Show Business: Profit Without Honor

It was perfectly all right for me to imagine a twelve-year-old Lolita. She only existed in my head. But to make a real twelve-year-old girl play such a part would be sinful and immoral, and I will never consent to it.

−Vladimir Nabokov

That was the novelist's original resolve when Hollywood first sought the movie rights to his Lolita in 1958. But one evening he dreamed that he was reading the screenplay; overnight, Nabokov came to the age of consent. An offer of $150,000 did not exactly dissuade him, and he agreed to do...

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