The Night of the Iguana (film)
Encyclopedia
The Night of the Iguana is a 1964
1964 in film
The year 1964 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* January 29 - The film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is released....

 film based on the 1961 play The Night of the Iguana
The Night of the Iguana
The Night of the Iguana is a stageplay written by American author Tennessee Williams, based on his 1948 short story. The play premiered on Broadway in 1961. Two film adaptations have been made, including the Academy Award-winning 1964 film of the same name....

by Tennessee Williams
Tennessee Williams
Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III was an American writer who worked principally as a playwright in the American theater. He also wrote short stories, novels, poetry, essays, screenplays and a volume of memoirs...

. Directed by John Huston
John Huston
John Marcellus Huston was an American film director, screenwriter and actor. He wrote most of the 37 feature films he directed, many of which are today considered classics: The Maltese Falcon , The Treasure of the Sierra Madre , Key Largo , The Asphalt Jungle , The African Queen , Moulin Rouge...

, it starred Richard Burton
Richard Burton
Richard Burton, CBE was a Welsh actor. He was nominated seven times for an Academy Award, six of which were for Best Actor in a Leading Role , and was a recipient of BAFTA, Golden Globe and Tony Awards for Best Actor. Although never trained as an actor, Burton was, at one time, the highest-paid...

, Ava Gardner
Ava Gardner
Ava Lavinia Gardner was an American actress.She was signed to a contract by MGM Studios in 1941 and appeared mainly in small roles until she drew attention with her performance in The Killers . She became one of Hollywood's leading actresses, considered one of the most beautiful women of her day...

, and Deborah Kerr
Deborah Kerr
Deborah Kerr, CBE was a Scottish film and television actress from Glasgow. She won the Sarah Siddons Award for her Chicago performance as Laura Reynolds in Tea and Sympathy, a role which she originated on Broadway, a Golden Globe Award for the motion picture The King and I, and was a three-time...

. It won the 1964 Academy Award for Best Costume Design, and was nominated for the Academy Awards for Best Art Direction and Best Cinematography. Actress Grayson Hall
Grayson Hall
Grayson Hall was an American television, film and stage actress. She was widely regarded for her avant garde theatrical performances in the 1960s-80s. Hall was nominated in 1964 for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for the John Huston film The Night of the Iguana...

 received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress, and Cyril Delevanti
Cyril Delevanti
Cyril Delevanti , sometimes credited as Syril Delevanti, was an English-born character actor with a long career in American films....

 received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actor. The film drew considerable attention for stories around its production, since Richard Burton had brought his soon-to-be-wife Elizabeth Taylor
Elizabeth Taylor
Dame Elizabeth Rosemond "Liz" Taylor, DBE was a British-American actress. From her early years as a child star with MGM, she became one of the great screen actresses of Hollywood's Golden Age...

 to the location shoot.

Plot summary

The preface to the story shows Episcopal minister Reverend Dr. T. Lawrence Shannon (Richard Burton
Richard Burton
Richard Burton, CBE was a Welsh actor. He was nominated seven times for an Academy Award, six of which were for Best Actor in a Leading Role , and was a recipient of BAFTA, Golden Globe and Tony Awards for Best Actor. Although never trained as an actor, Burton was, at one time, the highest-paid...

) having a "nervous breakdown" after being ostracized by his congregation for having an inappropriate relationship in Virginia with "a very young Sunday school teacher." The film's main action begins two years later, when Shannon, now a tour guide for bottom-of-the-barrel Texas company Blake Tours, is taking a group of Baptist School teachers by bus to Puerto Vallarta
Puerto Vallarta
Puerto Vallarta is a Mexican balneario resort city situated on the Pacific Ocean's Bahía de Banderas.The 2010 census reported Puerto Vallarta's population as 255,725 making it the sixth-largest city in the state of Jalisco...

, Mexico. The group's brittle group leader is Miss Judith Fellowes (Grayson Hall
Grayson Hall
Grayson Hall was an American television, film and stage actress. She was widely regarded for her avant garde theatrical performances in the 1960s-80s. Hall was nominated in 1964 for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for the John Huston film The Night of the Iguana...

), whose 17-year-old niece Charlotte Goodall (Sue Lyon
Sue Lyon
- Lolita :Sue Lyon was 14 years old when she was cast in the role of Dolores "Lolita" Haze, the sexually charged adolescent and the object of an older man's obsessions in Stanley Kubrick's 1962 film, Lolita. She was chosen for the role partly because her curvy figure suggested an older adolescent...

) tries to seduce Shannon. Charlotte's aunt, described as "butch
Butch and femme
Butch and femme are LGBT terms describing respectively, masculine and feminine traits, behavior, style, expression, self-perception and so on. They are often used in the lesbian, bisexual and gay subcultures...

" by the other characters, accuses Shannon of trying to seduce her niece and fires him, declaring that she wants to ruin him.

