Movie Moments: #74

The African Queen (1951)

Comment:

A Humphrey Bogart, and general cinema, classic from what Bill Collins used to call The Golden Years of Hollywood.  A funny thing, Bogart keeps calling Katherine Hepburn “old girl” and she responds lovingly; I call my wife “old girl” and I get “Don’t 'old girl' me.”  I guess you have to be Bogie to get away with it.  He collected a Best Actor Oscar for this pic, the only Oscar nod he ever received.

Synopsis:

During WW1, a gin swilling riverboat captain in Africa is persuaded by a strait laced female missionary to travel downriver to attack a German warship.

Quote:

Charlie: All this fool talk about The Louisa. Goin' down the river...

Rose: What do you mean?

Charlie: I mean we ain't goin' to do nothin' of the sort.

Rose: Why, of course we're going! What an absurd idea!

Charlie: What an absurd idea! What an absurd idea! Lady, I may be a born fool, but you got ten absurd ideas to my one, an' don't you forget it!

Link:

Rumbling stomach scene:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mA-X90TpnHU

Trivia:

From IMDB:

To show her disgust with the amount of alcohol that John Huston and Humphrey Bogart consumed during filming, Katherine Hepburn drank only water. As a result, she suffered a severe bout of dysentery.

Sources claimed that everyone in the cast and crew got sick, except B0gart and Huston, who said they avoided illness by essentially living on imported Scotch. Bogart later said, "All I ate was baked beans, canned asparagus, and Scotch whiskey. Whenever a fly bit Huston or me, it dropped dead."

According to cameraman Jack Cardiff, Hepburn was so sick with dysentery during shooting of the church scene that a bucket was placed off camera because she vomited constantly between takes. Cardiff called her "a real trouper." In "The Making of  The African Queen (1951)” " Hepburn said she rushed for the outhouse only to find a black mamba inside, then ran to the trees.