South Pacific Movie: Williams/Jackman/Timberlake? — Page 2

^ Partially agree. Can anyone name another show where the action all hinges around boredom and waiting? The life-and-death plot doesn't really move till mid-Act II, so the characters are left with little to do but distract themselves with romance ups and downs until then.

That said, the show is incredibly potent when well done. Somehow those distractions Hammerstein and Logan came up do suffice.

Updated On: 5/11/13 at 03:00 PM

...don't forget Josh Logan also gave us all those hunky sailors with their shirts off...a lot...woofy!!...or at least he made sure they were the main focus of the camera shot a lot...:)

Better youtube of Michelle Williams singing. I'd still prefer wonderful Kelli O'Hara or Laura Osnes.

That "Hurry up and wait" is a general military thing. The waiting must have been a combination of boredom and tension, worrying about what was to come. I don't think the audience of the time would have thought of it as a static thing, lot of very bloody battles in the Pacific Theater. Per Wikipedia over 106,000 US military died in the Pacific Theater, even Seebees like those in South Pacific got killed.
From Wikipedia:
"NCB 133 [Seebee unit] accompanied the invading forces on Iwo Jima on February 19, 1945; with a primary goal of maintaining a constant supply to the forward lines of Marine forces. As soon as the Japanese were driven from their airstrips, the Seabees went to work and in just seven days the northeast-southwest runway had been made operational and was in use by American planes. Over the 26 days the battle for Iwo Jima waged on, NCB 133 endured 245 casualties, including 3 officers and 39 enlisted men killed in action. This was the highest number of casualties for any Seabee unit in history." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Mobile_Construction_Battalion_133

I think maybe the context is kind of lost for us, the cheesy (but cute) theatricals of Honey Bun were maybe part of morale boosting and keeping people's spirits up while they waited to find out if they were going to live much longer. Now maybe it just looks like cheesy theatricals. Seems like the waiting would be maddening, I don't think the screenwriter had to add back some big drama about Nellie being raped. (what a bad idea) Seems like in the right hands this could be made immediate for a current audience, although people don't seem to want to see movies about our recent military adventures, wonder if that affects whether this gets made.
from My Week with Marilyn

I didn't mean to suggest that Act I was slow, only that the main action of the show is a waiting game for the cast until the deployment begins. Out of that stress/boredom come all the romantic complications.

(Come to think of it, another R&H show based on a waiting game in Act I is The King and I. Maybe it's a Hammerstein "thing". There is even that awful cut song from the Lost in Boston collection called "Waiting" to prove my point.)

But I agree that despite the setup, Act I of South Pacific flies by effortlessly, and Act II is a slow slog to get to its conclusion.

Updated On: 5/13/13 at 11:58 PM

I think it IS a Hammerstein thing: there is some action in OKLAHOMA!'s first act, but basically everyone is getting ready for the box social, where everything is resolved.

He used his first acts to set up conflicts and local color and second acts to play them out. (But technically, so does every playwright; maybe Hammerstein just did it more obviously.)

Why not have Laura Osnes as Nellie? Lord knows she could sing it beautifully, and Les Mis proved like nobody's business that you need at least some legitimate theatre talent to make a musical film work.

I absolutely agree with Best12. SOUTH PACIFIC has been revived on television THREE TIMES in the last decade or so (counting the Reba McIntire concert version).

Everyone who wants to see it has seen it.