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 Jerome Kern and Oscar
Hammerstein the musical and dramatic rights to Show Boat. 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 " Ziegfeld Follies" 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 the New York Times, 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,