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Full Cycle. The tougher Novak has an unpretty side. She has begun throwing her weight around; in her tantrums, there is less of the plaintive whimper and more of the prima donna's war whoop. Says Co-Star Tyrone (The Eddy Duchin Story) Power tartly: "Confusion between temperament and bad manners is unfortunate." Retorts Kim: "When things are going wrong, it is a waste of time to be calm." She has taken to offending lesser studio employees, breaking appointments and stalking out of interviews. During shooting of the final scene in the big musical production number of Pal Joey, she kept a huge company waiting for two hours until she" showed up on the set. Among those cooling their heels: Rita Hayworth.
Last week nobody felt the brunt of the new Novak more than the man who "created" her, Harry Cohn. She has decided—rightly, by Hollywood standards —that, at $1,250 a week, she is grossly underpaid. When Columbia lent her to Producer Preminger for Man with the Golden Arm, the studio charged him (and pocketed) $100.000 while paying Kim a salary of $750 a week. On today's loanout market, she is worth $250,000 to $300,000 a picture. Yet for Jeanne Edge's, on which Columbia had to pay $200,000 for Co-Star Jeff Chandler, Kim got only $3,000.
As her new agents went into action, she said: "It will have to be a raise that means something, not a little bit. How many more years will I be able to work? Jeanne Eagels reminded me I've got to protect my future." She added pointedly: "It hasn't come to the walkout point yet." Cohn squirmed on his black leather throne. "You know anybody who isn't hard to control?" he demanded. "They all believe their publicity after a while. I have never met a grateful performer in the picture business." Will she get more money? "I think she'll get it," he growled. "I'm only afraid she'll ask me to make Kim Novak pictures instead of Columbia pictures." The star-making process was approaching full cycle. The throne room at Columbia resounded with the whoosh of an outsized riding crop swung in anger.
* The name, now in show-business vogue, came into currency with the hero of Kipling's Kim, an urchin of Lahore, later with a girl in Edna Ferber's novel Showboat, so named because she was born on the Mississippi River within sight of Kentucky, Illinois and Missouri. Kim Novak has as good a title to it as Actress Kim Hunter (real name: Janet Cole), not quite so good as Actress Kim Stanley (real name: Patricia Kimberly ReidJ.