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Jill Haworth, Exodus, 1959. The young German actress auditioned in London for producer-director-ogre Otto Preminger even though he hadl already given Karen to rhe 13-year-old Sussex schoolgirl. He immediately recommended Christine to his fellow Germam director, Gottfried Reinhardt, as the rape victim in the Kirk Douglas drama, Town Without Pity, 1960. Christine was Tony Curtis’ second of six wives, during 1963-1968 and two children.
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Sue Lyon, Lolita, 1962.
Before falling for Sue Lyon – or her breasts, very large from age 13 – director Stanley Kubrick supposedly saw 800 nymphets... Sandra Dee, 15 (Mom said no); Jill Haworth, 15 (No said Mom and Otto Preminger, who had her under contract); Joey Heatherton, 16 (Dad said no); Jenny Maxwell, 19 (Elvis spanked her in Blue Hawaii; the next year); and Tuesday Weld, 17. Three others lived the role… Beverly Aadland, at 15, was the lover of Errol Flynn at 50! – “we’d be perfect for the film!” Germany’s Christine Kaufman, 15 at the time, wed the 20-year-older Tony Curtis at 18. And Walt Disney’s UK moppet, Hayley Mills, 14, was sorry to miss the film (on Dad and Disney’s orders); eleven years later she married her lover-mentor- director, Roy Boulting… 33 years her senior. Author Vladimir Nabokov vetoed Brigitte Bardot, far from his ”creature”; he’d obviously never seen her at a youthful 26, opposite veteran Jean Gabin. twice her age in En cas de malheur/Love Is My Profession. 1957. (James Mason was the same age, 53, in Lolita). Instead, Nabokov voted for Louis Malle’s Zazie dans le métro, 1960, Catherine Demongeot… aged ten! (In 1977, Malle made his own under-age sex study, Pretty Baby – Brooke Shields at 12… the age of the book’s “Lo. Lee. Ta.“). As for Sue Lyon… “My destruction as a person dates from that movie,” she declared in 1996. “Lolita exposed me to temptations no girl of that age should undergo. I defy any pretty girl who is rocketed to stardom at 14 in a sex nymphet role to stay on a level path thereafter.“ She suffered decades of mental instability, five marriages and abandoned a child – though less to do with the actual film than with Kubrick’s producer, James B Harris (32), making her his mistress at age 14. - Stella Stevens, Girls! Girls! Girls! 1962. Refused $35,000 (and Elvis) because Tony Curtis said so.
- Elke Sommer, The Victors, 1963. “She turned it down,” insisted Curtis, now her husband. “For a very good reason. It was going to be made in Europe and I was working in Hollywood. No way for a married couple still on honeymoon to be.” Carl Forman chose her because J Lee Thompson raved about her after Tarus Bulba. “Frankly, I’m much happier with the new girl.” So were the crew… Three years before Blow Up, Elke performed the second full-frontal nude scene in a British movie and like the first (Brigitte Bardot’s full monty shower in Doctor At Sea, 1955), it was really only seen by the crew!
- Lilli Palmer, Murders in the rue Morgue, 1971. Christine, by now divorced from Tony Curtis, was booked to play a mother and daughter – their resemblance being a key plot element. Then, the director called London scenarist Chris Wicking from Spain. “We’d like some scenes for Lilli Palmer.” Great, terrific but what is she playing…? There is no part for her. She’s 60. “Oh, she’s going to be the mother.” But that’s supposed to be the girl who plays the daughter… “But we need Lilli Palmer to sell the film in Germany. ” So, said Chris, lots of people are confused by this picture!
Birth year: 1945Death year: 2017Other name: Casting Calls: 0