My Romance with Movies: From the 1950s: The Inn of the Sixth Happiness

1958 War Biography

From 20th Century Fox

Directed by Mark Robson

Starring

Ingrid Bergman

Curt Jurgens

Robert Donat

Athene Seyler

Peter Chong

Burt Kwouk

Tsai Chin

Moultrie Kelsall

Ronald Squire

When I first saw this film I found it a most happy experience... entertaining, full of hope and inspiration, love and kindness. I just watched it again, after a couple of decades, and found that very same happy experience. For me here was one of those biographical (based on the life of...) movies I so love, characters and situations I could root for and another superb Ingrid Bergman performance.

Alan Burgess wrote a 1957 biography, The Small Woman, on Brit Gladys Aylward who became a missionary in China and wound up involved in Japan's 1937 invasion of China. The screenplay was written by Isobel Lennart (East Side West Side, The Sundowners, Love Me or Leave Me, Funny Girl).

One might be struck how the tall Bergman would be cast in a role based on the life of someone called The Small Woman. The real-life Gladys Aylward was amused and downright cranky about the film's inconsistencies. More on that later. I have noted in these many pages how I don't get why so many liberties are taken in telling the stories of real-life people. In the case of Ms. Aylward, it didn't bother me as much I guess because prior to this film, I had no idea who she was.

She apparently knew from early on that she that she wanted to do missionary work in China. Although she had no specific training in that field, she was a devout Christian whose principles lent themselves to such work.

The story opens with her troubles in getting to China. She hasn't enough money for the fare but offers to put a little down and make regular payments after she gets a job. A senior missionary (Kelsall) takes pity on her to the degree that he gets her a job as a domestic in the home of a veteran explorer (Squire) who has contacts in China.

First, of course, she must win over her employer which she is able to do as he gains respect for her. He knows of a missionary in China, Jeannie Lawson (Seyler) who manages a rundown missionary for traveling merchants with the aid of a cook Yang (Chong) and she needs more help. Soon Bergman is on her way, not an easy or pleasant journey, but she is a person who sees the glass as half full.

The inn's mission is to provide food and sleeping accommodations for muleteers. Yang tells them Bible stories. Bergman is welcomed within the walls of the missionary but outside of it she is feared and treated poorly. Others scream foreigner at her and make an effort to make her life unpleasant.

Circumstances improve when she meets Captain Lin (Jurgens), a half Chinese-half Dutch commander of the local garrison. Although he strongly suggests she leave China because of impending troubles from the Japanese, he is secretly glad she is determined to stay. Before long they have fallen in love.

Bergman and Jurgens

She wins over the local Mandarin (Donat) and becomes his foot inspector. She is in charge of enforcing the government's order to eradicate the long practice of foot binding.

She becomes immensely popular in and out of the missionary. The people in her village and some other villages call her Jenai (the one who loves people). Before long she becomes a Chinese citizen.

She comes to the aid of starving prisoners and secures the release of many of them. She adopts several local children. She is forceful but also gentle and trusting.

The Mandarin comes to respect and trust her as he does no other with the possible exception of Captain Lin.

Tragedy comes when Jenai's beloved head minister Jeannie dies after a crumbling balcony collapses on her. Now Jenai is fully in charge.

Lin, now a colonel, returns to the village to advise of imminent danger. Bombs rain down on the city, killing the beloved Yang before the Mandarin evacuates the city. Li (Kwouk), a former prisoner and dear friend of Jenai's, comes to help her with the 50 children living at the mission. The colonel advises she must leave but she responds that these are my people and I will live and die for them.

Soon she and her beloved children are facing a bitter winter and an increasing loss of the prospect of food. For the first time Jenai is seriously considering leaving but to go where? Then a letter arrives stating that she and the children and any others can make a 100-mile journey where trucks will take them to a safe mission in the interior. They have three weeks before the trucks are no longer available.

Bergman and Donat

Shortly before embarking on the journey, two important things occur. First, 50 more children arrive from another mission and Jenai must take them with her. Then Col. Lin tells her that the roads they were expected to walk along are under Japanese control. So the decision is made to take the journey over rugged mountain ranges.

Jenai and Lin are both skeptical but she is also very determined to succeed. He tells her that he knows she will return to him. As long as I'm alive, I will love you, he tells her.

And so begins the most famous part of The Inn of the Sixth Happiness. It's the 100-mile, tiring, treacherous journey of a courageous and loving woman to bring 100 children to safety. They experience a sad death, face danger as they cling to a rope over a perilous river crossing, avoid Japanese soldiers, freezing weather, hunger, sickness and that imposing mountain range.

Most viewers, I should think, after being invested in this story for 158 minutes, realize a swelling heart and happy smile for the triumphant finale as Jenai and her long column of children march through cheering crowds and up the steps to the mission as they sing This Old Man. You remember it...

This old man, he played one

He played knick-knack on my thumb

With a knick-knack paddywhack

Give a dog a bone

This old man came rolling home.

Jenai is offered a chance to come to the mission with the children but she looks back over the mountains and says I am going home... to her colonel, no doubt. Trying to locate him could have been the plot of a sequel.

