Tales of the South Pacific He is never seen by the other characters in Michener's short story until a search-and-rescue party finds his head impaled on a stake. The character of Emile de Becque in Michener's short story has eight mixed-race illegitimate daughters by four different women, none of whom he married, when he meets the nurse Ensign Nellie Forbush; in the musical, he has two legitimate mixed-race children by a Polynesian woman whom he had married and who had died. The Rodgers and Hammerstein musical "South Pacific" was made into a feature film in 1958. It was adapted as a made-for television film 2001.
South Pacific (musical) play together ("Dites-Moi"). Ensign Nellie Forbush, a naïve U.S. Navy nurse from Little Rock, Arkansas, has fallen in love with Emile de Becque, a middle-aged French plantation owner, though she has known him only briefly. Even though everyone else is worried about the outcome of the war, Nellie tells Emile that she is sure everything will turn out all right ("A Cockeyed Optimist"). Emile also loves Nellie, and each wonders if the other reciprocates those feelings ("Twin Soliloquies"). Emile expresses his love for Nellie, recalling how they met at the officers' club dance and instantly were attracted to each other