History Lesson! How The King and I Danced From Siam to the Big Screen, Broadway & Throughout the World

The classic musicals of Rodgers & Hammerstein feature feisty heroines and star-crossed couples, most of whom live happily ever after (see: Oklahoma, South Pacific, Cinderella, The Sound of Music). Their 1951 smash hit, The King and I, appears to follow the pattern, but with a bittersweet twist: The title pair never express any romantic feelings, with the exception of one subliminally sexy polka. As five-time Tony nominee Kelli O’Hara and Oscar nominee Ken Watanabe get set to open in Lincoln Center Theater’s lavish revival, let’s head back to the Royal Palace in Bangkok and see how “Mrs. Anna” and the King became one of Broadway’s most beloved duos.


Welcome to Siam
The East-meets-West tale of a polygamous king and a widowed British schoolteacher gained worldwide fame thanks to Margaret Landon’s 1944 biographical novel Anna and the King of Siam. Set in 1862 in the country now known as Thailand, the book centers on Anna Leonowens, who is invited by King Mongkut to move to Bangkok with her young son to tutor his many children and wives. Anna inspires the king to move toward adopting Western ideals of democracy, and on his deathbed, he convinces her to stay on as an adviser to his son. Historians dismissed Anna and King of Siam, but Hollywood (and later R&H) recognized the story’s dramatic potential.


Page to Screen to Stage
Ten years before making his mark as Henry Higgins, Rex Harrison assumed an Asian accent to make his American movie debut in Anna and the King of Siam. This non-singing version, co-starring Irene Dunne, captured the attention of British stage diva Gertrude Lawrence, who immediately envisioned herself headlining a musical. Though she wasn’t much of a singer, Lawrence pitched the project to Cole Porter, who passed, and Rodgers and Hammerstein, who agreed to write and produce their first star vehicle. Harrison, Alfred Drake and even Lawrence’s pal Noël Coward (!) passed on playing the supporting character of the king.


The King and Yul
When Yul Brynner showed up to audition for The King and I, he was a 30-year-old journeyman actor, folk singer and TV director. The Russian-born Brynner had traveled the world as a circus acrobat and arrived in America in 1941 barely able to speak English. In his autobiography, Richard Rodgers recalled that at the audition, Brynner “scowled in our direction, sat down on the stage…then plunked one whacking chord on his guitar and began to howl in a strange language that no one could understand. He looked savage, he sounded savage, and there was no denying that he projected a feeling of controlled ferocity.” Uhh…and he got the part!


Getting to Know Them
The King and I opened at the St. James Theatre on March 29, 1951, and became an immediate hit—much to the relief of Rodgers and Hammerstein, who dreaded comparisons to South Pacific. Lawrence’s vocal limitations led the pair to pen easy-to-sing numbers such as “Getting to Know You,” “I Whistle a Happy Tune” and “Shall We Dance?” Also contributing to the show’s success was Jerome Robbins’ choreography, including “The Small House of Uncle Thomas,” a children’s ballet version of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The show won five Tonys (Brynner as best featured actor) and ran for 1,246 performances; four actresses, including Celeste Holm, succeeded Lawrence, who died of liver cancer 18 months into the run.


A Lifetime Reign
Yul Brynner’s indelible performance lives on in a lavish 1956 movie co-starring Deborah Kerr (with vocals dubbed by Marni Nixon) and Rita Moreno as Tuptim, the concubine whose doomed romance is echoed in Anna’s song “Hello, Young Lovers.” By then, Brynner was considered the star of the piece, and he won the Oscar for Best Actor. (For evidence of his charisma, watch him bark, “Come! We do it again!” at Kerr during “Shall We Dance?”) The indomitable star played a total of 4,625 live performances, including multiple tours and Broadway revivals in 1977 (opposite Constance Towers) and 1985 (opposite Mary Beth Peil), months before his death from lung cancer. He even starred in a 13-episode TV version in 1972, cementing his association with a role others became reluctant to take on.


More Nights in Bangkok
The Brynner spell was broken in 1996, when Lou Diamond Phillips joined Donna Murphy on Broadway in a gorgeous revival that had begun in Australia, helmed by British opera director Christopher Renshaw. The production won four Tonys, including Best Revival and Best Actress; Marie Osmond and Faith Prince replaced Murphy during the two-year run. On the big screen, Broadway vets Christiane Noll and Martin Vidnovic voiced the leads in a 1999 animated King and I; the same year, Jodie Foster and Chow Yun-Fat starred in the drama Anna and the King. (Every film version, by the way, has been banned in Thailand, which rejects this narrative of the country’s history.)


21st Century Royalty
After winning acclaim as Nellie Forbush in the 2008 revival of South Pacific, Kelli O’Hara and her frequent collaborator, Bartlett Sher (The Light in the Piazza, The Bridges of Madison County), set their sights on reviving The King and I. “I love that she’s so strong and took a huge leap,” O’Hara says of Anna in a Lincoln Center Theater video feature. “It’s a beautiful story—somewhat of a love story, but not a traditional one—where people come into each other’s lives and affect each other greatly.” But who should play the king opposite one of Broadway’s musical queens?


From Samurai to Sovereign
The minute he spotted Japanese superstar Ken Watanabe in Clint Eastwood’s 2007 World War II drama Letters From Iwo Jima, “I said to myself, ‘That guy’s a king,’” Sher told The New York Times. Watanabe, best known in America for his Oscar-nominated performance opposite Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai, had to be convinced. In his native country, the 55-year-old has played Hamlet and headlined The Lion in Winter on stage, but he worried about speaking English on stage, particularly in a musical. Sher won the day, and now O’Hara and Watanabe head a cast of 51 in a show that has lost none of its dramatic and romantic pull. See them this spring in The King and I at the Vivian Beaumont Theater!