Rodgers and Hammerstein Nellie Forbush, and opera star Ezio Pinza starred as Emile de Becque, the French plantation owner. Also in the cast were Juanita Hall, Myron McCormick and Betta St. John. The 1958 film version, also directed by Logan, starred Mitzi Gaynor, Rossano Brazzi, John Kerr, Ray Walston, and Juanita Hall. Brazzi, Kerr, and Hall had their singing dubbed by others. Based on Margaret Landon's "Anna and the King of Siam"—the story of Anna Leonowens, governess to the children of King Mongkut of Siam in the early 1860s—Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical The King and I opened on Broadway on March 29, 1951,
Deborah Kerr 1950 adventure film "King Solomon's Mines", shot on location in Africa with Stewart Granger and Richard Carlson. This was immediately followed by her appearance in the religious epic "Quo Vadis?" (1951), shot at Cinecittà in Rome, in which she played the indomitable Lygia, a first-century Christian. She then played Princess Flavia in a remake of "The Prisoner of Zenda" (1952). In 1953, Kerr "showed her theatrical mettle" as Portia in Joseph Mankiewicz's "Julius Caesar". She then departed from typecasting with a performance that brought out her sensuality, as "Karen Holmes", the embittered military wife in Fred Zinnemann's "From Here to