Tea at Trianon: Hayley Mills on (Almost) Playing Lolita

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, November 14, 2022

Hayley Mills on (Almost) Playing Lolita

I am glad Hayley did not play Lolita, although I understand that she wanted the acting challenges that she could not find at Disney studios. Although I loved her later films Summer Magic and The Moonspinners, both wonderful stories based on novels. From Hayley Mills at LitHub:

Then came the most interesting offer of all.

A script arrived from Stanley Kubrick—it was called Lolita.

Now I could see that it was a good part. This really was an exciting role to play; she was so uninhibited and sassy, and I understood—or rather recognized—certain things about Lolita, without being fully cognizant of the implications. She was teetering on the brink of womanhood, like me; aware for the first time that men and boys are noticing her. She’s becoming aware of her looks, of her body, and yet not quite understanding the effect she’s having. She’s a difficult adolescent, argumentative and bolshie with her poor mother, played by the great Shelley Winters. She wants her own way, she’s moody, she wants to be treated like a grown-up, but she behaves like a child. I got all that.

The full implications of Humbert’s obsession with Lolita were lost on me, but I don’t think it would have been to the detriment of my performance. An inexperienced girl of fourteen like Lolita wouldn’t have fully understood it either; like me, she grasped it intuitively. There’s a big difference between having an “awareness” of one’s sexual power and actually “understanding” or being in control of the effect it’s having. Lolita’s feelings toward Humbert are complicated; he’s like an indulgent father, he spoils her. Lolita enjoys his attention, she likes showing off to him, while infuriating her mother.

James Mason was going to play Humbert; he was a friend of my parents, so I knew and liked him. Shelley Winters was a formidable talent, and everyone knew and loved Peter Sellers, cast to play Clare Quilty, Humbert’s rival for the girl’s affections.

For Stanley Kubrick to make such a leap—from Pollyanna to Lolita—is somewhat mysterious, but on reflection, I suspect it was Lee Thompson’s Tiger Bay that caught his attention, with its ambiguous emotional relationship between Gillie and Bronik— which Horst Buchholz had played so intelligently, treating Gillie like the child she was, but with the sensitivity of a man relating to a woman. The crucial difference between Gillie and Lolita, however, is that Gillie loves Bronik and wants to protect him, whereas, for Lolita, the character of Humbert is a curious plaything whom she exploits. The girl doesn’t really care about him, or even about her poor mother for that matter. (Read more.)