"Touch of Evil", "Psycho", and "The Manchurian Candidate" are only the core of Janet Leigh's impressive film career. "The Naked Spur", with James Stewart, was a great Western directed by Anthony Mann; "My Sister Eileen", an infectious musical; "Pete Kelly's Blues" was a great jazz film, also starring Peggy Lee and Ella Fitzgerald.
You get the impression when you spend time with Janet Leigh that she's always been bright and hyperactive, easily bored, and into everything. She ran away from home in California and married underage. Movie star Norma Shearer spotted her photograph in a ski lodge and brought her to Hollywood. Her marriage to Tony Curtis made them the Cruise and Kidman of their day. (When I mentioned that she and Curtis were accused of getting together for headlines, she seemed not to know this, then said "I don't care").
Her career faltered in the 70s, as did those of many actors from earlier generations, and she ended up in dodgy horror flicks like "Night of the Lepus", about homicidal Easter bunnies (an unpromising scenario, I'm sure you will agree). But Leigh - unlike Curtis - never seemed to buy the whole movie star hoopla, so was less affected when she was offered only bit parts in horror movies.
Which is what Marion Crane in "Psycho" was: a big name with a small role that turned out to be one of the film's major surprises. And yet, the more you watch "Psycho", the more Leigh's scenes become the foundation of its strange grace. Janet Leigh can talk about this kind of stuff. And she does in her "Scene by Scene" on 16th December.
Janet Leigh's place in cinema history.
You can see Mark Cousins talking with Janet Leigh in "Scene by Scene" on 大象传媒2, Saturday 16 December 2000 at 1.20pm.
"Touch of Evil", starring Janet Leigh, is on at 11.55pm, 大象传媒2, Sunday 17th December 2000. "Reconstructing Evil", a documentary about the making the film, is on 大象传媒2 at 12.55am the same day.
