Word: oscarization
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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This is not a facetious answer. Take the "No" part of it first. "South Pacific" is not "really that good" because like all shows, it is not perfect. For one thing, Oscar Hammerstein II has succumbed to a fit of moralizing for a few minutes in the second act, and although it is only a passing fit, one that is practically flippant compared with the attack that laid "Allegro" low, it is nonetheless a blotch, a mar, a flaw. And the song that does most of the moralizing, called "You've Got To Be Taught"--the full line...
...With Mother; Anne of the Thousand Days; Death of a Salesman; Kiss Me, Kate. For this month she has chosen Sidney Kingsley's promising Detective Story. She has also closed a deal giving her members seats for April's South Pacific, whose author-producers, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, are notoriously fussy about what happens to their tickets...
...Oscar Wagner, onetime dean of the Juilliard Graduate School, who went to Los Angeles to help, put White's idea into whole tones: "The day is gone when all a fellow needed was a little talent, a velvet collar and long hair. Now he must have a more versatile education and that's what we're working toward...
That adjective "wonderful" applies to nearly everything about "South Pacific." Take the story, for instance. It was based on James Michener's Pulitzer Prize "Tales Of The South Pacific," and the relationship of Oscar Hammerstein's piece to Michener's is closer than I would have supposed possible. There are, of course, the wonderful "characters," such as the lusty, nonchalant Luther Billis and the colorful, to say the least, Bloody Mary. There is also the love story of Lt. Joseph Cable and the native girl Liat, beautifully and simply told...
...Senator need worry at a Mesta party if he cannot quote Oscar Wilde, if he thinks Picasso is a ham & eggs painter, or is unable to pronounce the name of French Premier Queuille. In the new, hearty Mesta milieu, the lorgnette has abdicated to the guitar. Said a friend: "You go to a great many beautiful formal houses here where people barely speak above a whisper. You go to Perle's, and you know it's going...