The King and I Fifty years after its premiere, Rodgers biographer Meryle Secrest summed up the musical: The King and I The King and I is the fifth musical by the team of composer Richard Rodgers and dramatist Oscar Hammerstein II. It is based on Margaret Landon's novel, "Anna and the King of Siam" (1944), which is in turn derived from the memoirs of Anna Leonowens, governess to the children of King Mongkut of Siam in the early 1860s. The musical's plot relates the experiences of Anna, a British schoolteacher hired as part of the King's drive to modernize his country. The relationship between
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