EXCLUSIVE: Decades after her work in Vertigo, Picnic and Bell Book and Candle made her Hollywood’s biggest and most glamorous star, Kim Novak today came back for another closeup as the Venice Film Festival honored her with the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement. The festival is also screening Kim Novak’s Vertigo, a documentary by Alexandre Philippe about a career that ended when she made the decision she’d had enough of the movie game. It is amusing how smitten that director clearly is with Novak, but after an hour on the phone with her, I too fell under her spell. After I told her to bring mosquito spray to Venice, she asked me about myself, and was soon counseling me on life in general and how best to help my 90-year old mother transition from a lonely apartment to an assisted living facility that might make her feel part of a community. “Tell her, don’t ever let anyone make her feel trapped,” she said. We called that the Kim Novak Rule as we continued the search, and believe it or not, the very next day after our interview, we found the perfect new home for my mother. I could see why her fans adored her and her movies so much.
Much like her idol Marlene Dietrich, Novak walked away from the business under her own steam, and has largely kept to herself, marrying an equine veterinarian and busying herself raising horses and painting. Docu director Philippe grew up in a home with the same deep red wallpaper as in the iconic Vertigo scene where a surveilling James Stewart first glimpses Novak in all her gorgeousness. The director devotes a lot of the film in giving Novak the chance to relive that Alfred Hitchcock-directed classic that cast her in dual roles. Though it fell flat upon release, Vertigo is now acknowledged as one of the all time greats. In the docu,
Novak has little to say in the movie about her provocative relationship with Sammy Davis Jr, which Colman Domingo is trying to turn into a Sydney Sweeney film. After a gossip columnist proclaimed the couple altar-bound, Columbia Pictures boss Harry Cohn put out the word that Davis Jr. might lose his other eye to the mob goons he would send if the relationship continued. Sources told me that their dalliance was actually not much more than a fling and that Novak wasn’t heartbroken when it went public, because it created a reason to exit an affair that wasn’t going to lead to marriage. And maybe there was an element of Novak just wanting to stick it to her iron-fisted movie boss Cohn whom she respected but fought with over the shackles of the studio contract system.
DEADLINE: You grew up in Chicago, went on a road trip to promote a new line of home freezers, and embraced the suggestion of one of the two other models to check out Hollywood while you were on the West Coast. On a lark, you were an extra in a picture, got discovered and within two years you were the biggest female star in the business. Was it really that fast and that simple?
KIM NOVAK: Yes. It was funny because when I left Chicago to go on the modeling job, my mom and dad took me to the train and we all thought I’d be back soon. By the time I came back, I was a famous movie star. It was only within months really, before I did my first movie. It hit, things clicked and everything in my life changed.
DEADLINE: Sounds like a lot to adjust to?
NOVAK: Somehow when it’s happening to you, it feels like it’s the way it’s supposed to happen. You either can go with it and I chose to go with it. But of course, the journey is not always perfect, and you run into lots of things that you want to resist. A lot of people get tunnel vision and they’ve got in their mind a goal of what they’re going to do and how they’re going to react. It’s fine to focus on a certain direction, but I learned you have to keep your eyes open to what’s going around you. It was so important that I went on a modeling job, but then everything just seemed to fall in place to change things. Then it becomes a matter of being able to recognize the path that you’re on, and that often it’ll take detours, but you’ve got to willing to follow the detours and recognize when doors open and be willing to go through them when they do. You also need to know when it is time to resist and say no, I’m not going down that road.
I’ve often wondered, how did this happen to me? Why did this happen? Timing is everything. And I had a lot of good luck, obviously, to get where I did. It came at the expense of giving up my life in Chicago, but on the other hand, there was more that made me want to go away somewhere. I knew I didn’t want to stay in Chicago. I remember at the time I was going out with this person and he wanted to get married. He didn’t want to take no for an answer. For me, it’s always better when that happens to write something out. I wrote a poem, I always like to write poetry, and I wrote this poem about how I could not be with anybody right now because I need to find where I’m going to go in this world. And as long as I don’t know it, I can’t decide something that I still haven’t experienced or know that I wanted in my life anyway. I must’ve done a good job on that poem. He never called me back.
DEADLINE: It is clear from the docu that you didn’t succumb to the superficial star adulation that always proves hollow, and that you bristled under a system of being told what movies to do. Actresses now make those choices and while the Metoo revelations and the disparity in pay between actresses and actors shows the perils facing up and comers, it’s a lot better than when you were a big star. What were the things you bristled against?
