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) allowed him to quit his job as an editor at Macmillan and to become a full-time writer. Over the next five decades, his lengthy, detailed novels centering on different places would dominate the bestseller lists. The role of Nellie Forbush was the first time with Hammerstein that Rodgers made the leading female role a belter, rather than a lyric soprano like Laurey in "Oklahoma!" and Julie in "Carousel". According to Mordden, "Nellie was something new in R&H, carrying a goodly share of the score on a 'Broadway' voice". Nellie does not sing together with Emile, because Rodgers promised Martin that