SHOW BOAT

Original 10 inch x 8 inch Portrait of HELEN MORGAN in the 1936 James Whale Musical Drama SHOW BOAT, based on the stage play by Oscar Hammerstein II.

Superb second version of the classic musical about turn-of-the-century Mississippi river folk. The show is stolen by Paul Robeson and Helen Morgan in supporting roles as Joe and Julie.

Helen Morgan (1900 – 1941) was a Broadway and night-club star of the 1920s and 1930s, the original “torch singer”. A farmer’s daughter, she worked as a biscuit packer, shop girl, and manicurist before starting on her road to fame in a small Chicago cabaret. She appeared in only a handful of films early in the sound era, typically portraying fallen women as she had done on the stage, most memorably as the pathetic Kitty Darling in Rouben Mamoulian’s “Applause” (her debut film, made and first shown in 1929 but not released until 1930) and as the tragic Julie in James Whale’s “Show Boat”, in which she repeated her triumphant Broadway role. She had also appeared in the part-talking 1929 film version of that musical. The manager of several speakeasies during the Prohibition era, she fell into a heavy drinking habit and her career was eventually shattered by alcoholsim. She died at 41 of cirrhosis of the liver. Ann Blyth portrayed her in the film biography “The Helen Morgan Story” (1957).

The portrait, on doubleweight paper, is in very good condition. Reverse side blank.