Kim Novak, Kimco and Boys' Night Out — The Kim Novak Blogathon: An 89th Birthday Celebration

So, this originally was going to be a deep-dive into Boys' Night Out, the poorly-received sex comedy starring Kim Novak as a graduate student doing a thesis on the fantasies of adult men unbeknownst to the group of men who rent a New York City apartment and sublet it to her under the guise of having affairs and escaping their hum-drum suburban lives. 

Then it was going to be a further love letter to the set design of this film (which I've previously done here) because I cannot get over how chic that apartment is, nor how homey all of the suburban houses are as well. 

But then, as I was researching more into Kim's career at this time, after a near-decade of stardom as the Lavender Blonde, I learned that she produced this film—and only this film—with her production company, Kimco, and I wanted to explore more of who she was as a star using this film as a reference point. 

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This post is part of The Kim Novak Blogathon: An 89th Birthday Celebration hosted by Classic Movie Muse. Make sure you click through and read all the great posts this weekend! 

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In 1953, Kim Novak toured the country on behalf of a refrigeration company, modelling its appliances, and a stint as Miss Deepfreeze in California led to her earning a walk-on role in The French Line and later, a contract with Columbia Pictures. 

She was meant to be a successor to Rita Hayworth and a rival to Marilyn Monroe, but she was aloof and earthy and stubborn about having her career on her terms. She fought with Columbia head Harry Cohn over her stage name, eventually settling on Kim Novak (she was born Marilyn Novak; Cohn wanted her to be Kit Marlowe). 

She had no acting experience and had to pay for lessons out of her own pocket, and her insecurity with her skills had her under Cohn's thumb for the first decade of her career. Her gimmick was the lavender rinse tint in her hair that set her apart from the other blonde bombshells of the era, and she was known as the Lavender Blonde because of this (she would say that she hated the colour, but was often photographed in purple at this stage of her career). 

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Her big break came in 1955. That year, she appeared in Picnic, The Man with the Golden Arm; her pictures through the rest of the decade included Vertigo, Pal Joey, and Bell, Book and Candle. 

But then Harry Cohn died in 1958, and Kim's career seemed to stall. She still appeared in movies but they weren't up to the same caliber as before, and when Boys' Night Out was announced in 1961, it was a joint venture between Filmways Inc and Kimco, a production company set up by Kim.

She earned $500,000 as a salary and 20% of the gross of the film. It recorded a loss of $262,000, but today it might be more memorable as the film that launched James Garner into a new typecast: comedic actor. 

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In his memoirs, The Garner Files, published in 2011, he wrote about Kim, saying that she "was more interested in her makeup than the script" and was constantly running off set to fix her face. This mirrors what we know about Kim's career: that more emphasis was placed on how she looked than her acting talents. 

Photoplay would write about Boys' Night Out that it's "a neatly designed, brightly paced frolic that keeps promising to plunge into sin, but somehow always stumbles into respectability instead. In fact, that's the point of the wacky plot. It's acted by a small army of well-known players topped by [Tony] Randall and by Garner, who's recovered his old Maverick wit."

But the thing about Boys' Night Out for Kim's career? It began the slump where she'd later say she started losing interest in making movies. And it was the one and only film Kimco ever produced. 

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In a 1996 interview with the Washington Post, Kim would say: "I don't feel that I was a Hollywood-created star. Harry Cohn did not make me. But I also feel that I probably didn't make me, either. I think it was a combination. I think that's what made it work. But I've always had a hard time when they say 'this manufactured star.' God, if they knew how much I tried not to be!"

She made a few more films between 1962 and 1965, including The Notorious Landlady and Kiss Me, Stupid (which I don't think did too well critically but is another film I adore) but started to retire; came back in 1968 for The Legend of Lylah Crane (I've watched part of it and it's bonkers), and then retired again. 

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What I love about Boys' Night Out is how much fun Kim Novak's character, Cathy, appears to be having. It's not a typical role for Kim Novak, she was quite a serious actress at that point, and this film is often considered to be the type of film that Doris Day and Rock Hudson would've excelled at, and instead it was made with Kim and Jim Garner (who'd go on to make Move Over, Darling and The Thrill of It All with Doris the following year). 

The set design, yes, is a major sticking point for me, but it's also just such fun. Make sure you've seen Kim at her greatest, in Picnic, in Vertigo, in The Man with the Golden Arm, but don't sleep on this farcical Kim either (in this, or in Kiss Me, Stupid).