Embracing Chaos: Making the African Queen (2010) - full transcript

How about the new picture

you're going over to the
deep, dark continent to make?

Yes. We're going over to Africa,
probably down around Nairobi

and Northern Rhodesia.

Incidentally, we just found
out it was raining there,

so we may have to shoot
it in Scotland. I don't know.

Name of the new picture?

African Queen.

Movies are like souffles.
They either rise or they don't,

and people seldom are
able to predict or tell you why.

The African Queen is an
improbable cinematic triumph,



made against seemingly
insurmountable odds

and comprising a bunch of
disparate, desperate characters

who, saving the movie business,

would probably not even
be in the same world,

let alone the same
room with each other.

There's something special
about the film, immediately.

It's still a film that has an
enchantment about it, it's exciting,

and a lot of it has to do with the
relationship of Bogart and Hepburn,

the way they play
off one another.

NORMAN LLOYD: That's one of the
great charms of The African Queen.

It's played by adults, not kids,
pulling a boat through water.

African Queen is a classic.

It's one of the best films.

It's the sort of film that
is shown constantly.



THEODORE BIKEL:
This is an independent film.

In those days, this was
the time of the big studios,

where either the studios
made it and distributed it

or where were you?

You gotta remember that making
films on location was not the norm.

RUDY BEHLMER: The thought of
going to Africa to shoot a fictional film

with actors and full crews

was not something that
was looked upon as a reality.

STEVEN-CHARLES JAFFE: I don't think anybody
in Hollywood would've ventured to do that

except for John Huston.

He always seemed to have a
feeling for places that were exotic, wild.

NATASHA FRASER-CAVASSONI:
Huston got the big picture.

And in order to make The
African Queen with all its dramas,

you needed to
get the big picture.

NICHOLAS MEYER: I think, when
you watch this movie, there's no question.

They're in Africa. This
is really happening.

And you can just imagine what
was going on outside the frame.

The African Queen had been written
as a novel in 1935 by C.S. Forester.

Forester was a major
popular writer of that time.

He was not a great author, but he was
a very good craftsman and storyteller.

SCHICKEL: He wrote wonderful
books that I loved as a boy

about Captain
Horatio Hornblower.

A very, very complicated,
not to say elusive, character.

In the first place, his
name was not C.S. Forester.

FORESTER: When he
wrote an autobiography,

he wrote it so you could
never tell where he came from.

And the name of Forester was
chosen for him by a local typist

who typed up his first novel.

BEHLMER: The African Queen,
it wasn't a big high adventure

as much as it was the story of
these two incongruous people

on this little 30-foot rig.

It had been published
in 1935, I think,

and then it had been
hanging around Warner's

for a good six or seven years.

BEHLMER: And Bette Davis
was interested in doing it.

LAX: RKO had wanted
to do a version of it

with Charles Laughton and
his wife, Elsa Lanchester.

So now it's 1950.
Warner's had given up on it.

FRASER-CAVASSONI: And
also, Alexander Korda, who said,

"Who wants to see a pair of old people
going up and down an African river?

"You'll be bankrupt."

Well, then enter S.P.
Eagle, Sam Spiegel.

Sam Spiegel was overbearing.

Charm of the devil.

He had no moral conscience.

Spent some time in jail.

And spoke nine languages.

Heavyweight boxer.

Extremely controversial.

He just had two problems,
money and women.

BIKEL: He was convinced

that unpleasantness was what
was called for in a producer.

A producer was
not meant to be nice.

HAMILTON: All these elements
combined in one man is necessary

to be a good producer,
and Sam had them all.

The projects that his
name is attached to,

the pictures that he's made,

he seemed to really love movies
and produce some extraordinary films,

including, just to mention
a few, On the Waterfront,

Lawrence of Arabia, The Bridge
on the River Kwai, of course.

Sam Spiegel had come
to Hollywood with very little.

He did his first
picture, as you know,

Tales of Manhattan,
as S.P. Eagle.

The American eagle, right?

And then later on, of course,
he went back to Spiegel.

But for a while there,
it was S.P. Eagle.

There are people now who say
to me, "That was his real name.

"Spiegel wasn't his real name,"

which is ridiculous, I mean...

He fled the sheriff. He fled
Nazis. He fled everything.

He was chased out of
Berlin because of Hitler

and arrived in San Francisco,

and was put in prison because he
was pretending to be an Egyptian official.

And he was so quick on his
toes. As Kazan said about Spiegel,

"This is a man who could be
dropped naked, without a penny,

"and the next day, he would be
having lunch in the best hotel."

At one point, at a party or a
dinner, he saw John Huston

and asked him, "If
you had your druthers,

"what story would
you pick to make?"

And it's worth noting that all John
Huston's movies are based on books.

Stories. The Maltese Falcon, of
course, Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

Moby Dick or Moulin Rouge.

The Asphalt Jungle and the
remarkable Man Who Would Be King.

They are all based on literary
sources. And at this dinner party,

John Huston apparently
mentioned The African Queen.

BIKEL: Which had the advantage
of having been written so long ago

that the rights were very
easy and very cheap to get.

So, Spiegel says, "Let's
form a company, John.

"I'll do this. I'll make African
Queen with you. I'll get the money."

BIKEL: He secured the
rights of The African Queen,

and then he went
to Bogart and said,

"John Huston is directing
The African Queen for me.

"And he would like you to
star, and I would like you to star.

"Would you do it?"
And Bogart said, "Sure."

Then he said, "What would you say?
Who would be a good co-star for you?"

He says, "You know, I've never
worked with Katharine Hepburn.

"That would be an
interesting combination."

So then Spiegel went
to Katharine Hepburn

and said, "I've got John
Huston directing, Bogie starring,

"will you co-star?" And
she said, "Absolutely."

(CHUCKLES) So, now, he had
absolutely no money to make this film.

Sam Spiegel was not
the financier of the movie.

He rounded up the money.

In those days, with the beginnings
of the break-up of the studio system,

financing was always difficult.

FRASER-CAVASSONI: Money
had fallen through endlessly.

There was Walter Heller, a guy
from Chicago, bringing in money,

and then Spiegel met up with
the Woolf brothers, Romulus Films.

SIR JOHN WOOLF: My brother
was in Hollywood at the time,

and we started two companies,

Romulus Films to produce films,

and Independent
Film Distributors,

which was to distribute films
throughout the world that we financed.

