Bloody Mary (South Pacific)

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For the show song "Bloody Mary", see South Pacific (musical).

Bloody Mary is a character in the 1946 book

James Michener, which was made into the 1949 musical South Pacific by Rodgers and Hammerstein, and later into a film
in 1958.

The Bloody Mary character is

Second World War. She is learning English, and is proud that she will eventually "speak English as good as any crummy Marine". When the American spurns her daughter's hand out of prejudice, her most famous line is "Stingy bastard!" Juanita Hall won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical
for originating this role on stage.

A song from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical about her makes

betel nuts", and doesn't use "Pepsodent
", with the refrain "Now ain't that too damn bad!"

Possible models for her are Aggie Grey or her sister Mary Croudace (Auntie Mary); hotelkeepers in Apia, Samoa who hosted American film stars and military personnel. They were daughters of an Englishman and his Samoan wife.[1] Kirsten Thompson posits "that Bloody Mary was a composite of an unnamed Tonkinese worker, Madame Gardel, and aspects of Aggie’s character and personality."[2] Françoise Gardel was visited by Michener when 60 Minutes took him back to Vanuatu to revisit the settings of his novel.[3]

A 2001 article in Islands Magazine states that Michener renamed

Aoba Island Bali-ha'i. The author interviewed the proprietor of a resort on Espiritu Santo, who claimed the "real Bloody Mary" lived on Espiritu Santo for many years after the war and lived to the age of 102.[4]

References

  1. ISBN 1-86940-378-9
    .
  2. ^ https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262976511_The_construction_of_a_myth_Bloody_Mary_Aggie_Grey_and_the_optics_of_tourism
  3. ^ "James A. Michener Returns to the South Pacific". YouTube.
  4. ^ Gibbs, Tony. "A Tale of the South Pacific", Islands Magazine, Islands Media, Carpenteria, California, Vol. 21, No. 1, Jan/Feb 2001, pp. 88–89
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