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Paul Robeson, Will Vodery's “Jubilee Singers,” and the Earliest Script of the Kern-Hammerstein Show Boat

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2009

Scott McMillin
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Extract

An early stage in the writing of the Kern-Hammerstein musical Show Boat is captured in a typescript marked “from the Ziegfeld Collection” in the Theatre Collection at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. The script, #7430 in the Library numbering, is undated, but Paul Robeson, Elizabeth Hines, and Guy Robertson are penciled in for the roles of Joe, Magnolia, and Gaylord, with “Aunt Jemima” (Tess Gardella, in her famous blackface role) set for Queenie, Norma Terriss for Ellie, and Andy Tombes for Frank. These are principal parts. Magnolia is the ingenue who will fall in love with the dashing, undependable Gaylord, a gambler, in Act 1 and then will grow up to become a singing star after her marriage fails in Act 2; Ellie and Frank are performers on the show boat; Queenie is the boat's cook, and Joe—the part intended for Robeson—is her husband. As yet uncast are Julie, the leading actress who is forced off the show boat when it is discovered that she is mulatto, and Magnolia's parents, Cap'n Andy Hawkes and his shrewish wife Parthy.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 41 , Issue 2 , November 2000 , pp. 51 - 70
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 2000

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References

1. The standard source for information about Show Boat is Kreuger, Miles, Show Boat: the Story of a Classic American Musical (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977)Google Scholar; about Robeson, , Duberman, Martin. Paul Robeson (New York: Knopf, 1988)Google Scholar; about Kern, , Bordman, Gerald, Jerome Kern: His Life and Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980); aboutGoogle ScholarHammerstein, , Fordin, Hugh, Getting to Know Him: A Biography of Oscar Hammerstein II (New York: Da Capo, 1995); aboutGoogle ScholarZiegfeld, , Richard, and Ziegfeld, Paulette, The Ziegfeld Touch (New York: Abrams, 1993)Google Scholar; about the Broadway theatre of the 1920s, Mordden, Ethan, Make Believe: the Broadway Musical in the 1920s (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

To be exact about the range of dates for ＃7430, on 17 November 1926 Edna Ferber gave Kern and Hammerstein rights to dramatize her novel, more than a month after Kern had first raised the idea of doing the musical. Ziegfeld said that Kern and Hammerstein performed the first act for him on 26 November 1926, when he had Harry Fender rather than Robertson in mind for Ravenal. Clearly Kern and Hammerstein had been at work on Act 1 before they signed the contract with Ziegfeld on 11 December (which called for delivery of the script on 1 January 1927). Kem himself is said to have taken “Ol' Man River” to Robeson's apartment, a visit which Alexander Woolcott placed in October 1926 (While Rome Burns [New York: Viking, 1934], 124)Google Scholar. Woolcott's dating is casual, but it seems clear that the visit occurred early, before Kern and Hammerstein took music to Ziegfeld on 26 November. (Ferber herself recalled a different interval, nearly a year after meeting Kern, before he played “Ol' Man River” for her, but she also claims to have heard “Why Do I Love You” among other songs in the meantime, and this would have been impossible: “Why Do I Love You” was written in Pittsburgh during the pre-Broadway tryouts. See Ferber, , A Peculiar Treasure [New York: Doubleday, 1939], 305.)Google Scholar

Ziegfeld's contracts with Robeson, Hines, and Robertson were announced on 13 December, and on 22 December Variety reported that Show Boat, with Elizabeth Hines. was “due to go into rehearsal this week with an out of town opening tentatively set for Jan. 8.” That date passed without sign of Show Boat, but on 19 January 1927 Variety implied that the chorus was being hired when it reported that the “Negresses” in Show Boat would all be “dark brown,” in keeping with a policy of Broadway producers to avoid “light-skinned colored girls.” By that time, however, there were other signs that the show had been postponed. Robeson went on a concert tour to the mid-west in January and February. While he was away, Variety announced on 26 January that he might not play Joe after all, because “the so-called option one of the show's representatives had with the colored actor was not binding.” Bledsoe, then in In Abraham's Bosom at the Provincetown Playhouse, was mentioned as a possible replacement. Then on 9 February 1927, Variety announced that Show Boat had been put off until next season, when Marilyn Miller might play the role assigned to Elizabeth Hines. Robeson, Hines. and Robertson were eventually released from their contracts (although Hines did not see it this way, and tried to sue Ziegfeld).

