Celebrating Kim Novak's 91st Birthday: The Controversy, the scandal & best film ever made!

She starred in what is considered by many to be the best American movie ever made. She was the iconic cool blonde, but the sexual heat could not be hidden!

Watch Kim Novak in Hitchcock's VERTIGO by clicking here

From Wikipedia:

Director Alfred Hitchcock was working on his next film, Vertigo (1958), when his leading actress, Vera Miles, became pregnant and had to withdraw from the complex role of Judy Barton. Hitchcock approached Harry Cohn to offer Novak the female lead without even requesting a screen test. Though Cohn hated the script, he allowed Novak to read it because he considered Hitchcock to be a great director. Novak loved it, as she could identify with the character and agreed to take part in the film without meeting Hitchcock. At the same time, she was striking for more money from Columbia and refused to show up for work on the Vertigo set to protest against her salary of $1,250 a week. Novak hired new agents to represent her and demanded an adjustment in her contract. Cohn, who was paid $250,000 for Novak to do Vertigo, suspended her, but after a few weeks of negotiations, he relented and offered her a new contract worthy of a major star. She was now receiving $3,000 a week and explained to the press, "I don't like to have anyone take advantage of me."

Novak finally reported for work, and according to Hitchcock, she had "all sorts of preconceived notions" about her character, including what she would and would not wear. Before shooting began, she told the director she did not like the grey suit and black shoes she was slated to wear, thinking them too heavy and stiff for her character. Novak later recalled, "I didn't think it would matter to him what kind of shoes I wore. I had never had a director who was particular about the costumes, the way they were designed, the specific colors. The two things he wanted the most were those shoes and that gray suit." Indeed, Hitchcock explained to Novak that the visual aspect of the film was even more important to him than the story, and insisted on her wearing the suit and the shoes that he had been planning for several months. Novak learned to make it work for her, as she saw it as a symbol of her character. Nonetheless, Hitchcock allowed Novak the freedom to develop the character herself. As she later recalled: "It excites me to work on dual personalities because I think I have many myself. And I think that I was able to use so much of me in that movie. At first I was feeling insecure because I kept saying, "Is this right? How do you want me to play this character?" Hitchcock said: "I hired you and that's who I want, what you bring to this role. But what I do expect from you is to stand where I want you to, wear what I want you to and speak in the rhythm that I want you to." And he worked a long time with me to try to get the right rhythm." The role took on a personal significance for her, as she felt she went through the same thing as her character when she arrived in Hollywood:

From my point of view, when I first read those lines where she says, "I want you to love me for me," and all the talking in that scene, I just identified with it so much because going to Hollywood as a young girl and suddenly finding they want to make you over totally, it's such a total change and it was like I was always fighting to show some of myself, feeling that I wanted to be there as well. It was like they'd do my hair and go and redo a bunch of things. So I really identified with the fact of someone that was being made over with the resentment, with wanting to. Needing approval and wanting to be loved and willing, eventually, to go to any lengths to get that by changing her hair and all of these different things. And then when Judy appears, it's another story and then when she has to go through that change. I really identified with the movie because it was saying, "Please, see who I am. Fall in love with me."

The film had mixed reviews at the time of its release in 1958, and broke even at the box office, but has since been re-evaluated and is widely considered one of the director's best works. In the 2012 British Film Institute's Sight & Sound critics' poll, Vertigo was voted as the best film of all time, displacing Orson Welles' Citizen Kane from the position it had occupied since 1962.

Film critic David Thomson thought it was "one of the major female performances in the cinema" and film director Martin Scorsese called it "extraordinary", adding that Novak's work was "so brave and emotionally immediate".

Watch VERTIGO by clicking here- and be amazed

Hollywood Loved Sammy Davis Jr. Until He Dated a White Movie Star

Via Smithsonian Magazine

A decade before the Supreme Court ruled in favor of interracial marriage, the Rat Packer risked losing his career—and his life.

In 1957, Sammy Davis Jr. was a rising star. He’d just completed an acclaimed performance in Mr. Wonderful on Broadway and had a popular nightclub act with his father and uncle called the Will Mastin Trio. It was a strong comeback from a car accident three years earlier, when a pipe went through Davis’s eye, permanently blinding him. For the rest of his life, he would wear a glass eye.

The accident, however did nothing to curtail Davis’s charisma and sex appeal. Hollywood starlet Kim Novak certainly noticed him.

