5: Dolores Onstage

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Trigger warning. This podcast involves discussions of child sexual abuse
and pedophilia. Listener discretion is advised. Alan Jay Lerner didn't
need to take suggestions from his assistant. He was Alan
Jay Learner. He was a Broadway legend. He had written
lyrics and librettos for huge musicals like My Fair Lady

(00:23):
for Camelot, for Brigade Doone. I don't know what Brigade
Dooon is, he wrote it. He'd worked in movies doing
the music with collaborator Frederick Lowe for Gigi, and he
wrote An American in Paris. But those hits were a
while back now, and it was the nineteen seventies. Learner's
work didn't fit as well into the Broadway culture at

(00:44):
the seventies. It kicked off hits that had overwhelmed New
York in a culture shifting way in the mid to
late sixties into the early seventies were sexy, edgy stuff
like Hair and Cabaret and Company. And by nineteen seventy one,
God's Bell and Jesus Christ super Star. You know, the
sexy Jesus musicals. Broadway was getting horny, and Alan Jay

(01:06):
Lerner was not a horny lyricist. His work was pretty traditional,
featuring heavy costumes and straightforward love stories with catchy burst
into song hits, and now that luster was wearing off.
His last two shows were nominated for a handful of Tony's,
but they were not the smash, financial and culture defining
hits he'd had with Low up through Camelot in nineteen

(01:28):
sixty the chased Alan jay Lerner needed to get with
the times. He needed to listen to his assistant. I
think you see where this is going. His assistant wanted
him to adapt Lolita by Vladimir Tobakov, and I quickly
want to give a huge shout out to one of
the top keepers of Lolita history, writer Sarah Weinman, who

(01:51):
we talked to last week for collecting a lot of
this information on the musical back in article for Vulture,
which I will link in the show notes. So did
Alan j Lerner understand Lolita? Uh? I think that the
story of Lolita is much more pertinent now than when
the film was made. Humbard is such a tragic, flawed

(02:11):
and misplaced romantic lost in post World War two. They're
countless men like him over forty who find it impossible
to wake up in the morning and not blink once
or twice at the life facing them. Oh, absolutely incredible.
Do you ever just hear how any person who has
ever adapted this book talks about the story and your
head just like explodes like that scene in Scanners. I can't.

(02:35):
It's unbelievable. But okay, who's collaborating on this with Mr Lerner?
It's a composer named John Barry, a suave Englishman most
famous for writing the theme song to James Bond. He
was in his late thirties. To Learners fifty one or
Is Learner would describe it a contemporary man go off.

(02:55):
Also on Learner's team is producer Norman Twain, who was
notorious in theater and film for being a gigantic personality
with big hits and bigger misses. For an idea of
what his vibe is, here's a quote pulled from the
Associated Press piece on the auditions for Lolita in nineteen seventy.
We've got to have a girl who makes a man
forget the moral conventions of society, but it's got to

(03:19):
be a complete mental situation. If Lolita is five ft
five with a great figure, it would be perfectly normal
for from Bear to go after her. The musical was
to be called Lolita My Love, and it's the last
attempt at an adaptation Vladimir Tobakov would ever sign off
on before his passing in ninety seven. By this time,
he was living in Montro Palace in Switzerland, working on

(03:42):
new novels full time and enjoying the residuals that Lolita
continued to rake in. He is, as he was during
the Kubrick movie, strongly averse to the idea of an
actual twelve year old playing the part night after night,
calling it sinful and immoral. This is, according to ken
Endel bomb book not since Carrie this statement aside, Nabokov

(04:05):
appears to have had all the faith in the world,
and Mr my fair Lady at first saying the following,
Mr Lerner is a most talented and excellent classicist. If
you have to make a musical version of Lolita, he
is the one to do it well. Keep in mind
Nabakov also said that about Kubrick two back in the sixties.
So let's see where this goes. Back to those low

(04:25):
La auditions in November nineteen seventy, dozens of girls as
young as ten and oldest twenty one went to the
Billy Rose Theater to audition for the head Hanchos and
Sarah Whyneman's piece kind of distills the vibe at these auditions.
A thirteen year old audition ee said the following to
a reporter. I wouldn't like to be Lolita, but I'd

(04:46):
still like to play the part. And a lot of
those auditioning legally had to be accompanied by a parent,
and the parents also had takes. There's a wickedness wherever
you go. It's just lucky my daughter only play accit.
The audition process sounded similar to that of Stanley Koprick
and James B. Harris's a lot of young girls, bodies

(05:08):
being appraised, a lot of extremely personal questions. Don't wear
makeup next time, said one of the producers to a
girl who was auditioning. I wanted to look sexy. The
girl replied, you look sexy anyways, he said, yikes. The
actor eventually selected for the role of Lolita was named
Annette Farah, now a casting director who goes by Chris Gilmore.

(05:29):
We're gonna be talking to her today and at the time,
she was fifteen years old and from a Los Angeles family.
More interested in her music career than being Lolita, but
being offered the lead in an Alan J. Lerner musical
that was grounds to be launched into superstardom, Honey, and
so she jumped at the opportunity and was willing to
relocate to New York from Los Angeles with her sister.

(05:50):
She had had a guest spot on The Brady Bunch
earlier in nineteen seventy and had sung a number of
obscure but very catchy teen hits in the nineteen sixties,
and had a promise in rear Ahead, including this incredible
B side I found on YouTube. She's saying nineteen seven,
You're a dumb dumb iconic stuff. Everyone go to YouTube

(06:19):
and listen to You're a Dumb dumb. So at fifteen,
Farah told the Associated Press her take on the story
of Lolita. Oh no, there's nothing dirty about what Humber does.
It's not a crime. In the ant umbar is cured.
It's just a love story. Interestingly, she had not read
the book at the time of being cast, so this

(06:41):
impression she's sharing is an impression made from the loretto
of the musical. Other leading roles included Dorothy Lowden, as
Charlotte Hayes. She'd later originate the role of Mrs Hannigan
and Annie and as Humbert the Shakespearean actor John Neville.
He'd also been in the mix for the Cooper adaptation,
and at least physically and in terms of stuffy englishness,

(07:03):
seemed like a good fit for the part. Rehearsals began
with February one previews at the Schubert Theater in Philadelphia.
In mind and producer Norman Twain was hyping it up,
even as things behind the scenes remained very chaotic. As choreography, music,
and story remained in fairly constant flux, Twaine assured local paper,

(07:24):
The Camden Courier Post that Lolita My Love would be
the best thing Alan's ever done, including My Fair Lady,
and that Alan J. Lerner and John Baba Baba Ba
Barry was that funny, okay, that they would be even
better than Learner and Low had been, no better than
Rogers and Hammerstein, no better than Olivia Benson and Elliott Stabler.

(07:49):
I've never watched s VU, but but I thought that
that might hit for people. When asked what Lolita My
Love was like as a show, Twain said the following.
No contraver see, no nudity, no four letter words, nothing
which compromises the taste of membo. The moral is that
total obsession with anything destroys a person, whether the obsessions

(08:13):
a little girl or a philosophy here. Okay, oh wait,
you've not done. Could I be involved with a nim fete? Yeah?
It could be, absolutely. There are certain types of girls,
little girls FETs, but all else being equal, would turn
me on if you met them in a motel by chance.
But I haven't fallen yet. I've been playing it pretty straight.

