The film""s production, the first of Kubrick""s films produced independently in England, was marked by:a long casting search for the proper ""Lolita"" (Kubrick decided upon blue-eyed blonde Sue Lyon, a fourteen-year-old television actress in her screen debut, and almost 16 by the time the film was released)the appointment of Nabokov to write the screenplay for his own lengthy novelKubrick""s rewriting (with co-producer James B.The English that will keep her in the gutter till the end of her days.Well, sir, in six months, I could pass her off as a duchess at an Embassy Ball.I could even get her a job as a lady""s maid or a shop assistant, which requires better English...[To Eliza] Yes, you squashed cabbage leaf.You disgrace to the noble architecture of these columns! You incarnate insult to the English language! I could pass you off as, ah, the Queen of Sheba.The rioting crowd violence is partially quelled when the organist begins playing: "The Star Spangled Banner.Among the unusual characters are:a dim-witted, slithery Southern playboy/gigolo from Kentucky (Vincent Price)a cynical, mannered and prickly society columnist (Clifton Webb in his first screen appearance since the silent era); also an effete intellectual and an aloof bachelor (with many gay affects)an aging, well-heeled, matronly socialite (Judith Anderson) who lusts after the gigoloa beautiful career woman and ad designer (Gene Tierney), seen in her own apartment""s fireplace portrait - the gorgeous heroine who is presumed dead for about half of the filman unconventional, puzzle-playing, chain-smoking, dead-pan-speaking detective (Dana Andrews)Trailers for the compelling film promised: "Never has a woman been so beautiful, so exotic, so dangerous to know!", and Gene Tierney (in her signature film role as Laura) delivered with exquisite elegance and sublime, breathtaking beauty the role of the untouchable ""work of art"".