A close examination of "Show Boat" reveals that it is actually quite progressive for a show that was written in 1927. The plot, involving a woman who is prohibited from performing on the show boat because she is bi-racial and is married to a white man, is compelling, as is the song "Ol' Man River," which is the complete antithesis of the more upbeat tunes popular at a time when many whites did not wish to acknowledge their injustice to African Americans. "Show Boat" was made into a film musical three times -- in 1929, 1936, and 1951. In 1954 it became part of the New York City Opera's standard repertory -- the first musical to be adopted by an opera company. The 1930s saw a string of Kern musicals: "The Cat and the Fiddle"; "Music in the Air"; "Roberta," which was made into a film starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in 1935 and which included the song "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes"; the Astaire/Rogers film musical SWING TIME, featuring "A Fine Romance" and the Oscar-winning "The Way You Look Tonight"; and "Very Warm for May," which was a flop but from which the song "All the Things You Are" -- perhaps Kern's best song, if not the best popular song by any composer -- survives. In the 1940s Kern moved to Hollywood and devoted the rest of his career to writing music for films. He contributed the songs "The Last Time I Saw Paris" to LADY, BE GOOD, "Dearly Beloved" to YOU WERE NEVER LOVELIER, and "Long Ago and Far Away" to COVER GIRL. He died in New York in 1945; his last score was for the film Centennial Summer, which was released in 1946. Most of Kern's manuscripts were assumed for decades to be lost. But in 1982 hundreds of manuscripts by Kern and other Broadway composers were found in a warehouse in Secaucus, New Jersey. In an article in the NEW YORK TIMES on March 10, 1987, the year that the manuscripts were inventoried after having been moved to Manhattan, Kern scholar John McGlinn was quoted as saying that the discovery was "like opening the tomb of King Tut. There are major works here that had been presumed lost forever; shows that were never revived and were assumed to have vanished off the face of the earth." Included among the findings were the complete scores for "Very Good Eddie," "Leave It to Jane," and "Sunny," and the original manuscripts of "Ol' Man River," "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man," and music that was cut from "Show Boat" after the 1927 production. This "lost" music was added to a 1988 recording of "Show Boat," restoring themusical to its original glory. Source: CONTEMPORARY MUSICIANS, VOLUME 13. Gale Group, © 1994 Gale Group. Reprinted by permission of The Gale Group. back to page 2