The True Story Behind Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho
For movie buffs Alfred Hitchcock will always be associated with a long list of Hollywood classics. Between 1921 and 1976 the English director known as the Master of Suspense released 52 feature films, many of which are still thrilling new audiences today. To most people, though, he’s best known for a film that was very different – Psycho.
The most fascinating part of movie, however, is actually the real story behind it. This book tells the chilling true story behind of the movie.
The most fascinating part of movie, however, is actually the real story behind it. This book tells the chilling true story behind of the movie.
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Excerpt
Introduction
For movie buffs Alfred Hitchcock will always be associated with a long list of Hollywood classics. Between 1921 and 1976 the English director known as the Master of Suspense released 52 feature films, many of which are still thrilling new audiences today. To most people, though, he’s best known for a film that was very different – Psycho.
As his nickname suggests most of Hitchcock’s movies are tightly plotted and intricate, using ingenious plot twists to keep viewers guessing until the last moment. Big budgets and glamorous scenery made his films as visually stunning as they were psychologically ingenious. Then, in 1959, he did something completely new. Intrigued by the low-budget horror titles that were being produced by small independents outside the Hollywood studio system he decided to see how good one could be if a director of his talents was involved.
His plot idea came from a newly published horror novel loosely inspired by one of the most gruesome crimes of the 1950s, the tale of a small-town grave robber and murderer who turned female bodies into grotesque homeware articles and freakish clothing. Hollywood wasn’t interested in the book. Such sensationalist – not to say gory – material was beneath them, and the studio executives thought it wouldn’t bring in the audiences. Hitchcock thought they were wrong, and with his trademark single-mindedness he set out to prove it.
Through the end of winter 1959 and into the early summer of 1960 Hitchcock worked in a small TV production lot outside the hub of Hollywood. As industry moguls shook their heads in reproach he surrounded himself with his own production crew, taken from his TV show, and talked a small group of talented actors and actresses into risking their careers on a violent, morally ambiguous shocker. Tight security sealed his lot off from the curious press, until in late May he threw the doors open and invited the cameras in for a tantalizing trailer that he narrated himself. In the meantime he had overcome technical challenges, budget problems and the suspicion of the movie censors, who had battled with him over scenes showing fornication, murder and – weirdly – bathroom fittings.
By early June the movie-going public was eager to learn what all the mystery was about. The film critics were less thrilled. Denied the advance screenings they felt their exalted status entitled them to, they sneered at Hitchcock’s antics and predicted disaster for the movie. When the doors opened and they joined the public in front of the screen their reviews were faintly damning. Not Hitchcock’s best, the critics agreed. Unsubtle, a gimmick and in bad taste.
The audiences didn’t agree. They loved it, and flocked to see it in millions. By the end of the year it was the highest-grossing film of Hitchcock’s career and the most profitable black and white movie of all time. Even today it remains popular; three sequels and a TV spinoff have been made and it even earned the dubious honor of a modern remake (which flopped.)
For Hollywood, Psycho changed the rules. The Prohibition-era censorship that set boundaries for the movie industry had been under strain for years and was being routinely bypassed by independents and foreign imports. Now one of the giants of the industry had driven a bulldozer straight through it. Within a few years it had crumbled away completely and been replaced by the modern rating system. The success of Psycho opened the way for a flood of low-budget shockers, but it also left the road clear for classics of suspense horror like Halloween and Silence of the Lambs.
Psycho hit the screen in June of 1960 and dominated theaters for the rest of the year. It was one of the first defining events of the sixties, challenging taboos about sex and violence that had never been seriously questioned before. It’s remarkable that it all began years earlier in a tiny, conventional Wisconsin village.
Chapter 1: Genesis Of A Monster For any director looking to make a suspense movie, serial killers are an obvious choice. Most homicides are one-offs, committed in the heat of the moment by a killer who makes little effort to cover their tracks afterwards. In fact many of them, stricken with remorse, call the police right away to confess. You’d never guess it from Hollywood but the words a homicide detective hears most often are probably “I didn’t mean to kill him.” These squalid little everyday crimes don’t have a lot of box office appeal, but serial killers are something else. Motivated and remorseless, using intricate planning or animal cunning to evade capture and stalk their next victim, the knowledge that they’ll kill and kill again until stopped gives huge potential to build suspense.
