28 l Cardinal Mundelein, of Chicago, thought the repre sentation of the convent Kim 125 Ravenal attended was an affront to the Church. Tom Taggart, former United

States Senator, threatened to sue the author for using his name ~n connection

with a gambling casino in the book. The suit was dropped when the name was 126 changed. The book remained a success despite adverse publicity.

Edna Ferber doubted whether her story, which spanned fifty years and

dealt with miscegenation and desertion, could be adapted into a play. How-

ever, she signed a contract in November of 1926, giving and Oscar

Hammerstein the musical and dramatic rights to . Miss Ferber received

a royalty advance of $500 and 1~ percent of the gross weekly box office

receipts from the play's producer, Florenz Ziegfeld. 127

The play was not a typical " " girlie show with scantily

clad dancers and an even barer script. "'Show Boat' was a tightly written

musical play with devotion to character development, with songs that grew

meaningfully out of the plot, with spectacle and dance only when spectacle 128 and dance seemed appropriate to the story." It was th~ first musical to

move away from the traditional vaudeville style productions .

"Show Boat" previewed on November 15, 1927, at the National Theatre in

Washington, D.C. The audience remained for the entir~ four hour show. The

next morning there was a line of people wound around the block waiting to . k 129 pureh ase t~c ets. A shortened version of "Show Boat" qpened <1lt the new

Ziegfeld Theatre on December 27, 1927 and ran until May 4, 1929. The average

box office gross was $50,000 a week . The op~ratin~ expense was around $31,000 130 and the staff of 110 employees was paid $16,800 per week.

Brooks Atkinson, critic for , was very impressed with the Broadway production of "Show Boat."

Faithfully adapted from Edna Ferber's picturesque novel set to an enchanting score by Jerome Kern, staged with the sort of artistry we eulogize in R~inhardt,