Alfred Hitchcock bought the rights to the novel anonymously from Robert Bloch for only US$9,000. He then bought up as many copies of the novel as he could to keep the ending a secret.
Hitchcock deferred his standard $250,000 salary in lieu of 60% of the film's net profits. His personal earnings from the film exceeded $15 million. Adjusted for inflation, that amount would now top $150 million in 2006 dollars.
The film only cost US$800,000 to make and has earned more than US$40 million. Alfred Hitchcock used the crew from his TV series "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" to save time and money. In 1962 he exchanged the rights to the film and his TV series for a huge block of MCA's stock, becoming its third-largest stockholder.
The movie in large part was made because Alfred Hitchcock was fed up with the big-budget, star-studded movies he had recently been making and wanted to experiment with the more efficient, sparser style of television filmmaking. Indeed, he ultimately used a crew consisting mostly of TV veterans and hired actors less well known than those he usually used.
This was Alfred Hitchcock's last film for Paramount. By the time principal photography started, Hitchcock had moved his offices to Universal and the film was actually shot on Universal's back lot. Universal owns the film today as well, even though the Paramount Pictures logo is still on the film.
One of the reasons Alfred Hitchcock shot the movie in black and white was he thought it would be too gory in color. But the main reason was that he wanted to make the film as inexpensively as possible (under $1 million). He also wondered if so many bad, inexpensively made, b/w "B" movies did so well at the box office, what would happen if a really good, inexpensively made, b/w movie was made.
Due to the sheer number of people who stopped taking showers after seeing "Psycho", the movie is credited for, inadvertently, creating the hippie in 1960.
In the opening scene, Marion Crane is wearing a white bra because Alfred Hitchcock wanted to show her as being "angelic". After she has taken the money, the following scene has her in a black bra because now she has done something wrong and evil. Similarly, before she steals the money, she has a white purse; after she's stolen the money, her purse is black.
The lingerie worn by Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) in the movie was not 'made to order' but bought off the rack from clothing stores. Hitchcock wanted women viewers to identify the lingerie and thus add to the mystique of realism.
In the Collector's Edition DVD documentary, Janet Leigh does admit that a nude model was used in portions of the shower scene. The DVD notes include a quote from Alfred Hitchcock, in an interview by 'Francois Truffaut' , where he says the same thing.
The stabbing scene in the shower is reported to have taken seven days to shoot using 70 different camera angles but only lasts 45 seconds in the movie.
During filming, this movie was referred to as "Production 9401" or "Wimpy". The latter name came from the second-unit cameraman on the picture Rex Wimpy who appeared on clapboards and production sheets, and some on-the-set stills for Psycho.
Alfred Hitchcock originally intended to open the film with a four-mile dolly shot from a helicopter, a scene similar to Orson Welles' bravura opening of Touch of Evil (1958). The early motel scene between Norman and Marion (Janet Leigh) resembles in many ways another scene from that movie featuring Leigh.
The shower scene has over 90 splices in it, and did not involve Anthony Perkins at all. The scene was filmed between 17 December 1959 and 23 December 1959 while Perkins was in New York preparing for a play.
Janet Leigh had to wear a moleskin covering over her private parts when she acted out the shower scene so she would not really be nude and the camera would not pick up anything supposedly obscene. However, after the warm water of the shower washed off the moleskin, Hitchcock still did one more take. The take was used in the finished film.
Joseph Stefano and Alfred Hitchcock deliberately layered-in certain risqué elements as a ruse to divert the censors from more crucial concerns -- like the action that takes place in the bedroom in the beginning and the shower murder. The censors reviewed the script and censored the "unimportant" extra material and Hitchcock managed to sneak in his "important" material.
The sound that the knife makes penetrating the flesh is actually the sound of a knife stabbing a casaba melon.
Alfred Hitchcock originally envisioned the shower sequence as completely silent, but 'Bernard Herrmann' went ahead and scored it anyway and Hitchcock immediately changed his mind.
The blood was Bosco chocolate syrup.
Despite the fact that the entire film is in black and white, several viewers vividly (and specifically) recall the "red" blood as it swirled down the shower drain. Obviously, this could not be true, not just for the fact of the black and white film, but the blood was actually Bosco chocolate syrup. Although feature films were produced in color at the time, newsreels were shown in black and white. Filming the movie in black and white might have made it seem less gory (see other trivia), but it also might have seemed more real to viewers at the time who were used to seeing the news in black and white.
