PAUL JASMIN (voice of Mother), a photographer and painter, has done “key art” for movie posters for such films as American Gigolo (1980), An Officer and a Gentleman (1982), and Permanent Record (1988). His fashion photography has appeared in such magazines as Vogue and Interview and his canvases hang in the homes of Barbra Streisand, Bette Davis, and Marisa Berenson.
JANET LEIGH (Marion Crane) went on to appear in such projects as The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Bye Bye Birdie (1963), and Boardwalk and The Fog (1979). In 1982, she published a successful autobiography, There Really Was a Hollywood. Her daughter, Jamie Lee Curtis, whose godfather is Lew Wassermann of MCA, is also a successful actress.
LUIGI LURASCHI (studio censorship board liaison) is a consultant to Paramount Pictures in Europe.
VERA MILES (Lila Crane) worked again for Alfred Hitchcock in “Incident at a Corner,” a one-hour teleplay broadcast on “Ford Startime,” for John Ford in the feature film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), and for Don Siegel in The Hanged Man (1964). But, largely, films and TV have underutilized her common-sense cool, intelligence, and dramatic skills: The Spirit Is Willing (1967), One Little Indian (1973), The Castaway Cowboy (1974), and Psycho II (1983), directed by Richard Franklin. In 1989, she starred in a stage production, The Immigrant, in Southern California.
MORT MILLS (Highway Patrolman) played another memorable scene for Hitchcock as the farmer who aids Paul Newman in Torn Curtain (1966). He had appeared for Orson Welles in Touch of Evil (1958) and, later, in Twenty Plus Two (1961), The Quick Gun (1964), and The Name of the Game Is Kill (1968).
JEANETTE NOLAN (voice of Mother, screams) has appeared in such films as Two Rode Together (1961), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), My Blood Runs Cold (1965), TV shows such as “Lassie: A New Beginning”; and such series as “The Richard Boone Show” (1963; Emmy award) and “The Virginian” (1967). She has provided voice-overs for such animated features as The Rescuers (1977).
SIMON OAKLAND (Dr. Richmond) appeared in The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond (1960), West Side Story (1961), Follow That Dream (1962), The Satan Bug (1965), Tony Rome and The Sand Pebbles (1967), Bullitt (1968), On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (1970), and the TV series, “The Night Stalker,” “Toma,” and “Baa Baa Black Sheep.” He died in 1983.
ANTHONY PERKINS (Norman Bates) has appeared in such films as Pretty Poison (1968), Catch-22 and WUSA (1970), Play It as It Lays and The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972), The Last of Sheila (1973; which he co-wrote with composer Stephen Sondheim), Mahogany (1975), and Remember My Name (1978). In 1983 and 1986, he appeared again as Norman Bates in Psycho II and Psycho III, the latter of which he also directed. He directed Lucky Stiffs (1989), starred in Edge of Sanity and co-wrote with Charles Edward Pogue a treatment for Psycho IV.
RITA RIGGS (Wardrobe): After Psycho, Riggs assisted Edith Head on The Birds (1963) and Marnie (1964). Since becoming a costume designer, she has collaborated with such directors as John Frankenheimer, Taylor Hackford, Arthur Penn, Richard Brooks, and John Huston, and dressed such films as Seconds (1965), The Professionals (1966), Petulia (1968), Cinderella Liberty (1973), Night Moves (1978), Yes, Giorgio (1981), Deal of the Century (1983), and Mr. North (1987).
PEGGY ROBERTSON (assistant to Hitchcock) was a member of Hitchcock staff on all subsequent productions of the director through much of the preparations for his last project, The Short Night (unfilmed). She was an associate to director Peter Bogdanovich on Mask (1985).
MARSHALL SCHLOM (script supervisor) continues to work on such films as Beverly Hills Cop (1984), The Golden Child (1986), batteries not included (1987), and Rain Man (1988), after numerous credits on films directed by Billy Wilder, Stanley Kramer, and John Huston.
LEONARD SOUTH (camera operator, cinematographer) was Hitchcock’s camera operator for fourteen films and was director of cinematography for the director’s last, Family Plot (1976); he also worked on such other movies as Thieves (1977), Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo (1977), and Amy (1981). Less than a month before Hitchcock died, South was preparing to depart for Finland to shoot second-unit work for the director’s final project, The Short Night (unrealized). South photographed the pilot film and two seasons of the television series “Designing Women.”
