Anna and the King of Siam (1946) on Netflix
Passed19462h 8mBiographyDramaRomance
Anna Owens travels to Bangkok to tutor King Mongkut's children and brings her son Louis. The King promised her a separate house, but the Kralahome lodges her in the harem.
- Netflix4.0/5
- IMDb7.0/102,867 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes89%
Trailer
Plot summary
In 1862 Anna Owens reaches Siam with Louis, her son, to take up the post of tutor to King Mongkut's children. The King's letter promised her a house of her own apart from the palace, but the Kralahome says she must lodge in the harem. She asks him the next day for an introduction to the King, so that the house question can be settled and her school started. Mongkut tells her that prostration before him is the polite custom; Anna answers that she will give the bow she would give her own queen. The King wants her to live at the palace, where she will be easier to reach, and she meets his 67 children and his many wives. After she refuses a house in the fish market, she opens her school in the palace.
Cast
- Tito Renaldoas Prince Chulalongkorn (as a boy)
- Richard Lyonas Louis Owens
- Yvonne Rob
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Anna and the King of Siam (1946)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- King Mongkut really did write to Washington offering elephants as breeding stock for American elephants; the letter, with gifts, went to President James Buchanan in his last month in office, and President Abraham Lincoln's reply a year later declined the elephants because the latitude of the U.S. made raising them impractical.
SPOILER
Tuptim's torture and burning at the stake in the film is disputed by a great-granddaughter of King Mongkut who also claimed to be Tuptim's granddaughter, and former Prime Minister Anand Panyarachun said this type of execution was never carried out in Siam.- The real Anna Leonowens was Anglo-Indian, raised in India and not Welsh as she claimed, and had never visited Britain before becoming governess in the court of Siam; she was the widow of a civilian clerk and hotel-keeper, not a British army officer.
