[2] Although she returned home, her aunt, actress Anne Schaefer, invited her to California where she began acting in motion pictures in 1913 at the age of 17.

There she met Frank Newburg, who was, at the time, leading man to Ruth Roland at the Kalem and American Mutoscope and Biograph companies.

Some actresses who were Novak's contemporaries quickly found stardom, yet were forgotten soon afterward, while she was considered an "old-fashioned girl."

She played opposite Wallace Beery, Tom Mix, Hobart Bosworth, Alan Hale, Thomas Moore, and Lewis Stone.

Aside from Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., Novak was the first film star to paid in four figures for a single movie.

One was a World War II epic titled The Yanks Are Coming featuring Slapsie Maxie Rosenbloom.

Novak's last appearance on camera was in 1988 for the documentary Harold Lloyd: The Third Genius (1989) by David Gill and Kevin Brownlow, and first screened on ITV.