Over the Rain-Forest and the Still Water Beach

Abandoned movie set, Mismaloya, Mexico: photo courtesy of TripAdvisor

The programmers at Turner Classic Movies may not have planned the schedule with me in mind, but they’ve lined up a fine mix of films for me on my birthday this year.

Bruno Ganz in Wings of Desire

I share my day with Sir Laurence Olivier (born May 22, 1907), and TCM has programmed some films of his that I haven’t seen, including Term of Trial (1962) co-starring the great French actress, Simone Signoret. Later on in the day my beloved San Francisco provides the setting for the 1955 sci-fi classic, It Came from Beneath the Sea, in which the city is attacked by a radiation-enlarged octopus. In the evening, this month's TCM guest programmer, Deborah Winger, is set to appear. Among her choices is one film I haven’t seen but have had on my to-watch list for a long time: Wim Wenders' 1987 classic, Wings of Desire brought its director the Best Director prize at Cannes in 1987 and won or was nominated for a raft of other awards.

Winger has also chosen to spotlight John Huston’s masterful production of Tennessee Williams' The Night of the Iguana (1964), one of the great film adaptations of Williams' work.

Tennessee Williams had vacationed in Mexico during 1940, and his experiences at the Hotel Costa Verde outside Acapulco later formed the basis for his 1948 short story entitled The Night of the Iguana. Over time, the story evolved into a stage play that debuted on Broadway in 1961 starring Bette Davis in the role of Maxine Faulk, Margaret Leighton as Hannah Jelks and Patrick O’Neal as The Reverend T. Lawrence Shannon. It is Tennessee Williams' final masterpiece.

Margaret Leighton, Tennessee Williams and Patrick O'Neal

Reverend Shannon is an alcoholic Episcopal priest locked out of his church for stirring up scandal and reduced to working as a guide on a bus tour south of the border. A new scandal involving a nubile young woman in his group of mostly biddies has consumed him. As the play begins, Shannon brings his party to the broken down hotel of his friend Maxine and her late husband Fred on the Mexican seacoast. Also staying at the hotel are Hannah Jelks, an itinerant artist, and her elderly grandfather, a 'practicing' poet.  As Shannon wrestles with his demons he forms a bond with Hannah who is also in spiritual crisis.

The stage production was rocky from the beginning, but it was also acclaimed and successful, running for 316 performances. The Night of the Iguana received Tony nominations for Best Play, Best Producer and Best Actress - for which Margaret Leighton won the award - and was also chosen the best new play of the year by the New York Drama Critics' Circle.

Bette Davis as Maxine Faulk on Broadway

Legendary writer/director/producer Joshua Logan’s reaction to Bette Davis’ performance was enthusiastic: “She was svelte, handsome, voluptuous, wicked, wise, raffish, slightly vulgar – in fact, she was ideal for the part and gave the play added dimension.” But Davis was deeply unhappy in the production and began regularly missing performances. She left the show in April 1962 and Shelley Winters, who replaced her, quickly understood why Davis and her understudy, Madeleine Sherwood, had both been miserable in the part. It seems co-stars Patrick O’Neal and Margaret Leighton routinely undermined the actresses who played Maxine by using the age-old stage trick of moving slightly for a few seconds to divert the attention of the audience whenever they set up her lines. 

Richard Burton and Ava Gardner

The journey of The Night of the Iguana from stage to screen began with a call from producer Ray Stark to writer/director John Huston during the play's Broadway run. Huston, no stranger to adapting great works (The Maltese Falcon, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Moby Dick, etc.), was interested and the two quickly began working out the details of their collaboration. They agreed on casting: Richard Burton as Shannon, Deborah Kerr as Hannah and Ava Gardner as Maxine. Burton and Kerr signed on immediately but Miss Gardner required some courting. Both Stark and Huston flew to Madrid, where Gardner was then living, and spent days wining and dining her until she agreed to take the part. 

Huston and Stark disagreed on one major point, Stark wanted to film in color but Huston preferred black and white for fear that the vibrant colors to be found everywhere on location in Mismaloya, Mexico (azure skies and seas, multi-hued flora and fauna) would distract from the story. Years later, in his memoir, Huston wrote, “Looking back now, I think I was probably wrong.” He was. Color could only have underscored the power of Williams' evocative meditation on the tangle of spiritual and physical yearnings that drive human life.

