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Both Funny Girl and Show Boat also take pains to show their heroines’ modest roots. We see Magnolia performing in bad plays with bad actors on the Cotton Blossom show boat and are fully aware of the modest but loving family from which she sprang. Similarly, we see Fanny start out in low-class vaudeville and witness her modest Henry Street roots, where her mother runs a neighborhood saloon. Much more compelling parallels lie in the story of each heroine’s love life. Both wed for love, both wed professional gamblers, and both are ultimately abandoned by their loving but unreliable spouses. Magnolia falls in love with Gaylord Ravenal, a Mississippi gambler; Fanny falls for Nicky Arnstein, a New York gambler.3 To the relatively innocent eyes of Magnolia and Fanny, each man is handsome, suave and sophisticated, living exotic lives far beyond the two women’s sheltered upbringings. Magnolia’s mother Parthy objected to the match, but her father Cap’n Andy helped it along; we know little about Fanny’s mother’s attitude toward her marrying Nick. Each couple marries for love. Once wed, each moves away to live the high life elsewhere. Magnolia and Gaylord move to Chicago where they have their daughter Kim. Though we don’t see them, we hear reports that they party amongst the city’s elite, living opulent lives. Similarly, once wed, Fanny and Nicky enjoy a life of fine restaurants, champagne, and jewels. They revel in materialistic splendor, reflecting each husband’s good luck at the gaming tables. This point is especially hit home by Nicky’s refusal to wed Fanny unless he makes a bundle, not wanting to be beholden to Fanny’s bank account. Their “glitter and be gay” worlds eventually unravel, however, as the gamblers’ luck turns. Eventually Gaylord abandons Magnolia and Nicky leaves Fanny. Gaylord leaves Magnolia flat, forcing her return to the stage for a livelihood. By contrast, because Fanny is already a star her pain at abandonment is not economically devastating, though certainly as emotionally crushing as Magnolia’s. Not only do both abandoned wives carry on, both make still-bigger names for themselves professionally. Unlike the Cinderella musicals, both Show Boat and Funny Girl center primarily upon romance, rather than social acceptance. Magnolia and Fanny fall head over heels for their respective beaux, seemingly oblivious to their men being gamblers and hence rather disreputable ne’er-do-wells. Consequently, both Fanny and Magnolia attain public renown but privately suffer. So why wed gamblers?
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Stuart J. Hecht (Transposing Broadway: Jews, Assimilation, and the American Musical (Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History))