Going Psycho Over Typewriters

The creepy final scene in Pyscho showed the smirking face of Anthony Perkins (as Norman Bates) superimposed by what was presumed to be his mother's partially-decomposed, mummified dial.

"Dogs have fleas, managers have sports writers."

About 12 years ago I worked as a volunteer for a group called Mental Illness Education Australian Capital Territory. A team of us gave talks at high schools which were aimed at lessening the stigmatisation of those who, like members of MIEACT, suffered from various mental health issues. Part of MIEACT’s credo is that it uses “the power of lived experience”. Our talks began with us asking school groups to toss up words which students associated with mental illness. “Pyscho” was invariably at the top of the list.

There was a time when you couldn't move in my lounge room for typewriters.

A woman in my group described a manic feel-good spending obsession which led to her buying so many large, framed paintings she could hardly move in the rooms and passageway of her house. I recognised the problem straight away. I was living in a house with wall-to-wall typewriters. Even the Cambridge Dictionary defines “psycho” as “someone who is crazy and frightening”. It’s probably fair to say a reckless compulsion to buy typewriters verges on what could be described as crazy. And looking back now – on a time when the object was not to buy typewriters to sell, but merely to horde – it is most certainly frightening. I’m fortunate to have come out of it in one piece.

Not surprisingly, I suppose, thoughts about being “psycho” over typewriters came to me when I saw that the Olympia standard typewriter used by Joseph Stefano (above, 1922-2006) to write the filmscript for the 1960 Alfred Hitchcock classic Psycho had remerged. I first posted on this machine seven years ago, when it was put up for auction in the US by Stefano’s son Dominic and was expected to fetch $25,000. It was reauctioned in 2016 and again not sold. But last week the Stefano Olympia appeared in the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles. I gather it was gifted to the museum by Michael Eisenberg on behalf of the estate of Joseph Stefano.

Hitchcock typing a script on his Underwood Champion portable typewriter as he sits on a stool at small bar in his apartment in the Wilshire Palms, Palm Springs, in March 1939.

Harold Gauer's photograph of Robert Bloch typing.

Anthony Perkins typing on an Olivetti Lettera 22 during a break in the filming of Psycho.

Janet Leigh as Pittsburgh Messenger sports writer Jennifer Paige in the Press Box at Forbes Field, Pittsburgh, in the 1951 movie Angels in the Outfield.

Being obsessive about such things, this led me to typewriter-related images of Hitchcock (1899-1980), to Robert Bloch (1917-94), who wrote the 1959 novel upon which Stefano’s filmscript was based, and Anthony Perkins (1932-92) and Janet Leigh (1927-2004), the lead actors in Psycho. Happily, there are no typewriters in any images of Ed Gein, left, the killer who was the inspiration for the character of Norman Bates (as well as Leatherface in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Ezra Cobb in Deranged and Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs).

We didn't all wear yellow hats and yellow shirts in the Press Box.

The great delight in all this was finding the gorgeous Janet Leigh as 24-year-old Pittsburgh Messenger sports writer Jennifer Paige in the 1951 feel-good movie Angels in the Outfield. After a scathing piece about the Pittsburgh Pirates being walloped by Cincinnati, she gets the wonderful quote from Pirates manager Aloysius Xavier 'Guffy' McGovern* (played by Paul Douglas): “Dogs have fleas, managers have sports writers.” The screenplay, by George Wells, right, and Dorothy Kingsley, was based on a story written by the University of Scranton’s Father Richard Francis Grady, Society of Jesus (below, 1905-1989). The original story appeared under the pseudonym of Richard Conlin, Conlin being Grady’s mother’s maiden name.

We come full circle from MIEACT though Psycho to Angels in the Outfield by mentioning that in the latter movie, words like “wacky” and “looney bin” are used, early reinforcements of old and entrenched misconceptions surrounding mental illness. And, of course, typewriters have helped maintain the links. *The only thing that could be said to connect Guffy McGovern with Ed Gein is that they both owned birdcages. 

We, too, think we have shown balance and poise with this story.