The Night of the Iguana (MGM) (1964)

« x DEBORAH RERR « « Considering that she is allergic to spiders, Deborah Kerr took her courage into her hands when she flew from her home in Switzerland to Mismaloya, Mexico, to join co-stars Richard Burton, Ava Gardner and Sue Lyon for location filming of the John Huston-Ray Stark production, “The Night of the Iguana.” For Mismaloya, a tiny fishing village on the Pacific coast, chosen by Director John Huston as the principal locale for the screen version of Tennessee Williams’ prize-winning Broadway play, is alive with not only spiders but with such equally repellent (to Miss Kerr) creatures as scorpions, midges, mites, mosquitoes, flies, chiggers, snakes, land crabs and the iguanas of the picture’s title. However, with the aid of netting and insect repellents, the actress managed to make herself at home. Moreover, she has had considerable experience in roughing it on locations, dating back to 1949 when she traveled to Africa for the filming of MGM’s “King Solomon’s Mines.” Lived in Comfort “Not that making ‘The Night of the Iguana’ was actually roughing it,” she laughed. “Through the considerate arrangements of MetroGoldwyn-Mayer and Seven Arts, who are releasing the picture, I lived in considerable comfort. My husband (the writer Peter Viertel) came along on the location jaunt to keep me company and we had a very pleasant cottage placed at our disposal. After the day’s filming we would closet ourselves there and it was almost as though we were living in the country although somewhat exotic country to be sure.” In the Williams drama, Miss Kerr portrays Hannah Jelkes, a spinster who has been wandering across Mexico with her ninety-year-old father, the world’s oldest living poet, and who comes to the hotel run by Ava Gardner. Here she becomes involved with an emotional relationship with Richard Burton, an involvement which also concerns Miss Gardner and Sue Lyon. Oddly enough, she had also played a catalyst in the picture she had completed prior to taking on her role in “The Night of the Iguana.” This was “The Chalk Garden” in which she enacted a woman whose entrance into the life of an English family unleashes a strange set of circumstances. “However, the two roles are really completely different,’ she © said. “Naturally, the spinster in ‘Iguana’ isn’t really me, but I do say one line in the picture which is absolutely me. I say, ‘Nothing human disgusts me unless it is unkind or violent.’ That is a marvelous line. I feel that in saying it and millions of people in movie houses hearing it, perhaps that line will stick in their heads and I will have helped to contribute one small thought to human betterment.” Although she disclaims any pretension at pointing her motion picture roles at preachments, Miss Kerr has undoubtedly contributed some thoughts to human betterment during a screen career which began Deborah kerr, in her role as the spinster in ‘“*The Night of the Iguana,” screen version of Tennessee Williams’ prize-winning play. Richard Burton, Ava Gardner and Sue Lyon also star in the cast of the John HustonRay Stark production, presented by Metro-GoldwynMayer and Seven Arts, and directed by John Huston. Night of the Iguana Still NOI-91 Mat 1-E twenty-four years ago with her role as the Salvation Army lass in George Bernard Shaw’s “Major Barbara” and has since encompassed 38 films, including six for which she was nominated for an Academy Award as best actress. These were “Edward, My Son,” “From Here to Eternity,” “The Kingand I,” “Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison,” “Separate Tables” and “The Sundowners.” “I feel that I have been awfully lucky in my job,” she said. “It just sort of happened that I got where I am. I suppose I have some quality or other that seems to go over on the screen and I certainly thank my stars for it. Only once in my life did I say, ‘I’ve just got to do something different.’ And I got something different. That was the part in ‘From Here to Eternity.’ But now they’ve put me back in the old parts again, the sweet, gracious, ladylike characters: Asked if she still wanted something different, Miss Kerr laughed and replied, “Yes and no, When you first start out on a career you area ball of fire and you think nothing will stop you from doing what you want to. But as time goes by, you mellow and all those things that seemed so important become relatively less so. Particularly after you settle down and have a family. Then your husband and children become the really important things. Sometimes Irked “On the other hand, there are times when I do get a little irked by the constant assumption that I am the one safe, sensible, dependable element no one has to worry about. I think it would serve them all right if I suddenly developed temperament, had hysterics, became an unmanageable sexpot and threw temper tantrums.” If the actress has any plans to release herself on a movie set in this fashion, they must be reserved for a future production. According to director John Huston, Deborah was