Books, Arts & Manners: Girl Crazy

IF SHE had lived instead of dying in childbirth, Dolores Haze Schiller, better known to the world by the pet name “Lolita” bestowed on her by her chronicler-lover, the notorious Humbert Humbert, would have been 65 this year. Sadly enough, it was her age which defined Vladimir Nabokov’s naughty nymphet and brought her legendary status in the iconography of America’s sexual revolution, and so it is perhaps a cause for remark that she would now be drawing a pension. It certainly is remarkable that, even without a belated bid to sue the estate of Mr. Humbert for sexual abuse, the memory of Dolly Lo and her martyred childhood remains fresh amidst so many other, all-but-forgotten casualties of that revolution. How strange, then, that the excellent new film Lolita, by Adrian Lyne, failed to find an American distributor for well over a year—until it was already booked on the Showtime cable network.

Now the movie, which cost over $50 million to make and stars Jeremy Irons and Melanie Griffith, will open almost simultaneously on TV and as a Samuel Goldwyn release in August. Why should what sounds like a highly commercial proposition by the director of Flashdance and Fatal Attraction, cut to achieve an R rating and to skirt around the federal statute that forbids even simulated sex with children, have such a hard time getting a showing? Writing in the New York Times last year, Celestine Bohlen quoted anonymous Hollywood executives as saying that the film was not picked up because it was “not a good movie.” Later, Caryn James reported similar sentiments from yet more anonymous sources. “If you’re going to offend the parents of America,” said one, “you might as well do it with a film you love.”

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James Bowman

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IF SHE had lived instead of dying in childbirth, Dolores Haze Schiller, better known to the world by the pet name “Lolita” bestowed on her by her chronicler-lover, the notorious Humbert Humbert, would have been 65 this year. Sadly enough, it was her age which defined Vladimir Nabokov’s naughty nymphet and brought her legendary status in the iconography of America’s sexual revolution, and so it is perhaps a cause for remark that she would now be drawing a pension. It certainly is remarkable that, even without a belated bid to sue the estate of Mr. Humbert for sexual abuse, the memory of Dolly Lo and her martyred childhood remains fresh amidst so many other, all-but-forgotten casualties of that revolution. How strange, then, that the excellent new film Lolita, by Adrian Lyne, failed to find an American distributor for well over a year—until it was already booked on the Showtime cable network.

Now the movie, which cost over $50 million to make and stars Jeremy Irons and Melanie Griffith, will open almost simultaneously on TV and as a Samuel Goldwyn release in August. Why should what sounds like a highly commercial proposition by the director of Flashdance and Fatal Attraction, cut to achieve an R rating and to skirt around the federal statute that forbids even simulated sex with children, have such a hard time getting a showing? Writing in the New York Times last year, Celestine Bohlen quoted anonymous Hollywood executives as saying that the film was not picked up because it was “not a good movie.” Later, Caryn James reported similar sentiments from yet more anonymous sources. “If you’re going to offend the parents of America,” said one, “you might as well do it with a film you love.”