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Lot Essay
In saturated color and cartoonish forms, Grooms’ Filming The African Queen playfully depicts the movie’s cast and crew as they navigate the treacherous waters of German East Africa in 1914. Adapted from the C.S. Forester 1935 novel by the same name, John Huston’s 1951 film follows Rose, played by Katharine Hepburn, a Methodist missionary eager to avenge her brother’s death at the hands of German forces in World War I.
With the help of a local supply boat captain Charlie (Humphrey Bogart), Rose hatches a plan to convert his steamer, The African Queen, into a torpedo ship to attack a German ship, the Königin Luise, which patrols the border of East German and British territory. Over the course of their eventful voyage down the river toward the Königin Luise, Rose and Charlie fall in love. Though eventually captured by the Germans and sentenced to execution after a foiled attempt to sink the enemy ship, the couple manages to escape to safety when the German ship they are aboard accidentally strikes the sunken The African Queen.
With the help of a local supply boat captain Charlie (Humphrey Bogart), Rose hatches a plan to convert his steamer, The African Queen, into a torpedo ship to attack a German ship, the Königin Luise, which patrols the border of East German and British territory. Over the course of their eventful voyage down the river toward the Königin Luise, Rose and Charlie fall in love. Though eventually captured by the Germans and sentenced to execution after a foiled attempt to sink the enemy ship, the couple manages to escape to safety when the German ship they are aboard accidentally strikes the sunken The African Queen.