Before Deborah Kerr and Yul Brynner starred in the musical version of the story, Irene Dunne and Rex Harrison were Mrs Anna and her king in a stolid (if expensive) 20th Century-Fox adaptation of Margaret Landon's bestseller about English schoolteacher Anna Leonowens. While Dunne was born to play a governess, Harrison is miscast, with facial features more appropriate to Hampstead than Thailand (James Mason was the original choice). John Cromwell's direction suffers in comparison to the liveliness of the musical version and the art direction is relentlessly Hollywood Siam, but the sets won an Oscar, as did Arthur Miller's camerawork.

In 1862, a young Englishwoman becomes royal tutor in Siam and befriends the King.