Search - Show Boat on DVD

A vanished genre, a vanished time

Chrijeff | Scranton, PA | 05/30/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Just about any movie featuring Howard Keel is likely to be among the very best of the late MGM musicals, and this version of the oft-adapted Broadway classic shows you why. He plays Gaylord Ravenal, "of the Tennessee Ravenals," a river gambler and dandy who loses his steamboat ticket in a game and wanders down to the riverside to try to con his way aboard Cap'n Andy Hawks's (Joe E. Brown) showboat "Cotton Blossom." There he meets, and instantly falls for, the Captain's daughter Magnolia (usually known as Nolie), a romantic and aspiring actress played by Kathryn Grayson, another frequent face in 1950's MGM films. "We're full up, son," says Andy, but that soon changes. When Nolie's dear friend, leading lady Julie LaVerne (Ava Gardner), is betrayed to the sheriff by a jealous stevedore as "a miscegenation case...[part-]Negro woman married to a white man" (her beloved leading man Steven Baker (Robert Sterling)), Gay returns and is quickly snapped up, and Nolie--who, having grown up on the boat, naturally has an encyclopedic knowledge of its repertoire--is promoted to leading lady. Courting on stage in full view of audiences and Nolie's mother Parthenia (Agnes Moorehead), the couple's love deepens and they finally leave the boat to marry. But a gambler's life has no certainties, and when Gay's luck turns sour they quarrel. Nolie instantly regrets her words, but by the time she's ready to make up Gay has left her all the money he had and headed West. Still, their love endures, and at the end they are reunited and, as Cap'n Andy says, "It's Saturday fo'ever."

Besides the gorgeous music--which is in itself reason enough to own and rewatch this movie (I always sing along with my two favorite pieces, "Ol' Man River" and "You Are Love," even though I have to keep adjusting my pitch!)--the lavish production values make it a superior example of the last glory days of the greatest musical studio ever to grace the hills of Hollywood; the opening sequence, when the "Cotton Blossom" pulls in to one of the many river towns and draws a stampeding crowd of men, women, and children, old and young, black and white, and even is delightedly watched by two "shady ladies" on a lacy wrought-iron balcony, is one of the best scenes in it. (It flows seamlessly into the full-cast teaser performance on the "Blossom"'s foredeck, which introduces many of the principals, though I question whether a *real* showboat, seeking to attract the "respectable" trade, would have dressed its females in quite such short skirts!) Gorgeous Technicolor and beautiful costumes are other plusses, along with the splendid dancing of Marge and Gower Champion (a well-known hoofer team of the day) as Ellie Shipley and Frank Schultz (later Schultz & Schultz). Among the most delightful aspects are Brown, the smiling, big-mouthed comedian, and Moorehead (later Endora on "Bewitched") as Nolie's parents, sharp-tongued Parthy and warm-hearted, generous Andy. And Ava Gardner shines as the beautiful, tragic mulatto who becomes a sort of dea ex machina to Nolie--walking out on the New Year's show in the Trocadero so her protegee can get the job, revealing to Gay after a chance meeting above Memphis that he has a daughter. (The little actress who plays Kim Ravenal, though uncredited ([...] gives her name as Sheila Clark), has a particularly nice dance sequence with "Grampa Andy.") Grayson's soaring soprano blends beautifully with Keel's warm baritone, and even her occasional "twitteriness" (as another reviewer calls it) is put to good use in her solo, "After the Ball," as she struggles with stage fright at the Trocadero. Made long before Political Correctness came into vogue, the script doesn't mince its words about Julie and her situation, but that only adds to its impact and historical veracity. You get the feeling that this could well have been how life would be on the rivers in the late 1880's and early 1890's, with the South finally recovering from the Civil War and a certain romantic innocence back in flower. Whether the 1936 version is, as often claimed, "the definitive," I can't say, never having watched it, but this one certainly stands on its own."