The Inn of The Sixth Happiness - Historical Accuracy

Historical Accuracy

The film was based on the book The Small Woman (1957), by Alan Burgess.

The real Gladys Aylward (1902–1970) was born in London. She was a former domestic turned missionary in China and best known for her work with children. Aylward became a Chinese citizen in 1936. Four years later, despite being in ill health herself, she led more than 100 children over the mountains to safety at the height of the Second Sino-Japanese War.

In 1958, the year this film was released, she founded a children's home in Taiwan, which she continued to run until her death. Known in China as "Ai-weh-deh", or "Virtuous One", she continues to be regarded as a national heroine.

Gladys Aylward was deeply upset by the inaccuracy of the movie. Although she found herself a figure of international interest thanks to the popularity of the movie and television and media interviews, Aylward was mortified by her depiction in the film and the many liberties it took. The tall, Swedish Ingrid Bergman was inconsistent with Aylward's small stature, dark hair and cockney accent. The struggles of Aylward and her family to effect her initial trip to China were skipped over in favor of a plot device of an employer "condescending to write to 'his old friend' Jeannie Lawson," and Aylward's dangerous, complicated travels across Russia and China were reduced to "a few rude soldiers," after which "Hollywood's train delivered her neatly to Tsientsin." Many characters and places' names were changed, even when their names had significant meanings, such as those of her adopted children and of her inn, named for the Chinese belief in the number 8 as an auspicious number. Colonel Linnan was portrayed as half-European, a change which she found insulting to his Chinese lineage, and she felt her reputation damaged by the Hollywood-embellished love scenes in the film; not only had she never kissed any man, but also the film's ending portrayed her character abandoning the orphans in order to join the colonel elsewhere even though in reality she did not retire from working with orphans until she was sixty years old. In real life, Gladys and Lin Nan were not reunited - he was lost in the war and she never knew what happened to him.