Exclusive“The African Queen” (1951): First Jungle Adventure

Shall we go where bright angels' feet have trod? With its crystal tides forever Flowing by the throne of God. Yes, we gather by the river, The beautiful, the beautiful river. Gather with us saints by the river That flows by the throne of God. Hi, how many in your party? Just me. Okay, you should be able to get a seat on the next riverboat since not many people are at this ride today. Have you seen the movie this ride was based on? Yes, I loved it. Wow, I'm so impressed you're familiar with it. I mean, it was in all the big theaters. I went with a group of my friends on its opening weekend. There's no way you're that old. I know, I'm so old. That was like five years ago. Are you talking about the new Jungle Cruise movie? Yes, I love Emily Blunt. Well, that was actually based on the ride, but the ride itself was based on a much older movie. It's actually not a Disney film. Wait, really? What movie is that? The African Queen. I'm Tiffany Brannan. I'm Rebecca Brannan. Welcome to Real Thoughts on Cinema. Like the Gen Z Disney cast member I was just playing, a lot of people probably don't know that the Jungle Cruise ride at the Disney parks was based on a much older film that's not a Disney movie. Yes, Jungle Cruise was actually one of the original rides at Disneyland when it opened in 1955. And like many of the other rides, it didn't come from a Disney film. But since then, they've tried to make everything themed. So either they've re-themed things, or like this and Pirates of the Caribbean, they've made movies based on the rides. But the actual inspiration for the ride came from the 1951 movie The African Queen, which was one of Walt Disney's favorite films. Yes, it was. He said that he wished he'd made it himself. He loved it so much. And it's really a timeless, excellent film. Yes, it has an all-star cast. I mean, not too big, but just the two stars. Humphrey Bogart and Catherine Hepburn. Two huge names. Two of the greatest classic stars. And Robert Morley plays her brother, a very small part. And then other than that, it's mostly, there's some natives from Africa, and then German officers near the end. And it's a partially British film, is that right? Yes, it was technically released in America, you know, United Artists, but that was the company used for more independent films. It was directed by John Huston, a great American director, but it was produced by a British company. Was it Horizon? Yes, and the Romulus Films, with the main producer being the brothers, John and James Wolfe, who were British. And all the things that they didn't film in Africa on location were filmed in a British studio. The story follows a missionary, Catherine Hepburn's character, and her brother who are trying to bring Christianity to the natives in Africa right around the beginning of World War I. And when the village is burned down and all the natives are stolen away by the German officers to make them soldiers, this riverboat captain takes Catherine Hepburn's character down the river to sort of rescue her. Well, yeah, he takes pity on her because her brother has died. Basically insanity at the stress of what happened. And she gets this wild idea for them to use the boat as a torpedo to blow up this German warship that's in a lake down the river. But he tries to convince her this river is impossible to navigate. You can't go all the way down to the lake. But she's convinced that his boat, the African Queen, can do it, so she talks him into it. And during their journey, they go through so many trials together that they end up falling in love. It's a classic story of, you could say, the Beauty and the Beast, Lady and the Tramp story, the idea of a proper lady and a rough-and-tumble, really beat-up kind of guy. And I like how authentic this is about their two characters. You really see not only who these characters are but who the actors playing them are. That's true. So if you're not familiar with classic films, you'll know all about these two actors afterwards because you've got Katharine Hepburn, who was known for being very proper and high-minded, and Humphrey Bogart was kind of a, you know, he liked to drink a lot. But they ended up being friends, so you see that in this movie. The location shooting is what people talk about the most with this film because it was sort of unusual for that time period for them to do that much location footage, and they did a lot of shooting in Africa. It was expensive and dangerous. Very dangerous. They went through everything. Bugs, illness, wild animals, snakes, like anything that you could face basically going through the African jungle, they went through it. And funnily enough, Humphrey Bogart brought along his famous wife, Lauren McCall, you know, Bogie and McCall, and she trekked along with them and was sort of nursemaid to the cast and crew. Yes. But reflecting the film, one of the main points is that Rose, Katharine Hepburn's character, is quite disgusted by Charlie's drunkenness because he's always drinking