MARLI RENFRO, a pin up model, who doubled for Janet Leigh in Psycho’s infamous shower scene, was interviewed on 15th October 2014 in Los Angeles, California.

“I was 21 years old when I made Psycho. They wanted a pin up model to double for Janet Leigh in the shower scene. I was hired for 2-3 days and worked for a total of 7 days. When I first met Alfred Hitchcock, he was everything I thought he would be. I’ve always been a big fan of Hitchcock, and would have done the movie for free to work with him. He was very polite, very professional, knew exactly what he wanted. He put me at ease.”

“I have heard various people in the business not speak kindly of him, but for one thing I think it might be personality clashes. The other thing is he knows exactly what he wants. To the T. I can’t say anything bad or negative about him. He was totally professional and had a great sense of humour.”

“I was almost naked doing the shower filming. Except I had a little rubber patch on my crotch and that was it. I was a nudist at the time, so being without clothes was very comfortable. My first day of work I showed up for make up, I was there for 2-3 hours, and I wore a grey and white wig which matched Janet Leigh’s hairstyle. One of the make up men walked me to the set, I took off my robe, and started doing some stretching exercises and stood there nonachantly. When you don’t have any clothes on it’s really very boring compared to wearing say a sexy negligee.”

“Hitchcock was very professional and made sure everyone was very respectful to me. I never got the impression that Hitchcock was lecherous. Nothing even bordering, not a tinge. I would have been aware of it if he had.”

“Once he brought the measuring tape from the lens of the camera and brought it to my left nipple. I thought that was very funny, it was his sense of humour showing. But he didn’t touch me!

“It’s so easy to say things after someone has passed on. I don’t agree with anything like that. To continually press on after somebody has passed on, I take that with a grain of salt myself. To me he is a genius in his field. When filming the shower scene was over, Hitch said thank you, it was a pleasure working with you, and he was very cordial.”

2016 proves to be yet another year of Alfred Hitchcock in the headlines. Tippi Hedren’s memoirs are due to be published in November and Hitchcock’s ‘The Girl’, makes an appearance at the Hay Literary Festival in the UK this summer. But many people who worked closely with Hitch are still unhappy with the media’s portrayal of the famed director. Over the following week Save Hitchcock publishes some new interviews which aim to set the record straight.

Yvonne Hessler, Hitchcock’s secretary (1960-1962), interviewed on tape in Los Angeles in February 2016:

“My first impressions of Hitchcock was that he was a conservative person. Always dressed in a Navy blue suit with a white shirt, black shoes, black socks. That he was a very good verbal communicator, extremely intelligent and in general a Gentleman.

Knowing Hitchcock as well as I did, there is an enormous amount of fabrication in the media. Hitch was really non confrontational. He would never have gone up to anyone and say anything of a sexual nature. He was a perfect gentleman. He always treated Peggy (Robertson) and I in the office, as a perfect gentleman. In the office he never made a pass. That’s not to say he was passive. He was highly intelligent, that he would never make that kind of overture, to make an assault sexually. Never! He was too smart to do that. That is my judgement. His great sensual delight in life was not women, it was food, plain sensual food.”