Split Image: The Life of Anthony Perkins [Hardcover]

Charles Winecoff (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1996

An in-depth profile of the star of the movie Psycho includes interviews with his closest associates, recounts Hollywood anecdotes, and reveals the actor's struggles to hide his secret life. 35,000 first printing. $30,000 ad/promo.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Though Anthony Perkins played roles as diverse as a lawman of the old West in The Tin Star and Eugene Grant in the play Look Homeward Angel, he is best remembered for his performance as the maniacal son of a monstrous mother in Psycho. In Split Image, Charles Winecoff explains how Psycho pigeon-holed Perkins into similar roles and stagnated his professional life. His private life was equally vexatious--his father died when he was 5 and his mother controlled his finances until she died. He was married for 19 years but remained an active homosexual, engaging in a lifestyle that ultimately led to his death from AIDS in 1992.

From Booklist

"Why Tony Perkins?" Winecoff says he was asked "ad nauseam" while writing this life of an actor renowned for a single role, the psychopath Norman Bates in Hitchcock's Psycho. Winecoff gradually answers the question as he reveals a man who, like his greatest character, had things to hide. Perkins was homosexual at a time and in a profession that wanted homosexuality stifled. Both in college and early in his career, he saw the heavy hand of the powers that were descend on open homosexuality: first when a classmate was beaten to the point of hospitalization and then when Tab Hunter, assumed to be involved with Perkins, was barred from the set of Fear Strikes Out (1957). (Hunter denies the barring.) Perkins drove his sexuality underground and also, perhaps, into a taste for danger that may have eventuated in the AIDS from which he died. But he also finally married and had two sons. He makes a fascinating subject, fascinating enough to compensate for Winecoff's often plodding treatment. Ray Olson

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 512 pages
• Publisher: Dutton Adult; First edition. edition (September 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0525940642
• ISBN-13: 978-0525940647
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #224,307 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The enigmatic Tony Perkins revealed...sort of, September 26, 2001

By 

Jeffrey Ellis "bored recluse" (Richardson, Texas United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Split Image: The Life of Anthony Perkins (Paperback)

Best known, of course, as Norman Bates in the original Psycho, Tony Perkins remains one of those iconic stars who somehow remains a mystery himself. Though this biography (the first in-depth look at his life to be published after his death from AIDS in the early '90s) doesn't offer a lot of insight into what made him tick, it still reveals that Perkins was more than just Norman Bates and that he had the talent to create more characters than just the jittery motel owner. Ultimately, Split Image becomes a listing of the events of Perkins' life. Luckily, Perkins lived a pretty interesting life.

When this book first came out, it got a lot of attention because of its revelations concerning Perkins' secret homosexual life style and his affair, in the 1950s, with fellow matinee idol Tab Hunter. (Though its indicative of the book's rather strangely reserved style that at no point is it directly said that Hunter and Perkins were lovers. Instead, its merely insinuated or left assumed -- much like the tabloids that hounded Hunter and Perkins for most of their secret relationship.) Despite a few generic comments about the difficulty of living a lie, the book doesn't really give any insight on what it was like to be in the Hollywood closet in the '50s and early '60s. While we learn about Perkins attempts to hide his sexuality, we never really learn how he felt about the deception. Nor do we ever really gain any insight into his later marriage to Berry Berenson and whether it was a marriage of convenience or if Perkins and Berenson truly were in love. Even Perkins claims to have outgrown his past homosexuality is merely reported on without any further commentary on the validity of the claim.

However, this book is invaluable for revealing that Tony Perkins actually did have a life when he wasn't Norman Bates. For instance, if not for this book, I would have never have known that, even after his reputation started to decline, Perkins was a respected and distinguished theater director. I wouldn't have known that he was once something of a Broadway musical store. These are all images that run counter to the image of Perkins as a cross-dressing mass murderer and Winecoff is to be commended for showing us that while Norman Bates may have been created from parts of Tony Perkins, Tony Perkins was never Norman Bates. Instead, he was a talented man who created one of the most recognizable, powerful performances in the history of film and as a result of his grand accomplishment, he suffered for the rest of his life. Its a compelling story and even if Winecoff doesn't get under the surface of this split image, it remains a fascinating portrait of a classic enigma.

27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A harrowing look at life inside the Hollywood closet, January 5, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Split Image: The Life of Anthony Perkins (Hardcover)

Too often Hollywood biographies rely on the glossy, fabricated images of their subjects for inspiration. Not SPLIT IMAGE. This remarkable biography meticulously weaves together the very personal story of gay actor Anthony Perkins with the changing social climate of America from the 1950s right up to his death from AIDS in 1992; the book is rich in gossip and scandal (a requirement for any successful star bio) but also full of insights on the effect of the times on Perkins's own troubled psyche. Author Winecoff relentlessly probes the dark side of Perkins's self-made boy-next-door image, which was not only his calling card in surly Method-acting-inundated Hollywood, but also his own private survival mechanism as a young man leading a very severe double life. Nothing here is taken at face value. The author's research, which is vast, covers everything from Perkins's (single) mother's lesbianism and the actor's terrifying experiences at college where he endured a gay witchhunt (along with the older brother of actor George Hamilton) to his love affair with hunky Warner Bros contract player Tab Hunter - violently hushed up by Perkins's studio, Paramount (the two men were given strict orders not to be seen in public together) - to his reliance on homophobic psychoanalysis for confidence, and his eventual marriage (at age 43) to socialite Berry Berenson, with whom he had two sons. It is to Winecoff's credit that the Perkins-Berenson marriage is treated just as fairly as the actor's numerous gay love affairs. Perkins literally brainwashed himself into becoming a heterosexual, so hard was the pressure to conform not only in Hollywood but in America. One of the book's strengths is in subtly showing how one man's story is in fact the story of a nation, the psychiatric community, the gay community. etc. Add to all this fascinating stuff a tearful ending, and you've got what is without a doubt the most intelligent, passionate star biography in years.

29 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Split Image is an imperfect but fascinating biography., February 7, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Split Image (Paperback)

Charles Winecoff's Split Image answers successfully the two main questions posed by Anthony Perkins' life: why, despite talent and opportunity, he never became a major, enduring star; and why, despite his homosexuality, he spent the last third of his life married to a woman. For the general reader, Perkins' biography also serves as a moving example of the poisonous effects of gay closeting.

While I heartily agree with my fellow reviewers' favorable assessment of Split Image, the book does have its flaws. The documentation is wanting: Winecoff's bibliography cites only books, not articles. He provides no footnotes or endnotes, and no appendix with Perkins' filmography and other work. Furthermore, Winecoff dwells too often on supposed parallels between Perkins' movies and events in his real life, particularly homosexual "double meanings" that the filmmakers obviously never intended. At times Winecoff also tells us more than we need to know about the specifics of Perkins' sexual habits.

These defects, however, do little to detract from the biography's main achievement: its compelling portrait of an elusive, contradictory personality, particularly during his early years. (Perkins' private life after marriage emerges less clearly, as some of those closest to him at that time -- most notably, his widow and children -- apparently declined to be interviewed.) Unlike the typical celebrity biographer, Winecoff pays due attention to the professional aspect of his subject's life and offers thoughtful assessments of Perkins' work, both good and bad. The narrative is well paced and filled with surprising anecdotes. Winecoff's prose, though no threat to the reputation of Virginia Woolf, is still superior to the pedestrian phrasings of most Hollywood journalists.

I recommend Split Image not only to fans of "TP," who surely have read it by now, but also to anyone who wishes to learn more about film history or gay issues - or who simply enjoys a well-written biography.