An Amusing New-Found Mini-Doc from 1960 on Psycho
Cruising around the net to see if anything new on Psycho might be around, I found something I found long before ...on a DVD special edition of the film.
Its on YouTube. Title: "How Hitchcock Got People to See Psycho." Its a short film that Paramount made in 1960 in which theater exhibitors around the US were briefed on Hitchcock's "No One Can Enter the Theater After Psycho Begins" policy.
The film features real-life footage of real people lined up to see Psycho in NYC in June, 1960. Psycho got a "pre-release engagement" in June in NYC, Philadelphia, Boston and Chicago, and then rolled out to the rest of the country in August! It opened in Los Angeles almost two months after NYC? No internet back then -- the twist ending stayed unknown for a coupla months.
Its a marvelously nostaligic film, given you a "You Are There" sense of how Psycho hit in '60, and the people who lined up -- in suits and ties and dresses, in some cases. You can see the gigantic building-side PSYCHO poster(which lit up at night...THAT you can see on another YouTube piece), and the various cut-outs of Hitchocck used to promote the film. Hitch himself has a few voiceover moments, some of them rather cheesy in recognition that he was making intelligent films but for mass consumption.
The film fades out on Hitchcock's voice saying "I want you to be happy."
And that's all I've seen before.
But this newfound version suddenly "follows up" with some shall we say, banal but practical footage of a Paramount sales guy at a desk, reading from papers in his hand about what a blockbuster Psycho has been in its four Midwest/East engagements(thanks partially to that policy.) This Paramount guy then introduces several individual theater owners who tell us how Psycho has been a big hit for them and how the policy works just great.
One realizes(again) what a big hit Psycho was on first release. And it must have played more widely than just those four cities in its first weeks. One theater owner from outside of Boston says "Psycho is the biggest hit at my theater in 30 years." The manager of a Brunswick, New Jersey drive-in says the policy worked "even with the midnight show." (Ah, Psycho at a drive-in at midnight. What a way to see it!). He contends that on the first nights, there were lines of cars "three to five miles long" to get in to see Psycho.
Three to five miles long. It gives a new sense of "size" to the success that Psycho was on release, and how the tale of Marion, Norman, Arbogast, Sam and Lila became a tale the world would know by heart -- with those characters entering history, too. Such a "little" movie...such a big impact.
These Paramount execs and theater owners are all rather ordinary looking men; the "bread and butter" of the glamour business of Hollywood at the time. Hitch and his actors got rich out in Hollywood making these movies; I don't know how well the theater owners earned off of Psycho.
I know that other movies would soon take Psycho's place as the blockbuster "sold" by the exhibitors. Paramount would have Love Story and The Godfather to follow in the footsteps of Psycho...but it took awhile to get to them. Over a decade, in fact.
Still, to see this 1960 film about a 1960 blockbuster that has captured a lot of our hearts(how odd for such a creepy, horrific film)...is its own private triumph.