JOSEPH STEFANO (screenwriter) produced television’s best science fiction series of the sixties, “The Outer Limits,” and wrote the screenplays for such films as The Naked Edge (1961), Eye of the Cat (1969), and the television pilots for “Mr. Novak” and “Home for the Holidays.” In 1986, he wrote his first novel, The Lycanthrope. Blackout, from a Stefano screenplay, was released in 1989. At the time of publication, Psycho IV, a Stefano screenplay, was the basis of a project-in-development at Universal.
VAUGHN TAYLOR (Mr. Lowery), the veteran character actor, appeared in Diamond Head (1962), The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964), The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming (1966), In Cold Blood (1967), and The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970).
GEORGE TOMASINI (editor), the husband of the charming Mary Brian, star of such films as The Virginian (1929) and The Royal Family of Broadway (1930), cut such pictures as The Misfits (1961), Cape Fear (1962), and, for Alfred Hitchcock, The Birds (1963), and Marnie (1964). He died in 1964 at age fifty-five.
LURENE TUTTLE (Mrs. Chambers) acted in such movies as Ma Barker’s Killer Brood (1960), Critic’s Choice (1963), The Fortune Cookie (1966), and The Sentinel (1977). She won an Emmy for her role in the TV series “Julia.” She died in 1987.
UNIVERSAL-INTERNATIONAL PICTURES became Universal Pictures in 1963 and the studio’s new logo was seen for the first time in the credits for Hitchcock’s The Birds. In addition to releasing all of Hitchcock’s films after Psycho (The Birds, 1963; Marnie, 1964; Torn Curtain, (1966); Topaz (1969); Frenzy (1972); and Family Plot (1976)), the studio continued to enjoy success with episodic TV and the mini-series form, as well as with such theatrical films as Thoroughly Modern Millie (1968), Airport (1970), The Sting (1973), Jaws (1975), Coal Miner’s Daughter (1980), On Golden Pond, and E.T., The Extra-Terrestrial (1982). After the director’s death in 1980, the studio made the Hitchcock compound a tram stop on its popular tour and dedicated a new 340-seat screening room to Alfred Hitchcock.
Psycho on Video
Psycho is available on videotape and laser disc through MCA Home Video.
Psycho Soundtrack
Music From the Great Movie Thrillers (London Phase 4 Stereo; Bernard Herrmann conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra, 1973; record and tape)
Psycho (Unicorn; Bernard Herrmann conducting the National Philharmonic Orchestra, 1975; record)
Alfred Hitchcock’s Film Music (Milan; Suite for Psycho; Bernard Herrmann conducting the National Philharmonic Orchestra, 1986; record and compact disc)
The Films of Alfred Hitchcock
Silent
The Pleasure Garden (1927)
The Mountain Eagle (1927)
The Lodger (1927)
Downhill (1927)
Easy Virtue (1927)
The Ring (1927)
The Farmer’s Wife (1928)
Champagne (1928)
The Manxman (1929)
Sound
Blackmail (1929)
Juno and the Paycock (1930)
Murder! (1930)
The Skin Game (1931)
Number Seventeen (1932)
Rich and Strange (1932)
Waltzes From Vienna (1933)
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)
The 39 Steps (1935)
Secret Agent (1936)
Sabotage (1936)
Young and Innocent (1938)
The Lady Vanishes (1938)
Jamaica Inn (1939)
Rebecca (1940)
Foreign Correspondent (1940)
Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941)
Suspicion (1941)
Saboteur (1942)
Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
Lifeboat (1944)
Spellbound (1945)
Notorious (1946)
The Par
adine Case (1947)
Rope (1948)
Under Capricorn (1949)
Stage Fright (1950)
Strangers on a Train (1951)
I Confess (1953)
Dial “M” for Murder (1954)
Rear Window (1954)
To Catch a Thief (1955)
The Trouble with Harry (1955)
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)
The Wrong Man (1956)
Vertigo (1958)
North by Northwest (1959)
Psycho (1960)
The Birds (1963)
Marnie (1964)
Torn Curtain (1966)
Topaz (1969)
Frenzy (1972)
Family Plot (1976)
The Short Night (unfilmed project, in preparation 1978-1980)
Television
For the series “Alfred Hitchcock Presents”:
“Breakdown” (1955)
“Revenge” (1955)
“The Case of Mr. Pelham” (1955)
“Back for Christmas” (1956)
“Wet Saturday” (1956)
“Mr. Blanchard’s Secret” (1956)
“One More Mile to Go” (1957)
“The Perfect Crime” (1957)
“Lamb to the Slaughter” (1958)
“A Dip in the Pool” (1958)
“Poison” (1958)
“Banquo’s Chair” (1959)
“Arthur” (1959)
“The Crystal Trench” (1959)
“Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel’s Coat” (1960)
“The Horseplayer” (1961)
“Bang! You’re Dead” (1961)
For “Suspicion”:
“Four O’Clock” (1957)
For “Ford Startime”:
“Incident at a Corner” (1960)
For “The Alfred Hitchcock Hour”:
“I Saw the Whole Thing” (1962)
A Note on Sources
THE CORNERSTONE FOR MY research was the invaluable Alfred Hitchcock Collection of the Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, donated by Patricia Hitchcock O’Connell. The papers attest to Mr. Hitchcock as the compleat filmmaker but a frustratingly incomplete record-keeper. Nevertheless, the collection encompasses correspondence, production records, treatments, screenplays, and legal files for many post-1950s Hitchcock projects. I have also made use of The Billy Rose Theater Collection at the Library of Lincoln Center, New York, and of the American Film Institute Library, Los Angeles. The private collections of Frederick Clarke, Gary A. Smith, Paul Farrar, Sam Irvin, and Martin Kearns provided information and inspiration while supplementing material of my own.
