Background

Jane Novak was born in St. Louis, Missouri

Missouri

Missouri is a US state located in the Midwestern United States, bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. With a 2010 population of 5,988,927, Missouri is the 18th most populous state in the nation and the fifth most populous in the Midwest. It...

 was born Johana B. Novak, daughter of Joseph, an immigrant from Bohemia

Bohemia

Bohemia is a historical region in central Europe, occupying the western two-thirds of the traditional Czech Lands. It is located in the contemporary Czech Republic with its capital in Prague...

, and Barbara Novak. Her father died when she was a child and her mother was left to raise 5 children. Novak attended convent school but ran away with a friend with whom she created a vaudeville act. Although she returned home, an aunt invited her to California where she began acting in motion pictures in 1913 at the age of 17. The actress began in a stage stock company with her uncle in St. Louis. Novak's career extended into the sound film medium, appeared in a total of 115 movies in her career.

Career

She appeared in a movie on her very first day in southern California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

, before there was a film studio in Hollywood. There she met Frank Newburg, who was, at the time, leading man to Ruth Roland

Ruth Roland

Ruth Roland was an American stage and film actress and film producer.-Early life and career:Born in San Francisco, California, her father managed a theatre and she became a child actress who went on to work in vaudeville...

 at the Kalem

Kalem Company

The Kalem Company was an American film studio founded in New York City in 1907 by George Kleine, Samuel Long , and Frank J. Marion.The company immediately joined other studios in the Motion Picture Patents Company that held a monopoly on production and distribution...

 and American Mutoscope and Biograph

American Mutoscope and Biograph Company

The American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, was a motion picture company founded in 1895 and active until 1928. It was the first company in the United States devoted entirely to film production and exhibition, and for two decades was one of the most prolific, releasing over three thousand short...

 companies. Newburg took her to a studio in Santa Monica

Santa Mônica

Santa Mônica is a town and municipality in the state of Paraná in the Southern Region of Brazil.-References:...

, California, where her aunt, Anne Schafer, was a popular star. Newburg and Novak later married in 1915 and had one daughter. However, the marriage was short lived and the couple divorced in 1918.

Novak endured as a performer, in part, by sacrificing sensational roles for roles as leading women in more wholesome films. Some actresses who were Novak's contemporaries quickly found stardom, yet were forgotten soon afterward, while she was considered an "old-fashioned girl." As a result, Novak, refused to work in films with other leading ladies. She played opposite Wallace Beery

Wallace Beery

Wallace Fitzgerald Beery was an American actor. He is best known for his portrayal of Bill in Min and Bill opposite Marie Dressler, as Long John Silver in Treasure Island, as Pancho Villa in Viva Villa!, and his titular role in The Champ, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor...

, Hobart Bosworth

Hobart Bosworth

Hobart Bosworth was an American film actor, director, writer, and producer.-Early life:Born Hobart Van Zandt Bosworth, he was a direct descendant of Miles Standish and John and Priscilla Alden on his father's side and of New York's Van Zandt family, the first Dutch settlers to land in the New...

, Alan Hale

Alan Hale, Sr.

Alan Hale, Sr. was an American movie actor and director, most widely remembered for his many supporting character roles, in particular as frequent sidekick of Errol Flynn. His wife of over thirty years was Gretchen Hartman , a child actress and silent film player and mother of their three children...

, Thomas Moore

Thomas Moore

Thomas Moore was an Irish poet, singer, songwriter, and entertainer, now best remembered for the lyrics of The Minstrel Boy and The Last Rose of Summer. He was responsible, with John Murray, for burning Lord Byron's memoirs after his death...

, and Lewis Stone

Lewis Stone

Lewis Shepard Stone was an American actor.Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, son of Bertrand Stone and Philena Heald Ball. Stone's hair grew gray by the time he was twenty. He fought in the Spanish-American War, then returned to a career as a writer. He soon began acting...

. At one time she was engaged to marry Western

Western (genre)

The Western is a genre of various visual arts, such as film, television, radio, literature, painting and others. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West, hence the name. Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of...

 star William S. Hart

William S. Hart

William Surrey Hart was an American silent film actor, screenwriter, director and producer. He is remembered for having "imbued all of his characters with honor and integrity."-Biography:...

, although their marriage never took place. She is celebrated for her westerns; and made five films with Hart.

Novak's movies were often based on outdoor stories. Some of these include Kazan (1921), Isobel (1920), The River's End (1920), and The Rosary (1922). By March 1922 she had her own company and was under contract for five outdoor movies, with a salary was $1,500 per week. Aside from Mary Pickford

Mary Pickford

Mary Pickford was a Canadian-born motion picture actress, co-founder of the film studio United Artists and one of the original 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences...

 and Douglas Fairbanks Sr., Novak was the first film star to paid in four figures for a single movie. At this time performers were only paid while a motion picture was shooting. An entire film was completed in three or four weeks.
Novak's last starring role was opposite Richard Dix

Richard Dix

Richard Dix was an American motion picture actor who achieved popularity in both silent and sound film. His standard on-screen image was that of the rugged and stalwart hero.-Early life:...

 in the Technicolor

Technicolor

Technicolor is a color motion picture process invented in 1916 and improved over several decades.It was the second major process, after Britain's Kinemacolor, and the most widely used color process in Hollywood from 1922 to 1952...

 production Redskin

Redskin (film)

Redskin is a feature film with a synchronized score and sound effects, filmed partially in Technicolor. Color film was used for the scenes taking place on the Indians' land, while black and white was used only in the scenes set in the white man's world. Roughly two-thirds of the film is in...

(1929). The movie was also supposed to be with sound but there was a contract dispute involving this being Dix's final film with Paramount Pictures

Paramount Pictures

Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...

. So it was made without sound. Novak's voice was good but she made only a handful of pictures following the advent of sound. One was a pre-World War II epic entitled The Yanks Are Coming. It starred Slapsie Maxie Rosenbloom. She also appeared in Alfred Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock

Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...

's Foreign Correspondent

Foreign Correspondent (film)

Foreign Correspondent is a 1940 American spy thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock which tells the story of an American reporter who tries to expose enemy spies in Britain, a series of events involving a continent-wide conspiracy that eventually leads to the events of a fictionalized World War...

in 1940, having met him previously in the 1920s.

In 1974 the former silent screen star published a cookbook entitled Treasury of Chicken Cooking. The volume is a collection of 300 recipes compiled by Novak over the years, all of them her own.

Novak's last appearance on camera was in 1988 for a documentary, Harold Lloyd: The Third Genius

Harold Lloyd

Harold Clayton Lloyd, Sr. was an American film actor and producer, most famous for his silent comedies....

(1989) by David Gill

David Gill (film historian)

David Ian Gill was born in Papua New Guinea, the son of Cecil Gill, a missionary doctor. His uncle was the sculptor Eric Gill. The family returned to England in 1933 where Gill attended the Belmont Abbey School, Hereford...

 and Kevin Brownlow

Kevin Brownlow

Kevin Brownlow is a filmmaker, film historian, television documentary-maker, author, and Academy Award recipient. Brownlow is best known for his work documenting the history of the silent era. Brownlow became interested in silent film at the age of eleven. This interest grew into a career spent...

, and first screened on ITV

ITV

ITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK...

.

She was the sister of Eva Novak

Eva Novak

Eva Barbara Novak was an American film actress, being quite popular during the silent film era. She was the younger sister of actress Jane Novak and daughter of Joseph, an immigrant from Bohemia, and Barbara Novak....

 and died in Woodland Hills, California of a stroke in 1990.

External links

• Literature on Jane Novak