We watched South Pacific on YouTube for free the other night. We can hook up our computers to the big screen TV so it's a pretty good experience. Dick recommended a new book about Rodgers and Hammerstein called "Something Wonderful" so I put a hold on it and South Pacific seemed like a pretty good choice.
I guess people our age remember how amazing it was to see this on the big screen when we were 11 years old...so exotic and that wonderful photography with the filters that made the screen orange and yellow. That didn't come across quite so well in the YouTube version.
I played the songs from South Pacific on the piano hundreds of times. My grandmother would always come for Sunday dinner and afterward I would play the piano and my Dad would play the violin. We played songs from all the current musicals. I now loved playing the piano since I was allowed to drop working on my Grade 8 Royal Conservatory exam and could play what they called "popular" style which was chords and melody...dead easy and all the latest tunes.
My Dad always wanted to play Some Enchanted Evening and he also asked my to play that at least once a week for him. It was probably his favourite song. After hearing the words again last night..."some enchanted evening, you will meet a stranger... across a crowded room and somehow you'll know... you'll know even then...", I put together my Dad's love for the song and something my mother told me after he had died.
She was telling me about how they met. It was at a dance during the war and there were a lot of people and she saw my father in a crowd. These are more or less her words.
"He was quite a ways away but he was tall so I could see him above everyone else. He looked at me and he came straight towards me,,, and never let me go."
I think my parents undying love for each other was the greatest gift a child could have.
In later years as adults in Victoria we would sings these songs with Derek and Mary and Derek would play his guitar and I would play the piano. What fun we had!
And of course I don't have a single photo of any of this since it was just ordinary stuff we did all the time!
