cinema obscura: the pre-release "South Pacific"

In March of '79, I saw something unexpected - a version of Joshua Logan's "South Pacific" before Logan did some last-minute tightening prior to his film's roadshow premiere 21 years earlier - on March 19th, 1958 - at New York's Rivoli Theater. It was a rare Todd-AO print and this version followed the continuity of the original Rodgers and Hammerstein stage musical.

Which means the film's first musical number wasn't the seabees' antic "Bloody Mary" - which has always opened the film, following a brief airborne scene between John Kerr and Tom Laughlin - but rather, "Dites-Moi," "A Cockeyed Optimist" and "Twin Soliloquies"/"Some Enchanted Evening," which introduced the characters of Nellie Forbush (played by Mitzi Gaynor),  Emile De Becque (Rossano Brazzi) and De Becque's children in one continuous sequence set at De Becque's hilltop estate.

The version that I saw in 1979 opened with the De Becque children singing "Dites-Moi." The "Bloody Mary" number followed about ten minutes later.

The occasion for my discovery was a film series titled "Broadway Comes to Broadway," programmed by my friend Ralph Donnelly, a pioneer of specialized exhibition who, at the time, was booking New York's RKO Cinerama, once located on Broadway and 47th Street but now long gone. Ralph's pet project in the 1970s was the invaluable First Avenue Screening Room which was devoted entirely to unreleased/shelved titles ("The All-American Boy," "The Christian Licorice Store"). Ralph's screening there of Paul Bartel's "Private Parts" encouraged MGM to actually release the film.

click on image to enlarge

"Broadway Comes to Broadway" was a series of nine roadshow musicals (plus "Cabaret"), most of them shown in 70mm. Both "South Pacific" and "Oklahoma!" were screened in Todd-AO, the latter particularly gorgeous in that format. But the version of "South Pacific" that Ralph secured was the real find of the series. He told me that the print was acquired from the people overseeing the Rodgers and Hammerstein estate. ("South Pacific" was made independently by the Magna Theater Corporation, which developed Todd-AO, and then distributed by Twentieth Century-Fox.)

The film that Ralph screened ran 171 minutes, which was its running time for a few weeks in 1958 before the powers elected to trim it down to 157 minutes (following less than enthusiastic reviews). The 14 minutes eliminated from the film consist mostly of trimmed dialogue here and there and much of it reduced Ray Walston's Luther Billis character.

The 171-minute and 157-minute versions of "South Pacific" are both included on the DVD and BluRay discs, but the longer cut on home entertainment has the usual/familiar order of sequences.

The souvenir program for "South Pacific," which is rather creative and arty for a movie program (designed, no less, than by legendary production designers Dale Hennesy and John De Cuir), includes a section called "the continuity...," which is the film from the point of view of its editor Bob Simpson - and, again, the opening follows the contours of the play.

If I had to guess, I would say that Logan's decision to change the chronology of the early musical numbers prior to the film's opening was made strictly for commercial reasons. It's more audience-friendly to open the film with something rousing like "Bloody Mary" than with the moody and introspective "Some Enchanted Evening." Just a hunch.

Finally, there's Paul Osborn's screenplay for "South Pacific" (final draft, dated August 8th, 1957), which is available from Script City, that corroborates the continuity detailed in the film's program and the movie that I saw that day at the RKO Cinerama.

For the 157-minute cut of the film, Logan of course kept the introductory Nellie-Emile song medley intact, but eliminated the kids' first version of "Dites-Moi." He also removed a moment later in the film, just before the intermission break, during which Emile imitates Nellie, doing a mocking version of "I'm Gonna Wash that Man Right Out of My Hair."

Regarding that song, the version of it performed by Mitzi Gaynor was trimmed - truncated actually - way before the film's release, with the entire middle (sung by a chorus of nurese) eliminated. Rumor has it that Rodgers and Hammerstein wanted the song cut from the film altogether. From their perspective, while it was a big moment in the play - i.e., the novelty of the leading lady washing her hair on stage every night - it made less sense on film. It was less of a novelty in a movie. Also, it was a popular song - too popular to cut out entirely. So it was merely trimmed.

Writing this makes me wonder if that version of "South Pacific" is still in the archives of the Rodgers and Hammerstein estate. I hope so.

Note in Passing: Ralph Donnelly passed on September 21st, 2007. He was 75. He's missed.  

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~images~

(from top) 

~The opening title cards for "South Pacific"

-The advertisement for the RKO Cinerama's "Broadway Comes to Broadway" series in 1979

~Rosanno Brazzi and Mitzi Gaynor in a scene from the film
 ~Gaynor in the "Twin Soliloquies" number

~photography: Magna Theater Corporation/Twentieth Century-Fox 1958©