The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958) on Netflix
Approved19582h 38mBiographyDramaWar
Gladys Aylward, a working-class Englishwoman, is rejected as a missionary to China. She pays her own way overland to a remote village, where Jeannie Lawson runs an inn for muleteers.
- Netflix4.0/5
- IMDb7.2/105,875 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes100%
Trailer
Plot summary
Refused by the China Missionary Society because she has had only ordinary schooling, Gladys Aylward works as a domestic in England and saves to reach China on her own. Her employer, Sir Francis Jamison, writes to Jeannie Lawson, a veteran missionary in the remote county of Yangcheng who needs an assistant. Gladys takes the Trans-Siberian Railway and then travels by mule. Lawson keeps an inn for muleteers, serving hot meals and Bible stories, and Gladys learns Chinese from Yang, the cook. Captain Lin Nan, commander of the garrison, is skeptical of her. The Mandarin of Yangcheng gives her the post of foot inspector, enforcing the ban on binding girls' feet.
Cast
- Peter Chongas Yang
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Sean Connery was considered for the role of Captain Lin Nan, and his screen test survives on the film's DVD.
SPOILER
The real Captain Lin Nan was Chinese, and Gladys Aylward found it insulting that the film made him half-European; she also resented the invented love scenes, having never kissed any man, and an ending that has her leave the orphans even though she worked with orphans for the rest of her life.- Mark Robson planned to shoot the film in Taiwan, but the talks with Chiang Kai-shek's regime broke down, so 20th Century Fox built its Chinese villages on the backlot at MGM British Studios Borehamwood, with location scenes shot in Snowdonia, North Wales.
- The inn of the title was really the Inn of the Eight Happinesses, named for the Chinese belief that eight is an auspicious number, and the film renamed Aylward's adopted children along with many other characters and places.
- The flight to safety shown in the film really happened: in 1938 Gladys Aylward led almost 100 children 100 miles to safety from Japanese invaders.
- The Inn of the Sixth Happiness was the last film appearance of Robert Donat, who died on 9 June 1958, over five months before the film's premiere.
- A gold-painted Buddha statue made for the film's set now stands in the Italianate village of Portmeirion, North Wales.
- The film gives Aylward the Chinese name Jiān Ài, but the real missionary was known as Ài Wěi Dé, a Chinese approximation of "Aylward" meaning "virtuous one".
