The 1958 film South Pacific was a massive hit despite its director's color regrets
In short: Director Joshua Logan famously wished he could stand outside theaters with a sign apologizing for the film's extreme color filters. Despite this visual controversy and a troubled production, the musical became a global commercial juggernaut, spawning a record-breaking soundtrack that dominated the UK charts for over two years.
Released in 1958, South Pacific was a high-stakes adaptation of the Rodgers and Hammerstein stage musical. The production was a complex technical undertaking, involving the re-engineering of the Todd-AO widescreen process by 20th Century Fox to shift from 30 to 24 frames per second. While the film achieved significant commercial success—becoming the highest-grossing Rodgers and Hammerstein musical until The Sound of Music—it was plagued by casting hurdles and creative compromises. Producers initially hoped to reunite the original Broadway leads, but the death of Ezio Pinza in 1957 forced a search for a new Emile de Becque, while Mitzi Gaynor eventually secured the role of Nellie Forbush after other stars like Elizabeth Taylor were rejected.
The film's most enduring legacy may be its soundtrack, which achieved unprecedented chart success. In the United Kingdom, the album spent a record-breaking 115 weeks at number one, remaining in the top five for 214 weeks. This musical popularity helped the film sustain a massive theatrical run, playing continuously at London's Dominion Theatre for nearly four and a half years. However, the film's visual presentation remained a point of contention. Logan had intended for the colored filters used during musical numbers to be subtle, but the final result was far more extreme than he desired. Because the film was pre-sold as a roadshow attraction, there was no time to correct the color before its premiere.
For decades, the film's original three-hour roadshow version was feared lost, with only a truncated two-and-a-half-hour cut available for general release. The longer version was eventually rediscovered in a 70mm print owned by a private collector and screened in 2005. This discovery allowed Fox to restore the 14 missing minutes and attempt to mitigate the color issues. Despite its mixed critical reception and the director's public distaste for the final color grade, the film remains a landmark in musical cinema, having been re-released multiple times and eventually making the transition to high-definition Blu-ray in 2009.
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- Summary by Intellect · source: South Pacific (1958 film)
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