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.  

 

 

Searching for . . . (“The Searchers”)

I admit it: westerns aren’t my favorite genre. And it’s taken me quite a while to like one of John Ford’s most admired westerns, The Searchers. But I could always see why the film was popular. Shot in 1956, it takes full advantage of color cinematography in showing off Ford’s all-time favorite locale, Monument Valley, with its stark red buttes pointing toward the bright blue sky. 

Anyone wanting to know more about The Searchers should seek out my colleague Glenn Frankel’s 2014 book, The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend. Suffice it to say here that this film has had a huge influence on other major filmmakers, including David Lean, Sam Peckinpah, Martin Scorsese, Jean-Luc Godard, and George Lucas, who applied some of Ford’s shooting techniques to his Star Wars films. As for me, I returned to The Searchers after many years because it was referenced in a new biography of the actress Vera Miles. Who knew she was credited as the film’s third lead, after John Wayne and Jeffrey Hunter?  All I remembered was Natalie Wood as Debbie, the young white woman who’d spent nine long years as a Comanche captive: after all, she was what the search of the title was all about.

Vera Miles, I should explain, plays a major role in what Roger Ebert once called the film’s “silly romantic subplot.” The feisty daughter of settlers, Miles’ Laurie Jorgensen is in love with Martin Pawley, the earnest young man whom Wayne’s Ethan Edwards reluctantly allows to accompany him on his quest for the missing girl. What stands out about Wayne’s character is how thoroughly he detests anything to do with Native American life. His intrinsic racism extends particularly to captive women whom he views as defiled by Indian “bucks.” Given that Wayne is generally seen on film –by Ford and others—in a heroic light, it’s uncomfortable accepting him as a bigot who goes out of his way to be cruel. But there’s a tiny moment at film’s end that shows us a sliver of good will in his character, before he leaves the reunited family to enjoy some happy domesticity and heads out solo into the unknown.

Watching The Searchers again reminded me of how many films are structured around a quest for a missing person, usually a family member. Some examples include Missing (1982), Searching (2018) and what seem like a raft of Liam Neeson flicks, including Taken (2008). But  I was reminded of a very different search in an extremely arty 1999 movie called Three Seasons, the first film shot in Vietnam after President Clinton lifted a longtime embargo. Set in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon), it contains several plot lines that explore the changes in Vietnam since the infamous war of the Sixties and Seventies. In one  key subplot, Harvey Keitel plays a former American G.I.  who has returned to the country to find a daughter he’s never seen. 

I saw this film for a funny reason. At a favorite L.A. restaurant I got to know a waitress who was friendly and capable, with a faintly exotic look. It turns out she was Amerasian, and had just been cast as Keitel’s elusive daughter. I watched the film with excitement, waiting for Lola to come on screen. And at long last she did. At the very end of the film, we saw—through a window—the two sitting in a cafe, deep in conversation. What did father and daughter talk about? I have no idea. The movie ended there, leaving the viewer outside looking in. 

Whatever Happened to Vera Miles?

Vera Miles? Whatever happened to her? And who was she, anyway? Miles, who’s alive and well at 95, was an Oklahoma-born, Kansas-bred beauty pageant winner who found her way to Hollywood in 1949. She played key supporting parts in films directed by John Ford (The Searchers) and Alfred Hitchcock (The Wrong Man, in which she was the wife of Henry Fonda, playing a real-life jazz musician falsely accused of robbery). She also was several times cast by the Disney folks as a lovable wife and mom, often in tandem with Fred MacMurray or Brian Keith, perhaps reflecting her own real-life role as the mother of four children. She also regularly appeared in featured roles on television. Despite all this, in her forty-five year career she never truly moved beyond second-tier stardom. 

Things might have turned out differently in the late Fifties if Miles, who was then under personal contract to Alfred Hitchcock, had gone through with Hitchcock’s plan to star her as the female lead in Vertigo. Hitchcock favorite Grace Kelly had moved from the soundstages of L.A. to the throne of Monaco, and Miles was singled out as a suitable replacement. Said the Master of Suspense, “Miss Miles is going to be one of the biggest stars of Hollywood because she has understanding and depth and ability and lovely legs.”  To that end, he ordered a fabulous wardrobe for Miles, and cranked up the Hollywood publicity machine. But life intervened. Hitchcock’s need for gall bladder surgery delayed the production, as did time-off requested by the hard-working male lead James Stewart. And then Miles had the nerve to become pregnant with her third child, a move that Hitchcock considered something of a personal insult. (He was to say in later years, “I hate pregnant women because then they have children.”)  So Kim Novak got the plum dual role of Madeleine Elster and Judy Barton instead, though Hitchcock did feature Miles in his television dramas and in a key supporting part as Marion Crane’s sister in Psycho.

I know all the above because of Christopher McKittrick’s new biography, Vera Miles: The Hitchcock Blonde Who Got Away, coming in March from University Press of Kentucky. There’s no question that McKittrick has done his homework. Though he never had the opportunity to speak to Miles directly, he seems to know everything there is to know about her life and times, and in passing fills us in on everyone with whom she ever connected. Though it’s interesting seeing her on the set of masterworks like Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, I was most impressed with Miles’ evolution in later years into a woman who knew how to stand up for herself, one who clearly saw the lack of meaty roles for women and became determined to do something about it. (I’d love to know what she thinks about the current crop of films like Anora, The Substance, and Emilia Pérez—as well as last year’s Poor Things—whereby today’s actresses are coming to dominate the industry in which she once played a significant part. As someone always considered ladylike, she might not be pleased by the outrageous roles Hollywood’s women are now undertaking.) 

McKittrick considers it refreshing that Miles, far from becoming a burned-out Hollywood cautionary tale, largely ran her career on her own terms. As he puts it, “If opportunities like that of Vertigo passed her by because she chose other, more personally fulfilling paths for her life, those were decisions she was happy to make and has continued to stand by in her retirement.”