Joshua Logan Biography | Director, Producer, Playwright, Screenwriter

In the past three years especially, since the first Broadway revival of South Pacific opened at Lincoln Center in 2008, won 7 Tony Awards and played for 1000 performances, many people have asked me about South Pacific and my father, Joshua Logan; I wanted to post his brief "official" bio here until I make a more formal presentation on the internet at a later time. The South Pacific National Tour of the Lincoln Center production, that was launched in September, 2009, is currently on the road and booked into 2012.

Joshua Logan (1908–1988)
Director, Producer, Playwright, Screenwriter

     In 1930, half way into his senior year at Princeton, Joshua Logan went to Russia to study theater with Konstantin Stanislavsky. He observed the great Russian director for six months while he was directing opera. Stanislavsky's parting gift was a signed photograph inscribed with Logan's favorite quote, "Love the art in yourself, and not yourself in art."
     Logan received the Pulitzer Prize at the age of forty for the libretto of South Pacific, which he cowrote with Oscar Hammerstein II. He directed and produced the original South Pacific ('49), which ran for 1,925 performances—one of the longest runs on Broadway. Logan wrote, directed or produced a total of thirty-three original Broadway productions over five decades: sixteen musicals and seventeen dramatic plays.
     A third of Joshua Logan's theater work was produced before the American Theatre Wing's Tony Awards were created in 1947. There were eight pre-Tony musicals, including Annie Get Your Gun ('46). There were three by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart: I Married An Angel ('38); Higher and Higher ('40), with a book by Logan and Gladys Hurlbut; and By Jupiter ('42). Other musicals he directed before 1947 include: Stars in Your Eyes ('39), with music by Arthur Schwartz and lyrics by Dorothy Fields; Two For the Show ('40), a musical revue by Nancy Hamilton with music by Morgan Lewis; and This Is the Army ('42), a musical revue by Irving Berlin. In 1938 Logan directed Knickerbocker Holiday, starring Walter Huston, with book and lyrics by Maxwell Anderson and music by Kurt Weill; that musical gave the world the immortal September Song. He directed two plays by Paul Osborn, On Borrowed Time ('38) and Morning's at Seven ('39); the farce Charley's Aunt ('40) starring José Ferrer; and Happy Birthday ('46), a play by Anita Loos, starring Helen Hayes.
     Of the twenty Broadway plays Joshua Logan either wrote, produced, or directed after 1947, fifteen were nominated for a total of thirty-eight Tonys and collected twenty-five trophies. He personally received ten nominations and took home eight. In the New York Times Book of Broadway, two of Logan's plays are included in the chapter The Unforgettable Productions of the Century: Annie Get Your Gun ('46) and South Pacific ('49).

Saturday Evening Post, 1951
Joshua Logan/coauthor/coproducer/director, directs Roger Rico and Martha Wright of the New York Company of South Pacific
(Photo/George Karger)

After 1947 Logan produced, directed, and cowrote, with Thomas Heggen, Mister Roberts ('48), which starred his lifelong friend Henry Fonda. Other plays or musicals he produced, directed, or wrote include The Wisteria Trees ('50), a play by Joshua Logan; Wish You Were Here ('52), a play by Arthur Kober and Joshua Logan, songs by Harold Rome; William Inge's Pulitzer Prize-winning Picnic ('53); Kind Sir ('53), by Norman Krasna, which starred Mary Martin and Charles Boyer; Fanny ('54), a play by S.N. Behrman and Joshua Logan, songs by Harold Rome; Paddy Chayefsky's Middle of the Night ('56); The World of Suzy Wong ('58); There Was A Little Girl ('60), the play that marked Jane Fonda's Broadway debut; and All American ('62), with book by Mel Brooks, music by Charles Strouse, lyrics by Lee Adams.
Four of his plays hold records for the longest runs in Broadway history; another five ran for more than four hundred performances. Two sitting presidents left the White House to attend Logan's plays: Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1938 to see Knickerbocker Holiday; and John F. Kennedy in 1962 to see Mr. President, with book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse and songs by Irving Berlin..

