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The Voices of Psycho

posted 9 months ago by roger1 (3626)
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I think it was Peter Bogdanovich, in one of his critical writings(he was a critic before, during and after his stint as a top director) who pointed out that once the movies got sound , a lot of actors and actresses BECAME stars DID become stars because of "their interesting voices."

Most trained actors and actresses have good voices to start with. Part of this is the training. Its the same kind of training, however, that can yield a good disc jockey. Being a disc jockey was mainly a male domain for a long time(Casey Kasem got national exposure with HIS disc jockey voice on "American Top Forty") but the Sirrius radio channels in in the US have a lot of FEMALE disc jockeys, almost all of whom have sultry, sexy voice, it seems. (Except for that one gal left over from the MTV V-J era -- her sandpaper voice has coarsened to a deep rasp.)

If there was one actor whose voice struck me as a perfect "mix" of actor and DJ...it had to be...Dick Van Dyke. I think he WAS a disc jockey at one time. Listen to the young Van Dyke some time. His voice was very vibrant, but you could picture him behind the mike at a radio station as much as acting on the screen.

However: nobody could do a Dick Van Dyke impression. He's among a lot of actors -- more of them now -- who have distinctive voices without being distinctive enough to imitate.

Not so in The Golden Age of Hollywood(30s through 50s.) Impressions COULD be done of James Stewart, James Cagney, Henry Fonda, Cary Grant(British in origin, but "mid-Atlantic" in uniqueness) John Wayne, Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas.

One of the few Golden Age greats whose voice could NOT be imitated was: Spencer Tracy. Even though his was a quite distinctive voice and more importantly, his wry, crisp line readings were his and his alone.

I can't short shrift the great female voices of the time, though perhaps there were fewer of them: Katherine Hepburn(both the young and old version), Bette Davis ("Wot a DUMP!") Greta Garbo(folks did her accent, like Schwarzenegger..."I vant to be aw-loan.")

"Modernly" probably covers from the 60s on. And its interesting: nobody could do a Paul Newman impression or a Steve McQueen impression.

But lots could do a Jack Nicholson impression or an Al Pacino impresion or a Robert DeNiro impression.

When a "non-American accent" is involved, the impression gets easy: Arnold Schwarzenegger(and comics can do Christoph Waltz modernly as a variation on Arnold), Sean Connery with his great Scot accent ("I'm waiting to be IMPRESHED.") Cockney Michael Caine.

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Anyway, a great voice is part of the key to being a famous movie star and at the end of the fifties, Hitchcock issued a movie a year to "wrap up" one great voice per movie in the Hitchcock canon:

1956: Henry Fonda (The Wrong Man.)
1958: James Stewart (Vertigo.)
1959: Cary Grant (North by Northwest.)

Those were three great movies. Stewart and Grant rather gave the climactic "great Hitchcock performances" of their careers(each man made four Hitchcock movies, and this fourth one felt like it HAD to be the capper.)

Fonda only worked that one time for HItchocck(after Hitchocck had tried many times before to get him) but The Wrong Man isn't just one of the greatest Hitchcock movies, it is one of the greatest(and most fitting) Fonda performances.

(Alas, none of the three female leads of those movies had much in the way of a voice that could be imitated: Vera Miles in The Wrong Man, Kim Novak in Vertigo, Eva Marie Saint in North by Northwest -- Saint under orders from Hitch to lower her voice for sexiness.)

And then came the sixties for Hitchcock.

Having cashed out such Golden Era stars as Fonda, Stewart and Grant in the 50's, Hitchcock gave a tentative look at 60's talent and seems to have made this decision: "I've got to go younger than James Stewart or Cary Grant or Henry Fonda."

It would take Hitchcock awhile to work with a bona fide leading man star in the 60s. He got to work with only two, but they were two of the greatest: Sean Connery(Marnie) and Paul Newman(Torn Curtain.)

Meanwhile, once Hitchcock decided on the 1959 shock horror novel "Psycho" for his first film after closing out the fifties with North by Northwest and Cary Grant -- he went for a "low wattage" star movie.

Its always been debateable HOW low wattage Psycho was. For instance, when Hitchocck cast big stars Paul Newman and Julie Andrews in Torn Curtain, he wrote to a friend: "They are making me use big stars in this one. I didn't in the last three."

"The last three" had been Marnie(with near unknown Tippi Hedren and, frankly, Sean Connery not a full star yet, really) The Birds(with TOTAL unknown Tippi Hedren and second tier -- but young -- actor Rod Taylor) and...Psycho?

Well, that's what Hitchcock wrote to his friend. Casting stars in Torn Curtain after NOT having stars in "the last three." Psycho was one of them.

CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) 9 months ago

I suppose Hitchcock was being correct here. In Hollywood's pecking order, there are "top stars"(paid the most, that's the measure) and "second tier stars."

John Wayne (paid $750,000 for 1962's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance") and Cary Grant(paid $450,000 plus overages in for a near one-million total for North by Northwest) were top stars. Anthony Perkins' going rate when he did Psycho was $150,000 per movie. $150,000 was pretty decent really -- a lot more than most Americans made in 1959/60. But Perkins wasn't yet at the level(nor would he ever be) where he could make what John Wayne or Cary Grant made. "Second tier."

Still, $150,000 a picture meant that Perkins WAS a star. Indeed, the young Perkins was a star in an era when "young stars" weren't given the deference that they are today. Perkins would be what was called " a male ingenue" except for one thing: he got an Oscar nomination(supporting) for the prestige William Wyler/Gary Cooper picture "Friendly Persuasion" in 1956 and this conferred upon him "young star credentials" that put him in the possible star range of James Dean(already dead from a car crash before Friendly Persuasion was released.)

The trouble for Anthony Perkins, after Friendly Persuasion, is that Paramount put him in a lot of failures, often cast as rather the wimpy young male lead next to Henry Fonda(The Tin Star, a Western) and Jack Palance(The Lonely Man, a Western). Right before Psycho, Perkins got a big role in a big movie opposite a big star(Audrey Hepburn) in "Green Mansions" but the film required the spindly Perkins to fight, overcome and stab(!) to death brawny Henry Silva(the two mismatched men kept ruining takes, laughing at how ridiculous it looked.)

So Perkins came to Psycho still a star, but rather without any traction. He did another 1959 movie -(Perkins told an interviewer that, before Psycho hit so big, he had been ready to quit movies entirely for the stage.)

And the $150,0000-a-movie Perkins did Psycho for...$40,000 (the amount Marion Crane steals!) by burning up an owed movie on a Paramount contract. In return, Perkins got top billing for Psycho -- he had been FOURTH billing -- though over the title -- behind Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, and Fred Astaire in the nuclear aftermath drama "On the Beach"(1959.)

CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) 9 months ago

EVERYBODY on Psycho worked cheaper than usual ...to work with Hitchcock evidently. Janet Leigh came in for $10,000. Vera Miles was already on a personal contract to Hitch(a cheap one) so drew weekly pay. John Gavin got $25,000 -- more than his "girlfriend" Leigh...but much of his pay went to MCA agents(their boss man, Lew Wasserman, forced Gavin on Hitchocck , nicely.) Martin Balsam drew $6,000 for his short but historic character guy turn.

Who's the bigger star in Psycho? Anthony Perkins or Janet Leigh? In TV guide listings and elsewhere, Perkins goes first..usually. But sometimes the billing is "Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins." In the credits for the movie, Perkins goes first, Vera Miles goes second, but Janet Leigh gets "and Janet Leigh as Marion Crane" at the end. (On the 1960 movie poster, Janet Leigh is DEFINITELY pitched as the star -- a huge photo of her in slip and bra dominates the poster -- Perkins is relegated to a "little photo in the corner,"

Hitchcock said he wanted to "kill off a big star" in the shower in Psycho. Janet Leigh was FAIRLY big, but not among the biggest in 1960. Bigger were Liz Taylor, Audrey Hepburn, Doris Day -- one of whom(Day) had worked with Hitchcock, but it remains hard to see ANY of those women in that shower. As Janet Leigh said about her casting, "I looked like a woman who could have lived in Phoenix, Arizona." There were other factors: she HAD attained stardom with husband Tony Curtis rather as a pair -- in The Vikings, The Pefect Furlough, and Who Was That Lady? And she HAD worked for Orson Welles in Touch of Evil(menaced in her underwear at a motel!) And MCA boss Lew Wasserman was her mentor just as with John Gavin. So...Janet Leigh was starry enough.

