Was Kim Novak a good actress?

She was capable. Good in Picnic, very good in Vertigo, and surprisingly hilarious in The Mirror Crack’d.

No. Check her out in some of her 1970s exploits. They show how having a machine behind a performer can make them appear talented.

Was Lana, Rita, or Ava? Like them she was a star that depended on va-va-voom. As the va-va-voom faded, so did their careers. Beyond the va-va-voom, they all had screen presence which allowed them to get work in their later years. Kim is actually quite fine in Middle of the Night in the Gena Rowlands role.

She has a blank quality, which is why she’s perfectly cast in Vertigo. In Vertigo Novak plays a woman who is a screen, a beautiful glossy blank surface onto which a man projects his morbid obsession. Her insecurity and lack of technical assurance work very well in that film; not so well in others.

She's great fun in "The Mirror Crack'd."

She was ok on Falcon Crest.

She seemed sultry and mysterious and had her own kind of screen presence. A very beautiful woman.

A flower for a rose.

She was beautiful and - as R4 wrote - a blank slate. She was one note. Kim and Sammy Davis, jr had a long-running affair that the studio heads put an end to. Maybe that's why she comes off as lifeless in some of her roles.

In THE MIRROR CRACK'D Kim Novak somehow knew what was needed for the film (Tony Curtis too) where Liz Taylor and Rock Hudson failed. She was my favorite special guest-star on FALCON CREST, especially good in her struggle to get free from Robert Stack's character and romancing John Saxon's. Jane Wyman got along with her but Novak didn't want to stay longer than one season. Novak often played repressed characters (VERTIGO, FALCON CREST mirrored that). Her best performance is in THE LEGEND OF LYLAH CLARE (1968), Robert Aldrich's masterpiece, a satire on Hollywood co-starring Peter Finch, Ernest Borgnine, Valentina Cortese and Coral Browne. The critics hated it but it's fun and sometimes pure camp. The director still praised Novak many years later and she deserved it.

Quote - Wikipedia (The Legend of Lylah Clare):

In 1977, Aldrich called Novak "the most underrated actress around. The reasons LYLAH CLARE failed was to do with me; she was badly served by her director. But take a look at her work in MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT - she was brilliant. I could never understand why after PICNIC she was put in so much garbage."

[quote] I could never understand why after PICNIC she was put in so much garbage.

See R9. The Sammy thing was one of the major reasons she was put in bad roles. She was under contract and the studio tried to bully her into quitting the affair.

Lylah is MY role, r10!!!

R12 Never had the chance to see the TV film (any gossip about Dudley Moore who divorced Tuesday right after his breakout in Edwards'10?), but it seemed to be a different take on the role.

Wiki:

Aldrich said the Novak character was "an amalgamation of myths. The teleplay, which Tuesday Weld did, and did marvellously, was much more strikingly fashioned to fit the Monroe mould and we tried hard not to do that."

She was adequate, but she was stunning!

Loved Novak in “Picnic”, a film that’s been the topic of many a DL thread.

Speaking of “Picnic”, when it finally dawned on me that the ending is NOT happy, I realized I was a grown-up.

Watching Picnic on TCM right now. Wow, Willia Holden was beautiful...what a chest!

I can detect Roz Russell's performance in "Picnic" from here.

I think Nick Adams has a bit part in Picnic, playing a delivery boy.

She was wonderful in Bell, Book and Candle.

She may not be considered the greatest actress, but she gave a staggering performance in an astonishing film: Vertigo. And for that that one film and performance, she will be remembered and discussed amongst cinephiles long after a so called “great” actress like Meryl Streep and her mediocre films have been forgotten.

Such an air of sadness about her.

[R21] If you’re referring to her role as Judy in Vertigo, you are so right. She is such a sad and lonely character, and I think anyone watching the film can see a glimpse of themselves in Judy. The raw vulnerability that Kim Novak displays in the last third of the film really is heartbreaking, and I don’t think a so called better actress would have been able to pull it off.

I rewatched the film last night on TCM, it’s one that I try to revisit at least once a year. Vertigo is a rare film that not only holds up, but improves with each subsequent viewing. And it’s with those repeat viewings that the audience really starts to understand Judy as a character and the tremendous pain and guilt she carries for essentially breaking and destroying the man she fell in love with.

I look at Vertigo as a tragedy: it’s about two sad, lonely characters who set themselves up for misery. Judy is in love with a man who will never love her back for her true self, and Scottie is in love with a woman who never actually existed. Such a hauntingly beautiful film.

