DVDs: Shall We Dance?

In the mid-nineteenth century, an Englishwoman named Anna Leonowens journeyed to Siam later Thailand to take up a position as governess and teacher to the King of Siam's sixty-seven children. Leonowens wrote of her experiences in a pair of well-regarded works of non-fiction. But it was the enormous success of Margaret Landon's 1944 biography of Leonowens, entitled Anna and the King of Siam, that brought Leonowens' story back to the attention of a wide public.

Daryl F. Zanuck purchased the rights to Landon's book for 20th Century-Fox, and in 1946, the resulting Anna and the King of Siam film opened and was a major success. As one might expect of a post-war U.S. version of the tale, the film, directed by John Cromwell and with a screenplay by Talbot Jennings and Sally Benson, depicted Anna as a woman determined to bring democracy to a primitive, semi-barbaric nation.

As you are no doubt aware, the story of Anna and the King would become much better known through its musical adaptation by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, The King and I, which appeared only five years after the Fox film. But just as one can fully appreciate the film version of Shaw's Pygmalion without the score that helped make it into My Fair Lady, the film of Anna and the King of Siam stands on its own as an enjoyable picture.

Leading lady Irene Dunne is a natural for Anna, supplying a performance that's pretty much faultless. In spite of being, like the other actors depicting denizens of Siam, distinctly non-Asian, Rex Harrison, in his first American film, is excellent as the King. Although the film is in black and white, it's an impressive spectacle, and took Oscars for cinematography and art direction.

But it's the comparisons to The King and I that make the film most intriguing. Although the credits for the Rodgers and Hammerstein show cited only Landon's book as its source, it's clear that the team had also acquired the rights to the Jennings-Benson screenplay. For his libretto, Hammerstein borrowed liberally from the '46 film's principal characters, structure, and dialogue. In particular, Hammerstein took up from the film the King's manner of speaking English, right down to his fondness for the word "etcetera."

There are, of course, major differences between the '46 film and the musical. There's the character of Tuptim, who in the movie is troubled and resentful of Anna's position in the court. There's the fate of Anna's son, Louis. More importantly, Hammerstein took the elements of the screenplay and imbued them with heart and romance, making a gripping story all the more emotionally satisfying.

Still, Anna and the King of Siam holds up well on its own and will be of particular interest to those familiar with the musical. For the record, let's note that, in addition to the hugely successful Fox film version of the musical, there was a short-lived thirteen weeks 1972 television sit-com version of the story, called Anna and the King, with Samantha Eggar playing opposite Yul Brynner, the latter repeating his role from the stage and screen versions of The King and I. In 1999, the story was remade as a new feature film, also entitled Anna and the King, co-starring Jodie Foster and Chow Yun-Fat.

For its recent DVD premiere, the '46 Anna and the King of Siam has been supplied with one fine bonus, the 1999 A&E cable-TV "Biography" episode entitled Anna and the King: The Real Story of Anna Leonowens. This is a fascinating attempt at separating the reality of Leonowens' story from the fictionalizing that was part of Landon's book and all subsequent dramatizations.