Forty years, almost to the month/day after Alfred Hitchcock finished shooting Psycho — and its much admired (90 shots, 70 camera angles, chocolate syrup standing in for blood…), endlessly discussed, often parodied shower sequence — the commentary keeps coming.
‘Was it really Janet Leigh in the shower?’ is a theme discussed as often, and as frenetically, as the identity of the man on the grassy knoll, and who really wrote Shakespeare’s plays. Carrying the obsession to a natural conclusion, we now have a book — on the girl in the shower. Here’s Will Hodgkinson, in the Guardian, on the book and the controversy.
Incidentally, the girl in the shower has also been identified as one Myra Jones — who ended up stabbed to death, in real life.
Also incidentally, Leigh once said she was so terrified after seeing the movie for the first time, that she couldn’t for the longest time take a shower without leaving the bathroom door open, ditto the shower curtain — which must have been kind of weird for her house guests. I also recall reading someplace that after the release of the film, Hitchcock got an angry mail from a guy whose daughter, already off taking baths thanks to a scene in some horror flick, was now refusing to take showers as well.
Hitchcock’s reply was a classic: “Send her to the dry cleaners.”
Oh – and here you go:
Smoke Signals 
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It’s also just over 50 years since Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom was released, a film which in many ways prefigures and complements Psycho. You might be interested in a piece I’ve written on this ‘other’ Psycho at http://matineeidle.wordpress.com/2010/04/02/the-other-psycho/.
adding to the trivia: that other flick which inspired the daughter not to take bath was Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Les Diaboliques. it has an excellent bath tub murder scene.
Forty years, almost to the month/day…
Prem: 50 years, actually. (Hard to believe but true!)