MovieChat Forums > Psycho (1960) Discussion > Anthony Perkins -- Before Psycho

Anthony Perkins -- Before Psycho

posted 6 years ago by ecarle (14979)
11 replies | jump to latest

A lot of us often try to "imagine what it must have been like" to see Psycho first hand in 1960, hopefully without having seen the trailer(that discussed both murders and re-staged the shower murder) and to have been taken by shocking surprise by everything in it: Leigh's early death, the detective not solving the crime(and dying trying), and the fruit cellar reveal.

Musta been something.

But also this surprise: the killer turning out to be...Anthony Perkins? Sweet, harmless, lovable, teen idol Anthony Perkins?

I expect it was disturbing even before the big reveal arrived to watch Sweet Tony take such complicit action in covering up his mother's two murders and burying the bodies in the swamp. Fairly early on in Psycho (as Leigh's car sinks in the swamp) , Anthony Perkins is revealed to be playing a criminal...and late Hays Code audiences had to figure that he would be arrested at the end of the picture if only for being an accessory.

And then it got worse. Much worse.

I'm of one of many generations who pretty much got introduced to Anthony Perkins AS Norman Bates. I was told (by my very own mother, as I recall) that Perkins played the killer in Psycho pretty much instantaneously when I asked what Psycho was about. The original slasher in the original slasher movie(though Hitchcock had given us such psychos as Uncle Charlie and Bruno Anthony well before Norman, neither of them was THIS nuts, in THIS way, committing THESE gory murders.)

But it remains a fact of its era that Anthony Perkins had a full-on, above the title second-tier star career playing romantic leads and fairly normal(if milquetoast) young men for seven years before appearing in Psycho. That would be: for most of the fifties.

Moreover, in a time well before the "boy man" leading men of the Cruise-Damon-Leo era, when most leading men HAD to be middle-aged to merit the honor(and when a large number of Golden Era stars seemed older than their age -- Tracy, Bogart, Gable, Cooper)...Anthony Perkins managed to get Hollywood leading roles in his early 20s.

Evidently, Perkins did it by making a splash on Broadway(as the understudy to John Kerr in Tea and Sympathy, and then in Look Homeward Angel) to prove his acting bonafides, and by having much better than usual looks -- boyish, yes, almost pretty, yes, but also handsome in a way that older women could dig.

I've seen photos of Perkins standing alongside his elder stars (like Gary Cooper and James Stewart) in the fifties, and he looks like he "fits" -- he looks like a movie star, too.

All that turned out to be missing, alas was....good movies. Oh, most of them were A-list Hollywood productions(many by top studio Paramount , which had Perkins on contract), but somehow they just weren't all that good, a lot of them. The scripts.

Or: miscasting. Perkins as the love interest of strapping Sophia Loren(taking her away from overweight but charismatic Burl Ives as Perkins father!) Or in Westerns (two of them.) Or fighting hand-to-hand with muscular Henry Silva in Green Mansions and succeeding in overpowering him and stabbing him to death(hey, wait...)

Still, Perkins was a star. Hitchcock cast Psycho with a star. (Two of them -- Janet Leigh was the other.)

Here's a quick look at the movies Perkins made before Psycho:

The Actress(1953); Perkins debuts on screen at age 21, alongside Spencer Tracy, Jean Simmons, and Teresa Wright(a Hitchcock vet.) But he's not above the title.

(Then a few years of live TV, just like Paul Newman, James Dean, Grace Kelly, and Eva Marie Saint.0

Friendly Persuasion (1956.) Perkins' big break. An Oscar nomination almost "out of the box."(Supporting.) On the poster with Old Guy Gary Cooper. Playing a pacifist conflicted by a need to serve in the Civil War. Perkins was a star -- of some level -- from this movie on.

