The Detective Who Fell Down the Stairs....and Made a Lot of Great Movies

Time to re-launch Martin Balsam's page(as wiped clean from imdb.)

Back in 1996, to learn what the Oscar nominations were for 1995(Braveheart would win), I called a newspaper's entertainment page number(I didn't have internet then.) This is the message I heard:

"Fittingly, today's Oscar nominations were announced at the same time as the announcement of the passing of 1965 Oscar winner Martin Balsam, who won for "A Thousand Clowns" in that year."

I was all shook up, but a little proud. Here was Martin Balsam -- long gone from major motion pictures through most of the 90s -- getting his "day in the sun" on an Oscar hotline.

The obituaries that soon appeared cited two movies as Balsam's most famous: 1960's Psycho(where he was the famous OTHER victim than Janet Leigh in the shower -- the detective who got slashed in the face at the top of the stairs, fell the long way back down, and was finished off by Mrs. Bates at the bottom) and A Thousand Clowns, for which Balsam indeed won the Oscar in 1965, but for a lot less screen time than he had as that detective, in a movie seen by far fewer moviegoers(like MILLIONS fewer.)

Martin Balsam told friends that his "Thousand Clowns" Oscar was really for his work in Breakfast at Tiffany's(1961.) Oh, maybe. I say it was for "Psycho."

Balsam wasn't nominated for Best Supporting Actor in Psycho, almost as much a shame as Tony Perkins not getting a nomination for Best Actor. (Only Janet Leigh, wrongly in the Best Supporting Actress category, got a nomination.)

Balsam and Perkins share the most "Method modern" scene in Psycho, taking Hitchcock up to a new, hipper level of acting with their staccato ping-pong match of an interrogation by detective Arbogast(Balsam) of the nice but mysterious Norman Bates(Perkins.) Its a scene I can watch again and again, somewhat for Hitchcock's camera angles and editing, but a LOT for his two actors be-bopping away in a sequence that mixes suspense and humor in equal doses.

It was for his murder scene (called "the most spectacular martyrdom in the history of rear projection" -- the fall down the stairs) that Balsam was most famous, and I'm certain it launched him as one of the top three character guys of the 60s and kept him going til the 80's but -- Balsam evidently hated being identified with that scene. "I made all these other movies," he was said to have told one fan, "and all I ever get asked about is that one."

Stephen Rebello, the author of "Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho" wrote that Balsam "flatly and repeatedly" refused to do an interview on the making of his most famous movie. Janet Leigh and Tony Perkins gave interviews for the book, but Balsam, Vera Miles and John Gavin all passed. Gavin would eventually relent for Janet Leigh's book on Psycho, and Miles would talk a bit about Psycho when promoting Psycho II...but Balsam remained silent.

Until 1994, only a couple of years before his death in '96, when Balsam agreed to play Arbogast one more time -- but under his own name(as "Detective Martin Balsam") in a fairly bad spoof of Psycho called "Silence of the Hams" (to promote a more recent hit horror title.)

"Silence of the Hams" pretty much does Psycho scene by scene, just like Van Sant's remake of 1998. But it does each scene for comedy. We get this cast:

Janet Leigh ...Charlene Tilton
Anthony Perkins...Some Italian Comedian
Martin Balsam...MARTIN BALSAM
John Gavin...Billy Zane
Vera Miles....Joanna Pacula
John McIntire...John Astin
Vaughn Taylor....RIP Taylor
Frank Albertson...Bubba Smith
Pat Hitchcock...PHYILLIS DILLER

It is rather odd to see "the real deal," Martin Balsam, re-doing all his Arbogast scenes(Mel Brooks does a cameo during this sequence) right up to getting stabbed on the stairs(AGAIN?? he cries) and falling backwards against a process screen of birds flying and freeway traffic before being stabbed at the bottom of the stairs with a knife, a banana, and a woman's vibrator.

But Balsam is far more old and frail in Silence of the Hams than in Psycho. Its a little sad that he finally acknowledged the movie this way. I hope he was paid well.

Before Psycho in 1960, Balsam was perhaps most famous as the jury foreman in the great 12 Angry Men. Hitchcock looked at 12 Angry Men to decide on using Balsam(rather than some of the other great character actors in that movie, like Jack Warden and Jack Klugman)to play Arbogast. Balsam had been recommended to play Arbogast by the screenwriter who wrote the man from the Robert Bloch book, Joe Stefano. Hitchcock made the hire.