Show Boat -- Edna Ferber

<p>Show Boat is a 1926 novel by American author and dramatist Edna Ferber. It chronicles the lives of three generations of performers on the Cotton Blossom, a floating theater on a steamboat that travels between small towns along the banks of the Mississippi River, from the 1880s to the 1920s. The story moves from the Reconstruction Era riverboat to Gilded Age Chicago to Roaring Twenties New York, and finally returns to the Mississippi River.</p><p><br></p><p>Show Boat was adapted as a Broadway musical in 1927 by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II. Three films followed: a 1929 version that depended partly on the musical, and two full adaptations of the musical in 1936 and 1951. </p><p><br></p><p>In August 1924, Edna Ferber watched as the opening performance of her play Minick (co-written with George S. Kaufman) was disrupted by an invasion of bats that had been nesting undetected in the chandeliers and dome of the playhouse. Alarmed theatergoers scurried for the exits. As the crew recovered from this debacle, Winthrop Ames, the show's producer, jokingly remarked: "Next time... we won't bother with tryouts. We'll all charter a show boat and we'll just drift down the rivers, playing the towns as we come to them."</p><p><br></p><p>Show boats were floating theaters that traveled along rivers of the United States from the 1870s to the 1930s. The performers lived aboard the vessels. With song, dance, and dramatic productions, show boats provided entertainment for small riverside