Modern Screen (Feb-Dec 1958)

my sister kirn (Continued from page 44) "Who's taking a rest?" my sister laughed. "We've been playing Prince Charming for the past hour and a half, haven't we, Billy?" My son nodded enthusiastically. I don't know when he's had so much fun. Kim's whole relationship to Billy shows how much different she is here than in Hollywood. He has seen very little of his aunt since he was born, yet he not only took an immediate liking to her but formed a deep and sincere affection as well. He follows her around the farm like a puppy dog — and she loves it. Needless to say it isn't because he is in awe of her position. At his age he doesn't have the slightest idea of what a movie star is. His feelings are more than reciprocated by Kim. She took him for long walks in the snow, roasted marshmallows for him over the open fire, and once, when I suggested we play a game of canasta in the afternoon insisted, "Impossible. I'm too busy!" "Busy . . . out here in the country?" I wondered out loud. She smiled mischievously. "I have a date to-play traffic. . . ." The date was with Billy as the two of them set up a traffic court in the living room where they played with remote control cars. And Kim didn't participate like an indifferent grown-up pacifying a child. Her imagination made the game as real to her as to Billy. . . . In fact I am convinced this make-believe attitude is the key to her professional success. She doesn't study her parts like a student. She lives them. She always has. Kim's early drama I can still see her as a twelve-year-old, when her girlfriend Francine came over to play house. The two of them got along splendidly till they disagreed on the number of rooms they were cleaning, or something like it. Each got more and more excited till Kim finally lost her temper. "If you don't like it, we don't have to play together any longer!" "All right," Francine retorted, "I might as well go home. . . ." Kim got up from the floor and dramatically pointed at the front closet. Then, in the best Shakespearean tradition, "There is your coat, Francine . . ." and as she turned a little, ". . . and there is the door!" As usual, a few hours later she felt so sorry for her behavior that she walked all the way to Francine's house to apologize and ask her forgiveness. For the next two weeks she went out of her way to make up to her . . . till they had another argument and she threw her out of the house again just as dramatically! Fortunately they always made up quickly. The biggest difference in the Hollywood Kim and the Chicago Marilyn is one of insecurity. She has always needed selfassurance, but never the amount she requires now. I remember when she was in high school, and took a course in typing. At the outset she was about average — and that worried her. "I've got to be better. I just have to be perfect," she insisted whenever she came back from class, then sat up half the night practicing — till she became tops at it. Since she had no intention of becoming a secretary it shouldn't have mattered that much. But it did — which makes it easy to see why she has become so engrossed in her career. It means everything to her. And that includes every aspect of it, not just acting in front of the cameras. Kim is not a vain person. Yet to an outsider she might have given just that impression at a premiere I attended with her during my latest trip out to California. Although she looked radiantly beautiful when we got ready to leave the house, she was seriously worried when she turned to me. "Arlene, do I look all right . . .? I mean, really?" "Of course you do," I assured her. "I've never seen you look more attractive. . . ," I had to keep telling her this on our drive to the theater and practically throughout the evening as well. Not because she wanted compliments, but because she knew she was expected to be glamorous, and feared she might disappoint someone. Anyone. I found this insecurity to be even more pronounced in her relationships with her Hollywood associates. I have heard her described as haughty and distant, and having* gotten big-headed by her success. It isn't true. Honestly, it isn't. And I am not talking with the prejudice of a sister. Yet I can see why some people feel that way. Occasionally Kim is short-tempered, flares up, once in a while breaks into tears. But these outbursts only cover up her insecurity built up and expanded by the pressure and expectations of her phenomenal rise to stardom. I was on the set a number of times when she appeared in Pal Joey. She was the only performer who had never danced before. All the others were professionals. One day someone made a remark about Kim's being slow in catching on. Kim blew up. Yet she wasn't angry at the man — only at herself. She told me so at home that night, when no one else was around to hear her. And the next day she apologized to her surprised critic who had probably forgotten . all about the incident. . . . How Kim draws the line This attitude even holds true toward her friends and acquaintances. She always feels people are nice to her primarily because she is Kim Novak. As a result she has built a wall of isolation around her that few have been able to scale. To some degree this attitude was even apparent in her last visit with us, in Chicago. We had open house and invited a lot of relatives and old friends we hadn't seen in a long time. To my amazement, she was charming to some, rather aloof to others. I didn't know where she drew the line — till I asked her, after everyone had left. "That's simple," she replied sadly. "I could tell who came just because I'm in pictures and who was glad to see me, Marilyn, again." "But how?" I gasped. "Those who barely said hello to you and ignored the rest of the family were obviously impressed only by what I had done these past two years," she explained. "But the ones who were as attentive to you as to me, they were my friends. . . ." To a certain extent, Kim's relationship to others has always consisted of a mixture of wanting to please, of striving to be liked, and a fear that she wasn't accepted for herself. Particularly where boys were concerned! Once she passed the stage where she considered them pesty and a nuisance — mostly when they were still pulling her long pigtails — she grew into the awkward stage where she noticed them all right but began to feel uncomfortable with them because she was so tall for her age. Curiously enough, her quiet, introvert-like attitude made her much more popular than she realized. She was a good listener, agreeable, a wonderful sport. . . . One day we went on a double date with two boys who invited us for dinner to Chinatown. 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