NOVAK: It wasn’t just the movies you were told to do. They even told you who to go out with. I mean, in other words, you needed to go out and promote your studio, so every time there was a premiere of a movie, you had to go, and they wanted to tell you who to go with.
DEADLINE: They wanted the illusion you were half of a glamour couple and being romanced by the biggest stars?
NOVAK: I did that for a bit, but you find yourself sitting in the limo with a stranger. You have no idea who he is or what it’s about, but you’re doing what the studio tells you to do. I did a bit of that but finally thought, I can’t take this anymore. If I’m going, I want to go with who I want to go with, or I’m not going, period.
You had to make choices. I can’t imagine those things go on today that you had to choose things from a career point of view of building yourself as a star and promoting your studio, because now there’s no contract like that. It was hard, but so much of it was faith, and I had wonderful opportunities because of Harry Cohn. Yes, he was a dictator and everything you don’t want in someone that you’re working for. But on the other hand, he really knew the difference between good and bad scripts. He let me work on some incredible movies with incredible directors. But then when he passed away, suddenly there was nobody who knew what was really good, who to put in what movie…they just didn’t know.
DEADLINE: How is that possible?
NOVAK: They never had an opportunity to use their own judgments because Harry Cohn made all the decisions. And so it all fell apart. And that’s why I left. I felt I was at a stalemate and finally thought, wow, I’m not going to stay around Hollywood and just wait for something good to happen. I still owed them one movie when I left. They offered me some beach party movie that was so stupid and made no sense to me. And I thought, you know something, I’m not going to do it. I’m going to do what I love best, which has always been painting and art.
DEADLINE: That had been a creative outlet you found while acting?
NOVAK: Art is one of the things that saved me in my life. I think if I didn’t have it, I couldn’t have lived in the Hollywood system as it was at the time. Many people couldn’t take it, and it could take your life. And being a survivor, I felt I had to do that. I had some place to go. Somewhere that was more valuable from my perspective of doing. Art was my comfort zone.
DEADLINE: It seems funny you say that no one knew how to pick good scripts like Harry Cohn, and yet in the documentary you say he gave you the Vertigo script and contracted your services to another studio, but said, I’m going to let you do this with Alfred Hitchcock because I respect him, but the script is terrible. How did you react to that proclamation?
NOVAK: Well, when he said it, I was still new in the business. I didn’t even know the reputation of Alfred Hitchcock. So I listened to what Harry Cohn said, that he’s a really good director, doing a lousy script. That’s the actual words he said, lousy script. But I had been in Picnic and some good movies that he put together and that I was so right for, when I was under contract. They weren’t all Vertigo or Picnic or Bell Book and Candle. There were some others that were not so good, but I had no say so about them. But there was one I really wanted to do, and I fought for and did it even when he told me I shouldn’t do this movie, it’s not good. I really loved the script. And that was called Middle of the Night.
DEADLINE: A May-December romance written by Paddy Chayevsky from his play, and directed by Delbert Mann…
NOVAK: Here was a brilliant writer and wonderful director. And Frederic March was an incredible actor. I loved the part so much, and I wanted it because it wasn’t one of those glamour parts. It wasn’t about her being so pretty or anything. It was about a real working girl, who allowed herself to be in love with an older man. I wanted to do it so badly and [Cohn] said, I don’t want you to do this movie. It’s not going to be a commercial success. And it wasn’t. But I will never change anything about it or the experience. I got to work in New York, and I was finally working in a way that I really liked. We had rehearsals. All the Hollywood movies I’d done before, we never rehearsed. We just shot it whichever way it was set up on the schedule. But in that movie, we shot it in two or three weeks, but that was because we rehearsed for a couple of weeks. It was such a joy to be able to get to know the characters and their proper perspectives. So afterwards when it came out and it was not a hit, he said, ‘I told you this was not going to be good. You shouldn’t have done it.’ But I look back and I’m so glad I did. But I also look back and realize I didn’t really fully appreciate the gifts [Cohn] gave me and opportunities to play in some incredible movies with great directors.
DEADLINE: I wrote a book about The Three Stooges, who labored 24 years on the Columbia lot doing shorts for Harry Cohn. I came away feeling he really liked them and especially Moe Howard, but he wasn’t above making them feel insecure about how the short subjects department was going to be shuttered. There were a lot of years when The Stooges were afraid to ask for raises, even though their classic shorts were often more popular than the feature films they preceded on the big screen. And when Cohn died, it was Red Skelton who remarked on the large attendance at Cohn’s funeral and quipped that when you give the people what they want, they come in droves. Talk about the Harry Cohn you knew.
