Movie: The African Queen (1951)
“September 1914, news reaches the colony German Eastern Africa that its motherland is at war, so Reverend Samuel Sayer became a hostile foreigner; German imperial troops burn down his mission, driving him mad- shortly after his well-educated, snooty sister Rose Sayer buries him and leaves by the only available transport, the crummy river steamboat ‘African Queen’ of grumpy boorish compatriot Charlie Allnut. As if a long difficult journey without any comfort weren’t bad enough for such odd companions, she is determined to find a way to do their bit for the British war effort (and revenge her brother) and aims high as God is obviously on their side: construct their own equipment, a torpedo and the converted steamboat, to take out a huge German warship, the Louisa, which is hard to find on the giant lake and first of all to reach, in fact as daunting an expedition as nobody attempted since the late adventurous explorer John Speakes, but she presses till Charlie accepts to steam up the Ulana, about to brave a German fort, raging rapids, very bloodthirsty parasites and the endlessly branching stream which seems to go nowhere but impenetrable swamps… Despite fierce rows and moral antagonism between a bossy devout abstentionist and a free-spirited libertine drunk loner, the two bachelors grow closer to each-other as their quest drags on… Written by KGF Vissers”
- Director: John Huston
- Release Date: 20 February 1952 (USA)
- Run Time: 105 min
- Country: UK , USA
- Genre: Adventure , Drama , Romance , War
Tagline: The greatest adventure a man ever lived…with a woman!
Trivia: Katharine Hepburn, in her written account of the film’s production titled “The Making of “The African Queen,” or How I Went to Africa with Bogie, Bacall and Huston and Almost Lost My Mind”, described the first day of shooting, which required five cars and trucks to take the cast, crew and equipment three and a half miles from Biondo to the Ruiki river, at which point they loaded everything onto boats and sailed another two and a half miles to the shooting location. Press materials and contemporary articles detail the various perils of shooting on location in Africa, including dysentery, malaria, bacteria-filled drinking water and several close brushes with wild animals and poisonous snakes. Most of the cast and crew were sick for much of the filming. In a February 1952 New York Times article, John Huston declared that he hired local natives to help the crew, but many would not show up for fear that the filmmakers were cannibals.
Goofs: Continuity: When Allnut sets up the torpedoes in the African Queen, the holes are a little behind the prow. The turned boat which supposedly explodes the German ship has the torpedoes ahead.