| Based on a true story, Princess Caraboo had its genesis
when, says co-writer and co-star John Wells, "Michael Austin came
to me having read a bit about the story in a magazine. I was
absolutely fascinated by it, and we began doing some research. At
that stage we knew that the girl had turned up walking around on Good
Friday 1817, wearing a black turban and a black dress with one little
bag with soap in it! We knew that she had not spoken any known
language and had been taken up to Knole, the house of Mr. Worrall in
Almondsbury, by the Reverend Hunt (played in the film by Wells).
Mr. Worrall then insisted that she be tried as a vagrant, and she spent
the weekend in the poorhouse in Bristol.
"While she was there, she was extremely picky about what she ate. She wouldn't eat meat. She wouldn't sleep in any bed but slept on the floor, and she went through a sort of religious ritual with all kinds of prayers. People became very interested in her, and she was obviously very attractive to men because, even when in the poorhouse, there were three or four men around her trying to find out who she was. "She was then tried. A Portuguese sailor said he knew what she was talking about and identified her as a princess from far away. Mrs. Worrell then triumphantly took her back to Knole, and she was really put through a great deal of examination by various academic people from Bristol and Bath who went to see her. "She did use a bow and arrow, and she did dance and had a gong, as in the film. She was finally persuaded to write something, and it was sent to three authorities in Oxford. All of them said, 'This is not Chinese, it is no Sumatra dialect, it is humbug!' but Mrs. Worrall refused to believe it." "I dug up all this information from the Bristol archives, partly from newspaper cuttings of the time, partly from Gutch's notes. The real Gutch was fascinated by her, and, according to him, Professor Wilkinson made a complete fool of himself, as in the film. All the local newspapers had a picture of her and her story." Although the film ends with Caraboo and Gutch sailing together to Philadelphia, in real life Caraboo made the trip in October 1817 without the journalist. In the U.S., she began performing before audiences and was promoted to patriotic Americans as someone who had successfully fooled English society. She reappeared in England in 1829, married, had a daughter, and died in Bristol around 1860 at the age of 75. -- Princess Caraboo Production Information, Press Kit |