"Happy Talk" is a show tune from the 1949 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific. It is sung by Bloody Mary to the American lieutenant Joe Cable, about having a happy life, after he begins romancing her daughter Liat. Liat performs the song with hand gestures as Mary sings.
Ella Fitzgerald recorded this song with Gordon Jenkins and his orchestra for Decca and it was included on her 1955 album Miss Ella Fitzgerald & Mr Gordon Jenkins Invite You to Listen and Relax.
"Happy Talk" is occasionally cut from productions of South Pacific on the grounds that the song is racist, citing the fake pidgin in which it is written.[citation needed] It was omitted from the made-for-TV remake of South Pacific in 2001.
The most famous version of this song, for the 1958 movie, is performed by the ghost of a forgotten American Legend. Muriel Smith was a talent unrivaled in her day, and somehow she is often forgotten when speaking of American Musical Theatre History.
She made her début on Broadway in December 1943, taking the title role in Carmen Jones, an updated version of Bizet's Carmen by Billy Rose and Oscar Hammerstein with an African-American cast. At that time, US opera companies were segregated — in the cast of 115, only one had previous Broadway experience. Carmen Jones received a positive critical reception, and ran on Broadway for 14 months. Smith toured with the production until 1947, with two further Broadway revivals.
In 1947, she starred as Delphine with the baritone William Veasey (Joshua Tain) in Theodore Ward's 'Our Lan' at the Royale Theatre. She later appeared in Marc Blitzstein's opera The Cradle Will Rock in 1947/8,[3] and performed with the American Negro Theatre in 1948. She moved to London in 1949. After appearing in two Cecil Landeau revues at the Cambridge Theatre in the West End — Sauce Tartare in 1949 and Sauce Piquante in 1950 — she then performed in the London productions of two Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, as Bloody Mary in South Pacific in 1951, and as Lady Thiang, the King's head wife, in The King and I in 1953.
She gave a recital at the Wigmore Hall in 1955 before returning to the US to appear in a revival of Carmen Jones at the New York City Center. On December 17, 1956, she made her début in serious opera, starring as Carmen in a production at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.[2] The performance on December 27, 1956 was broadcast live on BBC radio.
This was not an unqualified success. In his history of the Royal Opera Harold Rosenthal comments that she was "a lovely figure on stage; a sultry slinky personality with a beautiful velvety voice; but she was tame dramatically and her singing often failed to dominate the stage." Though Covent Garden then had a colourful production and the musical director, Rafael Kubelik, conducted, other members of the cast were also below par, which did not help.[citation needed]
She was the uncredited ghost singer for Zsa Zsa Gabor in John Huston's 1952 movie Moulin Rouge, a biography of Toulouse-Lautrec (she also appeared on film as Aicha), and for April Olrich in the 1956 film The Battle of the River Plate.
More significantly, she was ghost singer in two songs for the 1958 Hollywood film version of South Pacific, providing the voice for actress Juanita Hall in for the songs "Bali Ha'i" and "Happy Talk", but she turned down an on-screen part in the 1959 film version of George Gershwin's opera Porgy and Bess, saying "It doesn't do the right thing for my people."
Later in her life, she worked for Moral Re-Armament, and also as a voice teacher at Virginia Union University. She received an arts award from the National Council of Negro Women in 1984. She appeared in several regional theatrical productions, including Equus at Theatre IV in Richmond, Virginia, and the première of Jeraldine Herbison's Sojourner Truth ... Ain't I a Woman? at Hampton University in 1985.
She died of cancer in 1985, aged 62, in Richmond, Virginia, having moved there in 1974.
So today, looking for a little happy, I choose “Happy Talk” as my, you’ve gotta have a dream to have a dream come true, find your little happy, look for your little Friday, song for a, you are more than the sum of your parts, belief makes things real, you can fly if you only forget the chains you’ve given yourself, Tuesday.
