Living With Miss G (28 page)

Sue is also chaperoned by her mother’s friend, the hatchet-faced, lesbianinclined Grayson Hall, who is watching Shannon like a suspicious wife and
waiting to pounce. Desperate for breathing space, Shannon instructs the bus
driver to make for Puerto Vallarta. Nearby on the coast is a rather run-down
hotel owned by an old girlfriend, Maxine Faulk (Miss G).
Also staying there is Hannah Jelkes (Deborah Kerr), a romantic, wandering
artist, doing good for the whole world and caring for her ninety-seven year old
grandfather, a poet (Cyril Devanti, who in real life was actually getting on
towards that age). He and Hannah have been offered temporary
accommodations by the indulgent Maxine to give them the chance of selling
some of Hannah’s sketches to local tourists. Hannah spots Shannon and decides
he needs her help to save his soul.
As the bus pulls up on the road under the terrace of the Hotel Costa Verde,
Maxine is standing there, looking down. Attired in a loose, low-cut Mexican
dress, she is strong, sexy, blowsy and alluring, the essential Miss G, in fact. As
the bus passengers disembark, she spots Shannon and screams delightedly,
“Shannon! Hah! My spies told me that you were back under the border…that
you went through last week with a busload of women—a whole busload of
females, all females, Hah!”
You know instinctively that in the past there must have been other
rewarding encounters between the two. You also know that, while Shannon may
have found temporary sanctuary, he is now the only human with male
credentials available in a den of predatory lionesses.

The Chacala Indians who live in small palape roofed villages along the
coastline west of Puerto Vallarta can not believe what they were seeing. A bus—
a real, huge, single-decker bus with driver and passengers—was driving across
the waves about half a mile offshore.

They shouted to their wives. The children screamed with excitement. They
crossed themselves. It was fortunate that in their religion miracles were
believable phenomena.

“That bloody bus,” said Clarence Eurist, Unit Manager of
The Night of the
Iguana
, “drove me to the point of insanity.” Clarence was a reasonable, quiet,
philosophical man who rarely expressed any deep feelings. We were sitting
outside the Mismaloya bar on top of our hill experiencing the warm sunshine,
the blue sky, and the sea below beyond a slope of palm trees, a shimmering
surface stretching to a distant horizon. Miss G had finished her stint before the
cameras for the day. I don’t remember which page in the script we had reached,
but it had all gone smoothly. We were sipping margaritas, and Clarence just
happened to be passing by and stopped for a chat. The subject of the bus
surfaced. Miss G stirred the crushed ice left at the bottom of her margarita glass
with a delicate forefinger.

