Anthony Perkins began his career as a teen idol of sorts, impressing young girls with his awkwardness and diffident charm as Gary Cooper’s son in 1955’s Friendly Persuasion, but within five years his image would be dramatically and permanently altered. As Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, Perkins would give birth to a character that would become a stereotype in cinema, that of the shy, seemingly harmless boy next door who is both a sex pervert and a murderer. Perkins’ greatest role also became a curse. The actor became so identified in the public mind with the knife wielding, cross-dressing, and highly strung Norman that his Hollywood career went into an almost immediate decline. Late in his career, Perkins seemed to accept his identification with his most famous role, even going so far as to say, "I am Norman Bates."
He
was born April 4, 1932, the son of actor Osgood Perkins who died when Tony was
five years old. The elder Perkins was 30 before he became a professional actor,
but his son was already a member of Actor’s Equity by the age of 15. He started
in summer stock. "I began as an off-stage bat-howl in Dracula,"
he joked to the press in 1959, and though that statement may not have been
literally true, it was his way of suggesting he worked a variety of
unglamourous jobs in theater before finally taking to the stage. What his first
director saw when he hired him was "a boy who would also sweep up the
place, clean up paint buckets, and nail scenery together."
Eventually
he was given the opportunity to act and he appeared in such plays as Junior
Miss, George Washington Slept Here and My Sister Eileen before
moving on to Rollins College productions of Harvey and The Importance
of Being Earnest.
Determined
to break into movies, his ambition paid off when a trip to Hollywood led to his
being cast in 1953’s The Actress. Though impressed by star Spencer Tracy
, he was not enamored with the film or his performance. "I thought I’d
given a very callow performance in a slight romantic picture, and I was
critical of what I saw in Hollywood."
Heading
back to New York, he hunted for television roles in between classes at Columbia
University. There were parts on Studio One, G.E. Theater, and
other familiar legends from the Golden Age of Television, and, finally, success
on Broadway as the successor to John Kerr as the sensitive college boy
suspected of homosexuality in Robert Anderson’s Tea and Sympathy. His
performance won praise from tough as nails critic Brooks Atkinson who felt that
Perkins offered a "mature performance of an immature role."
In
1956, a Goodyear TV Playhouse production titled Joey in which he sang
"A Little Love Goes a Long, Long Way" led to a recording contract,
first at Epic Records, then at RCA Victor. It was a course that many other
"teen idols" would also take, and a teen idol is exactly what the
lanky six footer was becoming. Nonetheless, the singing career was not a
success. "Nobody played ‘em," he said of his three solo albums,
"nobody bought ‘em, as far as I can determine."
Luckily,
by year’s end, his acting career would take off in a big way. Directed by
William Wyler, Friendly Persuasion is a film much beloved for its warmth
and unpretentious depiction of Quaker life. As Josh Birdwell, the thoughtful
son of Gary Cooper and Dorothy McGuire, the 24 year-old Perkins earned an Oscar
nomination as best supporting actor.
Like
many another young actor who achieved stardom in the wake of James Dean’s
emergence as a rebel without a cause, many of the roles Perkins was offered
could best be described as "misunderstood." In the western, The
Lonely Man, he was the son of a repentant outlaw (Jack Palance) hoping to
reconcile with the son he abandoned years before. A father and son relationship
was also at the center of 1957’s Fear Strikes Out.
The
disturbing account of the events leading to baseball player Jim Piersall’s
mental breakdown, Fear Strikes Out is one of Perkins’ most powerful
performances. "Tony lived his role," director Robert Mulligan said,
"and his tortures were real." With a subtly monstrous Karl Malden as
the father who pushes his son beyond a point that he can handle, Perkins slowly
unravels in an extraordinary portrait that made the real Piersall seem worthy
of sympathy. In recent years, Perkins’ remarkably sensitive portrayal has been
criticized by everyone from Piersall (who insensitively complained that a
"fag" played him in the movie) to Kevin Costner who has snickered at
Perkins’ alleged lack of believability in the baseball scenes. Such ignorant
carping misses the point, of course. Fear Strikes Out is not about
baseball, but a son’s inability to satisfy his father’s unrealistic ambitions
and the toll it takes on his psyche. Whatever faults Perkins may have had as a
baseball player were more than compensated for by his stunning portrait of
Piersall’s mental collapse. As Laura Kay Palmer observes in her book, Osgood
and Anthony Perkins, other actors may have played baseball more believably,
but "No one else could freak out in Fenway Park like Anthony
Perkins."
