South Pacific ranks among the most popular musicals in the American theater. The show was written by the team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. It opened on Broadway in 1949 and won the 1950 Pulitzer Prize for drama, only the second musical to win the prize to that time. The Broadway production ran for 1,925 performances, and toured throughout the United States over a period of five years.
South Pacific takes place on an island in the South Pacific Ocean during World War II (1939-1945). The plot is adapted from two short stories by American author James Michener. The stories were published in Michener’s collection Tales of the South Pacific (1947).
The main story portrays a romance between a young United States Navy nurse named Nellie Forbush and a middle-aged French planter on the island named Emile de Becque. A secondary plot concerns a tragic love affair between a U.S. Navy officer and an island woman.
South Pacific gained international acclaim for the classic Rodgers and Hammerstein score, which included the hit songs “Bloody Mary,” “There Is Nothin’ Like a Dame,” “Bali Ha’i,” “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair,” “Some Enchanted Evening,” “Younger Than Springtime,” and “This Nearly Was Mine.” The musical also had an exceptionally strong story. It dealt with racial prejudice, a serious theme rarely included in American musical comedies.
Mary Martin starred as Nellie Forbush in the Broadway production. Metropolitan Opera singer Ezio Pinza made his Broadway debut as Emile de Becque. Joshua Logan was the director and co-author of the dialogue with Hammerstein. South Pacific was made into a movie in 1958 with Mitzi Gaynor as the nurse and Rossano Brazzi as the planter.
