A wintry Manhattan, 1927, finds Edna Ferber preparing for
“the Ferber season on Broadway.†The bestselling author
has two shows opening back to back. On December 27, the
musical adaptation of Show Boat by Oscar Hammerstein and
Jerome Kern. December 28: The Royal Family, her comedy of
manners written with George Kaufman—Ethel Barrymore has
pondered legal action for the play’s depiction of
theatrical royalty like, say, the Barrymores. Why does Edna
miss both opening nights? She has something else on her
mind—murder. Edna has been mentoring some talented, young
black writers and actors who are part of the heady milieu of
the Roaring Twenties’ Harlem Renaissance—the jazz clubs,
the faddish dances, the frenzy—and the lively pulse of
Broadway that entices these talented young “Negroes†to
push for a downtown strut, for mainstream recognition for
Negro voices and talents. Only recently have Negroes been
allowed on downtown stages with Whites. Edna knows poet
Langston Hughes, but she’s most intrigued by unknowns. Her
housekeeper’s young son, Waters Turpin. Bella Davenport, a
beautiful vamp. Ellie Payne, a jazz singer. Freddy Holder, a
rabble-rouser. Lawson Hicks, Bella's handsome boyfriend.
Taken by some fiction by the boyishly handsome Roddy
Parsons, a charismatic man most recently in the “Negro
chorus"" of Show Boat, she heads to Harlem to take him to
lunch, only to discover he’s been stabbed to death in his
bed. Who killed this promising young man? Recognizing her
own fatal attraction to brash Jed Harris, the young producer
of The Royal Family, a darling of the Broadway set but a
notoriously vain and cruel man, Edna includes him in a pool
of suspects. Driven by curiosity, anger, and her sense of
justice, Edna Ferber sets out to chase down the murderer
rather than attend her plays’ opening nights.
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