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A certain Hollywood director, now immortalized in the area with a statue celebrating his beneficence toward Puerto Vallarta, had also discovered this slice of Mexican loveliness during the '50s. John Huston, already well regarded for movies such as The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and The Maltese Falcon, showed up in Puerto Vallarta in 1963 with a few big names who had seen better days—Richard Burton, Ava Gardner and Deborah Kerr—as well as young star Sue Lyon. His goal? To shoot The Night of the Iguana, based on a play by none other than Tennessee Williams.
As it happens, Burton was romantically attached to Elizabeth Taylor, and the two enjoyed a warm Mexican holiday in the area as the movie was being filmed. Much of the shoot took place in a rough-and-tumble corner of Vallarta named La Jolla de Mismaloya, where the Pacific Ocean and exuberant wilderness provided a breathtaking backdrop that needed no Hollywood magic. The entire area was soon swarming with paparazzi who, in trying to report all about the Taylor-Burton liaison, also memorably captured the organic beauty and increasing popularity of this exciting town.
In his memoir, An Open Book (1980), Huston wrote: "For the better part of the last five years I have been living in Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, Mexico. When I first came here, almost 30 years ago, Vallarta was a fishing village of some 2,000 souls.… There was one taxi and one hotel, the Paraiso, which catered to sailors, muleteers and traveling salesmen.… Before The Night of the Iguana the population was some 2,500. Afterward, it grew prodigiously and it's now [in 1980] close to 80,000. Today hotels and condominiums rise, naked as mushrooms, out of the abundant green jungle."
Puerto Vallarta was finally declared a city in 1968; after that, more and more hotels started to arrive, new residents kept moving in and visitors continued to come. Its historic center is enjoying revitalization efforts that encompass the homogenizing of its façades, sprucing up of its streets and a more cohesive signage system, among others. Whether or not John Huston would have approved we will never know, but he certainly loved the area enough to live there until shortly before he died in 1987.
Juan Manuel Gómez Encarnación: City Historian
 Born and raised in nearby Ixtapa, location of much of the archaeological activity in the region, Juan Manuel Gómez Encarnación holds archaeologist Dr. Joseph Mountjoy in high esteem. "The doctor has proved that our roots in this region go back to long before the Spanish appeared in the bay." Not discrediting the sources of the Spanish noblemen and fathers who lived on the coast, Gómez Encarnación mentions several he plans to investigate, who visited and wrote about the region.
Gómez Encarnación is an accomplished writer himself, author of six or seven titles primarily focused on the stories, legends and myths of the region. In 2002 his book Uitzitzilin was awarded the National Prize for Children's Literature in Veracruz. His current occupation allows him computer access and office space in the cultural offices at the Isla Río Cuale for his research and notes.
"History is an important element of our identity, because if we know where we're from, maybe we can figure out where we're going. Through knowing a place, we grow to love it. And if we love it, we'll take care of it. In our daily life in Puerto Vallarta, we learn the value of not only our families, but of our regular interaction with others in the community. We live more consciously and are healthier. Even in the solitary condition of man, we feel less lonely with the hands of friends to help and guide us. When we lose our culture, we become distant from one another."
"Even the place where we were born isn't important. It might have been here or maybe elsewhere. We can still be Vallartan if we recognize the spirit of the community and find our place within it. Not only are we accepted, but we learn to empathize and not judge what we see around us. We become Vallartan by conviction."
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