NOVAK: He really had an iron fist, on everything. And I resented him in a lot of ways. On the other hand, one time, when Christmas was coming up, I thought, that bastard, I’m going to do something. I think I was mostly living at the studio then because I worked so hard, and I went in the kitchen and I made up a big batch of chocolate fudge.
DEADLINE: Why?
NOVAK: I thought, I’m just going to see how he reacts. So I went to his office and he says, ‘what are you here for? What do you want? I said, ‘I don’t want anything. I want to give you something. He said, oh? And I presented it with the homemade chocolate fudge. And I swear for the only time I’ve ever seen it with him, he melted. He didn’t want me to see it, but I could see it in his expressions, it was like no one ever did this for me before. No one ever brought me a present. And it touched him somehow. And after that, I resented some things, like you had to do this and do that. But at the same time, I suddenly found somebody that was vulnerable also. It took chocolate fudge to show a softness that certainly, I don’t know that anyone ever saw that in him, but I saw it for a brief time. And then he said, ‘well, go on. Get out of here.’ So I mean, I did see both sides of the man.
DEADLINE: You don’t spend time on the documentary on this, but you had a famous friendship with Sammy Davis Jr. after you met on the Steve Allen Show. After a gossip columnist reported you were headed toward marriage, legend has it that Harry Cohn got a message to Sammy and said he was going to send some mob guys and take out the one working eye he had. Cohn was protecting his investment in making sure his biggest star was not on the arm of a Black man, as unfair as that seems now. Sammy Davis Jr. had a rougher road to stardom than you because of the rampant racism he battled in Hollywood and Las Vegas, but you both had reps for being defiant and principled. How did you react?
NOVAK: We both reacted the same way. How dare you tell us how we’re supposed to live our lives. How dare you tell us who we can see and who we can’t see. It brought out the defiance in both of us, because [Cohn] actually threatened [Davis Jr]. I mean, for me, it was, well, your career is going to go to hell. I said, ‘Hey! You’re not going to threaten me with that.’ I want to do what I think is right, and I don’t think this is right. I’ve always been against racial things like that. To me, it was almost a challenge. I didn’t realize how badly [Cohn] would react, from the point of view of his health, because he died very shortly after that. I feel bad about that. But on the other hand, it was wrong. I think he was racist, and I think that he felt that this would get all the racists against me. And from his perspective, it was [Davis Jr’s] life that was threatened, not mine. But it became, what are you willing to stand up for in life? And you’ve got to be willing to stand up for what is right over wrong and in humanity. It’s what we’re going through in our country right now, and we can’t be afraid and not do something because someone wrongfully tells you that you shouldn’t do it. You’ve got to be able to stand up to what you think is right, and for good things and good reasons.
DEADLINE: But from his standpoint of running Columbia Pictures, you are Harry Cohn’s biggest asset, and he felt this might puncture the Dream Factory balloon and destroy that asset. He protected his investment, but it has to be doubly detestable for you to have it reinforced that you’re considered a possession as opposed to a person who works for a boss.
NOVAK: Right. That’s absolutely right. Yeah.
DEADLINE: Did you cool your relationship with Sammy just out of concern for his family’s safety?
NOVAK: It’s one thing for you to stand up for yourself and what you believe in. But then when I saw that it was really a threat against his life…as wrong as it was, you still had to deal with it. They put guards at my gate and everything, and that bothered me. I wanted to react to it and be defiant. But on the other hand, when I found out that they were not only threatening him with his life, but his family? Of course that became the important thing. So they made him marry this Black actress and it only lasted a year. The whole thing still seems crazy to me. But I felt in a way that by seeing him, it would make other people feel that it was not an evil thing to see a Black man.
DEADLINE: Thankfully, it’s not a stigma anymore.
NOVAK: I thought maybe I could help people see it, but unfortunately, there was still so many other people that were not willing to move forward and into a better way of thinking. It was just crazy. But I was hoping to get a reaction that would help, that would be liberating to people rather than be looked upon badly. I was hoping I could have an influence on turning the corner on all of that.
DEADLINE: But this was also the 1950s, where you had the Jim Crow South and the brutal murder of Emmett Till fresh in people’s minds. The Civil Rights movement had only just begun to take root.
NOVAK: I thought I could get it to move faster. Sometimes you think you can be more of an influence, and you learn that you’re not. Here I was, a big star, maybe the biggest one, at the top of everything. And yet I was not able to advance the way people reacted. I really thought I was going to be able to help, and Sammy did too.
