Show Boat Opens: First True American Musical

Show Boat opened at the Ziegfeld Theatre on Broadway on December 27, 1927, and the American musical was never the same. Based on Edna Ferber 1926 novel, with music by Jerome Kern and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, the show replaced the plotless song-and-dance revues that dominated Broadway with an integrated dramatic narrative that tackled racial injustice, miscegenation, and the passage of time across three decades on a Mississippi River show boat. Florenz Ziegfeld, the impresario famous for his lighthearted Follies revues, had reluctantly agreed to produce the show after Kern and Hammerstein convinced him that audiences were ready for something more ambitious. Ziegfeld nearly backed out multiple times during the troubled production, which ran vastly over budget and required a radical last-minute restructuring of the second act. The show ran three hours and forty-five minutes at its first preview and had to be cut by over an hour before opening night. The score contained some of the most enduring songs in American popular music, including "Ol Man River," "Can Help Lovin Dat Man," and "Bill." Paul Robeson, who became indelibly associated with "Ol Man River," was not in the original cast but joined the 1928 London production and the landmark 1936 film version. The show treatment of race was groundbreaking for its era, featuring an interracial couple and a scene in which a white character defiantly claims mixed-race heritage to protect his wife from arrest under miscegenation laws. Show Boat ran for 572 performances in its original production and has been revived repeatedly on Broadway, most notably in Harold Prince acclaimed 1994 production. Theater historians consider it the dividing line between the musical comedy era and the modern musical drama. Every book musical that aspired to tell a serious story through song owes a debt to what Kern and Hammerstein achieved that evening.