(08:34):
My wife prefers it that way. So before the short
history of Lolita my Love was complete, the lead a
net Farah would be replaced for reasons we'll discussed today.
The show was completely reworked multiple times, and it had
lost nearly a million dollars in ninety one money in
production costs. A playbill from the show's final run in

(08:56):
Boston at the Schubert Theater proclaimed a two act sweeping
produce auction that started in Ramsdale with songs like in
the Broken Promised Land of fifteen and Dante, Petrarch and
Poe all the way through Humbert Sweeping Lolita away to
the Betty By Motel and to Beardsley with Quilties, showstopper

(09:16):
March Out of My Life. I'm not kidding. Nabokov never
saw the show. He was enthusiastic at first, but much
like his experience with the Cooper adaptation, his enthusiasm for
the adaptation wilted over time. By October ninety one, he
told The New York Times the following if they're going
to do it, someday, they're going to do it, so

(09:37):
I had better be around when they do it, not
only to criticize the thing, but also to explain that
I have nothing to do with it. So why haven't
we heard about Lolita, My love, the show that brought
you my least favorite line in all of music? Who
is the piper who likes them? Post? Because it never
debuted on Broadway? This is lowly to podcast. Welcome back

(10:28):
to Lolita Podcast. I am your host, Jamie Loftus, and
today I think we're going to get about as close
to some levity as this series is going to get,
because we are talking about Lolita on stage now. Saying
this episode is going to be a little lighter doesn't
mean that there isn't still a fair amount of trauma
being discussed this is Lolita Podcast, and there certainly is.

(10:51):
But today we're talking about the Broadway musical of nineteen
seventy one by Alan Jay Lerner one adaptation by Edward Albe,
as well as the mattering of international ballets, stage shows,
and operas in a recent attempted revival of Lolita My
Love in New York, which spoiler alert is the first
adaptation of Lolita ever to be directed by a woman.

(11:14):
I'll say it, Lolita does not work on stage, or hasn't,
I should say, but the reasons why fall into the
same trappings that most adaptations of Lolita don't, but in
a uniquely theatrical way. I think the reason that the
two Broadway failures that we're gonna be talking about the
most specifically rank as less harmful in terms of adaptation

(11:35):
is because one wouldn't debut on Broadway at all, and
the other would barely make it out of the starting gate.
They were completely panned, and they never really got the
chance to do much cultural harm to anybody, except, of course,
the girls and women playing the titular role. Another pattern
that is well established that will be devoting an entire
episode two in a couple of weeks. Today, we're gonna

(11:56):
be speaking to Chris Gilmore, formerly a net Farah, who
played Lolita in the nineteen seventy one musical, Blanche Baker,
who played Lolita in the one adaptation by Edward Albi,
and Jacob Holder, the executive director of the Edward F.
Alby Foundation. In this episode, I think you'll notice a
few trends solidifying in the adaptations of Lolita, carrying over

(12:17):
from the Stanley Kubrick movie that have a lot in
common and are also very uniquely of their time. So
with that in mind, let's return to nineteen seventy. My
parents are in elementary school and a few hours south
of where they lived. Lolita my Love was in production
preparing for a February debut in Philly. The cast dealt
with constant content changes, and the show debuted to uh

(12:41):
these reviews in its present form, which will doubtlessly be
drastically altered before it leaves down. The show is only
a ghost of Nabokov's comic masterpiece. The kindest thing that
can be said out the musical is that it's a disaster. Yeah,

(13:05):
by all accounts it didn't work. This February shipwreck made
the original March thirty intended Broadway debut more or less impossible.
Learner and Barry had a ton of overhaul to do
and would need a successful preview to go off without
a hit. Before hitting a New York stage, producer Norman
Twain went into damage control mode, saying that quote, the

(13:26):
show didn't work technically, and when things don't work technically,
nothing goes right. I can see the backstage crew rolling
their eyes from here. That was not the problem. It
was the material, and after the failure of the Philadelphia
shows critically, with this constant material change, we see some
of the key players get shuffled out. Director Tito Capo
Bianco is replaced by British director Noel Willman, and Annette

(13:50):
Farah leaves the production as Lolita Now. The reason given
by the production at the time for firing Farah, who
had been styled to look very similar to Sue Lyon
and kuprisill Alita, was detailed in a gossip column of
the time which was unearthed by Sarah Weinman. It says
that Pharaoh was quote looking twenty four when she was
supposed to be sixteen unquote. The reality, according to Chris Gilmore,

(14:13):
was very different. More in that shortly after Fara departs,
auditions for Lolita are held again, including a young Sissy
spacect but Denise Nickerson is the choice for the role
in spite of Nabokov's initial anxieties of casting a girl
of Dolores Hayes's real age in the book, Nickerson was
only thirteen. During that next round of previews, she was

(14:33):
seventy five pounds and four ft nine, and her hair
was styled into the blonde bob evocative of lions. And
if Denise Nickerson's name sounds familiar, it's because she plays
Violet Beauregard in The Gene Wilder, Willy Wonka and the
Chocolate Factory and had just finished shooting shortly before taking
the role. Nickerson sadly passed away last year, but with
the changes in cast and libretto made the show launched

(14:56):
again that March in Boston at the Schubert Theater and
in only lasted nine performances. Luckily for us, or put
a pin in that maybe not, but for my purpose
is lucky. A recording from the audio board from Boston
is preserved in full, giving us recordings of the songs
and an idea of what the show sounded like, although
the extensive dance numbers, yes you hurt that right, remain

(15:19):
lost to history. And no matter how many giggles of
enjoyment you hear from the nineties seventies Bostonians in the
clips you're gonna hear today, the reviews in Boston were
just as rough. I'm afraid it's going to be a
case of better never than late. Do you be taking
us first? Are melodrama or satire or just a dirty

(15:44):
musical comedy? Some good music and some fine wit, but
it is done in by the plot. We mean style
and daste and depth. And these are things which al
and Jay Lemo's idea of theater evidently can no longer offer. Oh,

(16:06):
that last review was from the Harvard Crimson. So just
imagine like an eighteen year old with a suit that's
too big saying that. So Lolita, my love flops in Philly,
it flops in Boston. And Lerner was desperate to save
the production. He rewrote the show again twice, renamed it
Light of My Life, which seems like kind of a
lateral move in terms of creepy sounding titles, and he

(16:27):
tried to recast the leads again, pursuing Rex Harrison for Humbert.
Rex Harrison was in My Fair Lady and Haley Mills
for Lolita, and Haley Mills at this point was too
old for the role by quite a bit, at age
twenty four, and she had already turned down the role
of Lolita in Stanley Koper's production nearly ten years earlier.
Nabokov had this to say about Fara and Nickerson, the

(16:49):
two Lolita's cast in a musical. He had never seen
both girls, the one they fired and the one who
replaced her, were awful little boozym me girls, the wrong
type altogether. Uh what. By the end, Lolita My Love
had hemorrhaged a million dollars and it never debuted on Broadway.
Everyone was ready to move on, and they did. But

(17:10):
don't cry for this musical, because I think you will
understand why it flopped when we give the one surviving
bootleg recording a little listen. This adaptation is so extremely
off the mark that it was genuinely hard for me
to keep up with the whiplash of the tone. Like
if you thought the Kubrick adaptation was being played too
much for comedy. You have not heard anything. This musical

(17:32):
isn't just a comedy of manners. Humbered Humbert is presented
as a full on comedic hero and Lolita and My
Love never made it far enough into production to ever
release a cast album. So what's being pulled from here
is a rehearsal that's taking place in front of an
audience in Boston, my home city. And please do not
judge them too harshly for how much they seem to

(17:54):
love this. There's a lot of adaptation changes that were
popularized in Kubrick's Lolita that follow through to this adaptation.
Everyone calls the lead Lolita instead of Dolly or Dolores.
Quilty has a hugely inflated presence, and Humbert is a
long standing teacher, But the bizarreness of this adaptation is
uniquely its own. It opens with Humbert Humbert talking to

(18:17):
the audience at the beginning of the show, explaining what
nymphets are to us. The stage format does make it
much easier for Humbert to break the fourth wall and
speak to the audience directly, and this show does take
smart advantage of that at times. How many of you
have ever committed a murder? I under it surprisingly unsurprising experience.

(18:42):
For eighteen years of my quality, I have been a teacher.
Every morning while shaving, I invariedly looked in the mirror
and said, Humbert, you look exactly like a teacher. The
day after the murder, I looked in the mirror and
I said, humble you, she'll look exactly. Humbert says he

(19:03):
was teaching at a girls school in Switzerland, had to
break down, then goes to Ramsdale, Vermont, to give lectures
at the local college. Now where in New England Ramsdale
is kind of varies depending on the adaptation. It's like
New Hampshire for Kubrick Vermont. In this adaptation, who knows why,
but Humbert does mention to us that he got divorced.

