The plot centers on an American nurse stationed on a South Pacific island during World War II, who falls in love with a middle-aged expatriate French plantation owner but struggles to accept his mixed-race children.

Several of its songs, including "Bali Ha'i", "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair", "Some Enchanted Evening", "There Is Nothing Like a Dame", "Happy Talk", "Younger Than Springtime", and "I'm in Love with a Wonderful Guy", have become popular standards.

[3] "Fo' Dolla' ", set in part on the island of Bali-ha'i, focuses on the romance between a young Tonkinese woman, Liat, and one of the Americans, Marine Lieutenant Joe Cable, a Princeton graduate and scion of a wealthy Philadelphia Main Line family.

Michener tells us that "any person ... who was not white or yellow was a nigger" to Nellie, and while she is willing to accept two of the children (of French-Asian descent) who remain in Emile's household, she is taken aback by the other two girls who live there, evidence that the planter had cohabited with a darker Polynesian woman.

[9] In the early 1940s, composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II, each a longtime Broadway veteran, joined forces and began their collaboration by writing two musicals that became massive hits, Oklahoma!

[14] According to director Joshua Logan, a friend of both theatre men, he and Leland Hayward mentioned Michener's best-selling book to Rodgers as a possible basis for the duo's next play,[15] but the composer took no action.

Harbison is one of the major characters in Tales of the South Pacific; a model officer at the start, he gradually degenerates to the point where, with battle imminent, he requests his influential father-in-law to procure for him a transfer to a post in the United States.

[33] Although Nellie and Emile were already fully developed characters in Michener's stories, during the creation of South Pacific, Rodgers, Hammerstein and Logan began to adapt the roles specifically to the talents of Martin and Pinza and to tailor the music for their voices.

There was no formal chorus; each of the nurses and Seabees was given a name, and, in the case of the men, $50 to equip themselves with what clothing they felt their characters would wear from the military surplus shops which lined West 42nd Street.

[45] One Logan innovation that Rodgers and Hammerstein reluctantly accepted was to have Cable remove his shirt during the blackout after he and Liat passionately embrace on first meeting, his partial nakedness symbolizing their lovemaking.

[54][55] Nevertheless, during the year he was in the show, and although aged 58, he was acclaimed as a sex symbol; George Jean Nathan wrote that "Pinza has taken the place of Hot Springs, Saratoga, and hormone injections for all the other old boys".

Billis yearns to visit the nearby island of Bali Ha'i – which is off-limits to all but officers – supposedly to witness a Boar's Tooth Ceremony (at which he can get an unusual native artifact); the other sailors josh him, saying that his real motivation is to see the young French women there.

After thinking a bit more about Emile and deciding she has become attracted on the basis of little knowledge of him, Nellie tells the other nurses that she intends to end her relationship with him ("I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair").

[81][83] The musical toured North America from 1986 to 1988, headlined by Robert Goulet and Barbara Eden, with David Carroll as Cable, Armelia McQueen as Bloody Mary and Lia Chang as Liat, first directed by Geraldine Fitzgerald and then Ron Field.

The opening cast starred Kelli O'Hara as Nellie, Paulo Szot as Emile and Matthew Morrison as Lt. Cable, with Danny Burstein as Billis and Loretta Ables Sayre as Bloody Mary.

Szot and Welsh National Opera singer Jason Howard alternated in the role of Emile, with Samantha Womack as Nellie, Ables Sayre as Bloody Mary and Alex Ferns as Billis.

[108][109] A Chichester Festival Theatre revival from July to September 2021 was directed by Daniel Evans and starred Gina Beck and Alex Young sharing the role of Nellie, Julian Ovenden as Emile and Joanna Ampil as Bloody Mary.

"[117] The review in New York World-Telegram found the show to be "the ultimate modern blending of music and popular theatre to date, with the finest kind of balance between story and song, and hilarity and heartbreak.

"[117] Richard Watts, Jr. of the New York Post focused on Mary Martin's performance, writing, "nothing I have ever seen her do prepared me for the loveliness, humor, gift for joyous characterization, and sheer lovableness of her portrayal of Nellie Forbush ... who is so shocked to find her early racial prejudices cropping up.

"[123] South Pacific is the only major American musical set in World War II,[124] but former Marine Robert Leckie wrote his memoir of that conflict, Helmet for My Pillow, after he walked out of a performance: "I have to tell the story of how it really was.

According to professor Philip Beidler, "Rodgers and Hammerstein's attempt to use the Broadway theater to make a courageous statement against racial bigotry in general and institutional racism in the postwar United States in particular" forms part of South Pacific's legend.

Andrea Most, writing on the "politics of race" in South Pacific, suggests that in the late 1940s, American liberals, such as Rodgers and Hammerstein, turned to the fight for racial equality as a practical means of advancing their progressive views without risking being deemed communists.

The Northern press had a field day; Hammerstein, when asked for comment, responded that he did not think the legislators were representing their constituents very well, and that he was surprised at the suggestion that anything kind and decent must necessarily originate in Moscow.

"[149][150] Most argues that even Emile is tainted by racism, as his lifestyle is dependent on the maintenance of a system whereby he benefits from underpaid native labor – Bloody Mary is able to attract workers to make grass skirts for sale to GIs because, as she puts it, "French planters stingy bastards!

"[151] Nellie Forbush, in her journey from Little Rock, Arkansas, to serving as a Navy nurse and on to the domesticity of the final scene of South Pacific, parallels the experience of many American women of the period.

One means of securing audience acceptance of Nellie's choices was the sanitization of her sexual past from her counterpart in the Michener work – that character had a 4-F boyfriend back in Arkansas and a liaison with Bill Harbison while on the island.

[154][155] Meryle Secrest, in her biography of Rodgers, theorizes that South Pacific marks a transition for the pair "between heroes and heroines who are more or less evenly matched in age and stories about powerful older men and the younger women who are attracted to them".

[173] Masterworks Broadway released a recording of the 1967 Lincoln Center production starring Florence Henderson as Nellie, Giorgio Tozzi as Emile, Justin McDonough as Cable and Irene Byatt as Bloody Mary.

[173] The 2005 Carnegie Hall concert version was released on April 18, 2006, by Decca Broadway with Reba McEntire as Nellie, Brian Stokes Mitchell as Emile, Lillias White as Bloody Mary, Jason Danieley as Cable and Alec Baldwin as Billis.

[182][183] Although reviewers have criticized the film – Time magazine stated that it was "almost impossible to make a bad movie out of it – but the moviemakers appear to have tried" – it has added success on television, videotape and DVD to its box office laurels.