She was about to film Hitchcock’s Vertigo when she saw Davis perform in a Chicago nightclub. Though they didn’t speak much at the time, Davis wanted to get to know the actress. His friends Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh obliged by inviting both of them to a party at their house. Soon afterward, there was a blind item in a gossip column: “Which top female movie star (K.N.) is seriously dating which big-name entertainer (S.D.)?”

This bit of idle gossip was far from harmless. An affair between Novak and Davis had the potential to destroy both of their careers. In 1957, interracial marriage was illegal in half the states. Most Americans were against it. A Gallup poll from 1958 showed that only 4 percent of Americans approved of interracial marriage. On top of that, the United States Supreme Court had only recently ordered the desegregation of public schools, and the showdown in Little Rock, Arkansas, over the integration of the city’s Central High School would occur the following year. The national atmosphere was fraught with racial tension.

As a black man, Davis had been stopped from dating white women before, but this time was different. Novak was a movie star. That year, newspapers were calling her “the hottest female draw at the box office” thanks to films like The Man with the Golden Arm and Pal Joey. Columbia Pictures was grooming her to replace Rita Hayworth, who studio head Harry Cohn disliked. As the latest Hollywood sex goddess, Novak was potentially worth millions.

When he saw the gossip item, Davis called Novak to apologize for putting her in an awkward position with the studio. According to his autobiography Sammy, Novak replied, “The studio doesn’t own me!” and invited him over for spaghetti and meatballs. Soon after, they were dating.

When Cohn found out, he became enraged that his star—who he regarded as property he’d invested in—was dating a black man.The next morning, while flying to Los Angeles, he had the first of several heart attacks that would soon kill him.

By all accounts, Cohn was a ruthless studio chief who admired Benito Mussolini and had ties to the Chicago mob. He even wore matching ruby “friendship rings” with gangster Johnny Roselli. There are various accounts of what happened next, but what’s clear is that Cohn took out a mob hit on Davis. Gangster Mickey Cohen found Davis’s father and passed on the threat. Silber was there when Davis received the phone call.

“They said they would break both of his legs, put out his other eye, and bury him in a hole if he didn’t marry a black woman right away,” says Silber. “He was scared as hell, same as I was.” 

Soon after in January 1958, Silber was sitting on the bed in the Sands Hotel, polishing a cowboy boot, when he noticed Davis, sitting on the other bed, paging through an address book.

“I said, what the eff are you doing?” says Silber. “And he said, I’m looking for someone to marry.”

The woman he chose was Loray White, a black singer who worked across the street at the Silver Slipper. She and Davis had gone out a few times in the past. Now Davis offered her a lump sum (between $10,000 and $25,000) to marry him and act as his wife. She agreed.

The full story of how dating Novak almost cost Davis his life

Kim Novak had an off again, on again affair with Frank Sinatra. In 1957 she appeared on his TV show, and her seductive and sexual nature became unleashed on a unsuspecting Sinatra and in front of American TV audiences. In this 3 minute clip, she literally cannot keep her hands off Sinatra. Sinatra was catnip for women, and she literally could not help herself.

Kim had received scholarships to attend The School Of The Art Institute in Chicago and actually walked away from Hollywood while still in demand to concentrate on art.

Art copyright 2014 by Kim Novak.

That’s right. She left Hollywood even though they were still offering her roles. She walked away from fame!

But not before she did another controversial film that almost wasn’t released, KISS ME, STUPID with Dean Martin, get this, playing himself! Billy Wilder, one of the greatest film directors of the 20th century (he created film noir with DOUBLE INDEMNITY and refined it with SUNSET BOULEVARD) did a film that had his European sense of irony. Unfortunately, American audiences didn’t really get films with irony, the critics were confused and church groups fought to have the film banned. Today her performance is seen very differently. She was brave and courageous in her choices, and the film is finally appreciated.

Today as I write this Kim Novak turns 91. She has lived long enough to be appreciated and loved for her courage, her refusal to surrender to fame, choices she made from the heart when such choices were illegal. She lived life on her terms and that makes her one of the first modern women. Cheers.

Behind the paywall- Kim has a favorite film of hers, MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT. In this film she is a 24 year old who falls in love with a man in his 60’s as all of society seems to turn against her. But as always, she lives her own life. It is easy to see why this film she considered her best. It reflects her own courage. Because even today, the age difference in a relationship is as controversial as interracial relationships once were.