"Martin Balsam Cenntennial -- November 2019 And That Psycho Death Scene"

Before I go, I just had to put this one in here.

I found a link to an article -- replete with a few key photos and one delightful GIF - - entitled "Martin Balsam Cenntennial, November 2019..and That Psycho Death Scene."

For the man was born in 1919. Hey that's 20 years after Hitch(who was 60 when he made Psycho -- Balsam played Arbogast fairly early in his career, and yet he was 40!)

The article makes witty, incisive points that I myself have noticed over the years, if not remarked on:

In a group photo from 12 Angry Men -- Balsam is barely visible and less formidable than many of the men around him.

A GIF from 12 Angry Men has Balsam as the Jury Foreman suddenly saying "Oh, that's me" -- he'd forgotten which juror number was his.

(Recall that while Hitchcock cast Balsam as Arbogast on recommendation of scenarist Joe Stefano, Hitch looked at 12 Angry Men to make his choice -- and there were at least five other potential Arbogasts in that jury room...Balsam beat the competition)

The article dutifully notes Balsam's Oscar for A Thousand Clowns(1965) and all the other great films Balsam was in, but then notes: "...all of which were eclipsed by Psycho."

Points made about Balsam in Psycho here continue to satisfy me that as the years roll on, Our Friend the Internet is going to make sure that Arbogast is not unsung...I mean, he's starting to get as sung..if not more sung...than Marion. Something about the savagery and clarity of his shock killing, I would suppose.(the foyer, the staircase climb, the overhead shot, the huge bloody close up, the fall, the finishing off.) And the wit that Balsam brought to the role in the scenes before his murder.

The author notes that Balsam's "great character name" in Psycho is "Detective Arbogast." Well, at least he isn't saying "Milton Arbogast," but c'mon "Detective Arbogast" is not a name. Its a characterization. This victim is either seen as "Arbogast" OR as "The Detective" -- in sort of an iconic shorthand: Mrs. Bates in Psycho kills "The Beautiful Girl"(yep, girl back then) and "The Detective." And it means something historic each time.

The author links to several shock scenes from various movies(Blair Witch, Halloween, Psycho) via single screen shots -- and the overhead on Mother coming out of the door as Arbogast unknowingly walks into the kill zone is (to me) easily the most "classic and profound" looking shot. It has a certain grandeur to it that the other shots on the page do not have. Ironic given how "cheap" Psycho looked compared to other Hitchcock films(but not THAT cheap -- it looks like a Major Motion Picture more than it does not, especially when the Mansion is involved.)

Back on the Thousand Clowns beat, we get a photo of all four 1965 Oscar winners (at the 1966 ceremony) and what a starry group - Lee Marvin(once a character guy like Balsam , but too tall and macho to stay there) stage left, then gorgeous Julie Christie, then zaftig Shelley Winters, then Balsam...wearing his "Hombre" moustache(he flew in from the Arizona location.) One of the commenters notes "I can't stop staring at this photo" and it certainly DOES conjure up some key actors from the 60's, doesn't it? (Shelly Winters was sort of a Martin Balsam female doppelganger, and they would both sadly appear in the 1994 Psycho spoof "Silence of the Hams," with Marty doing a comedy Arbogast.)

As we've noted here before, of the five Psycho leads(Perkins, Leigh, Miles, Gavin, Balsam) , by luck of being a character guy of a certain age(40) when he made Psycho, Martin Balsam ended up in more hits and/or classics than any of the other four, less possibly Leigh, though most of her hits/classics came before Psycho, not after(The Manchurian Candidate was the big one there.)

So, hey. let's give Detective Arbogast(aargh) his Centennial -- something about that scene, that character, that ACTOR ...has lasted.