Song Character Analysis Worksheet - The University of North ...

actress, probably the best in the company.” 54 Ferber provided a subliminal characteri-
zation of Julie as an ethnic femme fatale when Ellie complained about her own inability
to attract men:
Strangely enough, it was Julie who drew them, quite without intent on her part.
There was something about her life-scarred face, her mournful eyes, her langour,
her effortlessness, her very carelessness of dress that seemed to fascinate and hold
them. Steve’s jealousy of her was notorious. It was common boat talk too, that
Pete, the engineer of the Mollie Able [the Cotton Blossom’s tug boat] . . . was
openly enamoured [sic] of her and had tried to steal her from Steve. 55
Kern also foreshadowed Julie’s ethnic qualities before her initial entrance with an
orchestral leitmotiv that is later recognized as a sequential phrase of “Can’t Help Lovin’
‘dat Man.” This musical fragment also establishes her emotional connection with Pete
and Steve for it underscores their entrances. After the miscegenation scene in the first
act, Julie returns for only one more scene in the second act that summarizes the effects of
that episode upon her life. She appears as a headliner at the Trocadero Club, an
“uptown” Chicago nightclub, but she is now an alcoholic and completely disillusioned
with life on the stage. Hammerstein set the scene:
A woman sits dejectedly in a chair. This is Julie, a hollow-cheeked woman
—looking older than she really is—with all the earmarks of one who is downand-out;
marks which she has desperately and pathetically tried to hide by
overdressing, by making use of too many odds and ends of finery, by a tooanxious
application of rouge and lipstick and by dyeing her hair a wretched red.
She sits there, oblivious to all that is going on around her. From time to time she
54 Ferber, 90.
55 Ferber, 114-115. This foreshadows the later revelation by Pete of Julie’s mixed-blood heritage
and her stereotyped seductive skills.
75