UPDATED X 2
My latest Deconstruction Zone column for Pop Matters, celebrating the grim 50th anniversary of the publication of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita in the United States, is up and running; in the last third of the 3,000 word feature we focus on the destruction of Sue Lyon, the 15-year-old actress hired to play the titular heroine in Stanley Kubrick’s 1962 film:
The life and career trajectory of Lyon would eventually take on dimensions as tragic and complicated as Lolita’s. Only 16 when the film premiered, Lyon was made into an overnight sensation and nabbed a Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Newcomer (Female). But she could never live down Lolita. Aside from a co-starring role alongside Richard Burton and Ava Gardner in John Huston’s Night of the Iguana (1964), Lyon was not offered any roles that would place her acting career in anything resembling a respectable arc.
Lyon, whose turbulent life led to a diagnosis and treatment for bi-polar disorder, married and divorced five times and was the star of American scandal sheets when she married African-American photographer and football coach Roland Harrison in the early ‘70s (an eerie reflection of Nabokov’s observation that pedophilia and miscegenation are “utterly taboo” in American culture). Lyon and Harrison relocated to Spain to escape the tabloid press, but the marriage could not withstand the pressure.
Read The Panting Maniac: Chasing Lolita on a Grim 50-Year Anniversary
UPDATE: The Lolita piece received a nice nod from Green Cine Daily today.
UPDATE X2: Our friend Joseph Mailander calls the Lolita essay “an intriguing venture into the realm of poststructural critical theory.”
Well. Thank you, JM. I just hope that the article, combined with Graham’s excellent book, starts literary minds thinking again about Nabokov’s novel. He was warning us about beasts within our midst and we collectively misinterpreted his book as something else altogether.
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Roger, maybe one of the best takes and insight ever on both the book by Nabokov and the film by Kubrick, both on my favorites list. Bravo!
But I kinda disagree with your opinion that Sue Lyon’s career was ruined by the role she played as Lolita. Maybe that can be said for Patty McCormick who played the role of Rhoda in the film “The Bad Seed” or Louise Fletcher as Nurse Ratchett in “One Flew Over The Cukoo’s Nest” but not Sue Lyon bedause she wasn’t in the same league as those actors.
I’ll tell you a little insider info about Sue Lyon and why I think that way.
My wife and her sister and other friends of mine went to Marshall High School (It was Marshall High or the gang infested schools of Lincoln High or Belmont), with Sue Lyon and in fact I met her a couple of times at small gatherings. Marshall was a unique High Schoo as it drew from both the wealthy white kids from Los Feliz and also poor Chicano youngsters from Toonerville and Frogtown.
Anyway the real story I got from Sue Lyon herself and which is maybe a case of art imitating life,was that she (Sue Lyon) entered a Bridget Bardot look alike contest for “Look Magazine”, the winner and most of the girls were teenagers 15, 16 , and 17 years old, and they were judged by a select commitee on thier “bikini bathing suit” attributes , and although she didn’t win Sue Lyon was ‘noticed” by some movie agent hustler who “groomed ” her and promised her a movie career, (kind of like Claire Hilty in the Lolita story.
Sue LYon in person was exactly like the personality of Lolita in the movie, kind of spaced out, cute, and totally self absorbed with herself. No serious acting was needed by Ms Lyon she just played herself.
The late Fifty’s and early sixties were a wierd time for movies and other media, not only was the tight assed US public freaked out about Rock and Roll and movies like Lolita, Baby Doll, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Childrens Hour, but books and magazines like Peyton Place and Playboy Magazine, The Kinsey Report,
It was the end of the Ozzie and Harriet/ Eisenhower era and Nabokov / Kubrick helped usher in a new awarness.
The real story of Sue Lyon is probably too wierd to become a book or movie but I think someone like you could pull it off Roger!
PS, Besides Sue Lyon other notable Marshall High graduates are Paul Mitchell of the Shampoo Fame and OJ Judge Lance Ito.
By: don quixote on August 17, 2008
at 9:51 pm
Thanks, Don. But it was Sue’s own vehemence in that Reuters press clip that correlated her own demise to Lolita.
By: Rodger Jacobs on August 17, 2008
at 10:55 pm