The preface to the story shows Episcopal priest the Reverend Dr. T. Lawrence Shannon having a "nervous breakdown" after being ostracized by his congregation 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 school teachers by bus to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. The group's brittle leader is Miss Judith Fellowes, whose 16-year-old niece Charlotte Goodall tries to seduce Shannon. Fellowes accuses Shannon of trying to seduce Charlotte and declares that she will ruin him. In a moment of despair, Shannon shanghais the bus and its occupants, then tries to prevent Fellowes from calling his boss by stranding the tour group at a cheap Costa Verde hotel in Mismaloya. Shannon assumes the hotel is still run by an old friend named Fred, but the man died recently, so the hotel is now run by Fred's widow, the bawdy and flamboyant Maxine Faulk. Another new arrival at the hotel is Hannah Jelkes, a beautiful and chaste itinerant painter from Nantucket, who is traveling with her elderly poet grandfather. 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," just like an iguana 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. Hannah's grandfather delivers the final version of the poem he has been laboring to finish and dies. The characters try to resolve their confused lives with Shannon and Maxine deciding to run the hotel together. Hannah walks away from herlast chance at love.
Cast
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 Ward as Hank Prosner
Grayson Hall as Judith Fellowes, Charlotte's chaperone
Cyril Delevanti as Nonno, poet and Hannah's grandfather
Production
said he was originally offered the role played by Richard Burton but he turned it down because "it was just too Tennessee Williams for me." In September 1963 Huston, Lyon, and Burton, accompanied by Elizabeth Taylor, arrived at Puerto Vallarta—a "remote little fishing village"—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." 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 US theatrical rentals It was the 10th highest-grossing film of 1964. Time 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 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, calling him
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 Lolitaish Sue Lyon, he is farcical when he isn't grotesque.
Like many other Tennessee Williams plays, it also contains a repressed gay character: 'Miss Fellowes', perpetual spinster.
Awards and nominations
Legacy
A statue of John Huston stands in Puerto Vallarta, celebrating the film's role in making the area a popular destination.