But we found that
it was very difficult

to get really good
independent films.

In fact, we lost on
the various films

that we were able
to get at that time.

And so, we decided that we had
to go into production for ourselves.

And we set up The African Queen

to be made in this
country and in Africa.

It was the time of the
Un-American Activities Committee,

if you remember
Senator McCarthy.

There were a number
of top Hollywood directors

who were unhappy
staying in Hollywood.

So, I asked my
brother to go back there

and see if there
were any projects

that we would be able
to make in this country.

MEYER: John Huston, Katharine
Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart

were all, to a greater or
lesser degree, involved with

what were in the
early '50s perceived as

left-wing or leftist or Communist
ideologies or activities.

The backstory, the context
of The African Queen

really is the political strife
that was going on in Hollywood.

GROBEL: 1947 is when the House
of Un-American Activities Committee

was getting going. They figured
that the film industry was ripe,

because you don't want
Communists in the film industry.

LLOYD: And so many of
these people had to leave.

Others were
prevented from working.

MEYER: Huston, Bogart,
Bacall, other movie stars

who were part of this Committee
for the First Amendment

went to Washington

believing that they were
gonna set everybody straight

on how patriotic they were.

And as Lauren Bacall
said, they really hadn't a clue

the propeller into
which they had walked.

And it's very problematic
within the studio

because everyone fears that if
Bogart, any actor, is tarnished by this,

then it has nothing to do
with what's right or wrong,

it's that the films are
not gonna make money.

And so, there's a great fear that
his luster as a star will go down.

MANN: I think Hepburn was too big of
a star to actually have been blacklisted,

though there was
considerable talk,

and it was in the newspapers that
she was going to be subpoenaed.

KATHARINE HEPBURN: My name came
up because I did a speech about censorship.

That was in the Gilmore Stadium.

And, like a silly, I thought
of wearing a white dress.

And then I thought they'd
call me "The Dove of Peace,"

so I wore a pink dress, and
played right into their hands.

The idea of leaving
town, of going someplace,

and moreover, of having Bogart
and Hepburn play super-patriots

who were going to
do mission impossible

on this rickety little boat to
torpedo the German gunboat

and raise the Union Jack, even
if it wasn't the Stars and Stripes...

All three were very shrewd characters.
They knew what they needed to do,

and what better project
than The African Queen?

LAX: John Huston, for all
his rough-and-tumble ways,

was a very literate
person, very well-read

and had great
admiration for writing.

And one of the people who worked
with him on the adaptation of this

was James Agee, who had written
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

and had established a
career as a very literate writer

about films and
in film criticism.

James Agee was
essentially a disheveled drunk

with a poetic gift for language.

LLOYD: He was a most remarkable
character, remarkable-looking.

He was big, with a great rush of
hair, of which I speak from envy.

His way in with Huston was,
he wrote a LIFE magazine article

called "Undirectable Director."

And then they
struck up a rapport

and a kind of a mutual
admiration society.

It was only a matter of time until
Huston began thinking of Agee

as a potential collaborator
on his screenplay.

And Agee began thinking of
Huston as his conduit to Hollywood.

I said, "Well, how about
doing a picture with me?"

And he said he'd like nothing
better. The first one I did? Why,

The African Queen.

Mr. Allnut.

I'm still right here, miss.

There ain't much of any
other place I could be

on a 30-foot boat.

One of the key things besides
Bogart and Hepburn, of course,

is this extraordinary script by
James Agee from the Forester novel,

and the mixture of this romance,

which is blooming,
and adventure story.

Agee gave The African
Queen a lot of its early spark.

He consciously
modeled the characters

portrayed by Humphrey
Bogart and Katharine Hepburn

on his own mother
and his own father.

What an absurd idea.

"What an absurd idea.
What an absurd idea."

Lady, you got 10
absurd ideas for my one.

And I think it's what gave it some
of its magic and its special charm.

GROBEL: Agee was a big smoker.

And they actually had a regime
where they went to bed at 10:00.

They didn't drink that much.

HUSTON: We'd get
up early in the morning,

play a couple of sets of tennis,

have breakfast
and then go to work.

Work through until lunchtime,

lay off for a couple of hours,

and then work again
for two or three hours.

And another two or
three sets of tennis,

dinner, and after
dinner we'd work.

Jim was forever
bringing more pages.

He was doing an
enormous amount of work.

And I didn't see how he could
manage to turn so much work out.

And then I discovered
that he was working at night

and getting very little sleep.

GROBEL: And at one point,
John left for a little while,

and was called back because
James Agee had a heart attack.

I remember, after he'd had his
heart attack, we were alone in a room,

it was two or three days
after the heart attack,

and Jim said, "Give
me a cigarette."

And I said, "No." I said, "Jim,
it wouldn't be fair to the doctor."

He thought about that,
nodded, "That's right."

And that was the last
time John talked to him.

A year and a half
later, Agee would die.

Smite the Amalekites, O Lord.

Smite them, hip and thigh.

BERGREEN: The great
shame or tragedy was

that he was so gifted
in so many forms

that if he had lived longer,
we would've had more Agee,

more of Agee's
wonderful writing.

MEYER: Before Huston and
company departed for Africa,

the screenplay,

the ending of the movie
was still being hotly debated.

FRASER-CAVASSONI: When
John Huston did The African Queen,

it was to really shoot Africa,

and apparently his obsession
was to shoot an elephant.

Katharine Hepburn,
who was a control freak,

was desperate to talk about
her role with John Huston,

who perversely gave her
a tour of his hunting gear.

She was furious.

And Bogart, who knew
Huston pretty well, just said,

"That's the monster for you."

John Huston had the idea of
doing the whole thing in Africa.

And he said it was
going to be so easy

because we could make a
mock-up of the African Queen

for the main scenes, on a raft,

and just drift along the Congo.

We were going to start
and do the film in Uganda,

in Lake Victoria, which
was British territory.

And then Huston went out there,

and I was on another
film. I didn't go.

And he said he didn't like
that location. It was too pretty.

Too much like
Maidenhead and so on.

So, he disappeared
for a couple of weeks

and we wondered
what had happened,

whether he'd been eaten
by crocodiles or something.

GROBEL: When John
got to the first location

before Katie Hepburn
and Bogie arrived,

he was told that
the food was scarce.