Norman's hobby is taxidermy, stuffing birds.
The painting that Norman removes in order to watch Marion undressing is a classical painting depicting a rape.
Director Cameo: [Alfred Hitchcock] about four minutes in wearing a cowboy hat outside Marion's office.
Alfred Hitchcock (and his cinematographer) may truly have put one over on the censors. If you watch the sequence of the hand clutching around the shower curtain, you will see the curtain on the left side of the frame, the hand comes in center frame and diverts you from what can just been seen out of focus in the background right of the frame. If you increase the contrast on your monitor (particularly effective by tilting the monitor of a portable DVD player) the background visual information clearly resolves itself into a pair of naked breasts. Janet Leigh claims that she was not nude during the filming of this scene and was actually wearing a moleskin suit for the shot where she falls forward over the side of the tub. This is not disputed, but there was a nude model used for overhead and insert shots; this would be the case for the breast shot in question. Leigh insisted to her death that no nude woman, herself or a stand-in, was used in the actual filming, but modern video technology, including frame-by-frame advance, reveals one, in profile so as to expose no "private parts" and with the top of the frame at shoulder level so as to prevent identification.
Among the major promotional items for this film was a lengthy trailer (which was filmed in several languages), running a full reel, with Alfred Hitchcock taking the audience on a quite humorous tour of the motel and the house. At the end, Hitchcock pulls open a shower curtain to reveal a close-up of a woman screaming. The actress in the shower in not Janet Leigh but Vera Miles.
Alfred Hitchcock received several letters from ophthalmologists who noted that Janet Leigh's eyes were still contracted during the extreme closeups after her character's death. The pupils of a true corpse dilate after death. They told Hitchcock he could achieve a proper dead-eye effect by using belladonna drops. Hitchcock did so in all his later films.
In Robert Bloch's novel, Norman Bates is short, fat, older, and very dislikable. It was Hitchcock who decided to have him be young, handsome, and sympathetic. Norman is also more of a main character in the novel. The story opens with him and Mother fighting rather than following Marion from the start.
In the closing scene, as the camera moves down the long, dark hallway to where police have confined Norman Bates, the uniformed guard posted at the door is a young Ted Knight.
Alfred Hitchcock and Joseph Stefano originally conceived the film with a jazz score instead of 'Bernard Herrmann's miniature string orchestra.
The score, composed by 'Bernard Herrmann', is played entirely by stringed instruments.
For a shot right at the water stream, Alfred Hitchcock had a six-foot-diameter shower head made up so that the water sprayed past the camera lens.
Marion's white 1957 Ford sedan is the same car (owned by Universal) that the Cleaver family drove on "Leave It to Beaver" (1957).
First American film ever to show a toilet flushing on screen.
Joseph Stefano was adamant about seeing a toilet on-screen to display realism. He also wanted to see it flush. Hitchcock told him he had to "make it so" through his writing if he wanted to see it. Stefano wrote the scene in which Marion adds up the money, then flushes the paper down the toilet specifically so the toilet flushing was integral to the scene and therefore irremovable.
Janet Leigh only had three weeks to work on the movie and spent the whole of one of those weeks filming the shower sequence.
The novel "Psycho", written by Robert Bloch, was actually part of a series of pulp novels marketed in conjunction with the popular spooky radio show "Inner Sanctum".
Parts of the house were built by cannibalizing several stock-unit sections including a tower from the house in Harvey (1950). The house was the most expensive set of the picture but came to a mere US$15,000.
The first scene to be shot was of Marion getting pulled over by the cop. This was filmed on Golden State Freeway (number 99).
When the cast and crew began work on the first day they had to raise their right hands and promise not to divulge one word of the story. Hitchcock also withheld the ending part of the script from his cast until he needed to shoot it.
In order to implicate viewers as fellow voyeurs Hitchcock used a 50 mm lens on his 35 mm camera. This gives the closest approximation to the human vision. In the scenes where Norman is spying on Marion this effect is felt.