gin, right? Yeah, he likes gin. And realistically, Humphrey Bogart and the director, John Huston, were sort of drinking buddies, so the two of them basically lived on Scotch whiskey and gin on this shoot, and as a result, they were the only two people who didn't get sick. Humphrey Bogart said, any fly that bit one of us dropped dead. And Katharine Hepburn, out of protest, would only drink the water, which wasn't particularly good, so she got very sick from it. But that didn't keep her from having a good time. She loved exploring and seeing all the plants and animal life there, and she actually had a good time, and she became very good friends with Lauren Bacall, as well as that was the first time, and the only time, she worked with Humphrey Bogart, even though they both had been in Hollywood since the early 30s. But that was their first time working together. And it was supposed to be filmed in a different location, which would have been a lot easier to use, but John Huston went there and he didn't like it, so then he went off on his own mission to find it, and then he's like, oh, I found this wonderful place to shoot, and everyone else thought it was horrible. In the Belgian Congo. Some people say that one of the reasons why he liked that area was because there was good hunting nearby, and he wanted to get an elephant. It remains to be seen whether he actually did. But it's interesting to see the history of how this movie made it to the screen. Right. It started out as a book of the same name, by C.S. Forrester, and certain changes had to be made to get it to the screen, but they wanted to make it into a movie as early as the late 30s. Really? There was talk of Bette Davis playing the role in the late 30s, and then they were considering it again in the late 40s, but then she wasn't available, and then it ended up working with John Huston taking over the production, and at one point they were advocating for having British stars in the roles, which makes sense because the characters are British. When they ended up casting Humphrey Bogart, they changed the character of Charlie Allnut from a Cockney Englishman to a Canadian, because, I mean, he doesn't sound Canadian either, but they knew it would be kind of goofy if you tried to do a British accent, but it was very important for her to be able to make the point to him about doing something for his country, and Canada technically was still part of England, whereas America wasn't involved in World War I at all when this took place. Right, so he was a British citizen. Yes. I feel like that was kind of a common old Hollywood trick. If they either had a British actor in a part that really should be American, or an American actor in a British part, like, he's Canadian! Yeah. Because, like, they don't have a definite accent. Yes, definitely. And Catherine Hepburn has her usual refined Bryn Mawr East Coast accent. You can almost believe she's British because it's so strong. Yeah, you just don't really think about it. She's so refined. She works as the Englishwoman. And even though he really makes an effort to be very polite to her, you know, she's just driving him crazy. She keeps saying his name, Mr. Allnut. Yes. And her brother, the role of Samuel, as you mentioned, never went to Africa. They filmed all his scenes in England. That's right. And spliced it together with some other African shots. And it's amazing. You think he's there in that village. Yes. It's really impressive. I was really shocked when I read that. I couldn't believe that. But one of the biggest concerns with bringing this to the screen, as well as the fact of how do you bring something that dramatic, you know, so to make it realistic, but one concern was the fact that once they're on this boat and they fall in love together, the book is implying that they're sort of, it seems silly to say they're living together, because obviously, where else are they going to live? It's a pretty small boat. It implies that they're involved in an illicit affair. Yes, that's more what they said. And at the time, Hollywood had strong moral guidelines. The Motion Picture Production Code was very important in Hollywood at that time period. And even though it was sort of produced by a British company, it still was an American film, so it was held to those high American standards. And adapting anything to the screen, that was the first kind of, the first process they had to go through was talk it over with the PCA and see how can we make this work. But I think that nothing was lost in the handling of it. Their romance is very beautiful, but nothing is implied that they're doing anything more than a little rather refined kissing. And they do end up actually getting married. I read an article about this movie from just a blogger, I think, and of course it made reference to the censors of the time, which is inaccurately referring to the PCA that you were talking about, that addressing this very issue about their relationship being very tasteful and very delicately handled. But this person also expressed