MovieChat Forums > Show Boat (1951) Discussion > My Casting Complant...

My Casting Complant...

posted 18 years ago by ijonesiii
14 replies | jump to latest

My one big problem with this film, as much as I enjoy it, is one major mistake in casting and that was the casting of Ava Gardner as Julie. Am I the only one who thinks that the role of Julie should have been played by Lena Horne in this film? Julie is supposed to be mulatto, right? Lena Horne was under contract to MGM at the time, right? She wouldn't have had to be dubbed, right? Nobody could sing "Can't help lovin' dat Man" like Lena, right? TPTB at MGM really messed that up IMO.

[–] justoldbill 18 years ago

Four rights don't necessarily make a right.

Julie is mulatto, yes. But skin color and racial features are not the same thing. Julie is passing for white. On a large screen, Lena Horne's lovely features could not possibly be camouflaged enough to pass as caucasian.

Lena Horne was under contract to MGM, yes. So was Marjorie Main. That doesn't put her in the running for Julie.

Lena Horne would not have to be dubbed, yes. But the score of SHOW BOAT should not sound like "Honeysuckle Rose", and Lennie Hayton wasn't the arranger on this film.

Nobody could sing "Can't Help Lovin Dat Man" like Lena, maybe. But styling a song and playing a role are two different things. Lena Horne could probably make "Not Since Nineveh" sizzle, but that wouldn't make her right as Lalume.

MGM's SHOW BOAT may be a mess, but not in the casting of Ava Gardner.

[–] funkyfry 18 years ago

I have to agree with the original poster.

'Julie is mulatto, yes. But skin color and racial features are not the same thing. Julie is passing for white. On a large screen, Lena Horne's lovely features could not possibly be camouflaged enough to pass as caucasian."

I disagree, Lena Horne had soft features, a small nose, and not a very prominent chin. She could have looked more like a white woman than Ava Gardner ever looked black (which can only charitably be described as "barely").

"Lena Horne was under contract to MGM, yes. So was Marjorie Main. That doesn't put her in the running for Julie."

Give me a break, if anything Lena Horne was the obvious choice to be Julie. Did you forget that she was cast as Julie in the mini-Showboat in MGM's "Till the Clouds Roll By"?

Apparently what happened was that Lena Horne had angered the executives at MGM by making some political statements and by complaining somewhat publicly about the lack of roles that MGM was giving her and implying they were racist. MGM execs didn't have to release her from her contract, they just gave her no good roles for the last few years that they controlled her. It was inter-studio politics that kept Lena Horne out of "Show Boat", not any concerns about whether she could look white or had the dramatic chops to play the role.

"Lena Horne would not have to be dubbed, yes. But the score of SHOW BOAT should not sound like "Honeysuckle Rose", and Lennie Hayton wasn't the arranger on this film."

It would still be inherently better than seeing a dubbed performance IMHO. It creates a disconnect between the dramatic performance and the musical performance everytime you have dubbing from a different actor/actress.

Did I not love him, Cooch? MY OWN FLESH I DIDN'T LOVE BETTER!!! But he had to say 'Nooooooooo'

[–] justoldbill 18 years ago

Technically speaking, every musical performance in a film is "dubbed" in that a performer is mouthing to a pre-recorded playback, either one's own or another's, the one exception I can think of being Rex Harrison in MY FAIR LADY. And an actor or actress mouthing to another's voice is not always a "disconnect". Watch Dorothy Dandridge in CARMEN JONES.

[–] funkyfry 18 years ago

I felt like there was plenty of disconnect in Preminger's "Carmen Jones", all over the place actually. Yes, 99% of the time a musical performance is going to be dubbed in, but if it's actually been recorded by the artist then it will match not only his/her lips but the feeling of that person. The actor is using their own voice in all the other scenes, then they start singing and it's "whoah! who is that?". Other than the woman who used to dub Rita Hayworth, I've never really seen a case where the voice matches the actor or actress well enough that it's not noticeable.

