Former posting: “ —Kubrick only had one regret about the film:She was actually just the right age. Lolita was twelve and a half in the book; Sue Lyon was thirteen. I think some people had a mental picture of a nine-year-old. I would fault myself in one area of the film, however; 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…”

 

Present posting: A friend of mine, Luiz Fernando Gallego, observed that Sue Lyon’s age, as recollected by Kubrick, couldn’t have been thirteen ( to VN’s “twelve and a half”) at the time of the filming or even during the interviews for casting her in the role. Other descriptions of Kubrick make him come forth as someone who is obsessively precise in his movie-making.  Why Lolita’s age became such a shifting ground of approximations?
The first source I checked confirms age 14 for the actress
[http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0069.html].  In the Wikipedia  we read that “Suellyn Lyon was born on July 10, 1946 in Davenport, Iowa. When she was 14 years old, she was cast in the role of Dolores "Lolita" Haze, the sexually charged adolescent and the object of an older man's obsessions in Stanley Kubrick's 1962 film Lolita [...] Lyon was still 15 when the film premiered in June 1962.”

In short, Wikipedia and three other sources attest to her being  “14 years”, including Sue Lyon herself during an interview Cf. http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0106.html e https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bHz-N6bJ3I; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOLtXhPYxoM - actually, she was almost sixteen at the time of the movies premiere (one month to go before she turned 16).  

 

During the googling process, I  read that “Lyon recorded two songs for the film, which were released on an MGM 45 rpm record. The song "Lolita Ya Ya" (Riddle–Harris) appeared on side A, and "Turn Off the Moon" (Stillman-Harris)* appeared on side B.”.
Here we can hear her:

http://www.yourepeat.com/watch/?v=vjqhO-RFNZY

 

...............................................................................................................................

*On side B:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwHKEzn2lP8.  There’s also a gross montage using the theme:  http://www.yourepeat.com/watch/?v=_Cfih-Qc6-I

 

 

 

 

 

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