John Huston and Richard Burton

At the time location work began on The Night of the Iguana, Richard Burton had not yet sacrificed his talent for fame and riches. One of the great, classically trained actors to emerge from Britain in the post-war era, Burton’s finest performances were defined by depth and soul and enriched by his majestic voice, piercing blue-green eyes and potent physical presence. As Deborah Kerr observed in a diary she kept during the shoot, Burton was at his peak as an actor at this point and she agreed with Ava Gardner that "he makes everyone else act well, he is so good himself." Burton’s agonized rendering of the Reverend Shannon's dark night of the soul seems, at times, a glimpse into his own conflicted nature. Though he was not Oscar-nominated for this role (it was for his performance in Becket that earned his Best Actor nod in 1964), Burton would be nominated a total of seven times for an Academy Award, winning none, though he was otherwise acknowledged with BAFTA, Golden Globe and Tony awards. When the filming of The Night of the Iguana got under way in October 1963, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor were living together but not yet married; their life of paparazzi-infested, glittering excess had just begun. Even so, Huston later wrote, "There were more reporters on the site than iguanas..."

John Huston

A very young Ava Gardner

Ava Gardner’s Maxine Faulk was a departure from the character as written by Williams and portrayed on the stage. Warmer and softer, Ava’s Maxine personified the “openness and freedom of the sea” Williams had envisioned, but lacked the man-eating qualities of the original. Huston, who felt Williams’ Maxine became far too devouring by the play's end, was responsible for these changes. Ava Gardner later recalled that Tennessee was never entirely happy about Huston’s tinkering with the character but she also noted, “…anyone seeing the film knows that John’s choice was the only one that fit.” And Gardner committed herself fully to her role. In an earthy, raucous performance, she allowed herself to appear casual to the point of dishevelment. Clad in a loose serape and toreador pants through much of the film, she had lines penciled in under her eyes and her hair tied back into a loose ponytail to de-emphasize her glorious good looks. During filming, Kerr recorded a comment of Huston's that for Ava it may have been a real disadvantage to be so beautiful, "...it has made her appear publicly as someone she is not, and in her work has made her appear the kind of actress she is not." For this performance Ava Gardner received the best reviews of her film career. Reflecting in her memoirs she wrote, “I have only one rule in acting – trust the director and give him heart and soul. And the director I trusted most of all was John Huston. Working with him gave me the only real joy I’ve ever had in movies.”

Ava Gardner and Deborah Kerr

Hannah Jelks is an intriguing entry in Deborah Kerr's filmography. Kerr portrayed sensitive ladies of delicacy and reserve to perfection, but Hannah was slightly different, a "Thin-Standing-up-Female-Buddha," in Tennessee Williams' words. Down-on-her-luck, adrift in Mexico and living by her wits and intuition, the spinster has only her remaining dignity, the care of her 97-year-old grandfather and her paintbox to keep her going.

As the international press descended on the set, Kerr admitted that she was beginning to "feel more and more like Hannah in this movie." Reporters insisted on quizzing her for 'dirt' on Burton, Taylor and others, and, in her diary, she quoted Hannah's sentiments, "Nothing human disgusts me unless it is unkind or violent." Kerr added, "I do loathe and detest unkindness and violence and gossip and troublemaking and envy and malice."

On the day filming of The Night of the Iguana ended in late 1963, Deborah Kerr put down her thoughts in her journal, "It's funny how you get so close to a bunch of people on a movie. It is constant making and breaking of emotional relationships - some of the people you work with and get to know so closely, you may never see again." An interesting reflection, coming on the heels, as it did, of completing a film about the redemptive power of human connection.

It was on an evening in 1940 while in Mexico, that Tennessee Williams watched the sun set on a tree of golden lemons. He would later write a poem about it that provided inspiration for the story that became a play and then a film.  The poem was revised slightly and incorporated into The Night of the Iguana.  Here, Cyril Delevanti, who portrayed Nonno in the film, recites the verse popularly known as "Nonno's Poem" (click title to view).

Cyril Delevanti and Deborah Kerr

John Huston spent many, many years of his life in Mexico, and was living not far from Mismaloya, in Las Caletas, while working on his autobiography in the late 1970s. Sixteen years had passed since the making of The Night of the Iguana and the location site was now deserted. All that remained were the ruins of the buildings constructed for his film. Huston wrote, "No one - other than an old man who passes there on an occasional trip between Las Caletas and Vallarta - seems to give a damn what happens to the place. He would like to see it torn down and given back to the iguanas. The old man is me of course."

John Huston in Las Caletas, 1979

...I was at the Hotel Costa Verde over the rain-forest and the still-water beach which were the off-stage background for Night of the Iguana.

~ Tennessee Williams, Memoirs

Sources:
An Open Book by John Huston, McMillan (1980)
Ava: My Story by Ava Gardner, Bantam (1990)
Dark Victory: The Life of Bette Davis by Ed Sikov, Henry Holt (2007)
Deborah Kerr Personal Collection: http://www.deborahkerr.es

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A Chill in the Air - Part I

Halloween has come and gone, a time change looms (“fall back”) and winter is just around the corner. Early twilight and cool evenings are here and it seems to me that when the weather starts getting nippy and night falls early, nothing satisfies like a crackling fire, something either steaming or iced to drink and a well-chosen book or movie to settle into. What I'm reading and watching as autumn deepens this year are books and the films that were made of them.

