In doing research for her proposed novel "Show Boat", writer Edna Ferber spent five days on the "James Adams Floating Palace Theatre" in Bath, North Carolina, gathering material about a disappearing American entertainment venue, the river showboat. In a few weeks, she gained what she called a "treasure trove of show-boat material, human, touching, true". Ferber researched these American showboats for months prior to her stay on the Floating Palace Theatre. Jerome Kern was impressed by the novel and, hoping to adapt it as a musical, asked the critic Alexander Woollcott to introduce him to Ferber in October 1926. Woollcott introduced them that evening during the intermission of Kern's latest musical, "Criss Cross".