The Man Behind The Most Famous Horror Movie In History Meets A Peaceful End In California
Posted August 31, 2006 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The writer-producer was the man who created the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho”, considered by many to be the greatest horror movie ever made.
Word has just emerged that Stefano died earlier this week at the age of 84. The cause of his death hasn’t been released.
Stefano wrote a number of much lesser known scripts for TV and movies, including 1958’s “The Black Orchid,” starring Sophia Loren and Anthony Quinn.
But when he was approached to turn Robert Bloch’s novel into a screenplay in 1960, he faced a dilemma that forced a major change in the storyline.
“Bloch’s novel started with Marion Crane arriving at the motel and immediately being killed,” he once told the Los Angeles Times. “My feeling was that, since I did not know anything about this girl, I wasn’t going to care about her when she was killed. So we backed the story up a bit and learned something about her so that when she was killed, it would have more impact.”
And that’s how one of the main characters wound up stealing $40,000 from her boss and stopping at the Bates Motel to hide out. Crane, played by Janet Leigh, meets her end in the infamous shower scene, one of the most lauded moments in movie history.
While Stefano was never able to scale the same heights in pictures after “Psycho”, science fiction fans owe him a debt as well. He was the man behind the original “Outer Limits”, a well remembered and highly regarded anthology series that ran from 1963-1965.
Its opening, “There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture,” was reprised in a recent cable TV remake that continues to run on stations all over the world.
Stefano is survived by his wife and a son.
