Did You Know?

The scenes in the reed-filled riverbank were filmed in Dalyan, Turkey.

This is the role that won Humphrey Bogart the only Oscar of his career.

Walt Disney used this film as the basis for the Disneyland's "Jungle Cruise" attraction.

In "The Making of 'The African Queen,' or How I Went to Africa with Bogie, Bacall and Huston and Almost Lost My Mind", Katharine Hepburn described the first day of shooting. Five cars and trucks were needed to take the cast, crew and equipment 3.5 miles from Biondo to the Ruiki river. There, they loaded everything onto boats and sailed another 2.5 miles to the shooting location. Press materials and contemporary articles detailed the perils of shooting on location in Africa, including dysentery, malaria, contaminated drinking water, and several close brushes with wild animals and poisonous snakes. Most of the cast and crew were sick for much of the filming. In a February 1952 New York Times article, John Huston said he hired local natives to help the crew, but many would not show up for fear that the filmmakers were cannibals.

According to United Artists press materials and John Huston's autobiography, the director built a camp to house the cast and crew in Biondo, outside the town of Stanleyville. It included a bar, a restaurant and several one-room bungalows.

James Agee suffered a serious heart attack during development of the screenplay. Uncredited writer Peter Viertel wrote the film's final scenes with John Huston.

Berlin's film trade union requested that The African Queen be withdrawn from the Berlin Film Festival because of its "anti-German tendencies".

Sources claimed that everyone in the cast and crew got sick, except Humphrey Bogart and John 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 whisky. Whenever a fly bit Huston or me, it dropped dead."

According to Katharine Hepburn's autobiography, John Huston initially found her performance too serious-minded. One day, he visited her hut and suggested that she model her performance on Eleanor Roosevelt; putting on her "society smile" in the face of all adversity. After Huston left, Hepburn sat for a moment before deciding, "That is the best piece of direction I have ever heard."

Debut of Theodore Bikel.

In 2007, the American Film Institute ranked this as the #65 Greatest Movie of All Time.

'The African Queen,' built in England in 1912 was used by the British East Africa Company from 1912 to 1968 to shuttle passengers and cargo across Lake Albert (on the border between Uganda and Belgian Congo). It is now located in Key Largo.

John Huston's daughter Anjelica Huston was born in Ireland during filming.

"Lux Radio Theater" broadcast a 60 minute radio adaptation of the movie on December 15, 1952 with Humphrey Bogart reprising his film role.

According to recent on-the-ground research in Britain's West Country, the legendary riverboat 'Queen Of Africa' was built at the Abdela & Mitchell Brimscombe works in Gloucestershire between 1908 and 1911.

In the film Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn sail along Ulonga-Bora River to a lake. The actual Ulonga(Ulanga)-Bora River does not run to any lake, but to the Indian Ocean. The river has been renamed as Rufiji and it is quite alike to the fictional counter world-river in the movie with its massive delta at the end.