Movies
The African Queen (1951)
『アフリカの女王』1951年
Fan page about the movie “The African Queen” (1951), directed by John Huston, starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn.
The Story
German East Africa, 1914: Charlie Allnut (Humphrey Bogart) is running a little steamer, “The African Queen”, with supplies to small villages at the onset of World War I. He comes to a village that is overlorded by a stuffy British missionary, Rev. Samuel Sayer (Robert Morley), and his spinster sister, Rose Sayer (Katharine Hepburn), who is utterly devoted to her brother. She tends the sick, plays the organ at church services, and acts as if the savage wilds were nothing more than an extension of peaceful England. When German troops invade and destroy the village, Rev. Sayer dies, and Charlie offers to take the distraught Rose back to civilization. So he heads downriver with Rose on board, and the two are soon at odds with one another. Rose is appalled at Charlie’s constant gin swilling, and when he gets drunk he scorns her as a “crazy psalm-singing skinny old maid!” That prompts her to dump his ample liquor supply, a painfully hung over Charlie unable to stop her. The journey continues, and Rose comes up with a plan to join in the war effort against the Germans. She suggests that they sail down the dangerous Ulonga-Bora River to a lake in Central Africa where they will sink the powerful German ship “Louisa”. Charlie thinks she is crazy, but her persistence wears him down. The pair sets off in the old, bobbing, steam-belching tub on a wild adventure. They overcome every obstacle, yet finally lose their way in the reedy channels at the river’s end. Famished and ill (and lovers by now), they lie down to die at the bottom of the boat. The wind finally pushes the “Queen” out into the lake where they revive and see the enemy ship straight ahead of them. Charlie fashions some makeshift torpedoes and inserts these through holes in the bow. They make a night attack against the “Louisa”, but a raging storm overturns their boat. Both are picked up by the German warship at dawn and sentenced to death by the ship’s captain. Their touching last request, that they be married before the execution, is granted. With the ropes around their necks, Rose and Charlie exchange vows smilingly. All appears lost until the valiant “Queen” surfaces upside-down with its torpedoes angled toward the “Louisa”, which it strikes and sinks. As the warship goes down, Charlie and Rose joyously begin swimming toward a friendly shore, blissful as husband and wife and as accomplished saboteurs.
John Huston magnificently filmed C.S.Forester’s novel on location in the Belgian Congo, but the even bigger treat of this picture is the superb combination of Hollywood legends Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn, who make one of the most remarkable on-screen couples in movie history. Bogart received the 1951 Best Actor “Oscar” for his Charlie Allnut; Katharine Hepburn lost to Vivien Leigh’s Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire.
In 1987, Katharine Hepburn published a memoir on the making of this film called “The African Queen, or How I went to Africa with Bogart, Bacall and Huston and almost lost my mind” (read that book; it is just as delightfully unusual as its title - or, as one contemporary critic put it, the book is “like Katharine Hepburn - slim and irresistible”).
Star Bios
Katharine Hepburn was born in Hartford, Connecticut, on May 12, 1907 (“despite everything I may have said to the contrary”, she wrote in her memoir) to a prominent New England family. After graduating from Bryn Mawr College in 1928, she embarked on a sometimes tempestuous career as a theatrical actress, appearing in several summer stock and Broadway productions. Her 1932 Broadway appearance in The Warrior’s Husband led to a film contract with RKO Studios, where she debuted as John Barrymore’s daughter in A Bill Of Divorcement (1932). Her unusual looks and manner and her absolutely unique voice put off some moviegoers at first, but her endearing performance as Eva Lovelace in Morning Glory (1933) won her the first of her record four Academy Awards. In her early films, Hepburn portrayed memorable feminine characters, showing off her versatility in movies like Little Women (1933), Alice Adams (1935) and Stage Door (1937). By the time she teamed up with Cary Grant for the classic screwball comedy Bringing Up Baby (1938), her film career was on the skids, having been labeled “Box Office Poison” by the American movie exhibitors. She returned to Broadway to star as spoiled socialite Tracy Lord in Philip Barry’s The Philadelphia Story, which was a smash hit and led to an equally triumphant return to Hollywood in the 1940 film version. Her next picture, Woman Of The Year (1942), cast her opposite Spencer Tracy - they would star together in a total of nine films in the years between 1942 and 1967, and be off screen lovers until Tracy died in 1967. Their films together are sparked by the chemistry of their interaction, and are fondly remembered as exhilarating variations on the “Battle-of-the-sexes” subject, several of them made in the 1940’s. But some of the peak achievements of her career would be reached in the years to come, like in 1951, when Hepburn went on location to Africa with Humphrey Bogart to star in John Huston’s The African Queen. She gave further memorable performances in Summertime (1955), Suddenly, Last Summer (1959) and Long Day’s Journey Into Night (1962). Her last appearance on Spencer Tracy’s side was in Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner (1967), which won her another “Oscar”, as did her powerful Eleanor of Aquitaine just one year later in The Lion In Winter (1968). She followed this triumph by making her Broadway musical debut as couturier Coco Chanel in Coco. Hepburn’s continuing work throughout the 1970s and 1980s culminated in her teaming with fellow screen legend Henry Fonda in On Golden Pond (1981), which won her her fourth Academy Award. She continued to star in several star vehicle TV movies until 1994, the year in which she also made her last big screen appearance as Warren Beatty’s feisty aunt in Love Affair. Her long awaited memoir Me - Stories of my life, which appeared in 1991, is full of incredibly candid and self-deprecating passages, and she most touchingly wrote about her 26 year romance with Spencer Tracy. When she died from cardiac arrest on June 29, 2003, at the Hepburn family home in Fenwick, Connecticut, the world mourned the loss of one of the most iconic performers in Hollywood history.
