Every time I watch this now...
I feel like putting on the Kolchak series afterwards because of Simon Oakland.
shareHa.
Simon Oakland had a long and varied career, roughly the late fifties, the sixties and the seventies. Per Imdb, Oakland died in August of 1983 (a day after his 68th birthday, of cancer) but had credits on TV from 1980 to 1983. In short, Oakland was working til he died, pretty much.
In August of 1983, a movie called Psycho II was likely still in theaters. It had opened in June 1983 and did good business.
Psycho II was filmed in the summer of 1982, when Simon Oakland was still alive and working and there is this trivia:
the role of the psychiatrist who welcomes Norman Bates back into society and supervises him was played by Robert Loggia.
But in Tom Holland's original screenplay, that psychiatrist was meant to be played by...Simon Oakland, returning to his original role as Dr. Richman, the psychiatrist at the end of Psycho.
It would have been a great connection to the original Psycho to have had Oakland join original Psycho stars Anthony Perkins and Vera Miles in Psycho II. But the director Richard Franklin later shared that "Oakland already had health problems, and his appearance wasn't too good." So they created a new charactger for Robert Loggia -- one who dies by knife, but not by Norman's hand. (But we lost the impact of "the original Psycho shrink" finally getting murdered for his monologue, and being ACCIDENTALLY stabbed by Lila Crane Loomis' daughter in Mrs. Bates drag -- a ridiculous murder.)
"His appearance wasn't too good" is a stark reminder than in movies and TV -- even for character actors -- how one LOOKS is an issue and gets tougher in Hollywood as you age. Not so much now (we've got oldies like Bruce Dern still getting roles) but back then, maybe.
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In Simon Oakland's case, what also became apparent as the 60s turned into the 70s was some weight gain. Oakland is a little pudgy as the shrink in Psycho, but he looks young, tan and trim compared to the later version of Oakland. That's OK too -- Oakland stayed formidable, charismatic, a "big man with authority."
Like on Kolchak: The Night Stalker.
I recall being on a plane flight which had a satellite feed to cable TV. This was about 20 years ago. I found some channel with back-to-back-to-back Kolchaks and watched about four of them to complete my flight. Its a fun memory. Seeing Simon Oakland brought back memories of Psycho of course. And how about that cranky old macho man Darren McGavin? Kolchak and The Old Man in A Christmas Story end up being HIS legacy.
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A little more trivia: evidently in preparing Psycho, Hitchcock asked his screenwriter, Joe Stefano for casting recommendations for the parts in the film. I don't know if Stefano had recommendations for all the actors, but two were approved by Hitchocck: Martin Balsam for Arbogast and Simon Oakland for the psychiatrist. Balsam was an odd recommendation given that Arbogast is a tall tan Texan in a Stetson in the novel, but Stefano saw an "urban man."
I've always thought: Oakland could well have played Arbogast, and Balsam could well have played the shrink, but movie history dealt different cards: Balsam immortalized as the First Male Slasher Victim(Janet Leigh was the first female) and Oakland as the "lead" of the most debated and often hated scene in Psycho(which I love, of course.) Balsam didn't escape some mocking for his part in Psycho either: some folks hated Balsam's "fake" staircase fall as much as Oakland's "overlong explanation" at the end. Oh well. Great films have to take the hits.
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Between Psycho and Kolchak, Simon Oakland was good in two big screen Steve McQueen movies: The Sand Pebbles(as a racist sailor who takes of his shirt to box tiny Mako --its not a pretty sight) and, more sympathetically, as cop McQueen's stern but helpful cop boss in the classic "Bullitt." (Oakland has a great scene at SF's Grace Cathedral -- where Hitchcock would kidnap a bishop in FAmily Plot -- standing up to Robert Vaughn's oily political boss for McQueen.)
A fine career for Mr. Oakland. But Psycho and Kolchak might be his best remembered bits. (And maybe Baa Baa Black Sheep.)
I return because I remembered "two last pieces" of the history among Psycho, Simon Oakland and Alfred Hitchcock.
ONE: Evidently, an eyewitness to the filming of the psychiatrist scene(likely script supervisor Marshall Schlom, a key source to Stephen Rebello for his book "Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho") says that after Hitch called "cut and print" on Oakland's finished scene as the shrink, Hitchcock walked up to Oakland, shook his hand and said "Thank you, Mr. Oakland. You just saved my picture."