William Holden, Kim Novak, Picnic, directed by Joshua Logan, 1956
(Photo © 2011 by Zinn Arthur, all rights reserved)

     In 1955 Harry Cohn brought Logan to Hollywood to direct Picnic, which starred two actors Cohn cast himself: William Holden and Kim Novak. Logan received a Director's Guild of America nomination for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in a Feature Film, and a Golden Globe as Best Director for Picnic. Eight of his films received a total of twenty-nine Golden Globe nominations and eight wins. Logan received three more Director's Guild nominations: Bus Stop ('56), which starred Marilyn Monroe and Don Murray; Sayonara ('57), starring Marlon Brando; and Fanny ('61), which starred Leslie Caron, Maurice Chevalier, and Charles Boyer. Fanny is currently enjoying a renaissance of appreciation. In 2008 it was selected as one of “The Essential” films on TCM (Turner Classic Movies), and the host, Robert Osborne, pronounced it “one of the best films to come out of the 1960s.” A Widescreen DVD of Fanny was released in 2008.
    Logan was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Director for Picnic, the first of three personal nominations. His 1957 film Sayonara, received ten Academy Award nominations including Logan's second as Best Director. Fanny, released in 1961, received six nominations and Logan's third for Best Motion Picture producer. Although Joshua Logan never took home an Oscar, he directed ten films that gathered a total of thirty-five nominations and eleven wins. Six of his films are included in the New York Times Guide to the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made: Mister Roberts ('55), Bus Stop ('56), Sayonara ('57), South Pacific ('58), Camelot ('67), and Paint Your Wagon ('68).
     Logan believed it was the director's fundamental responsibility to prepare the script with the playwright or screenwriter, and seven of the screenplays from his ten films were nominated for a Writer's Guild Award. He received the award himself in 1956 for his own screenplay of Mister Roberts,which he cowrote with Frank S. Nugent.
     Joshua Logan was born in Texarkana, Texas, and raised in Mansfield, Louisiana. He would often say that “Mansfield was as far from Broadway as you could get.” From the age of six he knew he wanted to work “behind the footlights or behind the screen” and followed his dream to New York City in 1931. New York was a mecca for him—it was the place where all-important artists worked and converged. He lived and worked in the city the rest of his life, either producing or writing most of his projects. He never waited for an agent to hand him his next job. He never even had an agent for most of his career. He chose stories that inspired him and was instrumental in their production, thereby creating his own destiny.

"It takes a really serious person to write a play,
a play that really tells a story neatly and well
and leaves an audience in a state of exultation."
Joshua Logan, A New Dramatists Craft Discussion, January 1952

Joshua Logan, director, and Dorothy Fields, librettist, standing in line for their musical, Annie Get Your Gun, 1946
(Photo by Zinn Arthur, ©2011, all rights reserved)

    On August 22, 2010, the first ever Broadway revival of the Pulitzer Prize winning musical South Pacific ended its two-and-a-half-year run at Lincoln Center Theater with its 1,000th performance.
    When South Pacific ended its original five-year Broadway run on January 16, 1954, after 1,925 performances, the producers did not bring the final curtain down at the end of the show, signifying that a curtain would never come down on South Pacific; and, my goodness, it never has. Every year since it opened in 1949, there have been countless productions of South Pacific performed all over the world.
    Bruce Pomahac, Director of Music at the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization, reported that on the Lincoln Center Theater performance on August 22, 2010, André Bishop, Artistic Director of LCT, came onstage to announce that Lincoln Center was carrying on with the tradition that no New York curtain would ever come down on South Pacific. In the last moments of the show, they read Michener's final words from Tales of the South Pacific out loud, then raised the scrim curtain that has those words printed on it, and kept it raised as a symbol of this commitment.
    The first Broadway revival of South P. directed by Bartlett Sher (Tony Award winner, Best Director, 2008), opened to rave reviews on April 3, 2008. It received the Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle and Drama League Award for Best Musical Revival, as well as seven Tony Awards, including Best Musical Revival, 2008. My father's original production of South P. received nine Tony Awards, including four for Pop; so along with the Special Tony awarded the South Pacific orchestrator, Robert Russell Bennett, in 2008, South P. has received a total of seventeen Tony Awards, as of this writing.
    South Pacific is currently on a North American tour that is booked into 2012.
    On August 18, 2010, PBS broadcast a Live from Lincoln Center performance of South Pacific.
    Ultimately, kudos for this extraordinarily successful revival of South Pacific must be placed at the feet of Bartlett Sher; he is the reason why this revival is so glittering and wondrous. Sher's superb design team—Michael Yeargan's sets, Catherine Zuber's costumes, Donald Holder's lighting, and Scott Lehre's sound; the amazing Musical Director, Ted Sperling; Robert Russell Bennett's legendary orchestrations; the magnificent thirty-piece orchestra thrillingly performing the singular Rodgers and Hammerstein score; the restored songs; and the shining actors—all play their part in making this a huge success. But it is Bartlett Sher's directing, bottom line, that is responsible for this amazingly magical and perfect rendering of South P. in the 21st Century.

