[1] In the Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II's classic musical version of it, which opened on Broadway on December 27, 1927, her stage name (or alias) is Julie La Verne.
Nevertheless, the couple is obliged to leave the show boat because law at the time made it illegal for African-Americans to act on the stage with whites.
Many years after, just before being deserted in Chicago by her gambler husband Gaylord Ravenal, Magnolia accidentally discovers that Julie now works in a whorehouse.
[4] Most of what happens to her in the novel remains exactly the same in the show—she is still a biracial woman who is married to a white man and is forced to leave the show because of racist laws, an element once considered taboo in a musical play.
In the 1951 Technicolor remake of "Show Boat", Julie was played by Ava Gardner, with her singing voice dubbed by Annette Warren.
)[citation needed] In the 1929 part-talkie film version of Show Boat, based on the novel rather than the musical, Julie, played by Alma Rubens, was not biracial.