Which 'Show Boat' Were They In? Quiz

Answer: 1929

This first film version was not originally based on the stage musical, but took its material directly from the novel. This version started as a silent film, but was revised to be a part-talkie (with short interludes of singing) because the producers realised that audiences would be expecting a talkie. During production, a prologue was added to include Magnolia singing five songs, including two from the musical: 'Ol' Man River' (oddly, since this immensely popular song was sung by Joe in every other adaptation) and 'Cant' Help Lovin' Dat Man'. While Laura La Plante 'sang' them, her voice was actually dubbed by Eva Olivetti.

Magnolia Hawks is the daughter of the captain of a river showboat, a floating theatre that cruised the major rivers (especially the Ohio and the Mississippi) in the 19th century, and the early part of the 20th century. At the start of the film she is an impulsive 18-year-old who falls in love with Gaylord Ravenal, an actor with a gambling problem who has arrived to star in the Cotton Blossom's shows. After her father's death, they move to Chicago with their daughter and try (not very successfully) to live off his winnings. When he abandons her, she finds work singing, becomes famous, and eventually returns to the family show boat and reunites with the husband she had never stopped loving.

Laura La Plante was one of Universal Studios' most popular stars during the 1920s, but her career was effectively ended by the transition to talkies. Since most of her work was in the silent film era, most of it has been lost.

Answer: 1929

Although this film was primarily based on the original novel, the ending had a different fate for Gaylord Ravenal. In the book, he had died before the news came to Magnolia that her mother had died, and the show boat was hers. The film, however, went for a nice romantic happy ending, with Gaylord and Magnolia reuniting, now that her mother was no longer around to keep them separate. The film also cut out the first part of the story, which emphasised the racism affecting the members of the show boat, and starts with Gaylord's arrival on the scene. These two changes make a big shift in the focus, less an exploration of the ways in which the society around them impacts their lives, and more romance.

Joseph Schildkraut was born in Austria, started his stage and film career in Germany and Austria,, then moved to the US in 1920, at the age of 24. He played the title role in the first American production of 'Liliom', the play that Rogers and Hammerstein later adapted to be 'Carousel'. The portrayal of Gaylord (which was non-singing, and had a Viennese accent for his talkie bits) was closer to the book than the musical or either of the other two films, in that he is shown as abandoning Magnolia out of cowardice, and knowing they had a child, rather than having any more noble idea of saving them from sharing his difficulties.

Answer: 1929

Joe is a Black dock worker, whose major role is singing 'Ol' Man River'. Stepin Fetchit was chosen for the role, due to the fact that he was considered to be a familiar face for audiences, but he didn't do the actual singing - that was done by Jules Bledsoe, who had played Joe in the 1927 musical. He did sing the song 'The Lonesome Road', written for the film to replace the reprise of 'Ol' Man River'. Joe's wife Queenie is the cook for the cast and crew of the Cotton Blossom.

Stepin Fetchit was the stage name used by Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry, often described as the first Black actor to have a successful film career. He was a Bahamian-Jamaican vaudevillian whose Stepin Fetchit character was billed as the laziest man in the world. The character was very popular in the 1920s and '30s, but then came to be seen as a damaging caricature, with his cringing servility. Recently, historians have started to argue that he is actually a trickster, slyly manipulating his white masters in such a way as to avoid doing whatever he did not wish to.

Answer: 1929

In this film, the issue of Julie being biracial (and therefore illegally married to her white husband, Steve) was totally eliminated. The reason she had to leave the Cotton Blossom was because Magnolia's mother was jealous of the friendship between the two. In another change from the book, Julie ended up as the madame of a brothel, not a prostitute employed there, following her abandonment by Steve. In the prologue, Helen Morgan (who played the role in the stage musical) sang 'Bill' and provided the voice for Laura La Plante singing 'Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man'.

While not biracial, Alma Rubens was the daughter of a German Jewish father and an Irish Catholic mother who spent most of her life denying the Jewish blood, changing the spelling of her surname from Reubens to Rubens. She had a bit of a checkered career in film, due in large part to the fact that she developed a narcotics addiction during the 1920s, developed after morphine was prescribed by her doctor. She spent a significant amount of time in rehabilitation, and 'Show Boat' was her second-last film, followed by 'She Goes to War', a silent film also released in 1929.