Fear Strikes Out (1957) This one came surprisingly early in Perkins career, given how much the role "informs" Norman Bates. Its the movie Hitchcock saw that gave him the idea to cast Perkins in SOMETHING, which three years later, turned out to be Psycho. Its the true story of baseball player Jimmy Piersoll, who suffered from mental breakdowns,if not mental illness. Perkins gets a "berserk breakdown" scene on the baseball field that mirrors his fruit cellar freakout in Psycho. Interesting: Perkins' caring and articulate psychiatrist is played by Adam Williams, two years before he played the grunting knife killer Valerian in North by Northwest, a man who barely spoke a word.

The Lonely Man(1957). A Western. Perkins plays the son of ...Jack Palance? (Tougher to imagine than Burl Ives, even.) I've never seen this.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

The Tin Star(1957). ANOTHER Western. I've seen this, and actually...Perkins fits it. Because he's playing a tenderfoot milquetoast trying to be a town's sheriff under the tutelage of wise gunslinger Henry Fonda. Its a "coming of age" story about how a young man gets tough or dies, and all that harms it is that Perkins seems a bit TOO milquetoast to really come out of things as John Wayne tough. (Pairing him with Fonda, instead of Wayne, helped avoid the comparison.) Fonda took this movie on to TV as "The Deputy." (BTW, to those who find John Wayne and James Stewart too old for their roles in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance , how about: Steve McQueen and Anthony Perkins? Better casting, but not a better movie.)

The Sea Wall(1957). I'd never heard of this when I looked it up on imdb. I think that's because I used to see it listed under another title("This Angry Age.") This is one of Perkins' first forays into "foreign film" of a sort. I've never seen it.

(Let's stop here a moment to note that Perkins released FOUR films in 1957. Not only was he working in the fifties, he was like EVERYWHERE just a few years before Psycho.)

Desire Under the Elms (1958) This is the one with Sophia and Burl. From the play by Eugene O'Neill, thus proving Perkins' ability to make a prestige drama, if not a particularly well-regarded one.

The Matchmaker (1958.) This is Hello Dolly without the music, and Perkins has the Michael Crawford ingénue role(with Shirley MacLaine as his love interest.) This is perhaps the perfect "right" use of Perkins in a movie of the "normal" sort; he's an aw shucks, shy sweetie pie who lands just the right girl. (Shirley Booth and Paul Ford took the Streisand and Matthau roles.) Its odd -- Perkins seems to be "supporting" here, but he and MacLaine are bigger stars even then than Booth and Ford. (Note: the play is by Thornton Wilder, of Our Town and Shadow of a Doubt fame. Once again, Perkins acting in a class playwright's material.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

And Perkins wears an old lady dress and wig in The Matchmaker, too -- thus further inspiring Hitchcock, I'll bet, in his conception of Mother Bates when Psycho came out as a novel in '59.

Green Mansions(1959.) This shoulda been a big deal for Perkins, for he was paired with Audrey Hepburn early in her superstar period; its just their two names above the title. I think it is from a best seller. Hepburn dared to play one of those "Oona, the magical jungle girl" roles here; very fey and fantastical and grunting a lot. And Perkins overpowers Henry Silva (hey Sinatra did it in The Manchurian Candidate.) Anyway, I guess this one was an A-list bomb, the kind of movie that told Perkins even if he got cast with Audrey Hepburn, the movie wouldn't be good. Weird: I actually saw this at the theater, with my parents, when it was re-released in the 60s. I remember liking it enough...and having no idea I was watching Norman Bates up there.

On the Beach (1959) One of the things that drew Anthony Perkins to accept Psycho was when Hitchcock told him he would be billed first. For in "On the Beach," Perkins gets fourth billing(albeit above the title.) Its a Stanley Kramer "deep think epic" and it needed an all-star cast, and Kramer got four of them: Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire, and Anthony Perkins (not quite his Nuremburg cast of Tracy, Lancaster, Widmark, Clift, Garland, Dietrich and Schell, though.)
Its about the aftermath of nuclear war and how a group of people in Australia await their deaths from fallout; a true "end of the world" story. Perkins plays a Navy officer with wife and children(for the first and last time?) and he's OK in it, but he has an out of nowhere breakdown /screaming scene that screams "bad actor" late in the film. Hitchcock would save Perkins(forever?) by convincing him to take this all down a notch. Norman Bates is never this out of control, not even in the fruit cellar.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Tall Story(1960.) We reach 1960 -- the year OF Psycho -- and the Anthony Perkins movie that was released right before it. This is it: the last time audiences were presented Anthony Perkins as an average, All-American, red-blooded guy, with a hot college cheerleader on his tail for an MRS degree.

