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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. (***)

I was long curious to see this version of Show Boat and how it stood up against the two more well known versions that came out later. It's a curiosity and nothing more.

I'm willing to bet that the film was being shot at the time sound was hurriedly being accommodated for by the major studios. They had to make up for the fact they had hired non-singers for the lead roles so some dialog was added.

They would have been better keeping it a straight silent. Some of Broadway's best shows were done in acceptable silent versions. Kid Boots, Rose Marie, and The Student Prince come to mind.

First of all the whole subplot involving Julie and the miscegenation angle was completely eliminated. Considering that was a controversial theme in those days and gained Show Boat a pioneering reputation, why would you want to sacrifice it.

Laura La Plante and Joseph Schildkraut as Magnolia and Ravenal are acceptable enough. But when the Jazz Singer was made it was the musical interludes with Jolson that made it a hit. There was no rhyme of reason for the parts where dialog was included.

The best performance in the film was Emily Fitzroy who plays Parthy Hawkes like a stone-faced harridan. The later versions with Helen Westley and Agnes Moorehead gave her a trace of humanity. This was one witch of a woman and she never lets up either.

Now that Show Boat is an American classic and it's a classic because of the wonderful Kern-Hammerstein score, I'm not sure anyone would want to bother with this one.

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.

I had long heard about this film version of "Show Boat", and "Show Boat" being my favorite Broadway musical, I had anticipated this part-talkie as something truly dreadful to sit through. It was televised the other day, and I finally got my chance to see it.

The film is not a catastrophe by any means, but it certainly isn't good, either. It is mostly silent, and much of the dialogue and singing that was originally part of the film has either been lost forever or simply not found yet. Some of the film's two-reel prologue has turned up (both sound and picture) in A&E's biography of Florenz Ziegfeld, so somebody should obtain those excerpts and include them as part of this showing. It is inexcusable for Turner not to have done so. At present, none of the prologue in the TCM print is shown visually; it's all audio, with an "OVERTURE" card on the screen as the songs are sung. And as of now, only two of the five songs originally filmed for the prologue are heard. The prologue now ends with Otis Harlan heard enthusiastically saying, "And now, Jules Bledsoe will sing 'Ol' Man River'!" - however, we never get to see or hear this portion!

The singing by choral groups supposedly heard on the soundtrack isn't in this print of the 1929 film either; all we get during the action is orchestral accompaniment and a few sound effects. Jules Bledsoe's voice can be heard on the soundtrack at the end, singing "The Lonesome Road", a fairly good number also in the style of a work song, but no match for the great "Ol' Man River".

As for the acting, it never becomes the kind of silent film or early talkie acting that strikes people as unintentionally funny. Laura la Plante and Joseph Schildkraut are actually quite good in their dialogue scene on the stage of the show boat (here, as in the 1936 film version, renamed the Cotton Palace). Schildkraut, especially, is good, his Viennese accent hardly getting in the way. He shows a surprising and welcome ability to act "intimately" as opposed to the hammy overacting featured in most early talkies, except in the scene where he gets drunk. Gaylord Ravenal is presented as being much more of a jerk in this version than in the Kern-Hammerstein musical adaptation; he is shown being especially nasty (verbally) to Magnolia when his gambling luck runs out.

The film is directed in a very flat style; nothing in it seems especially interesting and one never becomes involved in the story; in fact, the musical version presents the story more dramatically. The racial angle in the original Ferber novel and in the musical is completely eliminated in this 1929 version, however, draining the film of much of its potential dramatic power and leaving it little more than a romantic soap opera. And without the beautiful Kern-Hammerstein score to hear, except for those two songs in the prologue and an orchestral rendition of "Ol' Man River" played as background music during the boat's arrival, one is tempted to ask, "Why bother with this version when you can have the classic 1936 film, or even the 1951 remake?"

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.