Sue Lyon, who at 14 was cast in the title role of Stanley Kubrick's "Lolita," a film version of Vladimir Nabokov's eyebrow-raising novel about a middle-aged man who becomes obsessed with a 12-year-old girl, died Thursday in Los Angeles. She was 73.
Lyon accumulated more than two dozen film and TV credits from 1959 to 1980, but she was known primarily for one: Kubrick's 1962 film, which was adapted for the screen by Nabokov himself. Some 800 girls were said to have sought the part. When Lyon was cast, Nabokov, employing the word he used in the novel, called her "the perfect nymphet."
The film was memorably promoted with a photo showing Lyon in heart-shaped sunglasses sucking on a red lollipop, despite the fact that neither the sunglasses nor the lollipop appear in the film itself.
Kubrick, in an interview for the 1970 book "The Film Director as Superstar" by Joseph Gelmis, acknowledged that he wasn't able to capture the forbidden flavor of the novel adequately.
"Because of all the pressure over the Production Code and the Catholic Legion of Decency at the time, I believe I didn't sufficiently dramatize the erotic aspect of Humbert's relationship with Lolita," he said, referring to the character Humbert Humbert, played by James Mason. Opinions of the movie, though, have improved over time.
Lyon was born July 10, 1946, in Davenport, Iowa. After her family moved to Los Angeles, Lyon landed a few small TV roles, including one in 1959 on "The Loretta Young Show," where Kubrick first noticed her.
New York Times
