The Night of the Iguana Trivia Quiz

Answer: John Huston

Legend has it that, prior to shooting, Huston made a gift to the principal actors of a gold-coated pistol and a set of bullets, each engraved with the names of the other principal actors. Supposedly, this was intended to reduce possible tensions on set, though it's not recorded if any of the leads were ever tempted to make use of their gift.

Answer: Mexico

The movie put Puerto Vallarte, Mexico, on the map, something for which the local tourist industry remains grateful to this day (some of the film's set has been preserved as an attraction).

Flirted with by the precocious young Charlotte, Shannon (an ex-priest defrocked for involvement with a young parishioner and reduced to tour-guiding busloads of tourists) fears that the girl's aunt will hold good to her promise to report him and lose him his job. In desperation, he hijacks the bus and diverts it to the hotel Costa Verde run by an old friend and which he believes to be telephone-free and so safe pro tem.

His friend has died and the hotel is now run by the friend's widow, Maxine, played by Ava Gardner. She is both earthy and strong-willed but has an inner vulnerability, particularly where Shannon is concerned.

Answer: Richard Burton

Garner claimed to have been offered the role. He dismissed it, he said, because it was "just too Tennessee Williams."

Burt Lancaster reputedly also demurred, on the grounds that the role was too similar to the one he had played in "Elmer Gantry" (1960).

Dean Martin was never offered the role, though he did have his own much-chronicled struggles with alcohol of course.

Burton received mixed reviews for his performance but is wonderfully convincing as the dissolute Shannon throughout and the chemistry between his character and the worldly Maxine (and contrast with the saintly, sensible and rather prudish Hannah) works well in this reviewer's eyes.

Answer: 17

Given Charlotte's youth and the difference in age between her and Shannon, perhaps we can understand better Aunt Fellowes' antipathy to him.

(Note that the hint given in the question relates to her age being the only prime number among the options.)

Answer: Deborah Kerr

Hannah is non-materialistic and she and her grandfather, Nonno, live a hand-to-mouth existence funded only by the money they receive for her sketches and for readings of Nonno's poems.

Despite his age and his dementia, Nonno is still trying to complete the poem that he considers to be his life's masterpiece.

Answer: An iguana

An iguana of course!

The iguana, which spends most of the play tied up on the edge of the veranda, is seen as a symbol for a number of things, including freedom, what it means to be human, and Shannon himself.

As an unnamed critic in "Time" magazine wrote, "Purists of the craft may object that, strictly speaking, 'The Night of the Iguana' does not go anywhere. In the deepest sense, it does not need to. It is already there, at the moving, tormented heart of the human condition."

Answer: A life with Maxine

Shannon and Maxine decide that they will try to manage the hotel together.

Charlotte leaves with her aunt for an uncertain future (the omens are not good!).

Rather sadly, Hannah just walks away from what was probably her last opportunity for love.

Answer: True

Nonno completes the final version of his poem ... and promptly dies.

When read aloud, the poem helps both Shannon and Maxine to conquer the confusion they feel over the direction of their lives and realise what it is that they are looking for.

"How calmly does the orange branch observe
Without a cry, without a prayer,
With no betrayal of despair?

Sometime while night obscures the tree
The Zenith of its life will be
Gone past forever, and from thence
A second history will commence.

A chronicle no longer old,
A bargaining with mist and mould,
And finally the broken stem
The plummeting to earth; and then ...

An intercourse not well designed
For beings of a golden kind
Whose native green must arch above
The earth's obscene, corrupting love.

And still the ripe fruit and the branch
Observe the sky begin to blanch
Without a cry, without a prayer,
With no betrayal of despair.

O Courage could you not as well
Select a second place to dwell,
Not only in that golden tree
But in the frightened heart of me?"

Answer: Best costume design in a black-and-white film

Dorothy Jeakins (1914-1995) collected the statuette and went on to receive a total of three Oscars and an additional 12 nominations for costume design over the course of her long career.

The film was also nominated in the other three categories given as options. Neither of the two principal female actresses, Ava Gardner and Deborah Kerr, received a nomination but Grayson Hall did for playing the role of young Charlotte's opinionated Aunt Fellowes.

Answer: James Earl Jones

James Earl Jones, of course, is famous for providing the voices of Darth Vader in "Star Wars" and Mufasa in "The Lion King".

In January 2017, it was announced that he would be appearing in a revival of "The Night of the Iguana" at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge Massachusetts.