I've never been a fan of Vertigo -- James Stewart is miscast and not very good, and the film is a tad too long -- but Novak is both perfectly cast and, perhaps intuitively, gives a magnificent performance.

Who would you have cast in Stewart part?

Definitely someone younger. Clift? Brando? Hudson?

Brando was too sexual. Hudson too like Novak.

R23 it’s definitely a departure from the typical character that he would play, but I consider this to be one of Stewart’s finest performances. Like Novak, he is playing a very sad character. Especially with his treatment of Judy, Scottie may not always be the most likable character, but I think that Stewart does an excellent job playing an obsessed man haunted by his past. He and Novak play off of each other perfectly.

It's been a long time since I've seen "Vertigo" but I think Stewart's wider status as a star in American pop culture makes him an interesting choice. Tom Cruise might have been an interesting choice in a remake

R28 That would be quite the acting feat if Tom Cruise could pull off being madly in love and obsessed with a woman.

Actually, Kelly McGillis had that big boned quality of Kim Novak.

I liked her performances in "Bell, Book and Candle" and "Man With The Golden Arm."

I watched several of her movies on TCM yesterday. Really wonderful in Middle of the Night, gorgeous in Bell, Book and Candle and pretty gutsy as Lyla. Also watched Vertigo for the very first time. Wow. Probably her best work but the movie ends so abruptly. It was weird. Also watched her interview with Robert Osbourne where she came off as very fragile and hurt but was smart enough to walk away from Hollywood and make a happy life for herself. Love her.

Her German accent was great in Lylah.

Smart enough to walk away yet she kept coming back and eventually the good plastic surgery she got turned to bad plastic surgery.

She hasn’t made a movie since 1991. Interesting that she replaced Natalie Wood in The Mirror Crack’d. I can’t see Nat in that role at all.

A young Burton could have added an extra layer of pathos, I think.

Her best performances have stood test of time.

I think Montgomery Clift would have made an interesting Scottie. But Novak and Stewart had a great rapport on screen and apparently off screen as well as she's been quite vocal that he's her favorite leading man.

I had no problem with Stewart in Vertigo. And he and Novak had great chemistry. Barbara Bel Geddes was a real treat as the best friend.

Dirk Bogarde?

Stewart’s nice guy aura made him perfect for Vertigo, I think. With Burton or Clift, you would immediately detect the dark undercurrents in the character. With Stewart, it’s a much slower, more suspenseful reveal of just how troubled he is.

I do hope TCM repeats the Osborne interview with Kim. Really raw and poignant and touching. Her aged physical beauty seems to crack before our eyes as she is broken down by her reminiscences.

I think she was an actress with no discernible technique, so if she was well-cast, as in Picnic, Vertigo and a few others (Strangers When We Meet, anyone?), she did very well. She had ENORMOUS charisma and photographed exquisitely when she was young in the mid-1950s.

Speaking of which, do check her out on youtube as the Mystery Guest on What's My Line? which was shot at the beginning of her Columbia stardom, publicizing Picnic. She has an ethereal quality, sort of like an innocent version of Jean Harlow, that conquers and survives even the harsh lighting and photography of live1950s TV.

Here is Kim in 1962 appearing on I've Got a secret. She does the intro and then comes back at about 10:30 to take questions from the panel about her secret. Like in What's my Line, she looks great despite the lighting.

This is a really interesting, very human interview with her. I don’t know that she was a very good actress, technically… but it’s touching that she really wanted to be one.

In that Robert Osborne interview Novak said that (I am paraphrasing) that she didn’t “act” as in impersonate a character in a mimetic technical manner but revealed parts of her inner self.

Novak was the beautiful but insecure daughter of working class Czech immigrants. She didn’t have a lot of education or sophistication. She grew up into a real beauty but people often saw that and didn’t see the conflicted and troubled sensitive soul underneath the perfect face and sexy body. She suffered from bipolar disorder. She didn’t have a lot of self-esteem but would fight for her personal integrity and refused to let Hollywood totally obliterate her real self.

So if she had to play an elegant society debutante as in the “Eddie Duchin” story, she was wooden and artificial. That is because there was nothing of the real Marilyn Pauline Novak that she could reveal in the role. The insecure but gorgeous working class girls she played in “The Man with the Golden Arm”, “In the Middle of the Night”, “Picnic” and Judy in “Vertigo” are all within that range and Novak gives performances of great honesty and vulnerability in those films.

