Show Boat

1936, USA, James Whale, 113 min.

Introduced by Rebecca Luker

Voted one of the top twenty-five movie musicals by the American Film Institute, Show Boat is by turns captivating and trenchant. Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein’s genre-spanning epic addresses racial integration through the power of song and dance. Paul Robeson’s performance of “Ol’ Man River,” perhaps the greatest of all show tunes, is the highlight of this panoramic look at life on and around a Mississippi riverboat.

This screening will be Introduced by three-time Tony Award nominee Rebecca Luker, who played Magnolia in the 1997 Broadway revival of the musical.

Wisdom connection:

Ol’ Man River, that Ol’ Man River

He must know something, but he don’t say nothing

He just keeps rollin’, he keeps on rollin’ along”¦

-Oscar Hammerstein’s “˜Ol’ Man River’

About the Speaker

Rebecca Luker was recently on Broadway in FUN HOME (Helen Bechdel). Other Broadway appearances include Fairy Godmother in Rodgers & Hammerstein’s CINDERELLA, MARY POPPINS (Mrs. Banks, Tony nomination), NINE, THE MUSIC MAN (Tony Nomination), THE SOUND OF MUSIC, SHOWBOAT (Tony nomination), THE SECRET GARDEN, and THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA. Ms. Luker received an Outer Critics Circle nomination for her role in Maury Yeston’s DEATH TAKES A HOLIDAY at the Roundabout. She has recorded several solo CDs including: I Got Love: the songs of Jerome Kern and Greenwich Time. She performed in the films Not Fade Away and The Rewrite, and on TV in Boardwalk Empire, The Good Wife and Law and Order ““ SVU.