Song Character Analysis Worksheet - The University of North ...
Song Character Analysis Worksheet - The University of North ...
Song Character Analysis Worksheet - The University of North ...
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looked, Magnolia decided, as if they had just come from some interesting place<br />
and were going to another even more interesting. 39<br />
Ellie’s character is the most dramatically revised in the translation from novel to<br />
musical show. She represents the society stereotype <strong>of</strong> the New Woman and the comedic<br />
soubrette <strong>of</strong> the show boat troupe, a modern character in her saucy attitude and quick-<br />
thinking solutions. 40 Ellie is also the dance lead, which was a crucial role in 1920s<br />
musicals. 41 She dispels the stereotypes <strong>of</strong> stage folk to a group <strong>of</strong> young girls in her<br />
song, “Life Upon the Wicked Stage.” <strong>The</strong>se chorus girl hopefuls believe in a grand and<br />
envious life that Ellie reveals as a sham with the lyrics, “Wild old men who give you<br />
jewels and sables only live in Aesop’s Fables. Life upon the wicked stage ain’t nothin’<br />
for a girl!” 42 Ellie concedes the allure <strong>of</strong> playing someone she’s not as she represents the<br />
nineteenth-century Victorian model <strong>of</strong> chastity combined with the New Woman’s sexual<br />
openness in this lyric:<br />
I admit it’s fun to smear my face with paint,<br />
Causin’ ev’ryone to think I’m what I ain’t.<br />
And I like to play a demimondy role with soul!<br />
Ask the hero does he like the way I lure<br />
When I play a hussy or a paramour.<br />
39 Ferber, Show Boat (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Page, 1926), 53.<br />
40 Ferber’s depiction <strong>of</strong> Elly [sic] is not so kind. In the novel she is a reluctantly ageing ingénue<br />
who is self-absorbed, chronically discontent, and described by other characters as high strung and a shrew.<br />
It is her departure from the Cotton Blossom, not Julie’s, that catapults Magnolia onto the stage.<br />
41 Originally performed by former vaudevillian, Eva Puck, this role is indelibly linked with Marge<br />
Champion (wife <strong>of</strong> future choreographer/director, Gower Champion) from the 1951 Metro Goldwyn Mayer<br />
film adaptation.<br />
42 Oscar Hammerstein II, Act I:3, Show Boat Vocal/Piano score (New York: T.B. Harms Co.,<br />
1927; reprint ed., Greenwich, CT: <strong>The</strong> Welk Group, 1970), 86.<br />
70