Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho

by Stephen Rebello

  Janet Leigh admitted, “Even though I knew what was going to come, I screamed. And even though I knew I was sitting there in that screening quite alive and well, it was a very emotional thing to see your own demise.” Novelist Robert Bloch retains a clear recollection of Leigh and Hitchcock at the screening. “I sat in the front row of this dingy, drab, claustrophobic screening room,” Bloch said. “When the screening was over, I vividly recall Hitchcock asking Janet Leigh what she thought of it. She said, ‘When that knife went into me on the screen, I could feel it!’ Hitchcock said, ‘My dear, the knife never went into you.’ She realized, and consequently so did I, that that was truly the case.” (Or so Hitchcock wanted everyone to believe.) Leigh recalled: “What I said was, ‘I believed that the knife went into me.’ It was that real, that horrifying, though, of course, it couldn’t to any extent because you could not show penetration.”

  Outside the screening room, Hitchcock and Bloch made their introductions, but when the director asked the novelist for his reactions, Bloch found himself at something of a loss. Just as screenwriter Stefano had expressed conflicting reactions to a screening of Psycho, so did Bloch to his screening. Bloch said, “I told him, ‘I’ll be frank. It’s either going to be your biggest success or your biggest flop.’ And that was precisely how I felt. Nobody could tell at that juncture how the public would react to something that graphic. My only real cavil was the psychological explanation. It could have been done in about one-third of the time, been perfectly clear to audiences, and given final momentum to the finale.”

  Bloch, an avowed Bernard Herrmann admirer ever since hearing the score for the William Dieterle-directed The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941), recalled that he was relieved that the composer never sought out his opinion of the Psycho score. “I simply didn’t know how to take it,” Bloch said. “It was quite innovative, discordant—not the sort of thing one usually expected to accompany that kind of motion picture. It threw me for a loop. I was not quite prepared for such screeching.”

  Screenwriter Stefano viewed the revised cut of the picture at another screening. “It was much closer to what ultimately came out,” Stefano observed. “I thought, ‘That’s a good picture,’ but that’s about all I felt.” The writer found himself unable to reconcile the cutting of dialogue and images he felt would have encouraged audiences to feel the emotional impact of Marion’s murder.. According to Stefano, Hitchcock had trimmed the very image that had most potently realized the poignancy of that death: a sustained, overhead shot of the lifeless body of Janet Leigh sprawled over the bathtub, her buttocks exposed.

  “It was a perfectly heartbreaking shot that came right before the close-up of Janet’s eyes,” Stefano said, and even after thirty years he recalled the shot with brimming eyes. “That one shot really brought home the tragedy of a lost life. I have never seen anything more painful than to see that beauty murdered. It was so poetic and so hurtful.” Hitchcock enraged Stefano by admitting he had axed the shot to appease the censors. The writer remembered arguing, “If you had cut it because you didn’t want to arouse painful emotions—fine. But to cut it because the girl’s buttocks were exposed? As if there were actually something sexual about it!”

  In spite of his words, Stefano did also reproach Hitchcock for avoiding deep emotion. The unease Hitchcock appeared to feel toward letting Psycho be anything more than a straight-out shocker hit Stefano hard. According to the writer, at the first sign that the characters or situation might carry emotional weight, Hitchcock ridiculed or cut it. It was as if the financial and critical trouncing of the deeply felt Vertigo had scarred Hitchcock irrevocably when it came to self-exposure. “Any time I had tried to get across a few seconds of silent memory for a lost life, it got cut,” Stefano complained. “He had also made some cuts for time toward the end of the movie that I felt bad about. It was a scene with Sam and Lila, the only point in the movie where you got the sense Sam was aware of the loss of this woman he had loved.”

  Hitchcock also showed the film to Saul Bass. The graphic designer said, “Frankly I was amazed that the shower sequence had the effect it did. I thought it was a very tight and effective little murder, but I didn’t fully understand the impact it was going to have, how truly shocking the whole thing was.”

