This is the seventh pairing of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers and already there was a fear that the successful formula was becoming less popular, subsequently borne out by the poor box office receipts. Nevertheless the brilliant score by the Gershwin brothers, the imaginative dance routines, the charm of the two principals and the fun of the regular supporting players, Edward Everett Horton and Eric Blore, make it the equal of the earlier ones.
George and Ira Gershwin had had a long collaboration with Fred Astaire on Broadway, but their previous attempt at a Hollywood musical had been a failure, and the studio moguls feared that their music would be too highbrow, especially post Porgy and Bess. George telegrammed: RUMORS ABOUT HIGHBROW MUSIC RIDICULOUS STOP ABOUT TO WRITE HITS.
Even though they lacked a script, they knew there would be the conventional quarrelling song between Fred and Ginger and wrote Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off. The music that accompanies the ‘walking the dog’ scene was composed by George on the set. The brothers, returning to the discipline of the popular song format after the different operatic framework, found themselves collaborating with a greater intuition of each other’s work, and with a new simplicity - look at how the word ‘that’ gets filled with meaning in ‘They can’t take that away from me’. They also adjusted to the kind of vocalisation required for the intimate film microphone, very different from that needed for the Broadway stage. Though light-hearted, there is a hint in the lyrics at the need to be optimistic against the background of the depression, and an awareness of disturbing changes in Europe with so many refugees in Hollywood - ‘Slap that base’ refers to ‘dictators’ and ‘the world is in a mess’. (References taken from Ira Gershwin: The Art of the Lyricist by Philip Furia). George Gershwin died within a few months of the film’s opening.
Edna Ferber heard about the vanishing tradition of the showboat, a floating theatre on which the company lived and acted, performing in small towns along the river. She interviewed any performers she could find and spent a week travelling on one herself. The result was a sweeping novel published in 1926. It attracted the interest of composer Jerome Kern despite its difficult themes of miscegenation, alcoholism and desertion. Working with Oscar Hammerstein II, they persuaded the great Florenz Ziegfeld to produce it and with its opening in December 1927 American musical theatre was completely changed.
“This seminal work revealed that a Broadway musical was free to embrace any kind of theme, however controversial; could deal with serious issues in a suitably mature fashion; could counterpoint light and cheerful scenes with those of human anguish; and yet never need to sacrifice popularity and a memorable tuneful score.” (From Miles Krauger’s notes to the EMI recording of Showboat.)
This 1936 version stars three of the original Broadway cast, notably Helen Morgan, the archetypal ‘torch singer’. The song, Old Man River, became forever associated with Paul Robeson. Showboat was remade in 1951, and a fifteen minute condensation was featured in the Jerome Kern ‘biopic’ Till the Clouds Roll By (1946).
With the arrival of sound, the first ‘musicals’ were little more than filmed variety acts, graduating to ‘backstage’ stories, notably 42nd Street, where the ‘show’ provided the excuse for musical numbers. Later musicals simply integrated the songs as ways of advancing the story. Arthur Freed, the legendary producer of MGM musicals, followed up Easter Parade (Irving Berlin), An American in Paris (George and Ira Gershwin) and Singin’ in the Rain (Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed), by reverting to the early formula with this celebration of the song-writing talents of Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz.
The writers, Betty Comden and Adolph Green, used themselves as models for the Broadway husband and wife team preparing a show for an aging ‘song and dance’ man, played by Fred Astaire (himself aged 53). A running gag is Fred’s worry about dancing with the Cyd Charisse character, a ballet dancer who is taller than he is - itself a genuine behind the scenes concern. Among the many pleasures is Oscar Levant, a brilliant pianist who, whatever the role, plays his own acidic self.
The musical play is ‘hijacked’ by an ambitious ‘arty’ director (played by the ‘English Fred Astaire’ Jack Buchanan) before being rescued in the classic Hollywood mode of ‘we have all this talent, let's put on a show!’, with Astaire and Charisse learning that they can indeed dance together in the exquisite Dancing in the Dark routine in Central Park. There is also the comic ‘triplets’ number which the dancers perform on their knees, though Buchanan was in considerable pain from tooth problems and Nanette Fabray had hurt her leg in a previous number, and Astaire’s moving opening ‘walk’ into Grand Central station, By Myself.
