"The King and I" Is Back in Theaters for a 60th Anniversary Run!

by Bruce Chadwick

Bruce Chadwick lectures on history and film at Rutgers University in New Jersey. He also teaches writing at New Jersey City University. He holds his PhD from Rutgers and was a former editor for the New York Daily News. Mr. Chadwick can be reached at bchadwick@njcu.edu.

Who can forget the 1956 luscious movie musical The King and I? The King, played by Yul Brynner, legs spread, hands on hips, haughty as haughty can get, finally humanized by adorable school teacher Anna (Deborah Kerr ) from England and all of his lovely children. Forget Siam in 1862? The British rule of the area? And, of course, Brynner and Kerr dancing across the palace floor to the unforgettable Rodgers and Hammerstein song Shall We Dance?

The memorable musical that won five Oscars, set in Bangkok in 1862, returns to the big screen August 28 and August 31 in a special 60th anniversary presentation produced by the Turner Classic Movies network and Fathom Events. It will be shown in hundreds of theaters nationwide on those two days as part of a continuing classic film festival (for theaters and info: fathomevents.com).

There was never a better time to show this lovable movie about the mid nineteenth century in Southeast Asia because of the political turmoil that has recently swept Thailand (Siam became Thailand in 1939) and its capital city, Bangkok.

There is plenty of history in the 1956 movie The King and I. There is a Siamese version of the American play Uncle Tom’s Cabin (from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel) that chronicles slavery in the U.S. There is a Bangkok dinner party given to assure visiting British diplomats, in charge of just about everything in the 1860s, that Siam was in good political and administrative hands with King Mongkut. There was talk from the King, too, of taking Siam out of the historic past and making the nation part of the world in 1862. You learned a lot of history in the movie and Brynner well, the Oscar winner just dazzled everybody with his stellar performance as Siam’s proud and yet petulant monarch. He ruled all with an iron fist, but he certainly had a hard time ruling Anna.

The Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein movie musical was based on their Broadway play. The play was based on the true story written as a memoir by the school teacher, Anna Leonowens, who taught the King’s children (critics say she puffed up her role). The movie has stood the test of time. It pops up on television now and then and was revived as a play by Lincoln Center on Broadway last year. Jodie Foster recently starred in a film based on the original play version, Anna and the King of Siam (1999). People have always liked the story and adored the music in the show (tunes include Shall We Dance?, Hello, Young Lovers, Getting to Know You and Whistle a Happy Tune).

King Mongkut could not see this re-release of The King and I anywhere in Thailand today, though. The movie, and Foster’s Anna and the King of Siam, have always been banned there. Government officials thought that Yul Brynner’s King looked like a buffoon and disparaged the nation’s history, making its people look ridiculous. Under a special 1930 law, it is illegal to make a movie that is disrespectful to the Thai monarchy. You can get up to six months in jail for participating in such a filming (none of The King and I was lensed in the country) and you can be executed for distributing any copies and showing the movie in public in the country.

Brynner’s King Mongkut might turn over in his grave if he took a good look at his beloved country and what has happened to it over the past 150 years.

Mongkut’s worries over foreign trade in 1862 and how the British perceived him paled in comparison to Thai politics in recent history. One King, Ananda Mahidol, was mysteriously murdered in his Bangkok palace at the end of World War II. Others have had to deal with coups and military strongmen. The first military coup to topple the civilian government took place in 1957. That military government stayed in power for nearly twenty years and then was brought down after public demonstrations in 1976. A new coalition government took over that year. Further unrest in 1992 brought on yet another coalition government. There has been turmoil in the country ever since. A military coup in 2006 caused two Prime Ministers to be removed from office that the army considered corrupt. A civilian government ran the country for a few years but a military junta seized power again in 2014 and just last week its leaders rammed through a new Constitution, approved in an election in which no one was allowed to campaign against it and anyone who did was jailed. Under the new Constitution, Thailand’s 20th in just 84 years, the military has the uncontested power to fill seats in the country’s senate. An 88 year old King remains the titular head of the country but has no authority.

Current Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, promised that free, democratic elections will be held in 2017 after the installation of the new Constitution. The government is hoping that after the elections tourism and culture will once again book in the country.

Thailand today, still full of protests, is a far cry from the adorable nation depicted in the 1956 film. If King Mongkut was around now, he would have to dance his way through street demonstrations and salute army colonels.

It is always good to see reasonably accurate movie about the past to remind us of what the world was like long ago and how it has changed over the years, for better or worse, and why.

No matter what your politics, it is always good, too, to see Yul Brynner and Deborah Kerr dance across the palace floor, taking you into a world of romance and music and hope that existed long ago.