When Rossano Brazzi was cast as Emile de Becque in the movie version of South Pacific he assumed he would be singing the songs. He recorded “Some Enchanted Evening” in Italy and played it for Rodgers and Hammerstein, but when they heard it, they were aghast and immediately went in search of someone to provide his singing voice. They settled on Giorgio Tozzi  and Brazzi was not happy. You can hear Brazzi’s voice in the video above and decide for yourself if they made the right decision.

I could go on writing about South Pacific for a long time. Not only is it my favorite of the Rodgers and Hammerstein shows, but it’s my favorite musical period. Yes, Virginia, I’d even put it above the Sondheim shows. Smoke on your pipe and put that in!

I wrote up a post about the music of South Pacific, but based on past experience, I decided it probably wouldn’t go over very well, so I’m not going to publish it.

I’ve previously written about my first exposure to South Pacific, on that summer night in 1959 when I was ten, and my mother invited our neighbors JoAnn Weiant and her daughters Ellen and Kathleen to go to the movies at the State Theater in Lebanon, PA, and I didn’t think I wanted to go to a movie about trains because that’s what I thought “South Pacific” meant as I was so used to seeing “Southern Pacific” printed on the sides of box cars on the trains that went through Richland, so I went along somewhat reluctantly.

But wow! What a revelation! I was enthralled the entire way through the picture, as were Ellen and Kathleen. We got engrossed in the story. We loved the songs.

I don’t know about Ellen and Kathleen, but I didn’t completely understand the story. I mean, why did Nellie have a problem with marrying Emile when she saw his children? Why did Lt. Cable not want to bring Liat back to Philadelphia to meet his family? It didn’t make any sense to me.

You see, my uncle Neal had been stationed in Okinawa when he was in the service and while he was there he married Fumiko and brought her and her daughter Kathy (not her original name but one she picked out on coming to the States, but I didn’t know that at the time) back to America. I wasn’t aware at that age just how much prejudice and hatred they had been subjected to in the backward, provincial little town of Richland (yes, I normally write about Richland with affection, but the truth is it is a small town with all the good and the bad things that that implies). Ellen, however, who had quickly become Kathy’s best friend, probably was aware of it.

So although in some ways the story didn’t make sense to me, it still resonated, and in later years when I did learn what Kathy had had to endure, not just from townspeople in Richland but even from members of our family, it resonated even more.

So, yes, I regard South Pacific as my number one favorite musical. And despite its flaws (those color filters!) I still retain a great deal of affection for the movie version.

While there is plenty more to say about the show, I’ll put that off for a while and close out this series with another excerpt from James A. Michener’s memoir The World Is My Home.

When it became obvious that Rodgers and Hammerstein had on their hands one of the blockbusters of all time, rumors circulated that they had shortchanged me in allowing only 1 percent—a charge I never made, not even privately, because it had never occurred to me that my ugly duckling of a book would ever have a life in the theater—and Walter Winchell the columnist let it be known that he was going to blow the whistle. He phoned me to tell me so, but I begged him not to muddy the waters of what promised to be one of the most triumphant Broadway openings seen up to that time, and he promised he’d hold off for a couple of days.

That night after a full dress rehearsal Oscar Hammerstein called me to say: ‘Jim, we’ve got a hit on our hands. We can’t adjust your percentage, but we do want you to invest in the show. It’ll be a sure thing. Five thousand dollars.’

‘I don’t have one thousand.’

‘We will lend you the money—tonight. You can pay it back when the first profits come in.’

Tears came to my eyes, and I think Oscar knew it, for he waited for me to say: ‘That’s wonderfully generous … one Doylestown kid to another.’ He kept his word. He lent me the money to buy shares that would have otherwise accrued to him and Rodgers, and my financial rewards were not trivial.

Winchell was faithful to his word, and the opening night was explosively wonderful, with the audience remaining in the aisles to cheer again and again. In the years that followed I received, from my royalties and the share of the show that Oscar gave me, the funds, though never excessive, that enabled me to become a full-time professional writer.

One summer when I was preparing to sing in South Pacific at the Lambertville Music Circus—I had the role of the Greek professor, much augmented in my behalf—I visited Hammerstein, then dying of cancer, to tell him about how the show was progressing. He wished me well in my performance, expressing regret that he would not be able to travel the four miles to see me: ‘I’m sure you’ll take it seriously, Jim. Don’t burlesque it,’ and I said: ‘I take everything seriously.’ Then we chuckled over a preposterous incident at the time of the original production: On the morning after the tryout in New Haven some agitated New Englanders had accosted me at the train station and warned: ‘Your play will fail if you keep in that song about racial prejudice. It’s ugly, it’s untimely and it’s not what patrons want to hear when they go to a musical. Please beg Rodgers and Hammerstein to take it out.’ I had reported their suggestion to Oscar and he laughed: ‘That’s what the play is about!’ I thanked him for the decision.

‘“You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught” made the show memorable,’ Hammerstein said. ‘Everyone wrote about it and forgot the love duets.’

I was swept by emotion, seeing this man who had so loved life lying stricken. For some minutes we recalled the joys of working with Mary Martin and Ezio Pinza and Josh and Leland and that wonderful cast, and I said: ‘Those days and nights were golden.’