Julie Dozier is a character in Edna Ferber's 1926 novel Show Boat. In the Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II's classic musical version of it, which opened on Broadway on December 27, 1927, her stage name (or alias) is Julie La Verne. She is exposed as Julie Dozier in Act I. In Act II, Julie has changed her name, this time to Julie Wendel.
Julie is married to Steve Baker, and both are actors on the show boat Cotton Blossom. However, they harbor a secret - Julie is part African-American, and Steve is white; therefore, according to the laws of the time, their marriage is illegal. They are an exceptionally close couple, and Steve is fiercely protective of her. Julie is also a close friend and surrogate mother figure to ten-year-old Magnolia Hawks, daughter of Cap'n Andy Hawks, the show boat's owner. Andy is married to the shrewish Parthy Ann, who has disdain for all actors, especially Julie.
Character history
When Pete, a coarse engineer who works on the boat, makes unwanted advances toward Julie, Steve engages him in a fistfight. Pete knows that Julie is mixed and Steve white so he goes to the local sheriff and exposes the couple. Before the sheriff arrives, however, Steve takes out a pocket knife in front of the troupe, makes a cut on Julie's hand, and sucks some of her blood, so that he can truthfully claim that he has mixed blood in him. Nevertheless, the couple is obliged to leave the show boat because law at the time made it illegal for African-Americans to act on the stage with whites. After some years have past, Magnolia, now eighteen, becomes the new leading lady on the showboat. Many years after, just before being deserted in Chicago by her gambler husband Gaylord Ravenal, Magnolia accidentally discovers that Julie now works in a whorehouse. Julie is mortified by this turn of events. Author Ferber never reveals why Julie has become a prostitute, or what happened to her husband Steve.
Show Boat's Julie is perhaps the first truly tragic character depicted in a musical.[citation needed] Most of what happens to her in the novel remains exactly the same in the show—she is still a biracial woman who is married to a white man and is forced to leave the show because of racist laws, an element once considered taboo in a musical play. There are, however, some major changes to her story in the musical:
The scenes with Julie on the show boat occur when Magnolia, Julie's best friend in the musical, is eighteen rather than still a child, and Magnolia becomes the troupe's leading lady immediately after Julie and Steve are forced to leave the boat.
Years later, Julie, rather than becoming a prostitute, becomes an alcoholic nightclub singer, despondent because Steve has ultimately left her. Magnolia, who has been abandoned by Ravenal, winds up auditioning at the same nightclub, without knowing that Julie is the featured singer. Julie, backstage, overhears the audition and deliberately (and secretly) quits her job so that Magnolia can have it. Magnolia goes on to become a great star, never learning of Julie's sacrifice. The ultimate fate of Julie remains a mystery, as in the novel, but Miles Kreuger, the musical theatre historian, has stated in the accompanying booklet to the 1988 EMI complete recording of Show Boat 's score that he believes that Julie's sacrifice probably will ultimately lead to her death (presumably from drinking).
In the musical, the character of Julie is given two of Show Boat's most memorable songs, Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man and Bill.
