"Lolita" was shot over 88 days on a budget of $2 million at Elstree Studios, between October 1960 and March 1961. Kubrick often clashed with Shelley Winters, whom he found "very difficult" and demanding, and nearly fired at one point. Because of its provocative story, "Lolita" was Kubrick's first film to generate controversy; he was ultimately forced to comply with censors and remove much of the erotic element of the relationship between Mason's Humbert and Lyon's Lolita which had been evident in Nabokov's novel. The film was not a major critical or commercial success upon release, earning $3.7 million at the box office on its opening run. "Lolita" has since become acclaimed by film critics. Social historian Stephen E. Kercher documented that the film "demonstrated that its director possessed a keen, satiric insight into the social landscape and sexual hang-ups of cold war America", while Jon Fortgang of Film4 wrote: "Lolita, with its acute mix of pathos and comedy, and Mason's mellifluous delivery of Nabokov's sparkling lines, remains the definitive depiction of tragic transgression".