For a general overview of a life in films, I found Hitch by John Russell Taylor and The Art of Alfred Hitchcock by Donald Spoto to be helpful. For analysis of the movie and others in the Hitchcock canon, one could hardly do better than Hitchcock’s Films by Robin Wood and Hitchcock—The Murderous Gaze by William Rothman. The frame-by-frame breakdown book on Psycho by Richard J. Anobile was enormously useful for verifying visual memory.
Unless noted, most of my information on the making of the film stems from personal interviews with Mr. Hitchcock and his collaborators that I conducted from the winter of 1980 through the early spring of 1989. My first interview was with Hitchcock himself in January of 1980 at his offices at Universal. I was promised twenty minutes of a great man’s valuable time. An hour later, he was still waving away his assistant, as if he were having a wonderful time being asked questions he must have heard a thousand times. Although battered in body and spirit, Hitchcock was, by turns, brilliant, acerbic, pedantic, lost in reverie, gossipy, and frustrated by the projects that he knew he would never make. I will never forget his grace, nor his rare good manners. Three months later, Hitchcock was dead.
I particularly want to salute the artists who were associated with Mr. Hitchcock and the making of the film Psycho. They shared happy and painful memories, gracefully endured my endless fussing and clarifying, and, in some cases, reviewed early drafts for accuracy: Harold Adler, Jack Barron, Saul Bass, Robert Bloch, Robert Clatworthy, Helen Colvig, Margo Epper, Hilton Green, Virginia Gregg, Mrs. Joseph Hurley, Paul Jasmin, Janet Leigh, Michael Ludmer, John McIntire, Jeanette Nolan, Tony Palladino, Anthony Perkins, Rita Riggs, Marshall Schlom, Leonard South, Joseph Stefano, H. N. Swanson, Lois Thurman, and Lurene Tuttle.
I hope this book will underscore the fact that, even for a Hitchcock, filmmaking, like living, is nothing if not a collaborative art.
Selected Bibliography
Periodicals
Abramson, Martin. “What Hitchcock Does with His Blood Money.” Cosmopolitan, January 1964.
———. “My Husband Hates Suspense.” Coronet, August 1964.
Anonymous. “Pourquoi j’ai peur la nuit.” Arts, no. 77, June 1, 1960.
Anonymous. “Hitchcock’s Three Nightmares.” Newsweek, January 24, 1966.
Anonymous. “Alfred Hitchcock Directs.” TV Guide 4, 15 (1956):20-21.
Anonymous. “Horror, Humor and McGuffins.” TV Guide 4, 43 (1956):17-19.
Anonymous. “Joan Harrison’s Specialty: Murder.” TV Guide 6, 10 (1958):17-19.
Anonymous. “An Old Master Opposes Sink-to-Sink TV.” TV Guide 7, 7 (1959):17-19.
Anonymous. “Alfred the Great Shocker.” TV Guide 9, 12 (1961):17-19.
Anonymous. “The Elderly Cherub That Is Hitchcock.” TV Guide 13, 22 (1965): 14-18.
Brown, Royal D. “Herrmann, Hitchcock, and the Music of the Irrational.” Cinema Journal, Spring 1982.
Clark, Paul Sargent. “Hitchcock’s Finest Hour.” Today’s Filmmaker, November 1971.
Counts, Kyle. “The Making of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds.” Cinefantastique 10, 2 (Fall, 1980).
Crawley, Tony. “Psycho!” Hammer’s House of Horrors, March 1978.
Foster, Frederick. “Hitch Didn’t Want it Arty.” American Cinematographer, February 1957.
Goodman, Ezra. “The World Is Now with Hitchcock.” New York Herald Tribune, April 5, 1942.
