Cleopatra (1963), The Wizard of Oz (1939), Gone with the Wind (1939), The African Queen (1951). What do these wildly different films have in common? All were notoriously difficult films to make, all for different reasons. The African Queen didn’t have difficult stars like Cleopatra. It didn’t have a meddling producer like Gone with the Wind and it didn’t have technical issues to overcome like The Wizard of Oz. What The African Queen did have was a notoriously difficult on-location film shoot led by the ultimate adventurer, director John Huston.
Katharine Hepburn’s experience filming The African Queen alongside co-star, Humphrey Bogart, was so difficult in fact that it warranted an entire book detailing her ordeal. Hepburn’s book, The Making of ‘The African Queen,’ or How I Went to Africa with Bogart, Bacall, and Huston and Almost Lost My Mind, describes the challenging conditions that she faced while filming in the Belgian Congo. Hepburn relished the opportunity to go to Africa and film on-location; however, the experience ended up being more challenging than she ever could have imagined. Hepburn famously suffered from that classic Oregon Trail Game disease–dysentery.
During the filming, Katharine Hepburn repeatedly chastised Humphrey Bogart and John Huston for drinking so heavily during the shoot. To make her point, she drank large amounts of the local water, which was contaminated. During the opening scene where Hepburn’s character, plays piano at the church, a bucket had to be placed nearby (but off screen) so Hepburn could get sick between takes. Bogart and Huston wisely (?) opted to survive solely on liquor, baked beans, and canned asparagus in lieu of the local water and cuisine. Bogart was in disbelief that Hepburn, despite how ill she was, seemed to also be in her element and having the time of her life–despite having a run-in with a black mamba in the outhouse, causing her to have to run to some trees to relieve herself.
Humphrey Bogart’s wife, Lauren Bacall, went along on the shoot and did her part by playing a den mother type role. She helped cook and clean for the cast and crew. When she wasn’t cooking, the locals treated the cast and crew. Bacall was quoted as saying that they learned very quickly to not ask what they were eating.
As for Humphrey Bogart himself, he loathed the entire experience. He couldn’t believe that John Huston would drag them to that hell hole. He hated everything: the temperature, the food, the water, the humidity, all the venomous insects and creatures, you name it. He refused to allow Huston to cover him in real leeches for a scene. Bogart insisted on using rubber leeches. Huston wanted real leeches and even went as far as to hire a leech breeder with actor leeches. Eventually, Bogart was allowed to film the scene with rubber leeches, and then a close-up of the leech breeder’s chest with his actor leeches was used in lieu of Bogart.
In The African Queen, Katharine Hepburn plays Rose Sayer, an English missionary working in 1914 East Africa. At this time in history, East Africa was occupied by the Germans during World War I. Rose is at a small village with her brother, Samuel (Robert Morley), spreading the word of their Methodist religion. Humphrey Bogart plays Canadian (!) Charlie Alnutt, the owner and operator of “The African Queen” steam boat which drives up and down the river delivering supplies and mail to the villages. He warns Rose and Samuel that the Germans have declared war on Britain and they’re in danger. Samuel dies soon after from disease.
Needing to escape, Rose has no choice but to leave with Charlie on “The African Queen.” A majority of the film deals with Rose and Charlie having to not only get along, but work together to navigate the treacherous river. Rose and Charlie are polar opposites, personality-wise. Rose is prim and proper, whereas Charlie is a bit rough around the edges. Rose disapproves of Charlie’s heavy drinking. Charlie has to get used to having not only another person onboard; but a woman onboard. He does his best–making tea for Rose and offering her the covered part of the boat to sleep under.
Much of the fun of The African Queen is watching Rose and Charlie interact. Eventually they come to grow closer, perhaps having either found common ground with each other, or genuinely finding the other person’s eccentricities charming. Charlie and Rose have a particularly exciting evening one night when they work together to build torpedoes out of supplies on the boat, and then use the torpedoes to fight the Germans. They are victorious and end up embracing and sharing a romantic kiss. From then on, Charlie and Rose are now a romantic couple.
The ending of The African Queen is the climax when Rose and Charlie have to confront the large German gunboat, the Luise. The Luise is the only thing that stands between them and freedom. Rose and Charlie decide that the only way they have even a slight chance is if they ram “The African Queen” into the Germans’ boat. However, a storm hits and “The African Queen” capsizes. Rose and Charlie are separated. Eventually Charlie is found by the Germans and brought onboard the Luise. The Germans accuse Charlie of espionage. Charlie confesses, thinking that Rose has drowned and now he has nothing to live for.
However, Rose appears, having been recovered and brought aboard. She proudly announces their plot to sink the Luise. The Germans are not amused and declare that both Rose and Charlie should be executed for being British spies. Thinking he’s about to die and being in love with Rose, Charlie asks the captain to marry them before they are hanged. In one of the oddest wedding ceremonies ever featured in a film, Charlie and Rose are married as nooses are placed over their necks. Suddenly, the Luise hits something and starts to capsize. It seems that the hull of “The African Queen” is sticking out of the water and that is what the Luise struck. Charlie and Rose are able to escape their nooses and swim away from the wreckage in marital bliss.
Humphrey Bogart notably won the Best Actor Oscar in 1952, beating the likes of Marlon Brando for A Streetcar Named Desire, Montgomery Clift for A Place in the Sun, Arthur Kennedy for Bright Victory, and Fredric March for Death of a Salesman. I don’t know that I would have given Bogart the Oscar over Brando or Clift, both of whom are tremendous in their respective films. That’s not to say that Bogart isn’t great in The African Queen, he is fantastic; however, I think that he was awarded for the wrong film. Bogart, hands down, should have won for Treasure of the Sierra Madre a few years prior–and he wasn’t even nominated! It is easy to suspect that Bogart’s win for The African Queen might have been a nod to his entire career, versus that single performance.
