South Pacific (1958)

The Original Soundtrack to the film South Pacific was released by RCA Victor in 1958. The film was based on the 1949 musical South Pacific by Rodgers and Hammerstein. The composers had much say in this recording, with many of the songs performed by accomplished singers rather than the actors in the film. Mitzi Gaynor and Ray Walston were the only two leading performers who did their own singing in the film. The roles of Emile DeBecque, Bloody Mary and Joe Cable were sung by Giorgio Tozzi, Muriel Smith and Bill Lee, respectively. The Original Soundtrack LP was originally released in the U.S. in mono only in March 1958 when the movie premiered. The stereo edition was released in RCA's first batch of stereo LP releases in August 1958. The album became a major success, reaching No.1 in both the US and the UK. In the US, the album stayed at No.1 for seven months - the fourth longest run ever. In the UK, the album remained in the top five for 27 consecutive weeks before reaching No.1 in November 1958. It stayed at the top for a record-breaking 115 weeks, and remained in the top five for 214 weeks. As of 2006, the album has sold 1,803,681 copies in the United Kingdom. From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_P...) under Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...)