The Night of the Iguana (MGM) (1964)

c WILY RICHARD BURTON DEFENDS HIMSELF FROM AN ACCUSATION An amused Ava Gardner listens as Richard Burton slyly defends himself from an accusation made by James Ward in ‘**The Night of the Iguana,” John Huston-Ray Stark production presented by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Seven Arts. The screen version of Tennessee Williams’ prize-winning Broadway play, filmed on locations in Mexico, also stars Deborah Kerr and Sue Lyon, with Grayson Hall and Cyril Delevanti. Academy Award-winner John Huston directed. Still NOI-69 Night of the Iguana Mat 3-A « « AUA GARDNER « « The screen play of “The Night of the Iguana” describes the characterization of one of the drama’s principals, Maxine Faulk, the proprietress of a hotel in an isolated Mexican village, as follows: “She is a very tortured woman. The furies are hot on her heels all the time. She’s traveled high, wide and handsome but her zest for living is unjaded.” The description comes awfully close to the character of the star who plays this role in the motion picture version of Tennessee Williams’ Broadway hit — Ava Gardner. Tennessee Williams does not admit to having had Miss Gardner in mind when he wrote the play of a defrocked minister who finds his destiny in the Mexican fishing village with three women involved in a vortex of tangled emotions. In the play, which was voted the best play of the 1961-62 season by the New York Drama Critics, the part was portrayed by Bette Davis, who gave it her own individual interpretation. No One Talks Nor will John Huston, who collaborated on the screen play of ‘The Night of the Iguana” with Anthony Veiller and who also directed the picture, be pinned down as to whether he could see no one but Ava Gardner for the role of Maxine. However, when the beautiful Ava first arrived in Mismaloya, Mexico, for location filming of “The Night of the Iguana,’ Huston was not at all reticent about his opinion of her. “This role requires more than beauty and sex-appeal,” he said. “It needs someone who can be tough. Ava Gardner is a tar-heel from Carolina. They put shoes on her and made a lady out of her, but basically she hasn’t change a bit. She’s still a tarheel at heart. She can belt it out.” After the picture was completed, Huston added a comment equally as terse. “For my money Ava’s performance in this film is the greatest thing she has done on the screen so far. People are going to talk about it Brief as it is, this is praise indeed when you consider that the cast of the Huston-Ray Stark production, released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Seven Arts, has such other distinguished performers as Richard 4 Burton and Deborah Kerr, who have received no mean accolades of their own, to say nothing of Sue Lyon, who made the name of “Lolita” familiar throughout the world. And how does the lady in question feel about all this? “It was fun,” she said. ‘“The part was good, everyone connected with the production knew his business, we respected each other. I am very glad I played it.” You can’t get much out of Ava Gardner. After years as one of the most glamorous women in the Hollywood spotlight, undimmed by her equally colorful life in the recent years during which she has made her home in Spain, the actress has come to distrust interviewers and columnists. She has been misquoted too often. Too many fictional love affairs have been attributed to her. Now she shuts up like a clam. However, she seems to have an affinity for writers. The late Ernest Hemingway was one of her greatest friends. And when ‘Tennessee Williams visited Mismaloya to do some additional writing on “The Night of the Iguana,” particularly in respect to Miss Gardner’s role of the woman who ministers to an anguished Burton, they hit it off immediately. “She is the most honest person I have ever known,’ Williams is reported to have remarked. “You can’t fool her and she doesn’t try to fool you.” One thing that endeared the actress to the Mexican technicians and workers on the set of the film was her complete command of the Spanish language which her years in Madrid have enabled her to speak like a native. If there is anything that wins a stranger over in a foreign country it is his ability to speak the