Crush of the Week : Kim Novak

Miss Novak's lovely back in Strangers When We Meet, 1960.

Unlike Elizabeth Taylor, Hepburn {Audrey}, Grace Kelly and other Hollywood actresses and sex symbols that rose to stardom in the 1950's, Kim Novak, having celebrated her 80th birthday last month, is still with us. Because she was unfairly compared to that other blonde bombshell of the 50's, Marilyn Monroe, Novak possibly hasn't registered as heavily as she should have. In fact aside from being blonde and beautiful, when it came to their screen persona Novak and Monroe had nothing in common. Whereas Marilyn's screen image that has passed down through the years is of a somewhat innocent, childlike creature almost unaware of her sexuality, Novak's screen character's are generally more somber, isolated, melancholy and she is completely aware of the power she has over men, sometimes to her regret. In her private life she seemed a reluctant goddess, turning her back on Hollywood in the late 60's and, though there would be brief comebacks in the 70's and 80's, she never really returned.

Giving her all for her art: Novak as Mildred in 1964's Of Human Bondage.

In the 1960 film Strangers When We Meet, which contains one of Novak's best performance's and is a favorite film of mine, helmed by her one time fiance and maybe her best director Richard Quine {the pair would end up making 4 films together}, Novak playing an unhappily married housewife, continually rebuffs married architect Kirk Douglas' advances until her resolve breaks down and she plunges into an affair that is at times sexy, tawdry, sensitive, yet ultimately doomed not to last. A time capsule film, Strangers When We Meet seems wonderfully perceptive when confronting the mores and morals of the late 50's and challenges anything Douglas Sirk was doing over at Universal Studios around the same time. It would also be of interest to any Mad Men fans.

Novak as the lonely housewife, Maggie, getting ready to leave the no-tell-motel she shares with Kirk Douglas, Strangers When We Meet.

                                                                                                                                                       Perfectly cast in Hitchcock's Vertigo  from 1958, Kim gives us two Novak's:The ethereal Madeleine and the down to earth working girl Judy. Novak, who always had a somewhat dreamy quality, was perhaps better suited to the Madeleine character than the common Judy. Her portrayal of the sad, lost Madeleine rings true, with Novak giving an almost effortless performance and is as much a part of the film's continued success as James Stewart's Scottie, Bernard Herrmann's influential musical score and Sir Alfred's steady pacing and flowing images. The film has grown in stature so much that in 2012 Vertigo was voted by the British film publication Sight And Sound, in a poll begun in 1952 and done every ten years since, as the #1 film of all-time, the first time since 1962 that the honor wasn't awarded Citizen Kane {maybe we can now simply enjoy that picture without having that 50 year burden of All-Time Greatest Film hanging over it}

As the haunted Madeleine in Hitchcock's Vertigo, 1958

 One of my favorite movie's of Novak's and one that gets overlooked is 1964's Of Human Bondage with Lawrence Harvey. In it she plays the low class waitress Mildred, the same role that Bette Davis made her own in 1934. Mildred's character takes advantage of the club-footed, failed-art-student-now medical student Phillip {Lawrence Harvey}. It was a stretch for her, with a cockney accent and a down-to-earth opportunistic demeanor, Mildred is not the type of part she would normally take but Novak was obviously looking for challenges. Supposedly the film was a difficult shoot. Originally Henry Hathaway, an old hand at John Wayne westerns, was hired. Hathaway had just completed the Wayne opus Circus World and was probably not the right man for the job. He left production early on and retreated to more comfortable ground with The Sons of Katie Elder, another Wayne western. Ken Hughes took over direction. Novak and co-star Harvey didn't see eye to eye and working with him was a strain for her. In the book Kim Novak On Camera by Larry Kleno, Kim is quoted "For some reason, known only to him, he refused to talk to me except in the line of duty" {Novak was another in a long line of actresses who didn't get along with Harvey}. The good thing is that none of this shows on screen. In fact their roles on screen are somewhat the reverse of their off-screen situation, with Novak being the bitch and Harvey having a forgiving nature and not being able to let go of his feeling for Mildred. I like the film and admire the effort of all involved but at the time it was considered a failure both with the public and critics. The movie is worth seeking out {it plays on Turner Classic Movies from time to time} for Novak's atypical work, Oswald Morris's photography, John Box' production design which perfectly capture gas lit London and Ron Goodwin's memorable score.

Larry shows Kim how he really feels about her, 1964's Of Human Bondage

 Other Novak movies worth a look or two are Richard Quine's Bell, Book and Candle with Novak as the witch Gillian who casts a spell on Jimmy Stewart, Preminger's The Man With The Golden Arm with Sinatra impressive as a druggie trying to get clean and Novak as a "hostess" of a nightclub who tries to help him to go straight, as Madge {the "Pretty One"} in Joshua Logan's Picnic opposite William Holden, the noir drama Pushover under Quine's direction with Fred MacMurray as the poor sap who falls for her charms and Pal Joey a not-to-faithful adaptation of the 1940 Rogers & Hart Broadway musical about a heel nightclub entertainer {Frank Sinatra} who charms his way into the life of rich society dame Rita Hayworth, while also trying to get Novak's Linda English in the sack. These films, all from the 50's and all big, big hits helped Novak to be voted 9th in Quigley Publications annual top ten list of 1956.

