Anthony Perkins

A couple of days ago we've discussed Tab Hunter. Today, the subject is one of his lovers: Anthony Perkins.

Anthony Perkins was born on April 4, 1932 to successful screen and stage actor Osgood Perkins and his wife Janet Rane. He was a descendant of a Mayflower passenger, John Howland.

Because of the nature of his profession, Osgood was often not home and little Anthony developed a strong attachment to his mother. Jealous of his father whenever he was home, he often wished him dead, and when he did actually die of a heart attack when Anthony was just 5 years old, the young child was consumed with guilt.

After his father's death, Anthony's relationship with his mother became more asphyxiating. In a 1983 interview with People Magazine, he opened up about his mother:

"She wasn't ill-tempered or mean, just strong-willed, dominant... She controlled everything about my life, including my thoughts and feelings."

In the same interview, Perkins also discussed his mother's inappropriate touching:

"She was constantly touching me and caressing me. Not realizing what effect she was having, she would touch me all over, even stroking the inside of my thighs right up to my crotch."

He went on to say:

"... [I] completely repressed what my mother was doing - blanked it out."

Despite this emotional repression, Anthony found comfort in the same profession as his father. After years of hearing stories about how successful and seemingly carefree his father was, Anthony decided to follow in his footsteps and try his hand at acting:

"There was nothing about me I wanted to be, but I felt wonderfully happy being somebody else. I made up my mind to be a great actor, greater than my father."

When Anthony was just 15 years old, he started doing theater performances. Then, in 1953 he made his big-screen debut in The Actress, starring Spencer Tracy. The following year he received praise for his role in Broadway production Tea and Sympathy, and in 1957 he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his role in the 1956 film Friendly Persuasion. Over the next few years Anthony became known for his ability to play roles with great emotional depth and sincerity, starring in anything from Westerns to romance movies, including a standout performance that demonstrated his emotional depth in Fear Strikes Out. (That was the film part that he "stole" from Tab Hunter, effectively putting an end to their relationship).

In the late 1950s, Perkins released three Pop albums, but a career as a singer never materialized, although he did have several successful singing roles in Broadway musicals. His first single, in 1956, was called A Little Love Can Go A Long Long Way:

His next single, also in 1956, was the theme song from the film that gave him his only Oscar nomination, the Gary Cooper - Dorothy McGuire multi-Oscar-nominated film Friendly Persuasion. The theme song, Thee I Love, was also Oscar-nominated and was Perkins' next single:

In 1957 he released three singles and an album. Fool In Love was one of the singles:

A more up-tempo single was Rocket To The Moon:

His only US Hot 100 hit came in October 1957. It peaked at #24 and was called Moon-Light Swim. 4 years later Elvis would include his own version in Blue Hawaii.

His debut album, simply called Tony Perkins, was also released in 1957. It included evergreens like How Long Has This Been Going On:

... As well as Gone With The Wind:

1958 brought another album and more singles. One such single was The Prettiest Girl In School. It made the Top 20 in Australia.

Treasure Island was released late 1958:

His 1958 album called Rainy Afternoon contained his take on classics such as Miss Otis Regrets:

... Also You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To:

His next album, From My Heart, came out at the end of that year. It contained, among others, Speak Low:

As well as the song from the Alan Ladd - Sophia Loren film, Boy On A Dolphin:

In 1960, Anthony got the casting call that would change his career forever. In a 1990 interview, Perkins remembered the moment:

"'Hitchcock wants you in his new picture. One of his last.' In those days that's all Hitchcock had to say."

Anthony was chosen to play the part of Norman Bates, the seemingly innocent innkeeper with a terrible secret. The world was transfixed by Anthony's performance in Psycho. His ability to capture the shy and demented psyche of Norman Bates, twisted by his malevolent "Mother," was probably channeled through his experiences with his own mother. Anthony went on to star as the iconic character in both Psycho II (1983) and Psycho III (1986).

Here's the final scene from that masterpiece:

... And just because, here's the famous shower scene:

Given his extraordinary performance as Norman Bates, Perkins often found himself directed towards similar roles featuring emotionally disturbed characters with sinister motives. When asked in a 1983 interview with Bobbie Wygant if the role in Psycho helped or hurt his career, Perkins responded:

"Well, it hurt it in that people started associating me with that kind of role. It helped it because people could - rather than saying 'here comes what's-his-name down the street,' they were able to put a name to the face. So, it did both those things."

During the next few years his juiciest roles came from Europe: in 1961 he starred in Goodbye Again, alongside Ingrid Bergman and Yves Montand. It's an adaptation of Françoise Sagan's best selling novel, filmed in France. Anthony Perkins took the oppurtinity to release an EP in France, which contained Quand Tu Dors Près De Moi, a song from this film:

In 1962 he starred in Dassin's Phaedra, alongside Melina Merkouri. Here's their love scene, backed by the great music of Mikis Theodorakis:

Other films that he made in Europe during this period included Five Miles to Midnight (1962), The Trial (1962), Le Glaive Et La Balance (1963), and Is Paris Burning? (1966). He would return to juicy parts in the US with films such as Pretty Poison (1968), and Catch-22 (1970).