  Director vs. Censors, Round Two

  Armed with a film that was nearly ready to face the world, Hitchcock further played with the press by announcing, on May 4, that his upcoming film had to do with “metaphysical sex.” On the same day, he prepared to renew his battle with the censors, expecting the best but fearing the worst. Janet Leigh delighted in recalling: “He told me how he had planned all along to manipulate the censors by deliberately putting in things so bizarre, he could come back to them and say, ‘Tsk-tsk. All right, I’ll take that out, but you’ve got to give me this.’ He bargained with them like the master he was.”

  Script supervisor Marshall Schlom acknowledged that Hitchcock practically rubbed his hands together in anticipation of springing the traps he had laid for the Shurlock office censors throughout the shooting. “In the shower scene, Mr. Hitchcock wanted to suggest, not show, the nudity,” said Schlom of the key scene for which the censors were waiting. “But if you stop-frame and magnify it, there are definitely a couple of frames showing a bare breast and nipple.” The censor board liaison for Paramount, Luigi Luraschi, took the film to the seven censors and waited for a reply. As expected, the board went berserk over the shower murder and requested that the scene be sent back to them for closer scrutiny. Luraschi complied and the verdict was returned: Three censors saw nudity; two did not. Memo from the Shurlock office to the Hitchcock office: “Please take out the nudity.”

  Marshall Schlom recalled, the following day, Hitchcock—murmuring his contrition and his intent to comply with the wishes of the Shurlock office—merely repacked the film. Without editing so much as a frame, he shipped it back to the censors. Now the three board members who had seen nudity the previous day did not and the two who did not now did. Much to the bemusement of Hitchcock and his staff, the shenanigans over who saw what dragged on for well over a week.

  Marshall Schlom recalled: “Finally Mr. Hitchcock said, ‘I will take out the nudity if you will allow me to keep the two people in bed in the opening.’ They said, ‘No.’ He countered by saying, ‘All right. If you leave the shower sequence as is, I will reshoot the opening, but I want you people on the set to tell me how you will pass it just watching it.’ We scheduled a reshoot, but they never showed up, so we never shot it. And they finally agreed they didn’t see the nudity in the shower sequence which, of course, was there all the time.” As a sop to the Shurlock office Hitchcock made minor cuts in dialogue, which brought down the running time of Psycho to 109 minutes.

  9.

  PUBLICITY

  The Care And Handling of Psycho

  HAVING HANDILY OUTWITTED THE censors, Hitchcock was free to turn his attentions to outsmarting the moviegoing public. By this time he was satisfied that he had realized his goals: He had made a picture unlike anything he had previously done and he had brought it in at a price. He was also soon to learn he had made a picture unlike anyone had ever seen. But how best to sell Psycho as a new kind of Hitchcock—one that went way beyond his usual “polite” thrills? First, Hitchcock concentrated not on the stars of the picture but on the title itself. Having taken a particular fancy to the title design for the book jacket by artist Tony Palladino, Hitchcock contacted the advertising agency, McCann-Erickson, to arrange a deal. “[Hitchcock] called me one day,” artist Palladino said, “telling me it was a smashing design and that he thought it would be perfect for the ads for this film. He wanted the lettering to dominate the newspaper and poster advertising, with just a few photographs of the main actors. I found it exciting learning how absolutely pragmatic he was. He preplanned so carefully, he could skim off the fat. I really got the sense he respected creative accomplishment in others.” Palladino received $5,000 for a complete buy-out of his concept, hardly a pa
ltry sum when one considers that novelist Robert Bloch had received little more for the rights to the original book!

