Kim Novak is now 92 years old. She is one of the more forgotten sirens of the Hollywood Fifties Golden Age, and to the extent that she is remembered at all, it is because she was one of Alfred Hitchcock’s interchangeable blondes somewhere between Doris Day and Tippi Hedren. Her Hitchcock vehicle, “Vertigo,” is for some reason regarded by film schools as Hitch’s best, but it can’t be because of Novak, who was cool, sexy, but not much of an actress.
They are making a movie about one aspect of Novak’s life because it can be twisted into some kind of woke message: she had a relationship of some sort with quadruple threat (drama, comedy, singing and dancing) Sammy Davis Jr., at a time when white sex symbols weren’t supposed to hang out with black superstars. Chosen to play Kim is current hot blonde Sydney Sweeney. It’s a high profile opportunity for the young woman, who is looking for opportunities to be taken seriously as an actress before her window of genuine stardom closes, just a Kim was, once upon a time.
So what does Kim Novak do? She gives an interview to the U.K.’s scandal The Times and trashes Sweeney, whom she has never met. Novak called Sydney “totally wrong” to play her in the upcoming biopic “Scandalous,” sneering that she “would never have approved” of Sweeney’s casting in the film, because she “sticks out so much above the waist.”
Funny, the degree that Kim was regarded as “sticking out above the waste” was substantially responsible for her having a career in films at all; Bette Davis she wasn’t. The size of women’s breasts that caused them to be lusted after as unusually busty has increased substantially over the decades: Raquel Welch, whose endowments were the object of endless jokes in the Sixties, would be regarded as unremarkable today.
But never mind the fact that Novak’s complaint is silly: she is 93 after all. Because Kim was a rising young actress once, she demonstrates ethical incompetence by not considering how would she have felt if she got a plum part in a Hollywood film biography portraying an earlier era’s blonde sex symbol like, say, Mae West, and Mae had announced in public that Kim was wrong for the role. She would have regarded Mae as a vicious bitch…and she would have been right.
Now Novak has laid the foundation for critics to crush whatever Sydney does in the film, something many of them are itching to do anyway. Woke World hates Sydney because she made a jeans ad that they absurdly claim advocated white supremacy. Yes, they are that desperate.
Nice, Kim. Here’s a little bit of advice that somehow you’ve managed to miss in your nine decades: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
Bi…never mind. You owe Sydney an apology, Kim.
Ethics Alarms 
this is a test
this is only a test
Received!
Hah! Roger. Wilco. Over and out.
Personally, I wish Sidney Sweeny could do some look other than the hooded eyes. She looks absolutely bovine when she does that, which is most of the time.
I’m also of the opinion her vaunted equipage is less flesh and more of what popped out of Clorette DePasto’s blouse, much to Larry Kroger’s surprise.
“I’m also of the opinion her vaunted equipage is less flesh and more of what popped out of Clorette DePasto’s blouse, much to Larry Kroger’s surprise.”
Not so sure about that, OB; my…um…admittedly limited observation suggests otherwise.
Clearly, more research is necessary…
PWS
An admittedly contrarian view, Paulie.
I agree about the eyes. Billie Eilish has a similar “default” look, and I expect their consultants and agents tell them it makes them look “mysterious”, or “unobtainable”. I think it makes a person, beautiful or not, look standoffish and too-good-for-it-all. I much prefer celebs who seem able to smile easily, like they actually appreciate people and life in general.
Re: Billie Eilish.
I am not sure I get the whole Billie Eilish thing. Our son’s friends rave about her. To me, she sounds like sings with marbles in her mouth so she simply cannot annunciate a single thing.
jvb
Maybe Kim Novak sees that Sweeney cannot pull off a “come hither” look that a real glamorous actress can do.
If both were contemporaries of each other Sweeney wouldn’t even place.
There are no glamorous female stars now, and the audience for that planned movie 1) has probably never seen a Kim Novak movie 2) don’t know who she is and 3) will just see a story about a sexy blond actress in the 50s who was ostracized because her boyfriend was black. Remember, a 5’10” actor nearly won and Oscar for portraying Larry Hart, who was less than 5 feet tall.
Gary Oldman once played “The Role of a Lifetime” as a little person in “Tip Toes”.
Full sized people portrayed halfling hobbits in Lord of the Rings.
Robbie Coltrane was only 6’1″ but Rubeus Hagrid was supposed to be 11′ tall. Robbie was so short that he could only portray 8’6″ on screen.
You’re gonna have to get over the height thing, bite the bullet, and watch the movie!
And yet Disney was so fearful of having actual Little People play the Seven Dwarves and worried about activists accusing them of “height-washing” by using full size actors play the roles.
I’ll go on the defensive here. I think a lot of the news outlets are trying to frame her comments as an attack and reading her comments (duplicated below) it seems she has a more nuanced view – primarily that Sydney Sweeney is too attractive and that would change the nature of the relationship she had with Sammy Davis Jr.
From the piece:
A film about the affair, Scandalous, starring David Jonsson (Alien: Romulus) as Davis and Sydney Sweeney (The Housemaid) as Novak, was in the works, but it seems to have stalled. “I would never have approved,” Novak says. Sweeney, she thinks, “sticks out so much above the waist”.
She worried the film would focus on the sexual side of the relationship when the attraction was based on them having “so much in common. There’s no way it wouldn’t be a sexual relationship because Sydney Sweeney looks sexy all the time. She was totally wrong to play me.”
Like – this doesn’t sound like a woman with an axe to grind against Sydney Sweeney. This sounds like a woman who wants to ensure that a film about her relationship accurately reflects her memories of that relationship. Do I think her concern was misplaced? Possibly. I think Sydney could have pulled it off and done it justice the way Kim Novak envisions it.
In all honesty, she appears to be graciously saying that Syd was not plain enough because she views herself as plain in her self-image. At 93, she was not prepared for how much the leftist hollywood media want to tear down a working woman in her prime.
I have nothing to say about Novak or Sweeney. I do want to speak to the quadruple threat of (drama, comedy, singing and dancing) Sammy Davis Jr.
While in Vietnam mr . davis came to put on a show. He would not great any white soldier yet effusively greated the black soldiers whilst visiting the 3rd Field Hospital in Saigon,
His racism was apaprant that day.
I have since considered him to have been a racist despite his being married to a white lady.