The Night of the Iguana | |
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![]() Theatrical release poster by Howard Terpning | |
Directed by | John Huston |
Screenplay by | |
Based on | The Night of the Iguana 1961 play by Tennessee Williams |
Produced by | Ray Stark |
Starring | |
Cinematography | Gabriel Figueroa |
Edited by | Ralph Kemplen |
Music by | Benjamin Frankel |
Production company | |
Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
Release date |
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Running time | 125 minutes (original) 118 minutes (TCM print and edited version) |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $3 million [1] |
Box office | $12 million [1] |
The Night of the Iguana is a 1964 American drama film directed by John Huston, based on the 1961 play of the same name by Tennessee Williams. It stars Richard Burton, Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr, Grayson Hall, Sue Lyon, and Cyril Delevanti. [2]
The film 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 received Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for Best Supporting Actress, and Cyril Delevanti received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actor. [3] In addition to Delevanti's nomination at the Golden Globes, Ava Gardner also received a Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama nomination. Both the picture and its director, John Huston, likewise received Golden Globe nominations.
The preface to the story shows Episcopal clergyman T. Lawrence Shannon having a "nervous breakdown" after being ostracized by his congregation and defrocked for having an inappropriate relationship with a "very young Sunday school teacher."
Two years later, Shannon, now a tour guide for the bottom-of-the-barrel Texas company Blake's Tours, is taking a group of Baptist schoolteachers by bus to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. The group's brittle leader is the stringent Miss Judith Fellowes, who has been entrusted as a chaperone by the parents of Charlotte Goodall, a man-crazy 16-year-old who tries to seduce Shannon. When Charlotte goes to Shannon's hotel room in the middle of the night, Shannon, mindful of past scandals, implores her to leave. Charlotte resists his feeble attempts to expel her, and the vigilant Miss Fellowes catches them together. Fellowes accuses Shannon of trying to seduce Charlotte and declares that she will ruin him.
While approaching the group's hotel in the bus, Shannon suddenly veers off and recklessly drives the terrified passengers to a cheap Costa Verde hotel in Mismaloya, then removes the distributor cap from the engine. The hotel is normally run by an old friend named Fred, but he has died recently and the hotel is now run by his widow, the bawdy and flamboyant Maxine Faulk. Shannon convinces Maxine to allow the tour group to stay at the hotel, believing that they will be unable to reach a phone or escape. He enlists Maxine to help him appease the ire of Miss Fellowes, to whom Shannon and Maxine privately attribute a lesbian obsession with her charge. Meanwhile, Charlotte has switched her seductive impulses to Hank, the bus driver, and Miss Fellowes declares she is no longer responsible for Charlotte's behavior though she follows through with her complaints to Blake's tours regarding Shannon.
Another new arrival at the hotel is Hannah Jelkes, a beautiful and chaste middle-aged itinerant painter from Nantucket who is traveling with her 96-year-old poet grandfather, Nonno. They have run out of money, but Shannon convinces Maxine to let them have a room. Over a long night, Shannon battles his weaknesses for both flesh and alcohol. Charlotte continues to make trouble for him, aided by Hank, and Shannon is "at the end of his rope," similar to how an iguana is kept tied by Maxine's cabana boys. Shannon suffers a breakdown, threatening suicide, and the cabana boys truss him in a hammock, while Hannah ministers to him with poppy-seed tea and frank spiritual counsel. Recovering a degree of rationality and making a magnanimous gesture in a savage world, Shannon frees the iguana from its rope.
Hannah's grandfather delivers the final version of the poem that he has been laboring to finish about having heart in a corrupt world and then dies. The characters try to resolve their confused lives. Perceiving the warmth between Shannon and Hannah, Maxine offers to walk away and let them run the hotel for her, with the proviso that Shannon must accept the offer to stay to be valid. Hannah points out to Shannon that Maxine's offer shows how deeply she cares for him and his welfare. Shannon and Maxine decide to run the hotel together, and offer Hannah a home there. Hannah walks away with an intrepid attitude of exploring the opportunities of life on her own.
James Garner claimed that he was originally offered the role played by Richard Burton but he declined because "it was just too Tennessee Williams for me." [4]
In September 1963, Huston, Lyon, and Burton, accompanied by Elizabeth Taylor, arrived at Puerto Vallarta —a "remote little fishing village"—for principal photography in Mismaloya, [5] which lasted 72 days. [6] Huston liked the area's fishing so much that he bought a $30,000 house "in a cottage colony eight miles outside town." [5] [7] [8] [9]
By March 1964, months before the film's release, gossip about the film's production was widespread. Huston received a Writers Guild of America award for advancing "the literature of the motion picture through the years." At the award dinner, Allan Sherman performed a song to the tune of "Streets of Laredo" 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." [10]
The film grossed $12 million worldwide at the box office, [1] earning $4.5 million in U.S. theatrical rentals [11] It was the 10th highest-grossing film of 1964.