“I thought you and John got along in complete harmony,” she responded.
“Oh, we do,” confirmed Clarence, “and we’re of long standing, but
sometimes I feel that John’s search for perfect authenticity touches perfect
lunacy.”
I had almost finished my margarita. I said, “But what’s perfection got to do
with a bus?”
“You’ve seen the bus?” questioned Clarence forlornly, as Miss G held aloft
a long, lovely sunburned arm at the brown-faced Mexican face peering from the
doorway. The face grinned and disappeared.
Miss G said, “Everybody’s seen the bus. Old, dirty, battered, and what the
hell it’s got ‘Blake’s Tours’ painted on its side for, I’ll never know.” Clarence
released another of his long reflective sighs. “Authenticity,” he said.
We both knew all about the broiling heat inside the bus when the first
interior shots were filmed in a Puerto Vallarta back street. “Christ!” Richard
said, “All the schoolmarms and I nearly died of heat exhaustion.”
Clarence nodded this time with some exasperation. “You know we could
have bought a similar bus in Los Angeles, sawed it in half, shipped it down here,
welded it together again, and got a vehicle at half the cost and half the number
of perspiring man-hours that damn bus gave us.” The waiter arrived with three
fresh margaritas, which cheered me up considerably. Clarence didn’t look any
happier.
“I don’t quite follow this conversation,” said Miss G. “What about a bus?”
“It couldn’t be just a bus. It had to be a Mexican bus. It had to look, feel,
smell and behave like a real Mexican bus. It had to be a Mexican bus that had
struggled over Mexican roads, bounced in Mexican potholes, been marooned in
Mexican streams, and towed out of Mexican mud.”
The sun was beginning to tilt down towards the sea. Early cicadas were
turning up for the evening concert. The second margarita was making all of us
feel happier now. As Miss G’s interest in the bus seemed to be evaporating and I
felt that poor Clarence needed a little backing in his story, I said, “So what did
you do?”
“John and I traveled the length and breadth of Mexico for what seemed like
three years, but was actually three weeks, looking for John’s perfect old bus. We
examined big buses, fat buses, thin buses, two-tier buses, and then, at last we
arrived in Tepozotlan.”
Miss G regained a little interest and asked if he could spell that. “No,” said
Clarence. Tepozotlan is a small, hot, neglected little town somewhere in
Mexico. There was John’s outrageous little vehicle just moving away from a
stop where it had been unloading passengers. “That’s it,” cried John, starting to
chase it, but I held him back by the sleeve, pointing out that an exact replica bus
was just pulling into view. There were, in fact, five of them in service. Five
dusty, battered little buses with worn upholstery and torn seats toiling through
Tepozotlan at elderly speeds and bringing relief to Mexican feet.”
“You managed to buy one?” I asked.
“The manager of the bus company was very suspicious of our motives. He
was a sweet little man with a big black moustache hiding his worried face. What
did these two funny-looking Americanos want trying to deprive him of one fifth
of the town’s transport?”
“We want to buy her or hire her,” said John.
“I am regretful, but no,” replied the manager. “She is a link–very vital–in
our passenger service. We could lose one fifth of our fares.”
“If you estimate the amount of fares you would lose, and add the cost of
gas, oil, tires, and servicing you would need, we will double that amount and
pay you a fee on top of that. After roughly two months we will return her as
good as new.”
The manager looked even more worried and said, “Well, I shall have to
consider….”
“Besides,” John went on, “We shall be using your bus in a film that will be
seen all over the world. When she comes back, she will be the most famous bus
in all of Mexico. You could even raise our fares to travel in her.” Miss G figured
that cinched the deal.
Clarence paused to allow more gloomy reflections to register on his face.
“So there we were in romantic old Tepotzotlan, a million miles from anywhere,
with John now back on other work, leaving me to figure out how to transport a
battered old bus that could scarcely cough its way down the main street, let
alone cross the mountain ranges and rivers and terrible roads before we reached
Puerto Vallarta.”
“You made it,” I said, trying to resurrect a spirit of victory.
“Sure, with pushers and pullers and tractors and sweat and blood, sweat
and tears. So we shot the scenes we needed in Puerto Vallarta town as per script.
Then we built a huge pontoon and anchored it offshore, and then we pushed out
movable wooden tracks and manhandled her aboard. Then we took the launch
and tied a rope to the pontoon, gave everybody who wanted one a bus ride over
the sea, headed for Mismaloya and unloaded her the same way. The local
Indians didn’t know if they were mad or we were mad.”
Miss G said, “If you’d hit a storm you’d have been bus-wrecked.”
“Sometimes, Ava, I wish we had been. Then we wouldn’t have to return
the bloody thing back to Tepozotlan.”
Miss G smiled. “Then John would have fished her up by submarine and got
her back somehow. He’d given his word.”
“That was what I was afraid of,” said Clarence gloomily.
As production on
The Night of the Iguana
churned along, to everybody’s
surprise—and I know it had nothing to do with the threat of those gold-plated
bullets—e veryone in our confined tropical community got on very well. Despite
the heat and humidity, the tropical storms, the mosquitoes, the creepy-crawlies,
the night-flying insects that bashed into naked electric light bulbs with the fury
of Kamikaze suicide pilots, the lavatories that wouldn’t work, the fact that there
was only one telephone linking us to the outside world—the one in the Puerto
Vallarta post office which opened and closed at mysterious times, and the line
was awful—we all got used to such minor irritations.
There were a few minor puzzlements relating to the film script, though,
such as Huston’s insistence on having all hands on deck whether they were
filming or not. Miss G said to Deborah, “Honey, do you know what the old
bugger intends to do?”
Deborah smiled sweetly and said, “Ava, darling. I think you are referring
to the fact that we shall be shooting the film in chronological order, like a stage
play. Not a bad idea. You know where you are.”
“I don’t start until page forty. When do you start?”
“Not until page eight,” replied Deborah, and both girls spurted with
laughter.
“God Almighty,” cried Ava, “and the whole script is only 140 pages long.
Shall we ask the old darling if we can go off to New York for the first month
and go shopping?”
They did not make that request. The “old darling” was having none of that
sort of hanky-panky. Everyone stayed put.
“Gives you all a chance to soak up the atmosphere of the place, to
understand your characters, gives you something to build on,” said Mr. Huston
firmly.
No doubt at all that John H. was the man in charge. He stalked around the
set of the Hotel Costa Verde in a dark Mexican shirt, loose, large-pocketed
safari-jacket and white slacks. He was tall, thin, stooped, with a creased brown
