Younger Than Springtime, I Am Not

I hear the human race
Is fallin' on its face
And hasn't very far to go,
But ev'ry whippoorwill
Is selling me a bill,
And tellin' me it just ain't so.

When my TV pickings get slim, I turn to Kanopy or TCM to watch an ancient movie. (You can get Kanopy for free by registering at a public library.) The most recent one was South Pacific, an album my parents owned. It presents an idyllic picture of U.S. servicemen on the beach of a remote island, surrounded by lush vegetation, sunny skies, hot nurses, and smiling native girls, with the enemy Japanese at a safe distance. In reality, of course, military service in the Pacific was hell.

The feeling of despair reflected in the lyrical excerpt above, from Cockeyed Optimist, surprised me for that time period and suggests, if only barely, that we still might be able to carry on no matter what happens next month. Doom-saying is an old habit. The original stage production of the show was in 1947, with a number of subsequent remakes or revivals. Most of the songs are now familiar standards to older folks. A few are now my earworms, especially “Happy Talk.”

The most striking angle and the subject of much commentary was the treatment of racism. There are two romances in the movie that are stymied by racial prejudice, by U.S. personnel towards the Polynesian natives. Oddly enough, in the 1958 film version, the racial angle is barely visible. I suppose people were motivated to read that into it, and that the issue was downplayed to retain a square audience. Maybe it was more shocking in the original Broadway stage version around 1950. In the movie I saw, the racism is only made explicit in a few places.

The supposed race problems can be baffling. One involves a nurse from Arkansas and a French plantation owner (played by the Italian, Rossano Brazzi). She is shocked to learn he had two children by a Polynesian wife (now deceased). The idea of a white man canoodling or fathering children with a POC should not be a shock to anyone from Arkansas. The problem in the other romance makes a tad more sense. White boy can’t take native girl home to the family in Philadelphia. (He was already engaged, but that seems to matter not at all.)

At the same time, the depiction of the Polynesian natives looked a lot like something out of a Tarzan movie. Some of the dancing natives had bones in their noses. I also looked twice at the duet of the younger couple, that starts “Younger than springtime . . . “ No kidding! The dude, a Navy lieutenant, looks like he has a good seven years on the girl, and he can’t be much older than 22.

The movie has these weird, distracting changes in color. It brightens up during rousing musical numbers, and it darkens in tense moments.

Then there is the homoerotic aspect. Maybe it’s just me but there are a lot of bare-chested, buff sailors striding around, and one of the lead characters—Ray Walston—is dressed up to look a bit effeminate. I know it’s hot where this is supposed to be taking place, but it still seems superfluous. Not quite true to the location, there are no mosquitoes or tropical maladies, nor aggressive Japanese soldiers. If it’s not just me, that subject was apparently too sensitive to mention. So too with Mitzi Gaynor smacking her bottom while singing “That’s my honey bun” in front hundreds of sailors. (It’s not just me.)

An interesting fossil from another age. I’ve always been a musical theater fan, starting with the albums my parents owned, though nothing since then. Mom took me to a couple of Broadway shows — I still remember parts of How to Succeed in Business Without Really trying, with Robert Morse. Very funny. Guys and Dolls, and Hair. As part of my research on public school privatization, I watched The Music Man. Finian’s Rainbow, also from 1968, is a marvelous piece of pinko propaganda in disguise. Periodically I watch The Wizard of Oz, just because. The Wiz was pretty clever too.