Humphrey Bogart was born on January 23, 1899, in New York City. While serving in the US Navy during World War I, a wood splinter accidentally penetrated his upper lip and stiffened it, giving him a physical characteristic that was to become one of his screen trademarks. Having started out as a stage actor in the 1920’s, he came to Hollywood in 1930 to star in Broadway’s Like That (1930). Achieving little success in his first movies, he returned to New York. His portrayal of the murderer Duke Mantee in the Broadway production of The Petrified Forest (1935) - and one year later in the film version - was a turning point in his career. Throughout the late 1930’s, Bogart was a popular gangster figure in crime pictures like Dead End (1937), The Roaring Twenties (1939) and High Sierra (1941). They were followed by the two parts that made him a legend: hard-boiled private detective Sam Spade in John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon (1941), and - of course - expatriate cabaret proprietor Rick Blaine in Casablanca (1942), the mother of all cult classics (“Here’s looking at you, kid …”). Bogart etched memorable portraits as another Rick-type in To Have And Have Not (1944, during the production of which he met and married Lauren Bacall, his fourth and final wife), as private eye Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep (1946) and as greed-crazed Fred C. Dobbs in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948). Besides his delightful Charlie Allnut, Bogie was also supremely funny in Billy Wilder’s Sabrina (1954, opposite Audrey Hepburn) and in We’re No Angels (1955). On January 14, 1957, he succumbed to throat cancer.
The Director
John Huston was born on August 5, 1906, in Nevada, Missouri. Born into a family of actors (his father was the distinguished Walter Huston), he began his Hollywood career as a scriptwriter in 1931. Prior to that time Huston had been, for short periods, a professional lightweight boxer, a soldier in the Mexican cavalry, a reporter, the editor of a picture magazine, an author of short stories and plays, and an actor. His first work as a film director was The Maltese Falcon (1941), which starred Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade and became the definitive private-eye picture. Upon resuming his career after World War II (during which he had made some acclaimed documentaries), he won Academy Awards for his direction and screenplay of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), which once again starred Bogart and yielded a Best Supporting Actor statuette for his father. More classics were to follow, such as The Asphalt Jungle (1950), The African Queen (1951), Moulin Rouge (1952), Moby Dick (1956) and The Misfits (1961), which - sadly - provided both Marilyn Monroe’s and Clark Gable’s last screen appearances. Huston was also a very good actor, as which he has left a remaining impact with his roles in The Cardinal (1963) and Chinatown (1974). At the age of 78, he turned in a spectacular effort directing Jack Nicholson and Kathleen Turner in Prizzi’s Honor (1985), a black comedy about Mafia assassins. He died on August 28, 1987, in Newport (Rhode Island). - His daughter Anjelica Huston (b. 1951) is a renowned actress.
Quotes
(manually transcribed from video)
Charlie: Well, Miss?
Rose: Yes, Mister Allnut.
Charlie: How’d you like it?
Rose: Like it?
Charlie: White water rapids!
Rose: I never dreamed…
Charlie: I don’t blame you for being scared - not one bit. Nobody with good sense ain’t scared of white water…
Rose: I never dreamed that any mere physical experience could be so stimulating!
Charlie: How’s that, Miss?
Rose: I’ve only known such excitement a few times before - a few times in my dear brother’s sermons when the spirit was really upon him.
Charlie: You mean you wanna go on?
Rose: Naturally!
Charlie: Miss, you’re crazy -
Rose: I beg your pardon?
Charlie: You know what would have happened if we’d come up against one of them rocks?
Rose: But we didn’t. I must say I am filled with admiration for your skill, Mister Allnut. Do you suppose after I practice steering a bit, that some day I might try?
Charlie: Let me tell you something, Miss. Them rapids ain’t nothing to what’s up in front of us - on second thought, I wouldn’t call them rapids at all.
Rose: I can hardly wait!
Charlie: But Miss …
Rose: Now that I’ve had a taste of it, I don’t wonder that you love boating, Mister Allnut!
Charlie: We can’t do that!
Rose: How do you know? You never tried it.
Charlie: Well, yeah, but I never tried shooting myself in the head neither.
Captain of the “Louisa”: By the authority vested in me by Kaiser William II, I pronounce you husband and wife. Proceed with the execution.
Rose: Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above.
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