The 2012 TCM Classic Film Festival will celebrate the career of actress Kim Novak with a series of events, including a hand and footprint ceremony at the historic Grauman’s Chinese Theater on April 14th. Novak is also set to join TCM host Robert Osborne on Friday, April 13th for an “in-depth conversation to be taped in front of a live audience for airing on TCM later.”
In addition, Novak will be introducing a screening of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 critically acclaimed film, Vertigo.
“From thrillers like Hitchcock’s Vertigo, to romantic dramas such as Picnic, noirish classics like The Man with the Golden Arm, comedies such as Bell, Book and Candle and musicals like Pal Joey, Kim Novak has made us fall in love with her time and time again,” stated TC host Osborne. “Our celebration of Kim Novak and her career is certain to be one of the highlights of the 2012 TCM Classic Film Festival.”
The TCM Classic Film Festival will be held Thursday, April 12 through Sunday, April 15th in Hollywood.
Kim Novak Biography [Courtesy of TCM]:
Audiences have always understood and loved Kim Novak, yet many critics misjudged her work as too simplistic when compared to actors whose stylized performances are now viewed as outdated. In retrospect, Novak’s work is receiving more acclaim with the passage of time. She is being recognized and honored for her acting ability. Novak’s most recent awards include the prestigious Golden Bear for lifetime achievement at the Berlin International Film Festival. In 2003 Novak was presented with the Eastman (Kodak) Archives Award for her major contribution to film (prior honorees include Greta Garbo, Audrey Hepburn, James Stewart, Martin Scorsese and Meryl Streep).
Novak was also the recipient of a special tribute from the American Cinematheque in Hollywood where her films were shown at the Egyptian Theatre in January 2004. She made a rare personal appearance with a Q&A onstage between the showings of Bell, Book & Candle (1958) and Vertigo (1958).
In 1956 Novak became the No. 1 box office star in the world, and held that position for three solid years of outstanding filmmaking. Knowing that nothing lasts forever, and not wanting to fall prey to the tragic endings that often resulted when stars and sex symbols got lost in identity crises, Novak made a decision to walk away from Hollywood. It took great courage to turn her back on a successful and lucrative career when she was at her peak, but she felt the need to go in search of herself to learn what she really wanted out of life. Novak moved to a cliffside dwelling along the wild coast of Big Sur, Calif., with the purpose of creating a new lifestyle in harmony with nature while combining it with her love of painting and writing poetry. One of her poems was made into a song and recorded by the Kingston Trio and Harry Belafonte.
Born Marilyn Pauline Novak in Chicago, Illinois, she was the daughter of a history teacher who, during the Depression, became a railroad freight dispatcher.
Her mother was a factory worker. Novak and her older sister, Arlene, were raised in a close-knit, lower middle-class family of Czech descent. As a teen she won several scholarships to the prestigious Art Institute of Chicago, and was following that path when it made a detour. Novak was fully intent on exploring her painting in different mediums, and had never thought about being an actress.
In her mother’s attempt to help Novak overcome her shyness and become more outgoing, she encouraged her daughter to join a teenage club where she soon began modeling. It was during her summer vacation from her first semester at Wright Junior College that she won the title of “Miss Deepfreeze” and traveled across the country showing refrigerators. When the tour ended in California, she stayed for the rest of the summer and signed with a local modeling agency. They got her a job appearing in two movies along with 20 other models when she was discovered by an agent and signed to a contract at Columbia Pictures. She earned her Associate Arts degree while studying at the studio during her first year in Hollywood.
Harry Cohn, the studio head at the time, decided to mold his most recent starlet, Novak, into a new “Love Goddess” to challenge his superstar, Rita Hayworth, as well as to compete with the already-established sex symbol, Marilyn Monroe. Novak was in the right place at the right time, but felt insecure because of her lack of acting experience. She began to study day and night with the studio’s acting coaches Benno Schneider and his wife, Batami. Novak never forgot Benno’s advice: “Don’t try to act,” he would plead. “Let the other actors show off their technique. You should just be yourself, real. Never be ashamed to expose your soul and share your feelings. Let the world experience your pain, your joy, and your passion. The camera will become your best friend. You have good instincts—trust them.” She did just that, and she did it her way.