The
Tin Star, another western, this time with Perkins as a sheriff tutored by
bounty hunter Henry Fonda, was not a worthy follow-up, nor was Desire Under
the Elms with Sophia Loren or the genteel comedy of The Matchmaker with
Shirleys Booth and Maclaine. The pretentious Green Mansions was a
disaster all-around with both Perkins and Audrey Hepburn miscast.
Stanley
Kramer’s On the Beach was pretentious, too, as any film dealing with the
end of the world is bound to be, but it was better than most. Off-screen,
Perkins earned the admiration of co-star Fred Astaire. "He was terribly,
terribly nice to me," the legendary dancer said. "He knew that I was
concerned about playing my first serious part, and I used to talk to him about
that."
Then
came the most pivotal year in Anthony Perkins’ career: 1960.
It
started innocently enough with the starring role in the Broadway musical Greenwillow
which closed after 95 performances. At the movies, there was the innocuous Tall
Story, a none too amusing and dated comedy with Jane Fonda as a college
girl with eyes for the basketball team’s star athlete (Perkins).
And
then there was Psycho.
After
its June release, Anthony Perkins would never be the same again.
Except
for the presence of Alfred Hitchcock behind the camera, there was little about Psycho
to suggest the impact it would have. Made quickly and cheaply at Universal
studios with the same crew the director employed for his then current TV
anthology series, there was even talk of the film airing as a two-part segment
of that show when the original distributor, Paramount, had misgivings about its
violence.
Psycho
was released, of course, and it was a sensation. With his nervous ticks and
conflicting air of sweetness and menace, the actor inhabited more than the skin
of his character. He plunged deep into Norman’s soul, as well as the soul of
Norman’s mother. A remarkable, and remarkably subtle performance, Norman Bates,
thanks to Perkins, is one of the most unforgettable characters in the history
of cinema, "The Hamlet of Horror," as he himself had wisely
suggested.
Perkins’
performance may have been too good. "I am ashamed of your fellow
actors," Hitchcock told his star via telegram after Perkins’ work was
ignored come Oscar nomination time.
Prior
to Psycho, no one had thought of him as homicidal or even odd except in
a shy, anxious way. In fact, Hitchcock was very cleverly casting against type
when selecting his star. It was the novelty of casting Perkins that won over
screenwriter Joseph Stefano who had little enthusiasm for the task of adapting
Robert Bloch’s novel in which Norman Bates was a seedy 40 year-old. "I
suddenly saw a tender, vulnerable young man you could feel incredibly sorry
for." Moviegoers in France were not so quick to associate the actor with
the knife wielding young man of the Hitchcock thriller. After his role as the
young American pursuing Ingrid Bergman in 1961’s Goodbye Again, he
became the Elvis Presley
of Paris, a teen idol whose dress and hairstyle were widely emulated by French
teenagers. He was also named best actor at the Cannes Film Festival.
Appreciative
of his cult status, he remained in Europe throughout much of the 1960s for Phaedra,
Orson Welles’ adaptation of Kafka’s The Trial, Five Miles to Midnight,
and Claude Chabrol’s The Champagne Murders among other films, and would
return to make more films there in the next decade. Working in foreign films
gave him a chance to escape Norman Bates, but upon his reentry into American
films, he was back in psycho territory for Pretty Poison. The 1968 film
which has gone on to achieve cult status, cast Perkins as a disturbed young man
recently released from an institution where he was sent after killing his aunt.
More at home in his own fantasy world than reality, he soon hooks up with a
majorette played by Tuesday Weld who proves to be more disturbed than he is.
But
the movie roles were becoming infrequent. The next two years found him
directing theater, including an Off-Broadway production of Bruce Jay Friedman’s
Steambath in 1970. The same year, he starred in How Awful About Allan,
a made for TV thriller that, despite its cast (Julie Harris and Joan Hackett
co-starred) and Curtis Harrington behind the camera, never quite hit its
target.