And so, they got a hunter,
who said he was a hunter,

to go hunt game, bring in
monkey, bring in pig or whatever.

And every day they were eating.

And so, there was
always food in the pot.

There was always
meat. And then one day...

The soldiers came and collected him,
and we didn't know why for a few days,

and then discovered that

during that previous period
villagers had been missing.

And this was why. It was the
very same meat for the pot.

And this guy was hung. He actually
was hung for doing this a few days later.

It's absolute bullshit.

ANGELA ALLEN: When we flew
to Africa for The African Queen,

we all left London from what
was then Northolt Airport.

The men are in coats and
jackets and tweed things,

and we're going
from England to Africa,

which is searingly hot.

HAMILTON: I think we stopped
in Rome, we stopped in Khartoum,

and landed in Nairobi.

And much to John's fury, all his
artillery was confiscated by Customs.

His ambition was, of
course, to shoot an elephant.

And it was explained to him that
there were only five licenses a year

that were issued, and there
was this five-year waiting list,

and obviously, that
didn't suit John at all.

I think he met a Belgian
at the bar that night,

and John told him that he was
very disappointed with Kenya,

that he wanted to
shoot an elephant,

and the Belgian said, "You
want to go the Belgian Congo.

"There you can shoot
anything, whatever you like."

Next morning, he had vanished.

He'd taken a plane and had
gone off to the Belgian Congo.

It was an incredible situation.

Bogart, Katharine Hepburn jumped
on various planes and arrived in Africa

to be told that Huston had
gone off to shoot an elephant,

which Katharine Hepburn said
was an utterly piggish thing to do.

And about two days later, he returned.
He said, "Kid, I found the location.

"It's really very interesting.
I think you'll like it."

And it was right
in nowhere land.

I mean, it was called Biondo, this
place, and it was beyond anywhere.

It was two days' Jeep
ride from Stanleyville.

There were two principal locations
in Africa where the film was made.

One was the Ruki River
in the Belgian Congo,

which is a very small river.

They wanted narrow banks,
and the water was pitch black.

BEHLMER: Because of
this underground foliage

that had rotted and
so forth and so on.

And somehow, this
appealed to John Huston.

What a frightfully strong smell.

What smell?

The river.

It smells like
marigolds. Stale ones.

It does, huh? Not a very
good smell for a flower.

JAFFE: The fact that
he went on location

to Africa to make
The African Queen

obviously had an effect
on everybody there.

The performance of Bogart
and Katharine Hepburn

would be night and day if they
filmed this on a back lot somewhere.

They were in the real place,

and you can't fake that stuff.

HAMILTON: We were in
the middle of a leper colony,

no hotels, and now we've
got to put the crew up.

And the art director, Wilfred Shingleton,
said, "Well, we got to build one."

And we built,
sort of this shape,

cabins, cabins, cabins
all the way around.

We put up about 40 people.

All made of bamboo,
and rattan on top.

To go to bed, you had
to pull back the flap,

when we were in, as
I said, the dormitory,

try to get your shoes off,

try and leap into bed before
something came with you,

and pull the net, 'cause
you had to sleep under nets.

HAMILTON: You couldn't
shoot on the African Queen

because it's only about 16-foot
long and about five-foot wide.

By the time you get
the camera in there,

which you'd do occasionally,

where do you put the lights?

The solution to that was

another pontoon with
bits of the African Queen.

You had the stern,

so that if you had Katie
driving and Bogart sitting there,

you could be the camera and
there was room for the lights.

BEHLMER: And they had an African
Queen. They bought an old boat,

an old riverboat there that
was actually built in 1912,

and they rechristened
it the African Queen.

HAMILTON: But now, a
Technicolor camera has loads of gear.

There are Makeup
and Hairdressing,

they've got their terrible
little boxes, plus the props.

We haven't got
room for them on that,

so we built another pontoon,

which has all the crew
sitting on that are not working.

(CHUCKLING) So, you had this parade going
down the river every day and shooting.

And then we had to pull
Miss Hepburn's personal loo.

HAMILTON: In her contract,
apparently, she had a private loo.

And so, we had to improvise.

Which wasn't easy because
the river turned around.

And then navigating
all the floating flotillas.

HAMILTON: And tail-last
Charlie is Katie's loo.

HEPBURN: John
Huston, who was doing it,

didn't know a hell of
a lot about river traffic.

The current would
take us careening down.

We'd get swept
way over to one side.

And everybody would say,
"Duck!" And we'd lie flat.

Otherwise, we would have been scraped
right into the crocodile pit or something.

It's really quite easy,
isn't it, Mr. Allnut?

Well, you gotta
learn to read the river.

We got not very
far around the river.

On the first bend, Katie's
loo got hooked up on the trees,

and so I yelled and shouted
to the natives behind to chop it

and we'll pick it
up on the way back.

Unfortunately, Miss
Hepburn is very regular,

and at 10:00, she
said, "Where is my loo?"

I then said, "Katie, I'm terribly
sorry, we had to abandon it."

She didn't take
very kindly to that.

And I couldn't see
why she couldn't do

what the rest of the
crew did, which was

to go whenever we were alongside
into the bushes somewhere.

We had no other sanitation.

Well, then, I'll just
go up in the bow

and hang off the anchor chain.

You can stay back
here in the stern

and do whatever you have to.

Just so long as we don't
look, it won't matter, huh?

BEHLMER: Now, Huston says, "Okay,
I want you to understand one thing.

"We have to shoot
this film in Technicolor."

Now you may say,
"Well, this is a big deal?"

This is 1951.

Most theatrical
films at that time

were still being made
in black-and-white.

The Technicolor
camera was a monster.

HAMILTON: It has this huge
blimp to be soundproofed.

So, it's a box about four-foot
tall and about two-foot wide.

And inside this great soundproofed
box, three films ran through the camera.

You've got to open it all up
and reload three reels of film.

It required an immense
amount of light.

There ain't two hours
of daylight left, miss.

We can go a long way
in two hours, Mr. Allnut.

SCORSESE: There's the color in
the film, which is still very, very rich.

Something very special
about that true Technicolor.

And of course, the movie
was shot by Jack Cardiff,

who was probably the greatest
of all Technicolor cameramen.

People know him now for the pictures
he made with Powell-Pressburger, like,

of course, The Red Shoes
and A Matter of Life and Death

and Black Narcissus.

