Kim Novak

Malilyn Pauline Novak was born on February 13, 1933 in Chicago. She did not like to talk much about the origin of her last name, and she is credited with saying that on one occasion she said that “I am Czech, but Polish, well, it does not matter, it is my last name.” She was the daughter of teachers, she was not a very good student, and instead, as a teenager, she showed a good hand as a model. She even got a scholarship to get better training in this field. She must not like something about this dedication, because the truth is that for years she worked various jobs, as a store clerk, dental assistant, and spokesperson for an employment office. But perhaps she realized that her beauty and her elegance were gifts that she should use in the modeling profession, because she fell back on her. And just as she moved to Los Angeles for work, she was offered an uncredited bit on The French Line .(1954), a film starring Jane Russell .

The great cinematographic opportunity would come from Columbia, which auditioned many actresses in search of a replacement for Rita Hayworth , who at the same time could be seen as the “new Marilyn”, a response to the dazzling brilliance of Marilyn Monroe . And yes, curiously, Marilyn Novak was chosen, but they immediately proposed a name change, Kit Marlowe. The actress, reasonable and stubborn at the same time, accepted the change of her first name, but she insisted that she keep the last name of her ancestors. She would eventually become known artistically as Kim Novak.

1954 marks Kim’s film debut, House Number 322 , where she composed a gangster’s girl with spark and mischief. It was under the orders of a director whose last name rhymed with his new first name: Richard Quine , with whom he had a happy association, since with this filmmaker he repeated in I fell in love with a witch (1958) and The mysterious lady in black (1960 ).

As a light-headed blonde, she lends herself to a sitcom like Phffft! (1954), where she first met Jack Lemmon . And in this vein, although more acidic, she would work ten years later under Billy Wilder ‘s orders in Kiss Me, Silly .

But the truth is that the Novak dazzled with its beauty, it was like a magnet on the screen, which looked good without having to make great efforts, wherever it was proposed. Which is not to say that she did not learn or take her acting profession little seriously, since she took classes from her when Harry Cohn hired her at Columbia, and apparently she had to pay for them out of her own pocket. In the dramatic genre, we first saw her in dazzling Technicolor in Picnic (1955), a Joshua Logan film that earned her a Bafta nomination. That same year she was also cast in a drug drama, The Man with the Golden Arm , opposite Frank Sinatra , with whom she reprized in Pal Joey (1957).

But surely the role for which the blonde actress is best remembered is From Among the Dead (Vertigo) , from 1958, where she suffered the eccentricities of the magician of suspense, who made her throw herself into the waters of San Francisco Bay several times. , not satisfied with the shot, or perhaps carried away by a certain sadistic streak that was attributed to the director. Be that as it may, the role of a mysterious woman who captivates a vigilante James Stewart, to commit suicide before their eyes, with the strange reappearance, moved moviegoers and scholars around the world. Of her work with Hitchcock, Kim said what she liked best was that she “left a lot of doors open there, a lot of clues that didn’t add up to the movie in the way you thought.” The wake of a woman with secrets would be used two years later in The Mysterious Lady in Black .

The sixties gave Novak important roles, such as Human Servitude (1964), based on the novel by W. Somerset Maugham , where she dared to reprise a role done thirty years earlier by Bette Davis in Captive of Desire . 1965 was highlighted, more than for his role in The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders, for his romance with actor Richard Johnson , to whom he was briefly married for just over a year. Before, he had given rise to his interracial adventure with Sammy Davis Jr. , which did not come to fruition. He would finally find sentimental stability with Robert Malloy, a veterinarian with whom she married in 1976, and with whom she continues today, although they have not had children. His foray into cinema within cinema in The Legend of Lilah Clare (1968), directed by Robert Aldrich , was also interesting .

From here, his star declined. She made few titles of interest in the 70s, and in the 80s she was one more face of those casts of old glories in films based on Agatha Christie’s novels in The Broken Mirror (1980). The highlight of her was her signing for the television series Falcon Crest where, a nod to the past, her character was called Kit Marlowe, the name she was about to assume when she started in the cinema. And in 1990 she would make The Children , opposite Ben Kingsley , adapted from an Edith Wharton novel , her last notable role on screen.