Don’t Let ’Em Make You Skinny—Kim Novak

DON’T LET

“Kim Novak has to shed 20 pounds . . .” MIKE CONNOLLY, HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

HOLLYWOOD

“Kim has been given the word. Shed a few pounds . . .” DOROTHY KILGALLEN, JOURNAL-AMERICAN

MAKE

“Kim is trying to take off 15 pounds . . .” SIDNEY SKOLSKY, NEW YORK POST

YOU SKINNY!

Dear Kim:

This is an open letter because I haven’t got the nerve to write a closed one. I’m newly married, and my wife understands me, but if she ever found out that I was sending private love notes to a lady with lavender hair—

Anyhow, I’m fresh out of purple ink, and I figure you wouldn’t bother reading words in any other color. If I’m wrong, I’ll eat my hat. Okay, now down to business. The sentence about my hat was thrown in just to introduce the topic of the day, namely eating.

It’s come to my ears that you’re about to quit same, because some base persons are spreading rumors that, lately, there’s too much Novak. You know this isn’t possible. There isn’t enough Novak to go around. Ask Mac Krim, Count Mario, Frankie-boy. Ask your fans.

Ask anybody. Every ounce of you is loved, and cherished. (This reminds me of a song in which Louis Prima used to carry on about his girl and how the bigger her figger the better he liked her because there was more of her to adore.)

The columnists, those hardened characters, are fighting me tooth and nail in an effort to shave you down to a slat. Starting in September, the papers began to run squibs. From Mike Connolly in THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: “Kim Novak has to shed twenty pounds before Jeanne Eagels rolls. It’s that Eyetalian food Sinatra’s been shoveling into her.” From Dorothy Kilgallen in the JOURNAL-AMERICAN: “Kim Novak has been given the word. Shed a few pounds before it’s camera-time again. You’re getting zoftic.” From Sidney Skolsky in the NEW YORK POST: “Kim Novak is trying to take off fifteen pounds before she faces the camera for the Jeanne Eagels story.”

Well, there you are. Sidney’s not as dangerous as Mike. He advocates i the loss of five fewer pounds. But I’m against the entire procedure. I long for each precious pound to stay exactly where it is. You look good curvy, and what’s bad about looking good? How come everybody’s trying to look so skinny anyway? Audrey Hepburn’s cute all right, but she’s not going to put Anita Ekberg out of business!

Personally, I blame women for all the trouble. Women are always studying Harper’s Bazaar, and stuff like that. Women are always looking at pictures of models seven feet tall and weighing 100 pounds, and then starving themselves because they—the women, not the models—look like women and not king-sized mechanical pencils. The models of this country have given the women of this country a complex.

Listen, Kim, men like women. And they like ’em a little fleshier than lollipop sticks. A photographer told me that you’re shy about posing for pin-ups because you’re a trifle round, and my heart sinks under the weight of the news. No leg art on our favorite legs?

The nation protests

You cannot deprive the country of your luscious self, Kim. The country protests. MODERN SCREEN protests. And MODERN SCREEN is always right. We remember thinking you were going to be a movie star long before you believed it. You thought of yourself as a girl who could tour the country smiling sweetly and demonstrating iceboxes, “but I could see,” you said, “where a lot of time might go by before any movie studio would want a girl to open an icebox.”

You were wrong. The studios did want a girl who could open an icebox, but now they don’t want you to eat anything out of it.

At least the men in your life are on my side. Take Mac Krim, your long-time beau who still adores you though he’s given up thoughts of marriage— “Now she’s a dedicated actress, and I can’t see myself marrying a career.” Mac likes Kim-in-the-kitchen much more than Kim-in-a-night-club. When you’re in a kitchen, Mac told one writer, you’re in it up to your apron. He also told of an incident when food got you both in trouble. You’d taken hamburgers and cokes to a sneak preview of Phfft, sneaked up to the balcony, and were eating away until an usher came along and wrinkled his nose. “You’ll have to leave the theater or get rid of that food,” he sneered. You stuffed your hamburger into your pocketbook, Mac recalls, grinning, and never told that usher you were one of the stars of the movie.

Frank, the Count and Aly

Frank Sinatra doesn’t seem to be concerned over your poundage, either, Kim, and your relationship with him started way back when you both made Man With The Golden Arm. Frankie was the first nan you’d given a second thought since you met Mac. “I’m in love with Mac,” you’re supposed to have said then, “but I’m infatuated with Frankie.” Love Frankie, love good Italian cooking, the saying goes. Or if it doesn’t, it should.

As for Count Mario Bandini, who introduced you to the best Roman restaurants on your recent trip to Europe, and therefore probably added breadth to the Novak hips, you suit him right down to the ground. Or right up to the clouds, since he’s planning to fly here as soon as some wings can carry him. After you first met Count Mario, you announced that he was “divine,” and for a couple of days even considered yourself engaged to him. Being a zestful girl, you latched on to when in Rome, and did exactly as the Romans did. When a stranger kissed your hand, you seized his hand and kissed it right back, and naturally you weren’t going to be left behind in the eating department. There were heavenly dinners in heavenly settings, and even the picnic lunches were superb. Remember the day when you went on a little trip in a gondola? And the hotel put up a hamper of thick Italian sandwiches, slabs of bread stuffed with ham and sausages and pickled peppers.

As you can see, Kim, I’m trying to point out that we’re all on your team. We want you, all of you, to dazzle us forever. But there is one tiny little thing that’s got us nervous. Just the slightest sign that maybe your eating was getting a trifle out of hand, that perhaps COLUMBIA did have to crack down. We read it in a rival magazine. It said that while you danced with Aly Khan, in Paris, you were nibbling on his ear! This could be dangerous. Next you’ll bite the hand that feeds you, and then who knows? Still, I love you, do you hear me, love you—

Your friend,

David.

Kim Novak will soon be seen in Columbia’s Jeanne Eagels.

 

It is a quote. MODERN SCREEN MAGAZINE MARCH 1957