But ah...i'm ostensibly here to talk the VOICES of Psycho.

So my lead in is this: after using the great and easily imitated voices of major stars Henry Fonda, James Stewart, and Cary Grant in the leads of his final three films of the 50s...Hitchcock used "smaller stars" in Psycho WITHOUT easily imitated voices and yet...ALL the voices of ALL the Psycho leads are distinctive, and once you've heard them in Psycho, you always hear their Psycho characters in their later roles.

CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) 9 months ago

Take Janet Leigh. No less that famous gossip columnist Hedda Hopper wrote of Janet Leigh around the time of Psycho: "Janet Leigh has the best female voice in Hollywood." I guess Hedda heard what can be clearly heard in Psycho: there is just something about Janet Leigh's voice(from the very first scene in the movie, in the hotel room.)

Psycho had then, and has now, a very clear and powerful sound system to it. (Today's digital stereo DVD sound is powerful, but when I saw Psycho on TV for the first time, I was stunned by how stereophonice the sound was THEN. Hitchocck quality!) Not an echo chamber like 50's Warner Brothers movies, but something "stereophonic."

And Janet Leigh's voice cuts right through in stereo. Its a strong, sexy, somewhat "reedy"voice. Compare the power of Leigh's voice in Psycho to Tippi Hedren's downright strange, "wobbly" voice timbre in The Birds and especially in Marnie(where she plays a woman with a terrified child inside.) And poor Eva Marie Saint in NXNW is wielding a slightly too deep voice as directed by Hitchcock.

So that's the BEST voice in Psycho: Janet Leigh.

Anthony Perkins' voice in Psycho is something unique, too. I'll jump forward to something that made me very sad when I saw(and heard) Perkins playing Norman Bates in Psycho II(1983), Psycho III(1986) and Psycho IV(1990). The Norman Bates voice of 1960 was almost entirely GONE. Perkins was still a slender man in the 80s(he was able to wear his original 1960 Norman Bates jacket -- it had been in warddrobe all those years.) Still had his dark hair, a bit more aged and wrinkled. But his VOICE ...and worse, his vocal mannersisms...had CHANGED. It was as if he took to heart th idea that Norman was "tic ridden." Now he would speak in an oddball "sing-song manner," with a kind of deadness behind the line readings, a woodeness that simply had not been there in 1960. And the boyishness in the voice was gone, too.

Perkins voice in 1960 fit the character as Hitchocck had conceived him(in a change from the book): YOUNG. Boyish. Rather sweet. Very innocent. Almost angelic...though with a telltale stammer that appeared in times of stress.

CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) 9 months ago

How Perkins reads his first line: "I'm sorry I didn't hear you in all this rain...go ahead on in, please." And other lines: "Well...a boy's best friend is his mother"(with a triumphant nod of his head.) His sweet sadness in the parlor talking about his mother...until his voice grows cold and angry.

And with Arbogast, stammering away ('What day was that?" "Th-th-th-the..next day!")

One critic called Anthony Perkins performance in Psycho "as if in a trance" and his voice does have a certain faraway quality to it.

The greatness of Anthony Perkins voice as Norman Bates in 1960's Psycho comes with the sadness in knowing that this voice was "forever gone to the past" once we heard the NEW...weird...voice of 1983 and after.

CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) 9 months ago

If Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins have the "lead voices' in Psycho, their co-stars and some of the support made THEIR voices known as well:

John Gavin: A tall, muscular, handsome man, he had the deep voice to go with the leading man status. Unfortunately, so did Rock Hudson(whom Gavin looked a bit like and was fashioned to follow.) But as I like to say, Gavin's Sam Loomis always struck me as a big strapping man who was FRIGHTENED of things --not life or death danger(he tells Lila at the Bates Motel that if she finds something out, drive back to town fast and "don't stop to tell me.")

But perhaps more scared of everyday life. Marriage (again) to Marion(he's reeling from alimony.) His hardware store life(living in a back room there!). The future. This "scared" nature comes through, I think, in the oddly clipped way that Gavin speaks -- his sentences seem to end abruptly and with a little fear.

But not all the time. I like Gavin's delivery on these lines:

Gavin: (To assistant, so as to get privacy with Lila) Bob, run out and get some lunch, will you?
Bob: That's OK Sam...I brought it with me.
Gavin: (Sharper) Then run out and EAT it!

Tough enough, and in that same scene (the hardware store scene) I thought that Gavin's reading of the following line(all fed up by the lack of information forthcoming from Lila and Arbogast) was WAY better than Viggo Mortensen's in the Van Sant remake.

Sam: Well, one of you better tell me what's going on...and tell me FAST! I can only take so much of this--
Arbogast: Take it easy, friend. Take it easy. Your girlfriend stole 40,000.

Viggo does the line with a light hillbilly twang and a bit bemused: "I can only take so much of THIS." Like its funny to him.

Vera Miles. It was and IS harder for actresses, it seems, to develop a voice that be imitated. Perhaps men like Jimmy Stewart and Henry Fonda had the benefit of a drawl. James Cagney could put on a "wise guy gangster" voice -- rather like Robert DeNiro does with less intelligence to it, today.

CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) 9 months ago

Vera's voice as Lila Crane is memorable, I think, because of the abosolute lack of sex appeal, or deference, or softness. Lila comes on angry, impatient (her great line to Sam -- "Patience doesn't run in my family" -- self-describes herself while also describing the impatient sister who stole money to finance a marriage), sometimes fighting fear.

In the remake, Julianne Moore seemed to elect a one-note rage throughout -- she doesn't cry briefly as Lila does in the hardware store("Sorry about the tears.") Moore's anger almost seemed directed at the role of Lila itself, of which Moore said "I don't have a character to play here."

Anyway, Vera Miles becomes "the feminine voice" of Psycho after Marion dies and I think a lot of people who saw Psycho HEARD Lila Crane -- the the 60's at least -- every time "working TV actress Vera Miles" showed up on Route 66, Mannix, Ironside, My Three Sons...everything.

Martin Balsam..Arbogast is played by a "character actor," but Arbogast is very much a co-lead as far as I'm concerned. Indeed, for the 20 short but compelling(and amusing) 20 minutes he is in the movie...he is the leading man. Even Norman has to defer to him and he gets two scenes where he is the only person on screen: in the phone booth and his long exploration of the Bates Motel and mansion...unto death.

CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) 9 months ago

In 1960, Martin Balsam was 40, with a young man's energy in a middle-aged man's body. He was short and stocky but reasonably trim. His voice? Well, its pretty much a deep voice, a man's voice, but it plays in a rather high register and Balsam plays with the tone from time to time. I'd say that Balsam's voice is in the service of other "actor's tricks," his little nods of understanding as the listens to Norman, his occasional pursing of his lips(as when he contemplates going up the stairs to mother's room.) And always -- energy, like here:

Norman: Let's put it this way, she may have fooled me...but she didn't fool my mother.
Arbogast: Then your mother met her! Can I meet your mother?

Ka-boom.

John McIntire shared the movie poster with Martin Balsam as a "co-star" in Psycho. Why did McIntire get on the poster when others in the supporting ranks did not? Likely because he had three scenes in the movie. The other support players(other than Balsam, who was a lead) each only got one scene -- even the cop who got two scenes didn't get to speak in the second one.

And while you can't imitate it, McIntire perhaps had the most noteable voice in Psycho: intelligent but with a touch of the cracker barrel to it, a rural lawman with a twang to it: "Your sister isn't so much missin' as she's run away." I do love McIntire's line and tone with Lila HERE:

Lila: That's what I want you to do something ABOUT!
Sheriff Chambers: Like what?

CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) 9 months ago

McIntire also gets to say the name of another character in the movie and put a nice special delivery spin on his voice. On the phone to Norman, inquiring about a certain private eye:

The sheriff: Oh, this wouldn't be a customer anyway. Private detective, name of (looks to Lila)
Lila: Arbogast.
Sheriff into phone: "AR-BO-GAST."

McIntire's line has been misremembered over the years as "Fellah name of AR-BO-GAST," which became the introduction line to a now defunct movie website called "Arbogast on Film" (with the other title on that site "In which I conduct an investigation into film so thorough that it will lead to my own death." Ha.)

And what of the other voices in "Psycho." Male, mainly:

California Charlie: Rustic but somewhat stern. He says friendly salesman things..but he is not a friendly man.
The highway patrolman: A robotic voice to go with his robotic manner, but some humanity seeps through: "There are plenty of motels in the area. You should have...I mean just to be safe."
Cassidy: An Arizona oilman with a Texas twang and a certain braying, disturbing tone. He gets such bizarre phrases to say as "I am dying of thirstaroonie," and "Hot creepers!" (When his script was used for Van Sant's 1998 remake, scenarist Joe Stefano said "I have no idea where I came up with the phrase hot creepers.")
Lowery: The pinched, nervous voice of a pinched, nervous man.
The psychiatrist: Simon Oakland used pretty much his usual voice but pushed it a bit louder and more bombastic than usual. We will never forget what HE tells us.

And a few women:

Caroline at the office: Hitchocck's daughter Pat Hitchcock, born in America to British parents and with somewhat of a British manner even without an accent.
Mrs. Chambers: Perhaps the most reassuring voice IN Psycho. Lurene Tuttle -- out to try to be reassuring to Lila, supportive of her husband. And with the great whispered line "They found them together -- in bed!"

CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) 9 months ago

And last but not least:

The voice of the the "terror of Psycho herself": Mrs. Norma Bates.

Some trivia. She is never called NORMA Bates in the movie. It was important in Robert Bloch's novel: Norman had THREE personalites: Norma(the mother), Norman(the son still a mental child) and "Normal" (the normal young man Norman presents at the motel desk.)

Mrs. Bates DOES yell the line "I'mmmmm...Norma Bates!" as "she" enters the fruit cellar to kill Lila. That line is clear as a bell on today's DVD prints...but I don't remember it from initial viewings of Psycho -- has it been "pushed up on the soundtrack?"

Otherwise, Mrs. Bates speaks only three times in Psycho:

ONE: Overheard by Marion up at the house: "Tell her she won't be feeing her ugly appetite with MY food...or my SON!" And the elegant line: "...in the cheap erotic fashion of young men with cheap erotic minds." (I love Mrs. Bates elegant verbiage in Psycho the original. In the coarse sequels, she kept calling young women "sluts and whores." Converting an eloquent Hitchcock villain into a bit of white trash.)

TWO: Arguing with her son as he carries her downstairs "No, you are not going to be put me in that dark, dank, fruit cellar. Think I'm FRUITY, hah?"

The old crone's jokey manner in this scene has always disturbed me. She's making lousy jokes shortly after we have seen her savagely and brutally stab two innocent people to death. It renders her all the more monstrous.

THREE: In the jail cell at the end, as "Norman's voiceover thoughts AS Mother." Her voice is softer here, more normal "Its sad when a mother must say the words that condemn her own son." But there's a reason she's softer: she's out to finger NORMAN as the mad psycho killer. She couldn't move anymore than one of Norman's stuffed birds. (As as she says it, "stuffed beards.")

CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) 9 months ago

Some folks - in writing and in conversation -- have complained that the big twist in Psycho was covered by a big CHEAT -- Mother's voice. So clearly a separate female actress, so clearly not Anthony Perkins.

I feel that way, too but there is this: we have learned that Mrs. Bates was voiced by one woman(Virginia Gregg, who also voiced her in Psychos II,II, and IV before dying) and one man (Tony Perkin's friend, photographer Paul Jasmin, who would do his old lady voice at parties.) It is rumored that John McIntire's wife, actress Jeanette Nolan, also voiced Mrs. B and then "all the different voices, female and male" were spliced together.

Maybe. Here's what I figure: Virginia Gregg does Mother when Marion overhears her. Paul Jasmin does Mother when she's joking about fruit cellars and such. And Virginia Gregg comes back -- as womanly as possible -- as Mother in the end trying to frame Norman for the crimes. (I've always liked the specificity of her accusation: "He wanted them to think that I killed those girls -- and that man" -- we realize that these were mainly sex crimes against women, that one man stumbled onto them and that Norman didn't see Marion as anything other than just ONE of Mother's victims.)

And so Psycho -- with no famous voices in it (no James Stewart, no Henry Fonda, no Cary Grant...and how about the accented women in Hitchcock's films? -- Ingrid Bergman and Marlene Dietrich -- Madeleine Kahn did a great Dietrich in Blazing Saddles) -- nonetheless gave us a classic movie with some very memorable voices. Janet Leigh's above all, then Anthony Perkins ("locked in" as THE Norman Bates, the YOUNG one for Hitchcock...accept no subsitutes, not even Perkins himself in the sequels.)

Hitchcock always did have as much an EAR for actors(their VOICES) as an eye for them. Right up to the villains in his final three films -- John Vernon(baritone Castroite in Topaz), Barry Foster(Michael Caine knock-off Cockney psycho killer in Frenzy) and William Devane(Nicholson-esque drawl in Family Plot.)

[–] telegonus (736) 8 months ago

That remark, as delivered by Lurene Tuttle, was one of the many comic moments in an otherwise serious and unsettling movie. She was a veteran radio actress, appeared frequently on TV in the 50s-60s, and very good. Miss Tuttle spoke that line in a rather loud whisper to Vera Miles, and in a manner consistent with the time in which Psycho was made.

[–] roger1 (3626) 8 months ago

That remark, as delivered by Lurene Tuttle, was one of the many comic moments in an otherwise serious and unsettling movie.

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Telegonus, welcome! (I'm working on the return of ecarle, but its still roger1 for now.)

Hitchcock always rather too broadly said that he saw Psycho as a comedy, which to me was always a way of revealing that Hitchcock sometimes just wasn't quite articulate enough. (MOVIES were his language.)

There aren't big laughs in watching naked Janet Leigh (in the still innocent movie year of 1960) getting stabbed brutally to death for seconds on end and then having the camera linger on the corpse.)

But Hitchcock also felt that when movies get TOO suspenseful -- they need little jokes along the way to help the audience let off steam laughing WITH the movie, and not at it.

Tuttle's whispered line and gossipy head shake after it is exactly one of those jokes. (It comes after the SECOND shock murder of the movie, and in the dead of night.) This is also a BIG reveal in the movie(Mother poisoned her lover and took a big dose herself of the poison), and perhaps the nature of the crime is ALSO being soft-pedalled with the joke. (Plus: Mrs. Bates in BED with an man not her husband.)

Great stuff all around. One of the many moments in Psycho that keep it humming along.

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She was a veteran radio actress, appeared frequently on TV in the 50s-60s, and very good.

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I was sort of hoping that you would drop in on this thread, telegonus, given your command of the actors of radio, TV, and movies from a particular series of early decades. Thank you.

---

CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) 8 months ago

Miss Tuttle spoke that line in a rather loud whisper to Vera Miles, and in a manner consistent with the time in which Psycho was made.

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Modern critics seem to think that this line -- and Tuttle's reading -- reflects "a dumb era in movies." A silly line, a silly reading. I don't think THEY get the joke. Whether in 1960 or now, Hitchcock(and scenarist Joe Stefano) are gently mocking Mrs. Chambers as a small town strait arrow who might be scandalized by such things.

By the way Hitchocck himself rather mocked the expositional nature of the scene at the Sheriff's house in the middle of the night(To Truffaut he said, "Here is a perfect example of what happens when they go to the police...they (shouldn't) go to the police, because it is dull.)

