Juanita Hall born 6 November 1902

Juanita Hall (née Long, November 6, 1901 – February 29, 1968) was an American musical theatre and film actress. She is remembered for her roles in the original stage and screen versions of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals South Pacific as Bloody Mary – a role that garnered her a Tony Award – and Flower Drum Song as Madame Liang.

Born in Keyport, New Jersey, to an African-American father and Irish-American mother , Hall (along with three siblings) was raised by her maternal grandparents after her mother's death. She attended Bordentown Industrial School and graduated from Keyport High School. She also received classical training at the Juilliard School. Soon after she finished high school, Hall worked in the Lincoln settlement house in East Orange, New Jersey, teaching music to children during the day and to and adult chorus at night.

In the early 1930s, she was a special soloist and assistant director for the Hall Johnson Choir and kept busy with performances in concert, on records, in films, and on the air. She auditioned for Talent 48, a private review created by the Stage Manager's Club. Later, she performed on radio in the soap opera The Story of Ruby Valentine on the National Negro Network. The serial was broadcast on 35 stations, and sponsors of the broadcast included Philip Morris and Pet Milk.

Hall began singing and playing small roles in theatrical productions on the eastern seaboard. In 1935, she appeared in a Broadway revival of Sailor Beware! Mostly, over the next few years she sang, her repertoire ranging through popular songs of the day to folk 

music and the blues. She made some recordings, including six sides for Victor Records, accompanied by jazz trombonist Bennie Morton and his orchestra. In those days, there never were enough major roles for black artists but things improved somewhat for Hall from the mid-40s onwards. She had a place in the chorus in Sing Out Sweet Land (1944) and a revival of Show Boat (1946). After moving up to small supporting roles in St. Louis Woman (1946) and Street Scene (1947).

A leading black Broadway performer in her day, she was personally chosen by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II to perform the roles she played in the musicals South Pacific and Flower Drum Song, as a Tonkinese woman and a Chinese-American, respectively.

In 1950, she became the first African American to win a Tony Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Bloody Mary in South Pacific starring Ezio Pinza and Mary Martin. She also won a Donaldson Award for playing that role. She played the role for 1,925 performances on Broadway at the Majestic Theatre beginning on April 7, 1949. She also starred in the 1954 Broadway musical House of Flowers in which she sang and danced Harold Arlen's Slide Boy Slide. In addition to her role in South Pacific, she was a regular performer in clubs in Greenwich Village, where she captivated audiences with her renditions of "Am I Blue?", "Lament Over Love", and Langston Hughes' "Cool Saturday Night".

                              

Inspired as a child by blues legend Bessie Smith, she only recorded one album of blues in her lifetime. In 1957, she recorded Juanita Hall Sings the Blues (at Beltone Studios in New York City), backed by a group of jazz musicians that included Claude Hopkins, Coleman Hawkins, Buster Bailey, Doc Cheatham, and George

Duvivier. In 1958, she reprised Bloody Mary in the film version of South Pacific, for which her singing part was dubbed (because of legal matters involving copyright), at Richard Rodgers's request, by Muriel Smith, who had played the role in the London production. The same year, Hall starred in Flower Drum Song, another Broadway show by Rodgers and Hammerstein.

She also toured in the road show version of Flower Drum Song, but she had to leave it in early 1962 because of illness. But she was able to appear on stage in 1966 in A Woman and the Blues, a tribute blues singers Billie Holiday and Ethel Waters. Hall spent her final years in poverty after an investment in a New York City restaurant, The Fortune Cookie, failed. In her later years, diabetes led to blindness. 

Because she had little money, the Actors Fund of America supported her in its Lillian Booth Actors Home in Englewood, New Jersey, and in then on Long Island, where she died in 1968 from complications of her illness.

Hall is remembered as a consummate professional and a thoughtful colleague. "I think everyone who had anything to do with her loved her," wrote Richard Rodgers, as quoted in Notable Black American Women. "As an actress, she was…a joy to work with."

(Edited from Wikipedia & AllMusic)

Even though Juanita Hall sang in close to 900 performances of "South Pacific" on Broadway, according to vocal arranger Ken Darby her voice had taken on a much heavier tone by 1957 and she was having trouble sustaining high notes. Music director Alfred Newman thought that it was unnecessary to dub her and asked Ken to work with Hall on smoothing out her voice to a level and vocal style that Richard Rodgers would approve. By the time of the recording sessions she was singing better than she had in the original 1949 stage production, but even though she achieved a vocal quality closer to what Rodgers preferred, Rodgers was

enamored with and always preferred Muriel Smith's voice (Smith played Bloody Mary in the London production). It was at his insistence that Hall's vocals were dubbed. No pre-recordings were ever made of Hall since by the time of the recording sessions it had already been decided that she would be dubbed. Hall was a good sport about it and was grateful to have the opportunity to preserve her Tony Award-winning performance as Bloody Mary in the film. Ken Darby said that she was one of the nicest and hardest working performers with whom he was ever privileged to work. Here is Juanita's vocal from the original Broadway cast recording, synched to the film. John Kerr and France Nuyen play the young lovers.