(Above: Lyon appeared in a provocative ad campaign for "Lolita" that promised more eroticism than the actual film contained.)
BY LEE PFEIFFER
Sue Lyon, who briefly took Hollywood by storm as the teenage vixen in Stanley Kubrick's 1962 screen adaptation of the controversial Nabokov novel, has passed away after a long illness at age 73. Lyon was 14 years old when Kubrick cast her as the seductive object of middle-aged Humbert Humbert's (James Mason) sexual desire. The provocative nature of the novel deemed it to be unfilmable but Kubrick succeeded, albeit after making some key concessions to censors. Lyon's career saw her cast in another role as a teenage seductress in John Huston's 1964 film version of Tennessee Williams' "The Night of the Ignuana", this time with Richard Burton as a much older, defrocked clergyman who is tempted by her charms. However, stardom didn't follow despite her being cast in a key role in John Ford's final film "Seven Women". She also played a wayward teen in the 1967 Frank Sinatra hit, "Tony Rome" and starred with George C. Scott in "The Flim Flam Man" the same year. She appeared in numerous TV show episodes as a guest star before retiring from acting in 1980. Her personal life was tumultuous. She had been married five times, once to a convicted murderer (in 1973). Lyon blamed the bad press she received from her choice of a husband (the ceremony was performed in prison) for derailing her career. For New York Times obituary and rare 1962 filmed interview with Sue Lyon, click here.