South Pacific - a family reprise

While rooting through some old family documents, I found an undated newspaper clipping with a picture of my mother in the eponymous role of Loughborough Amateur Operatic Society’s 1939 production of Katinka. No, I hadn’t heard of Katinka either, but…

Katinka: first production 1915; music by Rudolf Friml: book & lyrics by Otto Harbach. The plot: out of a sense of duty Katinka has married Boris Strogoff, the Russian ambassador to Austria. Her real love is Ivan Dimitri, an attaché. Ivan's American friend, Thaddeus Hopper helps Katinka escape and hides her in his house. When Mrs Hopper becomes suspicious and angry, Hopper pays Arif Bey to conceal Katinka in his harem. By error, Mrs Hopper is placed in the harem. At a Viennese café the principals are all gathered. When a lady named Olga announces she is Boris' lawful wife, a happy ending follows, apparently...

And if you think that story sounds hard to take, consider the 1958 movie version of South Pacific: the Solomon Islands in 1943, a French planter, Emile de Becque (played by an Italian), has the hots (Some Enchanted Evening) for a rather naive ("I could say life is just a bowl of Jello") US Navy nurse from Little Rock called Nellie Forbush (played by Mitzi Gaynor, who changed her name from Francesca Marlene de Czanyi von Gerber). Nellie falls for the Gallic charms of this “Wonderful Guy”, but gives him the cold shoulder when she discovers he has two children whose skin colour is clearly not French ("I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair". However, the USMC wants her to persuade de Becque to work as a scout on a nearby island occupied by the Japanese (sounds like a holiday, eh?). He is to be accompanied by the ‘dashing’ Lt Joseph Cable, who has fallen for a (“Younger Than Springtime”) Polynesian (played by a Vietnamese), but is worried by her ‘strange shaped eyes”!!!. Cable also has a number of secret admirers in the beach laundry. Liat’s “mother” is the barrel-shaped Polynesian (born in New Jersey) Mama-san, Bloody Mary, who lures Cable off to the pleasures of Bali-Ha’i ("Someday you'll see me floatin' in the sunshine") and some “Happy Talk” in a volcanic hot tub with her underage daughter. Well, to cut a 3 hour musical short, Emile gets his Forbush and Joseph doesn’t return from scout duty... But while all the serious stuff is going on, the comedy is provided by glistenly homoerotic cross-dressing marines who fail to convince that aren’t really very happy with each other as it is thank you very much with songs like “There Ain’t Nothing Like A Dame”, who collectively run a laundry on the beach and who really are the ones who are "as corny as Kansas in August"...

Rather scarily, in a critically hammered 2001 TV version, Nellie Forbush was played by Glenn Close. She was 54 at the time, and didn't have a strong reputation for playing naive young Southerners...