Das Komödiantenschiff

Edna Ferber did not write "Showboat" as a musical, but as a novel, and this 1929 silent-early talkie version fleshes out the story of a complicated marriage and makes it completely believable. It is certainly not dated, especially with the number of people today who are addicted to gambling, and it stands on its own two feet without the Jerome Kern score. I was pleasantly surprised, and enjoyed TCM's broadcast completely.

Favorite scenes: when little Magnolia is torn from Julie (Alma Rubens, who would be dead from heroin addiction only two years later) by her jealous mother (Emily Fitzroy, with her customary severe hairknot appearance), when Gay and Magnolia first meet on the Showboat (how beautiful those close-ups were!), and the ending, when the elderly Gay falls at Magnolia's feet and the forlorn Lonesome Road is sung in the background. The last scene in particular seemed other-worldly to me, and that was because of the performances of both Laura La Plante and Joseph Schildkraut, which were so solid and touching.

Especially compared to the later musical versions, which glossed over some of the more difficult aspects of Gay and Magnolia's marriage, 1929's "Showboat" has the courage to show the seedier aspects of the downward turn in their relationship due to gambling. The Grayson-Keel musical has their child being born after Gay leaves, with Magnolia never informing Gay she was pregnant. But in the 1929 version Gay is shown to basically abandon both wife and young child, instead of living up to his responsibilities to get a real job to provide for them. We should have less sympathy for such a man, but somehow, we understand and forgive.

It's such a pity that so much of the audio has been lost. I realize some of the film is supposed to be silent, but those scenes with obviously missing dialogue, are frustrating indeed. If it weren't for that, and the cowardly decision to eliminate the racial angle of Julie's storyline, I'd probably give this version of "Show Boat" 7/10. Despite it's flaws, the performances are very good and emotionally engaging. The actors are more subtle and natural than I expected them to be. I only hope that more of the lost score and audio tracks are discovered and restored someday. Shame on the studio for not taking better care of this historically important film.

I had thought this little gem completely lost and was delighted to spot it on TCM. The restoration is quite good considering the missing soundtrack for a long sequence toward the end. The plots of all three movies differ. This one may be more faithful to the book. The acting is especially good and the drama plays out much less superficially than the later versions.

For future restoration work, it seems to me an awful lot more of the spoken dialog can be recreated with very modest lip reading. I was delighted to realize that the retiring Magnolia, singing unknowingly to a tear-stained Ravenal in the audience, is in fact singing a slow Lena Horne-ish "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man of Mine". If they can't find that soundtrack, I say, what the heck, see what Marni Nixon's doing these days and give her the job! The haunting Kern-themed orchestral score works just right.

While I agree with the critics here who question the absence of the racial subplots, the scenario holds up very well on its own.

SHOW BOAT (Universal, 1929), a Carl Laemmle Super Production directed by Harry A. Pollard, is a part-talking/part-silent screen adaptation based more on the dramatic story by Edna Ferber's book than the then successful 1927 Florenz Ziegfeld Broadway musical by Oscar Hammerstein and Jerome Kern. Remade most famously by Universal (1936) starring Irene Dunne and Allan Jones, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (1951) with Kathryn Grayson and Howard Keel, no three editions are alike, all having both different outlook and visual styles of its own.

Opening title: "The mighty Mississippi - deep and moody," begins with the Cotton Palace Show Boat "bringing to the river folk the glorious world of unreality - the theater." As the public cheers the boat's arrival, Magnolia Hawks (Jane LaVerne), a child of show boat owners, Captain Andy (Otis Harlan) and Parthinia Ann (Emily Fitzroy), dances for the public against the objections of her stern mother, who dislikes show people. During the night of the show, Magnolia, hoping to someday become an actress, is caught imitating its leading lady by her mother, who punishes Magnolia with a spanking inside her room. Magnolia calls out the window for actress and dear friend, Julie Dozier (Alma Rubens) for both moral support and comfort. Overhearing Magnolia wishing Julie were her mother, the hurt and jealous Parthinia immediately dismisses Julie from the show, not before Captain Andy enters to have her go out to perform. Years later, Magnolia (Laura LaPlante) grows up to become a successful Show Boat entertainer, but finds it difficult keeping her leading men who constantly get fired by Parthinia after they find themselves falling in love with her. Captain Andy subjects Gaylord Ravenal (Joseph Schildkraut), a gentleman and non-actor, to become Magnolia's new leading man. Fascinated by her beauty and charm, Gaylord eventually elopes with her. Though Captain Andy approves of Gaylord, Parthinia simply refuses to accept him into the family, constantly arguing with him, even after Magnolia gives birth to their daughter, Kim. Some time later, after Parthinia becomes a widow and becomes in charge of the Show Boat, Magnolia and Gaylord, unable to cope with her anymore, buy out their interest of the show boat and, taking along their five-year-old daughter (Jane LaVerne), start a new life in Chicago. Because of Gaylord's compulsive gambling and losing all the earnings and wife's respect, causes a friction in their marriage, leaving uncertainties ahead.

