Joseph Stefano
Encyclopedia
Joseph Stefano was an American
screenwriter
, known to genre fans for writing the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock
's Psycho and for being the producer and co-writer of the Outer Limits
TV series.
. In Manhattan he adopted the stage name Jerry Stevens.
But Stefano's initial career was as a composer of pop music
in the 1940s, writing songs for Las Vegas showman Donn Arden
. In possession of a large collection of sheet music, he once spent five hours challenging pianist Michael Feinstein
on names of obscure Tin Pan Alley
songs.
with The Black Orchid (1958); his father, a tailor, had made silk flowers and this was an influence on the screenplay. In 1960 though, Stefano was commissioned by Alfred Hitchcock
to adapt Robert Bloch
's pulp
novel Psycho for the screen. His work was recognized by the Mystery Writers of America
when he was given a 1961 Edgar Award
, for Best Motion Picture Screenplay. Stefano was also offered the job of scripting Hitchcock's The Birds
(1963) and Marnie
(1964), but chose instead to produce and write for his friend Leslie Stevens
' science fiction television anthology series The Outer Limits
. Both Stefano and Stevens were involved only during the first season of the show. In the book Writing with Hitchcock, Stefano said that Hitchcock held a grudge over his being unavailable to write the screenplay for Marnie
.
After leaving the series due to network interference and exhaustion, Stefano wrote and directed The Ghost of Sierra de Cobre (1964; aka The Haunted), a film utilizing many of the crew responsible for The Outer Limits. The thriller Eye of the Cat
(1969) and the comedy
Futz! (1969) (co-written by Rochelle Owens) were Stefano's last big-screen jobs for many years. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, he wrote many made-for-TV movies, such as Home for the Holidays (1972), and Snowbeast
(1977). Stefano also wrote one episode for the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation
entitled Skin of Evil. Stefano was one of the Guests of Honor at the 1974 NY Telefantasy Convention (along with Noel Neill, Jim Danforth and William Tuttle), and spent hours signing autographs for hundreds of Outer Limits fans. At the show, he expressed his surprise that so many people still remembered the series almost a decade after its cancellation, little realizing that almost 50 years later, the show would still be considered a milestone in TV science-fiction.
In 1990, he revisited the characters from Psycho
with the TV movie script for the last sequel in what he believed had become an increasingly disappointing series of films. Psycho IV: The Beginning
(1990) interestingly posits the origins of Norman Bates
' destructive mother-love, featuring Olivia Hussey
as Mrs. Bates. Stefano wrote and executive produced the Al Pacino
drama
Two Bits
(1995; aka A Day to Remember), a personal project that fared poorly at the box-office and with critics, leaving Stefano less than enthusiastic about continuing to write for modern Hollywood. Gus Van Sant
's remake of Psycho
(1998) followed Stefano's script punctiliously.
Stefano died of a heart attack
at Los Robles Hospital in Thousand Oaks, California
.
The last episode was originally a pilot for a proposed TV series called The Unknown, but after ABC rejected it, Stefano reworked it as the season one finale.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
screenwriter
Screenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...
, known to genre fans for writing the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
's Psycho and for being the producer and co-writer of the Outer Limits
The Outer Limits (1963 TV series)
The Outer Limits is an American television series that aired on ABC from 1963 to 1965. The series is similar in style to the earlier The Twilight Zone, but with a greater emphasis on science fiction, rather than fantasy stories...
TV series.
Early years
As a teenager, Stefano was so keen to become an actor that he dropped out of high school two weeks before graduation and traveled to New York CityNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. In Manhattan he adopted the stage name Jerry Stevens.
But Stefano's initial career was as a composer of pop music
Pop music
Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...
in the 1940s, writing songs for Las Vegas showman Donn Arden
Donn Arden
Donn Arden was an American choreographer and producer.- Biography :Born Arlyle Arden Peterson Arden to a railway executive and a housewife, he grew up in St...
. In possession of a large collection of sheet music, he once spent five hours challenging pianist Michael Feinstein
Michael Feinstein
Michael Jay Feinstein is an American singer, pianist, and music revivalist. He is an interpreter of, and an anthropologist and archivist for, the repertoire known as the Great American Songbook. In 1988 he won a Drama Desk Special Award for celebrating American musical theatre songs...
on names of obscure Tin Pan Alley
Tin Pan Alley
Tin Pan Alley is the name given to the collection of New York City music publishers and songwriters who dominated the popular music of the United States in the late 19th century and early 20th century...
songs.
