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Alan Jay Lerner needed a hit.
But 1960 was 11 years past.
The less said aboutCoco(1969), starring Katharine Hepburn as Chanel, the better.
The musicals Lerner excelled at had abruptly become passe, and they didnt make bank.
Then one of Lerners assistants had a left-field suggestion: What about adaptingLolita?
Vladimir Nabokovs novel had been a best seller upon its 1958 American release.
The 1962 film directed by Stanley Kubrick had done decent box office.
There was a pedigree, a track record.
Yet Lerner did not balk; instead, he dived in.
Humbert is such a tragic, flawed, misplaced romantic, lost in post-World War II.
Lerners view ofLolitaowed entirely to Kubricks film.
Its been suggested that Lerner did not even read Nabokovs novel.
/ Ive got you at last.
/ You hideous, contaminated Switzerland of cheesiness!
(Hes best known for orchestrating the theme for the James Bond films.)
CBS Records, then run by Clive Davis, came in as the primary backer.
Most of the principals were cast quickly.
Lorna Luft took on the role of Doloress best friend, Mona Dahl.
But one pivotal part was left to cast: that of Lo herself.
Theres a wickedness wherever you go, said the mother of one aspirant, 14-year-old Verna Harrison.
Its just lucky that my daughter only play-acts it.
Verna didnt get the part, despite eliciting an approving Fourteen?
Widney, in a pleasant, guidance counselor voice, oozed charm toward one 15-year-old, Teresa Conforti.
I dont think youre right for Lolita but we might have something else for you.
And dont wear makeup next time.
I wanted to look sexy, said Conforti.
You look sexy anyway.
But, in the minds of the men who had the power to decide, that was the problem.
The girls were too sexy, or not sexy enough.
Too tall or too short, too busty or too flat-chested, too heavy or too emaciated.
Weve got to have a girl who makes a man forget the moral conventions of society, Twain complained.
But its got to be a complete mental situation.
Twain wanted to rule out anything that looks normal.
Ferra looked a lot like Sue Lyon.
Its not a crime.
In the end Humbert is cured.
Its just a love story.
Of course he would insist the show had no controversy, no nudity, no four-letter words.
Nothing which compromises the taste of Nabokov.
Where things grew strange was when the reporter, Craig Waters, asked about the moral ofLolita.
Did Twain have any personal obsessions of his own?
Like, for example, underage girls?
[Could I be] involved with a nymphet?
Yeah, I could be absolutely!
If you met them in a motel by chance …
But I havent fallen yet.
Ive been playing it pretty straight.
My wife prefers it that way.
John Neville kept saying, Theres nobody really to root for.
Nobody to care about.
You care about the child the victimization of this child.
But the play… Everybody was reading the novel.
In Philly, everyone was fixing the book in their own head.
Lerner kept changingLolita, My Loves book, moving around scenes and reworking dialogue.
None of it helped.
The first round of out-of-town reviews was brutal.
Lolita, My Lovewould not, in fact, make it to Broadway by March 30.
The show didnt work technically, Twain told an interviewer on February 18.
And when things dont work technically, nothing goes right.
Twain fired Tito Capobianco and replaced him with a British director, Noel Willman.
Lorna Lufts role was cut so she, too, left the show.
and was devastated when they let me go, Luftsaid in 2011.
(Neither Ferra nor Nickerson, who recently hada stroke, responded to comment requests for this story.)
Danny Daniels also exited, giving Dan Siretta his first gig as choreographer.
I dont know where it came from.
The thing took its cues from German Expressionism.
Thats what the next tryout, at the Shubert Theatre in Boston, was for.
ButLolita, My Lovehad already lost more than $650,000, and Boston cost another quarter million.
The total gross was $14,505.
Alan Jay Lerner still did not give up.
He vented to Loudon in a letter that theres a conspiracy somewhere against decent people.
It was not to be.
Chief among those relieved: Vladimir Nabokov.
Neither man was happy with the end result, andThe Little Princeflopped.
Only six months earlier, whenLolita, My Lovehad opened in Philadelphia, Lerner seemed to foreshadow the outcome.
Then, he added, with a dry smile, You go from there.
