Show Boat

source: Show Boat

Wow, there is so much in this to get upset about. You know, that it has one memorable song, presented so profoundly well that by itself it could have been the first successful music video. But it stands apart from everything else in this lurid mistake. Even if it had been a good film, viewers would tinge from the handling of race. Its so alien now that its even puzzling as to what the story actually is — so far from that world we've come. Here's the setup: we have four worlds. One is the world of the performer. Its a rich, rewarding happy world, one that you can always retreat to. Its a work of "make-believe" which is truer than true. Because all of the performer's songs are tepid, this is anchored by the dancing Champions. They are terrific, sexy, full. A second is the world of gambling. All people are gamblers to some extent in this movie, but there is a specific, closed gambling space and populace. These people are performers of sorts. The third world is the world of the viewers. They are arrayed up and down Huck Finn's river, and are eager, passive and barely human. We are folded into this class: tepid, lifeless humans. The fourth world is truly unsettling. Its the world of the blacks. They span the other worlds: they are smiling, happy audience, pleased to be in the fields picking cotton and to be distracted by the fun of the boat. They are natural performers, just look at one for a moment and they amuse. In fact, there is a story element strangely shoehorned in that depends on the top, sexy, unstable actress being "secretly" black -- supposedly explaining her passions and talents. This actress falls into sexual slavery in the gambling world. The core of the story follows a young girl as she drifts among these worlds. Its famously bad, except for the "Old Man River" segment. Its truly fine in so many ways. But seeing it in such a context ruins it. I've seen this several times. I believe that the original Technicolor print revealed painfully bad colors in the production design: costumes, hair, environment, everything. Now there does not seem to be a good print in existence, so the colors are even worse. Its horrible. Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

If you've read any of my reviews of musicals, then you know that I watch them only so that I can heckle them like Mike, Servo and Crow do to the crummy movies sent them by Dr. Forrester and TV's Frank. I did the exact same with George Sidney's "Show Boat". Among my jeers were: Andy: "I got a sixth sense about these things." - Me: "I can see dead people." Julie: "It's surely not his brain." - Me: "Bra-a-a-a-ains!" (like a zombie) I also noticed that Agnes Moorehead played a supporting role. She is of course best known as Endora on "Bewitched". I guess that Endora might tell Samantha "See what your marriage to that mortal has driven me to?" To be certain, in the scenes with the granddaughter, I said "Don't encourage Tabitha to use witchcraft!" But most importantly, this movie is the ultimate whitewash. It depicts racial harmony in the south when in reality the south had Jim Crow laws. It was definitely a little jarring to hear the casual talk about miscegenation laws. So, you probably think that I didn't understand the movie at all. Well, there's nothing to understand. It's the typical happy-go-lucky musical. Trey Parker and Matt Stone of "South Park" ought to remake it and put their own spin on it.

I have watched this movie a number of times over the years, mainly because I love the music. I keep hoping that I will also enjoy the movie. Sometimes the music wins, sometimes the movie loses, and I turn it off. I just caught it again on TV, after a long avoidance. My first thought was, was this movie colorized? The color was so garish, and the depiction of the "colored" farm hands so out of date, that I wondered whether it was actually filmed in the 30s or early 40s, before color, like the original. So I logged on and found out it was actually filmed in 1951, in Technicolor. There is no excuse for the absurd racial stereotypes by then, at least in Hollywood; but then the whole movie is nothing but stereotypes, so I guess it is an equal opportunity offender. The real problem is there is not much or a script to hold the musical numbers together. The movie starts with music, and the characters are never really introduced. Stuff just starts happening, and you never quite care about any of the characters. You get the impression someone just kept cutting out dialogue from the script to make room for the musical numbers and keep the movie short - 107 minutes - until there was hardly anything left except the bare storyline. Hey, if a film is good, you don't want to shorten it. And while the melodies are wonderful, the singing is awful. There is far too much vibrato, more, I think, than you would find in most operas. Next, if you watch the lips of the actors, you get the impression that all the dialogue is dubbed in afterward. And the acting is weird. In the beginning, it is bad because they are supposed to be bad actors on a showboat. But then they become bad actors in a bad B quality movie. The best thing that could happen to this movie would be to put the soundtrack in a lifeboat and torpedo the movie. It is offensive to blacks, offensive to whites, offensive to music lovers, and most of all, offensive to movie lovers.

Another of the great musicals I have seen so many times, and wish to comment on it and compare with the original made in 1936 with Irene Dunne and Alan Jones. Although the original is in black and white, the 1951 version is so colorful and story and acting so good and more developed and three-dimensional, that I had a few tears myself. Dancing by Marge and Gower Champion were truly champions. Joe E. Brown as Capt. Hawks plays a much funnier role than Charley Winninger did in 1936. He has such a rubbery face, and I can still hear him saying "Happy New Year". There are eight wonderful songs by Kern and Hammerstein and the best were "Make Believe" and "You Are Love" and "Old Man River" but there were other old goodies, too, like "After The Ball". 8/10

Show Boat is one of my favourite musicals, and I admit to being a solid Howard Keel fan! However, the one thing that gets me, and why they haven't returned it to the original film track, is the dubbing of Ava Gardner's voice. I have a copy of the soundtrack on good old vinyl and have Ava singing her own songs on it and I have to say, in my humble opinion, that she actually did a better job of it, than the person who dubbed her. Maybe in 1951 Ava's rendition was a bit.... too hot for the censors, but today, never. Why can't we have Ava's voice back on the film??? What do the rest of you think?

