The book
Rogers and Hammerstein based their musical on the book “Tales of the South Pacific” by James A. Michener, who wrote his own observations and anecdotes he collected while stationed as a lieutenant in the US Navy during WW2.
- The book won a Pulitzer Prize in 1948.
- Michener was sent to the South Pacific in 1944 to write a history of the navy in the Pacific.
- Michener barely survived a plane crash, the near-death experience is what inspired him to write fiction.
- Went to the Treasury Islands and visited a village--"scrawny residents and only one pig"-- called Bali-ha'i.
- On the island Espiritu Santo, he met a woman named Bloody Mary and collected her tales and complaints of French Colonialism in Vietnam to create Tales of the South Pacific.
- The book has nineteen stories.
- “Fo’ Dolla” was what inspired Rogers and Hammerstein the most
THE MUSICAL
In Rogers and Hammerstein's career, South Pacific falls after Oklahoma and Carousel. It also follows Allergo, which is generally considered a flop. Rogers and Hammerstein wanted another hit.
They got the hit they hopped for, the musical ran for a long time on Broadway and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1950 and won ten Tony Awards, the only musical to win Tonys in all four acting categories.
The early drafts of the musical were much closer to the book, for instance early drafts had Bill Harbison and Dinah Culbert as major characters.
They got the hit they hopped for, the musical ran for a long time on Broadway and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1950 and won ten Tony Awards, the only musical to win Tonys in all four acting categories.
The early drafts of the musical were much closer to the book, for instance early drafts had Bill Harbison and Dinah Culbert as major characters.
THe controversy
The musical was not without controversy. The show was criticized for having a “Communist Agenda,” and was banned in Georgia for this reason. One of them, Rep. David C. Jones, wrote in a letter, "We in the South are a proud and progressive people. Half-breeds cannot be proud."
In 1958, Hammerstein was on The Mike Wallace Interview, hosted by Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes fame. "South Pacific had two love stories in it," Hammerstein told Wallace. "They both concern, in a different way, race prejudice."
Larry Maslon, a Broadway historian who teaches at the graduate acting program at New York University, says he has always thought of Oscar Hammerstein as a preacher, "In the way that I think of Abraham Lincoln as a preacher, or Leonard Bernstein as a preacher. Lincoln used the White House, Bernstein used the conductor's podium, and Oscar used the theater," he says. "And all of his shows offer a kind of benign choice, it seems to me: that tolerance is probably better than prejudice; that enlightenment is probably better than ignorance," he says. "And I think he appealed, in the way that Lincoln did, actually, in his second inaugural address, to the better angels of our nature."
In 1958, Hammerstein was on The Mike Wallace Interview, hosted by Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes fame. "South Pacific had two love stories in it," Hammerstein told Wallace. "They both concern, in a different way, race prejudice."
Larry Maslon, a Broadway historian who teaches at the graduate acting program at New York University, says he has always thought of Oscar Hammerstein as a preacher, "In the way that I think of Abraham Lincoln as a preacher, or Leonard Bernstein as a preacher. Lincoln used the White House, Bernstein used the conductor's podium, and Oscar used the theater," he says. "And all of his shows offer a kind of benign choice, it seems to me: that tolerance is probably better than prejudice; that enlightenment is probably better than ignorance," he says. "And I think he appealed, in the way that Lincoln did, actually, in his second inaugural address, to the better angels of our nature."