she's just too prim and proper for it to be anything other than that. And that's kind of true if you know a little bit more about Katherine Hepburn. She herself was rather prudish in a strange way, because on the one hand she was this feminist who was, her biggest claim to fame is having this affair with a married man, Spencer Tracy, but on the other hand she was really prudish to the point that some people don't think she actually was having an affair with Spencer Tracy. It was more of a caring for him, because he was an alcoholic and she felt sorry for him. So it may not have been illicit, just like in this case. More like some things you see in a lot of films made under the code, where it is, you're in love with someone other than the person you're married to, but it never seems immoral. And I think she drew on her own experiences with Spencer Tracy for creating this character. Yes. A man who's very different than herself, but she finds great love for him in a different way. It's rare that you see, particularly in an old movie, a young love with characters who are not young, you know, the way they fall in love. It's not an old married couple. They're falling in love for the first time in their middle age. Yeah, later in life romance. Not to play into stereotypes or anything, but I think it would be true to say, particularly, that they're both later in life. Yes. In old movies, there are a lot like Humphrey Bogart. Many times, basically every time he was a leading man, he was with a much younger woman. Right. But this one, they're being very honest about that they're both older. He, in a drunken scene, calls her a skinny old man. Yeah. She was around eight years younger than he was. The character of Rose, Rose Sayre, in the book was described as being 33 years old. Now, Katherine Hepburn was in her later 40s at the time, but in the movie, we don't find out how old she is necessarily. Her brother seems like he could easily be in his 40s. Yes. So, we know she's an old maid. They're not trying to pretend she's any younger than she is, like they did in some of her other movies, and they're not trying to pretend that he's any younger. They're both experienced and hardened, or they've been given wisdom by their experiences. It's very honest. I feel like it's a very honest film. It's just very kind of frank and just puts everything out there. More like an epic romance. It's more of an epic friendship, and it grows into something real. It's beautiful to see how they transform each other, because it's not that she's bitter necessarily, but you can tell a long time ago she gave up on the idea of getting married. She's been in this outpost, but she's still trying to do God's work and help her brother, but she's so brave and courageous. And Charlie's kind of hardened and beat up, but he's still quite a gentleman toward her, and he has a sense of humor, but they bring things out in each other. And another reason why it was very important to handle it tastefully was she was almost a member of the clergy. She was a missionary woman. It was even more controversial that she'd, like the first man who would be interested in her, she'd be having some affair with him. That's not very tasteful. So, that's another reason. One thing I love about this movie is how many different elements it has in it. That's so true, because it's the kind of adventure film that's very popular now and has been basically... Like Indiana Jones. Yes, since like the 80s, it's really taken off. It's an action-adventure. Yeah, and beautiful location footage, something you don't always get to see in old movies. Sort of a nature film in that regard. Nature, definitely, almost... To show animals and wildlife. I don't want to say newsreel, but... Documentary style. Yes, it really shows you this beautiful scenery, similarly to what the Jungle Cruise ride wants to do at Disneyland. Yeah, originally it was more like that when it first opened. I actually read that Walt Disney originally wanted to have real animals. Really? But he realized they would usually be sleeping during the day, so it wouldn't be very interesting to see. So, he had the idea for the first safari park before that was being done. But it's also, as we were talking about, it has this great romance in it. It also has very strong religious messages, so it's sort of a faith-based film. And it's a war film, because it's during World War I, and they blow up this ship. It's a comedy. There are some surprisingly funny moments in it, like Humphrey Bogart singing and making animal sound effects at one point. That's probably the funniest part. But it goes back and forth between many different things. The script is so clever, because John Huston was a writer before he was a director. Wow, you can always tell. You always see that cleverness. There's also even a little bit of tragedy in the burning of the village and her brother's death. So, yeah, it has everything. I think it's a great one to recommend for people of all ages, and particularly young people who are interested in