Janet Leigh (Deceased) Her most notable performance, which earned her a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination, will forever be remembered as the ‘shower scene’ in Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller movie ‘Psycho’. Janet Leigh was born on July 6th, (a birth date she shares with George W Bush) 1927 in Merced, California. She was the only child of Frederick and Helen Morrison. While Janet was studying music and psychology at College of the Pacific she was discovered actress Norma Shearer and her husband Irving who was a senior executive with Metro Goldwyn Mayer. After seeing her photographs, talent agent Lew Wasserman secured her a contract with MGM studios for $50 a week and at the age of nineteen she appeared in her first film, The Romance of Rosy Ridge, in 1947. At that time Janet changed her name and began her journey to stardom. Although Janet Leigh starred in many Hollywood movies, such as Touch of Evil, with Charlton Heston, Marlene Dietrich and Orson Welles, Houdini, with Tony Curtis and the 1949 version of Little Women, with Elizabeth Taylor, her most famous was the Hitchcock thriller Psycho.
In 1962 Janet starred in the original screen production of The Manchurian Candidate along side Frank Sinatra and Angela Lansbury. The movie was remade in 2004 and starred Denzel Washington and Jeffrey Wright. However, it was her marriage to Hollywood heartthrob Tony Curtis in 1951 that really got Janet noticed. After marrying Curtis, and increasing her Hollywood profile she went on to star in The Naked Spur which co-starred Jimmy Stewart. Also in 1951 Janet played a reporter for a women's magazine in Angels in the Outfield which featured cameos from baseball greats Joe DiMaggio and Ty Cobb. It was in 1962 that Janet was to find out that Tony was cheating on her with a younger woman, Christine Kaufmann and they divorced. Together they had two children, Jamie Lee Curtis and Kelly Curtis. Within the space of a few months Janet went on to marry her fourth husband Robert Brandt, in Las Vegas. She remained married to Brandt until she died. As well as acting and raising two children Leigh served on the board of directors of the Motion Picture and Television Foundation.
In 2004 Janet was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree at the University of the Pacific at the same time as United States Solicitor General Ted Olson was awarded his honorary degree at the same university. On October 3rd 2004 while at her home in California, Janet suffered a heart attack and died with her family at her bedside. ABB |