I said to the producer in London
that I wanted to take two lamps,

two lamps to Africa with
me, with a baby generator.

And he said, "Jack, we're
going to Africa, in the sun.

"You don't need
lamps in Africa."

I said, "Believe me, sometimes
you do, and it also helps

"to put a bit of
light in the shadows

"because the light is
very strong," and so on.

So I was allowed to
have my two lamps.

Ironically, the first two weeks
of shooting on African Queen,

it rained every day. But we
were able to shoot every day

because I had my two lamps.

What are you doing?

I ain't doing nothing, miss.

Well, get out this instant.

BEHLMER: When we talk about
Bogart and Katharine Hepburn

being the only
actors going to Africa,

we had Lauren Bacall, who
was Mrs. Bogart at the time,

going, not to be in the
picture, but to be with Bogie.

And, of course, according to
all accounts, she was a big help.

Where you are going to, Africa,
Rhodesia, Nigeria, did you say?

Nairobi. Nairobi, yeah.

Do we have, still, cannibals,
wild animals, stuff like that?

I don't think so.

Well, there are
wild animals, honey.

Yeah, well, yeah, sure, I suppose
there are crocodiles, all kinds of...

I'm not too familiar with
the animal life of Nairobi.

I bet you he even
promised you a leopard skin.

You know, I'll
bet you he didn't.

How about that?

Nothing but mink. She
wears nothing but mink.

BRENDA SCOTT ROYCE: She
kind of made her own role there

as the camp cook and nursemaid

as one after the other of
the crew members got sick.

They suffered dysentery
and a few got malaria,

and one of the crew members
had an attack of appendicitis.

And Bacall would
take care of them,

help them write
their letters home,

do whatever she could.

And as she had done on
Treasure of the Sierra Madre,

she began also to help out
cooking some of the meals.

It is one of the great, and
I think fully truthfully so,

one of the great
romances of Hollywood.

WARREN STEVENS:
She was devoted to him.

Of course, I saw arguments,
but not serious arguments.

That's where the
"Miss Bacall" comes in

because when they
were having an argument,

he would always
call her "Miss Bacall."

But they were devoted to
each other and the children.

Lauren Bacall,

even though much his junior in
terms of years, and it is often seen as

that he was sort of the
father in the relationship,

but as time went on, particularly
when his alcoholism and his lifestyle

started to wear more on him, she
became more of a caretaker to him

and became his strength.

You see that, of course, with
all the stories on African Queen.

African Queen is one of my favorite
Bogart movies for a number of reasons.

One, it's him, later in life, taking
on this very different character

than he's ever played, and
doing it with great aplomb.

Huston, among others,
propagated the notion that

Bogart was an ordinary guy
if you saw him on the street

or at a party or something,

but then when the camera came
on, something magical happened.

STEVENS: Bogart was
a marvelous movie actor.

I never saw him on stage, but he
knew what to do with that camera,

knew how much and how little,

and the camera loved him for it.

"Could you make a torpedo?"

Bogie, of course, put on this
big act that he was a tough guy.

I mean, he told me at the
beginning about makeup.

He said, "Jack, you see this face?
It's taken me many years to get this,

"all these lines
and crinkles in it."

And he said, "That's
the way I want it.

"Don't light me up and make
me look like a goddamn...

"I want to look like
this." So, I did it.

DAVIS: He never seemed
to carry his script around.

Most actors hang onto
their scripts like directors do,

like drowning men
hanging onto a lifeboat,

but he never seemed
to have a script.

But he was always word-perfect.

I never saw him
fluff a take, ever.

He was very much of a gent, very
well born, frightfully good manners.

MAN: Not a tough guy.

Not at all. The exact opposite.

The exact opposite. But he
was one of the few actors...

He really liked his profession. He
really was proud of being an actor.

He was doing what
he wanted to do.

HAMILTON: Bogie
was always amenable.

He'd ask you,
"When's my next shot?"

And I could figure
that out perfectly well.

"We won't need you for
a couple of hours, Bogie."

And he would, very quietly,
not, as you would have today,

a motorboat come and take him back
to his caravan and so on and so on,

he would go and
make himself a bed

and go to sleep,
then you'd kick him.

(CHUCKLES) And always the
same outfit and that terrible cap.

It didn't matter
how dirty he got,

that was part of the routine.

URSINI: Humphrey Bogart
and John Huston, the director,

were made for each
other in many ways.

Their attitudes towards life and
their attitude towards their work

was very similar. They were
hard drinkers, hard livers.

On Sunday afternoons, I
was always sleeping one off.

John was much more wild.
Bogie was more domestic.

He didn't mix into
the Hollywood circuit.

Of course, I didn't see
much of Bogie in Hollywood.

Usually we were kicking around
the world, some other place.

He obviously is greatly responsible
for making a star out of Bogart, I think,

with The Maltese Falcon,

which was, of course, his
own first full credit as director.

But he also wrote High
Sierra, the Raoul Walsh film,

made the same year
at Warner Brothers,

and those two were the
breakthrough pictures for Bogart.

So, really, in a way, they
helped make each other, I think.

LAX: Huston loves adversity.
One of the things he loved about

shooting Treasure of the Sierra Madre
is they were up in the badlands of Mexico,

and he loved the tough
circumstances for it.

SCORSESE: You're gonna find evidence
of chaos in the making of many great films.

If the shoot goes smoothly
and everybody gets along,

usually the movie's
not very good.

(LAUGHS)

LAX: Well, African
Queen was that times 10.

They're there in what was then
the Belgian Congo, now Zaire,

way upriver, and
Huston is almost crowing.

He says, "We have
every known disease here

"and almost every
known type of servant."

And he's thrilled about that.

HUSTON: I used to go
out shooting in the mornings

before we started
shooting on the picture.

I used to go out with
a rifle in the mornings,

and Katie took a
very dim view of this.

She said, "John, this just doesn't
go with the rest of your character.

"You're not a murderer, I know,

"and yet you go out and
shoot these beautiful animals."

And I said, "Well, Katie,
you don't really understand,

"and you wouldn't
unless you came with me

"and experienced it yourself."

And she said,
"All right, I'll come."

I can't think why she went.

Presumably, to discourage him.

GROBEL: As they're walking through
the jungle, there's this giant grumbling.