Answer: 1936

Universal Studios felt that they had missed the boat with the 1929 film (which was a financial failure), because the advent of talkies meant that there was an opportunity for a film based on the 1927 musical. Hence the 1936 film featured several members of the original Broadway cast, including Helen Morgan. This film, like the musical, does deal with the racism involved in Julie and Steve being forced to leave the Cotton Blossom because she was biracial, although passing as white. After Julie is abandoned, she becomes an alcoholic, something which Helen Morgan knew all too much about.

Helen Morgan was considered the quintessential 'torch' singer (one who specialises in songs about unrequited love, abandonment by a lover, etc.), and brought that in spades to her portrayal of Julie on the stage and in this film, a role which became her signature. During Prohibition she had a number of arrests for running illegal speakeasies in which she regularly performed (often drunk). Unfortunately, she died from cirrhosis of the liver caused by her excessive intake of alcohol at the young age of 41.

Answer: 1936

Allan Jones has been described as the perfect Gaylord, radiating charm, a soft character who wants to please rather than a cowardly one who wants to avoid responsibility. In this version of the story, Gaylord abandons Magnolia because he feels guilty about having ruined her life, not because he is afraid to face his mother-in-law. The happy reunion between the couple occurs not at the Cotton Blossom, but at the Broadway theatre where their daughter is about to make her debut. This gives an excuse for a reprise of 'You Are Love', a duet which Allan Jones had sung with Irene Dunne (Magnolia) much earlier, when they agreed to elope and marry.

Allan Jones had previously played the romantic lead (opposite Kitty Carlisle) in the Marx Brothers 1935 film 'A Night at the Opera', taking the place in the team dynamic of Zeppo Marx, who had been the straight man on stage. He was a tenor singer (as was his successful pop singer son, Jack Jones) who made a career of singing, charming male leads. In 'The Firefly' (1937), he sang 'The Donkey Serenade', which was to become his signature tune.

Answer: 1936

While Paul Robeson was not in the original Broadway cast due to scheduling issues, the song was written for him, and his performance of that song alone is sufficient reason to select this version for viewing. Joe sings this song along with a chorus of dock workers after noticing how taken Magnolia is with the newly-arrived Gaylord to become the leading actor in the Cotton Blossom's shows.

Paul Robeson was a singer, actor and political activist who had played professional football while completing a law degree at Columbia University. In 1928 he played Joe in the UK premier of 'Show Boat'. During the 1950s his passport was suspended due to his advocacy for the rights of Black Americans and his refusal to recant his advocacy for the Soviet-supported Republican faction in the Spanish Civil War. It was restored in 1958, once again giving him the chance to tour the world in performances. If you have never heard him sing the spirituals which he brought into the mainstream music scene with his performances, go do it. Now.

Answer: 1936

Queenie, Joe's wife and the cook for the Cotton Blossom, has a larger role in this film than had been the case in the 1929 version. This includes a comedy duet with Joe, 'I Still Suits Me', one of three new songs written for the film by Kern and Hammerstein. She also features in 'Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man', during which she is surprised to hear Julie singing a song that she associated with Black Americans.

Hattie McDaniel was a singer-songwriter, comedian and actress who was a trailblazer in getting Black women accepted as radio and film performers. She took on a range of unskilled jobs as she tried to break into performance, and most of her early, often uncredited, roles were as maids. In 1935 she appeared with Shirley Temple and Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson in 'The Little Colonel', the success of which gave her a higher profile in Hollywood. the role for which she is most remembered is that of Mammy in the 1939 film 'Gone With the Wind'. She won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, the first Black actor to win an Oscar. Unfortunately, she had to sit at a separate table at the back of the room during the dinner and presentations, because the Ambassador Hotel had a strict no-Blacks policy which was only reluctantly relaxed to allow her in the room, but not with the others.

