9. "South Pacific" (1958)

World War II Movie Night ventures into an atypical genre with 1958's "South Pacific," the film version of the popular Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. Famous show tunes dot the action as U.S. sailors and nurses pass the time waiting for the War to get going. A secret mission to spy on the surrounding Japanese-held islands provides the backdrop of a relationship between a nurse and a Frenchman with a mysterious past, not to mention a very-questionable-by-today's-standards relationship between a Marine and a young Islander. Witness high levels of cheesiness and a message of racial-tolerance that angered many audiences of the day... Asides include musings on one of the greatest American writers ever, James A. Michener.