Their performances were the only reasons to watch this movie. Hall had a gorgeous voice, heard to lovely advantage on "Bali Hai". To this day, I have never heard anyone sing that song better and Ray Walston mined all of the comic possibilities out of the role of Billis, stealing every scene he was in.
shareNow, hold on a minute. First, if you heard Juanita Hall singing "Bali Hai," you were either in New York around 1949 or 1950 or you've been listening to the original Broadway cast recording. I hate to break the news to you, but her songs in the film version of "South Pacific" were dubbed by Muriel Smith. I admit I don't know the reason, especially since she went from the filming of this movie directly to R & H's "Flower Drum Song" on Broadway, in which she sang several songs. Then again, the singing of almost everyone but Mitzi Gaynor was dubbed in this movie. As far as the acting, we just disagree. Gaynor and Kerr were awful. And I generally liked Walston, but not here. That gutteral drawl he employed grew tiresome before this film was fifteen minutes old. As I explain in other posts on this board, I blame director Logan for this disappointing effort.
shareOMG, I had no idea Juanita Hall was dubbed! Thank you for clarifying. Well Muriel Smith has a gorgeous voice and I have never heard the song sung better. I don't know why you say we disagree about the acting...I agree that Gaynor and Kerr were awful, but I liked Ray Walston. I also agree with you that the monster share of the blame for this debacle has to go with Josh Logan.
shareMuriel Smith, by the way, played Bloody Mary in the first London production of SOUTH PACIFIC, where Mary Martin recreated her version of Nellie. (Smith also played the lead in CARMEN JONES on B'way and appeared in the '52 version of MOULIN ROUGE.) R&H decided that they preferred Smith's vocal to Hall's and used it for the film, even though Hall was fine on the OBC album.
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