- Born
- Died
- Birth nameJoseph William Stefano
- Creative horror screenwriter Joseph Stefano has been writing scripts
since the early sixties. His first was The Black Orchid (1958). Less than a year later,
he met his new friend, Alfred Hitchcock, to do the famous script for Psycho (1960).
Stefano decided to drop the assignment for Hitchcock's The Birds (1963). Stefano
later wrote a screenplay for Eye of the Cat (1969) and, by the early 1970s, he
did numerous made for TV screenplays including Revenge! (1971), Home for the Holidays (1972) and
Snowbeast (1977). When the 1980s came around, Stefano had no great intention to
write any more scripts, and he was discouraged when Alfred Hitchcock died in 1980. It
wasn't until the early 1990s that he wrote the script for the last
sequel in the Psycho series (he dropped the other scripts for II and
III) - Psycho IV: The Beginning (1990). Stefano has won many awards for his
writing.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Anonymous
- SpouseMarilyn Stefano(December 5, 1953 - August 25, 2006) (his death, 1 child)
- When he first read the novel "Psycho," he felt the story was weak in
that it started with and focused too much on the unsavory Norman Bates
character. It was Stefano's idea to Hitchcock to refocus the first part
of the film on ill-fated Marion Crane with her embezzlement and
shocking shower-stabbing murder at the Bates Hotel. Hitchcock loved the
idea of killing off the leading lady (Janet Leigh) in the first 20 minutes
and the movie was a huge hit. - Was a good friend of Alfred Hitchcock.
- His big break into show business came when he was hired as a writer for
the Ted Mack Family Hour (1951). - A broken eardrum exempted him from WWII service.
- Originally was a singer and dancer who wrote his own material for high
school and little theater productions in Philadelphia. He dropped out
of high school a few weeks before graduating in order to pursue his
career in Manhattan.
- "I think doing the screenplay for Psycho (1960) has done me more harm than
good. Through the years it has made it very difficult for me to get
some of the other kinds of pictures that I would have like to have gone
on to".
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