I know Hitchcock and his wife were'nt very young at the time of the movie...
I know it was different times...
Maybe, their puritan education was a reason...
... but I was very surprised that a married couple didn't share a bed ! Even if they do not have sex anymore like many aged couples, but I found this very odd...
Any thoughts ?
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I was confused because we see them on separate twin beds in the same room, then later we see Alma sitting on a double bed. Symbolism maybe?
shareI'm not sure if Hitchcock and Alma actually slept in seperate beds, but I think it was a sort of wink about the taboos of PSYCHO. Hitchcock goes on and on about new things, taking risks, and all this stuff in PSYCHO that has never been done, and often frowned upon. And at the time a couple, married or not, in the same bed was considered inappropriate.
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Only inappropriate in movies and television, not in real life.
shareOnly inappropriate in movies and television, not in real life.
almost all of the 50's movie sets and television shows had married couples in separate beds. You are writing your question in 2013 but as I remember the movies and television never showed a married couple in the same bed. I now know a lot of married couples who have separate rooms which leads me to think that it is more popular than we know to sleep separately. Twin beds were very popular in the 50's and then double beds. My family had 2 beds that were in between single and double in the house. Queen size beds only became popular in my adulthood and I had my first queen size bed in the 70's. I also think that married couples having sex in the 50's was to reproduce so if you weren't reproducing there was no sex. Do we really know? Sex was such a hush hush subject in the 50's. Where they show the film discussion among the producers in the movie of if they will show a nude body, etc., you have to remember that nothing was shown in those days. Whit and his "girl" at the beach house had their closes on.
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Separate beds were common in the early 20th century. My grandparents, who died about 15 years ago, slept in separate beds their whole lives.
My mother bought a house in the early 1980s from a catholic family whose parents had just died. When we toured the house, the master bedroom had two twin beds. I had never seen anything like it - at least not in real life. This was a nice all brick ranch house in a middle class suburb that was about 8 years old.
So I guess it was more of a cultural/generational thing for people who grew up in the 30s,40s and 50s.
Having 2 single beds was quite popular in the earlier 20th century forarroed couples. You will see this often in many earlier films as well. I assume this was a more natural form of birth control promoted by society rather than contraceptives.
shareIt just isn't true that 'most couples' slept in separate beds until the '60s. For those who did it, it was mainly for comfort's sake. Even a more censorious society (i.e. the 50s specifically) didn't have control over what married couples did in private.(Did someone on here *really* say 'Well, people didn't have sex after they'd reproduced in those days'? I mean, that's just generational 'we invented sex for pleasure' arrogance taken to a whole new level!)
My grandparents married in 1935 and slept in a double bed all their married life -and my grandma was already pregnant when they married, as I recently discovered! That happened without them even living together, never mind not sleeping together.
Separate beds in the movies only came in with the Hays Code in 1933. Watch Hollywood films from before that and you'll see more than a few double beds. Social attitudes to sex go back and forth, not just in one direction.
Though it's true that upper-class married couples and royalty tended to have separate bedrooms - usually because they were married to preserve bloodlines or wealth and quite often had no sexual interest in each other (though there are always exceptions).
I never said most couples slept in twin beds until the 60s. I said that twin beds became popular in early 20th century perhaps as a form of natural contraception, implying that it wasn't in use before then nor was it standard for everyone.
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Whereas you often saw two guys in the same bed in early movies. You even saw it in the 60s and 70s on British TV with the comedians Morecambe and Wise. No one thought anything of it but now it wouldn't happen unless the male couple were meant to be gay, which M and W were not. Strange thing, gay liberation.
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