The Making of the African Queen or how I went to Africa with Bogart, Bacall and Huston and almost lost my mind
by Hepburn, Katharine
pub. by Knopf, NY 1987     isbn 0-394-56272-0     heavily illustrated with black and white photos - photo credits p.132-133 - a note on the type face used p.134     - - 134 p. .
This book is the story of the making of the movie African Queen. It effectivley begins in 1951 with the beginning organization of making a movie from the 1935 novel written by English author C. S. Forester.
Part of the interest of making this movie is that it was to be filmed on location in Africa, which the actors thought would be very interesting. The principle actors were Katharine Hepburn as Rose Sayer and Humphrey Bogart as Charlie Alnutt. The director was the legendary John Huston.
After organizing themselves in England they flew to Stanleyville (now Kisangani) spent some time in a hotel there. After a few days they moved to their production camp taking the railroad to Ponthierville (now Ubundu) then some 40 miles to Biondo where their jungle camp was built. They filmed on or near the Ruiki River for some time. For other filming they flew to Entebe,Uganda near Kampala. Katharine got permission to take her Congolese young man assistant with her for that part of the filming. (Hepburn noted that the natives were treated much better in Uganda than in the Belgian Congo.) On location they stayed on a boat and filmed other parts of the story. In this place most of the crew got sick. It turned out that their supposedly safe bottled water was compromised. Both Bogart and Huston were not much affected, as their liquor consumption largely kept them safe. The filming and sound crew were also sick. They finished up as soon as possible, then flew to England for the final filming on stages there, including all the shots where they were actually IN the water. They had been warned not to get in African water because of likely infection from bilharzia. By the end of the year the African Queen was finished. Bogart got an Academy Award for the lead in the movie.
This is a delightful read. It offers a minor view into what central Africa was like in 1951. ~ 2014-08-08 ~

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