The Night of the Iguana ***** (1964, Richard Burton, Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr, Sue Lyon) – Classic Movie Review 358

The 1964 film version of Tennessee Williams’s play The Night of the Iguana is beautifully handled by director John Huston, with the dream cast of Richard Burton, Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr and Sue Lyon giving superb performances. 

Tennessee Williams’s brilliant play is one of his finest and this 1964 movie version The Night of the Iguana is beautifully handled by an inspired and fired-up director John Huston, with a dream cast giving performances to be proud of.

In a role that fits him like the proverbial glove, Richard Burton gives a thrilling, electric show of acting as the Reverend Dr T Lawrence Shannon, the drunken, burnt-out case of a former Episcopal clergyman, defrocked after taking liberties with one of his parishioners. Shannon has been scraping an existence working as a tourist guide for a cut-rate travel agency for two years in Mexico.

He is conducting a tour bus loaded with middle-aged Baptist women coming from Texas to Mexico for a tour of the Mexican coast and he gets mixed up with a bunch of characters who make him face up to the demons haunting him.

The characters memorably include the party’s leader, Judith Fellowes (Grayson Hall), her nymphette teenage ward Charlotte Goodall (Sue Lyon, Lolita herself), spinster painter Hannah Jelkes (Deborah Kerr), and tough old broad Maxine Faulk (Ava Gardner), the hotel keeper at the hotel where they hove up. Gardner is dazzling in the film’s other main hit turn, though Kerr is terrific too.

Charlotte comes on to Shannon and they spend the night together. When Judith finds out, she wants to get him fired. So, to stop her communicating with his employer, Shannon strands the party at the remote hotel run by his friend Maxine. The arrival of Hannah and her elderly grandfather (Cyril Delevanti) there starts Shannon thinking.

Stage play adaptation it may be, but Huston infuses it with the essence of cinema. Huston controls the comedy, eroticism, sentimentality and melodrama with the practised skill of an expert.

Splendid though the movie is, in every way, oddly it only won an Oscar for Dorothy Jeakins’s Best Costume Design Black-and-White, though it was also nominated for the Academy Awards for Best Art Direction Black-and-White (Stephen B Grimes) and Best Cinematography Black-and-White (Gabriel Figueroa). Grayson Hall received Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for Best Supporting Actress, and Cyril Delevanti received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

That is four Academy Award nominations and one win, five Golden Globe nominations and no wins, one British Academy Film Awards nomination (Ava Gardner as Best Foreign Actress) and no wins. Gardner won the Best Actress award at the San Sebastián International Film Festival.

It was a hit as the 10th highest-grossing film of 1964, costing $3 million, earning $4.5 million in US theatrical rentals and grossing $12 million worldwide at the box office.

Burton’s then bride-to-be Elizabeth Taylor sat by and watched the filming, which started in September 1963, though later she would have been perfect in the Gardner role.

Huston, Lyon and Burton, accompanied by Elizabeth Taylor, arrived in September 1963 at the Mexican beach resort town of Puerto Vallarta for principal photography, 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.

There is a statue of John Huston in Puerto Vallarta, celebrating him and his film’s role in making the area a popular resort destination.

Bette Davis scored a triumph playing Maxine Faulk on Broadway, and was infuriated to be overlooked for the movie when Huston cast his old friend and drinking buddy Gardner instead.

The final three-act version of the play premiered on Broadway at the Royale Theatre on 28 December 1961 and ran for 316 performances, with Patrick O’Neal as the Reverend Shannon, Bette Davis as Maxine and Margaret Leighton as Hannah. Davis left after four months, and Shelley Winters took over.

The Night of the Iguana started as a 1948 Tennessee Williams short story, was first staged as a one-act play in 1959, and developed it into a full-length play by him, with two different versions staged in 1959 and 1960 before the final three-act version.

Burton, entirely overlooked here, was nominated for an Academy Award seven times, but never won.

Gardner was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in John Ford’s Mogambo (1953), and for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama and a BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actress for her performance in The Night of the Iguana. However, she did win that Best Actress award at the San Sebastián International Film Festival for The Night of the Iguana.

James Garner claimed he was offered the Burton role but declined because, he said: ‘It was just too Tennessee Williams for me.’

There are two versions. It runs either 125 minutes (original) or 118 minutes (TCM print and edited version).

It is made by Seven Arts Productions and was released by MGM on 6 August 1964 in New York City.

Sue Lyon [Suellyn Lyon] (July 10, 1946 – December 26, 2019) won a Golden Globe for Lolita (1962) and gave notable appearances in The Night of the Iguana (1964), 7 Women (1966), Tony Rome (1967), and Evel Knievel (1971).

The cast are Richard Burton as the Reverend Dr T Lawrence Shannon, Ava Gardner as Maxine Faulk, Deborah Kerr as Hannah Jelkes, Sue Lyon as Charlotte Goodall, James (‘Skip’) Ward as Hank Prosner, Grayson Hall as Charlotte’s chaperone Judith Fellowes, Cyril Delevanti as Hannah’s poet grandfather Nonno.

Richard Burton died August 5, 1984.

© Derek Winnert 2013 Classic Movie Review 358

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Ava Gardner plays tough old broad Maxine Faulk.