Career as screenwriter, producer and director
Stefano began writing movie scripts in the late 1950s, firstly for Martin RittMartin Ritt
Martin Ritt was an American director, actor, and playwright who worked in both film and theater. He was born in New York City.-Early career and influences:...
with The Black Orchid (1958); his father, a tailor, had made silk flowers and this was an influence on the screenplay. In 1960 though, Stefano was commissioned by Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
to adapt Robert Bloch
Robert Bloch
Robert Albert Bloch was a prolific American writer, primarily of crime, horror and science fiction. He is best known as the writer of Psycho, the basis for the film of the same name by Alfred Hitchcock...
's pulp
Pulp magazine
Pulp magazines , also collectively known as pulp fiction, refers to inexpensive fiction magazines published from 1896 through the 1950s. The typical pulp magazine was seven inches wide by ten inches high, half an inch thick, and 128 pages long...
novel Psycho for the screen. His work was recognized by the Mystery Writers of America
Mystery Writers of America
Mystery Writers of America is an organization for mystery writers, based in New York.The organization was founded in 1945 by Clayton Rawson, Anthony Boucher, Lawrence Treat, and Brett Halliday....
when he was given a 1961 Edgar Award
Edgar Award
The Edgar Allan Poe Awards , named after Edgar Allan Poe, are presented every year by the Mystery Writers of America...
, for Best Motion Picture Screenplay. Stefano was also offered the job of scripting Hitchcock's The Birds
The Birds (film)
The Birds is a 1963 horror film directed by Alfred Hitchcock based on the 1952 short story "The Birds" by Daphne du Maurier. It depicts Bodega Bay, California which is, suddenly and for unexplained reasons, the subject of a series of widespread and violent bird attacks over the course of a few...
(1963) and Marnie
Marnie (film)
Marnie is a 1964 psychological thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock and based on the novel of the same name by Winston Graham. The film stars Tippi Hedren and Sean Connery. The original film score was composed by Bernard Herrmann.-Plot:...
(1964), but chose instead to produce and write for his friend Leslie Stevens
Leslie Stevens
Leslie Clark Stevens III was the creator of the cult TV series The Outer Limits and director of the cult horror film Incubus , starring William Shatner. He wrote an early work of New Age philosophy, Est: The Steersman Handbook .-Early life and career:Leslie Stevens was born in Washington, D.C...
' science fiction television anthology series The Outer Limits
The Outer Limits (1963 TV series)
The Outer Limits is an American television series that aired on ABC from 1963 to 1965. The series is similar in style to the earlier The Twilight Zone, but with a greater emphasis on science fiction, rather than fantasy stories...
. Both Stefano and Stevens were involved only during the first season of the show. In the book Writing with Hitchcock, Stefano said that Hitchcock held a grudge over his being unavailable to write the screenplay for Marnie
Marnie
Marnie is a 1961 English novel written by Winston Graham, about a young woman who makes a living by embezzling from her employers, moving on, and changing her identity. She is finally caught in the act by one of her employers, a young widower named Mark Rutland, who blackmails her into marriage...
.
After leaving the series due to network interference and exhaustion, Stefano wrote and directed The Ghost of Sierra de Cobre (1964; aka The Haunted), a film utilizing many of the crew responsible for The Outer Limits. The thriller Eye of the Cat
Eye of the Cat
Eye of the Cat is a 1969 film directed by David Lowell Rich. It stars Michael Sarrazin and Gayle Hunnicutt. The story is about two people who come to the house of a rich, elderly woman who is the aunt of the man planning to rob her of her riches...
(1969) and the comedy
Comedy
Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...
Futz! (1969) (co-written by Rochelle Owens) were Stefano's last big-screen jobs for many years. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, he wrote many made-for-TV movies, such as Home for the Holidays (1972), and Snowbeast
Snowbeast
Snowbeast is a made-for-television horror film that was first broadcast in 1977 in the The United States of America.The movie details the attacks of a ravenous white sasquatch on a Colorado ski resort. The teleplay was written by Joseph Stefano, who wrote the script for Alfred Hitchcock's classic...