The penciled casting notes on the front page of ＃7430 would have been made after the contracts were signed in December 1926 and before 9 February 1927, when the show was put off. The pagination in the first four scenes in Act 1 and all the scenes in Act 2 has the act number followed by a page number (thus 2–13 means Act 2, 13 in my citations). From scene 5 through the end of Act 1 there is a separate numbering system, from 1 to 36, without act reference, so this section may have been typed at a different time from the others and inserted. The script, now stamped “from the Ziegfeld Collection.” probably reached Ziegfeld before 2 March 1927, when Hammerstein sailed for England to oversee the London production of The Desert Song. On 3 March Ziegfeld sent a lengthy telegram to Kern complaining about Hammerstein's libretto, especially about Act 2. It is not unlikely that he had ＃7430 before him.

The other complete pre-Broadway Show Boat scripts, in what I take to be the order of composition after ＃7430, are one in the Library of Congress Music Division, LC ML50. K43S3 1927, and two in the NYPL Theatre Collection, labeled NCOF＋ and ＃7787. There is also early script of the opening scene and Act 1, scene 5 in the Kern Collection at the Library of Congress (Box 59/12). The Library of Congress's complete script has sometimes been thought the earliest (see note 3), but New York Public Library #7430 clearly precedes it, for many penciled corrections on #7430 are carried through in the typing of the Library of Congress script. On the other hand, the partial script of scenes one and five at the Library of Congress may well be the earliest of all the extant scripts.

I am greatly indebted to the staffs at the NYPL Theatre Collection and at the Music Division of the Library of Congress for their help on many points. Mark Horowitz at the Library' of Congress deserves special thanks. I have also benefited from consulting my colleagues Jacqueline Goldsby, Reeve Parker, and Hortense Spillers.

Excerpts from Show Boat are used by permission of the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization, on behalf of the heirs of Oscar Hammerstein II, Jerome Kern, and Edna Ferber. The photograph of Paul Robeson and cast is used by permission of the Billy Rose Theatre Collection, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.

2. Ferber, Edna. Show Boat (New York: Doubleday, 1926), 218–220Google Scholar.

3. But the quiet coda to the song, admired by John McGlinn in his notes to the EMI recording of 1988 (33) is already in place: “MAGNOLIA & RAVENAL: Good night—dream if you can—RAVENAL: My wife—MAGNOLIA: My man.” McGlinn finds this coda in the Library of Congress LC ML50. K43S3 1927, which he takes as the earliest script, but the lyric is repeated from #7430. The Library of Congress script shows that after #7430 Kern and Hammerstein wrote “Creole Love Song” as their first attempt at the water-barrel duet, keeping the quiet coda about “My wife…My man.” “You Are Love” first appears in the later NYPL script marked NCOF＋, where the title is typed as “You And Love” and is corrected in pencil.

4. The complex choral parts are suggested by a #7430 stage direction: “At this point the lyric is split up into parts for sopranos, altos, tenors, and basses which can not be indicated clearly here.”

5. This change is in script number 7787 at the NYPL Theatre Collection.

6. The two black characters who were to be played by white actresses, Julie and Queenie, have no further solos in #7430 after “Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man.” The “Ballyhoo,” and “Hey, Feller!” which would be written for Queenie are not there (nor are two “coon” songs which were briefly inserted for Tess Gardella and then removed, nor her part of “Mis'ry's Comin' Aroun’”). Neither Queenie or Julie has a song yet in Act 2. Julie was not yet cast according to the #7430 penciled notes, but it is strange that Tess Gardella was not given more highlighting at this point.

7. Kreuger, 50, points out that Hammerstein himself helped rid the musical of this sort of convention and seems to have felt later that preserving Gaylord was a mistake.

8. The purpose of “Cheer Up”—humanizing the termagant Parthy, so as to make her more acceptable to the conventions of earlier musicals—has never disappeared. By the New York opening, Cap'n Andy is singing a chorus of “Why Do I Love You” to Parthy and getting her to dance a few steps. The “sick smile” of #7430 has changed to “a faint smile flickering across her lips.” The Hal Prince revival of the 1990s tried to rehabilitate Parthy by the extreme method of turning “Why Do I Love You” over to her in the first place, as a song she sings to her new-born granddaughter Kim.

