Show Boat reminds me of . . . Robert Altman?????
I’ve wanted to see Show Boat for a long time, and my loving husband kindly TiVoed it for me this week. As it turned out, it was the 1951 version starring Howard Keel and Ava Gardner, not the 1936 version starring Paul Robeson and Hattie McDaniel. (That the most recognizable names are the white actors in one movie and the African American actors in the other may be significant . . . but we’ll get to that later). Pretty much all I knew about Show Boat, besides its composer (Jerome Kern) and lyricist (Oscar Hammerstein), was the footage I’d seen of Robeson singing “Old Man River,” which, even out of context, was enough to floor me.
So I was disappointed that Robeson wasn’t in this version, and I’ve since learned that most people regard the 1951 Show Boat as vastly inferior to the 1936 one–but, even so, both my husband and I were moved by it. And here’s the strange thing: I was most moved not by what happened, but by what we didn’t know about.
The inciting incident occurs when Julie (Ava Gardner) and her husband Steve, the leads of the Cotton Blossom’s show, are kicked off the boat because Julie’s would-be lover reveals that she is mixed-race. It seems that this little event only occurs, however, to get Gaylord Ravenal (Howard Keel) on board as the new leading man, so that he can romance the ship captain’s daughter Noli. Most of the rest of the movie follows Gaylord and Noli up and down the Mississippi, as their marriage goes on and off and on again. After Julie and Steve leave the Cotton Blossom, we never see Steve again; one brief line tells us that he abandoned Julie. Julie makes episodic appearances charting her decline into alcoholism and prostitution, and she becomes a minor character whose main function plotwise is to ultimately reunite Gaylord and Noli. The white people get on and off the ship, the river keeps rolling along, and no matter how stupid they’ve been, they get happy endings. Not so for Julie. We don’t even know what happens to her. The movie closes with her staring off after the Cotton Blossom as Joe (a black character we know nothing about, except that he’s got really powerful lungs) once again sings “Old Man River.”
You could argue that it’s because of racism that the movie focuses on the rather spoiled, self-pitying white characters rather than giving well developed roles to its black characters (including Julie, a mulatta character played by a white woman). And that may be part of it. But the movie—at least the lyrics of “Old Man River”–seems to actually call our attention to the fact that the African American characters’ story isn’t being told. Oddly, that’s where part of its power lies: you see how petty the white characters really are. They see only their own problems. Thanks to the narrative focus, we also see only their problems. And we recognize the racism there, perhaps more than we would if the plot were more balanced. Is the narrative focus racist or is it a commentary against racism? I don’t know. But in our tell-all culture, I’m awed by the power of a story not told.
That’s what reminds me of Gosford Park, the Robert Altman film. You go through almost the whole movie thinking that the main story is who killed the old, rich philanderer: then it turns out that the real story has nothing to do with the murder or whodunit. It’s stunning. Shocking. And it’s intentional in Gosford Park. I’m not sure how intentional it is in Show Boat. My husband thinks it is. “Look at who the lyricist is,” he says. “He knows his stuff.” And we know for a fact that Oscar Hammerstein had a powerful social conscience when he was working with Richard Rodgers. “You’ve Got to Be Taught” from South Pacific did so much to teach people about their own racism—rather didactically, I admit, but that’s fine. Show Boat’s subtler (Show Boat? Subtle?) approach, whether it’s actually there or I’m just imagining it, is more intriguing, though.
Now I just have to get my hands on a copy of the 1936 version.
Add comment February 4th, 2006