(19:25):
Humbert goes to Ramsdale and meets Charlotte, who brings up
her deceased husband Harold and shows Humbert her dead husband's
gun and his ashes. You're married, divorce, madam, happily divorced
many years ago in Paris, Oh Harrod magic. There's a
lot of laughing on this recording, and Dorothy Loudden is

(19:46):
definitely going for comedy with Charlotte here, but also it
seems like everybody's going for comedy. Denise Nickerson is introduced
to us as Lolita, and at age thirteen, she really
does sound thirteen, possibly more so than anyone who was
or played the part. You are Lolita, Lola, Lolita, there

(20:07):
are me, and just keep in mind for a reference
of how old she looked at this time. She plays
Violet Beauregard in Willy Wonka this same exact year. Humbard's
journals are significantly watered down to keep things light, and
he sings about Annabel to Lolita in the song in
the Broken Promised Land of fifteen. Perhaps it looks more

(20:28):
like a little girl that I knew many many years ago,
where Prince by the Sea Lolita never learned of Annabel,
and other adaptations that I know of. So it's an
interesting deviation, is that man upon the side. Another repeated

(20:58):
trend here is that Charlotte so heartlessly treated by the
script that the audience is trained to respond to some
really brutal lines from Humbert with laughter rumbling upstairs like
a truck on the street. Bursting into my room like
a horrs and heat that like driving out of my sight,
my only to the light of my life. Humbert is

(21:20):
preparing a lecture for Charlotte's group on the poets. I
intend to dwell exclusively on Fante fell in up with
Beatrice when she was nine, pet trot Will fell in
up with Laura when she was twelve, and Edgar Allan
Poe married Virginia when she was Humbert also makes very
little effort to conceal his true nature in this show,
but the people surrounding him are written to be so

(21:42):
clueless that it doesn't seem to matter. For my money,
he couldn't be more obvious. I won't speak to one
of them, only to Lolita, and Lolita, while remaining and
behaving twelve years old, is still framed to be a seductress,
and her quote unquote fluziness is often a pause for
laugh moment as actually, when Quialty is on stage, I'd
love to see little Lovelica. She must have grown. She's

(22:05):
sleeping out tonight, she must have Pulling from kuberc here,
Quilty comes to Ramsdale and meets Humbert. He's famous. His
plays are on TV, and he's also already familiar with
the concept of a nymphant infant a nymphet by me
caps Walker say how is your daughter? Gross? This is

(22:28):
a song called Dante, Petrarch and Poe. This song is
maybe the best and the worst of what all of
the adaptations have to offer, all said and done, you
see it is a Lectures exclusive plick features poets enraptured
and captured by creatures. Any pue, peasant, pessant, you peasant

(22:48):
chan them and throw them? What else is there to
call them but a nymphant? Because it's gross and awful
and trying to make you laugh about one of the
worst crimes that plagues humanity. But it's all so written
by the same guy who did My Fair Lady, and
the music is good. My head is exploding. Who is

(23:13):
that viper who likes them post viper? Who is that
viper that likes them post diaper? Why would you write
that this is how that song ends? I don't know.

(23:36):
Back at the house, Charlotte tries to seduce Humbert with
a show stopping number that I'm pretty sure it includes
an extensive dance routine. But Lolita comes home from a party,
and she and Humbert immediately start flirting. You remind me
of a sleepy Flamingo. Charlie gets a more sympathetic moment
than she does in other adaptations at this point. She

(23:58):
expresses regret at coming to rm Stell and expresses her loneliness.
Lolita then delivers Charlotte's letter, and while Lolita is away,
Humbert and Charlotte get married mother Englishman stepfather. Humbert, in
keeping with being the cruelest Humbert in this entire adaptation
catalog actually maybe put a pin in that until later

(24:20):
in the episode. But Humbert then sings a literal song
about how much he hates being married to Charlotte for
only twenty days. She talked and talked days me woked
and wopped in the rain. That wouldn't head kill my
toes began to web following that, he sings a whole
song about all the ways he wants to kill her.

(24:42):
I would never have the heart to shoot her with
a gun. The way that this song is just presented
as women right with my hands, all with the puta
of my life, with the all a night baby is

(25:07):
at this point in the show, especially where Humbert's word
is taken at face value. Here, he's the comedic hero,
the maligned husband with the loud, emasculating wife who's preventing
him from doing what he wants to. I would never
have Poisin. Charlotte finds Humbert's journal as normal. She's furious,

(25:31):
But then this has also played for comedy. How don't
we ever given Charlotte what ship? This happens right after
she realizes her new husband wants to sexually abuse her
twelve year old daughter. I mean, at this point, I'm

(25:52):
not surprised, but Jesus, Charlotte gets hit by the car.
Humbert is informed, and then the crowd laughs and laughs
as he says the reprise about the song about him
wanting to kill her. He gets a hotel room and
tells the camp not to mention Charlotte with death, picks
Lolita up and takes her to the betty By Hotel. Intermission.

(26:15):
We're at the betty By Hotel, which is the same
thing as the Enchanted Hunter's Hotel. Lolita says that Charlotte
is going to and stre but she doesn't use the
incest word as she does in the book. Now we
get a lot more Lolita in this adaptation than we
do in some others, and to be fair, we do
see different sides of her emotionally. Shortly after getting to

(26:38):
the hotel, she says that she wants to see her
mom and leave the hotel. In response, Humbert sings her
a song called tell Me, Tell Me to try to
seduce her into not wanting to go home now. In
the book, this is the scene where Humbert first rapes Lolita,

(27:02):
and the musical is wise enough to reference it without
showing anything. The way Humbert describes the moment to the audience, though,
is a daunable face on my naked chest. She told
me I was not the first. Oh, how innocent is
the Lord? He thought he was punishing a sinner, the

(27:22):
only lessoned my do. It's like that, And when she
learns that her mother has been killed, she has a
far more expressive outburst at him than in the book.
You Never Get You to Get Me? Why the women

(27:46):
always have to cry? They go straight to Beardsley, skipping
the entire road trip. Lolita tries to bribe him about
the play. Immediately says, I love you to increase the
likelihood of getting what she wants. The scene with Lolita's
head mistress on whether she can do the play or
not is included, but it's turned up to an eleven.
The headmistress gives Humbert an ultimatum that he must either

(28:07):
let Dolly do the play or go to a weird
class with her two nights a week where they get
to the root of her sexual trauma. Like in Koper's adaptation,
Quilty is very present in Beardsley. We see him at
the school, and Humbert is well aware that he's around.
He's not on the margins or in disguise as in
other versions. Tells me about the cast. They must be

(28:28):
quite young, butler on the inside. In fact, there's a
whole scene with Quilty and Lolita. Quilty openly flirt with
her while they're at school, and then he sings a
song called March Out of My Life about his own
tortured attraction to Lolita. Meanwhile, Lolita is portrayed as far

(28:50):
more outwardly devious than she is in Nabokov's book. She
blackmails Humbert. She says she'll tell her friends about him
if he doesn't pay up. He's portrayed sympath athetically as
a man who is losing touch with reality and being
tricked by a girl who seems to be doing absolutely fine.
You cannot torment me like this. I love you too much?

