LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Janet Leigh
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Janet Leigh was the only child of a couple who often moved from town to town. Living in apartments, Janet was a bright child who skipped several grades and finished high school when she was 15. A lonely child, she would spend much of her time at movie theaters. She was a student, studying music and psychology, at the University of the Pacific until she was "discovered" while visiting her parents in Northern California. Her father was working the desk at a ski resort where her mother worked as a maid. Retired MGM actress Norma Shearer saw a picture of Janet on the front desk and asked if she could borrow it. This led to a screen test at MGM and a starring role in The Romance of Rosy Ridge (1947).
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Janet Leigh is not the only celebrity to lend support to the Film Preservation Tour by attending press conferences, receptions and seminars. James Earl Jones, a member of the Library's private sector advisory group, the Madison Council, has traveled to eight events. Other actors who have participated include Tony Curtis, Alfre Woodard and Cliff Robertson.
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Janet Leigh has a critical, cynical attitude towards many religions and philosophies. Without realizing it, she prevents herself from appreciating new viewpoints and attitudes. Leigh is more rigid and dogmatic than she realizes. Her approach may ... be too intellectual or moralistic. Janet Leigh takes her own political beliefs and spiritual philosophy very seriously, worrying and fretting if she is not 100% clear about some ideology or theory.
Janet Leigh's parents pinned their hopes on their only child, and she did not disappoint. Their dream came true when movie star Norma Shearer spotted a photograph of the lovely teen that Janet's father kept on his desk in the ski lodge where he was a clerk. By 1946 Janet was starring opposite Hollywood's most popular leading men. For more than a decade, she and husband Tony Curtis were Hollywood's "It" couple. In 1960 she earned a Golden Globe® and Oscar® nomination for her role in Psycho. But as she neared age 40 parts began drying up, her father committed suicide and her marriage came apart.
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Janet Leigh wrote several books, including an autobiography in 1984, There Really Was a Hollywood. She was married four times, first at the age of 14 (subsequently annulled) to an 18-year-old called Kenny. Her second marriage, to bandleader Stanley Reames, lasted two years. After she and Tony Curtis divorced in 1962, she married her fourth husband Robert Brandt, a stockbroker, the same year. He survives her with her two daughters by Tony Curtis, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Kelly Curtis... an actress.
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Janet Leigh was born July 6, 1927 Jeanette Helen Morrison in Merced, California. Norma Shearer, whose late husband had been Irving Thalberg, senior executive at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, discovered Ms. Leigh. After Ms. Shearer showed a photograph of Ms. Leigh to Lew Wasserman, a talent agent, Wasserman secured a contract for Ms. Leigh at MGM.
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Janet Leigh