'Do you want to hear a mammy song?': A historiography of show boat

This article considers the changing fortunes of Show Boat, the 1927 Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II musical, in popular and academic criticism from the 1940s to the present. A select group of writers who weighed in on Show Boat and the question of race over the last 60 years are discussed. Given its unusual interracial cast, the production history of the work and larger social and political transformations-in particular the Civil Rights Movement-have consistently played an important role in Show Boat's changing reputation and meaning. During the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, popular historians, composers and critics such as David Ewen, Leonard Bernstein, and Miles Kreuger minimized race as a salient element of the work while arguing for Show Boat's importance in the history of the musical as an American theatrical form. Beginning in the 1990s, academics and activist critics such as Robin Breon, Linda Williams, and Raymond Knapp brought the race question to the forefront of Show Boat scholarship, altering the terms on which the show was evaluated (at least within some sectors of the academy). However, as a heretofore unpublished exchange from 1948 between Oscar Hammerstein II and the theater critic of the Daily Worker demonstrates, the dynamic interplay between racial representation, text, and performance, often highlighted by recent scholars, has been an enduring element of Show Boat criticism. Recent archival research on the genesis of the work, begun by Scott McMillin, suggests that old and new views of Show Boat stand to be revised in the light of historical research, much of which remains to be done.