But i think it is yet another great scene -- of a certain type -- in Psycho.

To repeat, this scene follows the REALLY shocking in 1960 SECOND stabbing of a second victim -- a tough man, yet. Audiences were plenty spooked and comes now this old couple in pajamas and nightdress and robe to "bring some order to the scene." Except they open NEW horrors(a murder suicide), ALMOST give away the twist(If Mother is dead, Norman must be the killer) and then PROTECT the twist ("...It that woman up in the house was Mrs. Bates, who is that woman buried out in Greenlawn Cemetary?")

Hitchcock's visual sense is evident in even this expositional scene:

ONE: How John McIntire is framed in the "V" of his staircase.

CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) 8 months ago

TWO: A REALLY tricky "self imposed visual challenge": Hitch keeps cutting from Sam and Lila to Sheriff Chambers - using MRS. Chambers in BOTH shots. She is at the right of the shots of Sam and Lila, at the left of the shots of Sheriff Chambers. Hitch pretty much never blows her position -- though I have read in one book on Psycho that Hitchcock told his crew he thought he DID blow that scene blocking when he saw the scene in rushes, "but its too late to fix it now." Nah...it works great as a "game" being played with the audience: "The Incredible Two Mrs. Chamberses..Jumping from Frame to Frame."

[–] swanstep (2715) 9 months ago

Voice as an aspect of stardom probably isn't considered nearly enough, so bravo to the effort in this thread. I have a very minor contribution to make with a small Psycho connection.

In the year of Psycho, 1960, the biggest selling pop-hit in the US (#1 for a then record 9 weeks) was Percy Faith’s “Theme From A Summer Place“. You all know it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSsiS-v6_6M
This is *still* the biggest instrumental hit that there has ever been on the US charts and it's in the top 25 biggest US hits ever. It's impossible, from a Psycho perspective, to not hear Herrmann's strings as directly attacking the signature string-piece of its time.

Well, I finally got around to watching the hit film Faith's tune came from, A Summer Place (1959) dir. by Delmer Daves (Broken Arrow, 3-10 to Yuma). The biggest name in the film is arguably Grease-punchline Sandra Dee followed by her object of lust Troy Donahue, but it's the two fathers of the teens who really jump out. Richard Egan playing Dee's character's liberal father is a somewhat generic big handsome dad-dude for the time but he's also got a great sonorous voice that makes the pretty corny dialogue almost poetic. Donahue's dissolute dad is played by Arthur Kennedy who most of us know as the reporter-figure in Lawrence of Arabia (1962) - again he's got a *great* voice that makes average dialogue sing (and he's a good physical actor too, really taking over many of his scenes).

A Summer Place (1959) is a solid film with a famous theme and two great voices (which we'd kill for today) to get us though its more eye-roll-inducing scenes. Worth a look, in part because it's good to listen to. (One slight problem with ASP, typical for the time, see also NbNW, is that its supposedly east coast scenes are all filmed in California as the coastal mountains in the backgrounds give away.)

[–] roger1 (3626) 9 months ago

Voice as an aspect of stardom probably isn't considered nearly enough, so bravo to the effort in this thread.

--

Thanks. It was a musing that originated with my arguing -- "out here in the real world" with someone over how little I enjoyed James Stewart as a movie star(even though he was quite a big one in the fifties after a slump) , how somewhat discouraging it was to me that Hitchcock used him in FOUR movies, how indeed "un-handsome and old" he seemed to me against Grace Kelly and especially Kim Novak but...well, he sure did have a great VOICE, and I guess that's what truly made him a star.

And that triggered more thoughts: how Hitchocck used quite a few of the great voices in movies: Grant, Fonda, Olivier, Laughton, Dietrich, Bergman, Peck (thought THAT said, he certainly missed out on great voices like Bogart and Cagney).

And THAT sent me to Psycho and this idea: "Psycho didn't have any top stars -- how about THEIR voices?" I remembered stumbling onto that old Hedda Hopper quote about Janet Leigh having the best female voice in Hollywood -- and it was off to the races. Moreover -- and I mean this -- Anthony Perkins voice and manner in Psycho are very, very special ---and he just pretty much lost ALL of that by the time the so-so sequels came around in the 80s.

I mentioned how people couldn't much imitate Spencer Tracy's voice -- the modern simile to that, I think is Gene Hackman -- who was SORT OF Spencer Tracy in his day -- but who ALSO (like Tracy) DID have a distinctive voice, and I have to used the same words I used about Tracy -- "wry and crisp." After his retirement, Hackman starting doing voice ads for Loew's Home Improvement and -- you could just TELL it was Hackman.

CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) 9 months ago

And here's one of my favorites with a key additive: Walter Matthau. One of my favorite stars of my childhood and youth. I think it is because I always identified with the character support in movies(hello, Arbogast!) and I had the pleasure of watching Matthau move up the career ladder, first as "key support" (to Douglas in Lonely are the Brave, Grant in Charade, Peck in Mirage) then to get that Oscar in The Fortune Cookie(along with getting his comedy partner Jack Lemmon), then on to full stardom(with Lemmon again) in The Odd Couple -- and then pretty much sustaining as a star through the entire 70's and a bit of the 80s.

What took Matthau to stardom when Martin Balsam, Jack Klugman, Ed Binns, and Jack Warden didn't make it? Well...he was tall. And he was funny.

But perhaps mainly..he had that VOICE. New York and he could play it dry and deadpan or yelling and honking.

But this: I look at photos of Walter Matthau and -- the stardom can barely be seen. He had a somewhat funny face as a younger man...a wrinkled look in his older age. In between, at his most "handsome" (try photos from Cactus Flower, A New Leaf, and Charley Varrick)...just OK. The photos don't show the star. Because you can't hear Matthau's VOICE.

I've read that as he got older, Jack Nicholson hated photos to be taken of him -- its one reason he wore sunglasses at night and at the Oscars. Nicholson KNEW that HIS voice was a big part of his stardom. He surely was handsome -- with a killer smile - in his youth -- but as he aged and gained weight Nicholson counted on his voice to keep him sexy and charismatic. Photos couldn't show that.

CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) 9 months ago

I have a very minor contribution to make with a small Psycho connection.

---

Au contraire, swanstep! Once I saw where you were going with this one -- "A Summer Place" -- it opened up all sorts of food for thought -- and memories.

And I will get ahead of myself and say that its great that you focussed on two great voices in that movie that one doesnt much think about anymore -- Richard Egan and Arthur Kennedy (more on THEM, anon.)

---

In the year of Psycho, 1960, the biggest selling pop-hit in the US (#1 for a then record 9 weeks) was Percy Faith’s “Theme From A Summer Place“. You all know it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSsiS-v6_6M
This is *still* the biggest instrumental hit that there has ever been on the US charts and it's in the top 25 biggest US hits ever.

---

Well, that SONG is the first "mega-dose of nostalgia" from a time and place. I've been noodling around on Breakfast at Tiffany's (over at ITS BOARD, see I don't stay OT here) and "Moon River" of 1961 is another "song of an era." For me, both of these songs are from my childhood, and I remember them ALL OVER the "easy listening channels" that my parents kept on in the car(en route to rock , I learned all the "adult" songs from movies and all the standards from Sinatra)..."insta-nostalgia."

And over the years, the "Summer Place" theme song was used in nostalgic ways: in "Animal House", a 1978 movie set in 1962, they didn't/couldn't use the ACTUAL "Summer Place" theme song, so composer Elmer Bernstein cooked up a "quasi-Summer Place" using the same backbeat and strings. Tellingly, it is over a scene of an innocent young college boy being confronted with an unconscious girl and -- should he or shouldn't he? (He doesn't -- this was an innocent movie at heart.)

CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) 9 months ago

In 1981, the movie "Diner" (set in 1959 Baltimore) sent its buncha guys to a local movie theater to WATCH A Summer Place, with at least one girl(whom Mickey Rourke sets up for a very sexual prank in a popcorn box.). Here they "tie in" "A Summer Place"(with a clip shown in the theater) for its sexuality, its "teen audience in search of sex story" and these guys working a sex prank into GOING to the movie. It all spoke to an era quite nicelly, I thought.

Wrapping up: in 1989's "Batman"(still my personal favorite comic movie - mainly because of Nicholson, followed closely by Keaton and Burton, Jack's Joker arrives to "court" Kim Basinger by having a brawny henchman hold a HUGE boom box...from which in moments emits the "theme from A Summer Place." Makes sense -- the Joker is about Jack Nicholson's age and so that's the music the Joker WOULD like.

...and I'm sure the theme from "A Summer Place" has been used many other times to connote a time and a place.

swanstep's conjuring of "A Summer Place" added another movie -- albeit one I have not seen -- to that group I so love from the "50s/60s cusp." I just added Breakfast at Tiffany's(which I DID see on release) to that list, but here are the other usual suspects: Some Like It Hot, Anatomy of a Murder, North by Northwest, The Apartment...Psycho.

"Objectively," they are from a time when the Hays Code was being pushed and prodded to "give up" and acknowledge sex(mainly) but also TRUE terror(Psycho, via ultra-violence).

CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) 9 months ago

On the basis of the trailer(hilarious), a couple of Youtube clips, and a reading of the story synopsis, I will have to come out and say that I think A Summer Place lacked the sophistication or "emotional IQ" of Hitchcock's films or Preminger's "clinical" Anatomy of a Murder. I'll "ding" Billy Wilder a bit because his movies felt a bit more Borscht Belt and broad in some of their gags(Lemmon trying to watch Grand Hotel on his TV as commercials overrun it) but.."A Summer Place" is pretty clearly (ominous music)....a soap opera!

Not that there's anything wrong with that. But you can see the players hitting the notes hard, histrionic, with dialogue not quite subtle enough.

And you've got moments like a husband yelling at his wife "You're a SLUT!" not only just in time for their grown-teen son(Troy Donahue, natch) to enter the room behing them as if on cue, but with that "DUH-DUH-DUM!" melodrama music that Herrman somehow managed to avoid.

About that trailer: the first thing I noticed is that the narrator for the trailer wasn't that "usual guy"(IMDb and Moviechat posters have his name, I don't) who ALWAYS narrated trailers in the 50's and 60s"(Vertigo, for one -- "Vertigo? What IS vertigo?") but ..someone else. I listened a second time and behold - the narrator was a lead in the film: Arthur Kennedy. Who indeed had a great, sonorous, rich, slightly high pitched voice.

I thought about how -- in my experience of Kennedy -- he seemed to be a guy(at the movies at least, he was Broadway) ...always willing to take the "weak villain" role. I think he played two of them in James Stewart Westerns. He's the "straight arrow" brother of Bad Boy Frank Sinatra in "Some Came Running." And here he is the husband cuckolded by Dorothy McGuire.

CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) 9 months ago

And yet, was he not GREAT - -and with that GREAT voice -- as cynical reporters in BOTH Elmer Gantry(from teh Psycho year of 1960) and "Laurence of Arabia" (pay dirt! a journeyman American character guy in David Lean's intenational classic masterpiece.)

Every movie generation has so MANY character actors. I'm not sure why I give short shrift to Arthur Kennedy while extolling Richard Boone(who was actually a TV star and over the title movie star for awhile) and Martin Balsam(whose Arbogast is history, but who had lots of other great roles). Maybe because Kennedy was just too willing to play the schmuck.

Richard Egan and Dorothy McGuire are married to other people as A Summer Place begins. With McGuire, its the alcoholic broke blue blood Kennedy. But she's got a better deal that Egan with HIS spouse. Just on the basis of the trailer and a couple of YouTube scenes, its clear that Constance Ford was hired to "take beyotch up to 11!" -- a Karen, they call them now. And a bigot as well.

There is a clip of scene from A Summer Place on Youtube. Its a scene that got a standing ovation at a Radio City Music Hall screening in '59, I've read. Long suffering husband Egan calls out his horrible wife for her bigotry -- which is evidently against all races(Egan names Jews and "especially Negroes") and types -- even children (too loud.) I suppose you COULD generate a standing ovation as Egan tells off this film's ultra-villain but...I mean, Snidely Whiplash wasn't ever this evil.

Its a reminder for modern folks that all this "Hollywood is woke" business goes way back, but in sort of an easy way -- a woman with the full laundry list of hate that Egan details for his wife would be part of a fringe of society -- the scene begs how and why Egan ended up with her in the first place.

Now that's the bigotry part, but Egan also tears into his wife for her puritanism on sex "You always make th word sex sound dirty!"

CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) 9 months ago

And that's the playground that "A Summer Place" really wanted to play in 1959: sex.

Sex between "the adults" : Richard Egan and Dorothy McGuire, once young lovers, now trapped in horrible sexless marriages to other people; sex between "the teens" (30-something "teens) - Sandra Dee and Troy Donahue, the REAL stars of this film, which evidently targeted teens more than adults.

And how sorta-kinda incestuous, eh? The film's ultimate goal is sexual coupling between a man and a woman and then sexual coupling among their CHILDREN (by other people.)

The trailer has the Evil Beyotch yelling at Sandra Dee that she is going to make "a doctor...FULLY EXAMINE YOU!!" -- to check out virginity, no doubt and we're reminded how hard the barriers remained in 1959 against "pre-marital sex," and how clinical sex WAS in the movies and in classes -- anybody remember trying to define "heavy petting"?

The trailer ends with a phrase on screen along the lines of "The kind of screen story that modern audiences are demanding to see!" or something like that. I'm reminded of Hitchocck telling Truffaut that he opened Psycho with the hotel post-sex scene because "I know that's how young people behave and what they wanted to see." Though Psycho got big bucks with blood and screams, it joined in the desire to SHOW pent up desire that was such a big deal in the 50's/60s cusp.

Indeed, among all the more graphic or clincial sex movies of the cusp -- I add the otherwise traditional "North by Northwest" to the mix almost solely on the basis of Eva Marie Saint's overt and continual sexual come on to a very receptive Cary Grant on the train. Their love scenes on the train culminate in a night together in a sleeping car, the Hays Code line "You're going to sleep on the floor" -- which is about as cold a shower as a movie ever gave a sexual scene except -- maybe that line was just for the censors.

CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) 9 months ago

A bit on the other stars of "A Summer Place":

Richard Egan. Indeed, a great voice. And a man with great looks, a muscular body -- but, full stardom just didn't come.

Looking over his movies, it looks like Richard Egan in the 50's was like Rod Taylor in the 60s -- a second tier leading man who lasted about a decade in movies and-- over. Back to TV series.

You can figure that Hitchcock wouldn't have ever felt like using Richard Egan. In the fifties, Hitchcock generally NEEDED bigger stars in his movies: Grant, Stewart...Fonda, Clift. Came the 60's, Egan was too old, I"d think for Sam Loomis..possible for The Birds...not big enough for Marnie or Torn Curtain.
Casting directors and producer/directors like Alfred Hitchcock knew the "gradients of stardom."

That said -- and I"ve said this before -- Hitchcock seemed to work as much with "small stars" as with big ones. Particularly in male leads: Joel McCrea, Robert Montgomery, MacDonald Carey, Bob Cummings, Farley Granger, John Forsythe. I suppose Richard Egan would have fit one of THOSE roles had he been active at th time. But maybe not. They all required some wit that I don't see in "A Summer Place."

AND: the true stars: Troy Donahue and Sandra Dee. Indeed, how quickly they became "50's punch-lines" in Grease. Donahue -- playing a weak n'er do well wastrel trying to marry Talia Shire -- seemed sadly fitting casting in Godfather II -- I mean there he is in a stone-cold Best Picture classic and even THAT is making fun of his hasbeen status.

