Variety (1960) - Miscellany: More or Less Secret; Hitchy Puts Perkins in Transvestite Role
Details
- article: Miscellany: More or Less Secret; Hitchy Puts Perkins in Transvestite Role
- journal: Variety (04/May/1960)
- issue: volume 218, issue 10, page 2
- journal ISSN: 0042-2738
- publisher: Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier, Inc
- keywords: Psycho (1960)
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Article
More or Less Secret; Hitchy Puts Perkins In Transvestite Role
No visitors on the set. no press interviews, no story synopsis, no releasing of stills, no sneak previews—all this is part of the "campaign" for Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho." Indeed at a recent ultra private screening of the picture at the Paramount home office one night last week Par general counsel Leonard Kaufman personally checked to see that only trustworthy company personnel were admitted.
Reason for all secrecy is that Hitchcock is determined that the public will be taken by surprise with the nature of his newest feature. He's quoted as describing the story as "metaphysical sex" and there are no elaborations.
Departments heads and staffers are refraining from saying anything about the story whose star, Anthony Perkins, as a youngster, has an unusually strong attachment to his mother. There's no detailing as to how he, learning that mother has taken on a lover, kills both mother and lover, removes his mother's body from the grave and retains same, and, in a transvestite bit, dons her clothes. The two key figures, following her death, also engage in verbal communication off-screen.
Perkins commits a couple of other murders before he's booked and, for the finale, yields not his own but his mother's voice.
It's presumed Par will approve removal of the wraps from the story outline following the first public showings of "Pyscho."