getting to know the classic genre. No matter what your preferences in movies are, I think you could find something you like about this film. So, it might be a good one for a group of friends to try watching. I don't know if it's partly the way it was filmed. I know my very great cinematographer, who's really famous for doing The Red Shoes, or the way it's been remastered. But I just noticed right away, it's just so crisp. And the location footage at the beginning, when the credits, you just hear the bird sounds, and monkeys and everything, and seeing these leaves, it looks a lot more modern than 51. So, I feel like it wouldn't have that immediately startling, oh, this looks so old-quality. Yeah, because it's in colour, it's out of the studio, out there in the real world, and the parts that are in the studio are in the British studio, and they look very real. It was the first Technicolour movie of both Humphrey Bogart and Catherine Hepburn. Really? Which is surprising, because, you know, they'd had Technicolour since the late 30s, but neither one of them had made a colour film before this. Would you agree there's something about the Technicolour, the quality of it, though, that's still different? It's just, it doesn't have as much of that, what one thinks of in the old Technicolour. Well, since you mentioned that the cinematographer was British, British colour was different. Maybe that's true. Even though, technically, it still was Technicolour. It might have been a different kind of film. Yes. It could have been using a different process. And not have a whole lot of make-up. So, I really think it's just, like I said, going along with just being very honest, I don't think it has the elements, a lot of times, with old films that can just kind of throw off modern audiences, like, oh, this looks so different than what I'm used to. Yes. I mean, I love it, but I know sometimes that not everybody does. It was very popular at the time, and well-respected by the Academy Awards. It was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Actor for Humphrey Bogart, Best Actress for Catherine Hepburn, Best Screenplay, and Best Director for John Huston. It wasn't nominated for Best Picture, which was kind of surprising, since it was nominated for the two leads. Only one win? Yes. Humphrey Bogart won, and it was the only Oscar he won of his career. And it also marked the last time that someone born in the 19th century won Best Actor. He was born in 1899. And he was over 50 by the time that this movie came out, so usually people who win Best Actor tend to be a little younger. I'm sure there were Best Supporting Actors who were older who won after that. Probably. But for Best Actor, that was a bit unusual. And Catherine didn't win for this one, but she won a lot of Academy Awards in her time. Because she tended to be in movies. Way into later in her career, right? Yes, in the late 80s. She was very much like this character. She just plowed through all of life's trials. I think the character of Rose Sayre is such a great role model for young women because she's such a strong woman, but she's so feminine too. Even when she's on this dirty old boat, she doesn't let it get her down. She has her little parasol, and she has her hat. She tries to keep herself clean. She's washing out her clothes, and she still loves to have her cup of tea. And she inspires Charlie to not be such a slob, and he shaves in one scene. He tries to make himself look cleaner because she inspires him. But she just won't give up. She's not afraid to risk her life to get ahead. She's very ingenious. She's steering that boat, and she gets a lot of fun out of shooting the rapids. Catherine Hepburn was very integral in the look of this character. She insisted on the designer that she wanted because she wanted to have very period-accurate costumes. She insisted on having a full-length mirror with her at all times so she could check how she looked between takes. So she lugged this full-length mirror through the jungle, and then it broke. And she wasn't daunted by that. She just took the larger broken piece and lugged that through the jungle. That's the way. So she was always determined to live up to what Humphrey Bogart's character says about her, and that she always keeps herself looking neat, even when she keeps getting wet and almost thrown off the boat. Speaking of costumes, you see her in a couple of different outfits while she's aboard the African Queen. And this is modeled on one of her dresses, which she wears shades of pastel to stay cool in the hot African sun. So sometimes she wears white, which grows less and less clean throughout the journey. So I'm wearing a long white dress with buttons up the front and a hat similar to the sun hat that you see her wearing, and very minimal jewelry because she's a very simple lady. In the latter part of the film, she's mostly seen wearing a short-sleeved blouse of sorts, which I have replicated in pale shades of blue. Along with the long skirt, which is similar to the style of the time, perhaps