Actress Kim Novak to Leave Prints at Grauman's Chinese Theatre

Kim Novak, one of the top box office stars of the 1950s, will sink her hands and feet into wet cement in front of Grauman's Chinese Theatre Saturday.

"From thrillers like Hitchcock's Vertigo, to romantic dramas such as 'Picnic,' noirish classics like The Man with the Golden Arm, comedies such as Bell, Book and Candle and musicals like Pal Joey, Kim Novak made us fall in love with her time and time again," said Robert Osborne, the Turner Classic Movies host who will serve as the master of ceremonies for the 10 a.m. ceremony.

The ceremony is being held in connection with the four-day TCM Classic Film Festival, which included a screening of Vertigo and Novak's taping of an interview with Osborne, which will air on Turner Classic Movies under the title, Kim Novak: Live from the TCM Classic Film Festival.

Born Marilyn Pauline Novak on Feb. 13, 1933 in Chicago, Novak was a teenage model for a department store, eventually touring the nation as Miss Deepfreeze for a refrigerator company.

Novak began her film career in an uncredited cameo in the 3-D Jane Russell film The French Line. Novak's shapely figure and cool demeanor helped win her a long-term contract with Columbia Pictures, whose president, Harry Cohn, ordered her to change her name. Kit Marlowe was the original suggestion, but they both eventually agreed on Kim Novak.

Her first starring role was in the 1953 the crime melodrama Pushover opposite Fred MacMurray and her last was in the 1991 thriller Liebestraum, playing the estranged mother of a young man (Kevin Anderson) who discovers unpleasant truths about his family after returning home.

Novak lives with her veterinarian husband on a ranch in Eagle Point, Ore. where they raise livestock.

— City News Service