Scores On This Historic Day: December 27, 1927: Show Boat Premieres

December 27, 1927:Show Boat premieres at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York. It changes American musical theater forever.

Jerome Kern wrote the music. Oscar Hammerstein II wrote the lyrics, and also wrote the book based on Edna Ferber's novel of the same name, published the year before. Florenz Ziegfeld, for whom the theater and its main attraction, the Ziegfeld Follies, were named, produced it.

As the title suggests, the play takes places on a boat that produces stage shows, going up and down the Mississippi River, from 1887 to 1927. While most Broadway shows up until then were full of fluff, light stories with light music, and if they were lucky had one song that anyone would remember in the years to come, Show Boat tackled serious themes: Tragic love and race relations, including Broadway's 1st interracial marriage.

In the original production, Captain Andy Hawks was played by Charles Winninger, his daughter Magnolia by Norma Terris, her husband Gaylord Ravenal by Howard Marsh, the acting troupe's leading couple Steve Baker and Julie La Verne by Charles Ellis and Helen Morgan, and black dockworker Joe by Jules Bledsoe.

The part of Joe had been written for Paul Robeson, the top black stage actor of the day, who had the deep bass voice necessary to properly sing the show's signature number, "Ol' Man River." But Robeson, once an All-American football player at Rutgers, was in another show when Show Boat was being put together, and was unavailable.

But he was able to play the role when the show went to London's West End in 1928, and for its first Broadway revival in 1932, and for the first film version in 1936. Notably, the original production's use of the N-word -- the show's first line is "(N-word)s all work on the Mississippi, (N-word)s all work while the white folks play" -- was dropped for the 1936 film, replaced with "darkies," which isn't much of an improvement. Later versions used the term "colored folk." From the 1971 London production onward, most versions use the words "Here we all work while the white folks play."

The 1936 film was directed by James Whale, who also directed the 1931 version of Frankenstein. In addition to Robeson playing Joe, Winninger reprised his role as "Cap'n Andy," Irene Dunne played Magnolia, Allan Jones (father of 1960s singing star Jack Jones) played Gaylord, Donald Cook played Steve, and Helen Morgan again played Julie.

Show Boat was filmed again in 1951, directed by George Sidney. The first version filmed in color, it remains the most successful version of the show, and was the 2nd-biggest box office draw of the year. Cap'n Andy was played by Joe E. Brown, Magnolia by Kathryn Grayson, Gaylord by Howard Keel, Steve by Robert Sterling, Julie by Ava Gardner (but her singing was dubbed by Annette Warren), and Joe by William Warfield, who resembled Robeson both physically and vocally.

Since the character of Julie is revealed within the course of the play to be mixed-race, and passing for white, later versions of the show have tended to cast light-skinned black actresses. The first was Lonette McKee, who won a Tony Award for the role in the 1983 revival. (The Tonys did not exist when the show was first staged.) She also played Julie in the 1994 revival, and was replaced in it by Marilyn McCoo, the lead singer of The 5th Dimension.

Robeson and "Ol' Man River" became forever connected. In the official versions of the show, the bridge and 3rd verse go:

But Robeson was a civil rights activist long before that was cool. In concert, he would make it a song of defiance:

December 27, 1927 was a Tuesday. Baseball was in the off-season. Football season had just ended. There was no NBA yet. But there were 3 NHL games played that night, and both New York teams then in the League were in action:

* The New York Rangers lost to the Boston Bruins, 2-0 at the Boston Arena. Now the Matthews Arena, home of Boston University, it was built in 1909, and is the oldest multi-purpose sports building in use, anywhere in the world. The Boston Garden opened the next year.

* The New York Americans and the Detroit Cougars played to a tie, 4-4 at the old (but then new) Madison Square Garden. The Americans folded in 1942, and the Cougars became the Falcons in 1930 and the Red Wings in 1932.

* And the Montreal Canadiens and the Ottawa Senators played to a tie, 0-0 at the Ottawa Auditorium.

I could have done a "Scores On This Historic Day" post for the premiere of another groundbreaking musical. By 1942, Lorenz Hart had fallen so deep into alcoholism that he had become unreliable. So when his songwriting partner Richard Rodgers wanted to write his next musical, he turned to Oscar Hammerstein II. Neither Hart nor Hammerstein's writing partner, Jerome Kern, objected. And, on March 31, 1943; Oklahoma! premiered. Just 8 months later, Hart was dead, only 48 years old; 2 years after that, so was Kern, at 60. Hammerstein lived on until 1960, Rodgers until 1979.

But March 31, 1943, a Wednesday, had no scores. The baseball season hadn't yet begun. Football was in the off-season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. And the NHL had no games scheduled: The Stanley Cup Semifinals had both ended the day before, and the Finals began the next day. The Detroit Red Wings ended up beating the Boston Bruins in 4 straight.