(Nominated for 5 Academy Awards, including Best Music, thi...)
Nominated for 5 Academy Awards, including Best Music, this romantic comedy tells the story of a young Chinese girl who travels to the United States as part of an arranged marriage and discovers a new and modern world. Featuring an all-new digitally remastered picture, 5.1 Surround Sound, never-before-seen bonus materials, and timeless musical numbers such as "I Enjoy Being a Girl," Flower Drum Song is a lavish song and dance extravaganza.
(The dazzling Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, brought to ...)
The dazzling Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, brought to lush life by the director of the original stage version, Joshua Logan. Set on a remote island during the Second World War, South Pacific tracks two parallel romances: one between a Navy nurse
South Pacific - Original Broadway Cast Recording: South Pacific - Original Broadway Cast Recording: South Pacific - Original Broadway Cast Recording: Bali Ha'i (Voice)
Juanita Hall, born Juanita Armethea Long, was an American musical theatre and film actress, who became most famous for stage and film roles in which she played Asian characters.
Background
Juanita Hall on November 6, 1901, in Keyport, New Jerseyб the daughter of Abram Long, an oyster fisherman, and Mary Elizabeth Richardson. Her mother died when Hall was a baby, and so she was raised by her grandmother, whose love of singing had a profound influence on her.
Education
Hall attended public schools in Keyport, sang in the church choir. She moved to New York City in the 1920's to pursue a musical career. Hall, who had a strong mezzo-soprano voice, attended the Juilliard School for a time before abandoning classical studies in favor of the theater.
Career
Hall made her debut in the chorus of an obscure black revue called Blackbirds of 1926 (not to be confused with the famous Blackbirds of 1928), which was produced by Lew Leflies at the Alhambra Theatre in Harlem and starred Florence Mills; it ran for only six weeks.
According to many accounts, Hall went from Blackbirds into the chorus of Florenz Ziegfeld's Showboat (1927), but this is probably apocryphal, for her name does not appear in the programs and press releases. It is more likely that she spent some time in the late 1920's discovering how difficult it was for a young black woman to work professionally in New York. Black performers were barred from opera (which she loved) and from nearly all theater.
In the late 1920's Hall began a long association with the Hall Johnson Choir, which became famous after its appearance on Broadway in The Green Pastures (1930). Hall was a soloist with the choir until 1936, when she established her own group. She later estimated that the Juanita Hall Choir had given over 5, 000 performances, including concerts at the 1939 New York World's Fair and on the radio with Norman Corwin, Kate Smith, and Rudy Vallee.
In the 1940's Hall set out to establish herself as a singer-actress on Broadway. She played a mango seller - with one line and several crowd appearances - in the Lunts' production of The Pirate (1942). In Sing Out Sweet Land (1944), a revue of American folk and popular music that starred Alfred Drake, she earned a rave review for her rendition of "Five O'Clock Whistle. "
Hall won further critical praise as Leah in St. Louis Woman (1946), a Johnny Mercer-Harold Arlen musical about a black jockey. In the role of the jockey's older sister, Hall had several good scenes and a solo number, "Racin' Forms. " In 1948 Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II saw her in the revue Talent '48 and offered her the role of Bloody Mary in their musical South Pacific (1949). It was her big break: her portrayal of a barefoot Tonkinese woman who chews betel nuts and sells souvenirs to American sailors delighted audiences and critics, and her singing of "Bali Ha'i" and "Happy Talk" made her a celebrity. The New York Post columnist Leonard Lyons reported that she was so well known that the post office delivered letters to her addressed "Bloody Mary, N. Y. C. " In the second year of the show her salary was raised to $350 per week, and she "switched from whiskey to champagne to enjoy life. "
Hall's next Broadway role was the brothel owner Madame Tango in House of Flowers (1954), which had book and lyrics by Truman Capote and music by Harold Arlen. On January 25, 1954, she made radio history when she starred in "The Story of Ruby Valentine, " the first program broadcast on the National Negro Network. In 1956 she was back on Broadway as an outspoken maid in The Ponder Heart. Two years later she completed the film version of South Pacific, although - in typical Hollywood style - her songs were dubbed by another singer. Rodgers and Hammerstein then cast her as Madame Liang in Flower Drum Song (1958), which she played in New York for 600 performances, on a long road tour, and in the film version (1961).
With the security of South Pacific, Hall had resumed her solo singing career. She appeared as a blues singer in a number of New York clubs, where her fame as Bloody Mary increased her following. For fifteen years, whenever time allowed, Hall sang the blues, and her renditions of "Mean to Me" and "More Than You Know, " among others, survive in recordings. In 1966, despite failing health, she presented a tribute to Holiday and Ethel Waters called A Woman and the Blues, which played a limited run in New York.
After the success of Flower Drum Song, however, Hall's career began to fade. She lost money in a restaurant, the Fortune Cookie, in New York City, and poor health drained her savings. But the same pride and spirit that had pushed her to the top of a very competitive profession made it difficult for her to seek help. Eventually her friends and family moved her to an actors' home in Englewood, New Jersey, and in December 1967 to the Percy Williams Home for Actors in East Islip, Long Island. Although her eyes were failing, her spirits were always bright, and she would reprise her songs from South Pacific if someone needed cheering up. Juanita Hall died on February 28, 1968, in Bayshore, Long Island, remembered most for her haunting rendition of "Bali Ha'i. "
Juanita Hall was short and stocky and thus not a candidate even for the dubious category of "smoky exotics" who occasionally appeared on the Broadway stage of that era.
Interests
She liked to cook, dance, and root for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Suspicious of exercise, she delighted friends with stories of her sedentary habits of reading and watching her cat.
Music & Bands
Juanita Hall was a fan of the blues, and especially of Billie Holiday.
Connections
Juanita Long married actor Clement Hall while in her teens. He died in the 1920s; they had no children.
During rehearsals of Blackbirds, Long met Clement Hall, a singer, whom she soon married in Newark, New Jersey. The marriage ended in divorce; there were no children.