Great Characters: Norman Bates (“Psycho”)
I don’t know about you, but for years after first seeing Psycho, I rarely took a shower where I didn’t catch myself glancing through the shower curtain and wondering… is that shape the door… or something else?
The character Norman Bates, played by Anthony Perkins in the 1960 Hitchcock thriller Psycho (screenplay by Joseph Stefano, based on a novel by Robert Bloch), is one of the most memorable movie characters of all time. Some background on the character per Wikipedia:
The character Norman Bates in Psycho was loosely based on two people. First was the real-life murderer of the serial killer Ed Gein, about whom Bloch later wrote (1962) a fictionalised account, “The Shambles of Ed Gein”. (The story can be found in Crimes and Punishments: The Lost Bloch, Volume 3). Second, it has been indicated by several people including Noel Carter (wife of Lin Carter) and Chris Steinbrunner, as well as allegedly by Bloch himself, that Norman Bates was partly based on Calvin Beck, publisher of Castle of Frankenstein.
The characterization of Bates in the novel and the movie differ in some key areas. In the novel, Bates is in his mid-to-late 40s, short, overweight, homely, and more overtly unstable. In the movie, he is in his early-to-mid-20s, tall, slender, and handsome. Reportedly, when working on the film, Hitchcock decided that he wanted audiences to be able to sympathize with Bates and genuinely like the character, so he made him more of a “boy next door.” In the novel, Norman becomes Mother after getting drunk and passing out; in the movie, he remains sober before switching personalities.
In the novel, Bates is well-read in occult and esoteric authors such as P.D. Ouspensky and Aleister Crowley. He is aware that “Mother” disapproves of these authors as being against religion.