an anthem in four-part harmony about “The Oldest Estab-
lished Permanent Floating Crap Game in New York,” the num-
ber comes from out of the blue. When Adelaide reads from a
medical textbook, footnotes and all, and makes it into a song, it
is out of the blue. But the contrast between Salvation Army
singing and Hot Box singing, which is also the contrast be-
tween the leading female characters, is built on diegetic songs.
Diegetic Sophistications
Magnolia is introduced into Show Boatby means of a diegetic
tune. She is heard practicing the piano offstage, faltering
through a little ditty that sounds like it comes out of an exer-
cise book. Kern’s original conception was to transform the
G-major ditty into the final number of the musical, “It’s Get-
ting Hotter in the North,” which Magnolia’s daughter Kim
was to sing at the end of the show. This would have been an-
other diegetic number—Kim is a Broadway star on a visit to
the showboat, and this is the kind of tune she has been singing
on the Great White Way. “It’s Getting Hotter” was cut from
the original production and lost from view thereafter, but it
can be heard on John McGlinn’s recorded reconstruction of
the original, and the derivation of the jazz tune from the piano
ditty is unmistakable. There are other recollections of the pi-
ano ditty (in the convent school scene, for example) and they
usually connect Magnolia to Kim. Ferber had stressed this iden-
tification between mother and daughter, and Kern’s various
transformations of the piano ditty form a musical way of creat-
ing the same effect.^10
That is an example of a composer using a convention for a
dramatic point. The diegetic tune shared between mother and
daughter in Show Boatdramatizes the relationship between the
114 CHAPTER FIVE
(^10) The McGlinn recorded reconstruction of Show Boatas Kern intended it
is from EMI Records Ltd., 1988. Kreuger, Show Boat: The Story of a Classic
American Musical, is a storehouse of information about this musical. Kern’s and
Hammerstein’s original intentions can be traced through various early drafts
and rehearsal scripts. See McMillin, “Robeson.”