In “Vertigo” Judy is being made over into one man’s fantasy ideal woman and Judy goes along with it because she wants to be loved. Novak’s experience being made over by the studio and her inner conflicts with that make her performance so real it hurts. Madeleine in “Vertigo” is a character Novak can’t relate to, so she ends up a ravishing empty cipher. And this is an accidental but brilliant approach that a better smarter actress like Vera Miles (Hitchcock’s original choice) wouldn’t have made but is inspired onscreen in combination with Novak’s ethereal beauty.

Check out Novak’s Mildred in the 60’s remake of “Of Human Bondage” - no one except a masochist would fall for Bette Davis’s mean shrew but Novak is genuinely sensual, self-destructive and vulnerable that you understand why she has a hold over the miscast Laurence Harvey. He wants to protect her from herself and she lashes out at him but also needs him - like being the codependent with a drug addict. Novak’s cockney accent is terrible and phony but all the emotions ring true.

They should have cast Barbara Windsor.

Watched "Middle of the Night"...Novak with Fredric March. Good movie, but what a mismatch. She was good in it. Some of the scenes of them together were cringey.

Amazing that March’s character was 56 and everyone talked about him like he was an old man. My how times have changed. And I loved seeing DL fave Joan Copeland as his daughter.

I went on a TCM cruise she was the main attraction on. I felt sort of out of place since everyone was quite elderly BUT she was fascinating. Talked loads about Hitchcock in great detail. (my Hitchcock/Bunuel class in college was my favorite.)

Spoke very candidly about her bipolar disorder which took years to be diagnosed.

One part (and I thought this was corny because it was the first day and i was still feeling out of place but by the end I thought it was beautiful):

They were about to show Rear Window to a packed theater. She spoke about it and then she and Mank started to leave the curtains started to move like they were done with the talk and now time for the movie. She hesitated on the stage and started crying and said I hope you love it. That's all Hitchcock wanted, and Jimmy Stewart wanted... was to be loved. It was getting a bit awkward as she was getting emotional. Then some man yelled WE LOVE YOU KIM!!! And it was like the perfect end to an awkward moment. She then left the stage and the movie started.

Then it was cool since as I was going thru customs I turned around and she was right behind me. I said I learned so much from you. (meaning since I was once a Hithcock student.) She and her husband laughed and said thank you.

Illeana Douglas was on the cruise too. She was very approachable and hung out with the passengers. I got into a conversation with her and she said that during the lifeboat drill Novack came up to her (she now immitates her voice) and said were you on Six Feet Under? Yes said Illeana. Kim said we loved your character. Illeana said that she would have never have had the nerve to talk to her so the interaction meant a lot to her.

So strangely one of my best vacations was with a bunch of 80 year olds!

Cool story ^^ Thanks R48..

Kim was 88 this year. What a survivor!

She has survived so much diversity.

Yes, that is a very cool story R48; I've seen the TCM cruises advertised (along with the other stuff they try to shill) and thought that seemed like a pretty big dose of TCM. But you're trip sounds like an unexpectedly wonderful experience.

I would have hated being there when she started crying.

Who's hosting the next TCM cruise? Ryan O'Neal?

Here's an interview she did with Eddie Muller of TCM this summer.

Just finished watching The Legend of Lylah Clare. What an awful movie! Terrible script, dreadful direction, and Peter Finch chewing the scenery. Novak (along with Rossella Falk) is a bright spot, though the dubbing by Hildegarde Knef is disconcerting.

Kim would have made a wonderful Blanche duBois.

That would be interesting. There’s a surprising amount of comedy in that role, though, and I don’t believe she could easily pull that balance off.

I watched some clips from her Falcon Crest stint. She might have been fun in a John Waters movie but the woman wasn't a real actress. She wouldn't have even been half as good as Ann-Marget.

How incredible for Kim. Though she was never taken seriously as an actress , even ridiculed when she was in her prime, she is experiencing appreciation, respect and adulation now in her old age for those very same performances. That's very rare in Hollywood.

R61 Well her performance in Vertigo has stood the test of time. Both it and the film were misunderstood at the time of release and are now getting the praise they so richly deserve.

She’s perfection in Bell, Book and Candle. And how funny that Janice Rule (the original Madge in Picnic) has a supporting role. Josh Logan wanted to cast Rule in the movie version of Picnic but the studio insisted on Novak.

