...janet leigh - the beauty in the shower...

She was a leading lady in many of her movies, but the sweet and wholesome Janet Leigh will always be remembered for her one role that gave her less screen time and ended up dead...in Alfred Hitchcock's top thriller, "Psycho" (1960).

Lovely Janet Leigh was born Jeanette Helen Morrison on 6th July 1927, the only child to Frederick Robert Morrison and wife Helen Lita Westergard in Merced, California. Living in apartments, Janet was a bright child who skipped several grades and finished high school when she was 15. A lonely child, she would spend much of her time at movie theaters. She was a student, studying music and psychology, at the University of the Pacific until she was "discovered" while visiting her parents in Northern California. Her father was working the desk at a ski resort where her mother worked as a maid. Retired MGM actress Norma Shearer saw a picture of Janet on the front desk and asked if she could borrow it.

Without any real training Leigh was signed by the great studio MGM after she passed the screen test. Her first movie "The Romance Of Rosy Ridge" in 1947 as a farm girl in love with Van Johnson. She was the girl who seeked solace in the very married Walter Pidgeon in "If Winter Comes" (1947). She had a part in one of the better Lassie movies, "Hills Of Home" (1948) after which she was the loyal lady in the life of composer Richard Rodgers (Tom Drake) in the all-star "Words And Music" (1948).

She was the wife of Van Heflin in the thriller "Act Of Violence" (1948) and a quiter role as Meg in the 1949's version of "Little Women". In "The Red Danube" (1949), she played a ballerina turned nun. After a few more MGM movies, she was loaned to RKO as a widow romanced by Robert Mitchum in the Christmas perennial "Holiday Affair" (1949). In the musical "Two Tickets to Broadway" (1951) for the same studio, she had musical assignments and to Ann Miller, Gloria DeHaven to contend with.

Her position in the industry was greatly boosted when she became romantically linked with the up-and-coming heartthrob Tony Curtis, whom she married in 1951. Staying sweet, she was put in an Enzio Pinza musical "Strictly Dishonourable" (1951); in the episodic "It's A Big Country" (1951) as Gene Kelly's girlfriend and the lighthearted "Just This Once" (1952) with Peter Lawford.

She was serenely beautiful in Technicolor costume swashbuckling adventure "Scaramouche" (1952). She then did her best work to date, as the tough girlfriend of escaped killer Robert Ryan in the James Stewart western "The Naked Spur" (1953). She and Curtis got together for the highly fictitious biopic "Houdini" (1953). "Walking My Baby Back Home" (1953) is a musical starring the energetic Donald O'Connor and "Prince Valiant" (1953) is another costume drama (with a young Robert Wagner in a silly pageboy wig). She played a straight woman reporter in Dean Martin/Jerry Lewis "Living It Up" (1954).

"The Black Shield Of Falworth" (1954), a knight-in-armor adventure, cast her opposite husband Tony Curtis again. The she was in "Rogue Cop" (1954) opposite Robert Taylor and "Pete Kelly's Blue" (1955). In the meantime, Leigh had fared quite nicely as the lovely Eileen in the 1955 musical "My Sister Eileen" and abused by some thugs with Charlton Heston in Orson Welles's "Touch Of Evil" (1958). She was back with Curtis in the popular "The Vikings" (1958) and a pair of mild comedies "The Perfect Furlough" (1958) and "Who Was That Lady?" (1960), the last stolen by Dean Martin. They divorced in 1961.

As a clerk who absconds with some cash and pays dearly for it in Alfred Hitchcock's now classic "Pyscho" (1961), she gave a searing, intense and sympathetic perfomance, culminatingin her participation in one of the most famous and terrifying scenes in film history as she is brutally attacked in the shower, receiving an Oscar nomination but lost to Shirley Jones.

"The Manchurian Candidate" (1962) was another fine film but her role was relatively small opposite Frank Sinatra. Finally, she was top billed in the teen musical "Bye Bye Birdie" (1963), singing "One Boy" and energetically cavorted through "The Shriners Ballet". Another star part in the frothy comedies "Wives And Lovers" (1963), she find herself slipping from the "A" list. She worked with Paul Newman in "Harper" (1966) and Jerry Lewis in the poor "Three On A Couch" (1966).

She lived with Tony Randall in an underwater home in the silly "Hello Down There" (1969) and battling giant killer rabbits in "Night Of The Lepus" (1972). Spending much of the 1970s on television, she returned to the big screen with daughter Jamie Lee Curtis in the thriller "The Fog" (1980). She appeared in a cameo role in Jamie's "Halloween H20 : 20 Years Later" (1998).

Janet Leigh died on 3rd October 2004 from vasculitis. Her beauty and versatility put her up among those Hollywood near-legends.

(Scanned autographed phot0 - property of author)