The idea for The King and I was born in 1950 when British actress Gertrude Lawrence’s manager, Fanny Holtzmann, was looking for a new project for Lawrence. She was sent Margaret Landon’s novel, Anna and the King of Siam, a semi-fictionalized account of the time that Anglo-Indian school teacher Anna Leonowens spent in Bangkok, Siam (modern-day Thailand), giving the children and wives of King Mongkut a Western education during the 1860s. (Landon’s novel itself was based on two Anna Leonowens-authored memoirs, The English Governess at the Siamese Court and Romance of the Harem). Holtzmann
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The King and I guide sections