face, prominent off-white teeth, a shock of gray hair, and a cigarette never far
from tobacco-stained fingers. He never raised his voice, never lost his temper,
but cosseted, cajoled, soothed and sympathized and got it done his way.
A new threat then arrived—playwright Tennessee Williams—who was
determined to change Huston’s way, and unfortunately it seemed his main target
was Miss G. Tennessee had been enticed down from New York by John Huston,
for John would never think of making changes in the work of such a creative
artist as Tennessee Williams without consultation. Well, not often he wouldn’t.
Williams arrived, sporting a clipped piratical black beard, carrying his
portable typewriter. At his heels danced his cute, small, black poodle named
“Gigi,” whose entire experience of life so far had consisted of New York
pavements, and she decided this Mexican life was paradise. She even got around
to paying a courtesy call on the iguana. Tennessee’s boyfriend, Freddy, also
arrived, but he wasn’t half as much at home.
From the moment we first met Tennessee, Miss G and I decided that not
only was he a playwright genius, but also a really nice guy, even though most of
the time he was quite certain he was right. At his first press conference with
scores of happy journalists transcribing every word he spoke for posterity and
continuing to do so during the rest of the time we were in Puerto Vallarta, both
John and Tennessee were available and spoke their minds at the drop of a hat.
I’m not sure about Tennessee, but John knew all about the value of publicity,
especially if there’s a bit of conflict in it.
Tennessee said, “I did not offer to do the screenplay of
Iguana
for a
number of reasons. I did the screenplays for
The Glass Menagerie
,
A Streetcar
Named Desire
,
The Rose Tattoo
, and
Baby Doll
, but now I am fifty-two years
old, and turning plays into screenplays is not all that creative, and I can’t
squander any more years.”
He smiled indulgently and went on saying that he would sooner let
someone else handle the screenplay of
The Night of the Iguana
, particularly if it
was someone he respected. He respected John Huston and Anthony Veiller very
much. He then added a flavor of lemon juice caution to his praise. He said,
“However, I do care what happens to my plays on the screen. That’s why I am
here now. I care very much.”
Tennessee did not waste a moment fraternizing with the lay-abouts in
Puerto Vallarta, or even spend much time with our small group of
Iguana
actors
and actresses. He occupied a small apartment in the newly constructed complex
at Mismaloya, and his typewriter could be heard tapping like a woodpecker at
6:30 every morning. Not that Tennessee was stand-offish. He served his time in
the bar and treated it as a general recreation center. He talked to everybody. He
believed in his play and knew there were strong differences between himself and
John about various screenplay changes.
John H’s contention was that Tennessee had conceived the character of
Maxine—the blowsy, over-the-hill, but grateful for scraps, fifty-year-old lady as
played by Bette Davis in the Broadway production—as an act of love. Towards
the end of the play he had rebelled against his own creation and tried to shade
her into something she was not—a sort of she-devil, a devourer of men who
would in the end toss out Shannon as soon as he bored her. Tennessee thought
John had changed Maxine from the word go. That was the essence of the
disagreement. Our wonderful Pacific setting provided a spectacular backdrop for
their arguments.
In those mountainous regions of western Mexico with cliffs as a rocky
barrier against the immense high-roller drive of the Pacific Ocean, tropical
storms were commonplace. They arrived with tropical suddenness. On this
occasion the sun was setting. There was no breeze, but abruptly the palm fronds
began to rustle, to shiver and make soft sounds almost as if they were human.
Dark clouds began to scurry in from the mountain tops. It got much darker.
Flashes of lightning cut vivid zigzags across a sky now purple-black. Then bang,
bang, bang—thunder crashed round our ears in a quite terrifying bombardment.
You felt that the lightning bolts were aimed directly at you. The driving wind
caught the palms, and torrential rain came cascading down. Coconuts thudded to
earth. Doors slammed shut like rifle shots. Window shutters banged backwards
and forwards as if they’d taken on a life of their own. Canvas coverings were
ripped off or blown sky high. Hired help, technicians, every able-bodied citizen
rushed around, soaked to the skin but exhilarated, trying to tie everything down
or prop everything shut. For a few brief minutes a cannonade of thunderous rain
closed out the world.
The generators went out and with them the lights. The generators lived
private lives of their own, often deciding to quit functioning for twelve or
twenty-four hours at a time. The lack of electric illumination made the bar much
more cozy, a refuge against nature and its storms. Candles were lit and oil lamps
brought in. At the bar demands for more beer, more margaritas, more everything
increased and were met. The bar was always crowded, more so if bad weather or
a storm like this prevented the usual boat exodus back to Puerto Vallarta. At the
moment it was full of actors, stars, character players, walk-ons, technicians, prop
men, secretaries, script girls, newsmen, and associated free loaders, all noisy and
happy. The thunder soon trailed away, its anger diminishing, but the continuing
flashes of distant lightning still dug into faraway valleys to show it where to hit
next.
That evening, John H. and Tennessee Williams were sitting at one table
with Gabriel Figueroa, our brilliant Mexican cameraman. Listening in were two
or three others, including me. Miss G, who was fiddling around in her apartment
dressing room, had sent me ahead to get our favorite barman to prepare her
usual, authentic, Richard Burton boilermaker. John H. never cared who
overheard his conversation. In fact, I think he positively liked it. It publicized his
points of view. John knew I was listening in, using me as a sort of unofficial
communication channel to Miss G.
Tennessee said, “John, I admit that the film script is better constructed than
the play ever was, but there are some things in it that I don’t like at all.”
He paused, and John blew a stream of smoke out of one side of his mouth,
the eyes in the lean face never moving, the right arm, hand curled around his
drink, resting on the table. Occasionally he swapped cigarette and drink by
carefully balancing drink on the edge of the table, taking swigs, and then
reversing the process. He listened. John H. was a good listener.
“John,” said Tennessee, “you know I was never thrilled when Ava was cast
in the first place. I know she’s great for the box office. I know that, but I’ve
always said she’s too beautiful to play Maxine. Maxine’s brazen, blowsy, a
slovenly tart that uses sex and booze as life support systems, the way Bette
Davis played it on Broadway. She has to play a beaten-up old dame thankful for
anything she can get.”