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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (02/Jun/1995) - Janet Leigh glosses lightly over 'Psycho'

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Janet Leigh glosses lightly over 'Psycho'

Janet Leigh's "Psycho" is a trivial reminiscence from an actress who had a pivotal role in a seminal Alfred Hitchcock film.

The preface, in which she notes that a "high level of intense interest" in the film persists, is typical of the overwritten, conversational hyperbole that is her style.

Perhaps she is just too close to the subject. Perhaps it all happened too long ago.

More likely, she is simply no writer, although she previously penned "There Really Was a Hollywood."

Fortunately, Leigh's co-author, Christopher Nickens, who has written biographies of Elizabeth Taylor, Marlon Brando and others, has a pared-down, no-nonsense style, a working knowledge of the subject and the focus to shape the material.

His fact-filled chapters about the film, the director's style and the source material of Wiscon sin resident Robert Bloch, who wrote the novel on which the movie is based, create a sense of time, place and context for Leigh's informal first-person meanderings.

Leigh's thoughts on the shower scene in which her character of Marion Crane was killed offer few insights into the inner workings of the character.

But Nickens' commentary is more precise and coherent.

For instance, Hitchcock financed the $800,000 film himself and three actors recorded the voice-overs for Mother, the surrogate character of a deranged Anthony Perkins.

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