Ezio Pinza, Mary Martin, South Pacific, 1949, co-written, co-produced and directed by Joshua Logan
(Photo by John Swope, ©2011 all rights reserved)

"South Pacific was and remains the most romantic musical I have ever seen. When the first notes of "Some Enchanted Evening" were heard-for the first time-you could feel a palpable shiver of pleasure, a collective wistful sigh, from the audience. When Ezio Pinza brought the song to its quiet (and oh so theatrical) finale, the audience went wild."
~ Hal Prince Remembers, Lincoln Center Theater Review
©2002-2008 Lincoln Center Theater. All rights reserved
http://www.lctreview.org/article.cfm?id_issue=10106306&id_article=81198956&page=1

"South Pacific was one of the most fabulous things that ever happened to me. It was one of those magic shows that come along once in a decade-maybe once in a lifetime-and stand for their era forever after."
~ Mary Martin Remembers, Lincoln Center Theater Review
©2002-2008 Lincoln Center Theater. All rights reserved
http://www.lctreview.org/article.cfm?id_issue=10106306&id_article=81198956&page=2

"In the few days left before the night, I worked on my lines with a good friend, Edgar Vincent. Edgar was a former actor who had studied in Germany with Max Reinhardt, and who now handled my press relations in the office of Muriel Francis, my new publicity agent. (Constance Hope had decided to leave the publicity business and join R.C.A.)

Those were exhilarating days of search-ing with Edgar for maximum effectiveness and sparkle, and every remark Josh Logan had tactfully made during the preceding weeks fell into its proper place. By the time the opening night arrived, I felt that I was ready for what Doris [Pinza] called the "test by audience." And so was everyone else connected with the show. The rest belongs to the history of the American theater."
~ Ezio Pinza Remembers, Lincoln Center Theater Review
Reprinted from Ezio Pinza: An Autobiography by Ezio Pinza,
Rinehart & Company, Inc., 1958.
©2002-2008 Lincoln Center Theater. All rights reserved
http://www.lctreview.org/article.cfm?id_issue=10106306&id_article=81198956&page=3

The Official Website for South Pacific on Tour in the USA
http://www.southpacificontour.com/

South Pacific opens at the Barbican Theatre in London on August 15 - October 1, 2011, and then it will tour England
http://southpacificonstage.com/

A smattering of reviews and articles:

South Pacific premiered at the Majestic Theatre on April 7, 1949 and went on to enjoy a five year Broadway run, winning countless awards including nine Tony Awards (including Best Musical) and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Considered by many the finest musical ever written.
Broadway World.com, 8-18-10

While the score for "South Pacific" is justly celebrated, the revelation of this revival, for me, was the complexity and economy of the book by Hammerstein and Joshua Logan, the show's original director…
Charles Isherwood, New York Times, 1-17-10

"Director Bartlett Sher has masterminded a big, luscious, witty production with the emotional intimacy of a chamber musical.
"He locates the timely darkness in the 1949 Pulitzer Prize-winning war story about deep love and deep bigotry, courage and almost unbearable loss. Yet, he trusts the Rodgers and Hammerstein score and Joshua Logan's book with a touching sense of old-time wonderment."
Linda Winer, Newsday, 4-4-08

What a joy it can be to be swept away by a tidal wave! But don't worry: The most engulfing and enrapturing experience of this year - and quite a few others in recent memory - is not the product of global warming or any other natural disaster. In fact, the word "natural" fails to properly describe its provenance: Something this transporting, this precise, and this beautiful can only be crafted by the most skilled of hands.

Specifically, those of Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II, and Joshua Logan, who created the enduringly exquisite musical called South Pacific, which Lincoln Center Theater is now resuscitating in a glowing revival at the Vivian Beaumont.

As directed with superb reverence by Bartlett Sher and performed by an astonishing company, this production speaks and sings to your heart in a way few shows today do.
Talkin' Broadway, 4-4-08

Sher began his [Tony] acceptance speech with a nod to the original creators of "South Pacific" — composer Richard Rodgers, co-author and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II, co-author and director Joshua Logan and novelist James Michener (whose short stories inspired the 1949 musical drama).

"They were kind of incredible men, because they seemed to teach me… that in a way I wasn't only an artist but I was also a citizen," Sher said.
Misha Berson, The Seattle Times, 6-16-08

The artistic director of Lincoln Center Theater, André Bishop, greeted Mr. Schoenfeld before the play began.

"He put his arm around me," Mr. Bishop said in an interview Tuesday.

"He said: ‘My boy, do you know what Lincoln Center Theater did when it put on ‘South Pacific'? By producing that show you lifted up all the boats.'
Bruce Weber, New York Times, 11-26-10

It's one hell of an enchanted evening.