They were that
close to the elephants

they heard the
grumbling in the stomachs.

And they realized they were
downwind up until this point,

and the wind changed.

And all of a sudden, there
was a herd of elephants

they were within
15, 20 yards of,

and one of the bull
elephants started to bellow.

(MIMICS BELLOWING)

Turned around and
they started to charge.

And John realized, "Oh, my God, I
almost lost our star, our leading lady."

It was very irresponsible.

In any case, from that moment on,
Katie was a veritable Diana of the hunt.

TONY HUSTON: In actuality,
Dad never shot an elephant.

People often think that he
was a braggart and inflated,

but he was much
more subtle than that.

First of all, he thought it would
be a crime to shoot an elephant.

But no, it wasn't a
crime, it was a sin.

And this is a nonreligious
man saying, "It's a sin."

This is a man who
refused to be bored.

In his early childhood, he was
diagnosed with an enlarged heart.

He was basically dying.

His doctors would say, "You
can't move. You can't do anything."

And all he wanted to do
was get out. He was a kid.

He would look out his
window and he could see

that there was a river
down a distance away.

And so, what he did, he waited at
night and he snuck out the window.

What he didn't know the first
time he jumped in the river was

that the river turned
into a waterfall.

I went underwater for a
little while and then came out

and discovered
it was great sport.

And he had some kind of epiphany
that, far from avoiding danger,

if he went right for it, somehow
it would turn into nothing,

which worked really well for him

but was dangerous
for other people.

(BIRDS SQUAWKING)

He loved to tell stories
of beautiful losers.

Everybody in John
Huston's movies

are trying to do
something and failing.

SCORSESE: He kind of recognized
the strange unconscious urge,

that part of humanity
which makes you wanna fail,

and has defeat in
your own makeup.

It's like man is his
own worst enemy,

and you can feel that in
all of Huston's pictures.

MEYER: Whether it's finding gold

in The Treasure
of the Sierra Madre

or stealing jewelry
in The Asphalt Jungle,

or Peachy and Danny in
The Man Who Would Be King

going off to be
kings in Kafiristan.

And that doesn't work, Ahab
going after the whale, nothing works.

SCORSESE: And he doesn't seem
prejudiced about it. He doesn't say,

"This is a bad thing in this
character. It's just part of being alive.

"It's being a human being."

African Queen, which is
almost an upbeat picture,

the way that he takes them
to the brink of total disaster

is extremely unusual.

What you being
so mean for, miss?

A man takes a drop
too much once in a while.

It's only human nature.

Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we
are put in this world to rise above.

We had a famous scene
between Bogie and Katie,

and John said, "Fine, print it."

And she said, "But
you weren't watching."

"But I was listening." "No, you
weren't watching," said Katie.

And this went on.

TONY: Dad usually
knew, almost intuitively,

whether the shot
had gone right or not

by the way that
the actors sounded.

What he would do is turn away,

listen to the beat of the lines.

We've gone through
all the rehearsals,

we've gone through the setup,

Dad would just listen to
the music of the words,

and then at the end of the shot,

he'd say to his
cameraman, "Did you get it?"

And if the cameraman
said, "Yes, sir," that was it.

DAVIS: His gold
standard was take one.

Now, most of us as
directors do two or three takes.

We give notes to the actors in
between, but Huston did none of that.

He did a quick rehearsal
and said, "Let's go for it."

He'd shoot it, do the
cover and say, "That's it."

Problem, I think today,
where we do so many setups,

they had setups, they
locked in with that camera.

They did camera moves, but
they locked in, and once they had it,

you had the world around them.

You could feel the flies, you
could feel the humidity, the heat.

Put the actors in
there, and I quite...

Once they got it set, how
many takes could you do?

The uniqueness
about his direction

was that he would often let
the actors work things out.

He would tell them, "Go
ahead and do what you want."

And then he tweaked. And
he would tweak in such a way

that the person wouldn't even know
that they were being given an instruction.

In The African Queen, very famous
situation with Katharine Hepburn.

She doesn't like Charlie Allnut.

She doesn't like this character

that her character doesn't like,

and she's playing it condescendingly
and angrily and whatever

for the first three
days they're shooting.

In other words, you are
refusing to help your country

in her hour of need, Mr. Allnut?

Well, I wouldn't
put it that way.

Just how would
you put it, Mr. Allnut?

GROBEL: And John is picking this
up. He says, "This is not the kind of

"relationship that's gonna
develop into a good relationship,

"and that's what has
to happen in this movie."

And so, he calls her aside
and he says, "May I talk to you?"

He said that he thought that
she ought to be more of a lady.

And she took umbrage by that
because she felt she was a lady.

She says, "Well, what lady?"

And he says, "Have you ever
seen how Eleanor Roosevelt,

"who she always thought
of herself as an ugly woman,

"but when she visited people, she
always had this smile on her face?"

You see, he kept
it really simple.

And Katharine Hepburn in her book,
The Making of the African Queen, says

that is the single greatest piece
of direction she has ever received.

She got the character.
It was immediate.

She understood who
Rosie was supposed to be.

And that's genius. That is
what a great director does.

See, the key thing, as you
know, is really trust with the actors.

And you gain the
trust of the actors,

you trust them, too,
and they feel protected.

They feel they've got a
safety net. They feel enriched.

You could try anything.

I had a moment of weakness.

Oh, now, if you're feeling weak,

a day or two more here
won't make any difference.

Oh, no. We'll go on.

Thank heaven for
your strength, Charlie.

MEYER: And Katharine Hepburn, a woman
who had invented herself several times

over the course of her career.

She had been labeled
"box office poison"

and had come back with
The Philadelphia Story.

But she'd worn out
her welcome again.

She was now gonna corner
the market on spinsters.

She was a unique individual.

I don't know anybody like her.

Can you think of one soul

who is in her area
who was comparable?

People always talk
about Summertime,

David Lean's charming
film that he made in Venice,

as a first great middle-age
role, but it's really, I think,

a few years earlier
with African Queen.

This is the moment when she
separates herself from her contemporaries

and really becomes

the great American
institution that she became.

HUSTON: We were in
a delightful part of Africa.

It was new and
exciting and it was a joy.

There were a few instances of
people getting ill, some malaria, even.

On the whole, it was a
very pleasant experience.

HAMILTON: Most
pictures are fun to work on.

I mean, the conditions are...

