Trivia of Kim Novak

Trivia of Kim Novak

*Novak never dreamed of becoming an actress or a movie star. As a young girl she won two scholarships to the prestigious Chicago Art Institute where she hoped one day to become a great painter.

*The French Line (1953) starring Jane Russell was her first released movie.She got uncredited role being seen on a set of stairs.

*Some of the studio hierarchy thought that Kim was Columbia's answer to Marilyn Monroe. Kim, who was still going by her own name of Marilyn (Marilyn Pauline Novak), was originally going to be called "Kit Marlowe". She wanted to at least keep her family name of Novak, so the young actress and studio personnel settled on Kim Novak.

*Kim Novak's hair color had a touch of lavender in it to make her blonde hair unique. Her color was "lavender blonde" that would be her signature.

*She came the No. 1 box office star in the world for three years, starring opposite actors such as Jimmy Stewart, William Holden and Frank Sinatra, and working with directors like Alfred Hitchcock. Her most famous film was Hitchcock’s “Vertigo (1958),” which is considered by many to be the her greatest movie ever made.Though in a later interview, Alfred Hitchcock said he believed Kim Novak was miscast and the wrong actress for the part.

*Kim Novak said James Stewart was her favorite leading man in later interviews and was disappointed at his expressing that he wouldn't be playing a leading man again after filming Bell Book and Candle (1958). That was James Stewart's final appearance as a romantic lead. Because many of the leading ladies that were playing his romantic interest were becoming younger and a few were half his age. After this film he would concentrate more on roles that portrayed him as an everyman or as a father figure.She said she enjoyed working with him so much that she hoped they would just keep going working together and felt they had great chemistry.

*At the peak of her career, Novak walked away from Hollywood.Not wanting to fall prey to the tragic endings that often result when stars and sex symbols get lost in an identity crisis. She moved to a cliffside dwelling along the wild coast of Big Sur, California with the purpose of creating a lifestyle in harmony with nature while combining it with love of painting and writing poetry. One of her poems was made into a song and recorded by the Kingston Trio and Harry Belafonte.