At 91 years old, screen legend Kim Novak is clear on how she wants her story to be told — and she does not want to over romanticize the affair she had with Sammy Davis Jr. in the late ’50s.
Almost seven decades later, that relationship is scheduled to be the subject of an upcoming film. According to Deadline, actor Colman Domingo will direct the drama, titled Scandalous, and Sydney Sweeney and David Jonsson are in talks to play the two leads.
According to Novak’s longtime manager Sue Cameron, it’s important to get their story right.
“Kim and I have been aware of at least four unauthorized and unapproved projects in development about the Kim Novak and Sammy Davis affair,” she tells PEOPLE.
“She never wanted to get married back then — to anyone. It was a romance based on love, respect, the things they shared in common.”
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As Cameron recounts, “Kim and Sammy met at a party and recognized they were both rebels and outsiders. They both had strong ties to their families and spent time with close relatives in both Hollywood and Chicago. In truth, she hoped their relationship could help break down people’s racial bias.”
At the time, interracial romances were considered scandalous, and even outlawed in some states. Novak hoped she could be a small agent of change.
But once a gossip columnist broke the news of her affair with the Rat Pack actor, singer and dancer in 1957, falsely claiming that she and Davis were planning to marry, Harry Cohn, head of Columbia Pictures where Novak was under contract, feared the news would hurt her box office sales and threatened Davis with a mob hit. Novak and Davis ended their relationship soon after.
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Novak, the top star in Hollywood in the late ’50s, left it all behind when she moved to Carmel, Calif., in the early ’60s. From there, she moved to Oregon, where she lived with her second husband, equine veterinarian Robert Malloy, who died in 2020.
The enigmatic star of such classics as Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo and The Man with the Golden Arm (opposite Frank Sinatra) continues to live there quietly, where she spends much of her time painting and caring for her horses, only granting an occasional and rare interview.
As for the fact that the star’s story is having a resurgence and may soon be dramatized, Cameron says, “I have been asked to consult on one of the projects, but I will not do so until I read the script to see if it tells the real story.”
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She and Novak also have their own documentary project in the works, of which Cameron is also the executive producer.
“This will be the real story of the mystery of Kim Novak’s life, directed by Alexandre Philippe, who just won best documentary at the Venice Film Festival,” she says. “We have already completed principal photography and we are now doing post-production.”
“Kim is a treasured legend in Hollywood,” she says, “and it has always been my dream to do the truthful accurate documentary from her point of view.”