Fictional serial killers stalk many classic movies, including Dirty Harry, Halloween, The Hitcher and the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. Real-life killers have also been immortalized on film – the Son of Sam, Henry Lucas, the Zodiac Killer and many more have inspired directors and horrified audiences.
The murderer who’s had the biggest influence on Hollywood, though, may not even have been a serial killer. He was convicted of a single murder and confessed to a second, although some people believe he may have committed at least another six and there’s plenty of circumstantial evidence to back that up. Even one murder is an appalling crime, but compared with the toll of John Wayne Gacy (at least 34 victims), Ted Bundy (at least 36) or Green River Killer Gary Ridgway (more than 90) he was strictly small-time. Despite that the grotesque nature of his crimes inspired some of the best known villains in cinema, including Leatherface in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre series, Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs and the most famous movie murderer of them all – crazed motel owner Norman Bates.
If somebody wanted to illustrate the melting pot idea of American immigration they’d be hard pressed to find a better example than Wisconsin. At one time or another just about every wave of immigration to the USA has washed over the state. The one that’s had most influence on it crested in the late 19th century, when hundreds of thousands of Germans flooded into the growing industrial towns. These hard-working newcomers, mostly from Prussia and Westphalia, settled in well and devoted their energies to succeeding in their new land. They clung to elements of their old identity though; German was often spoken at home, and it took a generation or two for the names of their children to become Anglicized and most of them stayed within the religion they’d brought with them, the Lutheran Church.
In July 1878 Augusta Wilhelmina Lehrke was born to two of these immigrants in Waushura County. Her middle name was a tribute to the first German Emperor, who had been proclaimed seven years before, and reflected her parents’ pride in their Prussian ancestry. She was also brought up in the Lutheran faith. As a young woman she married local man George Philip Gein, who was also of German descent, but the marriage quickly ran into difficulties. George had alcohol problems and found it difficult to hold a job, and although the couple had two sons Augusta increasingly despised her husband. Their first child, Henry, was born in 1901. The second, Edward Theodore Gein, followed on August 27, 1906. To support them George worked at a variety of jobs, including carpentry and selling insurance, while Augusta ran a small grocery store in the town of La Crosse. The store provided most of the family’s income and George’s irregular earnings mostly ended up being spent on alcohol. Augusta, a strong personality, became increasingly overbearing thanks to her role as breadwinner and effective head of the family. This was to have a terrible effect on her younger son. A shy child who didn’t feel comfortable in social situations, Edward was steadily warped by his mother’s dominating behavior until a quiet but good-natured boy had been transformed into a monster.
Along with her growing self-importance and sense of superiority, Augusta’s personality was also being transformed by her religious views. The German Lutheran faith is an undemonstrative one, mostly concerned with promoting the virtues of hard work and a Prussian sense of good order and thrift. In Augusta’s case the spirit of the times was changing it into something very different. Scholars of American Christianity sometimes call the period from about 1850 to the USA’s entry into the First World War “the Third Great Awakening.” In these decades the country generated a huge number of campaigning pastors, mostly from Protestant sects and mostly concerned with social reform. The Temperance movement that led to Prohibition had its roots in this phenomenon, as did the late 19th century surge in missionary activity, but it had positive effects too – crusading church groups pushed for many reforms to child labor laws, women’s suffrage and the emancipation of slaves, as well as founding many of America’s leading universities.
These reforms all came out of a muscular, justice-driven Protestantism of the “hard work and cold baths” school of thought, but the Great Awakening energized other sorts of preachers, too. Especially in the Midwest millions of people listened to tent revivalists and prophets of Armageddon. Some of them were little more than con men who used the Bible as a prop; others were genuinely crazy. Augusta Gein seems to have spent too long listening to the second type. As her sons grew up she became increasingly obsessed with sin and degeneracy, a fixation that worked its way into the insults she threw at her husband. Her views of society also began to change. America, she started to believe, was a cesspool of immorality and vice (in fact it was then, as it is today, easily the most devout of the western industrial nations.) More and more her thoughts turned to protecting herself and her sons from the corruption that would inevitably infect them without her intervention.[i]
[i] Crime Library, Eddie Gein p2 http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/notorious/gein/begin_2.html
For movie buffs Alfred Hitchcock will always be associated with a long list of Hollywood classics. Between 1921 and 1976 the English director known as the Master of Suspense released 52 feature films, many of which are still thrilling new audiences today. To most people, though, he’s best known for a film that was very different – Psycho.
