“What Is a Richard Rodgers?”

Abstract It is indeed unfortunate that subsequent generations remember Joshua Logan (1908-1988) primarily as the man responsible for the outrageous colors that marred the 1958 film version of South Pacific. From the late-1930s through the mid-1950s Logan was one of Broadway’s most distinguished directors and producers with numerous major play and musical credits, including On Borrowed Time and Knickerbocker Holiday (1938), Morning’s at Seven (1939), This Is the Army (1942), Mister Roberts (1948), Picnic (1953), Fanny (1954), and Middle of the Night (1956). His association with Rodgers began in 1938 with the Rodgers and Hart hit musical, / Married an Angel. Over the next few years Logan would serve as co-librettist as well as director for Higher and Higher (1940) and as the director of Rodgers and Hart’s last musical, By Jupiter (1942). Before co-producing, directing, and co-authoring the original stage production of South Pacific (1949), Logan directed another hit show, Irving Berlin’s Annie Get Your Gun (1946), co-produced by Rodgers and Hammerstein one year after Carousel. In Josh: My Up and Down, In and Out Life Logan describes his role in the creation of the South Pacific libretto over a ten-day period on Hammerstein’s farm, and relates in painful detail how, in his view, the Rodgers and Hammerstein corporate juggernaut deprived him of what he felt to be his legitimate right to share an author’s copyright with Hammerstein. At the same time he blamed Rodgers for these decisions, Logan acknowledges that Rodgers did more to establish and maintain his career than any other man. Logan’s anguish, hurt, and anger loomed so large after his experience with South Pacific that he “politely refused” co-authorship and direction for Rodgers and Hammerstein’s next show, The King and I.