In real life, Sandra Dee soon after A Summer Place married the hip, brash (and doomed-to-die young) Bobby Darin and for a few years there, they both had it all. And then they didn't. ("True fact": Hitchcock actually considered Sandra Dee for Melanie in The Birds, I've read.)

CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) 9 months ago

I'm reminded of how John Wayne used, in successive "50's/60's cusp" Westerns -- Ricky Nelson(Rio Bravo), Frankie Avalon(The Alamo) and Fabian(North to Alaska.) The non-Western version of this is Dee and Donahue in A Summer Place: "teen idol ingenue stars" to support the mature stars. And Nelson, Avalon, and Fabian were sold as singers first(only Nelson really was.)

Which is another reason to underscore how Anthony Perkins rose above all THOSE folks. Evidently he WAS a teen idol, and DID have a hit record("Moonlight Swim") but he ALWAYS managed to parlay his Oscar nomination into more serious "real star" casting. For the fun of it, consider one of these guys as Norman Bates: Fabian, Frankie Avalon, Ricky Nelson, Troy Donahue. NO CAN DO!

CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) 9 months ago

t's impossible, from a Psycho perspective, to not hear Herrmann's strings as directly attacking the signature string-piece of its time.

---

Yes, I hear it -- having never heard it before -- "looking for it here." But its a reminder: a very similar stroking of the violin strings can underscore either suspense(Psycho) or sexual romance(A Summer Place.)

I've read of the Psycho credit theme violins turning up again in the Beatles "Eleanor Rigby." It sure is THERE. Evidently somebody got Paul McCartney to fess up -- but he just said he was influenced by Herrmann's Farenheit 541 score for Truffaut(1966.) Which strikes me as impossible, movie and song were too close together.

And -- as I've noted before -- isn't it NIFTY that Psycho has NOT ONLY the screeching viollns for the murder scenes, but this hyper-nervous credits theme AND the "deep three chords of madness" that conclude the movie in its last seconds after appearing throughout the film.

---

A Summer Place (1959) is a solid film with a famous theme and two great voices (which we'd kill for today)

---

How nifty you thought of the voices of Richard Egan and Arthur Kennedy to remind us -- a LOT of actors had and have great voices. I suppose Stewart and Grant rose to the top because their voices could be imitated. Its a thought.

---

CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) 9 months ago

to get us though its more eye-roll-inducing scenes.

--

And it looks like A Summer Place has some eye-rolling scenes.

That's really why I like Hitchcock movies of the cusp (and before, if not after.) Hitchcock dialogue(written by others) was always so cool, intelligent...deadpan for actors to PLAY deadpan. He saved the histrionics for The Birds and Marnie, and suffered accordingly, I think.

Side-bar: a great, sophisticated, almost in improv acting moment I like from Cary Grant in NXNW comes during the Glen Cove scene as Mason accuses him:

Mason: Now , Mr. Kaplan, are you going to cooperate?
Grant: Wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute wait a min--- Kaplan? My name's Roger Thornhill...its never been anything else.

That "wait a minute" pitter-patter is so REAL, like a real person talking, away from the high dudgeon of A Summer Place type melodrama.

Or maybe it was just Grant's style. In Charade:

Audrey Hepburn: Well, didn't you hear me? I want you to give the money back!
Grant: I heard yuh, I heard yuh, I heard yuh!

I'll bet the scripts only had the phrase once -- "Wait a minute." "I heard you."

CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) 9 months ago

(A Summer Place is) Worth a look, in part because it's good to listen to.

--

I'm reminded of Breakfast at Tiffany's of two years later -- the constant flow of the main theme throughout the movie creates a poignant mood and never loses it, and becomes part of the entertainment value of the film itself. (

---

One slight problem with ASP, typical for the time, see also NbNW, is that its supposedly east coast scenes are all filmed in California as the coastal mountains in the backgrounds give away.)

---

Ah, but those rocks at Big Sur with the crashing waves and deep blue sea...gorgeous. Even for the "Glen Cove" New York shoreline(flat in real life) in NXNW.

Which reminds me: it is always fun to suddenly remember something long forgotten BUT:

I go to the Monterey/Carmel area from time to time...have, over YEARS....and one year I went there with a companion who booked us on a "bus tour of Carmel coast movie locations."

The bus was equpped with televsion sets to watch clips from movies filmed in Carmel/Monterey and the bus driver would pull up to a location, show the movie scene on the TV, and let us look at the location for REAL out the window.

I remember four such locales from the bus tour:

The "inn" from A Summer Place.

The tree where James Stewart first kisses Kim Novak(with the waves crashing behind them) in Vertigo. (Of course, in the movie,the ocean is a process footage behind them.)

The streets of Carmel as shown in Clint Eastwood's 1971 thriller "Play Misty for Me."

A stretch of sandy ocean beach on the famous "17 mile drive" near Carmel...used by Director Marlon Brando for some outdoor footage in the WESTERN "One Eyed Jacks."

Not a bad tour. Maybe they still run it.

[–] roger1 (3626) 9 months ago

I wanted to return with a follow-up to my "50's/60s cusp" theory.

With some additives, here are some of the great movies -- classic or otherwise of that "Hays Code envelope pushing" 50s/60s cusp: Some Like It Hot, Anatomy of a Murder, A Summer Place, North by Northwest, Psycho, The Apartment, Spartacus, Breakfast at Tiffany's."

Again, the envelope they were pushing was largely sex, and mainly heterosexual sex(though Some Like It Hot, Spartacus, and in its own way Psycho touched on homosexual content.) Psycho was the big shocker of the bunch and thus went "all the way" -- the biggest hit and landmark in its bloody horror violence(with a little help from bloody Spartacus.)

But still...the Hays Code WAS there, and churches in particular still held censorship power.

JUMP TO: The "60's/70's cusp."

The R and X ratings arrived in 1968. SOME 1968 movies were either rated R or had R content. "The Kiling of Sister George"(from Robert Aldrich) was about Lesbians. Rosemary's Baby was about Satan. I have no idea what "Secret Ceremony" was about, but it had Old Time Stars Liz Taylor and Robert Mitchum(along with Rosemary herself, Mia Farrow) in a studio-made X-rated film.

And that was just 1968. With a bunch of taboo-breaking greenlights 1969-1971 gave us The Wild Bunch(Psycho bloody violence times 100); Midnight Cowboy(the first X-rated Best Picture -- since downgraded to R) Medium Cool and Putney Swope(more X -- with nudity and politics) The Boys in the Band(gay men); MASH the movie(sex, nudity and ultra-blood in the operating room), Patton(with the general swearing a blue streak -- minus the F word - in his opening speech); Straw Dogs, A Clockwork Orange and Dirty Harry(a lotta rapes)...and more.

That 60s/70s cusp pretty much blew the doors off of all the tentativeness of the 50s/60s cusp...and made for a more gritty, semi-documentary realistic style that didn't partiuclarly thrill THIS classic movie fan. But there it was.

CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) 9 months ago

stretching out from that 1969-1971 cusp, two movies that smashed two remaining taboos came with Deliverance in 1972(male-on-male rape) and Chinatown in 1974(father-daughter consensual incest.) That about took care of everything. (Not to mention all the international movies like The Devils and Fellini Satyricon and The Damned.)

Whereas I only partially experienced the 50s/60s cusp -- mainly on TV years after -- I lived through the 60s/70s cusp with some real limits on what I could see(The Wild Bunch, Dirty Harry, Straw Dogs) -- I had to wait a few years to see all the X rated movies once I was of age -- got that done at "revival movie theaters" in Los Angeles.

Funny: does the 70's/80s cusp really matter? By 1979, Spielberg had made his mark with Jaws and Close Encounters(and 1941 would bomb); Lucas had American Graffiti and Star Wars in the marketplace with The Empire Strikes Back to start the 80s like the 70s ended. "Alien" was there to merge Psycho and Jaws WITH Star Wars. And a whole bunch of "prestige" Oscar bait like Kramer vs Kramer and Ordinary People hit. Also, SNL joined Lucas and Spielberg in running the decade: from Animal House in 1978 through Caddyshack and The Blues Brothers in 1980 and on through Bill Murray and Eddie Murphy in the 80s(after Belushi died), SNL powered a lot of 80's comedies.