Its been endlessly speculated as to what Hitchocck meant. Most likely he meant that to avoid the censorship or outright banning of Psycho by the MPAA, Oakland's speech was meant to "cover the bases" to avoid "the wrong thoughts"(of Norman as a sexual pervert per 1960 standards rather than just trying to be his mother.)
I often try to picture the heavy burden ON Simon Oakland as an actor. He's been given this part in Psycho. Its only one scene, but it is PAGES of dialogue -- a long monologue really -- and "all eyes are on him." All the other actors in the scene, and..Alfred Hitchcock...are watching.
Two years previously , on Vertigo, the actor who played the psychiatrist briefing Barbara Bel Geddes on James Stewart's catatonic breakdown...kept blowing his lines. Hitchcock fired the man on the spot and the next day, another actor(Raymond Bailey, soon to be Banker Drysdale on The Beverly Hillbillies) took over the one day shrink role.
So Oakland COULD have been fired on the spot if he blew his lines. He didn't.
Oakland had to memorize those lines AND sell them as an actor. I think he did fine, though some complaints about his bombastic delivery may well have stemmed from the pressure of the role. And I think his bombast works for the role - the big "wrong move" is when he almost yells at Lila "He was touched by her, aroused by her, he wanted her...and MOTHER KILLED THE GIRL!" (Vera Miles even flinches at this, great acting.)
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TWO: It is pretty well known in Hitchcock circles that when Hitchcock elected to film a screen test of unknown model and TV commercial actress Tippi Hedren for "The Birds," he flew in actor Martin Balsam from NYC for the day at Universal Studios to work with her.
Part of this screen test can be seen on The Birds DVD(extras) and on YouTube. I saw the entire screen test in 1999 at the "Hitchcock Cenntennial" program at the Motion Picture Academy in LA.
In either version, one gets the gist: in "Part One," Hedren poses and has to improvise small talk with Balsam(who sits on a couch as Hedren turns this way and that under Hitchcock's rather cold vocal directions.) Balsam and Hitchocck treat this beautiful woman(out of both of their leagues physically) with a certain condescending sexism(Balsam does it while improvising her rich husband -- "How are you spending MY money today?") .
But then comes "Part Two," Hedren re-enacting kissing scenes from Notorious and To Catch a Thief with Balsam. Balsam wasn't that bad looking in 1961(the year after he played Arbogast in Psycho -- Hitch must have liked his acting), but he was no Cary Grant and it is odd to watch him kiss Hedren. (
In the 2012 HBO movie, "The Girl," this screen test scene was re-enacted with Sienna Miller as Tippi and a man heavier and uglier than Balsam playing Balsam -- when Hedren "had to kiss the ugly man" the point was made more clearly -- Hitchcock evidently had no interest in having Hedren kiss a handsome hunk like John Gavin or Rod Taylor(or any of many Universal he-men) for this screen test. He evidently liked the idea of keeping her uncomfortable by kissing Martin Balsam.
I"ve SEEN footage of the real life Tippi/Balsam screen test, but I have READ that, only a few years later, Hitchcock elected to shoot ANOTHER screen test of ANOTHER pretty young actress on contract(Claire Griswold) and brought in SIMON OAKLAND to do the screen test with HER.
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So, here was Hitchcock again, directing a pretty young actress to enact an erotic kissing scene with a character actor who otherwise would never be put in such a romantic scene for a movie.
Was Hitchcock jealous of the young male hunks he did not WANT kissing Tippi or Claire? Or did Hitchcock think it would be funny to make the actress uncomfortable with her kissing partner?
(That said, I think that Martin Balsam is quite handsome as Arbogast in Psycho -- if a bit balding -- and in Breakfast at Tiffany's the next year, he played a Hollywood agent who is shown kissing a beautiful woman at a party -- but she likely wants a job.)
Anyway, "Claire Griswold's screen test with Simon Oakland" is a bit of Hitchocck history. I wonder if the footage was kept somewhere like the Balsam/Hedren footage.
"But wait, there's more": If you would like to see footage of Claire Griswold when she was young and pretty and starting out(in 1962) you can see her in The Alfred Hitchcock Hour episode "I Saw the Whole Thing," which is famous as both the only episode of the Alfred Hitchcock HOUR that Hitchcock ever directed(he directed quite a few of the half hours) and as the last TV episode ever directed by Hitchcock. I saw that episode in re-run without knowing who Claire Griswold WAS, but I DID notice: "Hey, that young women is pretty." Hitchcock thought so , too. So did director Sydney Pollack(The Way We Were, Out of Africa)...Claire Griswold remained his wife until his death.