(29:14):
Is that all you have to say? I don't want
to be loved so much fun at least for me.
But in this scene, for all of this musical's glaring,
glaring failures, I really liked the song that Lolita sings
here at the height of her outward anger at Humbert.
It's called all you can do is tell me you
love me. That's all you can do is give me

(29:36):
in prison and tell me it's love. I tell you
it is all I can do. Think about you. Now,
Humbert is still framed as pathetic, and she's framed as
a mastermind. But I thought this was a solid cathartic
look into Lolita's mind. Humbert gives the idea to leave town,
and they leave Beardsley, just as in the book. She

(29:58):
gets away at three years pass Humbert runs into Lolita's
old friend Mona from Beardsley. Fun fact, this is played
by Judy Garland's daughter Laura left. Mona tells her that
Lolita ran away with Quilty. Humbert kills Quilty before going
to see Lolita, and Lolita has just heard about Quiality's murder.
When Humbert arrives, Lolita refers to Quilty's attempt to coerce

(30:21):
her into being in pornography as group activity, but she
says that she forgives him what he was fun. At
the end, Humbert is arrested in front of Lolita and
the show is over, just like in the Kuper movie,
Lolita Lives. Yea. I mean, what else is there to say?

(30:41):
It's all right there that this was truly a springtime
for hitler attempt to make one of the most hideous
crimes a person can commit into a lighthearted musical that
blames the child that, in the case of Denise Nickerson,
looks and sounds very much like a child for her
own abuse. Koper's adaptation looks deeply nuanced by comparison, and

(31:01):
the story behind the scenes was just as unsettling. I
mentioned a net Farah earlier, the original Lolita in Lolita
My Love and the girl who appears on the poster
even after being replaced. We'll be talking to her at
length in our episode on the actors who have played
Lolita in the past. But I wanted to share this
here because in the story of this musical, she is
generally reduced to a footnote in the already hard to

(31:25):
access history of the show. And that's not fair because
the press clipping I quoted earlier about her looking twenty
four more than sixteen as the reason for her dismissal
was not the case at all. Parah would have been
fifteen going on sixteen at this time, a minor with
very little control over how she was styled. She's now
a casting director and producer in Los Angeles who goes

(31:48):
by Chris Gilmore, and she has a new project called
Blood Pageant starring Snoop Dog. I know she rocks. We
caught up over the summer and she explained the circumstances
of her dismissal from Lolita, My love. Had you read
the book before going into the show or was or
had you seen the movie from the sixties or so?
I never read the book And when I Allen asked

(32:10):
me that, I said, no, Mr Lerner, I never read
the book, and he said, well don't, He said, since
you didn't, I want you to put the spin on it,
you know that you and he worked with me a little.
He counseled me, and you know, we did work through
the problem that I had never dated. I was so
virginal and perfect with that that it was something that

(32:32):
I wasn't, you know, going to hide from him. I
was saying, well, you know, approaching this, here's my thought.
The There was one scene was the most risque scene
we had, um where I had a little blue nightgown.
It was short, but it looked like a dress and
you know, thank god, it wasn't like see through or anything,
but it looked like a little blue baby doll dress.
It was really cute and so, um, I'm supposed to

(32:56):
be in a motel room with Humbert. Humbert, I take
my hand, and believe me, they rehearsed this thing so
many times because it was so important to them. How
my hand raised from the bed to like get my
finger and call him in enough and then the lights
go out. So they never showed two people getting together anything.
But it was very um it was like a ballet

(33:18):
and uh, you know because because I well, well I'm
jumping ahead though, I go, what's what's the snaps on
the top of my nightgown. What they had this? What
did they do to it? And nobody wanted to tell me.
And this is a hell of a way to hit
it on an actress, but you know, um, I went
around and then somebody said, well, Mr Learner will come in,
and so he told me, well, the snaps are in

(33:40):
the top because you're gonna drop your nightgown. You're gonna
rip it off and drop it in that scene rather
than I said, but yeah, but we rehearsed for three
days how to lift my finger to call him to
the bed. You wanted it sensual, you wanted a certain way,
and now all of a sudden, I'm not gonna lift
my finger. You know, I was I trained method Meisner,

(34:01):
comedy improm I added all I sang uh. And yet
they they wanted me to be a stripper too, And
there's nothing wrong with strippers, God bless him, but I
wasn't a stripper and I shouldn't have had to be
a stripper. I mean, you almost feel guilty, like you're
killing somebody to walk away from it. And so I

(34:21):
had this big conflict inside because everything inside of me said,
I don't want to drop this outfit in front of
hundreds of people. Well, you're a kid, you're fifteen, maybe sixteen,
and that's not a reasonable request for a child, and
it's demeaning to me. It almost it almost, um, you know,

(34:41):
adulterates the fact that I'm a singer and actor. And
if that's what people come for, then they're not coming
for the rest of the art, you know. So I cried,
and then I called my agent and I see him.
He was on the West coast and he said, I'll
be here tomorrow. I'm dropping everything. Um, he's not with
him anymore. But his name was Ron. Ron was amazing,
and so he flew to the coast. He said, this

(35:03):
isn't in your contract. They can't do this to you,
and you're a minor. And he had to talk with
them and they said, but we have to add this
hair has big box office seals. We want this, and
she won't be naked, she'll have a sea through body
stalking on. Well, I don't know what the difference is really.
I mean, if I know and I could see your
breasts and I could see your cha cha and everything else,

(35:24):
then you're naked. You know, it doesn't matter to see
through body stalking or not. And so I refused, and
then I'll never forget the producer's last words. He said,
well you're too virtuous. Thank you so much to Chris Gilmore,
and we'll be talking more about her career and experience
in Lolita soon. She has had a fascinating life so far.

(35:47):
So there's obviously a lot to unpack with this musical.
I mean, Piper, yes, but also other stuff. We're going
to analyze Learner's lowly to and I'll bes Lowlita together
towards the end of this episode. But one thing I
want to say here is that, in spite of all
the bad feedback Learner rightfully got in response to this show,
almost none of it had to do with the quality

(36:09):
of he and Barry's music. And I wouldn't call myself
a musical theater expert, but I was too into Phantom
of the Opera in middle school, and as such I
feel qualified to comment because a lot of the music
in Lolita My Love is extremely sticky, and that's another
reason I'm glad a proper cast album never got released.
As we're going to discuss in future episodes about how

(36:31):
Lolita and Dolores have been remembered in music. One of
the most effective ways to get bad info into the
minds of the general public is to make a simple, catchy,
highly repeatable song about it. Dante, Petrarch and Poe is
one of the most abjectly creepy songs I have ever heard,
but it's been stuck in my head for six months

(36:52):
against my will. While Lolita My Love's Music is an
extreme example of this, think of other earworms that have
gotten similar mess edges across and hit songs. I literally
couldn't possibly name them all. It would take all week.
I mean, off the top of my head, you have
every Disney Villain song ever you have, like Blurred Lines.
I'm a militant feminist and I listened to that song

(37:12):
for an entire summer. Really any like legendary seventies boomer
band has a famous song that is an ode to
an underage girl as an ostensibly consenting party. And then
think a learner's own creepy, immortal hit the song Thank
Heaven for Little Girls from g I hadn't thought about
this song in a very long time, and so I'm

(37:33):
gonna share some of the lyrics here. Thank Heaven for
Little Girls. They grow up in the most delightful way.
Those little eyes so helpless and appealing when they were
flashing send you crashing through the ceiling Nabokov. Why did
we hire this man? I mean the people selected for
these adaptations. It's a problem. So if you thought that

(37:56):
Lolita My Love flopping would put Broadway off the whole
story for another generation, you would be incorrect. Just ten
years later, a handful of years after, in a Book
of Death, then a Book of Estate, that is to say,
Vera and Dmitrina book off. At that point approved playwright
Edward Albi to do a very different, gritty, non musical

(38:19):
play adaptation, and spoiler alert, it also never makes it
to Broadway, but for different reasons. Allow me to explain
and what must be one of the best hidden secrets
of Broadway casting shame Albe's Humbert. Humbert is Donald Sutherland,
I'm not kidding, and his Lolita is played by Blanche Baker, who,
at the time of this production was around twenty four

(38:40):
years old. Donald Sutherland could not be reached for this podcast,
but we know about the behind the scenes of this
production was that, like Lolita My Love, it was incredibly tumultuous.
Albie had the full cooperation of the nabookof Estate, but
at this point the primary contact was in a book
off son Dimitri, whose track record overseeing adaptations was is mixed.