Others in the cast include: Elsie Bartlett (Elly); Jack McDonald (Windy); and Edwards (Schultzy). With Jane LaVerne, playing both mother and daughter roles, being such an adorable child, Stepin Fetchi's Joe, the character who sings the famous "Ol' Man RIver," is reduced here to a cameo dub-singing a slow but dull song titled "Look Down That Lonesome Road." While many of the actors credited being properly cast, especially Laura LaPlante, Universal's top actress of the day, and Schildkraut's less sympathetic gambling husband, it's Emily Fitzroy as Magnolia's frightful mother who gets better attention here over the likable Otis Harlan's Captain Andy.

For anyone having seen the remakes and expecting on hearing its classic songs, would be disappointed. Also missing are the romantic subplots of half-black Julie Dozier and her white husband, Frank Baker; and black comic support of Joe and Queenie. Other than some tunes from the musical used as underscoring for the silent treatment, the existing two hour edition to 1929s SHOW BOAT opens with an audio overture of stage performers of the musical show, including Aunt Jemima singing "Hey, Fella," Helen Morgan's "Bill" and Jules Bledsoe's rendition of "Ol' Man River." Take notice the voice-over announcer, Otis Harlan, introducing Bledsoe's "Ol' Man River" does not occur, cutting straight to the opening titles instead. Virtually silent with original underscoring, it takes the story nearly a half hour before reverting to ten minutes of spoken dialogue set during a bad acting stage play and after. The second talking segment occurs a half hour after reverting to silent scoring and inter-titles. Unfortunately the surviving print's second talkie segment, lasting a good half hour, contains no audio (now lost) using some inserted subtitles in its place. The supposed banjo segment of LaPlante singing on stage is voiceless with no indication to what songs she is actually singing.

Reportedly lost with no prints to have survived due to MGM's acquiring the rights to both Universal editions for its basis for its 1951 Technicolor musical, both 1929 and 1936 adaptations have fortunately survived, with the long unseen 1936 version the only one of the Universal two being available on video cassette and DVD. Regardless of being incomplete both in audio and brief segments, at least Turner Classic Movies cable channel has brought back this original edition back from obscurity, where it has been shown since July 1995, a real curiosity for fans of both stage and screen editions to see for comparison reasons more than anything else. (***)

...but frustrating if judged as a talkie. I use the term "talkie" in the loosest of terms, because very few talking passages survive. In a tragic reverse of what is the case of many dawn of sound era films, the video film elements for this movie largely remain and do so in good quality, and the talking and singing passages largely do not. For example, you can find CDs of the entire soundtrack of 1929's Gold Diggers of Broadway - minus a very little - but it is the film itself that no longer exists with the exception of two reels. We owe this to the durability of Vitaphone discs and to the throw-away attitude that the film industry had towards these early talking and part-talking experiments.

There is a prologue at the beginning of the film in which stars from the Ziegfeld production do numbers from the musical, and the video portion of that is lost. Then the first half of the film is largely silent with synchronized sound effects. The second half of the film was largely synchronized dialogue, but the audio portion has been largely lost. All that remains where there is both video and dialogue are two short scenes between romantic leads Laura LaPlante (as Magnolia) and Joseph Schildkraut (as Gaylord Ravenal). Notice that the film has Ms. LaPlante billed ahead of the now well-known Schildkraut. LaPlante was a big star at Universal at the time having starred in films such as "The Cat and the Canary".

This incarnation of "Show Boat" differs from the 1936 and 1951 versions in big ways besides just the technical aspects. For one, a large portion of this film is devoted to the disintegration of the Ravenal marriage after the couple leave the Show Boat. Also, Julie is only a passing figure in this film, and Captain Andy has a completely different fate than in the latter two films.

In spite of all the odd decisions - to put the musical numbers associated with Ziegfeld in as a prologue, and to make this musical a part-talkie with non-musical stars in the first place, the film made money for Universal, largely outside the big cities where people had not seen Ziegfeld's Broadway version. In short, this is an example of a film that was dated in technique as soon as it was made, but was rushed out the door in order to cash in on the dawn of sound in motion pictures.