Women and People of Color in South Pacific
Trude Rittman
Vocal Arranger / Underscoring
(Mr. Rogers Assistant)
(24 September 1908-22 February 2005) was a prominent German-born American composer, music arranger, teacher and pianist. Her career spanned from the 1930's to the 1970's, highlighted by her vital roles in many famous musicals such as Carousel, Brigadoon, South Pacific, The King and I, The Sound of Music, Fanny, Peter Pan, etc. Rittman's work with household names such as Rodgers and Hammerstein and Lerner and Lowe has earned Rittman recognition.
Juanita Harris
Bloody Mary - Featured Actress
(November 6, 1901 – February 29, 1968) was an American musical theatre and film actress. She is remembered for her roles in the original stage and screen versions of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals South Pacific as Bloody Mary – a role that garnered her the Tony Award – and Flower Drum Song as Madame Liang.
Archie Savage
Abner - Supporting Role
Archie Savage made a vital contribution to African-American Dance in the United States. Born in Norfolk, Virginia on April 19, 1914 and raised in New York's Harlem. Archie's first introduction to the world of modern dance came when he joined the "Hemsley Winfield's Dance Troupe" in the 1930's. In 1939, Archie joined the "Katherine Dunham Dance Troupe" and later was a part of a nation wide stage production of "Cabin in the Sky".
Archie Savage’s Broadway Credits
Further Exploration and Deep Dive…
Trude Rittman - An Unsung Art, worked on 33 Broadway musicals
In 1945, Rittman began her association with Rodgers and Hammerstein. For the musical Carousel, she was responsible for the arrangement of music to Agnes de Mille's dances. Rodgers and Hammerstein hired her again in 1949 as composer for incidental music and musical continuity in South Pacific (1952, directed by Joshua Logan) which ran for 1,925 performances. (In a late interview with Trude Rittman by Nancy Reynolds for the New York Public Library Dance Division, Rittman described approaching South Pacific from the point of view of Russian theater as influenced by Constantin Stanislavsky.) Several accounts also describe her as being "billed as the assistant to Mr. Rodgers." - New York Public Library
Deep Dive: Broadway Nation’s Podcast
In this episode Albert Evans and David Armstrong tell the story of one of the least known, but most significant, women that invented the musical. Full link here.
Pro Tip: Listen up to 13.50 for her contributions on South Pacific.
“Trude Rittman was a vital part of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s team…
For South Pacific, Rittman would write lush underscoring for the most intense dialogue scenes, going off at night to elaborate on themes from Rodgers’s tunes and then rehearsing over and over with Logan until the music was set.”
Something Wonderful, pg. 163
Deep Dive further into Trude Rittman’s career…
Juanita Harris - The first Black Women to win a Tony Award
Hall’s major break came in 1949 when she was cast as “Bloody Mary” in Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein’s South Pacific at New York’s Majestic Theatre. In 1950 Hall became the first African American to win a Tony Award when she was named Best Supporting Actress for her role in South Pacific. Hall played “Bloody Mary” for over 1,900 performances of South Pacific before beginning a brief a career as a nightclub singer performing mostly in Greenwich Village venues. - Black Past: JUANITA HALL (1901-1968)
Controversy: “Yellow-Face” and Juanita Hall
“Juanita Hall… was an African American woman who donned yellow-face to play the role. She also won a Tony Award for playing in yellow-face as Bloody Mary in South Pacific. One of my main arguments for bringing this up was to ask, is this okay?
We obviously have been very vocal about representation of Asians as themselves and what is means to show Asians as they really are, but what about others ideas on representing Asians?” - Yellow-Face as a Mutating Consistency
Deep Dive further into Juanita Harris’ life…
Archie Savage - South Pacific’s man of color
Savage’s Bio in South Pacific Playbill:
“Both as dancer and choreographer, Mr. Savage has achieved a record that would fill a little brochure all by itself. His lazy, graceful steps most recently amused the customers in “Finian’s Rainbow” and “Beggar’s Holliday.” Before that, he had contributed his talents to “pins and Needles,” the Cuban Village at the World’s Fair, “Cabin in the Sky,” in which he danced with Ethel Waters; “Four Saints in Three Acts,” Orson Welles’ Federal Theatre production of “Macbeth,” the opera version of “The Emperor Jones” at the Metropolitan, and Katharine Dunham’s first New York concerts, at which he served as the star’s partner. He staged the dances for the picture version of “Cabin in the Sky,” and has played in such films as “Carnival of Rhythm,” “Tales of Manhattan,” Jon Mili’s “Jammin’ the Blues,” and “Broadway Rhythm,” in which he danced with Lena Horne. He has headed his own dance group on the Coast, and staged dances and musical numbers for revues both here and in California.”
Watch Savage Jitterbug in “Swing Time”
Audience Reaction to Race influenced South Pacific:
“There were a few other changes. On March 9, Hammerstein’s old friend Essie Robeson, the wife of Paul Robeson, wrote to wonder why Archie Savage, the sole black dancer in the show, and a spectacular one at that, was always jitterbugging. “It is very possible that I am unduly sensitive, racially, but so are a lot of us, and it would help enormously that if just once he appeared with his comrades NOT cutting up.” Oscar immediately replied, “Since you have seen the play, and before I received your letter, we have inserted an episode in which Archie Savage is not jitterbugging.”
Vanity Fair: South Pacific, the Rodgers & Hammerstein Show that Re-Wrote the Rules of Race on Broadway
Deep Dive further into Archie Savage’s impact on dance…
Discussion: Respond to this quote from “The Daily Herald” about a “color-blind” casting choice:
Courtesy: Mark A. Philbrick
“‘She [Juanita Harris] was an African-American,” Hooper said. “And it’s often played by African-Americans who aren’t (Bloody Mary’s) race either. And so part of me said, ‘Yeah, I’m a white girl playing a Vietnamese woman,’ but isn’t that what we do in theater? We occupy someone else, so to speak. … You try and research and find out about who this person is and what their motivations are and if one of the lessons of ‘South Pacific’ is to see beyond race, then can we portray somebody else’s race — hopefully respectfully?”
One way of approaching that respect was in how Hooper found the character’s perspective and internal life, she said.
“Sometimes she’s played dumb,” Hooper said. “But how many of us have learned that playing dumb is actually really smart, because you learn a lot, because people think you’re not understanding. So hopefully I’m playing her as crafty and someone who’s trying to navigate the world she’s in well as best she can.””