a bit slimmer, with black boots for practicality. And at some point she has a scarf, which she wears over her hat to cover her head. You know, on the topic of clothes, I just have to bring up this picture that I came across that I thought was very interesting of Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn arriving at the London airport at the end of the shoot, flying back from Africa. And Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart still look very much their characters, although Katharine isn't as well-dressed as Rose. She's wearing sort of a white linen suit. She was known for she always wanted to wear pants. And she's got a couple of bow and arrows with her, and some sort of safari hats. And Humphrey Bogart is still kind of ill-shaven, wearing sort of a battered hat. So they both look like they've been trekking through the jungle. And then Lauren Bacall is just picture-perfect. She's wearing this beautiful dress. Her hair is styled perfectly. My heels. She's still fashionable. She had to live up to her image. And speaking of costumes, throughout the film, you see Humphrey Bogart in sort of a torn-up shirt, a little scarf around his neck, a captain hat. And that outfit inspired the costume that Dwayne the Rock Johnson wears in the Jungle Cruise movie that came out in 2021. Took them 65 years to make something based on that ride. And they did draw inspiration from the African queen in making it. Would you say in terms of the plot, there are similarities? There are similarities. You've got the proper lady who goes on this wild jungle cruise with this sort of rough man. Similarity right there. That's enough right there. It also goes into some more fantasy-related kind of Indiana Jones type things. Which, speaking of that, it's a very popular genre. There have been so many movies made that are kind of knockoffs of that. But it's always interesting to see some of our sort of modern classics are really just knockoffs of older ones that are better. Yes, they are. So for anyone who enjoys those adventure type of films, traveling through the jungle, this is a really great way to start to look at classic movies. Because this one, I think, is a good entryway for anyone who enjoys the George Lucas and Steven Spielberg adventure movies. And while you might think that modern films would have more accurate racial representation, this movie has some actual depictions of natives played by natives, which is something you don't find in a lot of movies like Indiana Jones. And you see them, they shot them there in Africa trying to sing hymns and doing their native work. But it was funny that they sometimes struggled to get the natives to come because they built this village that they were going to burn down as part of the movie, and none of the natives wanted to show up because they heard that all the movie people were cannibals. And they were afraid they were going to get eaten. Which just shows how easy it is to misunderstand another group that you don't know. Another culture. Exactly. We might think of them as being cannibals, but they think of the English people as being cannibals. It goes both ways. It is interesting to see them in the movie and hear the native music that's used, as well as a brisk Hollywood score, which it features throughout. One of the kind of preconceived notions I think people often have about old movies is that they were so worried about not having things that were objectionable that they never let anything be real or have anything kind of gritty or even some things were a little nasty because people liked that for some reason. And there's just enough of that in this film. There's wildlife. There's one scene involving some leeches, which is a little difficult to watch. Yeah, but if you're missing the bug, creepy-crawly scenes from Indiana Jones, you'll get a little bit of that. There are swarms of mosquitoes and leeches. Oh, yeah, the mosquito scene. I forgot that. That's, I want to say, more dramatic than the creepy-crawly scenes you show in Indiana Jones. Like, those are disgusting, but this is more, it's very intense. And again, it's real. Yeah. So when there's a pit of thousands of snakes, why? But there are mosquitoes around the banks, and you would get leeches on you if you were walking around in this water full of swampy reeds. And there's a tasteful blend of rubber leeches for Humphrey Bogart's sanity and real leeches with the leech breeder. So it's great that we can now see these movies really easily. The African Queen is very widely available. You can rent or buy it on streaming services like YouTube, Amazon Prime Video, Google Play. It's also available on DVD. And you can relive the classics and get the great fun experience of seeing these movies again and hopefully being inspired to watch more great old films. Adventures aren't for everyone, but for you animal lovers out there, if you prefer your animals to be a little closer to home, join us next week as we talk about a charming film all about a very unusual pet. Thank you for watching. Goodbye.