South Pacific Tickets : The Original Production Of South Pacific Won Ten Tony Awards

South Pacific is a musical with music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and book by Hammerstein and Joshua Logan. The story draws from James A. Michener's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1947 book Tales of the South Pacific, weaving together characters and elements from several of its stories into a single plotline about an American nurse at a U.S. Naval base, during World War II, who falls in love with an expatriate French plantation owner with a dark past.

The issue of racial prejudice is sensitively and candidly explored in several plot threads, including the struggle of the lead character to accept the mixed-race children of her lover. Another interracial marriage is explored in the song "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught".South Pacific is considered to be one of the greatest Broadway musicals.

The musical premiered in 1949 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1950. Several of its songs, including "Bali Ha'i", "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair", "Some Enchanted Evening", "Happy Talk", "Younger than Springtime" and "I'm in Love with a Wonderful Guy", have become popular standards. The Broadway production won ten Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Score and Best Libretto, and it is the only musical production ever to have won all four Tony Awards for acting.

The show was a critical and box office hit and has since enjoyed many successful revivals and tours, also spawning a 1958 film and other adaptations. The 2008 Broadway revival was a strong success, winning seven Tonys including for Best Musical Revival.
South Pacific opened on Broadway with $400,000 in advance sales. The New York Times and other newspapers published glowing reviews of the show; one critic called it "South Terrific".

People were so eager to obtain tickets that columnist Leonard Lyons wrote a column about the lengths people had gone to in getting them. Because "house seats" were being sold by scalpers for $200 or more, the attorney general's office threatened to close the show. However, the parties who provided the scalpers with the tickets were never identified, and the show ran without interference.

The production grossed $2,635,000, with a $50,600 weekly gross, and ran for 1,925 performances.The national tour began in 1950 and grossed $3,000,000 in the first year, making $1,500,000 in profit. The original cast album, priced at $4.85, sold more than a million copies.

The original production of South Pacific won ten Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Male Performer (Pinza), Best Female Performer (Martin), Best Supporting Male Performer (McCormick), Best Supporting Female Performer (Hall), Best Director (Logan), Best Book and Best Score. In 1950, it won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. However, the Pulitzer Prize was given to Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein only; Joshua Logan was not recognized for his work on the libretto until later. The 2001 London revival garnered a Laurence Olivier Award for Philip Quast (Emile).

The 2008 Broadway revival won numerous theatre awards including Tony and Drama Desk Awards for best revival of a musical, director, leading actor (Szot) and for sound and set design. It also won Tonys for costume and lighting design, as well as nominations for choreography and for the performances of O'Hara, Burstein and Ables Sayre. The late Robert Russell Bennett was also recognized that season for "his historic contribution to American musical theatre in the field of orchestrations, as represented on Broadway this season by Rodgers and Hammerstein South Pacific."