9. Kreuger, 26. Another downbeat moment in #7430 has Ravenal being depressed over a gambling loss in the Chicago World's Fair scene; in the final version, he has won and is cheery enough to sing “Why Do I Love You.” Both of the depressing episodes are still intact in the Library of Congress complete script (ML50. K43S3). The “3 August 1927” stamped on the Library of Congress script suggests that the brightening-up of Act 2 had not yet taken place by then.

10. Bordman, Kern, 283, reports that Kern had thought of Morgan for Julie from nearly the beginning, but that she was not signed until she returned from Europe in September 1927.

11. The revisions which bring Morgan and “Bill” into being are apparent in the NYPL Theatre Collection script labeled NCOF＋.

12. An earlier Ziegfeld parade of chorus girls is suggested in #7430 when “forty beauties from forty nations” fill out the Chicago World's Fair opening to Act 2. At the end of the World's Fair scene, a stage direction says, “To bridge scene, the chorus of forty beauties from forty nations may pass in front of curtain” (2–11).

13. Robeson may have kept his options open during the summer of 1927. when he was considering the European concert tour he eventually made. The Library of Congress script which warns that he might not be engaged is stamped 3 August 1927 on the front. Robeson signed his contract for the European tour in September and sailed in October. A letter from him to his wife in December 1927 suggests that he had sought to develop his reputation in “art” songs through the tour and had thought this a better avenue to a career than things like Stow Boar. Duberman, 111. By “art” Robeson means his way of singing spirituals in concert halls and in formal attire, exactly the format envisioned in the Show Boat of #7430.

14. See McGlinn's program notes to the EMI recording, 28–30.

15. It may be added that Kern did not invest his own money in the inspiration, leaving that to Ziegfeld. See Bordman, 283.

16. For a full treatment of racism in the novel, see Philip, M. Nourbese, Showing Grit: Show Boating North of the 44th Parallel (Toronto, 1993)Google Scholar, passim. This also provides an account of the racial protests against the production of Show Boat directed by Hal Prince, which opened in Toronto in 1993.

17. Stewart, Jeffrey C., ‘Paul Robeson and the Problem of Modernism,’ in the catalogue for the Heyward Gallery exhibition Rhapsodies in Black: Art of the Harlem Renaissance (1997). 95Google Scholar.

18. In addition to Philip, Showing Grit, see Breon, Robin, “Show Boat:the Revival, the Racism.” The Drama Review 39 (1995), 86–105CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19. See Mordden–s important discussion of the black musicals, 132–45.

20. Two-thirds of the Show Boat chorus have yet to be traced, but most will be found among the black musicals and revues in the mid-twenties, not all of which have been searched out and documented. The best source of casting information is Sampson, Henry T., Blacks in Blackface: a Source Book on Early Black Musical Shows (Metuchen, N. J.: Scarecrow Press, 1980)Google Scholar. For Will Vodery, see the entries under his name and Jules Bledsoe–s in Southern, Eileen, Biographical Dictionary of African-American and African Musicians (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood, 1981)Google Scholar. James Hatch–s reservoir of knowledge about African-American theatre was useful at more than one turn.

21. For the O–Neill and Black Boy controversies, see Duberman, Robeson, 68–105. Robeson had faced larger problems than the offensive word, in All God' Chillun Got Wings he played a black man married to a white woman, a rare enough theme for 1924, and he and Mary Blair needed police protection when a stage photo was published showing the wife, played by Blair, kneeling before her husband and kissing his hand.

22. See Fordin. 269–71 for Hammerstein's progressive politics, with the accurate comment that there was no cynicism in all this.

23. See Duberman, 604n.

24. That the difference in lyrics can fade into the impression that these black and white people are singing together is another example of the musical's tendency to assimilate otherness to the standard of the audience. See Most, Andrea, ‘We Know We Belong to the Land’: The Theatricality of Assimilation in Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma!' PMLA 113 (1998), 77–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25. An excellent musical analysis is Swain, Joseph, The Broadway Musical (New York: Oxford University. Press, 1990), 51–72.Google Scholar

26. Stroman did not have to see the stage-direction in #7430 about the passing years to invent the dance montage, of course. The “passing years” theme is clear in other ways in Show Boat.