one person he didn’t have to worry about during the filming of “The Night of the Iguana.” On completion of the picture, he pointed out that she was all the things she claims to resent being—safe, sensible and dependable. He also furthered the description when he added, “She is ee the world’s truly gentle people. As one of the world’s most succesful stars as well, Deborah Kerr is constantly asked for advice from would-be actors and actresses. _“T can only tell them to learn the lines, to understand them, feel them and never stop working hard. You have to be terribly honest with yourself and find out from someone who knows whether you have real talent. There is no set formula for becoming an actor. If you keep trying and do everything possible to prepare yourself for the heartaches and discouragements, the breaks will come. The ‘being discovered sitting at a soda fountain’ routine is the exception. In fact, I doubt that that sort of thing could happen anymore.” CASTING “NIGHT OF THE IGUANA” PROVED EXACTING CHALLENGE The motion picture version of Tennessee Williams’ “The Night of the Iguana” had its inception in 1961 when Seven Arts backed the Broadway production, which starred Margaret Leighton, Bette Davis and Patrick O’Neil. The play won the New York Drama Critics Award for the best play of the 1961-62 season. With a hit on his hands, Ray Stark, vice-president in charge of production for Seven Arts, began laying the groundwork for the film adaptation. Stark, who produced the highly successful “The World of Suzie Wong,” immediately began to gather the finest talent available. He began with director John Huston, at the time fresh from his filming of “Freud,” and Huston agreed to coproduce and direct “The Night of the Iguana” following “The List of Adrian Messenger.” Huston and screen writer Anthony Veiller began work on the script and by the early summer of 1963 were ready to go. Casting the production was an exacting challenge since the play centers around three of the most complex and interesting characters Tennessee Williams has ever created. Many names were suggested, but in one memorable weekend the producer flew to Ireland for a meeting with Huston, took off for Madrid and signed Ava Gardner for the Bette Davis role of “Maxine Faulk,” jumped back to Switzerland and got Deborah Kerr for the Margaret Leighton part of “Hannah Jelkes’”’ and wound up the three-day jaunt by obtaining Richard Burton in London for the role of the “Reverend T. Lawrence Shannon.” The part of “Char lotte Goodall,” which was small in the stage version, was built up in the film script and awarded to Sue Lyon, who makes her second motion picture appearance following her memorable success in “Lolita.” Where to make the film presented no problem to Huston. Long a devotee of Mexico, the Academy Award-winning director has tramped over every foot of the rugged country and at his suggestion, he and Stark visited the quiet town of Puerto Vallarta on the Bay of Banderas, some 450 miles above Acapulco on the west coast of Mexico. In existence for more than 100 years, Puerto Vallarta is slowly feeling the inroads of civilization and tourism. Although it is accessible only by road from Guadalajara during three months of the year and two flights which arrive daily from Los Angeles and Mexico City, it has grown from a town of 1,000 inhabitants to roughly 9,000 during the height of the tourist season, November through March. The Costa Verde Hotel, in which much of the action of “The Night of the Iguana” takes place, is described in the script as being situated high in a rain forest aboveastill-water beach. Huston knew just the spot, six miles south of Puerto Vallarta on a small inlet nestling behind three huge rock formations called “Los Arcos.” The only inhabitants of the area were the members of an Indian pueblo called Mismaloya. Construction of the Costa Verde Hotel and the miniature community required to house and feed the movie location crew began on July Ist and was ready for operation by the first of October. Constructed around the hotel set were 26 bungalows capable of housing the 102 members of the cast and crew; a dining hall equipped to serve 150 persons at one sitting; a bar and dance pavilion; offices and storage buildings, not to mention two docks and a four-block-long retaining wall to keep out the sea. Filming on “The Night of the Iguana” began on September 25th at the Churubusco Studios, headquarters of the Mexican film industry, in Mexico City. The company worked there for two days filming interiors before moving to the picturesque town of Tepozotlan, just north of the caiptal city. Here the unit spent three days, utilizing the backdrop of one of Mexico’s national monuments, the Jesuit-built Seminario de San Martin. On September 29th, the cast and crew boarded two specially chartered Mexican planes for the flight to Puerto Vallarta. There the company worked for nearly two weeks filming exteriors in and around the town. The bus in which much of this shooting took place (the story revolves around a defrocked minister who becomes a guide for a busload of tourists) was affectionately called “Tguana.”’ This vehicle was given preferential treatment. Rather than brave the almost impassable roads from Guadaljara to Puerto Vallarta, it was sent by barge from Mazatlan along with a five-ton generator truck, plus all of the camera equipment and lights. “The Night of the Iguana,” released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Seven Arts, marks the third time that John Huston has directed a film in Mexico. In 1948, he made his Oscar winning “Treasure of Sierra Madre” in and around Tampico and in 1959 he returned to film “The Unforgiven” near Durango. MANY A DIRECTOR LONGS TO SHOOT THE PRODUCER: EMILIO FERNANDEZ DID IT! There has been more than one instance in Hollywood when a frustrated movie director has experienced the impulse to shoot the producer who has over-ruled him. Emilio Fernandez actually did it. “There came a time when I doubted that producer’s creative intelligence and I had to do it,” said Fernandez, one of Mexico’s leading film figures and winner of 17 awards at Cannes and Venice film festivals. As a result of the near-fatal shooting, the Producer’s Association in Mexico boycotted Fernandez as a director for seven-and-a-half years, although he was permitted to work as an actor. The boycott has since been withdrawn, enabling him to accept the offer of John Huston to work as assistant director on “The Night of the Iguana,” screen version of Tennessee Williams’ Broadway stage success, which was filmed on location in Mexico. Fortunately for Huston and Ray PLAYS VIXEN Ava Gardner as Maxine, the vixenish widow who compli-. cates Richard Burton’s life in “The Night of the Iguana,” explosive screen version of Tennessee Williams’ prize-winning play. Deborah Kerr and Sue Lyon also star in the John Huston-Ray Stark production, presented by Metro-GoldwynMayer and Seven Arts, and directed by John Huston. Night of the Iguana Still NOI-31 Mat 1-C Stark, who produced the MetroGoldwyn-Mayer and Seven Arts release, there were no disagreements and the picture was completed with stars Richard Burton, Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr and Sue Lyon without Fernandez having to resort to the pistol he has always carried since his revolutionary army days. Fernandez, better known as El Indio (the Indian), drew the full salary of a soldier at the age of ten when he joined the revolutionary troops fighting against the Diaz regime in 1910. By the time he was sixteen his military record had earned him entrance into Mexico’s official military academy, the equivalent of West Point. Subsequently he became a pilot in the Air Force and took part in the revolution against Obregon. It seems El Indio was never happy except when he was revolting. Taken prisoner, he spent three years of a 20-year sentence in prison, then made his escape across the border to El Paso. Some time later he had to make an escape from different pursuers. This was in Chicago, where he had made an heroic rescue of a beautiful girl who was about to go under in the waters off Edgewater Beach. The girl fell madly in love with her rescuer but the idyl was to have a quick ending. Worried friends rushed on E] Indio in his hotel room and told him he had no time to pack. They would smuggle him out of the service entrance, Gangsters Waiting “But why?” El Indio asked. “Because there are gangsters at the entrance of the hotel, waiting to take you for a ride,” was the answer. “Your new girl friend is the mistress of ‘Bottles Capone’ and right this minute he is sitting in the Club Alabam on Rush Street waiting to get the word that you have been erased.” E] Indio caught the first train out. The westbound train happened to be the one carrying the funeral cortege of Rudolph Valentino and El Indio was fascinated by the contingent of Hollywood celebrities who accompanied the corpse. No sooner was he in the film capital than he got a job as a laborer at Universal City. One day he noticed that a director was having trouble with an actor who was afraid of horses. “I can handle that horse,” he said, and the result was that he was signed as Warner Baxter’s double for the film, “In Old Arizona.” When EI] Indio returned to Mexico in 1933, he had learned enough about the movies to become a director and, eight years later, he directed Dolores Del Rio in five pictures. “The Night of the Iguana” marks EI Indio’s second association with director John Huston. “I’ve often asked him if he would come back to the United States and make pictures,” the director said. “His answer was, ‘John, I thank you, but I couldn’t live again in a country where they have an electric chair and a gas chamber because I know they’d put me in one or the other!’ ” A devoted Ava Gardner gives Richard Burton a shave in this scene from ‘The Night of the Iguana,”’ screen version of Tennessee Williams’ prize-winning Broadway play. Deborah Kerr and Sue Lyon 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-60 Night of the Iguana Mat 2-D