The Uninvited, 1944

I’ve been reading Dorothy Macardle’s classic ghost story, The Uninvited, a novel that made its way to film by way of Paramount Pictures in 1944. I’d seen The Uninvited again recently and became curious about its original source material.  I’ve also picked up Daphne du Maurier’s romantic thriller Rebecca once more and have happily revisited the 1940 Hitchcock-directed Selznick production.

Rebecca, 1940

I don’t know how old I was when I first read the words, “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again,” but do know I was young because, when I came upon du Maurier’s description of 50-foot rhododendrons I didn’t know what they were or how to pronounce the word (...if only I could remember what I called them in my imagination back then...). As I re-read Rebecca, I realized how completely Hitchcock’s Oscar-winning film had supplanted the book, erasing nearly all but the opening line and “rhododendrons” from my memory.

The film is a generally literal adaptation, barring Production Code-dictated changes (most notably, Rebecca's death is accidental in the film rather than outright murder as in the book) and a few other alterations. This is largely thanks to producer David O. Selznick, who was wary when it came to tinkering with literature.

Selznick, Fontaine & Hitchcock at Academy Awards dinner

Hitchcock and Selznick weathered a famously rocky collaboration on Rebecca, Hitchcock’s first American film and his first under contract to Selznick International Pictures. The director counted himself lucky that Selznick was still involved with Gone with the Wind - which lessened his interference on Rebecca to some extent. For his part, Selznick was flabbergasted by the director’s stubborn habit of shooting very little ‘coverage’ – or extra footage, effectively “editing in camera” (filming only what he wanted for the final cut). Once Hitchcock completed the shoot, the producer did what he could to more explicitly stamp the production as his own. In particular he supervised the film’s score, having music added to almost every scene – which accounts for intermittent intrusions of musical bombast. Selznick biographer David Thomson writes that the producer learned that no matter how involved he was, “there were secrets of craft, nuance and meaning that only a director controlled.” According to Thomson, Rebecca had been a battle between director and producer that left Selznick feeling defeated.

He should not have been so glum. Rebecca is plainly a Selznick project, a glossy and rich first rate production. The film was an unqualified success and brought the producer his second Best Picture Oscar in a row, one of the two Oscars Rebecca won out of the eleven total nominations it received. But Selznick was accustomed to dominating his directors and Hitchcock had outfoxed him…

Despite the fact that Rebecca has been called the least ‘Hitchcockian’ of the director's films and that Hitchcock later virtually disowned it, it bears unmistakable signature touches. The character interpretations of Florence Bates (Mrs. Van Hopper) and George Sanders (Jack Favell) are darkly witty comic turns - entirely in the Hitchcock tradition. And from relatively inexperienced Joan Fontaine in the central role, the director determinedly mined the performance of her young life. Judith Anderson’s iconic Mrs. Danvers, a brilliantly shaded tour de force, evolved out of a collaboration between actress and director about which she remarked, “I knew I was in the presence of a master; I had utter trust and faith in him.”

Judith Anderson and Joan Fontain in Rebecca

Rebecca's visual style also bears the recognizable imprint of its director. Hitchcock and cinematographer George Barnes concocted a persistently foreboding atmosphere that permeates the film from its first frames.  In fact, the film's opening images - of Manderley's ornate iron-gated entrance, its misty landscape and the mansion's ghostly silhouette - are often cited as an influence on Citizen Kane. Hitchcock and Barnes also notably and inventively contrived to create a character, or the presence of a character, who never once appears onscreen - the titular Rebecca. The scene above beautifully illustrates...

Daphne du Maurier and her children at Menabilly

Daphne du Maurier once described Rebecca, her most well-known and popular novel,  as a study in jealousy. Many have offered opinions on what inspired the plot - was it du Maurier's relationship with her mother and father? Was it based on the writer's insecurities about her husband's beautiful, glamorous, dark-haired former fiancee? It is known that du Maurier spent time during childhood at two grand country mansions, Milton Hall in Cambridgeshire and Menabilly (which she later owned) in Cornwall, and that the two estates were both likely models for Manderley and its grounds. Regardless of conjecture about du Maurier's inspirations, few have questioned that Rebecca is a triumph of its genre - it has been continuously in print over the eight decades since its original publication.

Daphne du Maurier

Du Maurier's Rebecca is a shrewd, seductive 20th century update on the gothic mystery/romance. Its persistent lure is dream-like imagery and a vulnerable narrator's voice throbbing with melancholy and hinting at dark secrets and heartbreak. Soon enough the reader is trapped, like the second Mrs. de Winter, in the world of psychological torment that is Manderley.

For me, du Maurier's novel and the Hitchcock/Selznick film are, taken together, an unbeatable way to greet the season's chill...

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