Alfred "Tex" Hitchcock , In Psycho

There were lots of reasons that , back in the day, Alfred Hitchcock was a "special director" who was as much a movie star as a director.

Ironically enough, the TV show he hosted for ten years helped him become a movie star -- it made famous the line-caricature of his face that he'd been drawing since at least the 30's, and it gave him a theme song , much as Bob Hope had "Thanks for the Memories" and Jack Benny had "Love in Bloom."

But in Hitchocck MOVIES, part of the "packaging" was: The Hitchcock Cameo

In the 30's right on through about 1956 ("The Man Who Knew Too Much"), these cameos were smallish, almost blink-and-you-miss them throwaways. For instance, in The Man Who Knew Too Much '56, Hitchcock is only seen from behind, watching some performers in a Morocco bazaar.

But once the TV show hit, the cameos became more like brief acting bits, gags, "mini-films."

Hitchocck's best cameo is in North by Northwest...the only time it occurs when his "Directed by Alfred Hitchcock" credit appears on the screen. Hitchcock appears to "race" that credit to a New York City bus he misses; the doors slam in his face. A bus will figure later in the movie, too(on the Indiana prarie.)

In The Birds, Hitchcock mixes his cameo with the introduction of his new "discovery," Tippi Hedren. As she walks into a pet shop, he walks out(walking his real-life dogs.)

His most dubious cameo is in "Torn Curtain" -- because his TV theme music accompanies it, thus "breaking the wall" twixt the motion picture and the TV series. Still, its a witty cameo...Hitchcock with a baby on his lap...that urinates on him.

And what of Psycho..his biggest hit, his most famous film, and, at the time, "the most terrifying film ever made."

Well, its a low key and witty enough little cameo. Not quite as grandiose as the ones in NXNW, The Birds, or Torn Curtain. But meaningful.

Famously, Hitchcock appears standing on the sidewalk outside the window of the Lowery Real Estate office, as Janet Leigh's Marion Crane runs in(late from a lunch that was really a sexual tryst.) As with Tippi Hedren one film later, Janet passes Hitchcock without acknowledging or recognizing him. But by appearing in the same frame, Janet becomes linked to him.

Hitchcock is in his customary suit and tie outfit, but with one minor and amusing change: he is wearing a big Texas-style Stetson cowboy hat. And its funny. And meaningful.

Funny: There is the juxtaposition of Hitchocck -- ever so British, ever so Hollywood -- wearing a cowboy hat.

Meaningful: Hitchcock is, with this hat, tying himself directly into the opening setting and atmosphere of Psycho -- "Phoenix, Arizona" -- the American Southwest and an area not much covered in American films. I think New Mexico made it into Wilder's "Ace in the Hole" and the Kirk Douglas classic "Lonely are the Brave," but Arizona isn't so covered in movies. Until Psycho. And not much there -- but enough. Hence, Hitchcock in a Cowboy hat.

Another man enters the Lowery Real Estate Office in a cowboy hot -- Frank Albertson's loathsome good ol' boy oil man, Tom Cassidy. Hitchcock has indirectly linked himself to the older man who sexually harasses Marion, and that must mean something. TWO menacing father figures in cowboy hats?

Hitchcock in a cowboy hat also establishes something that has been discussed from time to time in Hitchcock lore: the idea of Psycho as "Hitchcock's Western." This is perhaps more a matter of setting(s) and character(s) than of traditional Western plotting, but the story DOES begin in the American Southwest with two cowboy hatted characters and DOES move to the rural backwaters of Northern California, with such bucolic characters as Sheriff Chambers and his wife (who appear after yet another bucolic character -- California Charlie the car lot man, has appeared, played by veteran Western heavy John Anderson.)

In Robert Bloch's novel of Psycho, one key character wore a Stetson cowboy hat all the time...Parity Mutual insurance investigator Milton Arbogast. That's because in the book, Psycho starts with "Mary" Crane in Dallas, Texas(with Lila on business in nearby Fort Worth) and hence...Hitchocck likely saw "Psycho" as a Western from the get-go.

