Kim Novak, an urban girl who spent most of her life in metropolitan Chicago, then fashionable Bel Air, now prefers the solitude of her turreted home on the rugged sea cliffs of California's Big Sur country, 250 miles from Hollywood. "It's the haven I've always wanted, " says Kim, and here she dresses as she pleases, eats and sleeps when she pleases, does what she pleases with whoever pleases her. Although she earns upwards of $500,000 per film, Kim would just as soon spend all her time in Big Sur, painting, writing music or just loafing. Frequently taunted by mass-media moralists because at 33 she's never been wed, Kim retorts that marriage is "unnatural," claims "a bachelor girl's morals should not be the subject of research projects and reports. " Her unflagging box-office appeal has long been acknowledged, but she's finally begun to earn professional recognition, as exemplified by director Billy Wilder's comment: "Kim is a much better actress than most people realize—including me—until they work with her." Her next two roles (following "Of Human Bondage") are hand-picked and juicy: In Wilder's "Kiss Me, Stupid, " she plays a round-heeled roadhouse waitress named Polly the Pistol, and in "The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders," she'll portray the first heroine-whore-with-heart-of-gold in the English novel.
