Limelight:
So fair a lady
By
Lubna Abdel-Aziz
She was one of the most beautiful women in the world -- one of the last of Hollywood's screen goddesses. Dubbed the "melancholy blonde", she possessed a magical appeal with a more refined, reserved quality, more subtle, more cerebral. Yet she was accessible; never distant, haughty or chilling. She seethed with inward sensuality rather than outward sexuality. She never bored us with her nervous breakdowns, heartbreaks, affairs, divorces or marriages. She never flaunted her diamonds nor married a prince. She never sought publicity, never wallowed in it, never tarried too long groping the last rays of the limelight. She simply thrilled us with her luminous beauty for a short spell, and then she was gone!
She walked away in top form with intelligence, dignity and amour propre. She withdrew from the Hollywood jungle scene in the mid-1960s after a little over a decade (1954--1965) and 20 remarkable films. Semi-retired, she made occasional appearances during the last four decades in 10 more films and some television, but it was her work of the 1950s and early 1960s, her beguiling glamour and magnetic allure that left its mark on an enchanted public. Unblemished in a tainted town, extraordinary among the ordinary, her star never faded, and the magic she brought to her screen persona enabled her to endure the test of time. Unforgettable Kim Novak star of such classics as Picnic (1956), Vertigo (1958), was one of the most underrated and overlooked actresses of her time. Hollywood has now rediscovered Miss Novak, a star for the new millennium. She is that
...thing of beauty... a joy forever,
Whose loveliness increases...
Last week she received the Eastman (Kodak) Archives Award for her contributions to the art of film. Previous honourees are Greta Garbo, Audrey Hepburn, Jimmy Stewart, Martin Scorcese, and Meryl Streep. What better company could there be! The Berlin Film Festival recently presented her with their prestigious Golden Bear Life Achievement Award. The Hollywood Heritage Museum is giving a special benefit honouring Miss Novak following a screening of the haunting classic Vertigo. The famed "Egyptian Theatre" in Hollywood is celebrating Kim Novak week starting 16 January, featuring some of her best films. She will be making one of her very rare appearances to introduce the newly restored copy of Hitchcock's masterpiece Vertigo.
Such is the legend of the beautiful and fair Kim Novak. Of course Kim Novak is not her real name -- few names in Hollywood are! She was born Marilyn Pauline Novak in Chicago Illinois on 13 February 1933 to Catholic Czech parents. She won a beauty contest at 15, and on graduating from high school, received a scholarship in a modelling school. Her modelling landed her an uncredited role in an RKO picture The French Line (1954). All she had to do was come down a set of stairs. That was enough to earn her a screen test with Columbia, which resulted in a studio contract. She was using her given name Marilyn, but another Marilyn reigned in Hollywood. Columbia's ruthless head, Harry Cohn decided to change her name to Kit Marlowe. She threw a fit, battled with the mighty Cohn to keep at least her family name: "Well nobody is going to see a girl with a Pollack name," shouted Cohn. But with all the courage of a 20 year-old fearless cat, she shouted back: "It's Czech, not Pollack, but whatever it is, it is my name and I want to keep it." They finally compromised, she accepted to change her first name to Kim rather than Kit, and he accepted to keep her Czech family name, Novak. The legendary Kim Novak was born.
Her first film with Columbia was Pushover in 1954 opposite Fred McMurray. At first she appeared uncomfortable in front of the cameras, but her scenes with Jack Lemmon in Phffft had fans clamouring for more. After co-starring with Frank Sinatra in The Man With the Golden Arm, she was cast by director Joshua Logan in the screen version of Picnic, as Madge Owens, a small town beauty who falls in love with a drifter, William Holden. As she came dancing down those steps, tapping her hands and swinging her hips, she practically hypnotised a breathless viewing public. The film was a hit and so was Kim. She was crowned the hottest sex symbol in town, a title she wore with great discomfort. Novak disliked the blonde bombshell image, but could no longer avoid it.
After Picnic she became the world's number one box office star for three solid years (1956--1959). Hitchcock the great, was ready to film an adaptation of a French story "From Amongst the Dead", with one of his favourite actors Jimmy Stewart. He called it Vertigo! The female lead, like every other Hitchcock female lead, was to be a cool, superfluous blonde. A last minute change in the casting replaced Vera Miles with sensational newcomer Kim Novak. It was a masterful stroke. The riveting thriller became the best film of Hitchcock and Novak's respective careers. It was Novak's finest hour. The great Pauline Kael of the New York Times found her to possess a redeeming virtue, which she aptly called "her lostness!" It is that very "lostness" that singled her out and set her apart from other Hollywood buxom blondes.
She received the Golden Globe Award for Best Newcomer in 1955 and another in 1957 for the World's Favourite Film Star. Almost a decade later, in a poll taken at the New York World Fair in 1964 she was voted again as the world's No.1 Favourite Film Star. In the year 2000 Playboy magazine named her No. 18 on its list of the 100 Sexiest Stars of the Century. At the height of her Hollywood career and after such successes as Bell, Book and Candle, The Eddie Duchin Story, Man With the Golden Arm, Pal Joey, Kiss me Stupid, and Of Human Bondage, with such giant directors as Richard Quine, George Sydney, Billy Wilder and Terrence Young, Novak turned her back on fame and fortune in search of her own identity
No ordinary manufactured product of Hollywood she was always considered smart and independent. A talented painter, a remarkable photographer, sculptor and writer, she also designed most of her clothes on film. Back in the spotlight, Novak has resurfaced to accept with grace the many honours bestowed upon her of late.
Kim was briefly married to British actor Richard Johnson her co-star in The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders, in 1965. Their marriage only lasted one year but they remain friends till the present day. In 1978 she married veterinarian Dr Robert Malloy and together they care for several animals, horses, llamas, and an orphaned family of geese amongst others, in a ranch up near Oregon's Rogue River, away from the glitz and sparkle of tinsel town.
On 6 February, the newly established Golden Gate Film Festival to be held for the first time this year in San Francisco, will open its inaugural session by paying tribute to the legendary Kim Novak with their Golden Gate Career Achievement Award. Her classic suspense thriller Vertigo will receive the Golden Gate Masterpiece Award.
Kim Novak brought to audiences an aesthetic pleasure, a prelude to a far richer and lasting impression of intelligence, success and respectability that has remained unmarred through the years.
Miss Novak is a lady where none existed and few survived. She once said: "To survive in this business, you have to cultivate patience, toughness, resilience, yet somehow remain a human being at the same time." It is not easy, but Kim Novak seemed to have managed admirably. She is a unique class act in a sinister town of actors. In her own quiet way, our fair lady, in spite of herself became a rare Hollywood legend.
