The Night of the Iguana (MGM) (1964)

x « JOHN HUSTE When director John Huston began the project of turning Tennessee Williams’ prize-winning Broadway play, “The Night of the Iguana,” into a motion picture as a Huston-Ray Stark production starring Richard Burton, Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr and Sue Lyon, he invited the noted playwright to visit the location in Mexico, where the film was being made. This was in the isolated fishing village of Mismaloya, fifteen degrees north of the equator on the Pacific coast. As he showed Williams the hotel, principal locale of the drama, which had been constructed exactly as it was described in the play, Huston said, “This is going to be an interesting experiment, something I’ve always wanted to do. “When you put ‘Iguana’ on Broadway, your actors created their characters each night for two-and-a-half hours. Here, we’re keeping them in character for three months and they will actually be living in the setting you conceived. There’s no road, no telephone, no TV, nothing but what you described in your manuscript as a rather rustic and very bohemian hotel sitting on a jungle-covered hilltop overlooking the beach. Our actors will live here without distraction while we film the story in exact sequence. Yes, it’s going to be an interesting experiment.” Proved His Point And it proved exactly that. Huston brought in the picture, released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Seven Arts, five days under schedule, and everyone connected with the filming of the high-powered drama of a defrocked minister and his effect on the lives of three women agreed that it was one of the most interesting experiences of their careers. But experiments are nothing new to Academy Award-winner Huston. He made one of his early ones in Hollywood in 1941, when he was working as a writer on the Warner lot. After having collaborated on the writing of some of the company’s biggest * hits, “The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse,” “Juarez,” “High Sier ra,” “Sergeant York” and “Dr. Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet,” he announced he would not write another screen play unless he could direct it, too. Moreover, the picture he wanted to direct was Dashiel Hammet’s “The Maltese Falcon.” The studio had already made it twice and had lost heavily at the box-office on both AcademyAward-winning director John Huston makes friends with a parrot during the Mexican location filming of ‘*The Night of the Iguana,” screen version of Tennessee Williams’ prize-winning play, with Richard Burton, Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr and Sue Lyon in the distinguished cast. The Huston-Ray Stark production is presented by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Seven Arts. Night of the Iguana Still NOI-x-24 Mat 1-G occasions. Huston persuaded the executives to try it once more and they selected George Raft for the starring role. When the latter objected to being directed by a novice, Humphrey Bogart was given the role, and thus began the first of seven motion pictures which Huston made with Bogart as his star, He brought ‘The SR ee eee CYRIL DELEVANTI LITERALLY “ROLLED” THRU HIS ROLE IN “NIGHT OF IGUANA” _———— ee Cyril Delevanti claims his role in the John Huston — Ray Stark production, “The Night of the Iguana,” based on Tennessee Williams’ prizewinning play and presented by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Seven Arts, was as easy as rolling off a log. “Actually, I literally ‘rolled’ through my part because when I wasn’t lying in bed, Deborah Kerr was rolling me in a wheelchair,” he said. “Not that I needed the chair once the scenes were finished. I’ll admit I’m ancient enough to be Miss Kerr’s father, and Richard Burton’s and Ava Gardner’s. And, of course, as for that sweet little Sue Lyon, I could easily be her grandfather. Nevertheless, for an old party, I’m still able to make my way around without help.” In “The Night of the Iguana,” Delevanti enacts Deborah’s grandfather, Nonno, a 98-year-old man known as the world’s oldest living practicing poet. The actor is not ninety-eight; he is seventy-five, but there is nothing about the nimble and spritely gentleman, except perhaps his wondrous face, looking like a fine parchment scroll, and his cap of thick white hair to bespeak his years. Acting in “Iguana,” which was filmed on location in Mexico, required Delevanti to make a daily arduous trip from the town of Puerto Vallarta to Mismaloya eight miles across rough ocean. He didn’t mind it a bit. He claims the role was worth ry es “It’s what you’d call a cameo part,” he said. “It’s the sort of part that calls for concentration because you have to register the moment you appear. There isn’t time to develop the characterization.” Originally from England, the actor came to the United States more than twenty years ago to appear on Broadway with Ethel Barrymore in “Declasse.” He has worked on stage, screen and television ever since. His recent credits include “Mary Poppins,” “The Greatest Story Ever Told” and “Bye Bye Birdie.” He no longer saves notices or clippings. “When I was younger I used to save them all,” he said, “but no one ever wanted to read them and I certainly didn’t. So I finally threw them out.” Except for playing a few juveniles when he was young, Delevanti has always done character work. “Tt’s more interesting,” he claims. “You're never yourself. Of course, you don’t get the fans that a typed actor does. With a typed actor they either like you or they don’t. With a character actor, they don’t know which one of you to like.” DEBORAH WAS BRAVE 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 Night of the Iguana,” When she got to the tiny fishing village on the Pacific coast, she found it alive not only with spiders but with scorpions, midges, mites, mosquitoes, flies, chiggers, snakes, land crabs and the iguanas of the picture’s title! SS cht © pee tee ct WEDOTAU asuin, vec i ton as he sat in a corner on the “Teuana” set, engrossed in an Elizabethan treatise and oblivious to everything around him, said: “T sometimes wonder if Dick is not so much in love with acting as he is with words, words, words! John Huston and Literary Names Go Hand-in-Hand In bringing Tennessee Williams’ prize-winning Broadway play, “The Night of the Iguana,” to the screen, director John Huston collaborated on the screen play with Anthony Veiller. Williams is the latest of famous writers with whose works Huston has been associated. He has written and directed pictures adapted from works by Ernest Hemingway, Dashiel Hammet, Maxwell Anderson, Stephen Crane, Herman Melville, Romain Gary, Arthur Miller, JeanPaul Sartre and Sigmund Freud, among others. when her play for him tails 1n the face of more experienced competition from both Ava Gardner and Deborah Kerr that Ward becomes romantically involved with her on the rebound. “When they first spoke to me about playing in ‘The Night of the Iguana,’ they asked me if I could drive a bus,” said young Ward. “I told ’em I had driven everything from motorcycles to jeeps to foreign sports speedsters so I guessed I could handle a bus. What I didn’t know at the start was that I would have to handle Sue Lyon, too. That,” he laughed, “turned out to be a dividend.” It turned out that in order to win Miss Lyon he would have to fight for her, which he does in a vicious scrap with a couple of Mexican beach boys. Director Huston insists on his movie scenes being realistic and before the fight was over, Ward came off the set with a black eye and not a few black-and-blue marks as souvenirs. “T didn’t mind that, either,” he said. “Luckily I had some previous training in movie fights when I acted in such tough pictures as ‘Lafayette Escadrille.’ I’ve always kept in physical condition and while I was serving overseas during the war I dida little boxing and wrestling.” Deborah Kerr removes a crucifix from Richard Burton’s neck in this scene from “The Night of the Iguara,” screen version of Tennessee Williams’ prizewinning Broadway stage hit. Night of the Iguana Still NOI-63 Mat 1-D 7