A Ride on The African Queen

January 21, 2019
General

My husband and I are heading to Key Largo, our first trip to Florida! While there we hope to ride on the African Queen. The REAL African Queen, the actual boat used in the 1951 movie with Katherine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart. See Katherine’s biographical behind-the-scenes tell all book “The Making of the African Queen: Or How I went to Africa with Bogart, Bacall and Huston and Almost lost my Mind”, which Hepburn once said was a bit of a glamorize version.

Bogart and Huston were drinking buddies, and, coincidentally, the only two members of the cast who didn’t get sick. “All I ate was baked beans, canned asparagus, and Scotch whiskey. Whenever a fly bit Huston or me, it dropped dead,” Bogart said. In spite of the fact that the water was boiled and treated with halazone tablets, Hepburn was so ill a bucket was kept beside the organ she played in the missionary scene for her use between takes.

Good times and I want to relive them. I love the energy of these historic sites and sometimes feel there is another presence there with me. To be in the same space occupied by Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart is thrilling to me. According to Travelocity, somebody took a cigar and fake leeches with him for the picture op. I’m not sure how to attach the leeches? Maybe you have some ideas. At any rate, it seems to me a bottle of whiskey would be in order. I really want to do my photo op right.