Janet Leigh as a teenager

MEMORIES OF LILLIAN AND THE DEATH OF HER JENNY

Janet Leigh the movie actress died at her home in Beverly Hills on Sunday at age 77. Her role in “Psycho” kept millions vigilant every time they took a shower for years after that famous scene in which her character was stabbed to death by the mad Tony Perkins’ character in Bates Motel.

I knew her circuitously through Debbie Reynolds, for whom I wrote an autobiography (in collaboration with her of course) in the late 1980s. Debbie and Janet were both stars on the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer lot when they were in their late teens. Their mentor, Lillian Burns Sidney, who was instrumental in hiring me to write Debbie’s book, was for years the “acting coach” at Metro. I put quotations around the term because there were a number of stars who took issue with her methods of coaching.

Nevertheless, “Burnsie,” as she was affectionately known to the stable of “more stars than there are in heaven” had the very respectful ear of Mr. Mayer, as he was referred to by all who worked for him, and because of that for many many years she was the highest paid (earning $100,000 in the 1940s – more than a million in today’s dollars) and most powerful woman executive in Hollywood (late 30s through the early 50s). As the wife for three decades (40s, 50s, and 60s through the early 70s) of director George Sidney, she wielded a social power in the film community too.

George Sidney dumped Lillian very unceremoniously after the death of their friend Edward G. Robinson, and married his widow Jane. Jane had been a receptionist here in New York for a designer named Nettie Rosenstein who catered to society and movie stars. The first Mrs. Robinson, Gladys, who, like a lot of Hollywood women, used to come East to buy her wardrobes, and took a liking to Jane whom she invited to visit her and her husband in Beverly Hills. Jane accepted the invitation and ultimately moved in, ending the first Robinson marriage.

Lillian Burns Sidney, circa 1946, when Janet Leigh first met her at MGM Studios

The Robinsons’ divorce settlement was a sensation at the time because it caused the breakup of the Edward G. Robinson art collection, then considered one of the greatest in the world. Much of it was sold in one transaction to Stavros Niarchos, the shipowner, creating the foundation of his great collection. The proceeds from the sale were split down the middle, community-property style and was a crushing blow to the sensitive art-loving actor who became famous as a tough guy mobster in “Little Caesar.”

Mr. Sidney, who was several years younger than his wife Lillian, already had a long time behind the scenes reputation for chasing the ladies, especially the starlets on the casting couch. Their marriage breakup was a devastating blow to the little woman (she was 4’11” in her youth) who had so much power in the Hollywood studio system and who had guided her husband, among others, to and through many cinematic successes. To make matters worse for her, Mr. Sidney and Mrs. Robinson also helped themselves to much of the couple’s joint financial assets as well as much of the 18th-century English antiques that Lillian acquired in London auction houses over the years of their marriage.

The divorce left Lillian, then close to 70, in dire financial straits as well as emotionally bereft. Three women came to her rescue: Debbie Reynolds, Donna Reed, and Janet Leigh. It was principally Debbie, who initiated the assistance, and who relied profoundly on Lillian’s unerring eye and theatrical know-how. For the rest of Lillian’s life (almost thirty years – she died in 1998), in varying degrees of financial participation (principally Debbie’s), the women assumed many of Lillian’s living expenses, including the cost of the daily maid, communicated with her daily and included her in family gatherings on holidays and special occasions. When Donna Reed died in 1986, the responsibility shifted more to Debbie and Janet who gave even more of her time to looking after Lillian, since Debbie (who called her every night of her life) was on the road as much as forty weeks a year with her nightclub act.

DPC and Lillian Sidney in 1988 at a book party in Los Angeles for Debbie Reynolds

Lillian, despite the havoc her former husband wreaked on her finances, remained, thanks to these women, ensconced for the rest of her life in a very comfortable co-op on the Wilshire corridor, smartly decorated with the little that was left after the big house on Tower Road was vacated and emptied by George Sidney and Jane Robinson who liked her predecessor’s taste.

I first met Janet Leigh at a cocktail party at her house in the late 1980s. Her career had long passed and she was now famous as the mother of Jamie Lee Curtis, and her second daughter, Kelly Curtis. As Hollywood women go, Janet, or Jenny, as Lillian always called her, was especially lady-like off-camera. Gracious, modest in her demeanor, she was educated. as all those girls under contract at MGM were, to have a sophisticated presence

Janet Leigh in Psycho Janet Leigh at the LA Premiere of Chicago (Photo: WireImage)

She was born in Janet Helen Morrison on July 6, 1927 in Merced, California, an only child. She was literally discovered when she was eighteen by the great MGM star of the 20s and 30s, Norma Shearer, in a ski lodge where her mother was working. Shearer who was married to a professional skier, Marty Arrouge, was also the widow of film production legend and MGM co-founder, Irving Thalberg, was also the largest individual stockholder in MGM at the time. She easily arranged for the girl to have a screen-test which was overseen by Lillian – their initial meeting.

In her long career she made more than sixty films – including some classics besides “Psycho” – “Little Women,” Orson Welles’ “A Touch of Evil,” and John Frankenheimer’s “Manchurian Candidate” and in the last two decades of her life, wrote a memoir – by herself – There Really Was A Hollywood, and during the early 1990s, a roman a clef about Hollywood called House of Destiny, on which she worked closely with Lillian as an editorial adviser.

She was always a very popular figure in Hollywood and never known for any kind of star temperament. When I knew her, later in her life, with her career mainly behind her, she seemed very much the proud mother of two daughters, who worked conscientiously to maintain a professional life as a writer and an actress. She was a popular star for more than a quarter century and the public’s perception of her – a lovely lady with a witty (and occasionally wicked) sense of humor – was accurate.

Although her biographies state that she was married four times – the second to Tony Curtis by whom she had her two daughters – for the majority of her adult life she was married to businessman Bob Brandt, who, along with her daughters, survives her.

Email
A
Friend