Reflections on ... Sue Lyon

Farewell to the notorious Sue Lyon (10 July 1946 – 26 December 2019) – most infamous for playing the nymphette titular character in Stanley Kubrick’s 1962 film adaptation of the troubling Vladimir Nabokov novel Lolita.

The casting of unknown starlet Lyon was considered problematic (the role was offered to Tuesday Weld first), partly because Lolita was meant to be 12-years old and Lyon – a poised and sophisticated 14-year old during filming – was obviously older. (Although to be fair, there was no way the Motion Production Code in place at the time would have permitted an actual 12-year old playing the part).

I for one genuinely love the bouffant-haired, petulant Lyon’s memorable performance in the film: so pert and doll-like, a kitten-ish teenage hybrid of Carroll Baker and Ann-Margret. No one ever looked better in heart-shaped sunglasses! And she holds her own remarkably well among heavyweight, experienced talents like James Mason, Shelley Winters and Peter Sellars.

Lyon continued to act post-Lolita (her final acting credit was in 1980. I know I saw her in the 1964 adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ Night of The Iguana years ago) but never again with comparable impact. (You could argue that was also true of Lyon’s spiritual precursor – Carroll Baker in Babydoll). Eventually she drifted into obscurity. And Lyon’s personal life sounds insane, encompassing near-fatal car crashes, rumoured mental health problems and five stormy marriages (including one to a convicted felon, then in prison for second-degree murder and robbery!).

The enigmatic Lyon withdrew into complete seclusion in later years and was reportedly estranged from her children. In one of the few relatively recent photos of her to surface, she looks totally unrecognizable and almost Morticia Addams-like. (Lyon's contemporary Tuesday Weld, too, has become a recluse and apparently now struggles with mental health issues).

The Lolita persona Lyon created in the early 60s still haunts popular culture: when Lana Del Rey first appeared in 2010, she made stylish references to Lyon’s heart-shaped sunglasses and lollipops in her early publicity shots. Rest in peace, Sue Lyon.

/ All photos of Lyon from a photo session by Bert Stern. Below: Lana Del Rey paying homage in 2010 /

Reflections on ... Gloria Grahame in Human Desire (1954)

/ The gloriously feline Gloria Grahame /

Last week I watched Human Desire (1954), the hard-boiled, fatalistic Fritz Lang-directed film noir starring Glenn Ford and the sensational (or should that be sin-sational?) Gloria Grahame (“born to be BAD, to be KISSED, to make TROUBLE!”). In fact I watched it twice. Human Desire represented a reunion for the trio of Lang, Ford and Grahame: the year before they made the more celebrated The Big Heat (1953). 

The film is a loose remake of the haunting, very different 1938 French film La Bête humaine  directed by Jean Renoir. Smouldering young heartthrob Ford (that deep growling voice! That dark pomaded hair!) plays a Korean vet returning to small town life and his job as a train engineer – who gets ensnared in the toxic, potentially murderous marriage of his violent colleague (Broderick Crawford) and frustrated wife (Grahame).

Human Desire isn’t a prestigious film. It’s considered a minor work in Lang's oeuvre, is overshadowed in peoples’ memories by The Big Heat and regarded as inferior to La Bête humaine. For Lang, Ford and Grahame Human Desire was probably just another routine job or contractual obligation and business as usual. But seen today – 62 years later – Human Desire looks like a paragon of tight craftsmanship and tough, absorbing noir storytelling.  The tale of tense, desperate lives played out in shadows and penned-in by smoke-belching trains and a bleak landscape of criss-crossing train tracks, it throbs with tension, claustrophobia and atmosphere.   

Certainly the lead performances give Human Desire an edge. Broderick Crawford as the abusive husband is nominally the story’s villain. But the remarkable character actor Crawford depicts him as so mired in self-loathing, weakness, jealousy and alcoholism, he’s ultimately pathetic and even tragic. If anyone owns the film, though, it’s Gloria Grahame. As always, the perma-pouting Grahame (1923 - 1981) injects her trampy, insolent vixen role with complexity, humanity, perversity and bruised soul. 

She was perhaps never better than giving her confessional monologue to Ford as the doomed, slapped-around  Vicki in Human Desire. (“It’s hard for a girl, drifting from job to job ... most women are unhappy, they just pretend they aren’t … I guess I’m not much of a woman – or a wife”).  And Grahame looks wild in the film: with crazily over-drawn lip-line (worthy of Divine) and a wardrobe of hoop earrings, seamed stockings, berets, tightly-belted trench coats, pencil skirts and some serious bullet bras under tight sweaters. 

/ Glenn Ford and sweater girl Gloria Grahame (and a killer bullet bra) in Human Desire /

The late film historian John Kobal (1940 - 1991) is far more eloquent on the subject of Grahame’s screen persona than me. Calling her the “fallen-blonde, pouty-lipped, sinful-eyed angel” of noir cinema, in his book Hollywood Colour Portraits (1981) he argues “nobody else was quite like Gloria Grahame – glittering with the barely controlled fires seething beneath the social veneer. While she herself was no criminal, her presence alone could incite men to criminal actions if only to attract her attention as she prowled big city streets – so sultry, so spiteful, so wanton, and so lethal if the mood took her and the man didn’t. She was the great bitch goddess, shedding her coats like snakes their skin, and tugging at the tight coils of her hair to conjure up a world of bedrooms in disarray. Her freezing looks were as memorable as her scalding actions, and whether she made only one film like that or fifty she would still have made her niche ... silk or sack, her clothes are only worn to be torn; for her all things are black or white, and anarchy is the roost she rules.”