While young, Perkins was a very shy person, especially in the company of women. According to the posthumous biography Split Image by Charles Winecoff, he had exclusively same-sex relationships until his late 30s, including with actors Rock Hudson, Tab Hunter and Nick Adams; artist Christopher Makos; dancer Rudolf Nureyev; composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim; and dancer-choreographer Grover Dale, with whom Perkins had a six-year relationship. Perkins has been described as one of the two great men in the life of French author Patrick Loiseau. He is also rumored to have been in liaisons with Troy Donahue, Paul Newman, Leonard Bernstein, Teno Pollick and James Dean.

Perkins was also allegedly known to frequent gay porn stores and gay movie houses in Times Square, NYC, where he watched men have sex in the stairwells.

When Anthony shot to fame, he became highly sought after by some of the leading female stars of the time including Brigitte Bardot, Ava Gardner, Jane Fonda and Sofia Loren. Recalling one uncomfortable encounter in which Brigitte Bardot made her romantic intentions clear, Perkins said:

"Sooner than get close to her, I would have crashed through the window and fallen to the pavement 10 stories below."

In Ronald Bergan's book 'Anthony Perkins: A Haunted Life,' he states that while struggling with his sexuality, Perkins underwent psychotherapy to "'cure' his homosexuality," and at age 39 he had his first heterosexual experience with actress Victoria Principal on location filming The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean in 1971.

Then, in 1973 he married Berinthia "Berry" Berenson, a young photographer, granddaughter of the Paris fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli and a grandniece of the art dealer and historian Bernard Berenson. Also daughter to Marquesa Gogo Cacciapuoti and sister to actress Marisa Berenson (Cabaret, Barry Lyndon).

Together they had two sons who have both gone on to have successful careers in music and film; Elvis (b. February 9, 1976) is a Folk-Rock musician and Oz (b. February 2, 1974) is an actor and director. (Oz was "Dorky David Kidney" in Legally Blond.)

Perkins was tested for AIDS in 1990, after an article in The Enquirer, a tabloid newspaper, said he was HIV positive. Ms. Berenson said her husband had not been tested for AIDS but had been given a series of blood tests in Los Angeles for a palsy on the side of his face. Ms. Berenson said she assumed that someone had tested her husband's blood for the virus and leaked the results to the tabloid. After the story appeared, he was tested and found to be HIV positive.

Because her husband was such a private person, she said, and because he had grown deeply depressed, he wanted to tell as few people as possible about the illness. Ms. Berenson agreed, but after she gave him a surprise 60th birthday on April 4, and friends said he looked gaunt, she pleaded with him to allow her to tell close friends.

"I said to him, "Look, I'm going to share this with a few close friends that I trust because otherwise I'm going to go crazy," she recalled. "I'm not that good an actress. I told Tony I can't play this charade. I just can't. He would be fine about me telling one or two people, but then he'd say, 'Oh, you're telling too many.' "

"He went twice to stay at the hospital, and once as an out-patient, and we went under another name," she recalled. "I literally asked myself, Who am I today? It was weird. You lose all sense of reality. You can't even be yourself in a situation like this. You're signing 'Mrs. Smith' or whatever. You think that this man has spent his entire life giving people so much pleasure in show business, and this is his reward. He can't even be himself at the end. I mean, people at the Screen Actors Guild are completely into this thing. They're used to dealing with aliases."

Asked how she thought her husband had contracted AIDS, Ms. Berenson shook her head and said haltingly: "No. We don't really know. No. It's not worth it."

Perkins died at his Los Angeles home on September 12, 1992, from AIDS-related pneumonia at age 60.

Perkins, in his final days, spoke to his sons about issuing a note upon his death, and the boys wrote down their father's words. "I chose not to go public about this, because to misquote 'Casablanca,' I'm not much at being noble, but it doesn't take too much to see that the problems of an old actor don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy old world."

Perkins said he learned "more about love, selflessness and human understanding from the people I have met in this great adventure in the world of AIDS than I ever did in the cutthroat, competitive world in which I spent my life."

Berry Berenson herself was tragically killed while aboard American Airlines flight 11 as it crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

Not to close on a downer, I'll leave you with this quote from him from 1983:

"It's satisfying to have grown from where I was to where I am. But there is so much growing still to be done. As long as I live, I'll be cleaning the past out of my mind, getting rid of those old cassettes I play over and over—my memories, my beliefs. I want to keep up with my life. Live it so completely that when death comes like a thief in the night, there'll be nothing left for him to steal."