In the early to mid 70s she starred in two made for TV movies. The first, Third Girl from the Left, was written by Dory Previn. Story about an aging chorus girl stuck in a rut of a relationship with a lounge lizard entertainer who takes her for granted. She meets a younger man who seems to take her seriously but has his own agenda. Tony Curtis and Michael Brandon co-star. Filmed in NYC. Novak is very good as once again she's connecting with the character she's playing and they must have drawn in some aspects of Novak's life, especially her character expressing a desire to be a painter.

The other was Satan's Triangle with Doug McClure. This one takes on the 70s fascination with the Bermuda Triangle and with Satan. More of a genre workout, but makes good use of Novak's other worldliness and how eerie it can be, same qualities found in her performances in Vertigo and Bell Book and Candle. It's currently streaming on Amazon Prime. Decent little chiller if a bit slow of pace, but the movie is short (72 minutes).

Not particularly. But she was interesting to watch. With the right director and a good script in a part that suited her, she did very well. In my opinion, "Bell, Book and Candle" and "Picnic" were her best roles.

R9 Didn't know that. Wow, Sammy really went for Nordic blondes, didn't he! What was he, 5"5"?!

I forgot all about Third Girl from the Left. My teen gayling self loved her in that.

What I want to know is, what was it like working with Pyewacket?

In the original Broadway company there were 3 Pyewackets. Lilli Palmer wrote that the main one “was a star, and she knew it.” Temperamental, she sometime liked to claw Palmer’s stockings onstage.

The standby cat was docile, but “not as good”… then if all else failed there was a stuffed toy cat.

I believe they used a number of cats for the filming, each had a different specialty. Kim Novak adopted one of the pyewackets after filming. A couple of years later her pyewacket gave birth to kittens and she gave one of the kittens to Fred Astaire as a present after they made Notorious Landlady together.

Rona Barrett who could be very unkind referred to Kim Novak as a "polish cow" and said that she went to a special masseur who literally molded and pounded her into a beauty.

Amazing what you can find in YouTube.

Age Restricted?

R69 - I didn't know that - that's kind of sweet, thanks. Imagine the casting calls for Siamese cats who looked enough like each other to rotate them in the film.

Rona Barrett shouldn’t be criticizing anyone's looks.

Bump, I'm watching "Eye of the Devil" which I recorded off TCM the other night. Kim Novak was originally cast in the lead, but fell and injured herself toward the end of shooting, and was replaced by Deborah Kerr. Anyone know if there's any of Kim's footage out there to see? (Similarly, I'd like to see Kevin Spacey as Getty one of these days.)

R70 I had Rona's book back in the day and I remember reading that. How the hell is that possible, to pound and mold someone into shape?

Her best performed roles to me were as a cockney waitress in Of Human Bondage - I bought her accent - and Paddy Chayefsky's Middle Of The Night.

Nope. She was not an actress, good or bad. She was beautiful, that's it.

Kim in "What's My Line"

Kim has never confessed to having a romantic/sexual relationship with Sammy Davis, Jr. insisting they were just friends. She also has never admitted to being the mistress of Harry Cohn.

I guess I'm in the minority but I thought she was dreadful as Judy in Vertigo. I didn't believe her for a second. She's fine in the other part, because it fit her so well. But I've never been a fan of the film. Her best roles are in Picnic and Middle of the Night. I think she's wonderful in both.

Kim is so gorgeous in that What's My Line? clip, bringing a true classic Golden Age Hollywood glamour to that dim, barbaric TV studio. If anyone can look that beautiful and smoldering under those primitive 1950s cameras and lighting, they must have looked out of this world sensational in person. Genuine charisma, talent be damned.

Kim must be in her 90s by now. What a survivor!

I defy you to not watch her when she's on a screen. That's a star. All good actresses arent stars and not all stars are good actresses. Love her in Vertigo ( which i only watched during covid and couldnt take my eyes off Kim).

[quote] Was Kim Novak a good actress?

Such a question!

Did she appear on the stage?

Did she ever play a real character who was in any way convincing?

In Pal Joey she seemed to tower over Sinatra even though they were probably the same height. Sinatra was scrawny, I guess.

[quote] she replaced Natalie Wood in The Mirror Crack’d. I can’t see Nat in that role at all.

I'm pretty sure Natalie was offered the liz taylor part (and declined)

Sinatra was SO scrawny they had to sack him from Carousel because it was inconceivable that this skinny lizard could work alongside mascuilne carnies.

Vincente Minnelli forced him to wear these things in 'Can Can'.

