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FOUND: A link to the "BillBoard That Started It All" -- Psycho LA TV Debut, 1967

posted 5 years ago by ecarle (14979)
5 replies | jump to latest

we19 wrote, on another thread("The Psychiatrist in Psycho Has Died: RIP Robert Forster),

the following:

BEGIN:

The L.A. Times is on there, but only select editions. They seem to add more over time. As of this writing, the page in question doesn't show. Here's what came up when I searched for it:

https://www.newspapers.com/search/#s_place=United+States+of+America&lnd=1&dr_year=1967-1967&query=alfred+hitchcock+psycho+anthony+perkins+janet+leigh+los+angeles+times&oquery=alfred+hitchcock+psycho+anthony+perkins+jan

END

Congratulations, we19, you have found for me the TV Guide/Newspaper print ad promoting the LA debut of Psycho on November 18, 1967.

Click on the link. Go to the link FOR Los Angeles Times, November 18, 1967. Click on the small photo (with the words ANTHONY PERKINS! JANET LEIGH! PSYCHO!)

And the small photo becomes a LARGE photo of the entire newspaper page and there it is:

The print ad that pretty much set "PSYCHO" -- for me, personally, from a young age -- as something very scary and unattainable for a few years.

More: This "small" print ad was a HUGE billboard all over Los Angeles in the weeks leading up to the TV debut of Psycho in Los Angeles.

As a youth, I saw this billboard several places -- most hauntingly at night -- but I specifically remember folks pouring out -- by the thousands, from a football game in downtown LA and flowing right under the billboard -- right under the Bates Mansion and Norman.

I don't know how long this link will be available, but for me, today...it is nostalgia gold.

[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

[deleted]

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

On some devices I could not bring it up. But on a PC, I could.

I sort of worry: when will the link die?

I sort of think: Maybe I'll pay the money to join the page, print it out...and read some of the OTHER articles (the Fort Lauderdale article about Psycho getting broadcast out of Miami tells me...more than LA and NYC got "Psycho" that year. I'll guess Chicago, too.)

Its on the test page for November 18, 1967...page 35 (other pages from that date don't have it, of course.) It is only a page meant to "sample" the page, but you can see the Psycho ad. I assume if one pays up one gets a closer, longer, bigger look.

we19 you have just ended a quest of many years on my part to find that ad. A fair amount of the original "kick" came back in seeing the ad again, but I must admit...time seems to take the juice out of all nostalgia. Certain movies were seen, and certain songs were heard, when my hormones and fantasy life were young. Its bittersweet not to get QUITE the kick out of seeing that Psycho ad that I had the first time.

But it came close!

Many, many thanks!

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

By the way, if you go to Los Angeles Times November 12, 1967, page 569 you get one page with HALF of the KABC-TV Psycho ad. The half with the famous PSYCHO logo.

Its page 569 because this is the TV Guide found in the voluminous Sunday edition of the LA Times.

This particular version of the ad spread across two pages of the TV Guide -- hence a page equals one-half.

Also, on the other page -- the full page version on November 18 -- it seems the case to me that they REVERSED the shot of Perkins with his hand outstretched. And tilted it. Adds to the spookiness...

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Bump.

Because: This 1967 newspaper ad for "Psycho" is from the first Los Angeles broadcast...and the ad haunted me in print and as a billboard for years after. I wasn't allowed to watch that broadcast -- the ad seemed creepy and resonant of a very scary movie, to me.

Gotta keep this link to that ad on the board...

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

bump.

It looks like the "view" of the ad is gone (the link is dead.)

But with this bump...the link can be found again and reactivated...