In a moment of despair, Shannon shanghais the bus and occupants, and tries to prevent Fellowes from calling his boss by stranding their bus at a cheap (and, he mistakenly thinks, phoneless) Costa Verde Hotel in Mismaloya
Mismaloya
Mismaloya is a small village, located on the coast of the Bahía de Banderas in the Mexican state of Jalisco. Mismaloya lies on Highway 200, south of Puerto Vallarta.-Film location:...

 on the coast. Shannon thinks that the hotel is still run by an old friend named Fred, but finds that the man died recently, and the hotel is now run by Fred's widow, Maxine Faulk (Ava Gardner
Ava Gardner
Ava Lavinia Gardner was an American actress.She was signed to a contract by MGM Studios in 1941 and appeared mainly in small roles until she drew attention with her performance in The Killers . She became one of Hollywood's leading actresses, considered one of the most beautiful women of her day...

). Maxine becomes interested in Shannon. Another woman at the hotel is Hannah Jelkes (Deborah Kerr
Deborah Kerr
Deborah Kerr, CBE was a Scottish film and television actress from Glasgow. She won the Sarah Siddons Award for her Chicago performance as Laura Reynolds in Tea and Sympathy, a role which she originated on Broadway, a Golden Globe Award for the motion picture The King and I, and was a three-time...

), a beautiful and chaste itinerant painter from Nantucket, who is traveling with her elderly poet grandfather (Cyril Delevanti
Cyril Delevanti
Cyril Delevanti , sometimes credited as Syril Delevanti, was an English-born character actor with a long career in American films....

). Hannah and her grandfather have run out of money, but Shannon convinces Maxine to let them have rooms. Over a long night, Shannon battles his weaknesses for both flesh and alcohol: Miss Fellowes' niece continues to make trouble for him, and he is "at the end of his rope", just like the iguana kept tied by Maxine's cabana boys. Shannon suffers a breakdown, the cabana boys truss him in a hammock, and Hannah ministers to him there with poppy-seed tea and frank spiritual counsel.

Hannah's grandfather delivers the final version of the poem he has been laboring to finish and dies. The characters try to resolve their confused lives with Shannon and Maxine deciding to run the hotel together. Hannah walks away from her last chance at love. There are several shortened after-market versions of this film, cutting out the endless dialog between Burton strapped into a hammock and Kerr. Such extended static dialog scenes were typical of Hollywood films from the late 50s and early 60s when based on stage plays. In one version, Burton commits suicide by walking and drowning himself in the ocean.

Cast

  • Richard Burton
    Richard Burton
    Richard Burton, CBE was a Welsh actor. He was nominated seven times for an Academy Award, six of which were for Best Actor in a Leading Role , and was a recipient of BAFTA, Golden Globe and Tony Awards for Best Actor. Although never trained as an actor, Burton was, at one time, the highest-paid...

    : Reverend Dr. T. Lawrence Shannon
  • Ava Gardner
    Ava Gardner
    Ava Lavinia Gardner was an American actress.She was signed to a contract by MGM Studios in 1941 and appeared mainly in small roles until she drew attention with her performance in The Killers . She became one of Hollywood's leading actresses, considered one of the most beautiful women of her day...

    : Maxine Faulk, widowed owner of the beach hotel
  • Deborah Kerr
    Deborah Kerr
    Deborah Kerr, CBE was a Scottish film and television actress from Glasgow. She won the Sarah Siddons Award for her Chicago performance as Laura Reynolds in Tea and Sympathy, a role which she originated on Broadway, a Golden Globe Award for the motion picture The King and I, and was a three-time...

    : Hannah Jelkes, wandering artist
  • Sue Lyon
    Sue Lyon
    - Lolita :Sue Lyon was 14 years old when she was cast in the role of Dolores "Lolita" Haze, the sexually charged adolescent and the object of an older man's obsessions in Stanley Kubrick's 1962 film, Lolita. She was chosen for the role partly because her curvy figure suggested an older adolescent...

    : Charlotte Goodall, underage girl who tries to seduce Shannon
  • James Ward
    James Ward
    - Sports :*James Ward , part-time footballer*James Ward , British tennis player*Jamie Ward , English footballer*Jim Ward , American football coach...

    : Hank Prosner, bus driver
  • Grayson Hall
    Grayson Hall
    Grayson Hall was an American television, film and stage actress. She was widely regarded for her avant garde theatrical performances in the 1960s-80s. Hall was nominated in 1964 for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for the John Huston film The Night of the Iguana...

    : Judith Fellowes, Charlotte's chaperone
  • Cyril Delevanti
    Cyril Delevanti
    Cyril Delevanti , sometimes credited as Syril Delevanti, was an English-born character actor with a long career in American films....

    : Nonno, poet and Hannah's grandfather

Production

In September 1962 Huston, Lyon, and Burton (accompanied by Elizabeth Taylor
Elizabeth Taylor
Dame Elizabeth Rosemond "Liz" Taylor, DBE was a British-American actress. From her early years as a child star with MGM, she became one of the great screen actresses of Hollywood's Golden Age...