That would be Jane Fonda, whose screen debut this is. This was the start of Fonda's "sexpot" period, that would last most of the 60's through Barbarella(and then be ended in '69 with They Shoot Horses Don't They.) Fonda is game and sexy and VERY un-radical as the cheerleader who is in college solely to land a man. Perkins is the basketball star who is the target of her affections. Interesting: Perkins always suggested being a tall man, but I don't think he really was. Thin, yes. With broad shoulders, yes. But tall? Not very. Look at him facing down Giant John Gavin in Psycho. Big shot director Josh Logan (Mr. Roberts, South Pacific, Bus Stop) directed Tall Story and cast Jane evidently as a favor to dad Hank. Its a Warner Brothers comedy and its in b/w , thus linking it a bit visually to Psycho. Great support in Murray Hamilton(as the basketball coach) and Ray Walston(as the professor who won't let Perkins play if he doesn't pass a test.)

Tall Story is notable, as a 1960 film,in its rather insistent number of references to sex. Fonda wants to have it, Perkins is resisting it, marriage is evidently required. In a key scene, Fonda and Perkins visit a young married couple who live in a nice trailer -- with a small SHOWER. That's right, there's a shower scene in Tall Story. Perkins and Fonda end up married, naked and in that shower at the end of the movie.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Perkins himself cited Tall Story as his worst movie (around 1970 on Dick Cavett; there would be worse.) Perkins felt that it played super slow and unfunny. Yeah, I guess it probably does. But it is fascinating to see Perkins looking and sounding and ACTING just like Norman Bates..in a totally different context.

I've always felt that things played out this way: in "Tall Story," Perkins was cast for his great looks and fit body, as a "boy next door." But something was wrong with him -- too nervous, too many tics, too otherworldly. So Hitchcock cast Perkins a role that PLAYED UP the tics and the nervousness...and then let Perkins great looks and shy manner pull us into sympathy with the character. Perkins ended up, thus, perfectly cast in Psycho.

Shortly after Psycho became a blockbuster, Anthony Perkins gave an interview in which he said, shortly before he was offered Psycho, he was just about ready to quit movies and become exclusively a Broadway and stage actor. His movies, he felt, simply weren't working (I don't know how many were flops, he certainly got to keep making movies.) Perkins' feelings that "it was all over for him as a movie star" was one reason he risked the role of NOrman Bates, frankly.

And it all worked. Not right away -- for most of the 60s, Perkins ended up working in Europe and on stage a lot. But eventually. Came the 70's, he got cast a lot in movies. Came the 80's, he got famous and made money as Norman Bates all over again.

Still, its interesting to think -- to realize -- that Anthony Perkins played a bunch of perfectly normal, romantic fellows for much of the decade before he played Norman Bates. It was a whole other career.

A whole other Anthony Perkins.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Side-bar. I never got to see Anthony Perkins in person..but my parents did.

Through a friend of a friend, they got to attend the premiere of Friendly Persuasion in 1956. They saw Gary Cooper. They saw Anthony Perkins."He was very, very thin," said my mother, "but he had these huge shoulders." She said he looked like a big bird. Hmm...

Side-bar: Hitchcock had cast against psycho type before: with Joseph Cotton and especially with Robert Walker. He would try one more time, seeking to get Michael Caine for the psycho in Frenzy.

Caine said no. He wrote in his autobio that "I didn't want to be associated with the part." Of course, a few years later, he played a psycho for Brian DePalma in Dressed to Kill. And the year before Frenzy, he'd played a pretty psychotic HERO as the gangster out for revenge in Get Carter(he kills one woman and sets up another to BE killed, as well as killing all sorts of men.)

