The Inn of the Sixth Happiness be seen on the DVD. Since the film's release, the filmmakers have been criticised for casting Ingrid Bergman, a tall woman with a Swedish accent, as Gladys Aylward, who was in fact short and had a cockney accent. Likewise, the two male leads, British actor Robert Donat and Austrian actor Curt Jurgens were not even Chinese (though Jurgens' character is said to be half-Dutch). Singer Bill Elliott sang the hit song The Inn of the Sixth Happiness with the Cyril Stapleton Orchestra. The film was based on the biography "The Small Woman" (1957) by Alan Burgess. The real Gladys Aylward
The Inn of the Sixth Happiness to China were skipped over in favour of the plot device of her employer "condescending to write to 'his old friend' Jeannie Lawson", and Aylward's dangerous, complicated travels across Russia and China were reduced to "a few rude soldiers", after which "Hollywood's train delivered her neatly to Tsientsin." The names of many characters and places were changed, even when the names had significant meanings, such as those of Aylward's adopted children and of her inn, named for the Chinese belief in the number eight as an auspicious number. Captain Lin Nan was portrayed as half-European, a change which Aylward found