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,
Anna Leonowens reforms were goals established by his father. By 1869, Leonowens was in New York City, where she opened a school for girls for a brief period on Staten Island, and began contributing travel articles to a Boston journal, "Atlantic Monthly", including "The Favorite of the Harem", reviewed by "The New York Times" as "an Eastern love story, having apparently a strong basis of truth". She expanded her articles into two volumes of memoirs, beginning with "The English Governess at the Siamese Court" (1870), which earned her immediate fame but also brought charges of sensationalism. In her writing, she casts a