(39:01):
This wasn't a great period in the career or life
of Edward Albi, who had gone through a period of
extreme success with works like Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf
in the nineteen sixties eight won a Pulitzer in nineteen
seventy five for a play called Seascape. He was a
master of dialogue and style, but not necessarily of adaptation,

(39:21):
albeit had some success adapting Carson mccullors to the stage,
and another with Everything in the Garden from a play
by Giles Cooper, but his attempt to adapt Truman Capote's
Breakfast at Tiffany's in nineteen sixty six never even opened
on Broadway, and his attempt at Nabukov's Lolita in eighty
one only ran twelve shows before closing. Albie's strength was

(39:44):
his own voice, a leader in the theater of the absurd, who,
in this Jamie's opinion, had such a distinct voice that
it seemed to kind of chafe with the very distinct
voice of Nabukov he was trying to adapt. Albi was
very edgy and very sharp, unaff aid to show and
simulate sex, to shock his audience, the same things that

(40:04):
Nabokov intentionally hid behind curtains of language and deception to
try and fool his jury into sympathizing with the despicable protagonist.
Albi's interpretation of Humbert leaves no question of who he is,
and the experience of even reading it made my skin crawl.
The biggest addition and change that Albi makes, without a doubt,

(40:25):
is a character called a certain Gentleman, a narrator to
the story who is meant to be a stand in
for Nabokov himself, who guides Humbert Humbert through the play
and exposes him to the audience for the monster he is. Ordinarily,
Humbert is our narrator, and he manipulates us into seeing
the events of Lolita his way. Albi takes the route

(40:48):
of using the character of a certain Gentleman to show
us how the author of the show is manipulating Humbert,
who in turn is manipulating us the audience. A certain
Gentleman will say things like tiss tist, tist dirty old man.
When Humbert says something that is clearly reflecting the mindset
of a child sex abuser, and this kind of creates

(41:08):
this air of distance and annoyance that a certain gentleman
has with the protagonist. And I was pretty fascinated by
that choice, because I think it helps in some ways
and in hurts in others. It's definitely the clearest tool
I've ever seen used to make it clear that Humbert
is not reliable, is not noble, is not an artist.

(41:29):
But it also strangely works against the production by having
it made constantly clear that another person is making Humbert's
decisions for him. It almost succeeds more in making us
question the bulk off than the child sexual abuser he's
writing about. It creates a strange amount of distance. It's
a choice. It's effective in some moments and then in

(41:50):
others completely distances you from Humbert's evilness. It's also worth
mentioning that Albi was suffering from alcoholism rather badly at
the time of this production, and is constantly undergoing rewrites
to get the play to where it needed to be. Meanwhile,
Donald Sutherland was rumored to be putting pressure on Alby
to make Humbert more likable, which was definitely not to be.

(42:12):
But that is another interesting trend in the adaptations. Everyone
wants to play Humbert until they're playing him all sudden done.
There were a number of different scripts written in this
play is Quick March to Death in one version of
which ended up getting published. That's the one that I
read for this podcast. Albe is also the first and
to my knowledge, the only gay man who has worked

(42:34):
on a lolit To adaptation at the highest level. I
got a little more context on this show from Jacob Holder,
the executive director of the Albi Foundation. I'll be passed
away in and over the summer. He talked to me
about what that play was like and where it fell
in Albi and Lolita's career. You worked with him from
oh one uh through his death. I guess I am

(42:58):
looking for I guess some perspective on what you feel
drew him to this material, to Lolita in the first place.
So he got through a really bad period in the
nine eighties where American theaters wouldn't touch his work. But
Lolita is one of three plays that are really seen
as the period right before his fall from popularity, and

(43:22):
and the reason I reread that piece in the biography
to make sure that I wasn't. He hated when people
did too much analyzing with his own personal life in
terms of how that relates to his work, because he
didn't believe in the concept um and I didn't want
to add a layer on that he didn't himself suggest,
but his drinking was out of control during that time period,

(43:44):
so Lolita, he may already noticed his version of it.
He had intended to be at least a three act play,
and he intended it for it to be over the
course of two evenings, which when I read about that,
I've done as much research as I like, I could
spend any time doing trying to find what version would

(44:04):
have taken two nights. And while I didn't do that,
I found the original, which is a three act version,
and I read both that and I read what is considered.
You know what anyone can put on if they wanted to,
which is the dramas play service acting addition, that's to act.
But you're dealing obviously the question of like how did
the creators feel about their workforces? But wound up occurring

(44:27):
the nature obviously of their art versus commercial sensibility is
always going to be strongly at war. So if you
have a producer who's terrified, if you think, okay, this
is great, this is risking material that will bring in
an audience. But I can't let this thing be three
hours long or four hours long because it's going to
bore everybody and we're gonna get reviews. Let's say that
this is a whole I'm sure we need to make

(44:48):
this thing tight. And then you have Donald Sutherland, probably
in his ego, thinking all right, I'm already playing somebody
who's going to be perceived as horribly reprehensible, so I
need to make this thing as funny as possible or
as light as possible, or you know, almost I'm going
to play it in a way that shows that I'm
also sort of outside of it and I'm uncommenting on
it who my performance. So, my guests is that there

(45:09):
was a lack of trust in the material from the
actor who wanted to show his best, because obviously all
actors are concerned about how they're being perceived, because if
it goes wrongly, not only could it be perceived that
the acting is bad, but also you know, he who
wants to be then associated that the last role, as
you know, one of the more famous pedophiles in the literature,

(45:31):
so that can impact his career, whereas for Edward it
would be all about getting as much to the brutal
truth of what this piece is supposed to be communicating.
But I think that Edward was probably like looking for
the best possible Broadway producer at the time to work with,
and it was just not a match made in heaven.
I guess how involved was the in the Book of

(45:53):
Estate in Um, you know, reading through drafts and um
interacting with play as it was developed. As far as
I got a sense of it, it it wasn't friendly on
either side. It was very much an aggressive thing. But
he conceded to just changing it to a certain gentleman
and you know, draw from it what you will, which

(46:14):
is obviously that it's supposed to be a stand in
for the writer. The other thing is not only is
it that you know a C. G or the end
can be a stand in almost an interview, but obviously
from from moment one in the play he says, this
is the character of my own creation. So you're dealing
now also with Will Wait a second, how can you

(46:35):
how can you actually be even at all judgmental of
this character because this character, essentially we're being told it
doesn't really exist. You do. It's just you at the
end of the day, it's it's the dark recesses of
your mind. It's not his. You're in control of all
of this. And what's fascinating is that Edward would have
been very aware of the rules of you know, you

(46:56):
present the universe, and you stick to those rules. You
don't worry about the universe we live in. That's for
outside the feeder doors. Once you step inside the space,
forget you, forget your more A's, forget your your ethical
co your ten commandments. It's about the universe on stage.
You know, I don't think he ever did that. He
clearly didn't do anything with Lolita that he truly intended,

(47:17):
because there I go again where I don't get why
he allowed the two accussions to be published if he
said that was sort of the bastard accident at the
end of this terrible journey to the bad producer and
a bad actor, Thank you so much to Jacob Holder.
So what happens in this adaptation, I won't rehash the
whole thing for you, because there's no horrifying music. But

(47:40):
it's very different from Lowly to My Love, And I'd
like to point out some of the bigger subversions from
other interpretations. For better and for worse. We already talked
about a certain gentleman who is on stage with Humbert
for the entire show, but there are other elements worth
noting as well. Having read the play a couple of times,
it feels pretty clear to me that Nabokov and I'll

(48:01):
be clash in storytelling style. The swears and the forth
right sexuality, constant references to erections on stage, overt racism,
and homophobic comments to turn an audience against a character.
These are all very Albi style choices, but they're almost
certainly something that Nabokov would not have liked. Now, we'll
get to the choices that I think Albie makes somewhat

(48:24):
effectively in a minute, but I just want to lay
it out. The show is a failure in more ways
than not. While Albi lets us know that Humbert is
an irredeemable criminal in no uncertain terms, he succeeds in
making the rest of the characters from the story leagues
more unlikable than they were in the original storytelling, particularly
Charlotte and Dolores Hayes. Charlotte Hayes is explicitly racist in

