At the same time, there are two living, breathing women in this conversation with me: Kim Novak, the carefully constructed Hitchcock blonde who adorned movie posters and sensually captured the audience’s eyes, and beside her, the other – real – Kim Novak, born Marilyn Pauline Novak, who is sensitive and shy, and who reflects tenderly on both her film career and her family life. Based on the 1954 novel, D’entre les Morts, (The Living and the Dead) by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, Vertigo starred James Stewart as a detective whose career ended due to a severe fear of heights, and whose later private investigation into Madeleine Elster (Novak) reveals a second, identical woman, Judy Barton (also played by Novak), around whom a murderous conspiracy begins to unfold.