Split Image: 8the Life of Anthony Perkins

This is truly a great book about one of my favorite actors. You will not put the book down.

If I remember it well the films where Mr Perkins appeared and I watched were "Psycho", inevitably, and "La décade prodigieuse" by Claude Chabrol. On "Psycho" there is nothing new to be said and Chabrol's movie was interesting. Towards the end of the book under review, someone who had been very close to Mr Perkins is quoted as saying: "That Tony never fulfilled himself is a tragedy. He never did anything optimum. And yet he was optimum." Well, the notion of "optimum" varies but, discarding that, frankly, that was not the impression I got from the book and if we go by the first sentence then most lives are certainly tragedies. In my opinion, what was really sad in his professional life was the fact of having achieved a peak, never to be repeated, at an early age. To use words by Tim Rice, for the musical "Evita", What happens now, where do you go from here? For someone on top of the world The view is not exactly clear A shame you did it all at twenty-six ... Much worse, was that he would be linked to the Norman Bates's character all his acting life. This surely must have affected his later career and the choices he made. Especially since, as opposed to photography or painting, cinema is an art where you depend on other people heavily. As I suggested above, I do not think that Mr Perkins was outstandingly gifted. However, I would not say that most actors are and yet they go on to win Oscars or similar important prizes. On the non-professional side, unfortunately Mr Perkins was a deeply troubled person. But, throughout his life, he met people who loved and cared about him. I enjoyed, if such a verb is appropriate, knowing a lot more about actor and man. This is a well written, highly informative and well documented biography.

As an actor, Anthony Perkins has always fascinated me. In every role that I ever saw him play, he had this quality about him that made you feel that if you didn't listen to every word he said and watch every movement that he made, you were going to miss something of major importance. It's called stage presence and he had it by the bucketfuls. He was of course most noted for his portrayal of Norman Bates in PSYCHO and he captured that character so well that it was both the blessing and the curse of his career. Already, before Hitchcock's masterpiece, the powers that be behind Perkins' acting career saw him as a replacement for James Dean or as the new Gary Cooper or someone like him. They wrongly saw him as a macho romantic lead but after PSYCHO, they and the movie public only wanted him to play variations of the Norman Bates character. Charles Winecoff, in his revised tenth anniversary edition of his Perkins biography, ANTHONY PERKINS: SPLIT IMAGE captures valiantly both the personal and professional life of a Hollywood icon. Perkins' acting career didn't begin on the movie screen; it began on the stage. His father was the famed actor, Osgood Perkins, who died during a perfomance at the age of thirty-seven when Anthony was only five. His mother was connected to theater people and saw that he learned his craft as a teenager in summer stock productions. Before his appearance in the movie PSYCHO, he had played the lead in at least two Broadway shows, one of which was as Eugene Gant in Ketti Frings' play LOOK HOMEWARD ANGEL based on the Thomas Wolfe novel of the same name. Eugene Gant's sensitive character was one that would have suited Perkins' personality well and if the movie mobuls could have seen that these kinds of roles rather than the romantic lead roles were who Anthony should play, his film career might have taken a happier, more successful turn. Anthony hadn't been in Hollywood long when he met Tab Hunter and the tongues began to wag concerning both men's sexual preference. Homosexuality in the 1950's and 1960's was not something to be tolerated in an actor's personal life and Anthony was quickly persuaded to not be seen with Tab in public too frequently. (Tab's autobiography indicated as well that he too was told to avoid too much contact with Anthony.) At the time, to make your homosexuality too public would have been a sure-fire way to kill a career before it even got started. Before, and after Tab Hunter, Perkins was linked with other (secretly) gay men, but psycho-analysis was revered at the time, and Anthony yearned to be as straight as so many people wished him to be. Why wouldn't he in the poisonous atmosphere of the time. At around forty, he met and married Berry Berenson and fathered two sons and I think for the rest of his life was convinced that his newly found heterosexuality and his role as husband and father was his salvation; at least that is what he told people. The many miscastings and the perception of

This is one of the best Hollywood bios around. While numerous authors rehash the tired stories of Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, and others (for the 10th or 11th time - and who cares) this book opens new, original territory by looking at the life and times of Tony Perkins. The author first published the book ten years ago and this is a great update - no one else has come along to do a better job either. Tony Perkins lived on the cusp of the social revolution, balancing between the uptight propriety of the 50s with the psycho/sexual upheaval of the 60s and 70s. Winecoff meticulously lays out this world, and Perkins difficult and often troubled, sometimes comical, walk through it. Tons of interviews and vivid descriptions of people and places makes Tony pop off the page in this "true Hollywood story" that is hard to out down. Winecoff's timing is impeccable - the book is a fast, fun read as well as an informative one. The reissue is more tightly woven (I read the first version when it came out ten years ago). The author has grown more sophisticated and observant with passing years, as all good writers should. The final scene, September 11th and all, is a fitting tribute to changing times and the end of an era.

It would be easy to do a posthumous hatchet job on Anthony Perkins, whose portrayal of psycho Norman Bates would unjustly eclipse four decades of other roles. Instead Charles Winecoff has chosen to tell Perkins' often lurid, always compelling story with taste and restraint -- but without pulling punches. The result: a rounded, respectful, meticulously researched account of a serious talent and tormented soul. Excellent work.

If you are interested in the complex life of Anthony Perkins, then this book is for you. It has his career and personal life down to the most exact detail including interviews with people he roomed with and was intimate with. I strongly suggest this book to Tony Perkins' fans.