language. Whatever Ava wanted, wherever she went, she got it fast and it was the best. Errand boys scurried to deliver her messages, costume assistants bent backwards in seeing that her clothes were spick and span, chefs outdid themselves in preparing exotic Spanish delicacies for a palate used to them. A quiet “gracias” from Ava, accompanied by one of her enveloping smiles, put them in the clouds. The bi-lingual, cultured, much traveled Ava Gardner of today is a far cry from the Smithfield, North Carolina, Miss Gardner who was brought up on a small farm where her father raised cotton and vegetables. When she grew up, the height of her ambition was to become a secretary and with this in mind she enrolled ina business course at Atlantic Christian College in Wilson, N. C. During a summer vacation, she visited her sister, Beatrice, in New York and her brother-in-law, Larry Tarr, a portrait photographer, took a picture of her and submitted it to MGM’s talent department. Actually, Ava took none of this very seriously but as it turned out her fate was sealed. Almost immediately she was offered a screen test. It was, unlike most screen tests, a silent one. After her first interview the talent department personnel was afraid that Ava’s very southern accent would limit her chances. But, silent or not, the screen test was quite enough for the front office and almost before she knew it, Ava was on her way to Hollywood and motion picture stardom, After a period of diction lessons through which she was able to lose her accent (Huston was wrong in saying that they put shoes on her — she already had shoes!) Miss Gardner made her MGM screen debut in 1941 in “We Were Dancing.” In progressively larger roles she was carefully groomed (“they madea lady out of her’) for the inevitable stardom, a rating assured her after her appearance opposite Clark Gable in “The Hucksters.” Oddly enough, her rival for Gable in this film was none Other than Deborah Kerr, who plays her rival for Burton in “The Night of the Iguana.” She Rose Fast Subsequently in such pictures as “Pandora and the Flying Dutchman,” “Show Boat,” “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” and “Magambo,” for which she won an Academy Award nomination, Ava emerged as a not only strikingly beautiful but highly talented performer. Among her more recent films are “The Barefoot Contessa,” “Bhowani Junction;’> The little Hut, “The Naked Maja,” “The Sun Also Rises,” “On the Beach,” “The Angel Wore Red” and “Seven Days In May.” In respect to the original description of the character played by Miss Gardner in “The Night of the Iguana,” she would laugh at the suggestion that she herself is a “very tortured woman” or that “the furies are hot on her heels.” As for the remainder of the portrait, Ava wouldn’t be able to deny it. She has “traveled high, wide and handsome” and her “zest for living” is still unjaded. Ava Gardner and Deborah Kerr compete for Richard Burton’s affections in “The Night of the Iguana.” The glamorous stars have been rivals before. Back in 1947, when MGM made “The Hucksters,;’ the Misses Kerr and Gardner came close to scratching each other’s eyes out in their rivalry for Clarr Gable! CAST Rev. T. Lawrence Shannon.....Richard Burton Maxine Faulk. 2s Ava Gardner Hannah welkes 222 Deborah Kerr Charlotte; Goodall). 2-5 Sa. Sue Lyon HankcProstienqscoicccccs 2b eect James Ward JodithFellowes=--.-..-2e-2 Grayson Hall INONNOL Sao cen besos ee Cyril Delevanti Miss: Peebles) 225 2.2o tes 0 Mary Boylan Miss: Dexter: 220s ee Gladys Hill Miss? Throxton: co---2:22 ee cee eee Billie Matticks Teacher eee tek. ee eee ects Eloise Hardt TEQCNEM cee cee cette ais Thelda Victor Neacher nc 2.2 cee eee Betty Proctor Teacher 2. Dorothy Vance Meache vec: ernest Liz Rubey Weacheree etek te Bernice Starr heachers 2.5. ae A yes Barbara Joyce Pepe js23 eo te er Fidelmar Duran Pedro eee ae ee Roberto Leyva Chari guesses Sree eee | Cc. G. Kim Produced by Ray Stark. Directed by John Huston. Screenplay by Anthony VYeiller and John Huston. Based on the play by Tennessee Williams. Produced on the Broadway stage by Charles Bowden and Two River Enterprises, Inc. Music Composed and Conducted by Benjamin Frankel. Director of Cinematography: Gabriel Figueroa. Associate Director: Emilio Fernandez. Production