Everybody's come out of the war.

All the crew had
all been in the war.

They'd all slept in
much worse conditions,

so we had no problems.

ALLEN: One night, I remember
the clapper boy coming and saying,

"Coming home tonight with the
African Queen, it was shipping water."

Overnight, it did
fill up and sink.

ALLEN: So, next morning
when we all go to work,

there is the African Queen,
lying on its side in the mud,

and the entire male unit and
anybody else who was around

were up there and
around the trees with ropes.

HAMILTON: We had to get 30 of
the crew, including Bogie, to help.

Pulling it back upright.

Have you ever heard of
a jigger? Yeah, well, don't.

Jiggers were sort of little
worms that get between your toes.

Bogie gets a jigger.

And so, he showed it to the doctor
and he said, "Can you take it?"

And he said, "No, no, no. You
must not take it. It's an operation.

"Because if you pull it out
with tweezers, the head stays in

"and then you get blood poisoning,
et cetera. The house boy will do it."

It was somebody in the
crew who was East African,

and therefore knew
about this sort of thing.

HAMILTON: The thing is that
he holds the back end of the jigger

and he puts a hot cigarette
and the jigger goes...

And that's the moment
when you've got to pull it out.

We thought it was
absolutely fascinating.

Bogie was lying on his stomach,

and he couldn't know
what was happening behind.

And a great shout of triumph
when the jigger came out,

and Bogie had another...

Among countless other
problems, the soldier ants.

One night, as Hepburn and Bacall
were walking back to their tents,

they started screaming and
they walked in and they realized

that everything was just
blanketed with soldier ants.

They march like an army, about four
deep, and they keep their distances.

And if they go through a henhouse
or something, the hens are gone.

They were in the clothing. They
were just blanketing the floor.

The art department, very
sensibly, had the natives dig

a trench all the way around,

and if they were ever to
attack, we would counterattack.

We would set the
kerosene alight.

(CHUCKLING) I remember that
night of everybody on the warpath,

going up burning
and moving things.

They knew that they had to finish
up at that location rather quickly

because there was no
getting around the soldier ants.

The second location
in Africa was Uganda.

ALLEN: To do the scene of the
school and the burning, et cetera,

that was all done in Uganda.

And from there, then we
went up the Murchison Nile.

(LAUGHING)

MEYER: Murchison
Falls and Lake Albert,

that was where
the Konigin Louise

was supposedly
patrolling the lake.

Animals aplenty, that was one of
the reasons for going to Lake Albert,

because on the banks
there are really big buggers.

Waiting for their supper, miss.

And when you wake them up, they
come crashing down into the water.

It's quite impressive.

And also the bumps on the boat,

because suddenly
hippos come along.

ALLEN: I was writing away, and
the hippo rose underneath the boat.

John always tells the story.

"She just went on writing,
never even reacted."

Well, he sort of lifted us up and he
went down again and we went down.

Oh, yes, the hippos were there.

The baboons were on the far
side, but they didn't attack us.

No, they just used to come out and
watch every day as we were shooting.

Down, miss. ALLEN:
I doubled for Katie,

taking the boat when they're on
the hill, the Germans, shooting down.

That's me steering
the boat down there,

and I went with the
captain of the Lugard,

who gave me one go-round
through the base of the thing,

where all the crocodiles are lying on
the bank with their mouths wide open,

and very large ones. You
can't go left. You can't go right.

You've got about a
foot on either side.

And I was, of course, having
to be down under the tiller.

You know, if I had gone aground,

we didn't really have anything
to push us off with, except...

And I don't even think we
did have a bower on the boat.

But it was good fun.

Now, there ain't no use
of us both going to do it.

Now that I've had
time to study it,

I can plainly see
it's a one-man job.

ROSIE: You couldn't be
more right, Charlie dear.

Well now, Rosie, I'm
glad you agree with me.

When the time comes, I'll
put you off on the east shore.

You'll wait there for me
while I attend to the Louisa.

Certainly not. You're
the one to be put ashore.

Me? BERGREEN: The
screenplay was actually written

by Agee and by John Huston.

And at the end, because they were
unable to find a satisfactory ending,

another Hollywood screenwriter
named Peter Viertel...

Was brought over to Africa briefly
to work on the revision of the script.

In the original C.S. Forester
novel, they don't succeed.

My father was a pessimist.

And he didn't think
things should go right.

The African Queen
gets swamped and sunk.

There we are,
that's the end of it.

The book ends it differently.

Is it a happy ending?

Do they get blown up?

Do they get the
German boat or not?

Do the torpedoes work?

I mean, there's a lot of
different ways you can go with it.

FRASER-CAVASSONI: And as
Peter Viertel quoted William Wyler,

he said, "William Wyler said,

"'Everyone comes to
me with a good beginning,

"'but what's hard is
finding a good ending.'"

MEYER: Sam Spiegel
definitely thought

that they should
somehow pull this off.

Huston, being true to
his beautiful losers' ethic,

was probably adamant that
no such thing should happen.

Don't think he would've had them
hung, but I think he would have had them

possibly drowning
when they hit the water.

I think until they
were actually rolling,

it didn't occur to any of
them that this was a comedy.

And I think the
person who realized it

with the keenest
appreciation for it was Huston.

Once he perceived the chemistry
between Bogart and Katharine Hepburn,

I think the reason that the
ending got rewritten in Africa

was because of that,
and he just thought,

"No way. Can't kill them,
can't kill Rosie and Charlie."

You know, you fight a
lot to make a good picture,

but the greatest enemy
is your own preconception.

You have to go with what
could change and what's there.

I think it's very tempting to take it
easy and just rely on what you know.

You can do well, but
you have to fight it,

and that's why in unlikely
assortments of people,

you find them lugging at
three-strip Technicolor camera

through the Congo
and getting malaria.

I mean, it's an
extraordinary thing.

Don't you understand, Charlie?

I wouldn't want to go
on to Kenya without you.

Then the river ceases to be.
They're now coming into the marshes

for the great shot of coming
out and revealing Lake Albert.

ALLEN: We had a wonderful
carpenter called Harry Arbour,

who John loved, who had to
build this extraordinary ramp

and get the... Which was a
very heavy camera in those days,

the three-strip Technicolor
camera. And this was John's idea.

I mean, it was his idea to get the
shot, and he managed to build it

and shoot it.

