Word: lolita
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...LOLITA H. BISSELL Nashville
...perfectly all right for me to imagine a twelve-year-old Lolita. She only existed in my head. But to make a real twelve-year-old girl play such a part would be sinful and immoral, and I will never consent...
That was the novelist's original resolve when Hollywood first sought the movie rights to his Lolita in 1958. But one evening he dreamed that he was reading the screenplay; overnight, Nabokov came to the age of consent. An offer of $150,000 did not exactly dissuade him, and he agreed to do the script himself. James Mason was cast as obsessive old Humbert Humbert, with Sue Lyon, then 14, in the title role of the stepdaughter who seduced him. Everybody said the adaptation could not be done, and they were right. But the pallid, bowdlerized film did gross...
Having profited if not learned from the experience, Nabokov in 1969 dealt away the rights to turn Lolita into−what else?−a Broadway musical. While the author seemed calm at the prospect, readers who consider the novel a masterpiece could only be horrified at what Broadway might do to Lolita. At any rate, this time Nabokov decided not to be a party to the adaptation himself. He waived script approval, though he did retain veto power over the choice of the adapter and composer. As it happened, Librettist Alan Jay Lerner (My Fair Lady, Coco) was at that...
Tuesday Weld is an understandably desirable love object, a genuine Lolita, but she can make little sense of her rather muddy character. Ralph Meeker, as the ruthless moonshiner, is all sinister smiles and barely repressed violence. The music, sung by Johnny Cash, is slick and unemotional. The main flaw is that the love affair between Alma and the sheriff lacks the qualities of desperation and frustration that would make it convincing. Alvin Sargent's script does not help matters much with such ritual movie Southernisms as "Eat your beans, Grandpa" and "Would you like a Dr Pepper?" Peck succeeds...