Because for him, he was constantly having to prove himself worthy. And that’s why he was so brilliant at it. He wouldn’t take anything less because it required for him as a Black man to have to prove himself to be better than anybody else at what he did. Some of the stories he told me from when he was in the service were unbelievable, how they treated him and what he had to endure. I mean, it’s unbelievably awful how it was at that time.
DEADLINE: It was eye-opening for you to see the limit of influence Hollywood’s biggest actress could have on the culture, but a surprise for me was how little time you had to enjoy the glamour that should have come with your standing. I figured you’d have lived like a queen in great opulence and a mansion. But you say in the documentary that you worked night and day, and you spent most of your time living in a room atop a soundstage that the studio provided you. Would you say that being Hollywood’s biggest female star was overrated?
NOVAK: Glamour, you say? Well, there was glamour, but it was not my choice to live that way. It never was. I’ve always been Marilyn Novak, not Kim Novak.
DEADLINE: They made you change the name for fear of confusion with Marilyn Monroe…
NOVAK: They had another name they picked out for me, and I just wouldn’t accept it. Harry Cohn was livid. He said, this is the name you are taking, this is who you are. I said, no, I’m not. I wasn’t going to have people call me Kit Marlowe, like I was some kitten. I mean, there’s nothing kitten-like or cat-like about me, and I just couldn’t do it. And I’m so glad I didn’t, because keeping the name Novak made me real, to me. I had a family, I had roots, and Kit Marlowe had no roots or a family. She was just a made-up pretender. I couldn’t do it. And I’m so glad I stood my ground.
DEADLINE: You did that yet again when you went on strike, and got your salary doubled from $1250 a week to $3000. How hard was it to stand up like that and buck an established system where actresses were taught to feel disposable and to keep their mouths shut even as they were being paid a fraction of what their male co-stars got?
NOVAK: That was the exact moment when I was to make Vertigo. I had no idea that Vertigo would turn out to be what it became, but I had to be willing to hold out for it and have the belief that what is right will win. And it was right to get paid more. Right and wrong was always important, and I believed that by really holding on for what I really believed in, it would work out. But it was always a risk; I could have lost the opportunity to play that role. I didn’t know it was going to be a hit, but nonetheless, it was an opportunity to work with supposedly a great director. But I had to gamble. I’m not a gambler, but I had to gamble nonetheless, and it worked out.
DEADLINE: You didn’t know Vertigo would be a classic, but you probably also didn’t know that when Harry Cohn loaned you out to Paramount Pictures to make that movie, he likely was pocketing fees that exceeded what you were being paid on a weekly basis, right?
NOVAK: Well, absolutely. Although I didn’t know that, but of course it had to be. I was aware the fact that I wasn’t getting more, but he was, and he was not appreciating at that time that I was a real value for him. I was not being valued enough for what I did and what I contributed.
DEADLINE: It wasn’t only Cohn. Years later, you made a movie called The Legend of Lylah Clare, played the lead role and only learned after the fact they had dubbed your voice with that of a German-speaking actress. How did you find that out and how did that feel?
NOVAK: Yeah, well, it wasn’t until the premiere. I hadn’t seen any of it, and all of a sudden I’m watching myself, and hearing this voice coming across. I thought, oh my God! [Director Robert Aldrich] wanted me to speak with a German accent, but I didn’t think that it was right, so I didn’t do it. He didn’t say anything, and then he went ahead and did that. If he’d have told me, you have to do it, this is what I want you to do, I would’ve done it probably. But he never insisted on it. So as I say, when I went to the premiere and suddenly I hear it, I was just livid that I was not given the chance to do it. If that’s what he really wanted, he should have said so, and I’d have followed through. But to all of a sudden hear that? I was furious. I remember leaving the theater and he was in front, and I wouldn’t even talk to him. I just got in my limo and left.
DEADLINE: How do you think your sometime costar Frank Sinatra would have reacted, had that been done to him?
NOVAK: Oh my. There was a man who held out for what he believed, and he was a great influence, in telling me that I should stand up and hold out for more money in my contract. And he was the one, Frank Sinatra, who convinced me to go with his agents because he said, they’ll get you the deal and it’ll work. And when I said, well, it’s all right, I’ll figure it out, he said, no, you’re worth more. You’ve got to stand up to it. He was very influential in making my life better.
DEADLINE: In the docu, you talk about doing Pal Joey with him. You worked hard training and learning all these dance moves. And Sinatra comes in and refuses to do much of the dancing. How surprised were you?
