INTERVIEW: ALLAN JONES

Here is a great video interview conducted by David Duncan of the great star Allan Jones from the late 1980s. This is a fascinating look at his life and career...

BORN ON THIS DAY: ALLAN JONES

I am not a huge opera singing fan. Sometimes I feel the singing is so shrill, but I wanted to take the time to remember a tenor that I have enjoyed through the years. Allan Jones was born on this day in 1907. He was born in Old Forge, Pennsylvania. Jones, of Welsh ancestry, appeared on Broadway a few times, including 1933's Roberta and the short-lived 1934 revival of Bitter Sweet. He starred in many film musicals during the 1930s and 1940s. The best-known of these were Show Boat (1936), and The Firefly (1937) in which he sang "Donkey Serenade." It became his signature song. He is now best remembered, however, as the romantic straight man to the Marx Brothers in their first two Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer films: A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races.

On the strength of his appearance in A Night at the Opera, he won the coveted role of Gaylord Ravenal in the 1936 film version of Show Boat (opposite Irene Dunne) over such screen musical favorites as Nelson Eddy and John Boles. It would be Jones's most distinguished screen role in which, under the direction of James Whale, he displayed dramatic acting ability, as well as musical talent.

He made a brief appearance in the 1936 Nelson Eddy - Jeanette MacDonald film Rose Marie, singing music from Charles Gounod's Romeo et Juliette and Giacomo Puccini's Tosca, but according to Merchant of Dreams, Charles Higham's biography of Louis B. Mayer, Eddy, who apparently considered Jones a rival and a potential threat, asked that most of Jones's footage in Rose Marie be cut, including his rendition of the great Puccini aria E lucevan le stelle - and MGM agreed to Eddy's demand.

In 1940, he moved to Universal for two musicals, both with scores by immortal composers: The Boys from Syracuse, with the stage score (severely cut) by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, and One Night in the Tropics, with an original score by Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields which produced no hit songs. Following those, he slipped to leads in B musicals, two at Paramount, then eight at Universal, including a re-teaming with Kitty Carlisle in Larceny with Music (1943). The same year, he briefly returned to A’s by guesting, as himself, in the Olsen and Johnson musical Crazy House, where he again performed "Donkey Serenade."

In the mid 1960s the busy Jones managed to fit a few appearances on television and in movies into his busy theater, nightclub, and recording career. In 1971, he took on the role of Don Quixote in "Man of La Mancha", a role he would perform off and on for the next eight years. He also was very successful on the lecture circuit. In 1982, the 75-year-old Jones cut yet another LP, his voice belying his age: as clear and vibrant as singers a third his age. Jones continued to work for the remainder of his life, finishing a successful tour of Australia a few weeks before his death, at 84, in 1992...

SHOW BOAT 1936

One of the most beloved broadway musicals of all time was Show Boat. This wonderful tale of performing on a riverboat had a magical score written by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II. The music was by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics  was by Oscar Hammerstein II. The show not only featured timeless songs like "Ol Man River" and "Make Believe", but the musical itself dealt with issues such as racial prejudice and inequality. Dealing with those themes was quite new to society in 1927 when the musical debuted.

The original show opened on Broadway at the Ziegfeld Theatre on December 27, 1927. The critics were immediately enthusiastic, and the show was a great popular success, running a year and a half, for a total of 572 performances. It made a star of Helen Morgan who played Julie LaVerne, an actress on the riverboat who is hiding the secret of her true ethnicity. For Morgan, the show was a role of a lifetime, and she never had a bigger success than Show Boat.

Show Boat was actually first filmed in 1929 as a silent movie with some sound added. It did not feature any of the Kern-Hamerstein score. The 1929 film was long believed to be lost, but most of it has been found and shown on TCM. The successful Broadway show would not get a proper transfer to film until 1936 when the film was made for Unviersal Studios.

Carl Laemmle, head of Universal, had been deeply dissatisfied with the 1929 film, and had long wanted to make an all-sound version of the hit musical. It was originally scheduled to be made in 1934, but plans to make this version with Russ Colombo as the gambler Gaylord Ravenal fell through when Colombo was killed that year in a shotgun accident, and shooting of the film was rescheduled. The film, with several members of the original Broadway cast, was begun in late 1935 and released in 1936.

This film version of Show Boat stars Irene Dunne as Magnolia and Allan Jones as Ravenal, with Charles Winninger, Paul Robeson, Helen Morgan, and Hattie McDaniel.
Morgan, already battling alcoholism reprised her role as Julie. What was the biggest shock of this new version is the choice of director. James Whale directed the film, and he was the top director at the time at Universal, but he was known for his directing of their horror movies like Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein. However, Whales suprisingly was a great director on this musical, and his attention to detail gave the movie a very authentic look.

The movie would be remade again in 1951 by MGM, and although their version was well made, it paled in comparison to this 1936 version. Irene Dunne, because of her dramatic movies, is really underrated as a singer. She had a wonderful voice that blended well with her co-star Allan Jones (the father of crooner Jack Jones). Paul Robeson gives the definitive version of  "Ol Man River" in the movie, and he would forever be associated with the song. Helen Morgan as well did well in the movie, but her years of alcohol abuse had its toll on her looks and she looks older than she is in the movie. Her voice was still there, and she gave a wonderful portrayal of Julie that is forever etched on movie celluloid. Unfortunately, this would be Morgan's last film, and she died of liver failure in 1941 at the age of 41.

What is equally as sad as the young death of Helen Morgan was that the 1936 version is not yet on DVD. Show Boat was successful at the box office, but was withdrawn from circulation in the 1940s, after MGM bought the rights so that they could film their own Technicolor remake; however, MGM's version did not begin filming until 1950, and was released in the summer of 1951. The fact that Paul Robeson, who played Joe in the 1936 version, was blacklisted in 1950 further assured that the 1936 film would not be seen for a long time, and it was not widely seen again until after Robeson's death in 1976. In 1983 it made its debut on cable television, and a few years later, on PBS. It was made available on VHS beginning in 1990, but it has yet to be released on an authorized DVD, although a Brazilian company, Classicline, released a DVD version in 2003. Until this excellent movie is released on DVD, I will be thankful for my DVD copy I recorded off of TCM. The best of the three movie Show Boats, this 1936 version deserves to be released. TCM/Warner Brothers owe it to the talents of Irene Dunne, Helen Morgan, and Paul Robeson as well as to the original visionaries of the show to issue this masterpiece...