The King and I (1956 film) The King and I (1956 film) The King and I is a 1956 American musical film made by 20th Century Fox, directed by Walter Lang and produced by Charles Brackett and Darryl F. Zanuck. The screenplay by Ernest Lehman is based on the Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II musical "The King and I", based in turn on the novel "Anna and the King of Siam" by Margaret Landon. That novel in turn was based on memoirs written by Anna Leonowens, who became school teacher to the children of King Mongkut of Siam in the early 1860s. Leonowens' stories were
Louis T. Leonowens Louis T. Leonowens Louis Thomas Gunnis Leonowens (25 October 1856 – 17 February 1919) was a British subject who was the basis of a major character in the 1944 novel "Anna and the King of Siam", as well as other fictional works based on it (see below). He was the son of Anna Leonowens, famous as a tutor of King Chulalongkorn of Siam (Thailand). Leonowens later served as an officer with the Siamese Royal Cavalry and founded a Thai trading company that still bears his name, Louis T. Leonowens Ltd. Leonowens was the son of Anna Leonowens "nee" Edwards, an