Enchanted Evenings:The Broadway Musical from 'Show Boat' to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber Block, Geoffrey (large ebook reader .txt) 📖

grumpy spouse). We can presume that Magnolia heard her mother’s theme calling—that is what prompts her to say she has to leave. The absence of Parthy’s theme in the film at this same point in the conversation makes Magnolia’s sudden desire to interrupt the conversation inexplicable.

An even more dramatically significant effect of an underscoring omission occurs during the short scene in which Pete confronts Queenie about where she got her brooch (which we soon learn was a gift from Julie who rejected Pete’s gift). The conversation appears in both the stage and film versions. In the stage version the underscoring of “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man” connects this song with Queenie and sets up its use in the next scene, where we learn that Julie somehow picked up a song closely associated with black culture. In the film, Pete’s confrontation with Queenie is accompanied, not by “Can’t Help Lovin,’” but by Magnolia’s piano theme. This important theme will not be associated with Magnolia until Ravenal asks her if she is a player.9 Although the 1936 Show Boat certainly exhibits expert plotting and dramatic consolidation, it discards some of the dramatic connections that the music of the 1927 stage original provided.

The opening number contains substantial cuts, and much of “Cap’n Andy’s Bally-hoo” is either deleted or spoken. The next two songs in the scene contain significant omissions as well. Among the most drastic and dramatically significant reductions are those in Ravenal’s entrance and first song, “Where’s the Mate for Me?” Those familiar with the stage version here (discussed in chapter 2) may recall that Ravenal sings a melody in AABA form in which the B section, “Magnolia’s Piano Theme,” forms the inspiration of Ravenal’s B section. Ravenal asks where his mate might be. He hears Magnolia, her theme enters his consciousness and his music, and when he repeats the question, Magnolia herself appears to answer the question before Ravenal is able to finish it in song. After Ravenal almost finishes the second of the first two A sections in the film version he is interrupted as well, but not by Magnolia’s piano theme. The interruption is in the form of a short film cutting to a conversation in which Frank contradicts Ellie’s assumption that Ravenal must be an aristocrat by pointing out the cracks in his shoes (after which Ravenal, now discredited, proceeds to complete the song with the final phrase). Together, the song and the dialogue interjection occupy a not-so-grand total of thirty seconds.

Although it no longer begins as the interruption of a song, the ensuing dialogue between Magnolia and Ravenal follows the stage version closely (with Parthy’s interrupting theme now absent). In the 1936 film, “Make Believe” is also deprived of its second section.10 With the time saved by the reductions of “Cotton Blossom,” “Where’s the Mate?,” and “Make Believe,” “Ol’ Man River,” sung by Paul Robeson accompanied by an inventive filmic montage of stevedores toting barges, lifting bales, Joe getting drunk and landing in jail, rolls along uninterrupted for more than four minutes to create a powerful conclusion to a magnificent if somewhat shorter scene. This change in emphasis surely reflects both Robeson’s star quality and the fact that since 1927, “Ol’ Man River” had become the signature song of the show and a deeply resonant reflection on American history. Indeed, in the MTV era, this filmic version of an iconic song can come across like a marvelous music video.

The 1936 film introduces to us a practice that becomes extremely common if not ubiquitous in films that discard significant amounts of musical material from the stage version. This is the practice of using fragments of abandoned songs as underscoring. Some examples include the appearance of the second section of “Make Believe” to underscore Julie’s departure, the use of “Till Good Luck Comes My Way” when Ravenal is seen gambling, and “Life on the Wicked Stage” when Frank and Ellie are seen together. “Why Do I Love You?” is also reduced to an orchestral fragment. Only if one knew the song would someone realize the significance of the words “Because I love you,” a lyric from this song and a line that appears in Ravenal’s farewell letter which Ellie reads out loud (or that the musical line that accompanies this lyric and the line in the letter are synchronized).

Since nearly every Show Boat ends differently, it should come as no surprise that major changes have transpired between the 1927 stage and 1936 screen versions. Due largely to the show’s excessive length, the role of Magnolia’s daughter Kim, a successful young singing and dancing star on the stage in the tradition of her mother, was removed during the tryouts along with her song, “It’s Getting Hotter in the North,” in which Magnolia’s piano theme is transformed into a jazzy ’20s tune in the general style of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. Although the growing length of the film forced a curtailment of Kim’s transformation of her mother’s “Gallivantin’ Aroun’” (sung earlier in the film in blackface), film viewers see a lot of Kim in 1936 from birth to young adulthood. Audiences witness her birth in a scene taken from the novel, we meet Kim again when Ravenal sings “Make Believe” to her at her convent school before his disappearance, and the adult Kim appears in several later scenes, including the happy reunion of her parents after twenty years who conclude the film with a reprise of their duet, “You Are Love.” The film also fleshed out the role of Joe, not only by giving him the rare full version of a song, “Ol’ Man River” and a new song later in film, but in some new dialogue with Queenie. Audiences also gain a richer sense of Joe’s character, when, in a demonstration of courage and resolve that belies Queenie’s accusations of laziness, Joe takes it upon himself to find a doctor in a hazardous storm so that Magnolia will give birth to Kim safely.

Even if one does not find the 1936