Anna Leonowens eccentric Victorian female traveler". The novel was adapted as a hit musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein, "The King and I" (1951), starring Gertrude Lawrence and Yul Brynner, which ran 1,246 performances on Broadway and was also a hit in London and on tour. In 1956, a film version was released, with Deborah Kerr starring in the role of Leonowens and Brynner reprising his role as the king. Revived many times on stage (with Brynner starring in revivals until 1985), the musical has remained a favourite of the theatregoing public. The humorous depiction of Mongkut as a polka-dancing despot, as well
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