Gaylord Ravenal

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Gaylord Ravenal is the leading male character in Edna Ferber's 1926 novel Show Boat, in the Jerome Kern-Oscar Hammerstein II musical of the same name based on the novel, and in the films and other adaptations of the story. He is a handsome, compulsive riverboat gambler, who becomes the leading man of the showboat Cotton Blossom at the same time that Magnolia Hawks, the captain's daughter, becomes the leading lady.^[1] In the novel, this happens several years after the illegally married mulatto Julie Dozier (Magnolia's good friend) and her white husband Steve Baker have left the show on the boat. In the musical, it happens immediately after Julie and Steve are forced to leave the show. In the musical, Magnolia and Gaylord meet in the first scene of the show, before Julie and Steve leave, as Kern and Hammerstein wished to bring Gaylord into the story early. In the novel the two meet right after Gaylord is hired as leading man, long after Julie and Steve have left.