Born On This Day- June 7th... Film Great James Ivory

When asked for my favorite film I always answer with1985’s A Room With A View, although it is not quite true. The famous Merchant/Ivory film is in a 10 way tie with other much loved films, but I name this film based on the E. M. Forster novel,  because of the time & place that I saw it & because it eventually led me to the trip of a lifetime, 3 weeks in Italy in 1991.

A Room With A View was nominated for 8 Academy Awards, including Best Picture & Best Director, & won 3, for Adapted Screenplay from Forster’s novel, Best Costumes & Best Production Design. A Room With A View was also voted Best Film of the year by the Critic’s Circle Film Section of Great Britain, the British Academy of Film & Television Arts, the National Board of Review in the United States & in Italy, where the film won the Donatello Prize for Best Foreign Language Picture & Best Director for James Ivory.

James Francis Ivory is known for his work in a long collaboration with Merchant Ivory Productions formed in 1961, along with Indian-born producer Ismail Merchant & screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. Their films won 6 Academy Awards. Ismail Merchant was also Ivory's longtime partner in life. Their professional & romantic partnership lasted until Merchant's death.

Oregon’s own Ivory studied at the University of Oregon, majoring in Architecture & Fine Arts & University of Southern California Film School. He wrote, photographed, & produced Venice: Theme & Variations, a 30 minute documentary thesis film for his degree at USC. The film was named by The NY Times as one of the 10 best non-theatrical films of 1957.

Merchant Ivory productions were noted for their literary adaptations, restoring characterization, subtlety & period feeling to films in an era of explosions, aliens, cyborgs, & high-tech escapism. Their early movies were dismissed as yawners. A Room With A View,at a cost of $7 million, grossed $45 million, & left much anticipation for their next effort- Maurice.

Maurice is an impassioned gay love story. E.M. Forster, who was gay in a period when homosexuality was a crime in Great Britain, decreed that the book he wrote in 1914 be published only after he died. Forster passed away in 1970.

Forster's literary executors tried to steer Merchant Ivory toward the author's works. They found it harder than usual to find investors. Collaborator- Jhabvala declined to write the screenplay. Ivory co-wrote the script with Kit Hesketh-Harvey, 30, an actor & writer who graduated from Cambridge, where much of Maurice takes place. Just before shooting began that year, Julian Sands, who had co-starred in A Room With A View, withdrew from the title role claiming personal reasons. Ivory was warned that a salute to homosexual passion during the AIDS crisis was hardly exemplary timing.

Merchant & Ivory stood firm. The R-rated film depicts men courting, kissing & making love.

Ivory: "It would have be wrong to turn our faces from the homosexual community. We wanted the audience to root for a happy ending for the film's male lovers. People should be saying, 'I know what's in their hearts, I can feel for them.' Although the book was written over 90 years ago, it's completely relevant to today. The laws may have changed regarding homosexuality, but people's feelings—the dismay, panic & compromises they endure—remain the same."

In 1987, Maurice received a Silver Lion Award for Best Director at the Venice Film Festival as well as Best Film Score for Richard Robbins & Best Actor Awards for co-stars James Wilby & Hugh Grant.

They are the most impressive, impassioned, inspired & influential gay partnership in film history.  The films of Merchant Ivory will always be noted as visually sumptuous, well-acted period pieces based on literary works, produced on tiny budgets. The couple & their work were so closely intertwined that many assumed that "Merchant Ivory" was the name of one individual. Associated in with British literary & cultural traditions, their professional & personal relationship actually brought together diverse elements of American & Indian culture.

Other Merchant Ivory works based on gay literary sources include their adaptations of Forster's Howards End, Carson McCullers's The Ballad of the Sad Café, & Henry James's The Golden Bowl .

Ivory had no problem gathering A-list actors willing to work for scale. Actors associated with films directed by Ivory: all of those darn Redgraves, Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson, Sam Waterston, Alan Bates, Maggie Smith, Judi Dench,  Bernadette Peters, Christopher Reeve, Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward,  Anne Baxter, Stanley Tucci,  Helena Bonham Carter, Daniel Day-Lewis,  Julie Christie, Ralph Fiennes, Nick Nolte, Natasha Richardson, Leslie Caron, & my past lover- Jeremy Northam.

Ivory & Merchant circa 1970

In 2005, Merchant died from a bleeding ulcer, after a short illness. Ivory's latest film, 2010’s The City of Your Final Destination, is the first he has made on his own.

Ivory: "But Ismail was very much there to plan it, he bought the rights to the book & we went down to Argentina together to scout the location. We then went to China & made The White Countess &, when we returned to London, that was when he died. I had to finish The White Countess without him & – how can I put this? – it took me some time to recover."

Ivory continues to work in film & lives in the 3 houses, on 3 continents that inspired his work as partners in film & life with Merchant. His films include:

 The Householder

Shakespeare Wallah

The Guru

Bombay Talkie

Savages  

Autobiography of a Princess

The Wild Party

Hullabaloo Over Georgie & Bonnie's Pictures

Roseland

The Europeans

Jane Austen in Manhattan

Quartet

Heat & Dust

The Bostonians

A Room with a View

Maurice

Slaves of New York

Mr. & Mrs. Bridge

Howards End

The Remains of the Day

Jefferson in Paris

Surviving Picasso

A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries

The Golden Bowl

Le Divorce

The White Countess

The City of Your Final Destination (based on openly gay Peter Cameron’s novel)