At any rate what I find most absurd is people's statement that Lena Horne could not "pass" for white, compared to Ava Gardner passing for black. At the very least it would be a draw, and I think Horne would have looked closer to white than Gardner does to black.

Did I not love him, Cooch? MY OWN FLESH I DIDN'T LOVE BETTER!!! But he had to say 'Nooooooooo'

[–] justoldbill 17 years ago

The point is Ava Gardner isn't playing a character passing for black, she's playing a character passing for white, and being successful enough at it to perform in an all-white troupe up and down the Mississippi, for heaven's sake!

[–] takopoly 17 years ago

Apparently the studios still didn't allow mixed-race romance on screen when the film was cast -- pretty ironic, eh? -- so Horne lost the role.

Ava could sing. There's a clip in That's Entertainment where she sings and she sounds fine. Not fantastic, but pretty darn good.

[–] justoldbill 17 years ago

Lena Horne never "lost" the role, except in her own imagination.

[–] funkyfry 17 years ago

If MGM was never considering her for the role, why did they cast her in the mini-Show Boat sequence in "Till the Clouds Roll By"? Nobody who's disputed my arguments or the OP's arguments can answer that.

Did I not love him, Cooch? MY OWN FLESH I DIDN'T LOVE BETTER!!! But he had to say 'Nooooooooo'

[–] daneldorado 17 years ago

Back in 1958, I was lucky enough to get front-row seats at a Broadway theater to see Lena Horne star in the musical "Jamaica." Her leading man was Ricardo Montalban.

There were love scenes, and plenty of kissing between these two. The fact that Horne is supposedly black and Montalban is a white Mexican NEVER intruded into the plot. He was a good-looking man, she was a hot woman, and the show takes it from there.

The point? Simply that in the 1950s, when Show Boat (1951) was made, Lena Horne would have been perfectly acceptable as a woman who is passing for white.

Today, part-black actresses do that all the time. Look at Vanessa Williams. Look at Jennifer Beals. Half the time you don't know WHAT their race is. And you shouldn't care.

Dan N.

English subtitles are a MUST on all DVD releases!

[–] justoldbill 17 years ago

One has to care in regards to SHOW BOAT, as that's what Julie's story line is all about. As to Lena Horne's appearance in TILL THE CLOUDS ROLL BY, when the film played in southern (white) theatres, her number was edited out, as were most of her film appearances (usually solo turns out of context with the rest of the story). This is especially obvious in TILL THE CLOUDS ROLL BY when you can see her number bookended by the same shot of the audience applauding, the easier to splice together without the number. You can't, however, splice Julie out of SHOW BOAT. And Lena Horne and Ricardo Montalban are both on record as to the racist death threats they received during the run of JAMAICA. It may not have gotten in the way on stage, but it did off-stage quite a bit.

[–] nomen_est_omen_4 17 years ago

We're supposed to be completely shocked to learn that Julie is mulatto. If Lena Horne had been cast, audiences would have been like "well, DUH". (Well, perhaps differnt terminology in 1951!)

[–] logicalskeptic 10 years ago

I certainly agree that Lena Horne was the more reasonable choice for Julie. It would certainly have made the dubbing unnecessary. I also remember reading some where that Ava Gardner wore makeup to make her look more like a light skinned mulatto.

Only two things are actually knowable:
It is now and you are here. All else is merely a belief.

[–] denis-38 9 years ago

Julie was supposed to be able to pass for white. Lena Horne looked African American. And even if she had looked whiter than she did, mixing the races on-screen (and off!) was not yet accepted.

[–] TheChamCham 9 years ago

Jane Powell should have played Magnolia. Better singer, actress, and prettier than Katherine Grayson,she had better chemistry with Howard Keel and their voices were more complimentary to each other. Jane Powell was under contract to MGM but made Royal Wedding and another film that year so I suppose she was unavailable.

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