  That mission accomplished, Hitchcock turned to another critical component of marketing. Script supervisor Schlom explained: “He worried that once the first audiences saw the movie, they’d tell the ending and that would kill the picture.” In order to combat that probability and to enhance the aura of mystery surrounding the film, Hitchcock chose not to show the film in advance to critics or opinion-makers, a move that flew in the face of what is perceived as industry tradition and privilege. Hitchcock deflected the angry questions of some reporters by saying, “I would like the screening at dead of night in a deserted barn. Preferably a barn with owls.” MCA president Lew Wasserman reportedly advised Hitchcock to book Psycho nationally in thousands of theaters directly following the prerelease engagement in two New York theaters on June 16. If word-of-mouth buried the picture, it was reasoned, the Hitchcock name would at least lure in the faithful for a week or two. Produced on such a tight budget, the picture might even stand a chance of breaking even.. When a man of Wasserman’s business acumen offered advice, men like Hitchcock took heed. Wasserman, a former agent of MCA, had rocked the movie business when he negotiated a profit-sharing deal for his client James Stewart on a Universal-International western, Winchester ’73 (1950), directed by Anthony Mann. The takings made Stewart a millionaire. Hitchcock bought Wasserman’s strategy for booking Psycho and rode it to the last penny.

  A screening of the film for executives at Paramount—studio chief Y. Frank Freeman among them—did not shake their view that the film was a decidedly minor, forgettable, even disreputable Hitchcock effort. They assumed Psycho would vanish quickly anyway, so they put no obstacles in the way of the director’s policy of no screenings or preview showings. But what they did not know was that Hitchcock had in mind a publicity blitz that would rank as one of the most smoothly engineered of all time. Lacking a presold story, showy production values, or surefire box-office stars, Hitchcock maximized his three most exploitable commodities: the title, the shock climax, and his own persona as a roly-poly ringmaster of a macabre circus of horrors.

  Hitchcock, Paramount publicity director Herb Steinberg, and several officers of the Paramount sales and publicity department decided to adhere to the decision to open the picture in a single prerelease engagement in a theater in New York. There, they would test an unusual ad campaign and audience admissions policy that—if successful—would be enforced throughout the country. Every newspaper and magazine ad would stress that “No one … BUT NO ONE … will be admitted to the theater after the start of each performance of Psycho.” Other advertising campaigns for earlier movies had offered such warnings. In 1958, even Paramount’s advertising manual for Hitchcock’s Vertigo, for example, suggested issuing those hoary reproofs: “Don’t tell the secret of Vertigo” and “No one will be seated during the last ten minutes of Vertigo.” But for Psycho, Hitchcock and Paramount were to top not only their own ballyhoo gimmicks but also those used for such films as Les Diaboliques. With the blessing of Paramount’s worldwide sales strategist George Weltner and executives Y. Frank Freeman and Barney Balaban, Hitchcock not only advised but also insisted that theater owners follow his decree against admitting patrons once the picture began; finally, he demanded the enforcing of his decree as a contractual prerequisite for any theater exhibitor who booked the film. In a bulletin to exhibitors, Hitchcock wrote, “I believe this is a vital step in creating the aura of mysterious importance this unusual motion picture so richly deserves.”

  Ticket buyers were accustomed to casually dropping in and out in the days when movie houses opened at 10:00 A.M. and double-features, short subjects, and previews of coming attractions ran continuously through late evening. Owners of several major theater chains feared that patrons would rebel at being told when and how they could view a movie—even by the mighty Hitchcock. Some chains rumbled about boycotts. Hitchcock stood fast. “I walk up and down here like Felix the Cat,” the director told a reporter in his Paramount offices, “trying to dream up new plot ideas. I’m playing my game with the public—trying to outwit them. All that my writer and I do in scheming surprises can be destroyed by letting the viewer walk in during the middle of the picture.”

  To rationalize further to movie exhibitors the offbeat admission policy, Hitchcock and Paramount mailed to them two elaborate (and irresistibly hokey) sales manuals. Each book ran longer than twenty pages and Hitchcock personally detailed the whys and wherefores of his publicity gimmicks. Each also explained exactly how to enhance the aura of the film as a suspense “Event.” Such Hollywood showmanship and hucksterism had been routine for major releases of the thirties and forties. By the fifties, with the inroads into movie patronage made by TV, this brand of all-the-stops-out exploitation was more commonly employed on 3-D pictures, widescreen Cinemascope spectacles, or fast-buck sex and horror “quickies.”

