Christmas in the Movies Everyday Through December
There are many threads in this simple love story that grows complicated when tested by the flawed male lead who appears on the bank at one of their stops, Gaylord Ravenal (Howard Keel) and meeting his enchanting lucky muse, innocent Magnolia Hawks. The backstory from the Edna Ferber novel is more complicated on some characters while making the story less redemptive on others.
Christmas, with its lure of celebration obscuring realities in one's lives, shows the newly married Gaylord and Magnolia enjoying the fun of Chicago, with its private gambling homes, to the following year, when the Ravenal's luck turns sour and the following Christmas finds them in a rented room in a dodgy part of town. It is Christmas at their darkest; we suffer with them as we watch how Gaylord and Magnolia approach their fall. Then Julie returns in the story and it is a heartbreaking reveal.
I know some classic fans on New Year's Eve love to watch the noirish, Repeat Performance (1947) and I agree it's good. But Show Boat is my favorite on New Year's Eve. I cry just in anticipation of William Warfield's magical performance of "Old Man River" (the tears start with the orchestra's first notes)-- it is a show-stopper. The ending does depart -quite a bit- from Ferber's original novel, but I don't care, for the musical is Jerome Kern's music and Oscar Hammerstein II's lyrics, and the movie is the product of the Arthur Freed unit.
HAP -- PY New Year!