(48:48):
nearly every scene she appears in in the Albi play,
particularly when speaking to her black housekeeper Louise, and Lolita
makes similar comments later in the show that are not
present in the look. They both make anti Semitic comments
as well, or a certain gentleman when this happens, as
if to say, isn't that awful? I would never say that,

(49:08):
and it is awful. It's fucking terrible. But since this
show isn't making us watch Humbert manipulate this narrative, we
are instead watching a certain gentleman do that. This succeeds
only in making us hate Charlotte and Lolita. I don't
know what Albie is really going for here, but the
comments that are made by these characters are absolutely horrific. Now,

(49:29):
going back to the book quickly, that is not to
say that Charlotte does not make funked up racial and
anti Semitic comments in the nbak of book. There are
several moments where she hints at anti Semitism. In particular,
and these are obviously worth singling out and criticizing. So
I wanted to share a quick insight on that topic
from Dana Dragonoiu, a Nabucovian we spoke with in episode two,

(49:52):
about the comments that Charlotte makes in the book, something
that I certainly didn't pick up on my first you know,
several reads of Lolita, but the references to you know,
his feelings on anti Semitism, Yes, I mean um, Um,
he was very progressive on race for a man is

(50:16):
of his time, like exceptionally so and um, in part
he inherited that from his father. Uh So, Nabokov himself
comes from a very kind of Caucasian aristocratic, upper middle
class um background. But his father, UM was very close

(50:36):
friends with a lot of Jewish intellectuals, and his father
put his career on the line and even lost a
lot by reporting very fearlessly on the on the Mendel
Bailis affair. So his own father championed Jewish Jewish causes

(50:58):
for the entirety of his life. Um. It is for
that reason that Nabokov's are able to sail on one
of the last boats sailing out of France because the
Jewish league had paid for them in in recognition of
what the father had done, and Nabokov himself marries a
Jewish woman in spite of the fact that he knew

(51:19):
that the female members of his family would not approve
of it. Thank you again to Dana. So Edward Albee
is not inventing this within Charlotte Hayes, but he is
turning it up to an eleven and using every tool
at his disposal to get the audience to actively root
for Charlotte's demise, And the way I was reading it

(51:39):
by the time she's killed, it's a relief. Albeit seems
to be using in sensitive language and views in his
characters to get you to root for a child sexual
abuser to murder them, which is a moral hedge maze
I wasn't even aware existed. There is a lot to

(52:09):
be said about how I'll be treated race in his work.
He both during his life and later with his estate,
has been resistant to casting black actors in some of
his greatest works, especially Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf, And
this was a decision that was widely criticized and eventually overturned.
So there's a ton to talk about there, and about

(52:30):
racism in casting on Broadway in general, that I don't
have time to tackle in this episode, but I would
start by referring you to a piece by writer Kyle
Turner called Who's Afraid of White Fragility. That's a good
place to start if you're interested in learning more. I
will link that in the notes. Albie does succeed in
making it the clearest of all of the adaptations. I've

(52:50):
encountered that Humbert. Humbert is an unreliable narrator and a
despicable person, but he still fails to bring Lolita to
the forefront in any meaningful way. Let me give you
some examples of what I'm talking about here. Here is
an exchange from the play. Humbert says that darling child
is a temptress. She is an infant. Then a certain

(53:14):
gentleman replies, no, really, she looks like an ordinary little
girl to me, he turns to the audience. Yes, I'm
sure she does, and to you too as well, I
dare say, unless unless I am not alone, Unless there
is one of you out there like me, one of
you who knows, one of you who senses the beauty,

(53:36):
the thrill of the danger. Is there a pedophile in
the house? That's right? That line ends with parentheses loud hiss.
The biggest change from the source material, besides the addition
of a certain gentleman, is probably Charlotte's death. Instead of

(53:59):
the incredibly convenient death that Humbert, Humbert constructs where she
is hit by a car at just the right moment.
Albe has Charlotte pull a gun on Humbert when she
learns of his diaries that are condemning her and planning
to rape Lolita. While doing so, In this version, she
falls down the stairs and dies of a head injury,
and the impact of Charlotte dying right in front of

(54:21):
us is much different than what we experience in the
book and some of the other adaptations. In a roundabout way,
seeing her die before our eyes validates Humbert's claim that
her death was a convenient win for him and gets
rid of all of the ambiguity and suspicion of Humbert
and questions that arrived from Charlotte's death happening outside of

(54:42):
the jurors plain site. We see other things like Charlotte's
funeral in detail, Humbert telling a certain gentleman that he
intends to abduct Lolita, and we also see this I'm
not kidding. Charlotte sits straight up in her coffin, calls
Humbert a molester, and says she will see him in Hell.
I especially don't like how this adaptation treats Lolita. For me,

(55:05):
the intense detailed descriptions of Humbert's intent to abuse her,
the actual nudity on stage of Blanche Baker or Lolita,
as well as a certain gentleman asking Humbert how she
was quote unquote indicates that i'll Be clearly wants to
confront the audience with how disgusting Humbert's crimes are, but
still manages to paint out Lolita as the seductress in

(55:28):
the process, and even exploits her body to make his point.
This just did not work. We understand Humbert's monstrosity, but
the way i'll be writes, we are not encouraged to
have any empathy for his victim. You can read it
if you really want to, but it's like gross. It
just it goes so far in the other direction that
even reading it on the page was deeply unsettling, because

(55:51):
it just feels exploitative and understands that it's exploitative, but
keeps doubling and doubling and doubling down. There are some
scenes where it truly just felt to me like Edward
Albe was trying to think of the most disgusting, gross,
horrific thing he could think of and then just made
someone do that. Final thing that struck me about this
adaptation was the final time that we see Lolita on stage.

(56:15):
At the end of a scene, Humbert, still accompanied by
a certain gentleman, literally will's Lolita away before going to
Quilty's mansion to murder him. After we've seen her seventeen
and pregnant. Have this interaction with Humbert, Lolita fades from
the story, just as she does in the book, but
in a much more self aware way than we see
at other points. Here's a bit from this scene. Lolita says,

(56:38):
you can tell them all about what I'm like in bed,
and he can tell you. Humbert replies, you are vanishing,
and the stage directions indicate that the lights begin to
go down on Lolita. Lolita says, huh, pardon, and her
spotlight continues to fade. Humbert says goodbye. Lolita. Hey, Lolita,

(56:58):
says humber It says, you have disappeared, and by this
time he is right. Lolita is completely engulfed in darkness.
There is still one more scene after this, Humbert goes
to Quality's house to murder him. After he's killed, a
certain gentleman tells Humbert what Lolita's fate was, her death,
her baby. Humbert asks what he should do next, and

(57:22):
a certain gentleman, the narrator of this production, tells Humbert
trigger warning that Humbert is going to masturbate to Lolita
over Quiality's dead body, and he starts to do that,
and that's the end of the play. Now it's hard
to compare and contrast these failed Broadway shows. Not only

(57:45):
are they completely different genres of theater, but it's impossible
to watch them since they never actually opened. I do
find it interesting that the actresses cast to play Lolita,
at least in the case of Denise Nickerson in Lolita
My Love and Blanche Baker in Edward Albe's Lolita, we're
both styled to look very similar to Sue Lyon in
the Kuberc adaptation. The Blonde Bombshell approach that completely contradicts

(58:09):
Nabokov's description of Dolores, a lanky Burnett who is by
all accounts an ordinary looking kid. That's a whole issue
we're going to keep discussing in future episodes, and one
of the reasons it's indisputably always going to be an
issue adapting Lolita with actors. Part of what makes the
book so horrifying is that we know that Dolores Hayes

(58:29):
is a twelve year old, and reflecting that on stage,
no matter how sensitively done, with a child who is twelve,
is inarguably unsafe. Nickerson does a good job in the
part of Lolita in the rehearsal recording that you can hear,
but the message of the show isn't just muddled. It
tries to have a child at the age that the
book indicates also matched the uncanny seductress rule that Humbert.

