the cellar and tries to stab her. Sam appears and subdues him. At the police station, a psychiatrist explains that Norman killed his mother and her lover ten years earlier out of jealousy. Unable to bear the guilt, Norman mummified his mother's corpse and began treating it as if she was still alive. He recreated his mother as an alternate personality, as jealous and possessive towards Norman as he felt about his mother. When Norman is attracted to a woman, "Mother" takes over. He had killed two other missing young women before Marion and Arbogast. The psychiatrist concludes that "Mother" has now submerged Norman's personality. Norman sits in a jail cell and hears his mother saying the murders were all his doing. Marion's car is retrieved from the swamp. Cast Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates Vera Miles as Lila Crane John Gavin as Sam Loomis Martin Balsam as Private Investigator Arbogast John McIntire as Deputy Sheriff Al Chambers Simon Oakland as Dr. Richmond Frank Albertson as Tom Cassidy Pat Hitchcock as Caroline Vaughn Taylor as George Lowery Lurene Tuttle as Mrs. Chambers John Anderson as California Charlie Mort Mills as highway patrol officer Janet Leigh as Marion Crane Virginia Gregg, Paul Jasmin, and Jeanette Nolan make uncredited appearances as the voice of Norma "Mother" Bates. The three voices were used interchangeably, except for the last speech, which was performed by Gregg. Production Development Psycho is based on Robert Bloch's 1959 novel of the same name, loosely inspired by the case of convicted Wisconsin murderer and grave robber Ed Gein. Both Gein, who lived only from Bloch, and the story's protagonist Norman Bates, were solitary murderers in isolated rural locations. Each had deceased, domineering mothers, had sealed off a room in their home as a shrine to them, and dressed in women's clothes. Gein was apprehended after killing only twice. Peggy Robertson, Hitchcock's long-time assistant, read Anthony Boucher's positive review of the novel in his "Criminals at Large" column in The New York Times and decided to show the book to her employer; however, studio readers at Paramount Pictures had already rejected its premise for a film. Hitchcock acquired rights to the novel for $9,500 and reportedly ordered Robertson to buy all copies to preserve the novel's surprises. Hitchcock, who had come to face genre competitors whose works were critically compared to his own, was seeking new material to recover from