Perhaps the 70's/80s cusp saw a "downshift" from just how rough and radical the 70's had been and how the promise of the 60's was long behind us...

[–] ElizabethJoestar (946) 8 months ago

[–] roger1 (3626) 8 months ago

I feel like the 50s/60s cusp is often underappreciated by modern cinephiles. A lot of people act like the late 1960s ushered in all these changes overnight and the 1950s was nothing but safe, sanitized conformity, when you already had quite a few films pushing the envelope in the 1950s, slowly but surely.

---

Yes, what's interesting is that you can see almost EXACTLY where these movies are pushing the envelope and EXACTLY where they had to pull back. In North by Northwest, Eva Marie Saint pretty much seduces a willing Cary Grant in her sleeping car and at the big moment -- says "You'll be sleeping on the floor." BOOM. Hayes Code. Though likely he did NOT sleep on the floor.

--- And then you had films that had darker undercurrents even without any censorship-baiting content. Even a thriller like THE DESPERATE HOURS-- very tame my modern standards-- has a lot of critical commentary on the so-called prosperity and security of 1950s American society.

---

Yes, but here's my thing about that "cusp" -- it always felt to me like the filmmakers of the moment (Hitchcock, Wilder and Preminger took the lead) somehow saw the end of the fifties and the imminent sixties as their "cue" to challenge the censors. The Desperate Hours from 1955 was still "held back" on certain things.

I watched The Desperate Hours on NBC Saturday Night at the Movies in the mid-sixties, with my parents. I found the film excruciatingly suspenseful and my young sensitive soul was hurt bad by the scene where the convicts chased down an innocent garbage man and killed him for discovering them. There was nothing gory or violent about the scene.(they shot him)..just the cruelty of such an innocent man NOT getting away felt bad to me. So you could say that, indeed, 1955 was as hard edged as later.

CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) 8 months ago

I remember one of my parents taking advantage of the opening scene in which the boy's bicycle left out on the front lawn told the convicts there was a family in there and worth kidnapping because of the kids. "You see? said one parent, "don't leave your bicycle in the front yard, or THAT could happen to us." Parents always dug scary life lessons in movies, for kids.

CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) 8 months ago

As for the 70s/80s cusp, it's definitely more of a let down and way less exciting.

--

I suppose one reason for the 50s/60s cusp having the power it did was that as someone wrote, "the fifties was pregnant with the 60s." Beatniks for instance, who would morph into hippies. The whole study of noncomformity. In certain ways, American society was well AHEAD of American studio films, which were still ruled by the Church and the government in certain ways.

The 50's/60s cusp also saw the "changing of the guard" as Hitchocck, Wilder, and Preminger made their sex movies just as Kubrick and others(eventually Nichols and Penn) came on the scene to "do it new."

For me personally(and why not?) what's great about the 50s/60s cusp movies is that they are from my CHILDHOOD. Some I got to see, some I did not, but they had me intrigued about the naughty things my parents and the neighbor couples gossiped about. Some Like It Hot came up. So did Wilder's more "direct"(greatest hit, if not great movie) "Irma La Douce." I had to grow up to find out more.

CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) 8 months ago

As for the 70s/80s cusp, it's definitely more of a let down and way less exciting. The promise of the New Hollywood movement dwindled in the face of the blockbuster and the increasing corporate mindset taking over the industry. While one might argue modern film geeks over-romanticize 70s cinema, it's easy to see why when you look at the 70s/80s cusp in broad strokes.

--

Yes. This is something I want to get into in more detail -- if not in this thread maybe a new one -- but I've been re-reading Tarantino's film essay book "Cinema Speculation" and he REALLY goes after the fifties and the eighties in this way(paraphrased) and you can see his point even as it doesn't quite work the way he says.

He pretty much names Hitchcock and some other directors with biggest hits in the fifties as "being stuck with the stink of the fifties on their films," which is just like, QT writes, "the stink of the 80s."

He gives the 60s and 70's a pass and then adds this: "Whereas the 50s movies HAD to be that way -- they were censured under the Hays Code -- the 80's movies were entirely SELF-CENSURED by timid studios."

Fair enough -- except I think that the fifties and the eighties don't REALLY have a "stink" to worry about. Hitchcock's fifties films and Some Like It Hot and Rio Bravo and The Bridge on the River Kwai and 12 Angry Men are just fine thank you. Though I'll grant that a lot 80's stuff was kinda lightweight.

CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) 8 months ago

QT NAMES the weak 80's films in his opinion. I can only remember a few that he named, but you will get his point: Ordinary People, The Big Chill, Out of Africa...he goes after stuff like THOSE feel-good(or feel bad) Oscar bait movies. He doesn't even touch on Lucas/Spielberg in that paragraph.

That's all I can hit right now, topic-wise, but I retain my fealty to the 50s/60s cusp and I think the American Film Institute does too:

They named Some Like It Hot the Number One comedy of all time. 1959.

They named Psycho the Number One thriller of all time. 1960.

Until the next time such lists are made...that's the 50s/60s cusp, folks!

[–] telegonus (736) 8 months ago

Thanks for all the decades musings, EC. They have my head spinning. Somewhat. As to the voices in Psycho, I've taken a shine to the somewhat similar vocal stylings of Johns Anderson and McIntire, with the former more deft and understated, the latter deadpan hilarious, a sort of Rocky & Bullwinkle for grownups. Both men had good runs in anthology shows of the same era as Psycho, and appeared in The Twilight Zone, as did several other cast members of the movie (Vaughn Taylor, Vera Miles, Balsam And Oakland, and even. in a tiny, non-speaking role, Ted Knight).

The 50s-60s and 70s-80s cusps in Hollywood is an interesting take on what seem in retrospect, competing eras; not at the time so much as now, viewed as four decades of the 20th century.

Those decades were also shaped by what even at the time, as a child, then teen, then a very young man, I was aware of as Old Hollywood in its death throes, and wasn't happy about. The historical breakdowns made major social change almost inevitable; and well beyond the usual suspects of Sex, Drugs and Rock & Roll: the rise of at the time a largely youth-driven culture led by Elvis, then JFK, with reality kicking in the the Vietnam war, the civil rights movements, and the massive changes in manners, morals and fashion implicit is S,D & R & R.

Psycho does appear as a key factor in these changes; as a template, a shocker and a hugely successful movie, filmed mostly on the Uni back lot, in glorious black and white and a cast of not thousands, or even hundreds but at most dozens; like maybe two or three, allowing for extras and very small parts players.

What happened, in the wake of all this isn't that Hollywood began changing history so much as history changing Hollywood. By around the mid to late 70s, the summer blockbuster era of movies, then Saturday Night Live, it's like America had become like Fernwood Tonight merged with Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. No one could have predicted that. It was like a tsunami, and it came to a halt when Ronald Reagan became President and things began to settle; a little anyway.

[–] roger1 (3626) 8 months ago

Thanks for all the decades musings, EC. They have my head spinning. Somewhat.

--

Sorry about that, telegonus(and thank you for the EC greeting.)

Well, I certainly digress from time to time. I've gotten SOMEWHAT better about it, but I think the long posts in THIS OP were meant to "travel a road to meaning":

Voices important to movie stars.
Hitchocck movie stars with great voices(Fonda, Stewart Grant.
The "less starry" cast of Psycho(hence a look at their low salaries)
The voices of Psycho(nonetheless.

Hah.

CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) 8 months ago

As to the voices in Psycho, I've taken a shine to the somewhat similar vocal stylings of Johns Anderson and McIntire, with the former more deft and understated, the latter deadpan hilarious, a sort of Rocky & Bullwinkle for grownups.