HAMILTON: The Lugard was
luxury compared to what we had,

because there were cabins.

I think some of the electricians
had to double up and triple up.

But anyway, we all fitted in.

CARDIFF: The ship we
were on, the filter on the water,

which we drew from the
lake that we were shooting on,

wasn't there. It
had disappeared.

We were drinking pure lake water

with the droppings of
hippos and crocodiles.

So they got absolutely every
single disease known to Africa.

We were all sick.
Very, very sick.

I mean, all kinds of dysentery,
all kinds of vomiting, everything.

There was an incredible story

of Katharine
Hepburn being filmed

playing the organ, and
then there was a bucket

where she was throwing
up every five minutes.

She was vomiting between
takes. It was terrible.

And Jack Cardiff's concern that
she was looking green in Technicolor.

And if you look at
the restored version,

you can tell what was shot in
Africa and what was shot in England

because Kate
became so dehydrated

that her face literally
started to sink in.

HEPBURN: The big joke was on me

because I was rather
self-righteous, and I thought,

"Well, I'm traveling with two
drunks. I better not drink anything."

So, I drank lots, lots of
the water, lots of the water.

MAN: Everything in that...

John never got sick.

Huston never got sick.
Bogie never got sick.

Because they never touched
water, they only drank whiskey.

And I nearly died
of the dysentery

'cause the water was poison.

They finished up in Africa and then
the cast and crew moved on to London

where they filmed all of the
scenes that take place in the water.

I wonder how much
damage we've done.

Let's get the water out and see.

ROYCE: The scenes with Robert
Morley were also filmed in London.

Wretched little man. What
indifference. He's a Canadian.

Doesn't he realize
he's in this, too?

And all of those people
on the German gunboat,

we have Theodore Bikel
and we have Peter Bull

and the others, that
was all shot in England.

(SPEAKING GERMAN)

Was there a woman with you?

It was three scenes, one
was on board this gunboat.

It shows the interior
that was built.

The next one was when we were
about to hang them on the deck.

And then in the water.

DAVIS: It was built on the lot
outside the Worton Hall Studios.

It was built on stilts
about 15 feet high

because they had to get above
trees so the deck was against the sky.

BEHLMER: They have to
shoot a lot of stuff in England,

which is soft-pedaled
in terms of the public.

Some people say 50 percent of
this movie was shot in England.

Not sure that it was that much.

But, for example, the
water was so poisonous

where they were
shooting in Africa

that no scene in which any of the
actors or crew had to be in water

could be shot in
Africa. That was deadly.

So all the scenes that involve
water or Bogart or Hepburn in water

were shot in the UK.

(COUGHING)

I swallowed half
the river that time.

There was then various
mock-ups of the African Queen,

both stern and aft
against bluescreen.

BEHLMER: Meaning that they
would matte in the background.

And originally you did have some

distortion on the
Technicolor prints

because you had bleed.

That happened in the
early bluescreen years

for a while with color
that was there at the time.

(LAUGHING)

And the boat was on rockers.

And during the storm
we used dump tanks

with these huge gallons
of water pouring down.

And there were rain
heads over the tank.

BEHLMER: And you did
have a miniature African Queen

that was probably, I don't know,

it looks to be about five feet.

That was used a lot for going
down the rapids and so on

where you just
cut to the long shot,

but you'd inter-cut that
with them on the craft.

And you'd see all of this water
coming over them with the bluescreen,

with Bogart and
Hepburn at the tiller there.

There's a lot of those shots.

(SCREAMING)

The famous leech scene
was filmed in England.

(EXCLAIMING)

The little beggars.

I said to Bogie, "Surely,
you're this great, strong man.

"Just take a leech
and put it on you."

MAN: Yeah. They
were repulsive-looking.

So, he said, "Not me."

Huston, in his perverse way,

wanted real leeches to be used.

I don't suppose anyone who ever
saw that movie can forget those leeches

and Bogart's reaction to them.
Completely convincing tremble.

He had that reaction
quite naturally.

You know, he brought
out a leech to show him,

even though the leeches he put
on eventually were like rubber ones.

And before Bogie had
to climb into the water,

they were stuck to his back.

They just fall off.

He was so bony, every move,
nothing would stick to him.

Finally, they got something that
stuck, but it wasn't a real leech.

ROSIE: Salt, salt.

The scene is, he
jumps out of the water

and everybody gets
rid of the leeches.

But one look from Miss Hepburn means
that he's got to go back in there again

because you haven't
finished pulling the boat.

And they do one more
shot. And John is over there

and he's whispering to Bogie,

and I hear John saying,

"Bogie, this bitch wants
you to go back into the water

"and you got these leeches.
They're going up your ass.

"She's a mad bitch."

He says, "Look,
John, cut out the crap.

"I've got three expressions.
Which one do you want?"

MEYER: When The African Queen was shown
to the distributors after it was finished,

they hated it.

They said, "Oh, my God. An unshaven
Humphrey Bogart. He looks awful.

"And Katharine
Hepburn looking her age."

And they just said,
"We can't sell this."

They made certain suggestions
to the Woolf brothers,

who basically told
them to take a hike.

LEWIN: John Woolf said, "No, I
employed John Huston to do it this way

"and I'm not going to
agree to any changes

"unless he wants to make them."

After that, there was
no more to be said.

MEYER: Sam Spiegel was
so convinced about his movie

that he was determined that it
should qualify for Academy Awards.

In order to qualify for
an Academy Award,

the film must be shown in a theater
in America, at least, for one week.

And everybody thought that
was just another piece of folly.

We're talking about a booking
at the 21st of December

at this one theater.

Actually, it was two days late.

They were as bewildered as
anybody else by the size of the success,

not only commercial
but also critical.

BEHLMER: Most of the reviews and most
of the audience response was very positive.

INTERVIEWER: Do you remember
the first time you saw the African?

Yes, yes. At the Loew's Commodore
on Sixth Street, Second Avenue.

My father took me. Sunday
afternoon. Audience loved it.

(CHUCKLES)

LAX: And Bogart's acting was...

There was all sorts of talk that there
would be an Oscar nomination for him.

He was up against
tremendous odds.

There was Brando in
Streetcar Named Desire.

There was Fredric March
in Death of a Salesman.

Montgomery Clift for
A Place in the Sun.

And he thought, "There's no way, in
this company, that I'm going to win."

