In the late 1950s, Anthony Perkins (or “Tony Perkins,” as the teen magazines called him) capitalized on his boy-next-door image by recording a few jazz-pop albums. Listening to those recordings (besides the song posted above, I’m also partial to “But Beautiful” and “I Remember You”), I find the difference in Perkins’ pre-Psycho and post-Psycho careers all the more fascinating. Even more interesting is the movie of his that came out mere months before Psycho, a comedy called Tall Story in which Perkins plays a college basketball player wooing fellow student Jane Fonda (in her film debut).

On occasion I hear my classmates talk about whether they “buy” a certain storyline or character in a film. In this instance, can we buy Perkins as a goofy, lovesick college boy since we’ve seen Psycho and perhaps some of his other unsettling performances? (See: Five Miles to Midnight, Pretty Poison, Psycho II/III/IV, etc.) As Marion Crane says in Psycho, “sometimes just one time can be enough,” and that was certainly true in Perkins’ case when you see how he was typecast. Since I spent my teenage years as a sort of aficionado of his movies and I heard some classmates ask what other roles Perkins did in his career, I can recommend a few in particular: the Civil War drama Friendly Persuasion (1956), for which Perkins got an Oscar nomination for playing Gary Cooper’s son; Fear Strikes Out (1957), the true-life story of a baseball player battling bipolar disorder; a pair of romantic dramas from the early 60s, Goodbye Again (1961) with Ingrid Bergman and Phaedra (1962) with Melina Mercouri; and, as was mentioned in class, the Orson Welles film The Trial (1962).

If I could make a case for Anthony Perkins as an auteur of acting, I would say that he should be lauded for making the most of lighthearted romantic comedy leads, various kinds of characters in period pieces of different genres, the psychological depths he had to plumb for Psycho, then all the bad retreads of the Norman Bates character that came afterward. And, to bring the post full circle, there was the Broadway musical Perkins sang in, Greenwillow, which he was rehearsing in New York in between shooting scenes for Psycho. (A stand-in played “Mrs. Bates” during the shower sequence.) The song “Never Will I Marry” might not be a classic of the American stage, but it’s to Perkins’ credit that he makes it so affecting, as you can see in this TV performance from 1985.