Kern–SB, 1929 historical video footage, etc

We are finished with the delightful Funny Face, one of the musical comedies of the teens and 1920’s. It was mindless fun, combined with some great jazz age music. While Funny Face was still running on Broadway, a new musical opened up that would change forever the status quo that existed at the time it opened. Show Boat started a run on Broadway on December 27, 1927 and would close May 4, 1929, just before the great depression started.

At the time Show Boat opened on Broadway, there were two types of shows: musical comedy and operetta. The Show Boat libretto was written by a man, Oscar Hammerstein II, who believed that the best form of musical theatre had yet to be discovered. Even if Hammerstein could not yet articulate this new form of musical theatre, he showed his innate genius by asking the right question in his 1925 article.

“The revolution in musical comedy which Rose-Marie has wrought was not accidental. It was a carefully directed attack at the Cinderella show in favor of operatic musical comedy…. The history of musical comedy has passed through a variety of phases, but the type that persists, that shows the signs of ultimate victory, is the operetta–the musical play with music and plot welded together in skillful cohesion…. Is there a form of musical play tucked away somewhere…which could attain the heights of grand opera and still keep sufficiently human to be entertaining?”

In 1927, Hammerstein tried to answer his own question. Show Boat, unfortunately, was not the answer that Hammerstein was searching for. It was a brilliant first step in the right direction, and this first step would lead to the final answer in 1943, when Oklahoma! opened on Broadway.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Instead let’s take some time to understand just how radical a musical Show Boat was in 1927.

Our first clip comes from A&E and contains some historical explanations, along with some rare archival material.