Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Leigh's Legs

Alexa here dropping in from Pop Elegantiarum again. I recently found this great publicity photo of Janet Leigh in a thrift store. Apparently the film it was shot for, Safari, was a bit of a dud, but I had to have it. I mean, check out those legs, so famously shot by Orson Welles in Touch of Evil! Then I was up all night the other night and I caught John Carpenter's The Fog, and while it was the perfect thing to watch at 3 a.m., I realized that this woman's career ran the gamut from classic to crap. I started wondering what my favorite Janet Leigh performance might be. While not the best of films, I think Holiday Affair might top my list because of the thick sexual tension between her an Robert Mitchum, plopped in the middle a saintly Christmas story. What are your favorites?

8 comments:

Deborah said...

Great moments in sentence structure: I momentarily thought that the picture showed Janet Leigh in a thrift store!

NATHANIEL R said...

HA!
so did i.
now i understand. I think i have serioulsy undervalued Janet Leigh over the years. Must look into it more.

Alexa said...

She loved to thrift naked. And once she saw that enormous leaf she just had to have it.

NATHANIEL R said...

hee.

Richard Bellamy said...

Janet Leigh is hot in "Houdini."

The Film Doctor said...

Psycho. Is there any real competition?

Paul Outlaw said...

Touch of Evil, which predates Psycho by two years yet somehow manages to parody the Hitchcock classic: Janet Leigh in jeopardy in some out-of-the-way motel, Dennis Weaver working a Norman Bates-like persona. How did Welles manage that trick? Or was Hitch just inspired by Welles?

And Bye Bye Birdie, of course.

Chuck Kahn said...

So when will there be a Safari Blu-ray in glorious CinemaScope? It was directed by Terrence Young and produced by Cubby Brocoli, who would also team on the 007 films Dr. No, From Russia With Love and Thunderball.