LAX: Bogart was happy enough,
I think, to get the nomination,

but he hated the whole idea,
all of the stuff you had to do

to promote yourself during it.

MEYER: And there they
were on the night of the Oscars,

riding with Richard
Brooks to the ceremonies.

Brooks had said to Bogie, "What
are you going to say if you win?"

He said, "I'm not going to win. I don't
have anything to say. Leave me alone."

And Brooks said, "Just,
you know, in case you win.

"What would you say?"

He still doesn't want to
have anything to do with it.

And Richard Brooks said, "Let
me tell you what to do if you do win."

LAX: He says, "You're
gonna walk down, slowly.

"You're gonna get there, you're
gonna take it, you're gonna look at it."

He says, "I want you to look at it for a
minute. It's gonna seem like an hour.

"Take a whole
minute looking at it.

"And then look up and
say, 'It's about time.'"

Bogart says,
"Great. I'll do it."

But he doesn't expect to win.
So, they call out his name...

ROYCE: And Lauren
Bacall's voice could be heard

throughout the Pantages Theater,
screaming, "You got it. Go up there."

And he went up and was
apparently so flustered

that he couldn't remember the
remarks that he had planned to make.

LAX: He thanks everybody
in his life. He starts to cry.

And he goes off. And Brooks
said, "What happened?"

He said, "I'll tell you what.
When you get yours, you do it."

MEYER: Peter Viertel had

a sufficiently amazing
experience on The African Queen

that he wrote his best novel,
White Hunter Black Heart,

about preproduction on The African
Queen and about John Huston,

whom he calls John
Wilson in the book.

BEHLMER: The picture
they were making was not

The African Queen in the novel.

But of course, everybody
who knew anything about this

thought, "It's The
African Queen."

At the end of writing it, Viertel
showed the manuscript to Huston

and said, "If there's
anything that you don't

like, I'll take it
out. I'll change it."

Peter Viertel was waiting,
wondering what was he gonna say,

because it's not what you'd call

a rhapsodic depiction
of the Huston character.

MEYER: Huston, of course,
immediately read the book

and then proceeded to
make suggestions to Viertel

on how to make him
even less flattering.

I think it was a pretty
accurate portrayal

of Huston, of Huston's
relationship with Spiegel.

And that became Peter
Viertel's masterpiece.

It's quite a wonderful novel.

And there was eventually
a movie made of it,

where Clint Eastwood played
John Wilson and also directed it.

White Hunter Black Heart.

FRASER-CAVASSONI: I mean,
after such an incredible film,

why did Huston and Spiegel fall
apart? 'Cause it was over money.

When the reviews came
out for The African Queen,

they were sort of,
"Best film ever,"

and then they were on good
terms when Bogart won his Oscar

for The African Queen.

And then Spiegel kept on
saying, "There's no money.

"Darling, there's no
money," and everything.

GROBEL: Spiegel did some
maneuverings with the finances.

And John's manager told
him that, "This could get tricky,

"and you could end up
going to jail over this."

And John said, "I want nothing to do
with it. Dissolve my company with him.

"I want nothing to do with it.
I don't want any more money.

"Whatever I'm getting paid,
get me out of this quickly."

And he did.

African Queen goes on to make a
ton of money and Spiegel gets it all.

And John regretted that. He said,
"I could've been a very wealthy man

"if that happened."

Huston was horrified
and really angry to hear

that Spiegel's then-wife was wearing
diamonds at Les Ambassadeurs.

And Spiegel's second wife
said, "It's all The African Queen.

"It's all The African Queen."

CARDIFF: I'd just finished
a film called The Magic Box,

which was a high-prestige film.

We worked on it on the
basis that we all got half salary,

and the rest we'd get
from the box-office receipts.

And as it happened, it was a very
nice film, but it was a financial flop.

I don't know why.

So, the next film was African Queen,
and when Sam Spiegel, the producer,

said, "Jack, how about taking a little
less salary and get a piece of the film?"

And I said, "No, Sam. No, thanks
very much. I've done all that."

And I turned it down.

I mean, I would've been
a millionaire because

even 1 percent or 2 percent
of the takings of that picture,

'cause it goes
on year after year.

Everybody loves African
Queen. It's just one of those films,

just two people on a boat,
and yet it's done in such a way

that you like these
characters in the end.

You see how they
could come together

from completely different
parts of the cultural world.

Ain't nobody in Africa
except yours truly

can get up a good head of
steam on the old African Queen.

I'm looking at it now, and it's
more than, what, 60 years later,

but it feels fresh in a new way.

I think the beauty of the film
and the sense of how it was made,

craftsmanship, has become
even more impressive.

A great little film which
became a masterpiece.

MEYER: This is a
compulsively watchable movie

with two great, great
cinematic performances

and a terrific story, and you
care deeply and passionately

about what happens

to Charlie and Rosie.

Rosie. Rosie!

It has a kind of an aura about
it, and you don't really remember

a particular event so much. It's just
the chemistry between these two stars,

and you wind up using
words like "magic,"

which don't even mean that much,

but if you see the movie,
well, they make sense.

(STOMACH GROWLS)

Ain't a thing I can do about it.

We know it worked in 1951.

We know that people flocked
to see this and were delighted.

But the fact's that here we are,
now, and it still works for people.

SCORSESE: I think because of the
relationship of Bogart and Hepburn,

the humor between
the two of them,

the sexual attraction
between the two,

and the fact that
they're not matinee idols,

this is something
that will never date.

CARDIFF: I know in my heart, the
photography was pretty straightforward.

There was nothing
very, very artistic,

nothing creative, nothing to
say, "Oh, isn't that wonderful?"

Just ordinary photography.

But the fact that The African
Queen is one of the most-seen films,

it's one of the
most popular films,

everyone loves African Queen.

Ipso facto, you photographed
The African Queen? Wonderful.

They give me credit
which I don't really deserve

because it's an ordinary
bit of photography.

LAX: When my son
was six years old,

this may have been the
first Bogart movie he saw.

And there was a period of about
two months where he just watched it

'cause he loved the adventure
in it. He loved these characters.

And it's so interesting that
a six-year-old would take

the same pleasure that I
did watching these folks

because the story is so great.

It doesn't pretend to be highbrow.
It's not a highfalutin movie.

It's a movie about two losers
who get together and win.