I think the problems were three-fold for Caine:

ONE: This psycho was a rapist, too.

TWO: He saw what happened to Tony Perkins' career.

THREE: A peaking Hitchcock came to Perkins after Vertigo and NXNW. An aged Hitchcock came to Caine after Torn Curtain and Topaz.

[–] swanstep (2715) 6 years ago

This interesting discussion reminds me to mention that a recent article in NY Magazine showed that Perkins lingers in the imagination of Casting directors etc.. The article was a Hollywood-insider discussion of long-term prospect for it-boy Timothee Chalumet (Call Me By Your Name, Ladybird). He's 22 I believe but looks 16 or 17 and has an unthreatening, possibly sexually fluid appeal. So the question was posed: is he DiCaprio (he eventually becomes a solid leading man)? or is he Perkins (he can never transcend boyish-ness as a lead and his reads-as-sexual-fluidity etc. in adulthood traps him in character parts)?

The article's content beyond raising this good question wasn't great; mainly lots of murky suggestions that could be understood as advice to Chalumet that he should start serial banging underwear models if he wants the Leo track! But the question was good.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

This interesting discussion reminds me to mention that a recent article in NY Magazine showed that Perkins lingers in the imagination of Casting directors etc..

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Yes, I think --primarily because of Psycho but also because "insiders" know that Perkins had that earlier ingénue career -- he is still a "prototype" for new young actors.

In 1980, Timothy Hutton was pitched as "the new Tony Perkins," and he won an Oscar(Ordinary People) and he became a star for awhile. But truth be told , he didn't quite have the near-perfect looks of Perkins , I'm reminded that some agent said "a movie star is unique, there can only be one, just as there is only one Blue Boy."

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The article was a Hollywood-insider discussion of long-term prospect for it-boy Timothee Chalumet (Call Me By Your Name, Ladybird). He's 22 I believe but looks 16 or 17 and has an unthreatening, possibly sexually fluid appeal. So the question was posed: is he DiCaprio (he eventually becomes a solid leading man)? or is he Perkins (he can never transcend boyish-ness as a lead and his reads-as-sexual-fluidity etc. in adulthood traps him in character parts)?

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Leo. He's a guy who is clearly one of the top two or three biggest male stars of our time, but there is still something "off" about his "grown up" features. Take a look at photos of Leo's face today and compare it to, say, Redford or Beatty or Newman in their primes. Doesn't really compare. And while I realize part of what I'm about to say is because I am so much older now then when I saw Redford/Newman/Beatty movies, it took Leo a LONG time to ditch looking like "a boy dressing up as a man." (Exhibit A: Leo in fedora and overcoat as a cop in "Shutter Island.")

The article's content beyond raising this good question wasn't great; mainly lots of murky suggestions that could be understood as advice to Chalumet that he should start serial banging underwear models if he wants the Leo track! But the question was good.

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I've always figured that Leo's banging of the chicks is a direct function of his wealth and his stardom. One might day "duh," but again, he doesn't look like the sexy swinging guys from Tony Curtis to Alain Delon who likely would have gotten women with or without movie stardom. And Leo's lifestyle is yet another "flip side of Me Too" in terms of the compliance of the young lovelies in question.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Young Leo had perfect, handsome boy features in his mega-launch, Titantic. It could be one of the toughest career climbs in movies for Leo to watch his face go from "Perkins perfect" to something less perfect, in about a decade's time, and to STILL achieve top stardom with that new visage.

No matter. Turns out that Leo can act(Titanic proved that; he's great in it) and he hooked up with Scorsese to get all sorts of cred (even if miscast in Gangs of New York and Shutter Island.) The Aviator was a good match for Leo ; and The Wolf of Wall Street, I think, put Leo entirely over the top. He looks great in the movie, he's hilarious in the movie, he's nude(ish) in the movie, he's dynamic in the movie (if rather channeling Young Ray Liotta in GoodFellas in a few scenes, you ask me.)

