![]() Show Boat was everything they hoped to create and more.įirst and foremost, Show Boat was filled with great tunes, tunes with lyrics that captured and propelled the special drama of the story, none more powerful than "Ol' Man River." Kern and Hammerstein's show wouldn't be just another musical it would be a drama with music. Kern assured her that he and Hammerstein would concentrate on bringing Ferber's complex story to life in music, a story line that included dramatic elements hitherto unexplored seriously in musical theater, especially racism and infidelity. He and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II (1895-1960) agreed to write a new kind of show, one that would forever change the face of American musicals. It was composer Jerome Kern (1885-1945) who convinced her otherwise. Ferber was worried that her story would be subjected to the same fluffy and frivolous treatment so popular in the revues and light operas of the day. Indeed, she expressed grave reservations about having it set for the musical stage post-World War I Broadway musicals had been "suffering from sameness and tameness" according to Stanley Green, author of Broadway Musicals, Show by Show. Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Edna Ferber, author of the 1926 novel Show Boat, didn't like the idea of a musical adaptation of her book. from the novel Show Boat by Edna Ferber (1885-1968) Mystery always lay just around the corner of the next bend." The river curved and twisted and turned and doubled. ![]() ![]() But ol' man river, he jus' keeps rollin' along." ![]()
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