(58:54):
Humbert casts her in and tries to have both be true.
Not only does it not work, it makes a listener
very uncomfortable to hear a kid have to play. So
not only is this a failure on the writer's part
to acknowledge that Humbert's account is unreliable. I think the
tonal dissonance and how Nickerson is presented by Humbert and
quilty and Lolita my love as this seductress, with how

(59:17):
we see her on stage as a kid singing about
how she never wanted any of this. It scans very
odd because it is odd not just because a girl
of Dolores Jeyes's age can't contain multitudes, but because having
Humbert's false reality projected onto a thirteen year old as
if it's fact, and a lighthearted fact that that is

(59:38):
so disorienting that you almost have to laugh and hope
that Nickerson was protected behind the scenes. Given Chris Gilmore's
account of her experiences. Then in Alpiece Lolita, the dissonance
is a little different. We are absolutely led to believe
that Lolita brings her ordeal onto herself, but the friction
between Humbert, Humbert and his own author is the strongest

(59:59):
relationship focus upon. Now. There's no public record of Baker's
performance in Albi's Lolita, but playing the role at twenty four,
even though Baker did tend to play younger roles at
this point in her career, there's no doubt that an
audience would be able to tell the difference between an
actor of Denise Nickerson's age and one of Blante Baker's.
This is not a slight to Baker at all, and

(01:00:19):
I think in terms of production ethics, it's the responsible choice.
Especially with the gritty, gross choices that Albe makes, Having
an actual minor in that role night after night would
be as unacceptable as Nabukov thought it would be in
the early nineteen seventies. But there's still a conflict here
seeing an actress in her twenties, even one who appears

(01:00:40):
to be in her teens, act in the role of
seductress with Humbert. Humbert strikes a slightly different tone on
stage than the twelve year old we hear about in
the book, and this repeated tendency to show sexualized adults
as representative of children creates a dissonance that strikes with
actual children. I mean, you can go to Riverdale for that.

(01:01:01):
You can go to any show about teenagers that's on
broadcast television where all of the quote unquote teenagers are
played by people ten years older than them. There have
been so many listeners of this show who have reached
out to me not having read the book before, saying
that their cultural osmosis of this story of Lolita was
that Lolita was about a purvy older man hitting on

(01:01:25):
and having sex with a teenage girl presented to the
viewer as sexy. As we all know now five episodes in,
that's not the plot of the book, but the popular images,
even up through the Alba production in the nineteen eighties,
reinforce that common takeaway. So much of this story's legacy
are driven by aesthetics, and the book off was well

(01:01:46):
aware of that. In the afterward to Lolita, called on
a book entitled Lolita, he writes this, for me, a
work of fiction exists only in so far is it
affords what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss. That is
a sense of being somehow somewhere connected with other states
of being where art, curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstasy is the norm.

(01:02:08):
This is a lot of why I think this story
is considered by many to be unadaptable. It is about
crimes so horrific that acting them out on stage with
actors the same age as the characters is unthinkable, and
yet they persist finding workaround using actors of the correct age.
For Lolita and watering the material down, or conversely, using

(01:02:31):
an older actor for Lolita and misrepresenting the reality of
the story's abject horror. And I'll be clear here, the
abuse of a person and their opportunes is no less
horrifying and contemptible. But there's an additional issue the men
adapting this story right with the assumption that Lolita is
not just able to consent, but is actively seducing Humbered,

(01:02:54):
just as he says in the text. I'll take you
back to that quote from Norman Twain from earlier. We've
got to have a girl who makes a man forget
the moral conventions of society. But it's got to be
a complete mental situation. If Lelite's five ft five with
a great figure, it would be perfectly normal for from
Bear to go after her. This was an attitude that

(01:03:15):
existed loudly and commonly at this time. So a live
action interpretation of this story, particularly a nightly one, becomes
a basically unworkable idea from a performance perspective. In my opinion,
personally as an animation writer, I think it's animation or
bust on this one. But that's another episode. But that

(01:03:35):
isn't to say, if this live action issue were miraculously resolved,
that these Broadway attempts would have been successful. There is
no way, because there is the and I hate to
use that these one oh one terms with you. You're
smarter than this, but I have to use it. There
is the male gaze of it all, with the way
Learner and Barry in nineteen seventy one and Albe in

(01:03:58):
nineteen eighty one are undoubtedly coming from a place of
prioritizing Humbert's voice and predicament, though with very different approaches.
Unlike Nabokov's book, Lolita or Dolores isn't really hiding in
the pages of these plays. She's not there at all.
Quality's role is inflated in both Unreliability is attempted to

(01:04:18):
be addressed, but ultimately either ends up endearing you to
Humbert or making him seem less responsible for his choices
by including a writer on stage. And as always, Lolita's
role is reduced to that of seductress who really barely appears.
Before we leave this chapter in Lolita adaptation history, I
wanted to share another small slice of an interview I

(01:04:41):
did with Blanche Baker, who played Lolita in the Albe
play and as an Emmy winning actor and professor. I'll
remind you here that Baker was the daughter of an
actress named Carol Baker, whose part in the movie Baby
Doll in the nineteen fifties was a huge influence on
how Sue Lion was styled in Kubrick's Low To in
the nineteen sixties. And this family through line of these

(01:05:04):
very specific ragid sexual aesthetics being asked of their performances
is not lost on Blanche Baker, reflecting an issue had
by virtually every actor who has played Lolita that I've
spoken to. Her issues with taking on the role had
much more to do with her treatment by the media
and the public. Unlike others, Baker had a generally positive

(01:05:25):
experience with the casting crew of the Albie production. Here's
a little slice of our discussion about her experience with
the media around the time of this show in the
show runs. From what I've seen, the show ran for
a couple of weeks, um after Boston previews. What was
that switch from Boston to New York Like that was

(01:05:46):
the onslaught of publicity, So that was that was very difficult, um,
you know, and I had to be very careful. I
was a young girls didn't have a lot of money
and stuff, and I was being followed after show and stuff,
and I had to have people meet me. I remember,
it was really not so pleasant that aspect once I
was before I got on the stage, and after I

(01:06:07):
got off the stage. It really wasn't a heck of
a lot of fun. Any time I went to a party,
people were really looking at me, so I stopped going
to parties. I really became more of a reck louse
than you would imagine because I felt like I couldn't
live up to what people expected. That was my own insanity,
I guess, um, but I felt like they would expect

(01:06:28):
me to be prettier, expect me to be you know, sexy,
or forget that I was an actress, and I was
just very uncomfortable for a while in my own skin.
Thank you so much to Blanche Baker, and like Chris Gilmore,
we will be speaking more with her soon. Okay, I
know this is getting to be a long episode again,
but really quick. Lolita has made other attempts on stage

(01:07:05):
over the years, with varying, usually low degrees of success,
that I would like to touch on really quickly, but
not as in depth because they are in no way
as notorious as the two shows we've talked about so far.
But for the sake of completeness, it is a weird list,
all right, Let's roll through these. There is the Russian
opera of Lolita from by composer ro Dion Shedrin, which

(01:07:29):
debuted at the Swedish Royal Opera with a Swedish translation
of the Russian libretto. Lolita was played by a twenty
five year old soprano. This is arguably one of the
more successful and enduring adaptations, as it still plays today
every once in a while. But that's not to say
that it gets the point of the story. It's been
performed in Russian, Swedish and German. Now, speaking to this

(01:07:50):
problematic approach, let's hear from Shedrin on his interpretation of
the story. It feels like a nostalgia for beauty. It
is a symbol really for me. First, really, Lolita as
a character is less of a human being but rather
an archetype symbol of beauty, but a fleeting beauty. Okay, yikes.
And that's also not to say that the reviews of

(01:08:11):
this show were good here's what Michael Walsh of Time said. Unfortunately,
the novel has more music on a single page. Shedren's lazy,
imptant scores loudish when it's not downright sullen, So there's that. Also,
it's four hours long. Moving on, there are several ballet
productions that I've found records of, one which was choreographed

