This comedy was followed by the stark, kitchen-sink   drama, “Middle of the Night,” based on Paddy Chayefsky’s Broadway hit. Kim starred as a bruised, neurotic young divorcee, entangled with her much older, widowed employer, played by Fredric March. Novak, cast entirely against type, de-glamorized as much as possible (hey, she’s Kim Novak, there are limits to how ordinary she can look!), is a raw nerve, an open wound. She and March are perfect as they maneuver a relationship that stands very little chance – their families are appalled, and they are consumed by their own demons. She is still physically attracted to her ex; March becomes insanely possessive and jealous. “Don’t tell me how beautiful I am," she begs her musician ex-husband, as he arrives to seduce and dissuade her from marrying March. Yet, again, her allure brings her little satisfaction, an albatross that offers only confusion. Seen today, especially, Novak turns in an award-worthy performance. But it was not to be (1959 offered three brilliant, industry-ignored female performances: Novak, Monroe in “Some Like It Hot” and Ava Gardner in “On the Beach”).  

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Kim ended the decade with director Richard Quine’s great soap opera of suburban infidelity, “Strangers When We Meet.” It travels the glossy road that was already clichéd via the emotion-and-color-saturated films of Douglas Sirk. What lifts this one up are superb performances by Novak, as the wife of a sexually timid, emotionally distant man, aching for love, and by Kirk Douglas – intense and besotted – as the married neighbor who pursues her. Richard Quine and Kim Novak were lovers during the making of “Strangers When We Meet” – engaged, in fact. And it shows in his superb lensing of her. He was presenting his lady at her best. “Strangers” offers two of Novak’s most compelling onscreen moments – one in which she attempts to lure her husband to bed. Half-dressed, her black bra exposed, she whispers urgently, “Do you think about me at work … what do you think, about making love? Don’t you think I’m pretty? Don’t you want me, show me …” He can only bury his face in her juicy shoulder – in embarrassment! And later, when Kim finally succumbs to Kirk Douglas, their affair leads to a revelation that she has strayed before. As she tells it, in tight close-up, it sounds like rape – “I tried to fight him, I did!” – but her actions and motivations are double-sided. Always, Novak is a woman whose inner life is split. It ends unhappily, with the bitter suggestion that Novak’s search for satisfaction was not over.

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Kim would not film again for two years. By the time “The Notorious Landlady” and “Boys’ Night Out” appeared, Marilyn Monroe was dead, and though she and Kim were quite different types, the handwriting was on the wall for the Hollywood Blonde. Novak, who knew Monroe, was deeply affected by her death. A year later, in 1963, Novak was handed a copy of the magazine Eros, in which some of Bert Stern’s famous nudes of Monroe appeared. Kim was horrified when she saw that Stern had released shots which Monroe herself had edited and crossed out. She burst into angry tears. To her, this was an act of cruelty and betrayal.

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Kim would end her Hollywood years with “Of Human Bondage” (quite good as the slattern, Mildred, despite a too-modern, teased bouffant) … Billy Wilder’s “Kiss Me, Stupid” had little wit, and required Novak to play dumb, which she did not do well … and “The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders” as Daniel Defoe’s saucy heroine. Kim, increasingly buxom, provided a flash of semi-nudity but the film was an overlong attempt to capitalize on the success of “Tom Jones.” There was, finally, a marriage to actor Richard Johnson, which ended quickly. As her “Bell, Book and Candle” character said, “I am set in my ways …”