We Didn't Start The Fire ~ 1949 ~ South Pacific

We Didn't Start The Fire

sung by: Billy Joel

 

Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray,
South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio,
Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, television
North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe.

Rosenbergs, H-bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom
Brando, "The King and I" and "The Catcher in the Rye,"

Eisenhower, vaccine, England's got a new queen,

 Marciano, Liberace, Santayana goodbye!

 

Chorus:

We didn't start the fire,
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning.
We didn't start the fire,
No we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it.

 

Joseph Stalin, Malenkov, Nasser and Prokofiev
Rockefeller, Campanella, Communist Bloc,
Roy Cohn, Juan Peron, Toscanini, Dacron,
Dien Bien Phu falls, "Rock Around the Clock"
Einstein, James Dean, Brooklyn's got a winning team,
Davy Crockett, Peter Pan, Elvis Presley, Disneyland,
Bardot, Budapest, Alabama, Krushchev,
Princess Grace, "Peyton Place", trouble in the Suez.

Chorus

 

Little Rock, Pasternak, Mickey Mantle, Kerouac,
Sputnik, Chou En-Lai, "Bridge on the River Kwai"
Lebanon, Charles de Gaulle, California baseball,
Starkweather homicide, children of thalidomide, Oh-oh-oh.

Buddy Holly, "Ben Hur", space monkey, Mafia,
Hula hoops, Castro, Edsel is a no-go,
U-2, Syngman Rhee, payola and Kennedy,
Chubby Checker, "Psycho", Belgians in the Congo.

Chorus

 

Hemingway, Eichmann, "Stranger in a Strange Land"
Dylan, Berlin, Bay of Pigs invasion,
"Lawrence of Arabia", British Beatlemania,
Ole Miss, John Glenn, Liston beats Patterson,
Pope Paul, Malcolm X, British politician sex,
JFK, blown away, what else do I have to say?

Chorus

 

Birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon back again,
Moonshot, Woodstock, Watergate, punk rock,
Begin, Reagan, Palestine, terror on the airline,
Ayatollah's in Iran, Russians in Afghanistan,
"Wheel of Fortune", Sally Ride, heavy metal suicide,
Foreign debts, homeless vets, AIDS, crack, Bernie Goetz, Hypodermics on the shore,

 China's under martial law, Rock and roller cola wars, I can't take it anymore.

 

We didn't start the fire,
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning.
We didn't start the fire,
But when we are gone
Will it still burn on, and on, and on, and on.

We didn't start the fire,
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning.
We didn't start the fire,
No we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it.

We didn't start the fire,
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning.
We didn't start the fire...

 

 

1949

 

South Pacific
 

 

 

     South Pacific is a Broadway play brought to life by Roger's and Hammerstein.  The play is based from the book, "Tales of the South Pacific" written by James A. Michener in 1947.  His book won the Pulitzer Prize award for fiction in 1948.  He based his book from short stories he recalled as he was stationed in the New Hebrides Islands while serving in the US Navy in WWII. 

     Play writes Roger and Hammerstein picked up on the book and adapted it to a musical.  This would be their fifth musical.  The play opened up April 7, 1949 and ran for over 5 years at the Majestic Theater.  That made up 1,925 performances.  It was the second longest Broadway musical next to Oklahoma.  Shortly after the play started the cast, under Columbia Records, produced the soundtrack.  It spent 69 weeks as #1 on the billboard charts.  The movie version came out a few years later in 1958 and that even had great reviews at the box office. 

     A brief storyline of South Pacific is when a nurse fell in love with a local French planter.  Lt. Joseph Cable starts to fall in love with Liat, a girl from the island.  She also falls for him.  A character known as Bloody Mary provides comic relief between the actions of the two couples.  Sailor's while waiting for the war to come in their direction puts on a comedy play to entertain themselves. There are several plots that twist and turn into each other throughout the musical.  

     The musical also won the Pulitzer Prize for drama.  In 1950, South Pacific was nominated for 10 different categories and won all 10.  South Pacific made Tony history by being the only Musical to win in all acting categories. They were in Best Musical, Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical (Ezino Pinza), Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical (Mary Martin), Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical (Myron McCormick), Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical (Junaita Hall), Best Producer (Rogers, Hammerstein, Hayward, and Logan), Best Director (Logan), Best Libretto (Hammerstein), Best Original Score (Rogers), and Best Scenic Design (Mielziner). 

     South Pacific has been redone both on Broadway and on the big screen.  Again, the well loved musical was huge hit.  A well done classic never dies. 

      

    

Sources:

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Pacific_(musical)

http://www.whosdatedwho.com/tpx_647702/south-pacific/trivia

http://www.playbill.com/news/article/176696-VINTAGE-PLAYBILL-South-Pacific-1949

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_of_the_South_Pacific