Novak with Pyewacket, Bell, Book and Candle 1958

 While under exclusive contract to Harry Cohn's Columbia Pictures in the 1950's, Novak got deferential treatment at the studio with top scripts, directors, co-stars, cameramen. She was given the best of everything. When Harry Cohn's heart gave out on February 27, 1958 Novak's career would never quite be the same. Cohn had discovered, nurtured, pampered, disciplined {Novak's "friendship" with Sammy Davis,Jr caused Cohn no end of grief}, molded her into a rival of Monroe's and also to replace Columbia's aging sex symbol Rita Hayworth. With Cohn gone Novak's career lost much of it's steam. Her box office allure took a slow fade to black as the 60's went psychedelic, yet 1964's Kiss Me, Stupid, co-starring Dean Martin at the peak of his popularity and Billy Wilder at the helm, must have seemed a good idea at the time. But when the film was released, it was condemned as a filthy near-porn movie by the Catholic Church, which forbid it's parishioners from seeing it and the movie's critic's tarred and feathered writer/director Wilder, who some felt had gone too far in his tastelessness with this tale of a hooker who poses as the wife of an aspiring songwriter, essentially pimping her out to sell his song to Dino-who is stuck in a desert town overnight with car trouble-while the aspiring composer's real wife, through circumstance's far to intricate to relate here, winds up in the hooker's trailer and has a one night fling with Dino. Ring-a-ding-ding!

1968's Legend of Lylah Claire

In 1968, after three years away from the screen, Novak came back to give her last real stab as the lead in a Hollywood feature in Robert Aldrich's The Legend of Lylah Claire. Her last few films not being particularly successful, a lot was riding on Lylah Claire's success. If it didn't hit big with the public Kim would be pretty much through as an A-List Hollywood star. In it Kim plays Else Brinkman a struggling actress in Hollywood going nowhere. Because of Elsie's striking resemblance to her, she is hired to play in a biopic about the mythic Lylah Claire, a kind of Garbo-Dietrich star from the golden days of the movies who died years earlier amid scandal and innuendo. Peter Finch plays her Svengali/Sternberg-ish director/former lover and Ernest Borgnine plays a Harry Cohn-like studio head who is funding the picture. Director Aldrich coming off 1967's mega hit The Dirty Dozen - although an entirely different kind of movie from Lylah - was hotter than a firecracker on the 4th of July, but he had some experience with this kind of story, as The Big Knife {his 1955 take on what was a version of the John Garfield story} demonstrated, so Kim's decision to take the part, whatever private thoughts of the script she may have harbored, showed a shrewdness on her part. She clearly wanted Lylah to put her back to her pre-1962 days. Well, it didn't happen.  Lylah Claire has gone down in history as one of those "Guilty Pleasures" of cinema, a movie perhaps only appreciated by a movie-drunk-on-movies cinephile like myself, and as big a box office bomb as Dirty Dozen was a hit.

Kim, casual  in the 70's.

That pretty much ended Novak's career as any kind of force in Hollywood. She would come back now and then, once in a while, in films which she may have been the female lead - White Buffalo opposite 70's tough guy Charles Bronson or the 1979 curio, hard-to-see Just A Gigolo, one of David Bowie's forays into film that also contains Marlene Dietrich's last screen appearance - but her career essentially ended in the 60's. One of the few bright spots in her post-60's filmography is the1980 Agatha Christie murder mystery The Mirror Crack'd, that co-starred Kim with such 50's stalwarts as Rock Hudson playing a movie director/husband to Elizabeth Taylor's fragile actress and Tony Curtis doing his best Sidney Falco from Sweet Smell of Success as a bottom-line producer. But stealing the show as diva movie star Lola Brewster, delivering some of the movie's best lines and looking like a million bucks, was Kim Novak. The scenes with La Liz are like outtakes from Cukor's The Women or Mankiewicz' All About Eve : Bitchy!! I love Taylor, but she did not look her best in this movie - she appears to be rather frumpy - and when she and Novak have their picture taken together for a publicity gathering of the film Hudson and Curtis are trying to make, Novak says to Liz "Chin up, dear. Both of them". What a moment!  Unfortunately that kind dialogue doesn't hold up for the entire movie and Novak has only a handful of scenes, but she makes them count and leaves the strongest impression in the picture.

Novak, with Rock & Liz, looking like a million dollars in The Mirror Crack'd

In a recently televised interview with Robert Osbourne on Turner Classic Movies {taped from 2012's TCM Classic Film Festival} Novak mentioned that she would have liked to have gotten more, or at least some, recognition from her peers in the film industry. Novak went on to say her life has been a good one, that she doesn't have any regrets, yet one could sense a sadness and longing to have some respect for her efforts. Osbourne said that he hoped she appreciated the turn out from fans at the film festival and an emotional Novak said yes she did and it seemed to mean a lot to her. The fact that in 2012 Vertigo was named the # 1 film by Sight & Sound, proves that Kim Novak is appreciated. Long after bigger stars have come and gone and been forgotten, Kim Novak will live on through her films and her work in them. For that reason and also because she is, was and always will be hot, Kim Novak is my Crush of the Week {and beyond}.


Sources : Kim Novak on Camera by Larry Kleno
               TCM's Interview with Kim Novak