In the show's original production, Julie was played by Helen Morgan, who made the role her own until her untimely death and reprised it in the 1932 stage revival, the 1936 film version of the show, and a 1940 Los Angeles revival. In the 1946 stage revival, the first U.S. revival after Morgan's death, Julie was played by Carol Bruce. In the 1951 Technicolor remake of "Show Boat", Julie was played by Ava Gardner, with her singing voice dubbed by Annette Warren. She was also given an additional scene in this version, in which she meets Ravenal a few years after he has deserted Magnolia and shames him into returning to her. (In the play and 1936 film, she is not seen again after she resigns from the nightclub.)[citation needed]
In the 1929 part-talkie film version of Show Boat, based on the novel rather than the musical, Julie, played by Alma Rubens, was not biracial. In this version, Parthy orders her and Steve to leave the boat out of jealousy over Magnolia's affection for Julie. Later in the film Julie becomes not a mere prostitute in a whorehouse as in the novel, but the actual whorehouse madam. In the musical prologue to the 1929 film, made with sound, Helen Morgan was filmed singing Julie's two songs from the musical, Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man and Bill.[citation needed]
While the usual custom in the past was to have a white actress play the role, it is now far more common to cast a biracial actress, despite the fact that the audience watching Show Boat is supposedly unaware that Julie is biracial until the sheriff reveals it. The first biracial actress to play Julie was Cleo Laine, in the 1971 London revival of the show. More recently, Lonette McKee portrayed Julie in Harold Prince's 1993 revival of the musical, as well as in the 1983 revival for which she earned a Tony Award nomination.[citation needed]
Lena Horne briefly appeared as Julie in the Show Boat sequence in the Jerome Kern biopic Till the Clouds Roll By, in 1946, but MGM was reluctant to cast her in a true film version of the show because they feared that audiences would not welcome a black actress playing a romantic role in a film featuring both blacks and whites, so they gave the role to Gardner in the 1951 film Show Boat.
Edna Ferber was an American novelist, short story writer and playwright. Her novels include the Pulitzer Prize-winning So Big (1924), Show Boat, Cimarron, Giant and Ice Palace (1958), which also received a film adaptation in 1960. She helped adapt her short story "Old Man Minick", published in 1922, into a play (Minick) and it was thrice adapted to film, in 1925 as the silent film Welcome Home, in 1932 as The Expert, and in 1939 as No Place to Go.
Arthur Freed was an American lyricist and Hollywood film producer. He won the Academy Award for Best Picture twice, in 1951 for An American in Paris and in 1958 for Gigi. Both films were musicals. In addition, he produced and was also a co-lyricist for the film Singin' in the Rain.
Show Boat is a musical with music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. It is based on Edna Ferber's best-selling 1926 novel of the same name. The musical follows the lives of the performers, stagehands and dock workers on the Cotton Blossom, a Mississippi River show boat, over 40 years from 1887 to 1927. Its themes include racial prejudice and tragic, enduring love. The musical contributed such classic songs as "Ol' Man River", "Make Believe", and "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man".
Edna May Oliver was an American stage and film actress. During the 1930s, she was one of the better-known character actresses in American films, often playing tart-tongued spinsters.
Helen Morgan was an American singer and actress who worked in films and on the stage. A quintessential torch singer, she made a big splash in the Chicago club scene in the 1920s. She starred as Julie LaVerne in the original Broadway production of Hammerstein and Kern's musical Show Boat in 1927, as well as in the 1932 Broadway revival of the musical, and appeared in two film adaptations, a part-talkie made in 1929 and a full-sound version made in 1936, becoming firmly associated with the role. She suffered from bouts of alcoholism, and despite her notable success in the title role of another Hammerstein and Kern's Broadway musical, Sweet Adeline (1929), her stage career was relatively short. Helen Morgan died of cirrhosis of the liver at the age of 41. She was portrayed by Polly Bergen in the Playhouse 90 drama The Helen Morgan Story and by Ann Blyth in the 1957 biopic based on the television drama.
Show Boat is a 1936 romantic musical film directed by James Whale, based on the 1927 musical of the same name by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II, which in turn was adapted from the 1926 novel of the same name by Edna Ferber.
Till The Clouds Roll By is a 1946 American Technicolor musical film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. A fictionalized biopic of composer Jerome Kern, portrayed by Robert Walker, Kern was originally involved with the production, but died before its completion. Featuring an ensemble cast of well-known musical stars, it was the first in a series of MGM biopics about Broadway composers.
Show Boat is a 1929 American romantic drama film based on the 1926 novel Show Boat by Edna Ferber. The film initially did not use the 1927 stage musical of the same name as a source, but scenes were later added into the film incorporating two of the songs from the musical as well as other songs. This version was released by Universal in two editions, one a silent film for movie theatres still not equipped for sound, and one a part-talkie with a sound prologue.
"Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" with music by Jerome Kern, and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, is one of the most famous songs from their classic 1927 musical play Show Boat, adapted from Edna Ferber's 1926 novel.
Julie Gregg was an American television, film and stage actress.
Gaylord Ravenal is the leading male character in Edna Ferber's 1926 novel Show Boat, in the famous Jerome Kern-Oscar Hammerstein II 1927 musical play of the same name based on the novel, and in the films made from it. He is a handsome, compulsive riverboat gambler, and he becomes leading man of the show boat Cotton Blossom at the same time that Magnolia Hawks, the captain's daughter, becomes the leading lady. In the novel, this happens after several of the company's leading men and ladies have left, including the illegally married mulatto Julie Dozier and her white husband Steve Baker. In the musical, Magnolia and Ravenal become the leading players on the boat immediately after Julie and Steve are forced to leave the show, not years later.
The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas is a 1982 American musical comedy film co-written, produced and directed by Colin Higgins. It is an adaptation of the 1978 Broadway musical of the same name, and stars Burt Reynolds, Dolly Parton, Jim Nabors, Charles Durning, Dom DeLuise, Noah Beery Jr., Robert Mandan, Lois Nettleton, Theresa Merritt, Barry Corbin, Mary Jo Catlett and Mary Louise Wilson.
Show Boat is a 1951 American musical romantic drama film, based on the 1927 stage musical of the same name by Jerome Kern (music) and Oscar Hammerstein II, and the 1926 novel by Edna Ferber. It was made by MGM, adapted for the screen by John Lee Mahin, produced by Arthur Freed and directed by George Sidney.
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.
Mis'ry's Comin' Aroun is a once-neglected song from the 1927 musical Show Boat by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II. It was cut from the production during the Washington D.C. tryout on the orders of producer Florenz Ziegfeld, supposedly because it was one of the factors that made the show too long. However, musical theatre historian Miles Kreuger and conductor John McGlinn, also suggest that it was the dark, dramatic tone of the piece that most concerned Ziegfeld. Kern was reportedly so incensed by the deletion of "Mis'ry's Comin' Aroun" that he made it the principal motif of Show Boat's original overture and asked orchestrator Robert Russell Bennett to work sections of it into the background music as well, where it is now played by the orchestra during some of the dialogue scenes involving the mixed race actress Julie La Verne.
"Bill" is a song heard in Act II of Kern and Hammerstein's classic 1927 musical, Show Boat. The song was written by Kern and P. G. Wodehouse for their 1917 musical Oh, Lady! Lady!! for Vivienne Segal to perform, but it was withdrawn because it was considered too melancholy for that show. When Kern and Hammerstein were at work on a serious and somewhat tragic production of Show Boat, however, they decided that the song would be perfect for a nightclub scene in that show. Hammerstein revised Wodehouse's original lyrics somewhat, and the song was given to real-life nightclub singer Helen Morgan to sing as she portrayed the mulatto Julie in that version of Show Boat.
"Make Believe" is a show tune from the 1927 Broadway musical Show Boat with music by Jerome Kern and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II.
Ethel Owen was an American actress with a lengthy career on stage as well as radio and television. In her early sixties, during the mid-1950s, she had a memorable recurring TV role on The Honeymooners, playing Mrs. Gibson, Ralph Kramden's sharp-tongued, interfering mother-in-law.
Diegetic music or source music is music in a drama that is part of the fictional setting and so, presumably, is heard by the characters. The term refers to diegesis, a style of storytelling.
Show Boat is a 221-minute studio album of Jerome Kern's musical, performed by a cast headed by Karla Burns, Jerry Hadley, Bruce Hubbard, Frederica von Stade and Teresa Stratas with the Ambrosian Chorus and the London Sinfonietta under the direction of John McGlinn. It was released in 1988.
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