KIM NOVAK STEPS FROM SHADOWS

Kim Novak, the famously reclusive star of such 1950s classics as Picnic and Vertigo, has taped interviews for a forthcoming DVD release, The Kim Novak Collection, due to be released on Tuesday, and is speaking to the press about it. In an interview with the New York Post, Novak indicated that she quit making films because of the psychological abuse meted out to her by former Columbia Pictures chief Harry Cohn (“King Cohn,” as Associated Press Hollywood correspondent Bob Thomas referred to him in his biography). “I was not a favorite of the critics …and Mr. Cohn used to read me all of my bad reviews,” the former actress, now 77, told the Post. “He really got to me, but I was kind of used to it because my father was hard on me.”