This gets back to the Perkins comparison, because while Perkins was more "movie star handsome" than Leo, he seems to have lacked that "something" that allowed Newman, McQueen, and Brando to move forward while his own career faded to character parts. Perhaps it was the competition of the time. Newman and McQueen could play "tough guys" -- that never really fit Perkins. Take "Psycho" out, and Perkins didn't have many big hits on his fifties resume. What kind of roles WOULD work for him in the 60's? Comedies, maybe -- a bit of Jack Lemmon type work? Some Tony Curtis type "suave and swinging" roles?

But this: I doubt that Leo DiCaprio, looking as he does today, could have made it as a sixties star. Beatty and Newman and Redford and Connery all had something very "basic" going on as movie stars: really good looks(which I don't think Leo has), and a certain macho(which Leo certainly found, in The Revenant.).

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Its hard to picture Timothee Chalumet(and what ABOUT the spelling of his first name? Precocious, or what?) going the distance to the full stardom of his fifties/sixties forbears. But Leo and Matt Damon prove...you never know. (Meanwhile, Brad Pitt has the looks AND the macho to have achieved a rather effortless stardom, even though, as some wag pointed out years ago, Pitt never really got a blockbuster like Top Gun or a franchise hit like Pirates or Batman on his resume; he's rather an art film star in mainstream movies.)

Back a bit to Anthony Perkins.

It remains an issue that while some say that "Psycho" ruined his career, I'm with those who say it made it. Perkins simply didn't have enough good (let alone great) films on his resume by 1960 and he likely would have flamed out as an ingénue with no chance to move up. Except Psycho was huge, Psycho made him an icon, Psycho changed his whole persona (and put him reluctantly in the company of Karloff and Lugosi.)

A great couple of "what ifs" for Perkins. He was in the running -- almost got it -- for Laurence of Arabia. That might have burnished his prestige bona fides and cancelled Norman Bates out(it would now be one of his TWO great roles.) Didn't happen.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

And YouTube has Perkins on film (in the 80's?) claiming that Hitchcock wanted him for the lead in Torn Curtain. Paul Newman -- a bigger star, and, said Perkins defensively, with a Universal contract at the time , got it.

It strikes me as NICE that Hitchocck evidently wanted to try to make up for whatever damage Psycho did to Perkins career by giving him the romantic action lead in a spy picture. Imagine Perkins with Andrews(or whomever) in the kissing scenes that open the picture and anchor the scene where she learns he's not a defector. And Perkins' Psycho history might have added another dimension to the Gromek murder, even as his slight build would have made the difficult fight believable.

But we also know that Torn Curtain turned out to be a mediocre Hitchocck picture. It might have been damaging for Perkins to have been in a great Hitchocck classic AND a mediocre Hitchock misfire. (Hitchcock wanted Eva Marie Saint in the female lead, not necessarily with Perkins cast; it would have been ditto bad for her -- NXNW AND Torn Curtain on her resume? Better to let Paul and Julie take the one-time-only hit for the team.)

Perkins kind of "played out his string" as a leading man. I can't see him as Hud or Harper, or Bullitt or the Cinncinati Kid, or as Clyde Barrow in Bonnie and Clyde. Funny thing is: I can't see Leo in any of those roles, either. But Leo is working in a new, different era and -- he caught the lucky breaks that make stars: Titanic, Scorsese(and QT.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

BTW: I mentioned Tony Perkins as one of the rare recipients of top stardom at a very young age when that wasn't done -- but in the fifties (with youth STARTING to take over), he had some competition: James Dean and Paul Newman. Dean died young and Newman and Perkins split up his committed parts. Newman had "it" for male stardom; Perkins not quite enough of "it" to go the distance. That said, Newman and Perkins, both above the title, are very interesting together on screen in the 1970 film WUSA, however -- almost equal in holding the screen with their looks and their iconic status.)