Mike
Nichols’ big-screen adaptation of Joseph Heller’s acclaimed novel Catch-22 might
have been a success had the book not cast such a long, imposing shadow, and if
Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H not already proven such a big success. In an
all-star lineup that included Alan Arkin, Orson Welles, Bob Newhart, and Art
Garfunkel, Perkins appeared as the chaplain who tries to comfort the men, but
only manages to make them uneasy.
On
the surface, WUSA was impressive, too. Produced by Paul Newman who
co-starred with wife Joanne Woodward, the heavy handed political drama was seen
by some critics as the left-wing equivalent of John Wayne’s widely condemned
gung-ho and right-wing take on Vietnam in The Green Berets. It was an
embarrassment for all involved except Perkins, who managed to make his
initially gentle character’s transformation into an assassin very believable
even in a less than believable script.
It
was back to France for Someone Behind the Door co-starring another
husband and wife team of note, Charles Bronson and Jill Ireland, and to star
again for Claude Chabrol in the lifeless Ten Days Wonder which also
reunited him with Orson Welles for their third film together.
Universal’s
Play It As It Lays was every bit as pretentious as its title, but on the
plus side, it re-teamed him with Tuesday Weld. "Making Pretty Poison,
Tuesday and I had several severe disagreements," he said. However, Weld
specifically requested him for the role of her husband, a request that directed
Frank Perry granted because "Tony was so incredibly right for the
part...." Unfortunately, not only was Play It As It Lays pretentious,
but the film, based on a Joan Didion novel, was a dull affair with little
beyond its stars to recommend it.
His
terrific and amusing cameo in The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean was
less notable than the off-camera relationship he had with co-star Victoria
Principal. At age 39, Perkins had his first sexual experience with a woman, and
in the following years he would enter psychotherapy in an attempt to turn from
his homosexuality. Marriage to Berry Berenson (a passenger on the first plane
to strike the World Trade Center during the terrorist attacks of September 11,
2001 ) and the birth of two children did give the actor a taste of a more
conventional life.
He
next added screenwriter to his resume. With Broadway legend Stephen Sondheim,
he wrote The Last of Sheila, a clever whodunit that won the two amateur
screenwriters the Edgar Allan Poe Award in 1974 for the best mystery
screenplay.
A
more established author of mysteries, Agatha Christie, wasn’t the only
attraction of Murder on the Orient Express. An all-star cast that
included Albert Finney, Sean Connery, and Lauren Bacall brought the audience
out in big numbers for this handsome, though sometimes sluggish, mystery.
Perkins was especially memorable as the nervous secretary to villainous
millionaire Richard Widmark.
Peter
Shaffer’s Equus was already a hit on Broadway when Perkins was asked to
replace Anthony Hopkins. Perkins didn’t think he was right for the role of the
psychiatrist who analyzes a boy who blinded six horses, but director John
Dexter insisted he take it. Although his success was overshadowed when the more
flamboyant Richard Burton took over the
role, Perkins was praised for his performance.
"Kitsch"
may be the fashionable way to describe Mahogany, the 1975 film that
Motown founder Berry Gordy executive produced and directed for ultra-diva Diana
Ross. Looking sensational throughout, Ross is an aspiring fashion designer who
finds fame and fortune as a model while being wooed by a politically active
Billy Dee Williams. As the gay photographer who guides her to the top, Perkins
used his entire bag of tricks (twitching, mock laughter) from every previous psycho
he had played. If he overdid it a bit, the results were in keeping with the
stylishly shallow tone of the film. Mahogany is very entertaining in its
trashy way, and Perkins provides most of the fun. Some offbeat assignments
followed, such as hosting duties on Saturday Night Live, Alan Rudolph’s Remember
My Name, Disney’s The Black Hole and a particularly vicious villain
who battles Roger Moore in ffolkes, but with Norman Bates always lurking
behind him in the public’s eye, the sequel-mania that was sweeping through
Hollywood seemed destined to affect him, too.