I, for one, think that Vertigo is one of Hitchcock's weakest efforts. Kim Novak is terrible especially in the second half, the make up is ridiculous, the story completely implausible. Stewart and Bel geddes are supposed to have been university buddies , which makes one of them totally miscast, as their age diffference is obvious (no one ever mentions that fact) the special effects are even worse than those of Mysterious Island. Just because some pretentious french critics have decided it's a masterpiece doesn't mean anything. it's not in the same leage as Dial M for murder, north by northwest, or rear window, IMO

R88 I used to think the same as you. And I agree that Novak is hopeless.

But I went to an Art Gallery screening on a BIG screen with brilliantly crisp sound reproduction of the Hermann score.

R89 I'm not saying it's shit, obviously it has it's moments, but I don't think it Hitch's top 5.

She played a dual role on Falcon Crest - Skylar Kimball & Kit Marlowe

[quote]Did she appear on the stage? Did she ever play a real character who was in any way convincing?

R84 very interesting questions, I thought of a few movie stars, and decided that the only one I can think of that fits the bill is Vivien Leigh, for her stage career and THE DEEP BLUE SEA

Novak wasn’t the worse part of Picnic, that would be Rosalind Russell in a tie with the distractingly age difference between William Holden and the other guy (who looked much younger than his age). I can’t understand the love for this awful movie.

In Vertigo she crested an iconic role, but that was Hitchcock. Her stilted acting did well for the role, as did Tippi Hedren in Marnie. She is, as someone said above, a blank screen and that is what is required of her and that is why it works. Someone also said that she is in love with Scottie but there is no real evidence of that. Her part is a cypher. She looks vaguely unhappy but she is almost always acting in the movie. Iconic though she is, she looks matronly in some parts.

[quote] Vivien Leigh, for her stage career

Vivien's stage appearances were intermittent and ornamental.

(Though, I realise there's an obsessive Datalounge eldergay here who insistently believes the opposite. He may have seen 'Tovarich' in New York in the 60s but that does not prove the assertion that Vivien had a consistent stage career)

R94 she only play every Shakespearean role, many modern ones, Blanche Dubois, etc...nothing remarkable

R94 's post is so stupid, biased and simply untrue, it's laughable

[quote] nothing remarkable

You're right. But VERY appealing to look at. She was a brilliant clothes horse! And she surrounded herself with extremely competent co-stars to carry the play.

nice, let's make this thread about Vivien, tell us more please R94 R97. Did you actually SEE her onstage ?

Tell us more please, R92, R95, R96. Did you actually SEE her onstage?

intermittent and ornamental. ?

Absolutely not. Too stiff and mannered.

R99 she worked steadily for over 30 years on stage and I 've know personally many of her peers and colleagues, Alan bates, Janet Suzman, David Suchet, Cicely Berry, an so on , and have discussed her performances with them, and they all seemed to think that she was formidable, and great, but surely you know better

Kim & Wilt Chamberlain we’re once a thing.

What a…change he must’ve been from Sammy Davis Jr.

I liked her in a lesser known movie, Middle Of The Night, with Fredrick March...although I could never understand the pairing.

her pussy was as tight as a regulation military bed sheet

She was divine!

Mispelling in R105.

Has anyone mentioned her poignant performance in STRANGERS WHEN WE MEET (1960) opposite Kirk Douglas as suburbanites married to other spouses who have an affair? Great little movie that's all but forgotten, produced by Douglas and written by Evan (The Blackboard Jungle) Hunter and directed by Richard Quine. As gorgeous as Kim is in the film, she's believable as a Westchester housewife and mother. Great cast, also starring Barbara Rush, Walter Matthau, Ernie Kovacs, Sue Ane Langdon, Virginia Bruce and Broadway musical fave Helen Gallagher.

Worth checking out (though I have no idea if it's streaming anywhere) !

Although I love Kim in "Picnic" (that first hand-clap!), I adore her in "Strangers When We Meet" (a brilliant, searing, TRUTHFUL movie), with Kirk Douglas. A reluctant femme fatale of the neighborhood.

"Eye of the Devil"... Anyone know if there's any of Kim's footage out there to see?"

There are some long shots she is still in, probably just to save money on re-shoots. Apparently it was more than just a back injury that led to her exit from the production:

"However, David Hemmings recalls in his autobiography that he witnessed a bitter argument between Kim Novak and Martin Ransohoff near the end of filming and that led Kim Novak to be sacked and the film to be reshot with Kerr."

Interesting that this movie may be her swan song as a movie star. Nothing much afterwards.

Kerr brought some class to the production, as she always did,