Hollywood plans to have another go at Anna Leonowens' account of King Mongkut's court have reopened debate.
Date: 8th November 1998
Publication: The Nation (Thailand)
Section: Sunday Focus
Writer: Manote TripathiIt is very doubtful whether that prim Victorian governess understood, much less paid any credence to, the concept of reincarnation. But Anna Leonowens, or rather her account of life at the court of King Rama IV in the late 19th century, has been ''reborn'' several times. And yet another rebirth is in the offing; a remake of her story which 20th Century Fox wants to shoot on location in Thailand. Laurence Blender's draft script for Anna and the King was rejected by the National Film Board on Oct 15 on the grounds that it was factually inaccurate and potentially insulting to the Royal family. An appeal was lodged and Paothong Thongchua, a lecturer on SoutheastAsian art history and textiles at Thammasat University, was given carte blanche to rewrite the script. Tomorrow the Board meets to consider his revised version. So what's all the fuss about? Well, the main bone of contention is how the film will portray King Mongkut (Rama IV), one of the most respected monarchs in modern Thai history.
And the Board has good reason to be cautious. Many Thais feel that a bad precedent was set by two previous Hollywood treatments of Leonowens' story. In an article published in the April, 1957, edition of The Journal of the Siam Society, historian Alexander B Griswold notes: ''King Mongkut is hardly known in the West except in the grotesque caricature popularised by Rex Harrison in Anna and the King and by Yul Brynner in The King and I''.
Yul Brynner won an Oscar for his role in that musical comedy (based on a Broadway musical in which he played the same part) but the film so offended Thais that it was banned here. ''[However] Hollywood and Broadway are only partly to blame,'' Griswold argues, ''They have thrown in some ill-chosen humour and some antics that are a shock to anyone who knows the courteous manners of Siamese ladies and gentlemen -- but these additions are more peccadilloes. The real fault lies in the two books they ultimately spring from -- The English Governess at the Court of Siam and The Romance of the Harem -- both written by Mrs Anna Leonowens.'' Although Griswold does praise Leonowens for her ''lively'' prose, ''sharp eye for landscape'' and interest in all aspects of Siamese life -- and even tolerates the ''profusion of small errors'' and ''muddled topography'' in the book -- he remarks that she never really mastered the Thai language and that her best passages on Buddhism were ''slyly plagiarised'' from other writers. Then he really lets rip: ''Hovering on the fringes of reality, often escaping into make-believe, she had an acute sense of melodrama and absolutely no sense of proportion ... If her self-portrait is flattering, her portrait of the King is quite the reverse; and it is all the more misleading because it is made to look like an impartial and carefully-balanced assessment of a complex personality ... I cannot say how far she was the victim of malicious gossip or misunderstanding, and how far she herself originated the accusations [about the King's character faults].''
In her preface to The English Governess, Leonowens writes: ''In the following pages I have tried to give a full and faithful account of the scenes and the characters that were gradually unfolded to me as I began to understand the language, and by all other means to attain a clearer insight into the secret life of the court.''
Asked for his reaction to this passage, Wutdichai Moolasilpa, a historian at Srinakarinwirot University, said, ''Well, if her books contain the truth, that begs the question: why is her version of events not backed up in Singapore newspapers of the time? Or in Dr Dan Beach Bradley's Bangkok Recorder? That seems strange to be. It's very likely that what Anna wrote didn't necessarily happen.''
To support his point, Wutdichai picked out a scene in Chapter XII of The English Governess in which Leonowens describes a dungeon where a concubine has been locked up (''Floor it has none, nor ceiling, for, with the Meinam [Chao Phya River] so near, neither boards nor plaster can keep out the ooze'').
''That has proven to be non-existent,'' says Wutdichai, ''It would have been impossible to build an underground cell at the Grand Palace, because the land is so muddy; water would have leaked into the cell.''
Paothong, main Thai consultant on the Fox film, bemoaned the fact that Blender had relied on Leonowens' books as the sole source for his draft script.
''I told him [Blender] that it wouldn't be appropriate to make a film from his script. But after four revisions, he and I are satisfied with the outcome. It's been turned into a whole new story which couldn't possibly damage anyone mentioned in the text.''
According to Paothong, Blender's version opened with King Chulalongkorn (Rama V; whom Leonowens had taught when he was still a young prince) paying a visit on his old tutor in London. The King drives up to Leonowens' house in a black Daimler which is flying the Union Jack. He is unaccompanied. Parking the car, he walks to the door and knocks.
Paothong says his first reaction on reading this was one of shock. ''The King wouldn't have gone around alone; there'd be an entourage. And he wouldn't have knocked on the door himself. Nor would the car be flying the Union Jack only; the [Thai] Royal standard would have been alongside it. Anyway that meeting didn't take place at her house, but at a fine hotel in London.''
(Earlier, I'd asked Wutdichai if he thought that Leonowens had deliberately fabricated details. In his reply, he mentioned that same meeting between Leonowens and King Chulalongkorn: ''After King Rama V visited Anna in London, there was a lot of conjecture as to what the two had discussed. Since then many historians have tried, in vain, to find out what exactly he talked about. But rumour has it that he asked her why she had written such things. Anna is supposed to have replied that she had done it simply because she needed the money.'')