Other
actors could play James Bond or Sherlock Holmes and meet with public approval,
but Norman Bates was a different matter (as Vince Vaughn would discover). In
the early ‘80s, with Alfred Hitchcock safely in the grave and in no condition
to protest, Universal, which had acquired the rights to Psycho from
Paramount, decided a sequel was in order. Naturally, they came calling on
Anthony Perkins. Psycho II was originally conceived as a way to cash-in
on the "splatter" film trend that began with 1978’s Halloween.
Since that John Carpenter film was often compared to Psycho, it was
assumed that Hitchcock’s masterpiece was the granddaddy of the gratuitously
violent genre.
Under
the confident, if undistinguished, direction of Richard Franklin, 1983’s Psycho
II benefitted from a clever screenplay by Tom Holland. What really made it
work, though, was Perkins who was attracted to the sequel because "It
really represented Norman’s story. Psycho was about Janet Leigh and her
activities and Norman and his mother were brought in more for local
color."
Twitching
to perfection, and pronouncing "cutlery" in such a way that, once
heard, it was not likely to be forgotten, he was once again superb. Those
critics who did not consider a sequel to a masterpiece a blasphemous act were
kind to the film, and it sold enough tickets to nab a place among the 10
biggest grossing films of the year. But its success also seemed to reinforce
the notion that Perkins and Norman Bates were one and the same. His next film,
Ken Russell’s Crimes of Passion further capitalized on that belief. As
the deranged reverend obsessed with a call girl (Kathleen Turner), he was a
seedy delight, and he impressed his director with his commitment and creativity.
When released in 1984, the film generated more talk than ticket sales, however,
due to sexual content that required extensive editing to avoid the dreaded X
rating. Perkins was soon back at Universal for Psycho III.
Aware
that it was hard enough to land a quality director for a sequel, let alone a
sequel to a sequel, Perkins offered to direct the film, as well as star. Psycho
III treats Norman more sympathetically than ever, as he wrestles with his
demons while courting and being courted by a lovely woman (Diana Scarwid) whom
he has saved from a suicide attempt. There are some touching moments, as well
as some amusingly ghoulish ones, and Perkins shows himself to be a very
confident and capable director.
Released
in summer 1986, Psycho III was a box-office failure, and Norman Bates’
big-screen career came to an end. Norman would be back for a 1990 cable TV
movie that reeked of desperation, but mercifully there were a few other worthy
roles for his creator before the curtain came down a final time. Edge of
Sanity was unceremoniously dumped into second-run theaters in 1989, but it
deserved a better fate. This retelling of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is vibrant in its anger, and Perkins is disturbingly
effective, as well as effectively disturbing.
Perkins
learned he had AIDS the same way millions of grocery shoppers did: courtesy of
a 1989 headline in The National Enquirer. Once revealed, he neither
confirmed nor denied the report, choosing to keep quiet about his personal
tragedy because, as he said in a posthumously released statement, "The
problems of an old actor don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy
world." With his wife, he worked on behalf of Project Angel Food, a
non-profit organization that delivered meals to AIDS patients. He died on
September 12, 1992 at the age of 60. The rest of his statement suggests a
philosophical attitude toward his illness, but a somewhat bitter one toward
Hollywood:
"There are many who believe this
disease is God's vengeance. But I believe it was sent to teach people how to
love and understand and have compassion for each other. I have learned more
about love, selflessness and human understanding from people I have met in this
great adventure in the world of AIDS, than I ever did in the cutthroat,
competitive world in which I spent my life."
Intelligent,
highly sensitive, and extremely gifted, Perkins did have at least one thing in
common with the character that would make him a legend. Like Norman Bates, he
was forever an outsider, a quality that no doubt brought an unnerving truth to
his characterizations and a strong pathos to his work in such films as Fear
Strikes Out and Play It As It Lays.
But
even though Perkins and Norman Bates are interchangeable in most people’s minds,
the majority of his films find him breaking from the image he acquired and
displaying a versatility that the continuing popularity of Psycho tends
to obscure. If his performance in Hitchcock’s film were his only contribution
to the cinema, Anthony Perkins could still rightfully claim an esteemed place
in celluloid history. But rarely seen performances in such diverse fare as Lovin’
Molly and Remember My Name demonstrate that there was much more to
him than Norman Bates.
For
those who know Anthony Perkins only through Psycho, its sequels and
imitations, his true versatility has yet to be discovered.
Brian W. Fairbanks