And now about the real Gladys Aylward and her complaints. Even before filming began, this squat British woman was most unhappy that Bergman would play her. Aylward noted that Bergman was 5' 10", beautiful, blonde and Scandinavian and most inappropriate to play her.

She disliked that the film rushed through her journey to China which was far more perilous than the filmmakers showed. What she really went through was a far cry from a convenient recommendation of a kindly employer. She also made known that she thought turning the rude Russians on the train with her into a comedy routine was ridiculous.

She didn't understand why they changed the name of the mission, which was known as the Inn of the Eighth Happiness, owing to the traditional lucky factors the Chinese associate with the number 8, and based on love, virtue, gentleness, tolerance, loyalty, truth, beauty and devotion.

In real life she was given the Chinese name of Wei De, meaning virtuous one, and not Jenai.

Most upsetting to Aylward is the phony love story invented between her and Col. Lin. While she claims they were extremely fond of one another, they not only didn't have a romantic relationship, she said that in her entire life she never so much as kissed a man.

More egregious to her-- and to plenty of others, including, of course, many today-- is the casting of Caucasian actors Jurgens and Donat as Chinese. Neither of these actors is convincing in this aspect. Aylward was maddened to learn that Col. Lin was even turned into a Eurasian when he was, in fact, not.

While I would agree with the upsetting nature of the above paragraph, I also wonder exactly what Chinese actors would have filled these roles in 1958. I am not aware of any famous enough to have starring roles in an American film. And with the inclusion of a love story, it would have been more problematic. (It is noted that three years later Carroll Baker and Japanese-American actor James Shigeta played a real-life couple in Bridge to the Sun.)

It should also be considered that Fox wanted and deserved to make a sizeable profit on the film and that would never have happened had they cast unknown Chinese actors in the roles.

The ending of the film was pure fiction as well. While Gladys and all the children did indeed march into that town, she was delirious with typhoid fever. Of course she was greatly upset that the fictional romance went so far as to suggest she would not stay with the children and would go back to Col. Lin. She not only stayed with the orphaned children but she worked with many Chinese orphans for the rest of her life. She died in 1970.

Most of this was not known to the general public in 1958. My guess is it would not have made much of a difference had it been known and the movie went on to become the second most financially-successful film of 1958 and was another triumph of sorts for Bergman.

Jurgens, of course, was wrong for his part although he turned in a good performance. I always found him to be an exotic, mesmerizing actor. I liked his looks, loved his voice. He was a strong presence and performed well opposite Bergman. I wished they done another film together.

Some critics said this was the best work Bergman ever did. That's just plain crazy because nearly every film she did was considered her best work. She is very good here and spurred on I might suggest by the fact that she had not only her natural grace but a gift of being able to imply an infinite goodness. (And for Bergman, THAT was fine acting.) Who wasn't convinced that she loved every one of those 100 children?

But I do regard this as one of her best performances. To claim the best means slighting Gaslight, Notorious and Casablanca and I couldn't do that.

Donat, virtually unknown to audiences today, won Oscar's best actor award in 1939 for Goodbye Mr. Chips. He robbed Clark Gable of his chance for a second Oscar for Gone With the Wind and many Gable fans were hostile toward Donat. He was monumentally miscast in this film and didn't look well, which he wasn't. He suffered from acute asthma and oxygen was awaiting him off the set. He died at age 53 after Inn was completed but before it was released. I don't know if he was a good actor or not since this is the only one of his movies I've seen.

Of the large cast, I was particularly drawn to the performances of the cherubic Seyler and also the two actors who are the closest to Jenai, Chong and Kwouk.

It was hoped that the film would be made on Formosa (where Aylward happened to live) but differences with Chinese Nationals could not be worked out so the large company encamped to Wales for all exterior shooting. Interiors were done at MGM's British studios. Most of the children were brought over from Liverpool which has one of the largest Chinese communities in Europe.

Actress and director

It appears the cast loved working with director Robson. He was very fond of making this large-scale but sentimental film. He received its only Oscar nomination. The year before he'd also been nominated for Peyton Place.

Buddy Adler had succeeded Darryl F. Zanuck as Fox's head of production. It was a brief tenure but Inn of the Sixth Happiness was one of his personal favorites. He did all he could to get it made. Unfortunately, like Donat, he passed away before the film was released.

Special mention goes to Malcolm Arnold's elegant musical score and the imaginative Freddie Young for his superb cinematography. A shout-out is also richly deserved for all those who built the sets in Wales.

Too many years after the film was made, Bergman planned a trip to Formosa to finally meet Gladys Aylward. The actress had written her a letter around the time production got underway but it went unanswered. Bergman knew of Aylward's disregard for the film and the casting. Bergman was hoping their meeting would once and for all set some things on the right path. But Aylward died shortly before Bergman's arrival. She did enjoy speaking of Aylward with one of her daughters who took the time to show Bergman a scrapbook her mother had kept on the film and the actress who played her.

Here, take a moment... Ms. Bergman wants to have a word with you...