Show Boat is a 1926 novel by American author and dramatist Edna Ferber. It chronicles the lives of three generations of performers on the Cotton Blossom, a floating theater on a steamboat that travels between small towns along the banks of the Mississippi River, from the 1880s to the 1920s. The story moves from the Reconstruction Era riverboat to Gilded Age Chicago to Roaring Twenties New York and finally returns to the Mississippi River. Show Boat was adapted as a Broadway musical of the same name in 1927 by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II. Three films followed: a 1929 version that depended partly on the musical and two full adaptations of the musical in 1936 and 1951.
Adaptations (3)
Show Boat has been adapted into 3 films, from 1929 to 1951.
Show Boat1929 · film · 147 min · dir. Harry A. Pollard, Arch Heath · IMDb ↗IMDb6.1This film sticks very closely to the Edna Ferber novel, rather than the musical based on the novel. There are only two major changes from Ferber's book : *Julie in this version is a white woman, not a racially mixed one; therefore she and her husband are not unlawfully married. * Ravenal returns at the end, instead of dying as in the novel
Show Boat1936 · film · 113 min · dir. James Whale · IMDb ↗Despite her mother's objections, the naive young daughter of a show boat captain is thrust into the limelight as the company's new leading lady.