Executive: Abe Steinberg. Associate Producer: Alexander Whitelaw. Production Manager: Clarence Eurist. Assistant Director: Tom Shaw. Associate to Mr. Huston: Gladys Hill. Script Supervisor: Angela Allen. Art Director: Stephen Grimes. Film Editor: Ralph Kemplin. Costumes by Dorothy Jenkins. Sound: Basil Fenton-Smith. Hair Styles Created by Sydney Guilaroff. Executed by Agnes Flanagan, C.H.S. Make-Up: Jack Obringer, Eric Allwright. A John Huston-Ray Stark Production. Presented by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Seven Arts Productions. AND NO LOLLIPOP Sue Lyon, who achieved overnight fame in her role as the nymphet in ‘Lolita,’ plays an even more seductive girl as the tourist who tries to capture the heart of Richard Burtonin MetroGoldwyn-Mayer and Seven Arts’ “The Night of the Iguana,” screen version of Tennessee Williams’ prize-winning play. But, according to Miss Lyon, there is a vital difference in the two characterizations. Here is her explanation: Lolita was a young girl who was curious and wanted to know. Charlotte, the girl in “Iguana,” already knows! DILAPIDATED BUS WINS MOVIE. FAME Recently, one of the major sights in Mismaloya, Mexico, a tiny fishing village on the Pacific coast, rested forlornly near the edge of the ocean, rusting from the spray. A member in full standing of the cast of stars who worked on location in Mismaloya for “The Night of the Iguana,” screen version of the prize-winning play by Tennessee Williams, she was a dilapidated, ancient Mexican bus, affectionately dubbed “Iguana” by director John Huston. With no prior training, “Iguana” became a full-fledged scene stealer, grabbing attention away from Rich ard Burton, Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr and Sue Lyon, principals of the Huston—Ray Stark production, released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Seven Arts. Playing itself, “Iguana” is the bus which brings the defrocked minister, Shannon (Burton), and his crew of sightseeing teachers to the Costa Verde Hotel, owned and operated by Maxine Faulk (Ava Gardner). It is, in fact, in “TIguana’s” interior that a good deal of the action of the high-powered film takes place. The vehicle was discovered by Huston, who scoured Mexico for her and finally found her in the town of ‘Tepozotlan. “IT accompanied Huston when he began looking for the bus,” said Clarence Eurist, the unit production manager. “We went from town to town for three weeks looking for her. She had to be a certain kind of bus, the kind which could have come from a place like Blowing Rock, Texas. After we found her, we had plenty of trouble getting her, It took us days to convince the duennos of the bus line, who had only four other buses, that they could make more money renting the vehicle to us than they could just using it for the town’s passengers.” Once “Iguana” was rented, the problems came hard and fast. Repainted and lettered with the sign, “Blake’s Tours — We Tour the Southwest and Mexico,” the bus started a hazardous journey to Mismaloya by land and sea. “The Indians in the villages couldn’t believe their eyes when they saw the bus floating by on a barge,” said Eurist. “And we almost lost her three or four times. We had to wait out two hurricanes and choppy water but the old girl finally made it to Mismaloya. I think that day was the happiest day in our lives. We almost had to hold up shooting for two days and if she had fallen into the water we couldn’t have finished the film on time.” “Tguana” had two new motors, eight new tires, two new clutches and two new brakes installed after she touched down at the location site. “Tt would have been cheaper to have bought the bus,” said Eurist. “T guess the only reason we didn’t is because we didn’t want to go into the bus business.” A love-smitten Sue Lyon steals into Richard Burton’s bedroom in this scene from *“*The Night of the Iguana,” explosive screen version of Tennessee Williams’ prize-winning play. Ava Gardner and Deborah Kerr also star in the John Huston-Ray Stark production presented by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Seven Arts. Filmed on locations in Mexico, the much-talked-about picture was directed by Academy Award-winner John Huston. Still NOI-48 Night of the Iguana Mat 2-B