In another scene in Blender's draft which disturbed Paothong, King Mongkut is sitting in a bathtub in the Inner Court receiving a massage. Later he performs tai chi in the palace garden.
''Blender didn't know that Siamese kings didn't practise tai chi because that's a Chinese martial art; nor did he know that bathtubs weren't in common use during the Fourth Reign.'' So, for the tai chi Paothong substituted ram phatchaa, a Siamese ritual involving dance steps which has associations with the Royal family and Buddhism.
Other scenes featuring the King were drastically rewritten too. In the original, he was shown beckoning one of his sons with the honorific jao (you); this was corrected, in the interests of authenticity, to look jaa (dear child).
At another point in the draft script, the King was depicted playing khlee (a Siamese version of polo). Pointing out that King Mongkut had never played khlee in his life, Paothong altered this scene to show Phra Pinklao, the King's brother, playing the game while the King looked on.
Other minor alterations included changing the name of one of the King's consorts from Im to Ueng, her correct name.
The final version has now been submitted to the National Film Board. A beaming Paothong says the fact that he had complete control over the revisions was a golden opportunity to clear up, once and for all, the misunderstandings caused by errors in Leonowens' books.
''I love my country. And I think it would be a self-defeating move for Thailand if the production crew had to move to Malaysia or Bali [because of inability to get approval from the Board]. Then we would lose all control over the script.''
On Wednesday, a similar view was expressed by Pitak Intaravithayanant, the PM's Office minister responsible for tourism. ''Having them film it here will mean we can have a thorough look at the script and urge them to cooperate in changing unsuitable parts,'' he said.
Paothong says the script is as close to the truth as he could make it. ''My job is done. All I can do now is to hope, and pray, that Blender will use the fourth, revised version -- no matter what happens.''
History with a Twist
1862 (March 15): Anna Leonowens arrives in Siam from Singapore on board the steamer Chao Phya. She is accompanied by her son (''Boy''), her ''Persian teacher'' (Moonshee) and ''her gay Hindostanee nurse'' Beebe .
1867 (July 5): Anna Leonowens departs from Bangkok on board the same steamer.
1868 (Oct 1): King Rama IV passes away.
1870: The English Governess at the Siamese Court being Recollections Of Six Years [sic] In The Royal Palace At Bangkok, a book by Anna Harriette Leonowens, is published in London.
1873: The Romance of the Harem, a book by Anna Leonowens, is published in Boston. Alexander B Griswold notes: ''She [Leonowens] was already far away from Siam when she came to write The Romance of the Harem, and her store of pertinent facts was running low. She relied more heavily on plagiarism, transposed and doctored up to look like eyewitness accounts or direct quotations from reliable observers ... the method she used sparingly in the first book is carried so far in the second that it gives itself away.''
1943: Anna and the King of Siam, a book by Margaret Landon, is published in New York. Griswold notes: ''Mrs Landon reduced them [Leonowens' two books] to a single volume and more coherent form ... She refuses to vouch for the accuracy of Anna's account; it is, she says, a romance with a historical setting, not a history; it is 'probably seventy-five per cent fact and twenty-five per cent ficti on based on fact.' ''
1946: Anna and the King of Siam, a movie starring Irene Dunne and Rex Harrison (in his Hollywood debut), is released. Directed by John Cromwell. Screenplay by Talbot Jennings and Sally Benson. Based on Landon's book about Leonowens (who is renamed Anna L Owens in the movie). Won Oscars for cinematography (Arthur Miller) and art direction/set decoration.
1952: Siamese Harem Life, a reissue of The Romance of the Harem, is published in London. Griswold finds it ''even more disconcerting'' than the stage and screen musical comedies and notes that it is ''illustrated with drawings that are a fantasy of every seraglio from Turkey to China and with an introduction by Miss Freya Stark containing the following description of Anna among the Court ladies: 'Harassed and indomitable, she loved the women in their royal slavery and trained a new and happier generation of children to carry light into the future: and few people can have wielded a stronger influence in that corner of Asia.''
The King and I, a musical comedy starring Yul Brynner is staged on Broadway. Writing about this Rodgers and Hammerstein production (based on Landon's book), Griswold notes: ''In the musical comedy and the film [with Kerr/Brynner] the truth loses out completely, and King Mongkut presents the astonishing appearance of Rousseau's Noble Savage with a bow to Gilbert and Sullivan. These trifles are intended more to entertain than to instruct, but it is disconcerting to find them advertised as if they were documentaries.''
1956: The King and I, a Hollywood musical comedy based on the stage play and starring Deborah Kerr and Yul Brynner, is released. Directed by Walter Lang. Screenplay by Ernest Lehman. Won Oscars for best actor (Brynner), art direction/set decoration, costumes, and scoring.
1998: 20th Century Fox announce plans to film Anna and the King starring Jodie Foster and Chow Yun Fat.
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