Going “Psycho”

The other evening, in the line of duty, I went back in time and watched Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 masterwork, Psycho. Ironically, I never saw it in a theatre back in the day. (I was a young teenager at the time, and not especially keen on horror.) Needless to say, I’d heard all the brouhaha, and was aware that Janet Leigh’s character didn’t fare well during her overnight stay at the Bates Motel. But the intricacies of her killer’s identity were beyond me—until I took a long bus ride with a gaggle of other girls, and one filled me in on the entire plot.

 I’ve since seen the film, of course, though it’s been a while. But because I was asked to comment on a new biography about a Hollywood regular (Christopher McKittrick’s Vera Miles: The Hitchcock Blonde Who Got Away), it seemed appropriate to check out Miles’ appearances in films by legends like John Ford (The Searchers) and Alfred Hitchcock. Miles was, I learned, slated to become Hitchcock’s next leading lady, once Grace Kelly decamped for Monaco. After portraying Henry Fonda’s long-suffering wife in The Wrong Man, Miles was his original choice to play the fascinating female lead in Vertigo (1958), until scheduling problems got in the way. Still, she was featured by Hitchcock in the drama that kicked off his well-loved TV series. And for Psycho she played the important (though not especially interesting) role of Janet Leigh’s sister,  searching for the missing Marion Crane and letting out an impressive scream when she learns the truth about the spooky old lady in the big Victorian house.

 Psycho may be today one of Hitchcock’s best remembered films, but it’s far from typical of his oeuvre. Yes, it features a pretty blonde woman in dangerous circumstances, but Janet Leigh’s role in Psycho is far removed from those played by such Hitchcock blondes as Madeleine Carroll, Eva Marie Saint, Grace Kelly and Tippi Hedren. Whereas the usual Hitchcock heroine is elegantly attired, Leigh’s Marion Crane is most familiarly depicted wearing a bra and slip. She’s attractive, but she’s no mysterious glamour girl caught up in international intrigue. The criminal act of which she’s guilty is the sordid little matter of stealing a wad of cash from her employer so that perhaps she can finance a marriage to her not-so-willing boyfriend (John Gavin, a future US ambassador to Mexico).  

 Hitchcock’s decision to cast Janet Leigh, a rising star with a well-publicized Hollywood marriage (to Tony Curtis) as Marion Crane meant that the bulk of his budget went toward her salary. The result was that other aspects of Psycho were necessarily simplified. It was shot, mostly by Hitchcock’s TV crew, in austere black & white, in contrast to such glossy full-color Hitchcock productions as 1958’s Vertigo and 1959’s North by Northwest. But in fact this austerity seems to suit the simple but macabre story.

 One thing I never realized until I read the Vera Miles bio is that Hollywood, in its wisdom, eventually decided to sequelize Psycho. Hitchcock was dead and gone in 1983 when Universal Pictures paid Richard Franklin to direct Psycho II, set 22 years after the original story. Marion Crane played no part, of course, but Anthony Perkins signed on to again play Norman Bates, newly released from a mental institution. And Vera Miles signed on too, to portray the still-grieving sister who thirsts for revenge. Naturally there are mysterious and macabre doings galore . . . and three years later, Perkins himself directed Psycho III, described as a psychological slasher film. Happily, I missed these cinematic gems.