Trivia for
South Pacific (1958)

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• Concerned that the film's lush tropical settings would appear unnatural in Technicolor, Director Joshua Logan hoped to soften the effect by filming several scenes through the newly available colored filters. He later indicated he considered this to be the biggest mistake he had made in his filming career.
  
  
• Juanita Hall, who played Bloody Mary in the original Broadway production, sang her own songs onstage, but was dubbed in the film version at the request of composer Richard Rodgers. Rodgers and musical director Alfred Newman brought in Muriel Smith (who played the Bloody Mary role in London).
  
  
• Partially restores the song "Loneliness of Evening", which had been deleted from the stage version. The lyrics turn up in the form of a poem sent by Emile de Becque to Nellie Forbush (the full song was used in the 1965 television adaptation of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II's Cinderella (1965) (TV)).
  
  

• Joshua Logan considered virtually every top actress of the day for the role of Nellie Forbush, including Elizabeth Taylor, Doris Day, Audrey Hepburn and even Ginger Rogers.
  
  
• The love scenes between characters Joe Cable and Liat were considered shocking by the still conservative standards of the late 1950s.
  
  
• Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II were also pressured to eliminate the song "You've Got To Be Carefully Taught", but they resisted.
  
  
• France Nuyen had not yet learned English when playing the role of "Liat". Fortunately, she was able to converse in her native language (French) with co-star Rossano Brazzi, who spoke French as well as his native Italian.
  
  
• This is the only theatrical film adaptation of a Rodgers and Hammerstein stage show to have all the songs intact, with the addition of the song "My Girl Back Home," which was cut from the play before it opened.
  
  
• South Pacific won the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 1950--it premiered on Broadway in April of 1949. Only six musicals have won the Pulitzer Prize in drama--one per decade from the 1930s to the 1990s. They are as follows: "Of Thee I Sing" (1931), "South Pacific" (1949), "Fiorello" (1959), "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" (1961), "A Chorus Line" (1975), "Sunday in the Park with George" (1984), and "Rent" (1996).
  
  
• The soundtrack album for the film was the first Rodgers and Hammerstein film soundtrack to be issued in stereo the same year that the mono version was issued. (Because stereo LP's were not possible until 1958, the movie soundtrack albums of "Oklahoma!", "Carousel" and The King and I" were issued in mono between 1955 and 1956, the stereo versions in 1958.)
  
  
• South Pacific opened at the Majestic Theater on April 7, 1949 and ran for 1925 performances. Juanita Hall reprises her role in the movie.
  
  

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