My special thanks go to Charles Winecoff and Jane Joseph for providing me with information on this new edition, and credit goes also to Amazon.com from where some of the following excerpts were taken. Mr. Winecoff was kind enough to contact me personally and I felt it appropriate to add, that he expressed "The new edition is the best - the one I am proud of - and it has finally been edited properly the way I wish it had been the first time out."
Anthony Perkins: Split Image is the definitive biography of Hollywood's most enigmatic and complex leading man. The book insightfully and comprehensively documents the life of this great actor, who was forced to act the part of ladies' man while privately struggling with his own homosexuality, and chronicles his complicated search for acceptance.
Anthony Perkins' performance as Norman Bates in Psycho gave the face of horror a makeover - he was Hollywood's cutest homicidal maniac ever - and became a milestone of movie history. In fact, Perkins was hailed as the new James Dean before Alfred Hitchcock got hold of him - and gave him the greatest role of his career.
Anthony Perkins: Split Image chronicles the actor's often rocky career acting opposite film legends like Gary Cooper, Sophia Loren, Orson Welles, Brigitte Bardot, Audrey Hepburn and Jane Fonda - and details his secret relationship with screen hunk Tab Hunter.
It also explores Perkins' sudden marriage to his biggest fan, Vogue photographer Berry Berenson - and reveals how they defied the odds of the proverbial "Hollywood marriage", staying together for nearly 20 years, until Perkins's untimely death in 1992.
Newly revised and updated for this tenth anniversary edition, Anthony Perkins: Split Image is both a harrowing look at life in the Hollywood closet and a poignant human drama that will change your vision of Anthony Perkins forever. Featuring a foreword by Village Voice columnist Michael Musto - and a new epilogue addressing the tragic loss of Perkins's widow in the attacks of September 11th, 2001.
"An irresistible biography. A landmark of its kind."
- Peter Harry Brown and Pat H. Broeske, authors of Howard Hughes: The Untold Story
"The best locked-in-the-Hollywood-closet biography since Patricia Bosworth's Montgomery Clift."
- Buzz
"Voluminous research, wonderful detail. A triumph."
- Entertainment Weekly
"A fascinating book filled with revelatory details of Anthony Perkins' homosexual not-so-private life"
- Anne Edwards, author of Streisand: It Only Happens Once
"Sensational"
- Hollywood Reporter
"Compelling"
- Boston Globe
"Insightful, touching, and jammed with eyebrow-raising dirt."
- Movieline
"Fast moving and fascinating ... Winecoff weaves a deliciously dishy yet delicate tale of an equally delicate human being."
- New York Post
"A damn good read."
- Barry Paris, author of Audrey Hepburn
"Winecoff pours light into Perkins' dark corners ... presents lurid facts with insight and compassion ... will renew interest in all of Perkins' film work."
- Lambda Book Report
"Much more than a celebrity tell-all ... required reading for anyone wanting a peek at the high price of stardom and homophobia."
- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
"One of the deepest, darkest Hollywood stories ever told"
- Robert Hofler, author of The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson.
"Riveting...With his laser-beam of an eye, Winecoff lights up the hidden corners of Hollywood's golden age, as well as a dark age of homosexuality that needs to be understood by anyone who didn't live through it. It's a page-turner."
- James Gavin, author of Deep in a Dream: The Long Night of Chet Baker
"Charles Winecoff is a clever biographer. With his inside, creepy examination of Anthony Perkins, I was mesmerized by a dude I never thought I'd be able to stomach for more than a paragraph. Well done."
- E!'s Ted Casablanca
"Told with empathy and a sagacious eye for detail, Winecoff's lively chronicle of one of the screen's more formidable, if underrated, leading men perhaps should have been called Brokeback Hollywood Hills."
- Stephen M. Silverman, author of David Lean and Dancing on the Ceiling: Stanley Donen and His Movies.
"An important chronicle of a time when gay was still the ultimate taboo, one that Hollywood had especially little use for as it aggressively sold illusion and lies."
- Michael Musto, from his Foreword
Charles Winecoff graduated from the UCLA Film School in 1983. He has written for many magazines, including Entertainment Weekly, Vogue and The New Yorker - and currently works as senior writer on the long-running TV series, the E! True Hollywood Story. As a boy Winecoff was a self-proclaimed walking encyclopedia of horror film trivia, and grew up around the corner from Perkins in the downtown Manhattan neighbourhood of Chelsea - "He was the first movie star I ever saw in the flesh, and he fascinated me."
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