Norma Terris; Magnolia in ‘Show Boat’

Norma Terris, the original Magnolia when Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II opened their “Show Boat” in the 1927 production by Florenz Ziegfeld, has died at her summer home in Lyme, Conn., it was learned this week.

She was 87 when she died Wednesday, the Associated Press reported.

Miss Terris, who also had a home in Palm Beach, Fla., so enchanted Kern and Hammerstein that they wrote one of the hit songs from the legendary musical--”Why Do I Love You?”--while the show was still in rehearsal. She remained with the original cast for the 2 1/2 years “Show Boat” ran on Broadway.

In 1932 she reprised her starring role during a “Show Boat” revival and continued to be seen as Magnolia into the 1940s, appearing in Los Angeles at the Philharmonic Auditorium in May, 1940.

A native of Columbus, Kan., Miss Terris sang in church choirs and was seen in several Midwestern musicals before moving to New York in the 1920s. She got her first big break in the title role of George M. Cohan’s “Little Nellie Kelly.” After her triumphs in “Show Boat,” she spent most of the 1930s and ‘40s as a star of the Municipal Opera Company of St. Louis and made a few films in Hollywood before becoming a patron of the Goodspeed Opera House Foundation in Chester, Conn., where she also sang occasionally.

There she participated in the remodeling of an old knitting needle factory into what was eventually named the Norma Terris Theater. It became a tryout theater for American musicals beginning with “Harrigan ‘n’ Hart” and “Mrs. McThing” in 1984. Miss Terris was also seen there in a one-woman show in which she impersonated musical comedy stars. All proceeds went to the theater.

She also donated 30 acres of land nearby as a nature center and office for the local Humane Society.

Her survivors include her husband, Albert D. Firestone.