This is a great splashy color musical in the MGM tradition. If that is what you are looking for then look no further. If you are looking for a story that more closely follows the dramatic line of Edna Ferber's novel you want to watch the 1936 version. Edna Ferber's heroines usually had some weakness or problem that they tried to solve by leaning upon a man. Ferber would remove the crutch (the man) from the heroine's life and, only once the woman had grown strong as a person, would she be reunited with the man upon which she had once leaned... or not. That was true in the novel Showboat, but not here. In this film Magnolia is only separated from her gambling husband Gaylord for a very few years before he returns. They both still have their youth and their daughter is quite young and almost everyone has a MGM happy ending. And the biggest surprise - Magnolia's mom turns out to have a heart of gold when, in the novel, her ill temper and constant sniping at first aimed at Magnolia's father and then at her husband, helped precipitate many problems in the first place. To eliminate any talk of controversy and keep this a big happy musical Lena Horne did not get the part of tragic figure Julie. Instead that part went to Ava Gardner. If you are going to do a musical in the 1950's Howard Keel has a strong wonderful voice and strikes a powerful pose, but that is exactly why he is totally wrong for the part of Gaylord Ravenal. I could believe in the 1936 version when Allan Jones slinks off and leaves Magnolia - he seemed like a credible rat. Not so Howard Keel. He looks every inch a gentleman and does not seem like a coward and a quitter at all, not even if he is practically pushed away. I'm giving this six stars because it is a cinematically beautiful film with a talented cast performing great musical numbers. Just don't expect the hard edges of the 1936 version.

This version can't hold a candle to either the Broadway version or the 1936 film--or even the 1989 PBS TV version. It's way too "P.C." before anyone even knew what P.C. was. It's like a colorful, pretty Xmas present, but when you tear off the wrapping and open the box--there's nothing inside. One of MGM's worst musical adaptations. . .but that's only my opinion.

The coded language being used to criticize this film is ridiculous. Too 'PC' for showing less of the shiftless Negro comic relief...too 'PC' for showing William Warfield sing "Ol' Man River" with operatic sophistication (he was an opera singer, for pity's sake!!)...an accusation that Lena Horne claimed to be promised this film? Where did THAT one come from? According to Ms. Horne's documentary IN HER OWN WORDS (which periodically airs on PBS), she never said she was promised the film, she said she was offered a shot at the stage revival (this, apparently, came from Jerome Kern himself before he passed away) back in 1945-1946. That never materialized and she did 'TILL THE CLOUDS ROLL BY, probably always keeping the idea of doing the film in the back of her head. MGM, so the story goes, apparently had many speculative cast packages for this film once upon a time: Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald were considered in the 30's as Gaylord and Magnolia, then in the 40's, Tony Martin and Kathryn Grayson-- with either Dinah Shore or Judy Garland as Julie (in retrospect, this wouldn't have been that far-fetched; Shore was a dark-haired, decidedly exotic looking, band singer at the time, and Garland had recorded several Kern songs as singles, including "Bill"), but Garland was already fired from the studio by the time they started filming. The final decision to use the gorgeous Ava Gardner was just fine, thank you; I just wished Gardner was allowed to keep her own singing voice in the final film. And as far as justifying not using Horne (as someone else noted) because she is 'obviously a woman of color:' if the studio felt that way, they wouldn't have created a special 'Light Egyptian' face powder for her to make her darker on film (claiming that without this makeup she photographed white.) The film is wonderful in its rich Technicolor cinematography, costumes, and lush music. Yes, the book has been shortened to make the film less than two hours; otherwise, it would be nearly four hours, just as it is on stage. And when it is remade again as a film (as I imagine it will be someday), will you then complain that it is "too long?"

This film is often disparaged as the "least" version of Show Boat, and I can't say that I disagree. It abbreviates the story, discards a sinfully large chunk of the score, and virtually eliminates the key characters of Joe and Queenie. And it pushes the limits of MGM Technicolor to the breaking point; the sets and the actors seem to have been doused with radium. The blinding color notwithstanding, the production is actually rather cheapjack and can't hold a candle to James Whale's 1936 version. Just compare the pivotal "After the Ball" sequence in the two films: The MGM rendering is naive and listless, while Whales' b&w sequence is so beautifully art-directed, populated, costumed and photographed that it actually comes off as the more colorful of the two. And while Irene Dunne as Magnolia is sometimes a little hard to take (especially when she "shuffles"), she seems far more authentic than Kathryn Grayson. The MGM version has one virtue, however, that's unmatched in any other: Ava Gardner as Julie. Although her singing was dubbed in the release print (even if the original tracks reveal her superior singing voice), the Ava Gardner of 1951, photographed in ridiculous old Technicolor, was quite possibly the most beautiful creature ever to appear before a camera. In a couple of closeups (especially her last), she is literally breathtaking, and those shots alone make the film worth viewing. By the way, the great Lena Horne has often said that she was promised the role of Julie (having acquited herself so admirably in the Show Boat sequence of "Til the Clouds Roll By") and then was betrayed by the bigwigs at MGM. But this has never made any sense to me. Julie is supposed to be a woman of multi-racial parentage who passes for white. Lena Horne was (and is) beautiful, elegant, uniquely talented, and unmistakably a woman of color. How, exactly, was that supposed to work?