This was a high water mark for musical theatre – for great American songwriting, even

In 1927, within a few blocks of Showboat you could have also seen George and Ira Gershwin’s Funny Face, Vincent Youman’s Hit the Deck or Rogers and Hart’s A Connecticut Yankee. This was a high water mark for musical theatre – for great American songwriting, even – but then two things come along to spoil the fun: the Wall Street Crash and talking pictures. In 1928 there were sixty-two shows along Broadway; this would decline to thirty-four in 1931. During the whole of the 1930s, the Great White Way would  host only sixty-eight new musical comedies.

With a very real lack of cash and opportunity for the New York songwriter, the lure of Hollywood – just about the only place in 1930s America where there seemed to be a silver lining – would prove irresistible.

B. Stanley, Let's do it: the birth of pop (2022), 110