Show Boat

Performing Race in an American Musical

Todd Decker

Broadway Legacies

Journal of the American
Draws on previously unknown sources, including scripts and scores from the earliest productions, rejected draft scripts for all three Show Boat films, and a musical source for Jerome Kern's famous melody for "Ol' Man River."
Moves important historical figures such as Paul Robeson to the center of the story of how Show Boat was made.
Based on over twenty stage productions of Show Boat-including those in London's West End-and four Hollywood film versions

Show Boat

Performing Race in an American Musical

Todd Decker

Description

Show Boat: Performing Race in an American Musical tells the full story of the making and remaking of the most important musical in Broadway history. Drawing on exhaustive archival research and including much new information from early draft scripts and scores, this book reveals how Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern created Show Boat in the crucible of the Jazz Age to fit the talents of the show's original 1927 cast. After showing how major figures such as Paul Robeson and Helen Morgan defined the content of the show, the book goes on to detail how Show Boat was altered by later directors, choreographers, and performers up to the end of the twentieth century. All the major New York productions are covered, as are five important London productions and four Hollywood versions.

Again and again, the story of Show Boat circles back to the power of performers to remake the show, winning appreciative audiences for over seven decades. Unlike most Broadway musicals, Show Boat put black and white performers side by side. This book is the first to take Show Boat's innovative interracial cast as the defining feature of the show. From its beginnings, Show Boat juxtaposed the talents of black and white performers and mixed the conventions of white-cast operetta and the black-cast musical. Bringing black and white onto the same stage — revealing the mixed-race roots of musical comedy — Show Boat stimulated creative artists and performers to renegotiate the color line as expressed in the American musical. This tremendous longevity allowed Show Boat to enter a creative dialogue with the full span of Broadway history. Show Boat's voyage through the twentieth century offers a vantage point on more than just the Broadway musical. It tells a complex tale of interracial encounter performed in popular music and dance on the national stage during a century of profound transformations.

Show Boat

Performing Race in an American Musical

Todd Decker

Broadway Legacies

Foreword by Geoffrey Block
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Magnolia's Black Voice
Part One: Making
1. A Ferber Plot
2. The Robeson Plan
3. The Morgan Plan
4. A Ziegfeld Soprano and a Shubert Tenor
5. Colored Chorus Curtains
Part Two: Remaking
6. Featuring Robeson: 1928-1940
7. Broadway Black, Hollywood White: 1943-1957
8. Landmark Status: 1954-1989
9. Queenie's Laugh: 1966-1998
Epilogue
Appendix 1 Cast of Characters
Appendix 2 Archival Sources for the 1927 Broadway Production
Appendix 3 Select Stage and Screen Versions (1928-1998)
References
Notes
Index

Show Boat

Performing Race in an American Musical

Todd Decker

Broadway Legacies

Author Information

Todd Decker, Associate Professor and Head of Musicology, Washington University in St. Louis

Todd Decker is Associate Professor of Music at Washington University in St. Louis and the author of Who Should Sing 'Ol' Man River'?: The Lives of an American Song and Music Makes Me: Fred Astaire and Jazz, winner of the Best First Book Award from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies.

Show Boat

Performing Race in an American Musical

Todd Decker

Broadway Legacies

Reviews and Awards

"A fascinating look at how Show Boat helped shape the American musical form and the significant role it continues to play in our conversation about race. Todd Decker has compiled an exhaustive, engaging, and immensely readable cultural history that resonates with the same vibrant emotional impact of the musical itself." - Susan Stroman, Director & Choreographer

"Traveling through seemingly familiar territory, one makes startling new discoveries on every page about American music, theater, identity, and racial history. Decker demonstrates forcefully and conclusively why Show Boat was and remains the 'most important [American] musical ever made.'" - Thomas L. Riis, Director, American Music Research Center, University of Colorado at Boulder

"Todd Decker opens a wide window on the extraordinary cultural reach of Show Boat, with special focus on its racial complexities. For Decker, Show Boat is not a fixed text but rather a fascinating and fluid performance object that shifts with the social codes and commercial demands of its many eras." - Carol J. Oja, Professor, Harvard University, and author of Making Music Modern: New York in the 1920s

"A well written, thoroughly researched and cogently presented new study on one of the most studied and, for that matter, most deserving of study musicals of the twentieth century." - Brad Hathaway - Theater Shelf

"An excellent overview of all aspects of the show...Decker demonstrates a fine command of sources, furnishes good documentation, and includes some photos, illustrations, and musical examples...Recommended." - Choice

"Decker offers a persuasive argument for the continued relevance of this classic musical, [demonstrating] the productive potential for historiographies of American musical theatre written across rather than 'along divided racial lines.'" - Theatre Journal

"[A] fascinating read about one of the true classics of the American stage." - Studies in Musical Theatre

"...There is a great deal to ponder in it." - JAMS

Show Boat

Performing Race in an American Musical

Todd Decker

Broadway Legacies

From Our Blog

Why does 'Ol' Man River' still stop Show Boat?

By Todd Decker Show Boat is back on the boards, visiting four major opera companies in a new production of yet another new version. Originally debuted on Broadway in 1927, apparently Show Boat will never stop being remade. The new production, directed by Francesca Zambello, had its premiere at the Chicago Lyric Opera a year ago, an appropriate starting place as much of the second act takes place in the Windy City.

Posted on February 5, 2013

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