(1977). Stefano also wrote one episode for the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Star Trek: The Next Generation is an American science fiction television series created by Gene Roddenberry as part of the Star Trek franchise. Roddenberry, Rick Berman, and Michael Piller served as executive producers at different times throughout the production...
entitled Skin of Evil. Stefano was one of the Guests of Honor at the 1974 NY Telefantasy Convention (along with Noel Neill, Jim Danforth and William Tuttle), and spent hours signing autographs for hundreds of Outer Limits fans. At the show, he expressed his surprise that so many people still remembered the series almost a decade after its cancellation, little realizing that almost 50 years later, the show would still be considered a milestone in TV science-fiction.
In 1990, he revisited the characters from Psycho
Psycho (1960 film)
Psycho is a 1960 American suspense/psychological horror film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins. The film is based on the screenplay by Joseph Stefano, who adapted it from the 1959 novel of the same name by Robert Bloch...
with the TV movie script for the last sequel in what he believed had become an increasingly disappointing series of films. Psycho IV: The Beginning
Psycho IV: The Beginning
Psycho IV: The Beginning is a 1990 made-for-cable-television horror film that serves as both the third sequel and a prequel to Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 film Psycho, as it includes both events after Psycho III while focusing on flashbacks of events that took place prior to the original film...
(1990) interestingly posits the origins of Norman Bates
Norman Bates
Norman Bates is a fictional character created by writer Robert Bloch as the central character in his novel Psycho, and portrayed by Anthony Perkins as the main antagonist of the 1960 film of the same name directed by Alfred Hitchcock...
' destructive mother-love, featuring Olivia Hussey
Olivia Hussey
Olivia Hussey is an Argentinian actress who became famous for her role as Juliet in Franco Zeffirelli's Academy Award-winning 1968 film version of Romeo and Juliet. For this role she won the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year - Actress as well as the David di Donatello for best actress...
as Mrs. Bates. Stefano wrote and executive produced the Al Pacino
Al Pacino
Alfredo James "Al" Pacino is an American film and stage actor and director. He is famous for playing mobsters, including Michael Corleone in The Godfather trilogy, Tony Montana in Scarface, Alphonse "Big Boy" Caprice in Dick Tracy and Carlito Brigante in Carlito's Way, though he has also appeared...
drama
Drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...
Two Bits
Two Bits
Two Bits is an American drama film. It was directed by James Foley, and stars Al Pacino, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, and Jerry Barone. It was released on November 22, 1995.The title refers to the American slang term two bits for a quarter dollar....
(1995; aka A Day to Remember), a personal project that fared poorly at the box-office and with critics, leaving Stefano less than enthusiastic about continuing to write for modern Hollywood. Gus Van Sant
Gus Van Sant
Gus Green Van Sant, Jr. is an American director, screenwriter, painter, photographer, musician, and author. He is a two time nominee of the Academy Award for Best Director for his 1997 film Good Will Hunting and his 2008 film Milk, both of which were also nominated for Best Picture, and won the...
's remake of Psycho
Psycho (1998 film)
Psycho is a 1998 American horror film produced and directed by Gus Van Sant for Universal Pictures, a remake of the 1960 film directed by Alfred Hitchcock...
(1998) followed Stefano's script punctiliously.
Stefano died of a heart attack
Myocardial infarction
Myocardial infarction or acute myocardial infarction , commonly known as a heart attack, results from the interruption of blood supply to a part of the heart, causing heart cells to die...
at Los Robles Hospital in Thousand Oaks, California
Thousand Oaks, California
Thousand Oaks is a city in southeastern Ventura County, California, in the United States. It was named after the many oak trees that grace the area, and the city seal is adorned with an oak....
.
The Outer Limits
Stefano was a producer for the first season of The Outer Limits and wrote a total of 12 episodes. They are:- "Nightmare"
- "It Crawled Out of the Woodwork"
- "The Zanti Misfits"
- "The Mice" (teleplay)
- "Don't Open Till Doomsday"
- "The Invisibles"
- "The Bellero Shield" (story & teleplay)
- "Moonstone" (story)
- "Fun and Games" (teleplay)
- "A Feasibility Study"
- "The Chameleon" (story)
- "The Forms of Things Unknown"
The last episode was originally a pilot for a proposed TV series called The Unknown, but after ABC rejected it, Stefano reworked it as the season one finale.