Answer: 1951

In 1951, MGM (who had bought up the rights to 'Show Boat' from Universal Studios) produced a third film version which made some significant changes to the earlier versions. One of these changes involved reducing the time frame, so that Magnolia is still relatively young at the end when she is reunited with Gaylord, and their daughter Kim is still a child, not an adult. They are reunited after Julie, who doesn't know that Gaylord was unaware of Magnolia's pregnancy when he left five years earlier, berates him for abandoning his family, and Gaylord immediately returns to the Cotton Blossom.

Kathryn Grayson was classically trained as an opera singer and made a number of musical films with MGM in the 1940s and '50s. This was one in which she costarred with Howard Keel (who played Gaylord), as were 'Lovely to Look At' in 1952 and 'Kiss Me Kate' in 1953. In the 1960s she started to focus more on stage performances (including replacing Julie Andrews as Guinevere in 'Camelot' in 1962, before taking the role on tour for over a year) and operas.

Answer: 1951

This version of Gaylord went even further than the 1936 film in making him appear in a better light than in the novel. Not only did he leave Magnolia for altruistic reasons (so that she would not have her life ruined by his gambling issues) rather than fear of her mother, but he also did not realise she was pregnant at the time. Five years later, when he was gambling on another river boat, he defended a drunken Julie, who was performing there, from the unwanted attentions of her escort. When she realised who he was and scolded him for abandoning the baby daughter of whom he had been unaware, he went straight back to reunite with his family.

Howard Keel trained as a singer and obtained the Broadway role of Curly in the musical 'Oklahoma!' in 1945, taking the role to England in 1947. His first movie musical role came in 1951 when he starred as Frank Butler (opposite Betty Hutton) in the 1950 film version of 'Annie Get Your Gun', the first in a string of hits. After the end of his contract with MGM he returned to the stage, then nightclub work, before being cast in 1981 as Clayton Farlow on the television show 'Dallas', a role he played for ten years.

Answer: 1951

Julie in this version of the story does not end up involved in prostitution, but becomes a nightclub singer after being forced to leave the Cotton Blossom because she has been revealed to be biracial, and black and white actors were not allowed to perform on the same stage. When Magnolia is taken to the nightclub where she works to apply for a position as a singer, Julie resigns (after hearing that Gaylord has abandoned Magnolia) so that her younger friend can get the job. This sacrifice sends her career on a downward spiral, leading to the drunken performance when she meets Gaylord five years later.

Ava Gardner had the look that the producers wanted, but not the singing voice - her songs were dubbed for the film by Annette Warren, although her voice was used for the soundtrack album. When the movie was filmed, she was married to Frank Sinatra, following brief earlier marriages to Mickey Rooney and Artie Shaw, and she was a star of the so-called Golden Age of Hollywood. While her greatest success came in the 1950s, she continued to work as a leading lady in films through the '70s, and had a recurring television role in 'Knot's Landing' as Ruth Galveston from 1985.

Answer: 1951

Parthy Hawks is the stern mother of Magnolia, and wife of the captain of the Cotton Blossom. It is her disapproval of Gaylord that leads to the young couple leaving the Cotton Blossom. In the original book and the 1929 film, this happened after her father's death, when the couple and their child departed for Chicago rather than stay with her. It is the announcement of her impending arrival that makes Gaylord leave.
In the stage musical, Parthy's antagonism towards Gaylord is based on the fact that she believes he once killed someone, although he was acquitted at trial; their departure happens immediately after the wedding. Parthy and Magnolia's father Andy arrive in Chicago on the night of Magnolia's first performance, after Gaylord has left. It is the death of Parthy, after years of estrangement, that leads Magnolia to return to the Cotton Blossom and restore it.
In this film, it is only Andy who attends Magnolia's debut as a singer; she and her daughter return to the show boat almost immediately, and she is still there five years later when he returns to join them. Parthy plays a much less significant role in events, and does no singing, but does have some good scenes.

Agnes Moorehead may be more familiar to many for her portrayal of Samantha's mother Endora in the television show 'Bewitched' from 1964 until 1972, receiving six Emmy nominations. But she had a stellar career before that, starting with multiple radio roles that included becoming part of Orson Welles' Mercury Players in 1937. She made her film debut in 'Citizen Kane' (1941), playing the mother of the title character. Her success in several of Welles' films led to a contract with MGM, while continuing to work in radio and on stage.