Haber, Joyce. “Hitchcock Still Fighting Hard to Avoid the Conventional.” Los Angeles Times, February 4, 1973.
Hitchcock, Alfred. “The Chase—Core of the Movie.” New York Times Magazine, October 29, 1950.
———. “Murder—With English on It.” New York Times Magazine, March 3, 1957.
———. “Why I Am Afraid of the Dark.” Arts: Lettres, Spectacles, no. 7777 (June 1-7, 1960).
———. “The Woman Who Knows Too Much.” McCall’s, March 1956.
Knight, Arthur. “Conversations with Alfred Hitchcock.” Oui, February 1973.
Martin, Pete. “I Call on Alfred Hitchcock.” Saturday Evening Post, July 27, 1957.
Montagu, Ivor. “Working with Hitchcock.” Sight and Sound, Summer 1980.
Natale, Richard. “There’s Just One Hitch.” Women’s Wear Daily, June 16, 1972.
Rebello, Stephen. “Plotting With Alfred Hitchcock.” The Real Paper, February 16, 1980.
———. “The Making of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.” Cinefantastique, October 1986.
Roche, Catherine dela. “Conversation with Hitchcock.” Sight and Sound, Winter 1955-56.
Whitcomb, Jon. “Master of Mayhem.” Cosmopolitan, October 1959.
Books
Anobile, Richard J., ed. Psycho: The Film Classics Library. New York: Avon Books, 1974.
Armes, Roy. A Critical History of the British Cinema. London: Oxford University Press, 1978.
Bloch, Robert. Psycho. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1959.
Bogdanovich, Peter. The Cinema of Alfred Hitchcock. New York: Museum of Modern Art Film Library/Doubleday, 1963.
Boucher, Anthony, ed. The Quality of Murder. New York: E.P. Dutton 1962.
Bouzereau, Laurent. The DePalma Cut. New York: Dembner, 1988.
Brill, Lesley. The Hitchcock Romance. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988.
Brosnan, John. The Horror People. New York: St. Martin’s, 1976.
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sp; Cameron, Ian, ed. Movie Reader (“Suspense and Meaning” and “The Mechanics of Suspense”). New York: Praeger, 1972.
Carringer, Robert L. The Making of Citizen Kane. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985.
Chase, Donald. Filmmaking: The Collaborative Art. Boston: Little, Brown, 1975.
Corliss, Richard. Talking Pictures. New York: Overlook Press, 1974.
Deny, Charles. Dark Dreams. New York: A. S. Barnes, 1977.
Deutelbaum, Marshall, and Leland Poague, eds. A Hitchcock Reader. Ames: Iowa State University, 1986.
Durgnat, Raymond. The Strange Case of Alfred Hitchcock. Boston: The MIT Press, 1974.
Eames, John Douglas. The Paramount Story. New York: Crown, 1985.
Everson, William K. Classics of the Horror Film. Secaucus: Citadel, 1974.
Eyles, Allen, Robert Adkinson, and Nicholas Fry, eds. The House of Horror. London: Lorrimer, 1973.
Freeman, David. The Last Days of Alfred Hitchcock. New York: Overlook Press, 1984.
Green, Jonathan. The Greatest Criminals of All Time. New York: Stein & Day, 1980.
Greenberg, Harvey R., M.D. The Movies on Your Mind. New York: Saturday Review Press/E.P. Dutton, 1975.
Grierson, John. “Directors of the Thirties,” in Film: An Anthology, edited by Daniel Talbot. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966.
Haley, Michael. The Alfred Hitchcock Album. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1981.
Hammond, Lawrence. Thriller Movies. Secaucus: Derbibooks, 1975.
Hardy, Phil, ed. The Encyclopedia of Horror. New York: Harper & Row, 1986.
Harmetz, Aljean. The Making of The Wizard of Oz. New York: Limelight Editions, 1977.
Harris, Robert A., and Michael S. Lasky. The Films of Alfred Hitchcock. Secaucus: Citadel, 1976.
Head, Edith, and Jane Kesner Ardmore. The Dress Doctor. Boston: Little, Brown, 1959.
Higham, Charles, and Joel Greenberg. The Celluloid Muse. New York: Signet, 1972.
Hirschorn, Clive. The Universal Story. New York: Crown, 1985.
Jara, Rene et al., eds. The Paradigm Exchange. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1981.
King, Stephen. Danse Macabre. New York: Berkley Books, 1982.
La Valley, Albert, ed. Focus on Hitchcock. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1972.
Leff, Leonard. Hitchcock & Selznick. New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1987.
Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho Page 23