The touring production of South Pacific, which Dancap Productions opened at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts last night, captures every bit of the power, beauty, romance and melodic splendour of the magnificent Tony Award-winning Broadway revival…

When you face this story of two couples whose lives and romances are ripped apart by racial prejudice in the closing months of the Pacific theatre in World War II, there are other questions you have to ask: how well is the show acted and how well is it sung?

Unlike many musicals, both of those issues are terribly important in South Pacific, because not only did Rodgers and Hammerstein write one of the greatest scores in the musical theatre canon, but Hammerstein and Logan penned a book of rare dramatic force as well.
Richard Ouzounian, The Toronto Star, 8-15-10, 4 Stars out of 4

South Pacific: Musical magic is made again…

Reconfigured for the road, Sher's production has lost little of its beauty or power. Presented with a full orchestra in Toronto's Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, the touring production certainly doesn't feel like a touring production…

Written in 1949, Hammerstein and Logan's adaptation of James A. Michener's Tales of the South Pacific views the American contribution to the war with a clarity that is missing from many subsequent fictional accounts that either succumb to Greatest Generation romanticism or are too influenced by skepticism toward the USA's Cold War military activities…

Sher's is the definitive production of this American classic.
J. Kelly Nestruck, The Globe and Mail, Toronto, 8-16-10, 4 Stars out of 4

Rossano Brazzi, Mitzi Gaynor, South Pacific film, 1958

The first South Pacific film, [directed by Joshua Logan] was released in 1958 and starred Mitzi Gaynor, Rossano Brazzi, John Kerr and Ray Walston. It was the top earning film of that year.
Broadway.com, 7-8-10

In Revival, 'South Pacific' Still Has Lessons to Teach

When South Pacific opened on April 7, 1949, its World War II story and setting had a torn-from-the- headlines feeling.

"Every single person that night in April knew someone who had been in World War II," says musical-theater historian Larry Maslon. "Every second person must've known someone who was in the South Pacific in World War II — and I would imagine at least every fourth person knew someone who died in World War II. And that's very potent, I think, for an audience…"

"I was always moved by this group of American artists in the '40s encountering this first major experience of American military power overseas and what it did to people," says director Bartlett Sher, who's in charge of the new Lincoln Center revival. "You know, what happens when somebody from Philadelphia and somebody from Arkansas get dropped into this new world, and they have to question everything about who they are and everything about who they think they were and what they believe…"

Lincoln Center Theatre has gone for broke with its South Pacific revival. It's deploying a cast of 40 actors and an orchestra of 30 — both big numbers by today's standards, even on Broadway. Artistic director Andre Bishop (who confesses that South Pacific is his "favorite musical ... always has been") argues that the investment is worth it.

"The show appeals to people," Bishop says, "because what is it about? It's about loneliness, it's about love, it's about war — though in fact it's mostly about people waiting to go to war — it's about people of different cultures coming together and attempting to find a common language…"

Tony-nominated actress Kelli O'Hara plays Nellie Forbush, the young Army nurse from Little Rock, Ark.

Nellie may, as one song lyric puts it, fall joyously "in love with a wonderful guy," but she's also forced to confront her own prejudice. She's shocked to find out that Emile has fathered two children with a Polynesian woman, and she breaks off her engagement to him. For O'Hara, that shock is a difficult emotion to play in 2008.

"I hear people gasping when I use the word 'colored,' which I expected," she says. "But [in 1949], they didn't even need to say the word 'colored' — they didn't need any of that. The audience knew what the problem was."
In fact, the line with that word was cut from the original production; it's been restored in the revival, to clarify Nellie's mindset.

"We actually have to over-explain it," O'Hara says. "And so when we do ... you hear people audibly gasping. It makes me feel dirty ... I want to apologize, but I don't because I think that gets us to the end of the play. And that's why it's so rewarding..."

Sher, the director, argues that South Pacific is more than a cultural artifact. The potential inherent in any classic, he says, "is it can return to us from our own past, to give us lessons about the future."

"And it can give us a sense of both who we were and who we could become," Sher says. "And this thing accomplishes that — this extraordinary musical is filled with complexity and hope about the kind of country we can be.
Jeff Lunden, npr interview, 8-3-08
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89309296

No one will be surprised this morning to read that Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein 2d and Joshua Logan have written a magnificent musical drama. Even before they set pencil to paper and chose "South Pacific" for the title, alert theatre-goers very sensibly started to buy tickets for it...
Brooks Atkinson, New York Times, 1949 original review