''The Night of the Iguana'' is a 1964 American

drama Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has b ...

film directed by

John Huston John Marcellus Huston ( ; August 5, 1906 – August 28, 1987) was an American film director, screenwriter, actor and visual artist. He wrote the screenplays for most of the 37 feature films he directed, many of which are today considered ...

, based on the 1961 play of the same name by

Tennessee Williams Thomas Lanier Williams III (March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983), known by his pen name Tennessee Williams, was an American playwright and screenwriter. Along with contemporaries Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller, he is considered among the thr ...

. It stars Richard Burton, Ava Gardner,

Deborah Kerr Deborah Jane Trimmer CBE (30 September 192116 October 2007), known professionally as Deborah Kerr (), was a British actress. She was nominated six times for the Academy Award for Best Actress. During her international film career, Kerr won a ...

and

Sue Lyon Sue or SUE may refer to: Music * Sue Records, an American record label * ''Sue'' (album), an album by Frazier Chorus * "Sue (Or in a Season of Crime)", a song by David Bowie Places * Sue Islet (Queensland), one of the Torres Straits island ...

. The film won the 1964

Academy Award for Best Costume Design The Academy Award for Best Costume Design is one of the Academy Awards presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) for achievement in film costume design. The award was first given in 1949, for films made in 1948 ...

, and was nominated for the Academy Awards for Best Art Direction and Best Cinematography. Actress

Grayson Hall Grayson Hall (September 18, 1922 – August 7, 1985) 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 ...

received Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for Best Supporting Actress, and Cyril Delevanti received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actor. 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 An image is a visual representation of something. It can be two-dimensional, three-dimensional, or somehow otherwise feed into the visual system to convey information. An image can be an artifact, such as a photograph or other two-dimension ...

and its director,

, likewise received Golden Globe nominations. ''The Night of the Iguana'' drew considerable attention for its on-set drama because Burton would bring his soon-to-be-wife

Elizabeth Taylor Dame Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor (February 27, 1932 – March 23, 2011) was a British-American actress. She began her career as a child actress in the early 1940s and was one of the most popular stars of classical Hollywood cinema in the 1950s. ...

to the location set.

Plot

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 Baptists form a major branch of Protestantism distinguished by baptizing professing Christian believers only ( believer's baptism), and doing so by complete immersion. Baptist churches also generally subscribe to the doctrines of soul c ...

schoolteachers by bus to Puerto Vallarta,

Mexico Mexico (Spanish language, Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a List of sovereign states, country in the southern portion of North America. It is borders of Mexico, bordered to the north by the United States; to the so ...

. The group's brittle leader is Miss Judith Fellowes, whose 16-year-old niece Charlotte Goodall tries to seduce Shannon. Meanwhile, 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. Shannon assumes that the hotel is run by an old friend named Fred, but the man had died recently and the hotel is now run by Fred's 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. Another new arrival at the hotel is Hannah Jelkes, a beautiful and chaste itinerant painter from

Nantucket Nantucket () is an island about south from Cape Cod. Together with the small islands of Tuckernuck and Muskeget, it constitutes the Town and County of Nantucket, a combined county/town government that is part of the U.S. state of Massachuse ...

who is traveling with her elderly 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, Miss Fellowes' niece continues to make trouble for him and he is "at the end of his rope," similar to how an iguana is kept tied by Maxine's cabana boys. Shannon suffers a breakdown, the cabana boys truss him in a hammock and Hannah ministers to him there with poppy-seed tea and frank spiritual counsel. 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, with Shannon and Maxine deciding to run the hotel together, although Maxine had offered to walk away and let Hannah run the hotel with Shannon. Hannah walks away from her last chance at love.

Cast

* Richard Burton as the Reverend Dr. T. Lawrence Shannon * Ava Gardner as Maxine Faulk *

as Hannah Jelkes *

as Charlotte Goodall * James ("Skip") Ward as Hank Prosner *

as Judith Fellowes, Charlotte's chaperone * Cyril Delevanti as Nonno, poet and Hannah's grandfather

Production

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." In September 1963, Huston, Lyon and Burton, accompanied by

, arrived at Puerto Vallarta—a "remote little fishing village"—for

principal photography Principal photography is the phase of producing a film or television show in which the bulk of shooting takes place, as distinct from the phases of pre-production and post-production. Personnel Besides the main film personnel, such as ...

, which lasted 72 days. Huston liked the area's fishing so much that he bought a $30,000 house "in a cottage colony eight miles outside town." 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."

Reception

The film grossed $12 million worldwide at the box office, earning $4.5 million in U.S. theatrical rentals It was the 10th highest-grossing film of 1964. ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and event (philosophy), events that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various me ...

'' 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." Bosley Crowther of ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' 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.

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

Lolita ''Lolita'' is a 1955 novel written by Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov. The novel is notable for its controversial subject: the protagonist and unreliable narrator, a middle-aged literature professor under the pseudonym Humbert Hum ...

ish Sue Lyon (whose acting is painfully awkward), he is farcical when he isn't grotesque."

Awards and nominations

Legacy

A statue of

stands in Puerto Vallarta, celebrating the film's role in making the area a popular destination.

References

External links

* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Night Of The Iguana (Film), The 1964 films 1964 drama films American black-and-white films American drama films American films based on plays 1960s English-language films Films based on works by Tennessee Williams Films directed by John Huston Films scored by Benjamin Frankel Films set in hotels Films set in Mexico Films that won the Best Costume Design Academy Award Films with screenplays by John Huston Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer films 1960s American films