Arbogast becomes an urban, urbane man in Hitchcock's movie..he wears a regular city hat on his head, not a cowboy hat, and he is presented as COUNTERPOINT to the rural surroundings. I've always figured that the Arbogast we meet in Hitchocck's movie is a New Yorker transplanted to Phoenix.

Speaking of further Western ambiance, here's a familiar script exchange as it appears in Joe Stefano's screenplay(but not the movie):

(Norman turns on motel sign.)
Arbogast: What's that?
Norman: The light. The sign. We had a couple come by a week ago , said if that sign hadn't been on, they'd have thought this was an old deserted mining town.

In the movie, Arbogast cuts Norman off before he can say "mining town." ("...and that's exactly my point! You said that nobody had been here for a coupla weeks, but here's a couple came by a week ago.") But had Norman gotten to say "mining town"...the Western ambiance of Psycho would have continued.

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12 years after the release of Psycho, Hitchcock released one more final film about a psycho killer: Frenzy. That film famously opens with Hitchcock in the crowd watching a London politician make a speech about fighting water pollution...just as a dead, strangled woman's body washes up in the River Thames nearby.

Listening to the speech, a deadpan, fishfaced Hitchcock wears one prop..a black bowler hat. Very much in the British tradition(if also carrying memories of the bowler Jack Lemmon proudly shows Shirley MacLaine in The Apartment), and very much (I think) a "shout out" from Hitchcock back TO Psycho. "Look, I'm wearing a bowler hat that looks funny on me...remember when I wore a cowboy hat that looked funny on me in Psycho? And this movie's gonna be as violent and perverted as that one was, I promise you!"

Noteable about Hitchcock's Frenzy cameo: he appears TWICE in the same scene. Once listening to the politician's speech, and then secondly, for a much longer time, with the crowd watching the pick-up of the dead woman's body, a fishface in a sea of faces. I always figured that Hitchcock's extended cameo in Frenzy was his way of saying: "I've come back with this picture, you'll see, I'm proud of it." His cameos in the ill-fated Torn Curtain and Topaz are "buried" a ways into the picture. His cameo in Frenzy is right up front, he takes ownership immediately.

As he would have in Psycho , if he could have. In Psycho, Hitchcock appears in the second scene, because there was no room for him in the hotel room shared by Marion and Sam in the first scene. (There was also the issue, and this sounds in Frenzy as well, of getting Hitchcock's cameo out of the way right away so that it doesn't interfere with the gripping suspense and terrors ahead in the rest of the movie.)

Hitchcock's cameos are a great part of his legend and a helpful reason for his "personality cult." But I'd say that the cameos in Psycho and Frenzy are nicely complimentary and focused on one key thing -- a hat -- to give us "Hitchcock in character" for the film he is presenting (one film set in the American West; another as a return to London for the prodigal son.) The hats tell the tale.

And all that said, we have to figure that the Psycho Hitchcock cameo -- that Hitchcock cat in a hat -- is the most seen of ALL his cameos. Because Psycho is the most-seen of all his movies.

PS. Hitchcock's hat cameo in Psycho is "dissolved into" from the end of the hotel scene, so that John Gavin, looking forlornly down at his shoeless feet("You have to put on your shoes," Marion dismissively told him as she left him for the last time) is screen left while Hitchcock at his window is screen right. The two men share the screen for brief seconds. THIS feels meaningful, too -- Sam is losing Marion to Hitchocck, who has ugly plans for her.

PPS. For Gus Van Sant's Psycho, Van Sant had a funny idea for the "Hitchcock cameo." Hitchcock (a double) is outside that window wearing his cowboy hat, alright, but he is angrily poking Gus Van Sant in the chest with his finger and berating him ("How DARE you remake my movie!" is what we infer from the silent raging) How knowing. How funny. I liked that (though the Hitchocck double didn't look like him at all.)

PPPS. A summer 1960 issue of "Coronet" magazine had a photo spread on Psycho which I love -- these photos have never been seen anywhere since, and they are distinctive. One is of Janet Leigh at the wheel of her car tearing her hair out. Another is of Anthony Perkins running down the steps from Mom's house.

And one is of Hitchocck in his cowboy hat in the window. Except the "street scene" of Phoenix is gone -- the real projection screen has been turned off and Hitchcock is standing in front of a tarp with clothespins holding it up.