Guillermo Wulff and Puerto Vallarta: The Engineer Who Brought Hollywood to Mismaloya

The dinner in Los Angeles

Wulff told the story himself. “I was at Syd’s house in Los Angeles when John Huston called him on the phone to invite him to dinner that night” [1]. He already knew Huston slightly from the Alemán years. At dinner Huston asked where he lived, and when he said Vallarta, Huston suggested Wulff invite him. He came, Wulff showed him everything, including Mismaloya, and Huston loved it. When the Night of the Iguana script arrived with instructions to find a location, Wulff suggested Mismaloya, which “almost killed him,” because there was nothing there and you could only get in by boat [1]. Our Night of the Iguana article identifies “Syd” as Hollywood screenwriter and producer Sy Bartlett [9].

Other versions exist. Huston himself remembered meeting “a Puerto Vallarta architect and entrepreneur named Guillermo Wulff” in Los Angeles [7][10], and one account has Huston knowing Mismaloya long before he heard about Wulff’s lease [11]. But the dinner at Syd’s is the version from the man himself.

Building a movie, and a debt

Wulff held a lease on the Mismaloya land [6][11] and built the set and bungalows under art director Stephen Grimes [11]. He and Huston hoped to turn the housing into a resort after the film [11]. He also signed, in his words “foolishly,” a contract to supply everything: sets, housing, maids, linens, boats, restaurant, bar and the extras’ pay. Up to 500 people worked for him, with 100 burros and 20 cooks, and a ton of tortillas, meat, beans, rice and bread went out by boat every day [1].

The numbers didn’t work. By Wulff’s own account, he had agreed to three meals a day for US$5 a person, and the real cost was about US$15. When he threatened to shut off water, light and boats, the Interior Secretary and the governor flew in the next morning to tell him the film could not be stopped [1]. He said he ended up owing about US$200,000 to Bancomer and took three years to repay it [1].

Then there was the sand. Grimes objected to Wulff using salty beach sand in the concrete; they compromised, with beach sand for the bungalows only [11]. Late in the shoot a balcony collapsed under assistant director Tom Shaw, who broke his back [11]. Wulff’s version: the railing was marked “fresh,” a man leaned on it at night, and Huston would not back him. Richard Burton did, giving him, as Wulff remembered it, up to US$10,000 [1]. Only the hotel set was left standing in the end [11].

Was it worth it? Wulff thought so. He reckoned the film’s press coverage was worth US$40 million in publicity, with Liz Taylor in Puerto Vallarta on front pages in London, Rome and Paris, and some 40 journalists living here full time [1]. “Vallarta grew so much because of it that I had more work,” he said [1]. He was also the go-between for the only Mexican reporter to get an interview with Taylor, a young Raúl Velasco [1].