NOVAK: Well, see now, in this this time in my life, I totally understand it. But at one time, he was a best friend when I first did a movie with him. He was so caring and thoughtful and wonderful. But then when we did Pal Joey, it was like he suddenly thought he was the big man over everything and anything. I was like, really? I worked so hard on those dance moves, over and over, and this was all news to me. I never did dancing or singing, but I wanted to be ready for it. It was an opportunity for me to show what I could do. I worked so hard, and God knows Rita Hayworth did also. And then he comes onto the stage for the first time, after we’ve been working on these routines for weeks. And he said, I’ll do this. I’m not going to do that. No, I won’t do that, but I’ll do this. And then he walked off, and left us with [the mess]. We had so much planned, I was so excited. To me, he was like a different person. That’s how I looked at it then.
DEADLINE: Maybe by then your former best friend felt he needed to protect his brand and had the clout to do it?
NOVAK: I realize now that he was a reactor, and I am also. And he was reacting to the part and to the script. He became Joey in Pal Joey, and he was totally acting like the character he was playing. And I realized that for him, it was also necessary to believe in what he was doing. When he became Joey, it was amazing. I thought, how could he be so different? How could he change so much? And I really resented it. In fact, he asked me to go out again with him. I wasn’t interested. I didn’t want to go out with him because I thought, well, he’s a phony. But now, when I look at it in retrospect, and of course I’ve thought of this now for quite a while, I realize what he was doing. He was just learning his part, learning to be Joey, and he became Joey. And that was right for him. He became a lot of the characters he played. And that I understand, totally, because I also had this fear of becoming too deeply involved in the characters. I would paint them, or rather, draw them in my script, and I got to know them so much that I became them and they became me. That’s a lot of what he was going through. So I understand it, now. He was reacting. He wasn’t acting.
DEADLINE: We discussed your complicated relationship with Harry Cohn, who, like your directors Hitchcock and Otto Preminger, had reputations for being tyrannical. And even though you had a rep for standing your ground, you got along great with all of them. How do you explain that?
NOVAK: Well, because they respected you for being on time, for really working hard and learning your lines. Otto Preminger was so hard on so many people, but usually because they showed up a few minutes late. My God, he didn’t forgive them for that. Or if they didn’t know their lines, they’d ask the script girl, what was it I just said? Where did I leave off? He found that intolerable. Me? I always was prepared. I always knew all my lines, and I was always right on time. Those things mattered to me, and those things mattered even more to him. And so it was a matter of respecting someone worthy of being respected. He seemed surprised that I took it seriously. It wasn’t, oh, come on, so I’m a little late. I went for coffee. He didn’t understand that and that was not okay with him.
So all I had to do was be honest and not dishonest. I did what he wanted, but I mean, I did it for my reasons. But in his appreciation, we became great friends. I watched him so many times be so hard on people. But the other thing about Otto Preminger is, he realized at the same time how vulnerable I was. Some people were not as vulnerable and they could take it. But he knew I couldn’t take it. I mean, I had to do the right thing because I couldn’t take it. If he was yelling at me, I would just start to cry, go to my dressing room. And so he knew enough to respect and treat me gently. He did treat me very gently.
DEADLINE: You talk wistfully in the documentary about Marilyn Monroe, and how she was a cautionary tale. What is interesting is the way you describe your home life in Chicago before you came, it doesn’t sound like there was a ton of love there. Then you become the biggest star in Hollywood. I always thought Marilyn Monroe was an unloved person who sought out love and adulation that could proved superficial and empty. I cannot imagine you would have been able to walk away from the business if you craved that adulation the way Marilyn Monroe did.
NOVAK: Yeah, that’s true. But you realize, I came from a family that who I was as a person and how I behaved in my life really mattered. They gave me my roots. And poor Marilyn, she had no roots. I was vulnerable, but not as much as Marilyn was vulnerable. I mean, she was totally vulnerable. And being vulnerable is, you hurt easy, but you also can get high on little crazy things like someone saying, I love you, and suddenly you feel, oh, I’m lovable. And then you suddenly realize that it wasn’t genuine. And so she was so much more vulnerable in that way. But it’s because she didn’t have the things that I learned from my family, a sense of right and wrong and decency and all of that. She used herself a lot physically to appeal to men, but it was for the wrong reasons. But only because she never had anyone to teach her right from wrong and what was okay and to set limits.
DEADLINE: You discussed having had several houses burn to the ground. You lost a complete memoir you had written in one of them. Did the whole book really perish in the flames?
