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Jeanette Helen Morrison (July 6, 1927 – October 3, 2004), known professionally as Janet Leigh, was an American actress. Her career spanned over five decades. Raised in Stockton, California, by working-class parents, Leigh was discovered at 18 by actress Norma Shearer, who helped her secure a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Leigh appeared in radio programs before her first formal foray into acting, making her film debut in the drama The Romance of Rosy Ridge (1947). With MGM, she appeared in many films which spanned a wide variety of genres, which include the crime-drama Act of Violence (1948), the drama Little Women (1949), the comedy Angels in the Outfield (1951), the romance Scaramouche (1952) and the western drama The Naked Spur (1953). She played dramatic roles during the late 1950s, in such films as Safari (1956) and Orson Welles's film noir Touch of Evil (1958). With RKO Radio Pictures she co-starred in the romantic comedy Holiday Affair (1949) with Robert Mitchum. Leigh achieved her biggest success starring as Marion Crane in Alfred Hitchcock's horror film Psycho (1960). For her performance, Leigh won the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress and earned a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Intermittently, she continued to appear in films, including Bye Bye Birdie (1963), Harper (1966), Night of the Lepus (1972), and Boardwalk (1979). She made her Broadway debut in 1975 in a production of Murder Among Friends. She would also go on to appear in two horror films with her daughter, Jamie Lee Curtis: The Fog (1980) and Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998). In addition to her work as an actress, Leigh also wrote four books between 1984 and 2002, two of which were novels. Leigh had two brief marriages as a teenager (one of which was annulled) before marrying actor Tony Curtis in 1951. The pair's highly publicized union ended in divorce in 1962, and after starring in The Manchurian Candidate that same year, Leigh remarried and scaled back her career. She died in 2004 at age 77, following a year-long battle with vasculitis. Early life Jeanette Helen Morrison was born on July 6, 1927, in Merced, California, the only child of Helen Lita (née Westergaard) and Frederick Robert Morrison. Her maternal grandparents were immigrants from Denmark, and her father had Scots-Irish and German ancestry. Shortly after Leigh's birth, the family relocated to Stockton, where she spent her early life. She was brought up in poverty, as her father struggled to support the family with his factory employment, and he took various additional jobs after the Great Depression. Leigh was raised Presbyterian and sang in the local church choir throughout her childhood. In 1941, when her paternal grandfather became terminally ill, the family relocated to Merced, where they moved into her grandparents' home. She attended Weber Grammar School in Stockton, and later Stockton High School. Leigh excelled in academics and graduated from high school at age sixteen. Career 1946–1948: Discovery and early roles In February 1946, actress Norma Shearer was vacationing at Sugar Bowl, a ski resort in the Sierra Nevada mountains where Leigh's parents were working at the time. In the resort lobby, Shearer noticed a photograph of Leigh taken by her father over the Christmas holiday, which he had printed and placed in a photo album available for guests to browse. Upon returning to Los Angeles, Shearer showed Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) talent agent Lew Wasserman the photograph of the then-eighteen-year-old Leigh (Shearer's late husband Irving Thalberg had been head of production at MGM). She would later recall that "that smile made it the most fascinating face I had seen in years. I felt I had to show that face to somebody at the studio." Through her association with MGM, Shearer was able to facilitate screen tests for Leigh with Selena Royle, after which Wasserman negotiated a contract for her, despite her having no acting experience. Leigh dropped out of college that year, and was soon placed under the tutelage of drama coach Lillian Burns. Prior to beginning her film career, Leigh was a guest star on the radio dramatic anthology The Cresta Blanca Hollywood Players. Her initial appearance on radio at age 19 was in the program's production "All Through the House," a Christmas special that aired on December 24, 1946. She made her film debut in the big-budget Civil War film The Romance of Rosy Ridge (1947), as the romantic interest of box office star Van Johnson's character. She got the role when performing Phyllis Thaxter's long speech in Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo for the head of the studio talent department. During the shooting, Leigh's name was first changed to "Jeanette Reames", then to "Janet Leigh" and finally back to her birth name "Jeanette Morrison", as the studio felt "Janet Leigh" might cause confusion with actress Vivien Leigh. However, Johnson did not like the name and it was ultimately changed back to "Janet Leigh" (pronounced "Lee"). Immediately after the release of The Romance of Rosy Ridge, Leigh was cast opposite Walter Pidgeon and Deborah Kerr in the drama If Winter Comes (1947), playing a young pregnant woman in an English village. By early 1948, Leigh was occupied with the shooting of the Lassie film Hills of Home (1948), her third feature and the first in which she received star billing. She played the young wife of composer Richard Rodgers in MGM's all-star musical, Words and Music (1948). In late 1948, she was hailed the "No. 1 glamour girl" of Hollywood, although known for her polite, generous and down-to-earth persona. 1949–1958: Contract with MGM and independent films Leigh appeared in a number of films in 1949, including the thriller, Act of Violence (1949), with Van Heflin and Robert Ryan, directed by Fred Zinnemann. Though a financial failure, it was well received by critics. She also had a significant hit with MGM's version of Little Women, based on the novel by Louisa May Alcott, in which she portrayed Meg March, alongside June Allyson and Elizabeth Taylor. The film was generally well received by critics. Also in 1949, Leigh appeared as a nun in the anti-communist drama The Red Danube, which earned her critical acclaim, followed by a role as Glenn Ford's love interest in The Doctor and the Girl. Other credits from 1949 include as June Forsyte in That Forsyte Woman (1949) opposite Greer Garson and Errol Flynn, and as Robert Mitchum's leading co-star in the RKO-produced Holiday Affair (1949). That December, she started work on Josef von Sternberg's adventure-drama film Jet Pilot, in which she starred as the female lead opposite John Wayne. Producer Howard Hughes' constant re-editing would cause the film to be delayed almost eight years before being released. At MGM she appeared in Strictly Dishonorable (1951), a comedy with Ezio Pinza, based on a play by Preston Sturges. The film received mild critical acclaim. Leigh then appeared in the .... Discover the G L Leigh popular books. Find the top 100 most popular G L Leigh books.