LEIGH, Janet 1927-2004

OBITUARY NOTICE— See index for CA sketch: Born July 6, 1927, in Merced, CA; died of vasculitis October 3, 2004, in Beverly Hills, CA. Actress and author. Best remembered for her role as the doomed Marion Crane in Alfred Hitchcock's classic 1960 thriller, Psycho, Leigh was a popular movie and television actress of the 1950s and 1960s. Discovered in 1946 when a Hollywood agent happened to see Leigh's photograph at a ski lodge, the actress was given a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and had her debut with 1947's The Romance of Rosey Ridge. Among her most notable early movies are Little Women (1949) and Touch of Evil (1958). After starring in Psycho, Hitchcock refused to direct her again, saying that audiences would forever see her only as Marion Crane, the character who died in the groundbreaking shower scene. After that, and following a divorce from her third husband, actor Tony Curtis, in 1963, Leigh's career in movies started to decline, although she appeared in such other notable films as The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and Bye, Bye Birdie (1963). In the 1960s, she began focusing more on television. However, she still made occasional movie appearances, such as the 1980 horror film The Fog, in which she starred with daughter Jamie Lee Curtis, and her last film, A Fate Totally Worse than Death (2000). Leigh was the author of two novels, House of Destiny (1995) and The Dream Factory (2001), as well as the nonfiction Psycho: Behind the Scenes of the Classic Thriller (1995), written with Christopher Nickens, and the autobiography There Really Was a Hollywood (1984).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

books

Leigh, Janet, There Really Was a Hollywood, Doubleday (Garden City, NY), 1984.

periodicals

Chicago Tribune, October 5, 2004, section 2, p. 13.

Los Angeles Times, October 5, 2004, p. B10.

New York Times, October 5, 2004, p. A25.

Washington Post, October 5, 2004, p. B7.