NOVAK: Yeah, it sure did. I mean, how was stupid was I? I made copies, but kept all the extra discs right in the house. So I lost it all, and it was hard for me to accept. But on the other hand, I rationalized it by saying, and this is true actually, that it was a catharsis, writing that book. I got quite far in the writing, doing it all myself with no one helping me, just pouring out all my feelings and reactions and my time in Hollywood. It was totally exhausting, but in the best way. But then when I lost it, as I say, in order to survive a loss that felt so tremendous, I took to calling it a catharsis. And that turned out to be true. I really got what I wanted and needed out of it. I’ve never been a person who cared about how much money I made, it was most important to work on something good that was important to me. So money didn’t come into it.
DEADLINE: Makes it easier when you don’t need the cash, even though the trauma of losing that memoir and many of your paintings, well that’s something some in Hollywood are still dealing with after losing their homes in the LA wildfires. Maybe it’s just stuff, but it’s your stuff, your memories…
NOVAK: I feel so badly for all of them. For me, it became bearable, after I rationalized it.
DEADLINE: That made you not be bitter or beating yourself up for not putting those backup discs someplace safe, and you could focus on the value of writing a memoir for you and no one else?
NOVAK: That’s it, exactly. Even if it was just for me and no one else. I actually came to that thinking pretty fast because the loss was overwhelming. I needed to know that I accomplished what I needed to accomplish, which was making peace by putting all my thoughts together. That’s what I had to gain. The other stuff like money, didn’t matter. I got what I needed, and that was catharsis.
DEADLINE: Even though your rise was meteoric, actresses had it harder than they do today. But then we watched the appalling revelations that came out of the MeToo movement, and the abuses of actresses by Harvey Weinstein and other powerful men. It makes you wonder, how much have things really changed? If you were talking to a young actress who is poised to have a career, what would you say about guardrails that might keep her on the right track, and avoid looking for instant gratification like Marilyn Monroe did that puts one in danger of being used?
NOVAK: Well, I think more than anything, and it covers all of these things is, be true to yourself. Don’t do something just because you’re told to. Find roles you want to play, for the right reasons. If they’re the right reasons, you’ll be able to identify with that character. Don’t give in to allowing yourself to be something you’re not, or to allow yourself to give up your sense of right and wrong. And I mean, it’s just so, so important to hold on to that respect for good over evil, and to really care about what you stand for. It may sound silly to them and they might say, what I stand for is I want that part. But I really feel that if it’s meant to be, it will be. And if it’s not, it won’t happen.
Just like my book, it was meant to burn up in the fire. It was meant for me to learn the lesson of why I did it. I’d have kept going, but fate or God or whatever you want to call it, stepped in and brought another fire and I might have lost it all there.
DEADLINE: You are able to compartmentalize adversity better than I would be…
NOVAK: You know what the best thing was to come out of one of those fires? I had just raised three geese. There was an island that got flooded, and my husband and I were going down the river in a kayak, and we saw this nest. We rescued these eggs that were in the nest. And my husband being a veterinarian, he had the equipment where we were able to get them hatched. I talked to those eggs, every day. So by the time they were hatched, I was definitely their mother. And when the fire happened, the geese still needed their mother very much.
Now, they were at the stage of going out on dates and staying overnight, and so they were not there when the fire happened. But they came back in the morning and were in total shock. Here’s their house, burned down to the ground. They start freaking out. And so I right away hopped in a little rowboat I had, and they jumped in and we just stood off in the distance, watching as I tried to help them understand that things happen in life and that how we react to them is what matters. And I remember Bob, my husband, being on the shore thinking, what the hell are you doing out there with these geese when we’ve just lost everything? But I knew they were like my kids, and they couldn’t understand it and I had to explain it to them. But Bob didn’t appreciate that, because what I also needed was to be with him, to help him understand that it happened for some kind of reason.
DEADLINE: How did you help him rationalize the trauma of what you both lost?
NOVAK: It was a place we didn’t build. It was like a lodge, old, and this had a lot to do with the old wiring. And so I said, we will be able to get a new house and make it just the way we want it. I had just redecorated everything in this house because nothing was like I wanted it. We both loved the property, there were three islands on it with our horse riding trails and everything was still possible, after we did it over with all this new stuff. It took a lot to convince him. One day, he said, you were right. Thank God it burned down, because neither one of us liked it. We just loved the property because it gave us things for our horses and everything else. And so I think one good quality I have always had is, I could see something good coming from something that was bad.
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