South Pacific

South Pacific is a musical play with music by Richard Rodgers and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II that opened on Broadway on April 7, 1949, and ran for more than five years. It is generally considered to be one of the greatest musicals of all time and a number of its songs, such as Bali Ha'i, Younger than Springtime, and Some Enchanted Evening, have become worldwide standards. It was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1950. The play is based upon two short stories by James A. Michener from his book Tales of the South Pacific, which itself was the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1948. The original cast starred Mary Martin as the heroine Nellie Forbush and opera star Ezio Pinza as Emile de Becque, the French plantation owner. Also in the cast were Juanita Hall, Myron McCormick, Betta St. John, and William Tabbert.

Controversy

On occasion, South Pacific is criticized for its political incorrectness, although it took what was then a radical position on race issues, particularly as the song "You've Got to be Carefully Taught" was viewed as a blistering condemnation of racial bigotry. James Michener claimed he was pressured to ask Rodgers and Hammerstein to take out the Joe Cable story, because it involved miscegenation.

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Nevertheless, it is argued that Joe Cable, who would have married Liat, the Tonkinese daughter of Bloody Mary, was killed in the play to eliminate the prospect of a transracial marriage occurring in the musical. The racial element in the other story is more muted: Nelly Forbush, the white nurse from the segregated south, marries Emile de Becque, a white man who is father to two half-Tonkinese children whose mother had died long ago.

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