African Queen, The, ranks among the most popular romantic adventure films in American motion-picture history. The movie was released in 1951. Humphrey Bogart won the Academy Award as best actor for his performance as Charlie Allnut, a hard-drinking river trader in Africa. The film co-starred Katharine Hepburn. John Huston was the director and wrote the screenplay with the noted American writer and critic James Agee. The story was based on the adventure novel The African Queen (1935) by the English author C. S. Forester.
The African Queen takes place in central Africa in 1915, shortly after the start of World War I. Rose Sayer (Katharine Hepburn) is a middle-aged unmarried missionary stranded in an African village after it was raided by German troops. She is rescued by Charlie Allnut, a Canadian who operates a river launch. Allnut plans to sit out the war with a store of alcohol and cigarettes. But Sayer talks him into sailing down the river to attack a German gunboat that blocks the advance of the English forces.
Most of the movie is devoted to the struggles of Rose and Charlie to sail the launch down the river. As they face disease and difficult natural obstacles, their early mutual dislike gradually turns to love. After terrible hardships, the pair reaches the open water. They rig the launch with torpedoes and plan to ram and destroy the German gunboat. However, a sudden storm swamps their vessel and they are captured by the Germans. Charlie and Rose are about to be hanged as spies when Charlie asks the captain to marry them. Just as the ceremony ends, the gunboat rams the partially sunken river launch and the torpedoes destroy the gunboat. Charlie and Rose escape.
The African Queen won the affection of audiences through its blend of adventure and comedy and the chemistry between Bogart and Hepburn. Hepburn wrote a 1987 book about her experiences during the filming, called The Making of the African Queen, or How I Went to Africa with Bogart, Bacall and Huston and Almost Lost My Mind. American author Peter Viertel wrote White Hunter, Black Heart (1953) about Huston during the making of The African Queen. Clint Eastwood filmed the Viertel book in 1990.
