The Night of the Iguana (MGM) (1964)

IN DISTINGUISHED CAST OF “IGUANA” PORTRAIT OF THE STARS . . . The stars of ‘The Night of the Iguana’? line up for a group photo. Seated is Richard Burton, cast as the defrocked minister, Lawrence Shannon. Standing behind him, left to right, are Sue Lyon as the young seductress, Charlotte; Deborah Kerr as the spinster, Hannah; and Ava Gardner as the vixenish widow, Maxine — the three women who play a dramatic part in Shannon’s life. The John Huston-Ray Stark production, presented by Metro-GoldwynMayer and Seven Arts, is based on the prize-winning Broadway play by Tennessee Williams and was directed by John Huston. Still NOI-100 Night of the Iguana Mat 2-H HIS JOB WAS TO SEE THAT THE STARS OF “NIGHT OF IGUANA” WERE WELL FED Ask a producer, director and stars to name the most vital item on a motion picture location and you may get a variety of answers. However, there was one item of the Huston-Stark production on which producer Ray Stark, director John Huston and stars Richard Burton, Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr and Sue Lyon were in complete agreement in connection with the filming of Tennessee Williams’ prize-winning play, “The Night of the Iguana,” on location in Mexico. Food. This particular tangent of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Seven Arts release was handled by Rick Rubin, a tall, thin New Yorker who came to Mexico fifteen years ago and ended up in the catering business. Sitting in the back of the food supply boat on its way to the set of “The Night of the Iguana” in Mismaloya, eight miles across the water from Puerto Vallarta, Rubin said, “About eleven years ago, my wife and I wererunninga hotelin Cuernavaca when a movie company asked us if we could provide the food for their location set-up. That’s how it all started.” He motioned to the boxes piled on the deck of the boat. “Now we cater practically all the movies made in Mexico. But catering this film made me feel like General Somerville must have felt trying to feed the troops in Africa. First we had to buy the food in Mexico City, then put it in giant freezers there. Next we packed the food in dry ice and shipped it to the airport, loading it on planes for the flight to Puerto Vallarta. But because we don’t have much freezing space in Mismaloya, we had to put all food not used up immediately back into freezers in Puerto Vallarta!” Rubin took a breath and asked for a fishing line which he lowered into the water. ‘““Every day we took some food out of Puerta Vallarta and shipped it to the beach,” he continued. “That took about a half hour. Then we loaded it aboard a dugout and brought it to this boat and after an hour on the high seas we made Mismaloya. You see what I mean about General Somerville?” Just then there was a strike on his line and he reeled in a twenty-pound Dorado fish. “This will make a few people a meal,” he said. ‘““These are good eating.” However, catering the cast and crew of “The Night of the Iguana,” totaling over a hundred persons, has not been Rubin’s toughest job. “T really can’t complain,” he said, hefting the huge fish aboard. “At least, we’ve got a kitchen there. When they filmed ‘The Sun Also Rises,’ we had to put a kitchen ina bank. Try feeding a hundred people in a bank. And then there was “Wonderful Country.’ For that picture we had to set up a kitchen ina laundry because it was the only place in town that had running water. Compared to that, Mismaloya has been a breeze.” Asked if he had any strange food requests from actors on the films for which he has catered, Rubin replied, “T’ve been asked for everything from kosher salami to a three-tiered birthday cake. But the stars in ‘Iguana’ were easy. One day, Sue Lyon asked me if I could bring in some gefilte fish and red horseradish. I found it. As for Ave Gardner, I catered for her before when she starred in “The Sun Also Rises.’ She likes hot, spicy food, the spicier the better. I suppose that’s because she lives in Spain.” Rubin did have one problem in respect to providing food for both Americans and the Mexican technicians at the same time. “We tried to please them both which made the job two-fold,” he said. “Offer Mexicans sandwiches for lunch and you run into trouble. They’ll quit in three days. You see, in Mexico, lunch is the big, hearty meal. On the other hand, give Americans (Miss Gardner excepted) too much Mexican food and — well,” he laughed, “I don’t have to tell you what happens then.” Between plying the food from Puerto Vallarta to Mismaloya, running the location dining room in impeccable Spanish, and ministering to the ailing with specially prepared food (“You can’t watch everything they eat when they go to town!”), Rubin found catering to the “Night of the Iguana” company something of a 24-hour-a-day job. VERSATILITY Versatility has been the keynote of Richard Burton’s phenomenal career. From musical comedy in “Camelot” to a beatnik in “Look Back in Anger” to the Archbishop of Canterbury in “Becket,” and now a defrocked minister in “The Night of the Iguana,” Burton has become famous by utilizing his greatest asset —talent. « « RICHARD BURTON « x There doesn’t seem to be anything Richard Burton can’t do, From Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” which he first played with the Old Vic Company in 1953, to a musical comedy role in “Camelot” to Marc Antony in “Cleopatra” to the millionaire in “The V.I.P.s” to Archbishop of Canterbury in “Becket,” to the Rev. Lawrence Shannon, a wayward man of the cloth, in “The Night of the Iguana”—these are the contrasting portrayals of an actor hailed as one of the most distinguished of today’s stage and screen stars. On completion of “The Night of the Iguana,” film version of Tennessee Williams’ prize-winning play, Burton completed the cycle by returning to the Broadway stage in a new version of ‘‘Hamlet.” For “The Night of the Iguana,” a John Huston-Ray Stark production presented by Metro-GoldwynMayer and Seven Arts, Burton journeyed to the remote coastal village of Mismaloya in Mexico, in company with his fellow stars Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr and Sue Lyon and the film’s director, Academy Awardwinner Huston. Once there, Burton entered energetically into the spirit of things. In his wide range of portrayals the actor had previously revealed his talent for bringing to life frustration and spiritual loneliness, but in enacting the Rev, Shannon, in whom these characteristics work inward like a demon, he chewed at the part with the relish of an actor being paid handsomely for doing something that was worth doing for nothing. “He is one of the most difficult guys I’ve ever had to play,” he said. “The role was not only physically taxing but it was tough mentally. It’s not easy to show the slow decay of a human being, a man sensitive to the pull of appetites of the flesh and the bottle, and not have the audience turn away in disgust.” Burton sometimes wonders if it would be easier had his own life been different. “You know,” he said, “sometimes I envy those chaps who talk about their broken childhood, how they were deprived and beaten and always hungry. Maybe if an actor has experienced that he carries the element of tragedy around with him all the time. “T had an idyllic childhood in South Wales in Pontryhydhfen. I ATTENDING A VERY OLD AND FEEBLE MAN was the youngest of thirteen children and everybody made a fuss over me. Now, when I have to dig deep into moroseness or depravity for a part, I’ve really got to work. I’ve heard of actors who, if they have to bawl ina role, think back on some terrible event of their youth. I don’t know if that really works out but I could never do it. If I looked back, I’d start laughing.” Asked if he had ever considered a career other than acting, Burton shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’m Richard Burton, one of the screen’s most distinguished stars, in his role as the defrocked minister, Shannon, in “The Night of the Iguana,” film version of Tennessee Williams’ prize-winning play. Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr and Sue Lyon enact the three women who complicate Shannon’s life in the John HustonRay Stark production, presented by Metro-GoldwynMayer and Seven Arts, and directed by John Huston. Night of the Iguana Still NOI-x-15 Mat 1-F sort of dyed in the wool by now. But there was a time when I did consider giving up acting. That was about seven years ago. I felt I’d had it and T decided I’d act just as a job for four or five years, make some money and get out. Then, about two years ago, I got the acting bug again. And unless the old Welsh decay sets in again, I aim to achieve something this time.” Burton made his professional act ing debut in London just before entering Oxford University on a scholarship. The play was Emlyn Williams’ “Druid’s Rest.” At Oxford he managed to mix acting with his studies, appearing most notably in a production of “Measure for Measure.” His university life interrupted by World War II, he enlisted in the R.A.F. Mustered out of uniform in 1947, he turned his full attention to his career and within a matter of months had appeared on the stage in “Castle Anna” and had made his film debut in “The Last Days of Dolwyn.” It was in 1948 that young Burton first attracted the serious attention of British critics. This was the result of asensational performance in Christopher Fry’s “The Lady’s Not for Burning.” After appearing in the play for eighteen months in London, he went to New York with the production. The reception accorded him by American critics exceeded even the acclaim he had received in England. He remained on Broadway to appear briefly opposite Dorothy McGuire in “Legend of Lovers.” Back in England, he alternated between stage and screen, starring on the stage in, among other plays, “Montserrat,” “Captain Brassbound’s Conversion,” “The Boy with a Cart” and “A Phoenix Not Too Frequent.” In addition to his Hamlet, he appeared as Caliban in “The Tempest,” Caius Martius in ‘“Cariolanus” and Sir Toby Belch in “Twelfth Night.” Two years later, he alternated as Iago and the Moor in the Old Vic’s revival of “Othello” and subsequently played Prince Hal in “Henry IV, Barts: lo and 2 sandaetienty Vat Stratford-on-Avon. In 1957, he returned to Broadway to co-star with Helen Hayes in “Time Remembered” and in 1960 scored his musical comedy hit in “Camelot.” Through all of this period Burton continued to star in motion pictures. His first visit to Hollywood was made in 1952 when he appeared opposite Olivia de Havilland in “My Cousin Rachel.” He followed this with the leading role in the first CinemaScope movie, “The Robe.” Subsequently he starred in “Alexander the Great,” “Desert Rats” and “Look Back in Anger,” among other films. When Burton flew from London to Mexico for the location filming of “Iguana,” he had to pay for overweight luggage. But it wasn’t clothes that made for the weight in his suitcases. They were crammed with books. The star reads everything he can lay his hands on and commits much of what he reads to memory. Deborah Kerr, watching Burton as he sat in a corner on the set of “The Night of the Iguana,” engrossed in an Elizabethan treatise and oblivious to everything that was happening around him, said: “TI sometimes wonder if Dick is not so much in love with acting as he is with words, words, words!” Deborah Kerr and Richard Burton stand at the bedside of a dying Cyril Delevanti in this scene from “The Night of the Iguana,”’ screen version of Tennessee Williams’ prize-winning play. Ava Gardner and Sue Lyon also star in the John HustonRay Stark production presented by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Seven Arts. Filmed on locations in Mexico, the explosive picture was directed by Academy Award-winner John Huston. Still NOI-54 Night of the Iguana Mat 2-C SHE COULD HAVE DANCED ALL NIGHT Director John Huston has his own method of determining the value of his players. At a party given for the location unit of “The Night of the Iguana” in Mexico City, just prior to their leaving for filming of Tennessee Williams’ drama in Mismaloya on the Pacific coast, the director asked Sue Lyon to give an impromptu dance. Miss Lyon had only recently met her co-stars, Richard Burton, Ava Garrner and Deborah Kerr, and, unsure of herself, would have preferred the obscurity of a corner. However, she rose to the occasion, took off her shoes, and did an uninhibited version of the Twist. She was aware that Huston was putting her on trial and that if she had refused to dance, she would have had it in the director’s eyes. His vigorous applause at the end of her number proved her point. HISTORICAL Richard Burton’s movie history might be described as “historical.” He has portrayed Marc Antony in “Cleopatra,” John Wilkes Booth in “Prince of Players,” Alexander the Great, and Becket. Of his latest role, as the defrocked minister in ‘The Night of the Iguana,’ Burton says, at long last he is playing someone who is marvelously obscure! 3