(01:08:32):
by British dancer Kathy Marston in in Denmark that, based
on its trailer, really seems to play up Lolita's role
of seductress as a torturer of Humbert. She even like
grins maniacally at the camera at the end. Brought another
attempted opera in Boston from composer John Harbison, which ends
up getting canceled when the clergy child abuse scandal in

(01:08:54):
Boston happened in two thousand and two. In two thousand
and three, a lot of attempts. Writer Michael West staged
some of Nabokov's unused screenplay from the nineteen sixty two
movie in Dublin, Ireland, and people didn't like it. Reviewer
Hiroko Mikami said, in particular the way that sex was
staged between Humbert and Lolita which already I'm like, no,

(01:09:17):
thank you, but Maccami says, the way it was staged,
he felt clearly placed the blame of a rape onto
the victim. Also in two thousand three, Russian director Victor
Sobchuk wrote a stage adaptation that gets rid of quality
entirely and changes the setting to England in the early
two thousand's. Also in two thousand three, Italian choreographer David

(01:09:38):
Bombana did a seventy minute ballet adaptation that skewed extremely
erotic based on clips I've seen with Lolita and Humbert
looking very sensual. There's a number of duet dance numbers
that have been inspired by Lolita and Humbert over the years,
all of which have a very forbidden love tone. All
links on below. It's a little more intriguing. There was

(01:09:59):
a man show from two thousand nine written by Richard
Nelson that features Humbert Humbert speaking to the audience from
a prison cell. Years later. This production was pretty well reviewed,
and while Dolores obviously never appears on stage, it couldn't
be clearer, according to the reviews of the time, that
Humbert is projecting and unreliable and Brian Cox played him

(01:10:20):
here who is the daddy in succession? And we know
he can play a really mean guy. Also in two
thousand nine, American composer Joshua Feinberg and choreographer Johann Saunier
made a quote unquote imagined opera in New Jersey that
was a multimedia production. Humbert Humbert uses screens and dance

(01:10:41):
and video to demonstrate his descent and obsession. This was
pretty well reviewed in the New York Times, but given
how reviewers Steve Smith characterizes the source material, I don't
really know who to trust here. Here's how Steve Smith
talks about the story. Is Humbert Humbert a suave, calculating
seducer or a pretentious, delusional monster? Mighty also be a

(01:11:02):
relatable victim, not only of his own urges but also
of those of Dolores Hayes, the child with whom he
has obsessed. But clips from this production seemed to strike
closer to the right tone. I do wish I could
have seen it. And finally, there is a Minnesota comedy
group called four Humors that did a three person production

(01:11:22):
based on the Kubrick movie. In oh the parts are
played by white guys. It's clearly in over the top
comedy and like Lolita is played by a chubby guy
in his thirties wearing a bikini, like I'm just, I'm just,

(01:11:48):
I'm tough. I don't know about you, but I was
exhausted just having to listen to that, and like, no
offense if if these guys are listening, I guess, But
sometimes you just get the feeling that a guy watches
three episodes of Anti Python and it's like, I think
I'm a comedian and it's like, no, I think you
just hold prejudices from the early nineteen seventies. Whatever, I'm

(01:12:09):
a comedian and this as lame as fuck. And that's
the comprehensive list up until now. But all this to say,
there's been a lot of attempts, and on stage, none
of them have been enduring. And you'll notice that there
were only one or two women involved in any of
the above in a creative, high level sense, which brings
us to the present. The final adaptation I want to

(01:12:33):
discuss is one I found to be the most intriguing.
It was a revival of the Alan Jay Lerner musical
Lolita My Love that was performed in New York in
as a part of a celebration of his work, and
the director of this production of Lolita My Love was
drum roll please, a woman was not a sist. Man.

(01:12:57):
Can you believe It's? Wow? It's really edible stuff. It
takes sixty five years, but but you get there. The
director of the revival of Lolita My Love is named
Emily Maltby. She took on the challenge of creating a
workshop performance of the show by cobbling and restructuring all

(01:13:17):
of the drafts that Learner wrote throughout the seventies. Working
with composer Eric Hogginson, Malbi managed to create a pretty
contemporary version of the show that still used Learner's work exclusively,
adding in a character that was a therapist speaking to
Humbert to address the unreliability that goes undiscussed in the original. Again,

(01:13:38):
I have not seen this show, but I know many
who have, and given the fact that Maltby was only
given a handful of weeks to get the production together,
it sounds like a pretty unique moment in lowlit to
adaptation history. We'll be talking to her more in the
finale of the pod. But I wanted to end this episode,
speaking with her about her process of waiting through Learner's

(01:13:58):
drafts and finding stuff she could use, as well as
her approach to taking on not just in the book
of Lolita, but learners. Here's our discussion. I just couldn't
believe that this fourteen year old girl was so was
so into this, and so one of the things we
did was basically I went through the script and I
highlighted the moments that if I were Humbert, I would

(01:14:19):
would be my like prime examples of how interested of
how she behaved like a Lolita, right, how she manipulated him,
how she coaxed it, whatever, how much she wanted it,
how much she was into it, whatever. I found all
of those moments sort of highlighted them and they were
really like, you know, a passage here, an interaction here, whatever. Um.
And so we would play a little like echo of

(01:14:40):
this synth music. The lights would change to like this
sort of insidious green and this like stark white uplight um.
And the actors playing Lolita, who I should say was
twenty four, which she is very small. UM. I was
very adamant from the beginning that we're not casting an
underage actress. Um. But she she went from this you know, rambunctious,

(01:15:02):
fourteen year old kind of energy, and she would essentially
like go into like a trance. She would go into
like you know, she would sort of lose all of
her agency and he would um. And then she would
just deliver these lines as if as if he was
like puppeting them to her or parenting them to her, right,
and he would like, you know, not quite as literally

(01:15:24):
as like controlling her like a marionette. But that was
the sort of idea was that, you know, there were
these moments and we kind of I couldn't give her
extra lines, I couldn't give her a voice, but I
could show you that her voice was being taken from her.
Maybe what you're seeing didn't actually happen in that way,
you know, and and maybe he's coloring it. And so
there were just these couple of moments that for him

(01:15:46):
were these key moments where we just got a sense
of like he was kind of manipulating the storytelling. And
we had this thing in the very first song where
she came out, you know, with a sweatshirt and her
hair up, and then over the core of the song,
the ensemble like at his commands, you know, took her
hair down and took the sweatshirt off, and then he

(01:16:07):
kind of um trained her to tuck her hair behind
her ears, and it was just sort of this like
creation of Lolita, this idea of like Lolita being a
different character from Dolores. Thank you so much to Emily
Maltby and we will be hearing from her soon. And
if you thought we talked about the aesthetics of Lolita today, honey,

(01:16:28):
buckle up. We are taking a week off next week
because my brain is melting out of my ears and
it's the holidays. But in our next episode, we are
diving into the visual legacy of Lolita. I'm talking music,
I'm talking niche fashion communities. Not that one Lolita fashion friends,
but there are fashion communities as well as interviews with

(01:16:50):
some of the creators and people influenced by them. That's
coming up on our next episode of Lolita Podcast. Happy Holidays.
Sorry my podcast is so sad. This has been a
production of I Heart Radio. My name is Jamie Loftus.
I write and host the show. My producers are the
wonderful Sophie Lichtman, Miles gray Beth and Marco Luso and

(01:17:14):
Jack O'Brien. My editor is the amazing Isaac Taylor. Additional
research and transcription from Ben Loftus. Music is by Zoe Blade.
Theme is by Brad Dickart. I wanted to also thank
my guest voices on this episode as he's Laura as
Humbert Humbert, Robert Evans as Vladimir Nabokop, Joel Smith, Anna
jos Nier, Paula Vignalen, and Aristotle Assavedo. We'll see you

(01:17:38):
next week.

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5: Dolores Onstage

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