The King and I (1956 film) O'Hara, who had a pleasant soprano voice, was originally cast, but Richard Rodgers did not agree to the casting. It was Yul Brynner who pressed for Deborah Kerr to play the role. Marni Nixon provided Kerr's singing for the film. Nixon and Kerr worked side-by-side in the recording studio for songs which combined speaking and singing. Nixon would also dub Kerr's singing the following year, for the film "An Affair to Remember". Donald Bogle's biography of Dorothy Dandridge claims that Dandridge was offered the role of Tuptim in partial fulfillment of her three-picture contract with 20th Century-Fox, but that Dandridge
Louis T. Leonowens Louis T. Leonowens Louis Thomas Gunnis Leonowens (25 October 1856 – 17 February 1919) was a British subject who was the basis of a major character in the 1944 novel "Anna and the King of Siam", as well as other fictional works based on it (see below). He was the son of Anna Leonowens, famous as a tutor of King Chulalongkorn of Siam (Thailand). Leonowens later served as an officer with the Siamese Royal Cavalry and founded a Thai trading company that still bears his name, Louis T. Leonowens Ltd. Leonowens was the son of Anna Leonowens "nee" Edwards, an