Deborah Kerr her long-time friend Robert Mitchum; a mama's girl in "Separate Tables" (1958) opposite David Niven; and a governess in both "The Chalk Garden" (1964) and "The Innocents" (1961) where she plays a governess tormented by apparitions. She also portrayed an earthy Australian sheep-herder's wife in "The Sundowners" (1960) and appeared as lustful and beautiful screen enchantresses in both "Beloved Infidel" (1959) and "Bonjour Tristesse" (1958). Among her most famous roles were Anna Leonowens in the film version of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical "The King and I" (1956); and opposite Cary Grant as his shipboard romantic interest Terry McKay in
Anna Leonowens the Commissariat in Perth. The Leonowens family left Australia abruptly in April 1857, sailing to Singapore, and then moving to Penang, where Thomas found work as a hotel keeper. In or before the first week of May 1859, Thomas Leonowens died of "apoplexy" and was buried (7 May 1859) in the Protestant Cemetery in Penang. His death left Anna Leonowens an impoverished widow. Of their four children, two had died in infancy. To support her surviving daughter Avis and son Louis, Leonowens again took up teaching and opened a school for the children of British officers in Singapore. While the