) arrived at Puerto Vallarta
Puerto Vallarta
Puerto Vallarta is a Mexican balneario resort city situated on the Pacific Ocean's Bahía de Banderas.The 2010 census reported Puerto Vallarta's population as 255,725 making it the sixth-largest city in the state of Jalisco...

—a "remote little fishing village"—for principal photography
Principal photography
thumb|300px|Film production on location in [[Newark, New Jersey]].Principal photography is the phase of film production in which the movie is filmed, with actors on set and cameras rolling, as distinct from pre-production and post-production....

, which lasted ten weeks. Huston liked the area's fishing so much that he bought a $30,000 house "in a cottage colony eight miles outside town."

By March 1964, months before the film's release, gossip about the film's production was widespread. Huston received an Writers' Guild of America award for advancing "the literature of the motion picture through the years." At the award dinner, Allan Sherman
Allan Sherman
Allan Sherman was an American comedy writer and television producer who became famous as a song parodist in the early 1960s. His first album, My Son, the Folk Singer , became the fastest-selling record album up to that time...

 performed a song, to the tune of "Streets of Laredo
Streets of Laredo (song)
"Streets of Laredo" , also known as the "Cowboy's Lament", is a famous American cowboy ballad in which a dying cowboy tells his story to a living one. Derived from the English folk song "The Unfortunate Lad", it has become a folk music standard, and as such has been performed, recorded and adapted...

", with lyrics that included, "They were down there to film The Night of the Iguana / With a star-studded cast and a technical crew. / They did things at night midst the flora and fauna / That no self-respecting iguana would do."

Reception

Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...

magazine said, "Huston and company put together a picture that excites the senses, persuades the mind, and even occasionally speaks to the spirit—one of the best movies ever made from a Tennessee Williams play."

Bosley Crowther
Bosley Crowther
Bosley Crowther was a journalist and author who was film critic for The New York Times for 27 years. His reviews and articles helped shape the careers of actors, directors and screenwriters, though his reviews, at times, were unnecessarily mean...

 wrote,
"Since difficulty of communication between individuals seems to be one of the sadder of human misfortunes that Tennessee Williams is writing about in his play, The Night of the Iguana
The Night of the Iguana
The Night of the Iguana is a stageplay written by American author Tennessee Williams, based on his 1948 short story. The play premiered on Broadway in 1961. Two film adaptations have been made, including the Academy Award-winning 1964 film of the same name....

, it is ironical that the film John Huston has made from it has difficulty in communicating, too. At least, it has difficulty in communicating precisely what it is that is so barren and poignant about the people it brings to a tourist hotel run by a sensual American woman on the west coast of Mexico. And because it does have difficulty—because it doesn't really make you see what is so helpless and hopeless about them—it fails to generate the sympathy and the personal compassion that might make their suffering meaningful."
Crowther was particularly critical of Burton's performance, calling him
"spectacularly gross, a figure of wild disarrangement, but without a shred of real sincerity. You see a pot-bellied scarecrow flapping erratically. And in his ridiculous early fumbling with the Lolita
Lolita
Lolita is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov, first written in English and published in 1955 in Paris and 1958 in New York, and later translated by the author into Russian...

ish Sue Lyon (whose acting is painfully awkward), he is farcical when he isn't grotesque."

Awards

Of the film's four Oscar nominations, it won one, for Best Costume Design in a black-and-white film (Dorothy Jeakins
Dorothy Jeakins
Dorothy Jeakins was a costume designer.Born in San Diego, California, she went to public school in Los Angeles from first grade through high school...

). Also nominated were Grayson Hall
Grayson Hall
Grayson Hall was an American television, film and stage actress. She was widely regarded for her avant garde theatrical performances in the 1960s-80s. Hall was nominated in 1964 for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for the John Huston film The Night of the Iguana...

 (for Best Supporting Actress), Stephen B. Grimes
Stephen B. Grimes
Stephen B. Grimes was an English production designer and art director. He won an Academy Award and was nominated for two more in the category Best Art Direction.-Overview:...

 (for Best Art Direction in a black-and-white film), and Gabriel Figueroa
Gabriel Figueroa
Gabriel Figueroa Mateos was a Mexican cinematographer who worked both in Mexican cinema and Hollywood....

 (for Best Black-and-white Cinematography). Ava Gardner was nominated for a Golden Globe and a BAFTA as best actress.

Legacy

A hotel and resort complex, La Joya de Mismaloya, has been built at the bayfront of the village of Mismaloya; it maintains the film's old sets as restaurants and tourist attractions. A statue of John Huston
John Huston
John Marcellus Huston was an American film director, screenwriter and actor. He wrote most of the 37 feature films he directed, many of which are today considered classics: The Maltese Falcon , The Treasure of the Sierra Madre , Key Largo , The Asphalt Jungle , The African Queen , Moulin Rouge...

was erected in Puerto Vallarta, where it still stands, because of his role in making the city a destination.
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