unlike the “Cotton Blossom,” Cap’n Andy, and Parthy themes, which establish immediate associations, Vallon’s theme, introduced immediately after the Overture, at first suggests a more generalized darker side of river life rather than a specific human representative of law and order. At its second appearance, where stage directions tell directors to “enter Vallon,” Kern makes a direct association between Vallon and his theme, an association that Kern will recall at the conclusion of “Make Believe” (“enter Vallon followed by Joe”).

  49. In the 1994 Broadway revival Cap’n Andy’s theme is absent on both these occasions.

  50. Not only does Kern adopt the B section of The Beauty Prize music as the B section of “Where’s the Mate?” he also retains its unusual modulation from G major to F major.

  51. The three-note descending scalar fragment also returns prominently in the opening chorus (sung by whites) at the Midway Plaisance in Chicago (Harms, 181).

  52. Julie’s song “Bill,” if not her fate, is also foreshadowed by the barker at the Chicago Fair (Harms, 186).

  53. Also mm. 5–6, 9–10, and 15–16.

  54. Stanley Green notes this reference to “Make Believe” in The Rodgers and Hammerstein Story (New York: John Day, 1963), 58–59. Ethan Mordden and Deena Rosenberg provide two additional examples of thematic reminiscence. In “Why Do I Love You?” the orchestra plays the first eight measures of “I Might Fall Back on You” while a chorus sings “Hours are not like years, / So dry your tears! / What a pair of love birds!” Immediately thereafter Ravenal reprises the first eight measures of “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man” to the words “I’ll come home as early as I can, / Meanwhile be good and patient with our man.” Mordden, “‘Show Boat,’” 81, and Rosenberg, “‘Show Boat’ Sails into the Present,” New York Times, April 24, 1983, sec. 2, 12.

  55. Show Boat (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page, 1926), 183–85.

  56. The meeting scene portion of act 1, scene 1, is found in Harms, 37–53, Chappell, 36–52, and Welk, 31–46; the libretto appears in the McGlinn booklet of the EMI recording, 62–66.

  57. This harmonic progression is known in classical theoretical parlance as a deceptive cadence (a B-minor triad in the key of D major).

  58. This chord, an augmented sixth chord on B expands into a dominant A-major triad to prepare circuitously the return to the tonal center of D.

  59. It is similarly not an accident that Magnolia and Ravenal’s declaration of love at the conclusion of the act will also be a waltz, “You Are Love.” Considering the importance of this waltz section in “Make Believe,” its omission in both the 1936 and 1951 film versions is regrettable.

  60. The Library of Congress typescript (identified in “Manuscript Sources” no. 1 of the online website) shows that before settling on “convention’s P’s and Q’s” the line read, “There really is no cause to have the blues,” a lyric that was removed before Kern’s first musical draft of this scene. In the third section of the song, this same typescript shows that “the world we see” replaced “reality.”

  61. The 1951 MGM film version offers yet another division of this material before Magnolia and Ravenal profess their love together:

  RAVENAL: Others find peace of mind in pretending Couldn’t you?

  MAGNOLIA: Couldn’t I?

  BOTH: Couldn’t we:

  RAVENAL: Make believe our lips are blending In a phantom kiss or two or three—

  BOTH: Might as well make believe I love you—

  FOR, TO TELL THE TRUTH … I DO.

  62. In addition to the Library of Congress and New York Public Library libretto typescripts there are two substantial musical drafts for this scene housed in the Library of Congress (designated Draft 1 and Draft 2 in the “Manuscript Sources” no. 1 of the online website). All of the Library of Congress material was acquired from the Warner Brothers Warehouse in Secaucus, New Jersey.

  63. In the Library of Congress typescript Frank appears before Ravenal has the opportunity to pick up Ellie’s handkerchief.

  64. The 1927 production offered two other exchanges between Ellie and Frank that succeeded in conveying the dynamics between them. The first of these opens act I, scene 3 (Outside a Waterfront Gambling Saloon), where Ellie explains to Frank that she “won’t never marry no actor”; the second appears in scene 5 where she informs him that she might settle for Frank if nothing better comes along (“I Might Fall Back on You”).

  65. The dialogue in the New York Public Library typescript (see “Manuscript Sources” no. 2 of the online website) goes like this:

  PARTHY (OFF): Magnolia! (She enters lower deck.) Andy! Drat that man, he’s never home—Magnolia! (Magnolia enters on top deck. Windy motions her to stand still where she is so that Parthy won’t see her. Windy exits R. Parthy exits L.)

  RAVENAL (RAVENAL RESUMES SOLILOQUY): Who cares if my boat goes upstream?

  PARTHY (OFF): Nola!

  RAVENAL: Or if the gale bids me go with the r
iver’s flow.

  The Library of Congress typescript (see “Manuscript Sources” no. 2 of the online website) originally had Magnolia’s stage action occur after Ravenal sang this last line with corrections made in pencil.

  66. Library of Congress typescript 1–21 and 1–22.

  67. During the tryouts Kern and Hammerstein made still more changes in this scene. Shortly before its closing moments, according to Draft 2 of the Library of Congress score, the lovers sing a reprise of the waltz (section 2) for fifteen measures, after which Kern indicated by arrows and hatch marks a direct move to the coda. Draft 2 also contained another six measures of “Make Believe” after the coda, which Kern deleted before the return of Vallon’s theme. The underscored waltz of section 2 then led to a scene between Magnolia and Joe and “Ol’ Man River.”