QHow much of this film was really shot in Mississippi?
AVery little. Nearly all of the film was shot in Hollywood. The opening credits and the scenes of the crowd running toward the river, together with the shots of cotton fields and Southern mansions, were filmed in Mississippi, and in those scenes the real Mississippi River is shown. But all the scenes showing the boat from a distance, and the scenes in which the boat pulls up to or leaves the wharf were shot on the MGM backlot, with the lake used in the MGM Tarzan movies doubling as the Mississippi River. The scene in which Cap'n Andy introduces the show boat actors to the crowd, the scene in which Howard Keel sings "Where's The Mate For Me?" and the one in which he and Kathryn Grayson sing "Make Believe" were shot on that lake, as was the scene in which Ava Gardner sings "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man". The final scene of the film was also shot there, and "You Are Love" was filmed (rather obviously; the sunrise is very phony-looking) on a Hollywood soundstage rather than on the actual deck of the boat. The riverboat was never actually on the Mississippi, only on the MGM backlot, and that is also where William Warfield sings "Ol' Man River". The wharf is considerably more "prettied up" than would have been the case in real life. The wharf in the 1936 "Show Boat" more closely resembles what a wharf of that era would have looked like.The only shot of a real boat on the Mississippi is the exterior shot of a packet boat late at night towards the end. That is supposedly the boat on which Ravenal meets Julie. However, the interiors of all the boats shown in the film are actually studio sets.None of the Chicago scenes were really filmed there.The 1951 "Show Boat" is the only film version of the musical in which any part of it was actually filmed in Mississippi, although the 1929 part-talkie "Show Boat" wasn't filmed there either.
QWhat is the biggest difference between the original show and this film version of "Show Boat"?
AThe plot of the show covers a period of forty years, from the 1880's to the late 1920's (the show premiered on Broadway in 1927). This means that everyone who is in their 20's and 30's at the beginning is at least 60 in the final scene, and Kim, Magnolia's daughter, is a grown woman rather than a little girl. Cap'n Andy is supposedly in his 40's at the beginning of the story, and 82 at the end. This was the pattern also followed in the 1936 film version.In the 1951 film version, only about five or six years pass, and all the adults look pretty much the same age at the end as they did at the beginning. Kim remains a little girl about three or four years old. Cap'n Andy, played by the then sixty-year-old Joe E. Brown, looks sixty (or perhaps sixty-five) throughout the film.
QHow different, overall, is this 1951 film from the original show as well as the 1936 film?
AIn some ways, very different. The basic plotline of the show is followed, but only in a general way. The biggest change in the storyline is that when Ravenal abandons Magnolia in the 1951 film, their daughter Kim has not been born yet. (In the stage version and the 1936 film Kim is already a little girl when Ravenal leaves, and a grown woman when he returns. In the 1951 film, Kim is a small child when Ravenal returns.) And unlike the stage or the 1936 film version, Ravenal actually does meet Julie in a crucial new scene near the end of the film. Another change is that the "miscegenation" scene, in which it is revealed that Julie (Ava Gardner) is part-black and therefore illegally married to her white husband (Robert Sterling), is given much less shock value than in the play or the 1936 film. This is mostly due to the fact that when Steve draws blood from Julie so that he and Julie can claim that Steve too is part-black , he pricks Julie's finger with what looks like a tiny sewing pin, rather than cutting the back of her hand with a threatening-looking pocket knife, and neither Julie nor any of the others watching react to this. The screenplay for this film version throws out nearly all of Oscar Hammerstein II's original dialogue, which had been kept in the 1936 film. Several new scenes and conversations not by Hammerstein have been added to this film, and the order of some of the songs has been shifted - for instance, "Ol' Man River" is first sung much later here than in the original show or the 1936 film, and "Life Upon the Wicked Stage", which was played but not sung or danced in the 1936 film, is here moved to the New Year's Eve sequence in Chicago rather than sung in Mississippi, as in the original show. It is also performed as a number on a stage, rather than "in character", as in the show. The "Cakewalk", from the Act I Finale, is danced by the black levee workers in both the stage version and the 1936 film version, while in this version it is danced first by Ellie and Frank (who are white), and later by Cap'n Andy and Kim (who are also white).The African-American chorus, which adds so much atmosphere in both the stage version and the 1936 film, does not sing or dance at all in this version, so that in this film those who would normally be members of that chorus are reduced to being simply extras. A "disembodied", offscreen chorus is heard singing instead.
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