Show Boat is a 1929 American pre-Code sound part-talkie romantic drama film based on the 1926 novel Show Boat by Edna Ferber. The film initially did not use the 1927 stage musical of the same name as a source, but scenes were later added into the film incorporating two of the songs from the musical as well as other songs. Many of these songs from the stage show were featured in a special prologue that was added to the picture before it was released. This film was produced and released by Universal. Like the majority of films during the early sound era, a silent version was made for movie theatres that had not yet converted to sound.

Show Boat is a 1926 novel by American author and dramatist Edna Ferber. It chronicles the lives of three generations of performers on the Cotton Blossom, a floating theater on a steamboat that travels between small towns along the banks of the Mississippi River, from the 1880s to the 1920s. The story moves from the Reconstruction Era riverboat to Gilded Age Chicago to Roaring Twenties New York, and finally returns to the Mississippi River.