Time magazine's reviewer wrote, "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." [6]
Bosley Crowther of The New York Times 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 , 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. [12]
Crowther was particularly critical of Burton's performance: "Mr. Burton is 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 Lolitaish Sue Lyon (whose acting is painfully awkward), he is farcical when he isn't grotesque." [12]
A statue of John Huston stands in Puerto Vallarta, celebrating the film's role in making the area a popular destination. [13]
Ava Lavinia Gardner was an American actress. She first signed a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1941 and appeared mainly in small roles until she drew critics' attention in 1946 with her performance in Robert Siodmak's film noir The Killers. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in John Ford's Mogambo (1953), and for best actress for both a Golden Globe Award and BAFTA Award for her performance in John Huston's The Night of the Iguana (1964). She was a part of the Golden Age of Hollywood.
John Marcellus Huston was an American film director, screenwriter and actor. He wrote the screenplays for most of the 37 feature films he directed, many of which are today considered classics. He received numerous accolades including two Academy Awards and three Golden Globe Awards. He also received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960 and the BAFTA Fellowship in 1980.
Richard Burton was a Welsh actor.
Charlotte Ayanna is a Puerto Rican-American actress, author and former beauty queen who won Miss Teen USA 1993.
Puerto Vallarta is a Mexican beach resort city on the Pacific Ocean's Bahía de Banderas in the Mexican state of Jalisco. Puerto Vallarta is the second largest urban agglomeration in the state after the Guadalajara Metropolitan Area. The City of Puerto Vallarta is the government seat of the Municipality of Puerto Vallarta, which comprises the city as well as population centers outside of the city extending from Boca de Tomatlán to the Nayarit border. The city is located at 20°40′N105°16′W. The municipality has an area of 681 square kilometres (262.9 sq mi). To the north, it borders the southwest of the state of Nayarit. To the east, it borders the municipality of Mascota and San Sebastián del Oeste, and to the south, it borders the municipalities of Talpa de Allende and Cabo Corrientes.
Raymond Otto Stark was an American film producer and talent agent. Stark's background as a literary and theatrical agent prepared him to produce some of the most profitable films of the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, such as The World of Suzie Wong (1960), West Side Story (1961), The Misfits (1961), Lolita (1962), The Night of the Iguana (1964), Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967), Funny Girl (1968), The Owl and the Pussycat (1970), The Goodbye Girl (1977), The Toy (1982), Annie (1982), and Steel Magnolias (1989).
The Night of the Iguana is a stage play written by American author Tennessee Williams. It is based on his 1948 short story. In 1959, Williams staged it as a one-act play, and over the next two years he developed it into a full-length play, producing two different versions in 1959 and 1960, and then arriving at the three-act version that premiered on Broadway in 1961. Two film adaptations have been made: The Oscar-winning 1964 film directed by John Huston and starring Richard Burton, Ava Gardner, and Deborah Kerr, and a 2000 Croatian production.
Margaret Leighton, CBE was an English actress, active on stage and television, and in film. Her film appearances included Anthony Asquith's The Winslow Boy, Alfred Hitchcock's Under Capricorn, Powell and Pressburger's The Elusive Pimpernel, George More O'Ferrall's The Holly and the Ivy, Martin Ritt's The Sound and the Fury, John Guillermin's Waltz of the Toreadors, Franklin J. Schaffner's The Best Man, Tony Richardson's The Loved One, John Ford's 7 Women, and Joseph Losey's The Go-Between and Galileo. For The Go-Between, she won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Grayson Hall was an American television, film and stage actress. She was widely regarded for her avant-garde theatrical performances from the 1960s to the 1980s. Hall was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and a Golden Globe Award for the John Huston film The Night of the Iguana (1964).
Annalee Jefferies is an American stage actress.
Emilio "El Indio" Fernández Romo was a Mexican film director, actor and screenwriter. He was one of the most prolific film directors of the Golden Age of Mexican cinema in the 1940s and 1950s. He is best known for his work as director of the film María Candelaria (1944), which won the Palme d'Or award at the 1946 Cannes Film Festival. As an actor, he worked in numerous film productions in Mexico and in Hollywood. He was the father of the Mexican actor Jaime Fernández.
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.
Harry Cyril Delevanti was an English character actor with a long career in American films. He was sometimes credited as Syril Delevanti.
Lia Williams is an English actress and director, on stage, in film and television. She has had television roles in The Crown, in May 33rd (2004) for which she was nominated for a BAFTA, and in The Missing (2016), Kiri (2016), His Dark Materials (2019–2022) and The Capture (2019–2021).
Stephen B. Grimes was an English production designer and art director. He won an Oscar and was nominated for two more in the category Best Art Direction.
Anthony Veiller was an American screenwriter and film producer. He wrote for 41 films between 1934 and 1964.
The 28th Annual Bengal Film Journalists' Association Awards were held on 1965, honoring the best in Indian cinema in 1964.
A statue of John Huston was installed in Isla Cuale, Zona Romántica, Puerto Vallarta, in the Mexican state of Jalisco, in 1988. The sculpture commemorated Huston's film Night of the Iguana (1964) and "its part in local history".
Casa Kimberly is a hotel and former residence of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, located in Puerto Vallarta, in the Mexican state of Jalisco. The hotel houses Iguana Restaurant. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton by Jim and Christina Demetro is installed outside the restaurant.
“The Night of the Iguana” is a short story by Tennessee Williams first appearing in the collection One Arm and Other Stories (1948) published by New Directions. Elements of the story provided the basis for Williams's play The Night of the Iguana (1961).
In ten wild weeks at a sunny place for shady people on Mexico's spectacular west coast, 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.