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Calgary Herald (04/Jun/1995) - JANET LEIGH: After 35 years, Alfred Hitchcock's star is still noted for the shower scene in Psycho

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JANET LEIGH: After 35 years, Alfred Hitchcock's star is still noted for the shower scene in Psycho

'No showers and no motels!" That's been Janet Leigh's recipe for happiness ever since she starred in Alfred Hitchcock's classic of suspense, 1960's Psycho.

After all, she spent seven days in a studio motel shooting the most famous shower scene in movie history.

"To be famous for that above all else! Well, it just beats me!

"Director Hitchcock had mapped out each and every camera angle with designer Saul Bass. I was given a flesh-colored moleskin bikini with pasties which melted under the constant heat of the water.

"There was even a scaffold constructed for the overhead shot. You never see me nude and you never see the knife enter the body although you think you do.

"And that sound of crunching — the special effects guy was stabbing a cantaloupe."

And now Leigh has written a book called Behind The Scenes Of Psycho (Harmony Books).

"I wrote to Vera Miles, who plays my sister, but never got a response. John Gavin who played my lover talks about the movie for the first time.

"Tony Perkins had died (of AIDS) but I dearly would have liked to sit down with him. We remained fast friends. He made a lot of romantic movies after that.

"It wasn't until 10 years later that the character of Norman Bates caught up with him and he was offered only weird parts.

"It's the same thing with me. I went on to do The Manchurian Candidate (1962) which is an equally fine film. I did the musical Bye, Bye Birdie (1963). I did Harper (1966). Nobody ever asked me about Psycho in those years."

Reissues of the film plus controversy over its TV showings (CBS withdrew the film after a firestorm of protest) resulted in renewed interest. Now it's the movie that Leigh is most often asked about.

"But I think my best movie is Touch Of Evil (1958, directed by Orsen Welles)."

Leigh really hasn't taken a shower in 30 years and she never stayed in motels to begin with. But she admits the film attracts a fair number of crazies that she stays away from.

"Mr. Hitchcock sent me the book. In it, Norman is a pretty sleazy character. It was Hitch's idea to cast Tony, who was tall and very good looking. In fact Tony and John Gavin look like brothers.

"Hitch wanted me because he thought it would be funny to kill off the leading lady in the first half-hour and have the audience spend the rest of the picture waiting for her to come back.

"She's stolen money, but in her conversation with Norman she determines to turn around in the morning and return it. She doesn't get the chance."

Hitchcock shot it on the quick with the TV crew from his series Alfred Hitchcock Presents. He felt the grainy black and white movie would be a flop after the success of such lushly romantic interludes as Rear Window and Vertigo.

"Every time I'd go back to my dressing room, Mrs. Bates would be sitting there. Hitch had plopped the dummy in a chair as a joke and I'd run screaming my head off."

Some dubious firsts: Psycho was the first American movie to show a flush toilet and the first to use the word "transvestite."

"The voice of Mrs. Bates was supplied by actresses Virginia Gregg and Jeanette Nolan, whose screams were also mixed with Vera Miles' yelps at the end of the movie.

Leigh had been in movies 13 years when Psycho came along. Film great Norma Shearer spotted her photo on a desk at the Sugar Bowl Ski Lodge near Reno, Nev. Janet's mother was the receptionist.

"Shearer forwarded the picture to MGM. Aged 19, the newly renamed Leigh (real name Jeanette Morrison) signed a six-month contract in 1946 and earned $49.50 US a week after taxes. MGM planned to bring the newcomer along slowly but director Roy Rowland was going on location for the next Van Johnson film, The Romance Of Rosy Ridge.

"I made a quick test. Van agreed with Roy and the next day I was in the Santa Cruz mountains making my movie. I washed out my own clothes the first night until told they had a wardrobe woman who did it.

"I remember Thomas Mitchell told me, 'Stop acting so much the camera picks everything up.' "

Leigh said one difference between her beginnings and daughter Jamie Lee Curtis' is that "Jamie had no support system. She still envies me. I was groomed. There were stills, interviews, acting classes.

"When I played the Russian ballerina in The Red Danube (1949), MGM gave me three months of ballet lessons. On Act Of Violence (1949) I apologized every time I made a mistake. Van Heflin said such behavior would not do and he put a box on the wall. Every time I apologized I had to put a penny in it."

On Little Women, Leigh co-starred with June Allyson, Elizabeth Taylor and Margaret O'Brien.

"Friends, yes. We were all giggling and doing pranks. Mary Astor, who played Marmee, would take it for so long and then shout 'Quiet!' But we weren't friends away from the studio. It was too competitive an atmosphere.

"MGM dangled parts like carrots. June and I might be up for the same script."

She was sashaying at a party when she noticed a man staring at her. It was Howard Hughes, who promptly bought part of her contract and started serving her up as a sexy temptress.

In 1951, Hughes started Jet Pilot with John Wayne, and Leigh as a Russian femme fatale who's also a fighter pilot.

"The director, Josef von Sternberg had me constantly taking baths so I'd be dripping wet with this little towel around me. Even the T-shirts I wore had an uplifted gadget in them! But every time the U.S. air force changed its planes, Howard would begin reshooting the picture. It finally came out seven years later."

The MGM factory system slowly slipped away when audiences stayed home to watch TV. But Leigh was a survivor because she'd married heartthrob Tony Curtis in 1951 (it was her third marriage) and became the darling of the fan magazines.

She had two daughters, Kelly Lee and Jamie Lee, before the inevitable divorce in 1962.

Leigh kept right on working.

Her favorite story involves Victor Mature and the filming of Safari (1956) in Africa.

"The scene called for Vic — who had a bigger chest than any of his leading ladies — to swim across a river. The assistant said they had fired off a cannon to scare off the crocodiles but Vic wasn't moving.

"'What if one of them is deaf?' he asked. A stunt double had to do it."

She says Touch Of Evil (1958) was a hard shoot because she broke her arm in the first day.

"Look closely and you'll see it's always under a coat. We shot every night in Venice. I'd do 40 takes and Orson Welles would say 'I think you're starting to get the feel.'

"He brought in all his old friends — Marlene Dietrich in a greasy black wig, Mercedes McCambridge as a leather-clad biker. Universal hated it so much they released it as a B."

Psycho followed, plus a fourth marriage (to stock broker Bob Brandt) which has endured. A youthful-looking 67, she still acts but hasn't made a feature since 1977's The Fog. She was last in Toronto six years ago for an episode of Twilight Zone.

"It's a youth-oriented world out there. Some of the old dolls my age sit by the phone. And it never rings. But I've got my writing to keep me going.

"I've just completed my first novel. And what about a book on Touch Of Evil? I feel like I'm just getting started, like I'm a kid again."

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