To ensure the people were in the theaters at the start of the film (rather than walking in part way through) the studio provided a record to play in the foyer of the theaters. The album featured background music, occasionally interrupted by a voice saying "Ten minutes to Psycho time," "Five minutes to Psycho time," and so on.
Anthony Perkins was paid US$40,000 dollars for his role, which is exactly the same amount of money that Marion Crane embezzles.
Alfred Hitchcock was so pleased with the score written by 'Bernard Herrmann' that he doubled the composer's salary to $34,501. Hitchcock later said, "33% of the effect of Psycho was due to the music."
Beethoven's 3rd Symphony ("Eroica") is in Norman's record player
In 2006, Scottish artist Douglas Gordon created a 24-hour slow-motion version of the film titled "24-Hour Psycho" that played at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
If you look attentively you can notice that nearly every time a driver gets out of his car he does so through the passenger side, a seemingly odd behavior. This is due to the bench seating in older cars, and Hitchcock's desire to continue the shot without either moving the camera to follow the actor or having the actor walk between the car and the camera.
"Psycho" was first scheduled to air on U.S. network TV in the fall of 1966. Just before it would have aired, however, Valerie Percy, the daughter of U.S. Senator Charles H. Percy (R-Illinois: 1967 - 85), was stabbed to death, apparently by an intruder, in a murder that, as of 2007, remains unsolved. It was deemed prudent, under the circumstances, to postpone the scheduled airing. Ultimately, the film was never shown on U.S. TV until 1970, following a highly successful theatrical re-release the previous year. At that time, Universal released in on the syndication market, where it quickly became a popular staple on local late night horror film showings.
Every theater that showed the film had a cardboard cut-out installed in the lobby of Alfred Hitchcock pointing to his wristwatch with a note from the director saying "The manager of this theatre has been instructed at the risk of his life, not to admit to the theatre any persons after the picture starts. Any spurious attempts to enter by side doors, fire escapes or ventilating shafts will be met by force. The entire objective of this extraordinary policy, of course, is to help you enjoy PSYCHO more. Alfred Hitchcock"
SPOILER: Alfred Hitchcock paid the title sequence designer Saul Bass (also credited as "Pictorial Consultant") US$2,000 to draw storyboards for the scene where Arbogast is killed at the stairs. Brass was excited about the movie and asked Hitchcock for the opportunity. Hitchcock discarded his work because the shots showed Arbogast's feet slowly going up the stairs and this prepared the audience for a shock. Hitch wanted it to be a surprise and that's why he filmed Arbogast in a completely natural way.
SPOILER: Alfred Hitchcock tested the fear factor of Mother's corpse by placing it in Janet Leigh's dressing room and listening to how loud she screamed when she discovered it there.
SPOILER: The last shot of Norman Bates's face has a still frame of a human skull inserted in it. The skull is that of Mother.
SPOILER: Alfred Hitchcock insisted that audiences should only be allowed to see the film from the start. This was unheard of as people are usually allowed to enter a theater at any point during a movie. The reason for this was that the film was advertised as starring Janet Leigh, but her character is killed in the first half of the film.
SPOILER: Alfred Hitchcock was very uneasy about the morphing of Norman's face into Mother's at the end of the film. He sent out three different versions of the film during its initial release. The first version included the ending seen on all prints today, the second contained no morphing at all, and the third contained the trick at the end, yet also included it at an earlier point in the film. When Sam Loomis comes back to the Bates Motel to look for Arbogast, there is a zooming shot of Norman standing by the swamp, looking very sinister. The third version of the film included the subtle morphing of Norman's face into Mother's at this moment.
SPOILER: During preproduction, Hitchcock said to the press that he was considering Helen Hayes for the part of Mother. This was obviously a ruse, but several actresses wrote to Hitchcock requesting auditions.
SPOILER: The MPAA objected to the use of the term "transvestite" to describe Norman Bates in the final wrap-up. They insisted it be removed until Joseph Stefano proved to them it was a clinical psychology term. They thought he was trying to get one over on them and place a vulgarity in the picture.
SPOILER: Alfred Hitchcock even had a canvas chair with "Mrs. Bates" written on the back prominently placed and displayed on the set throughout shooting. This further added to the enigma surrounding who was the actress playing Mrs. Bates.