Kim
Novak is frequently described as the last star manufactured by the old Hollywood
studio system. Although true, this is not the whole truth.
While Kim's career
was at its peak, Twentieth Century Fox were trying, without success, to
turn Suzy Parker into a major star. In the mid 1960s, independent producer
Joseph E. Levine tried, at great expense, to make a super-star out of Carroll
Baker - also without success. Jacqueline Bisset has admitted that when she
went to Fox in the late 1960s, they still had a good training programme for
young actors. The truth is that Hollywood did not give up trying to manufacture
stars until the collapse of the old studio system at the end of the 1960s;
and the whole truth is that after television had eroded cinema's mass audience,
Kim Novak was the only actress packaged and promoted in the traditional Hollywood
way who aroused the interest of the general public.
She was born Marilyn Novak
in Chicago in 1933. After leaving school, where allegedly she displayed considerable
independence of mind, she began to work as a model and eventually moved to
Los Angeles. Her modeling agency secured for her a tiny bit part in "The
French Line" at RKO, which brought her to the attention of Columbia talent
director Max Arnown who arranged for Kim a short term contract with Columbia.
Harry Cohn, the boss at Columbia,
had publicly announced that he was going to manufacture a replacement for
Rita Hayworth, and apparently decided that Kim was the best candidate. The
full weight of Columbia's expertise was placed behind Kim. She was given a
new Christian name to avoid being seen as a rival to Marilyn Monroe. The publicity department
persuaded numerous magazines to include articles about Kim and to feature
her on their front covers. Hundreds of glamorous photographs were taken
of her, and what is striking fifty years later is the high quality of so many
of them. Care was taken in choosing roles for Kim which gave her prominence
without stretching her acting too much.
Her first film at Columbia
was "Pushover", a good, much under-rated thriller opposite the ever-excellent
Fred MacMurray. Although Kim was nominally just a starlet, the film indicates
that Columbia had great hopes for her. She was given the female lead, she
was photographed attractively, and although Kim played a woman who lures a police
officer into crime, the screenplay did not make her villainous. The last few
seconds of the movie suggest that the ending was changed to make her more
sympathetic. The audience certainly found her sympathetic, and Columbia's
front office was swamped with requests for photographs and information.
Suddenly, almost overnight, Kim Novak was a star.
The mid-1950s was the period
when the pin-up culture was flourishing. Marilyn Monroe's success had encouraged
other actresses to bleach their hair blond, and young women with opulent figures
were being hired by the Hollywood studios. The tone was set by Jayne Mansfield,
Anita Ekberg and Mamie Van Doren, all of whom were regularly photographed
in bikinis or revealing dresses, all of whom participated in publicity stunts.
Although Kim had blond hair,
she was noticeably different from other glamorous, blond actresses. Her figure
was less extravagant, and she compensated for this by not wearing a bra -
thereby demonstrating the firmness of her figure. The majority of her
publicity photographs were fairly discreet: there are few pictures of Kim
in revealing dresses. This restraint and modesty gave Kim a slightly remote
image, which complemented an element of her screen persona that had been quickly
noticed. On screen, there was a distant, almost dream-like aspect to Kim,
which gave her an air of mystery. To this day, many of Kim's most ardent
admirers refer to this quality when trying to explain their enthusiasm for
her.
Columbia
capitalised on this sense of remoteness and mystery by feeding the press
with stories about Kim being lonely. They informed the world that lavender
blue was her favourite colour, and they hinted that she was a recluse. However, although one part of the press was
happy to print this waffle, another part was fascinated by Kim's love life.
Newspapers and magazines regaled their readers with reports that Kim was romantically
involved with, among others, Mac Trim, Frank Sinatra, Richard Quine, Cary
Grant, General Rafael Trujillo, Sammy Davis Jnr, and Prince Aly Khan. The
media was particularly interested in why Kim did not marry, and the yellow
press was not subtle in suggesting explanations. ("Confidential" magazine
with brazen vulgarity declared on one front page that it was because no one
man could satisfy Kim!)
Throughout the 1950s Kim
was a major box office attraction, and her films were commercially successful,
although often savaged by the critics.
While Kim was hugely popular
with cinema-goers, she was not well liked by some colleagues. That she clashed
with Kirk Douglas when making "Strangers When We Meet" is not surprising
as many have found Douglas to be a seriously irritating person
to work with. (In his autobiography "The Ragman's Son" Douglas states
that Kim became hysterical when her ideas on how a scene should be played
were rejected.) However even Tyrone Power was critical of Kim, and Henry Hathaway
quit "Of Human Bondage" because he found her impossible to work
with. (He gave Kim the nickname "stupid".) George Sidney, who directed
her three times, also made censorious remarks about her attitude, while Alfred Hitchcock
told François Truffaut that Kim arrived on the set of "Vertigo"
with a range of pre-conceived ideas that were unacceptable. The evidence is
that Kim has always had an independent mind and a stubborn streak.
None of this is apparent
from her films which are gradually being re-issued on DVD. What is apparent
is that the camera loved Kim. In fact, unusually, both cameras loved her,
the movie camera and the stills camera - the only other big stars adored by
both cameras were Ava Gardner, Sophia Loren and Marilyn Monroe - and
the result is a series of movies and publicity photographs from the 1950s
which place Kim Novak among the great Goddesses of the screen.
Kim's contract with Columbia
ended in the early 1960s and suddenly Kim's career went into sharp decline.
There were three reasons for this downturn. Not being tied to a studio contract
meant that Kim was not obliged to make movies on a regular basis, and it is
significant that after leaving Columbia, Kim made very few films. Second,
Kim had to rely on her own judgement in selecting roles, and although she
certainly had an independent mind, the evidence suggests that her judgement
was poor. Most of all, the James Bond cycle of films replaced traditional
movie heroines with a new type of woman: sexually obvious, sexually uninhibited,
and the exact opposite of everything Kim Novak represented.
Kim responded by playing
obvious and uninhibited women in films like "The Amorous Adventures Of Moll Flanders" and
"Kiss Me Stupid", and promptly lost her aloofness and mystery. She
also rapidly lost the interest of the general public, and in the mid 1960s
she went into semi-retirement.
Kim's reputation has been
restored in recent years partly by the re-issue of some of her films
on DVD, but mainly because of the re-emergence of "Vertigo"
which is now widely regarded as a masterpiece whereas it was dismissed
as botchwork when first released. Originally critics sniped at Kim's performance,
but now decades later, it is much admired.
Kim herself is much admired
now, and can be seen not only as one of the most beautiful actresses in movies,
but also as quite unique, conspicuously different both from her contemporaries
and from actresses who came later.
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