James Ivory reveals why he kept his decades-long romance with Ismail Merchant private: 'I felt I had to protect him'

At height of their fame in the 1980s and 1990s, director James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant were a true partnership — on-screen and off. Movie lovers knew them as the two halves of Merchant Ivory, the company behind such beautifully-crafted period pieces as A Room with a View, Howard's End and The Remains of the Day. Away from the spotlight, a tight-knit circle of friends and collaborators knew them as James and Ismail, longtime lovers whose romance spanned five decades and survived business setbacks and multiple affairs of the heart.

That side of their lives stayed largely private until Merchant's death in 2005. Since then, Ivory has been more open about discussing their relationship... although he's still not under the impression that it was all that secret to begin with. "I mean, we went on for half a century as partners," the now 95-year-old filmmaker and Oscar-winning screenwriter of Call Me By Your Name tells Yahoo Entertainment. "What more is there to say?"

Plenty, as it turns out. Ivory himself covered — as he puts it — "all the gory details" about his life with Merchant into his 2021 memoir Solid Ivory. And their unique love story is addressed again in Merchant Ivory, Stephen Soucy's new documentary about the creative collaboration between Merchant, Ivory and the third member of their artistic triangle, novelist and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, who died in 2013.

Premiering as part of the Doc NYC festival and opening in theaters in 2024, the film includes extensive interviews with many of the crew members and performers from Merchant Ivory productions, including Helena Bonham Carter and Emma Thompson. Some of their stories touch on the couple's at-times tumultuous relationship, which included a mid-’80s love triangle between Bonham Carter, the late composer Richard Robbins and Merchant.

Ivory is also interviewed at length in the documentary, and responds — at times testily — to Soucy's questions about his romantic history with Merchant. "I would throw a question at Jim that he wasn't expecting, and he might push back and we'd have some back-and-forth," explains Soucy, who joined Ivory for this interview. "But I wanted to highlight the Jim and Ismail partnership, because there's so much complexity there. It's part of the Merchant Ivory story."

Asked if he would have preferred to have been more open about his relationship with Merchant during his partner's lifetime, Ivory indicates that their specific circumstances would have made that impossible. "You have to remember that Ismael came from a very, very conservative Muslim family in India. There's not an awful lot he could have gotten into about his intimate thoughts of any kind. And I felt it wasn't right to expose him to the anger of his family or the ridicule of other people.

"God knows that India is as full as relationships like ours as in any other country," Ivory adds. "But I felt I had to protect him."

Go east, young man

Merchant and Ivory's first encounter happened in 1959 outside of the Indian consulate in New York City. The filmmaker had just presented his short documentary The Sword and the Flute for an invited audience and the Mumbai-born producer-in-training introduced himself after the screening to discuss its depiction of Indian miniature painting. But as the documentary alludes, their conversation inevitably took a more personal turn. Within two years, the couple established Merchant Ivory Productions and released their first feature, The Householder, in 1963.

Born in Berkeley, Calif., and raised by adoptive parents in Ore., Ivory says he fell in love with India during his first cinematic pilgrimage there in the ’50s. "I just liked it there — I can't really tell you why," he recalls. "When Ismail saw The Sword and the Flute, he was amazed that an American could make a movie like that about India." Ivory eventually followed Merchant back to India where they connected with Householder novelist Jhabvala, who adapted her own book to the screen.

"That's how the trio began," Ivory says with a smile. "And we stayed together as long as we made films."

Auteur, auteur

While Ivory is the only one of the trio still living, Soucy's documentary places equal emphasis on all three members of Merchant Ivory. "Jim says over and over again in the film that he couldn't do what he did as a director without Ismail as a producer, and Ruth's screenplays," he explains. "I wanted to make sure all the players were [accounted for], because the film is really about all of them together."

"I was the president, but Ismail was the Congress and Ruth was the Supreme Court," Ivory adds. "And it really did work like that!"

The collaborative nature of the core Merchant Ivory team would seem to be a counterargument to the auteur theory, the idea that the director is the primary author of a film. But Ivory — who calls himself "one of the rare American auteurs" — disagrees, offering up a more nuanced take on the term. "Many auteur directors had a group like this that they worked with and they could trust. A true auteur gets as many people as possible that know what the subject is and how they're going to help. Basically, you're asking them to show you, 'How would you do this?' And then I would nudge them one way or the other."

"Jim's approach was the hire the best people and let them do their work," echoes Soucy. "The overall vision and starts and ends with him, and otherwise he's in there when he needs to be."

Prestige picture problems

The Merchant Ivory team hit their commercial stride with 1985's A Room with a View, a spirited adaptation of the E.M. Forster novel that became the art house equivalent of a multiplex blockbuster. Other prestige hits followed, including Maurice and Howard's End. But with success came satirical jabs at the popular perception of Merchant Ivory movies — British actors in period garb sitting in lush gardens sipping tea.

But Ivory, at least, never minded the ribbing. "We were doing what we wanted to do," he says. "And we were funded very well for it! The studios wanted to make Merchant Ivory movies, so we made Merchant Ivory movies for studios and they never interfered." Not for nothing, but the Merchant Ivory model can also be credited for the popularity of subsequent British period hits like Downton Abbey, although Ivory says he never watched that blockbuster series. "I was making my own Downton Abbey, so I had no interest in that," he says, chuckling. "But I would steal their actors!"

And, for the record, Soucy points out that the company frequently ventured beyond early 20th century English gardens during that period, with movies like Slaves of New York and Mr. and Mrs. Bridge, starring Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. "One of the coolest things about the responses to the documentary is seeing people say, 'I didn't know Slaves of New York existed! I'm going to go find that now.' I want people to look at all the work that Merchant Ivory did and be inspired by it."

Of course, neither Slaves of New York nor Mr. and Mrs. Bridge scaled the box office heights of A Room with a View or Howard's End, and that kept Merchant Ivory locked into a certain kind of prestige film. Ivory says that several projects outside of that box fell by the wayside, including an adaptation of William Shakespeare's Richard II written by Oscar-winning Argo screenwriter, Chris Terrio. "I wanted to make a Shakespeare film, but we could never find the money for it. People just laughed at us. It's a rarely performed play, but he was such an interesting king. It would have been wonderful if I had been able to make it."

Day by day

Both Ivory and Soucy are understandably reluctant to pick a favorite Merchant Ivory production. But the filmmaker allows that The Remains of the Day, which celebrated its 30th anniversary this year, may be his most complete picture. "I really kind of got it altogether on that movie," Ivory says of the story of a reserved English butler (Anthony Hopkins) whose sense of duty prevents him from giving his heart to Emma Thompson's housekeeper. "I saw it again the other day, and I was really struck by it. It's a very special film."

Released on Nov. 5, 1993, The Remains of the Day remains a powerful rumination on repressed desire and missed chances, with career-best performances by Hopkins and Thompson. And Ivory says that he, Merchant and Jhabvala never wavered from their commitment to the film's emotionally devastating ending — even if it cost them at the box office.

"Apparently, when the top brass at the studio saw the ending, an executive jumped up and said, 'There goes $50 million,'" Ivory says with a chuckle. "There's no kiss at the end, and no happy ending. But we did get eight Oscar nominations."

Merchant Ivory is currently screening as part of the Doc NYC festival and will be released in theaters next year.