As his nickname suggests most of Hitchcock’s movies are tightly plotted and intricate, using ingenious plot twists to keep viewers guessing until the last moment. Big budgets and glamorous scenery made his films as visually stunning as they were psychologically ingenious. Then, in 1959, he did something completely new. Intrigued by the low-budget horror titles that were being produced by small independents outside the Hollywood studio system he decided to see how good one could be if a director of his talents was involved.
His plot idea came from a newly published horror novel loosely inspired by one of the most gruesome crimes of the 1950s, the tale of a small-town grave robber and murderer who turned female bodies into grotesque homeware articles and freakish clothing. Hollywood wasn’t interested in the book. Such sensationalist – not to say gory – material was beneath them, and the studio executives thought it wouldn’t bring in the audiences. Hitchcock thought they were wrong, and with his trademark single-mindedness he set out to prove it.
Through the end of winter 1959 and into the early summer of 1960 Hitchcock worked in a small TV production lot outside the hub of Hollywood. As industry moguls shook their heads in reproach he surrounded himself with his own production crew, taken from his TV show, and talked a small group of talented actors and actresses into risking their careers on a violent, morally ambiguous shocker. Tight security sealed his lot off from the curious press, until in late May he threw the doors open and invited the cameras in for a tantalizing trailer that he narrated himself. In the meantime he had overcome technical challenges, budget problems and the suspicion of the movie censors, who had battled with him over scenes showing fornication, murder and – weirdly – bathroom fittings.
By early June the movie-going public was eager to learn what all the mystery was about. The film critics were less thrilled. Denied the advance screenings they felt their exalted status entitled them to, they sneered at Hitchcock’s antics and predicted disaster for the movie. When the doors opened and they joined the public in front of the screen their reviews were faintly damning. Not Hitchcock’s best, the critics agreed. Unsubtle, a gimmick and in bad taste.
The audiences didn’t agree. They loved it, and flocked to see it in millions. By the end of the year it was the highest-grossing film of Hitchcock’s career and the most profitable black and white movie of all time. Even today it remains popular; three sequels and a TV spinoff have been made and it even earned the dubious honor of a modern remake (which flopped.)
For Hollywood, Psycho changed the rules. The Prohibition-era censorship that set boundaries for the movie industry had been under strain for years and was being routinely bypassed by independents and foreign imports. Now one of the giants of the industry had driven a bulldozer straight through it. Within a few years it had crumbled away completely and been replaced by the modern rating system. The success of Psycho opened the way for a flood of low-budget shockers, but it also left the road clear for classics of suspense horror like Halloween and Silence of the Lambs.
Psycho hit the screen in June of 1960 and dominated theaters for the rest of the year. It was one of the first defining events of the sixties, challenging taboos about sex and violence that had never been seriously questioned before. It’s remarkable that it all began years earlier in a tiny, conventional Wisconsin village.
Chapter 1: Genesis Of A Monster For any director looking to make a suspense movie, serial killers are an obvious choice. Most homicides are one-offs, committed in the heat of the moment by a killer who makes little effort to cover their tracks afterwards. In fact many of them, stricken with remorse, call the police right away to confess. You’d never guess it from Hollywood but the words a homicide detective hears most often are probably “I didn’t mean to kill him.” These squalid little everyday crimes don’t have a lot of box office appeal, but serial killers are something else. Motivated and remorseless, using intricate planning or animal cunning to evade capture and stalk their next victim, the knowledge that they’ll kill and kill again until stopped gives huge potential to build suspense.