  In one of these manuals, “The Care and Handling of Psycho,” Hitchcock is thus quoted alongside a reprint of the on-the-set article that had appeared in the New York Times:

  As you read the copy … please note that my own firm but non-belligerent stand on the top secrecy policy was recognized in the editorial cooperation of the mighty Times itself. I might add that this same pictorialized pastiche must certainly have piqued the curiosity of millions coast-to-coast.

  For Psycho, Hitchcock and Paramount deemed no advertising ploy beneath them. Publicity materials included tips for hiring Pinkerton guards to enforce the admission policies. “This man of the law will not only handle lines and crowds admirably,” advised Hitchcock, “but can also help your cashier explain our policy when doors are closed. Our experience has taught us that such explanations bring refund requests down to a bare minimum.” The kits also boasted order forms for large lobby clocks to remind audiences of the starting times for the movie and also five-foot-high cardboard standees of Hitchcock’s likeness to be used in conjunction with recorded messages to incoming and outgoing audiences. In one, the director said:

  How do you do, ladies and gentlemen. I must apologize for inconveniencing you this way. However, this queuing up and standing about is good for you. It will make you appreciate the seats inside. It will also make you appreciate Psycho. You see, Psycho is most enjoyable when viewed beginning at the beginning and proceeding to the end. I realize this is a revolutionary concept, but we have discovered that Psycho is unlike most motion pictures, and does not improve when run backwards.

  Theater owners were advised to mount speakers along the outside walls to broadcast other such recorded messages from Hitchcock:

  The manager of this theater has been instructed, at the risk of his life, not to admit to the theater any persons after the picture starts. Any spurious attempts to enter by side doors, fire escapes, or ventilating shafts will be met by force. I have been told this is the first time such remarkable measures have been necessary … but then this is the first time they’ve ever seen a picture like Psycho.

  Hitchcock even lectured theater managers across the nation on how to show the film:

  Experience in all our opening engagements has shown us that it enhances the dignity and importance of Psycho to close your house curtains over the screen after the end-titles of the picture, and keep the theater dark for 1/2 minute. During these 30 seconds of stygian blackness, the suspense of Psycho is indelibly engraved in the mind of the audience, later to be discussed among gaping friends and relations. You will then bring up house lights of a greenish hue, and shine spotlights of this ominous hue across the faces of your departing patrons. Never, never, never will I permit Psycho to be followed immediately by a short subject or newsreel.

  Alfred Hitchcock made certain that the print ads and lobby poster advertising did not repeat mistakes of the past. A proponent of the old Hollywood axiom, “If the picture flops, blame the ad campaign,” Hitchcock had been made aware that many had judged as too “arty” the advertising campaign for his previ
ous Paramount release, Vertigo. Posters and print ads for that film had featured evocatively stylized Saul Bass art suggesting a man and woman trapped in a vortex. The coffeehouse crowd got it; puzzled mainstream audiences stayed away. Hitchcock also took a cue from the differences between the European release posters for Les Diaboliques (disturbing graphic motifs suggesting elongated hands, murky waters, two figures lowering a wicker trunk by ropes) and the streamlined, hard-sell American ads (a photo of a terrified Vera Clouzot in a nightgown).

  Anxious for Psycho advertising to avoid any possible ambiguity, Hitchcock had authorized photographer William “Bud” Fraker to capture a series of publicity shots of Janet Leigh standing and reclining, clad in a white bra and half-slip, and of John Gavin, semi-crouched and stripped to the waist; the shots, printed in tabloidlike half-tone and monochromed in bold yellow and orange-red, served as the “key art” for the ads. These photographs, besides being unambiguous, were to shatter taboos by becoming the first blatantly “suggestive” photographic images ever to advertise a mainstream Hollywood feature. To these were added publicity portraits of Vera Miles (stifling a scream as her hands clutch her face) and Anthony Perkins (doing likewise).