Her first assignment was opposite Fred MacMurray in Pushover (1954), a moody film noir directed by Richard Quine. She was the breakout performer and that film and it led to her second film, playing a beautiful Broadway playgirl in the George Axelrod comedy, Phffft (1954), opposite Judy Holliday and Jack Lemmon. 5 Against the House (1955) followed, after which she was loaned to independent producer-director Otto Preminger for The Man with the Golden Arm (1955) in which she played the compassionate concerned girlfriend of a drug addict, played by Frank Sinatra.
Even more spectacular were her starring roles as the small-town country girl in the film version of William Inge’s Picnic (1955), directed by Joshua Logan, and as the socialite wife of Tyrone Power in The Eddy Duchin Story (1956).
In Jeanne Eagels (1957), opposite Jeff Chandler, she portrayed the title role of the tempestuous Broadway star of the 20s. In the Rodgers and Hart musical, Pal Joey (1957), she starred with Rita Hayworth and Frank Sinatra. In 1958 she starred with James Stewart in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, a film the Library of Congress named as a national treasure, picked the first time the National Film Registry decided to start adding 25 films a year to the Library. She followed Vertigo with a comedy Bell, Book & Candle, again opposite Stewart and Jack Lemmon. In her next film, Middle of the Night (1959), she played a much less glamorous love interest of her aging employer, Fredric March, and she really shone as an actress. Her films in the early 1960s displayed her versatility in Strangers When We Meet (1960), with Kirk Douglas, and the off-beat comedy The Notorious Landlady (1962),with Jack Lemmon again.
In a landmark move for all the actors to come after her, Novak was the first actor (and woman) to negotiate an ownership deal of her own product, as soon as her original Columbia contract ended. The deal was negotiated by her long-time agent, Norman Brokaw, now chairman of William Morris/Endeavor. She formed her own production company and did Boys Night Out (1962), and then flew to Ireland to star in the third version of Somerset Maugham’s novel, Of Human Bondage (1964), with Laurence Harvey. Her next film, Billy Wilder’s Kiss Me, Stupid (1964), shocked the Legion of Decency when it was released, but it was rediscovered and acclaimed for its forward thinking in 2001, and has been playing special engagements in art houses ever since to rave re-reviews, particularly for Novak’s performance as “Polly the Pistol.”
Novak returned to England to star in The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders (1965), and married her co-star Richard Johnson. In The Legend of Lylah Clare (1968), Novak again played a dual role (which seemed to be a theme in her work) as an early day screen star and the younger actress chosen by an obsessed director to recreate her. Following The Great Bank Robbery (1969), Novak returned to Big Sur.
In 1976, divorced Novak married equine veterinarian Dr. Robert Malloy, and to this day aids in the care of horses and other animals alongside her husband. They also spend time exploring the Oregon mountains and forests on horseback. This has afforded Novak the opportunity to capture special moments and moods of the wilderness and its wildlife through the lens of her digital camera.
Though Novak’s first priority is her private life, she has never lost the love of acting because she views it as another expression of her art. She has occasionally left “the wilds” for a project such as Just a Gigolo (1978) opposite David Bowie, or The Mirror Crack’d (1980), with Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor and Tony Curtis. Several years later she worked with Ben Kingsley on The Children (1990), then later on appeared in Mike Figgis’ Liebestraum (1991).
Novak and Malloy’s home burned to the ground in 2000, destroying much of Novak’s artwork, 10 years of writing her autobiography, and priceless artifacts of her film career. After absorbing the shock, Novak viewed it as a new beginning, and for the past three years turned the work of building a new home into a challenge to take on another art form. She not only designed the home from out of the ashes of the last, but she herself painted the walls with murals, and sculpted a portion of the entry with her verse to represent their lifestyle, their animals, and her dreams.
Over the past few years, Novak has chosen to express herself through her art. Her paintings are primarily impressionistic and extraordinarily emotional. She has never publically exhibited them, but she is currently planning an art show in San Francisco next year.
Novak has always possessed a magic that enables her to endure the test of time. She is luminescent both on and offscreen, a quality of stardom that can’t be bought or taught. That is what makes a legend.
