I wish I could tell you about the South Pacific. The way it actually was. The endless ocean. The infinite specks of coral we called islands. Coconut palms nodding gracefully toward the ocean. Reefs upon which waves broke into spray, and inner lagoons, lovely beyond description. I wish I could tell you about the sweating jungle, the full moon rising behind the volcanoes, and the waiting. The waiting. The timeless, repetitive waiting.

But whenever I start to talk about the South Pacific, people intervene. I try to tell somebody what the steaming Hebrides were like, and first thing you know I’m telling about the old Tonkinese woman who used to sell human heads. As souvenirs. For fifty dollars!

Those are the opening paragraphs of James A. Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific, a book that was published in 1947.

It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Literature.

In 1948 the book came to the attention of director Joshua Logan, who in turn passed it along to Richard Rodgers and then to Oscar Hammerstein II as a possible source for their next musical. Hammerstein was especially taken by the story “Fo’ Dolla’” and convinced Rodgers to get to work on it.

But Oscar quickly ran into a problem in re-shaping the material into a coherent plot, because Michener’s book is merely a collection of very loosely connected stories with no real over-arching plot. And many of the stories are more like vignettes. Hammerstein found some characters he felt he could work with and some situations, but after a few months all he had was an opening scene and a few lyrics.

So Rodgers suggested that Josh Logan, who had recently helped to adapt the book Mister Roberts into a play, might be able to help. Oscar was delighted, because Logan had served in the military and thus could help out with the way officers actually spoke, something that Hammerstein knew nothing about.

Logan spent ten days at Hammerstein’s Doyelstown’s farm and the two of them quickly whipped the material into shape, but then the question arose as to credit.

As he wrote in his memoir Josh, knowing that Rodgers and Hammerstein kept their credits to themselves, Logan was anxious when he approached Hammerstein:

“Oscar, I think I should get half credit for the book.”

Oscar’s face was immobile but I thought he blushed slightly. After the briefest of pauses he answered, “I wish I’d said it first. I’m sorry you had to. Of course you must have credit. After all you wrote it as much as I did. We’ll work out the exact credits later.”

But after Hammerstein spent a few hours with Rodgers and their lawyer, he came back to Logan the next day.

“In order to keep me from feeling that I’m being penalized by your demand, I will agree to the following arrangement. You may have equal credit with me for the book.”

“That’s wonderful, Oscar.”

“That’s not all. According to our contract, in the credits your name as director was to be in the same type size as mine and Dick’s. But now Dick and I must have the top one hundred percent credit with the lead-in ‘A Musical Play By Rodgers and Hammerstein.’”

“What?”

“Your name and mine as the book authors will be below that but with only sixty percent of the Rodgers and Hammerstein credit. And that’s still not all. Your director credit must be diminished to sixty percent as well.”

”Jesus, Oscar,” I said, “that’s a body blow.”

“That’s the only possible way we can go on. Of course, it goes without saying that you won’t get anything whatsoever of the author’s royalties.”

Logan knew that it was Rodgers who was behind all this and that Hammerstein had only agreed to it reluctantly, but in the end Hammerstein had agreed to it. Logan remained friendly with Hammerstein but his relationship with Rodgers took a big hit.

Still, Logan wanted very badly to direct South Pacific. As Laurie Winer writes in Oscar Hammerstein II and the Invention of the Musical, “His battle endured past the deaths of both the lyricist and the composer, at which point Logan and [his wife] took the fight to Dorothy Rodgers and Bill Hammerstein.”

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