---

John Anderson and John McIntire remind us that Psycho has some connection to...Westerns. Movies and TV shows. Because both Anderson and McIntire were in a LOT of Westerns. When Ward Bond had a fatal heart attack in 1960(in a motel shower, I might add) McIntire took over as the lead on "Wagon Train." In 1962, John Anderson was the paterfamilias of some truly rotten sons in Peckinpah's "Ride the High Country." THAT kind of role really fit ol' Anderson.

But this: Anderson and McIntire,in bringing their Western personas to the decidedly non-Western Psycho, somehow gave it a Western FEEL around the edges.

Even the Bates Motel --a wooded structure, not plaster and stucco -- feels like with a little tweaking it could be a Western saloon. Norman in the script(not the movie) says that old couple thought it was an old deserted mining town. Ride the High Country takes place IN a mining town. ETC.

CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) 8 months ago

Both men had good runs in anthology shows of the same era as Psycho, and appeared in The Twilight Zone, as did several other cast members of the movie (Vaughn Taylor, Vera Miles, Balsam And Oakland, and even. in a tiny, non-speaking role, Ted Knight).

---

Absolutely. Psycho is thus a spiritual brother of The Twilight Zone (perhaps moreso than of Alfred Hitchcock Presents) and now those quaint black and white spooky crime anthologies of the 1960s.

"Slient Ted Knight" at the end. Paid $200 a day, two day minimum.

At 70's/80's revival theaters, Ted got a HUGE laugh. He's on screen long enough for people to realize who he IS.

Not so much in decades since. Audience silence.

CONT

[–] telegonus (736) 8 months ago

Once more, EC, some interesting thoughts. The voices of actors is a seldom discussed topic these days; while the era of celebrity imitating comedians pretty much ended in the 70s.

Yet don't let us forget that distinctive voices were common in films as well as, arguably, more so, on radio, fifteen or twenty years prior to Psycho. In the very early 40s (1941-42) several popular, major movies were, and for many of us still, like catnip for the classic film buff. Think Rebecca (Colman, Fontaine, George Sanders, C. Aubrey Smith, Judith Anderson); or The Maltese Falcon. (Bogart, Astor, Greenstreet, Lorre, Cook and even the dynamic duo of Barton McLain and Ward Bond). These are great classic movies with great classic voices. Psycho is perhaps a tribute to those films; and maybe even an attempt to recapture their texture, visually (lighting, shadows, camera placement) and aurally (voices, often very subtle sound effects).

[–] roger1 (3626) 8 months ago

Telegonus: I switched to a "The Voice of Psycho PART TWO" because this thread keeps narrowing down on me. And yet...you seem to have handled it fine.

I see threads with 200 posts around here and wonder: how come THOSE threads don't narrow down like mine do? I'm sure there is a technical trick I have not mastered. But I will answer you here as best I can. I reserve the right(hah) to use Voices of Psyco PART TWO for some posts if only to avoid the narrowing.

Telegonus wrote:

The voices of actors is a seldom discussed topic these days;

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Well, I have read, from time to time, that given that a lot of our modern movie stars(let's go with the males) aren't trained professionally or on the stage, they pretty much bring with them the "regular guy voices" of their suburban upbringings.

A guy on SNL DID do a pretty good Brad Pitt impression on a few episodes, he captured Pitt's speech patterns as much as his voice.

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while the era of celebrity imitating comedians pretty much ended in the 70s.

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It remains interesting that audiences have always valued an impressionists ability to "get down perfectly"(or close to) a famous voice.

I mean, audiences PAID GOOD MONEY in , say , Vegas, to hear Rich Little do Johnny Carson, or Frank Gorshin do Kirk Douglas. (Interesting to me: Little's REGULAR voice was pretty close to Carson's; Gorshin's REGULAR voice was pretty close to Douglas...as when he played The Riddler on the Batman TV show.)

But I guess impressionists have faded away as a new generation of movie stars came along.

That said, I personally paid money(with friends) to see a comic named Frank Caliendo "do voices" about 10 years ago. He was on Mad TV. He could do Pacino and Connery and did a great John Madden.

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CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) 8 months ago

Caliendo's funniest bit to me was Morgan Freeman because he NARRATED his own ACT as Freeman narrates everything. (In Freeman's voice: "As I watched Caliendo do his impression of me, I was reminded of simpler, better times in my youth...and I missed them."

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Truth be told , I think that a number of us civilians can do SOME movie star impressions. They aren't that hard. Me, I can do John Wayne(just stick "Pilgrim" in there) Connery ("I'm waiting to be IMPRESSHED," "Of COURSH"), and Arnold ("Get to de CHOPPAH.") Can't everybody?

CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) 8 months ago

telegonus wrote:

Yet don't let us forget that distinctive voices were common in films as well as, arguably, more so, on radio, fifteen or twenty years prior to Psycho.

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Oh yes. I definitely wasn't around in the forties, but I've read that many major Hollywood movies were done also FOR radio...in truncated versions...and often EITHER by the stars who played the movie roles or by DIFFERENT, lesser stars in the same parts.

So if one adds in the need for great vocal talent in pre-television RADIO..great voices were practically required.

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In the very early 40s (1941-42) several popular, major movies were, and for many of us still, like catnip for the classic film buff. Think Rebecca (Colman, Fontaine, George Sanders, C. Aubrey Smith, Judith Anderson); or The Maltese Falcon. (Bogart, Astor, Greenstreet, Lorre, Cook and even the dynamic duo of Barton McLain and Ward Bond). These are great classic movies with great classic voices.

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The trio of Bogart, Greenstreet and Lorre in The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca is TRULY catnip.

And I can do an impression of Peter Lorre with this one line from Casablanca: "Yoo deSPIZE me, don' yoo, Reeeck?" (You despise me, don't you, Rick?) With Bogart's great comeback: "I suppose if I gave you any thought, I'd despise you." Rim shot.

CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) 8 months ago

Psycho is perhaps a tribute to those films; and maybe even an attempt to recapture their texture, visually (lighting, shadows, camera placement) and aurally (voices, often very subtle sound effects).

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You raise some great points here about how Psycho "calls back" to forties noir/Gothic filmmaking and not just that as practiced by Hitchcock himself in Rebecca. With its tale of embezzlement and a private eye, Psycho has SOME echoes to The Big Sleep and (this is important) Psycho is perhaps much closer in time and sensibility TO The Big Sleep of 1946 than it is to, say, something later and gritty like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Indeed, I've been musing on an idea tying Psycho more directly to the 40s, but rather than bury it in this thread, I'm going to give it an OP. No "command request" for you to read it, telegonus, but I'll be thinking of your comments when I post it.

Soon.

[–] telegonus (736) 8 months ago

I hope so, EC. Also, I'm hoping that the Moviechat admins don't start deleting posts, or closing threads that still have life in them. Psycho is sill alive ad kicking, as a classic movie AND a worthy topic for discussion.

[–] roger1 (3626) 8 months ago

I'm hoping that the Moviechat admins don't start deleting posts, or closing threads that still have life in them.

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Oh, I hope they don't. Frankly, the pages with the least activity ARE about older movies -- Marvel movie pages just fill right up.

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Psycho is still alive and kicking, as a classic movie AND a worthy topic for discussion.

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Yep. And we've been given the latitude of this board for some OT(off topic ) topics with the organizing force of "Psycho fandom" to drive them.

Come back soon!

[–] roger1 (3626) 7 months ago

roger1 wrote:

"Modernly" probably covers from the 60s on. And its interesting: nobody could do a Paul Newman impression or a Steve McQueen impression.

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I return for some self correction: somebody DID try to do a Steve McQueen impression. It was in Tarantino's movie "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood." Damien Lewis played McQueen, circa Manson era 1969 in one scene.

Lewis KIND OF got McQueen's look -- with 1969 long hair -- but could NOT get McQueen's voice(who could?)

Lewis DID get a McQueen facial expression down perfectly for a few seconds though -- in mid-conversation, he pauses and smiles with a closed mouth kinda dopey smirk that McQueen used in comedy roles like Soldier in the Rain and The Honeymoon Machine. For those coupla seconds ONLY, Damien Lewis "captures" Steve McQueen.