ABSTRACT
Sue Lyon died in December 2019 at age 73. Her legacy as an American actress is intimately connected with Stanley Kubrick’s Lolita (1962), her breakout role on the big screen that won her a Golden Globe. Produced under the pressure to follow the rules of the Production Code and the Catholic Legion of Decency, Kubrick asked his friend Bert Stern to take pictures of the actress for promotional purposes.
The most iconic shot of the nymphet, donning heart-shaped glasses and licking a red lollipop, looking into the rear window of a car, stems from a weekend photo shoot with the American fashion photographer. Stern had Lyon pose for his camera, similar to his other more sensational models. Among them, “The Last Sitting” of Marilyn Monroe took place in 1962, the subsequent summer as the photo shoot with “Lolita.” How do we look at Bert Stern’s intimate portfolio of the 14-year-old Sue Lyon almost 60 years later? Is it scandalous, frivolous, abject? Rather than judge the motivations behind this intimate portrayal of Kubrick’s teenage protagonist Lolita, this chapter starts by looking at the visual codes and representational clichés in Stern’s photoshoot.