Fictional serial killers stalk many classic movies, including Dirty Harry, Halloween, The Hitcher and the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. Real-life killers have also been immortalized on film – the Son of Sam, Henry Lucas, the Zodiac Killer and many more have inspired directors and horrified audiences.
The murderer who’s had the biggest influence on Hollywood, though, may not even have been a serial killer. He was convicted of a single murder and confessed to a second, although some people believe he may have committed at least another six and there’s plenty of circumstantial evidence to back that up. Even one murder is an appalling crime, but compared with the toll of John Wayne Gacy (at least 34 victims), Ted Bundy (at least 36) or Green River Killer Gary Ridgway (more than 90) he was strictly small-time. Despite that the grotesque nature of his crimes inspired some of the best known villains in cinema, including Leatherface in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre series, Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs and the most famous movie murderer of them all – crazed motel owner Norman Bates.
If somebody wanted to illustrate the melting pot idea of American immigration they’d be hard pressed to find a better example than Wisconsin. At one time or another just about every wave of immigration to the USA has washed over the state. The one that’s had most influence on it crested in the late 19th century, when hundreds of thousands of Germans flooded into the growing industrial towns. These hard-working newcomers, mostly from Prussia and Westphalia, settled in well and devoted their energies to succeeding in their new land. They clung to elements of their old identity though; German was often spoken at home, and it took a generation or two for the names of their children to become Anglicized and most of them stayed within the religion they’d brought with them, the Lutheran Church.
In July 1878 Augusta Wilhelmina Lehrke was born to two of these immigrants in Waushura County. Her middle name was a tribute to the first German Emperor, who had been proclaimed seven years before, and reflected her parents’ pride in their Prussian ancestry. She was also brought up in the Lutheran faith. As a young woman she married local man George Philip Gein, who was also of German descent, but the marriage quickly ran into difficulties. George had alcohol problems and found it difficult to hold a job, and although the couple had two sons Augusta increasingly despised her husband. Their first child, Henry, was born in 1901. The second, Edward Theodore Gein, followed on August 27, 1906. To support them George worked at a variety of jobs, including carpentry and selling insurance, while Augusta ran a small grocery store in the town of La Crosse. The store provided most of the family’s income and George’s irregular earnings mostly ended up being spent on alcohol. Augusta, a strong personality, became increasingly overbearing thanks to her role as breadwinner and effective head of the family. This was to have a terrible effect on her younger son. A shy child who didn’t feel comfortable in social situations, Edward was steadily warped by his mother’s dominating behavior until a quiet but good-natured boy had been transformed into a monster.
Along with her growing self-importance and sense of superiority, Augusta’s personality was also being transformed by her religious views. The German Lutheran faith is an undemonstrative one, mostly concerned with promoting the virtues of hard work and a Prussian sense of good order and thrift. In Augusta’s case the spirit of the times was changing it into something very different. Scholars of American Christianity sometimes call the period from about 1850 to the USA’s entry into the First World War “the Third Great Awakening.” In these decades the country generated a huge number of campaigning pastors, mostly from Protestant sects and mostly concerned with social reform. The Temperance movement that led to Prohibition had its roots in this phenomenon, as did the late 19th century surge in missionary activity, but it had positive effects too – crusading church groups pushed for many reforms to child labor laws, women’s suffrage and the emancipation of slaves, as well as founding many of America’s leading universities.
These reforms all came out of a muscular, justice-driven Protestantism of the “hard work and cold baths” school of thought, but the Great Awakening energized other sorts of preachers, too. Especially in the Midwest millions of people listened to tent revivalists and prophets of Armageddon. Some of them were little more than con men who used the Bible as a prop; others were genuinely crazy. Augusta Gein seems to have spent too long listening to the second type. As her sons grew up she became increasingly obsessed with sin and degeneracy, a fixation that worked its way into the insults she threw at her husband. Her views of society also began to change. America, she started to believe, was a cesspool of immorality and vice (in fact it was then, as it is today, easily the most devout of the western industrial nations.) More and more her thoughts turned to protecting herself and her sons from the corruption that would inevitably infect them without her intervention.[i]
[i] Crime Library, Eddie Gein p2 http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/notorious/gein/begin_2.html
